The Woodlanders

The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there only

remained two in the darkness. One of these came from a residence on

the hill-side, of which there is nothing to say at present; the other

shone from the window of Marty South. Precisely the same outward effect

was produced here, however, by her rising when the clock struck ten and

hanging up a thick cloth curtain. The door it was necessary to keep

ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because of the smoke; but she

obviated the effect of the ribbon of light through the chink by hanging

a cloth over that also. She was one of those people who, if they have

to work harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a

secret as far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of

wood-splintering which came from within, no wayfarer would have

perceived that here the cottager did not sleep as elsewhere.

Eleven, twelve, one o'clock struck; the heap of spars grew higher, and

the pile of chips and ends more bulky. Even the light on the hill had

now been extinguished; but still she worked on. When the temperature

of the night without had fallen so low as to make her chilly, she

opened a large blue umbrella to ward off the draught from the door.

The two sovereigns confronted her from the looking-glass in such a

manner as to suggest a pair of jaundiced eyes on the watch for an

opportunity. Whenever she sighed for weariness she lifted her gaze

towards them, but withdrew it quickly, stroking her tresses with her

fingers for a moment, as if to assure herself that they were still

secure. When the clock struck three she arose and tied up the spars

she had last made in a bundle resembling those that lay against the

wall.

She wrapped round her a long red woollen cravat and opened the door.

The night in all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold, like the

very brink of an absolute void, or the antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed

in by her Teuton forefathers. For her eyes were fresh from the blaze,

and here there was no street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly

transition between the inner glare and the outer dark. A lingering

wind brought to her ear the creaking sound of two over-crowded branches

in the neighboring wood which were rubbing each other into wounds, and

other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the screech of

owls, and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon

ill-balanced on its roosting-bough.

But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she could see well

enough for her purpose. Taking a bundle of spars under each arm, and

guided by the serrated line of tree-tops against the sky, she went some

hundred yards or more down the lane till she reached a long open shed,

carpeted around with the dead leaves that lay about everywhere. Night,

that strange personality, which within walls brings ominous

introspectiveness and self-distrust, but under the open sky banishes

such subjective anxieties as too trivial for thought, inspired Marty

South with a less perturbed and brisker manner now. She laid the spars

on the ground within the shed and returned for more, going to and fro

till her whole manufactured stock were deposited here.