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Title: Gone to Earth

Author: Mary Webb

Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7055]
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[This file was first posted on March 3, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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GONE TO EARTH




by Mary Webb

1917





[Dedication]
_To him whose presence is home._




Chapter 1


Small feckless clouds were hurried across the vast untroubled
sky--shepherdless, futile, imponderable--and were torn to fragments
on the fangs of the mountains, so ending their ephemeral adventures
with nothing of their fugitive existence left but a few tears.

It was cold in the Callow--a spinney of silver birches and larches that
topped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the tree-tops, and
a fainter purple haunted the vistas between the silver and brown boles.

Only the crudeness of youth was here as yet, and not its triumph--only
the sharp calyx-point, the pricking tip of the bud, like spears, and
not the paten of the leaf, the chalice of the flower.

For as yet spring had no flight, no song, but went like a half-fledged
bird, hopping tentatively through the undergrowth. The bright springing
mercury that carpeted the open spaces had only just hung out its pale
flowers, and honeysuckle leaves were still tongues of green fire.
Between the larch boles and under the thickets of honeysuckle and
blackberry came a tawny silent form, wearing with the calm dignity of
woodland creatures a beauty of eye and limb, a brilliance of tint, that
few-women could have worn without self-consciousness. Clear-eyed,
lithe, it stood for a moment in the full sunlight--a year-old fox,
round-headed and velvet-footed. Then it slid into the shadows. A shrill
whistle came from the interior of the wood, and the fox bounded towards
it.

'Where you bin? You'm stray and lose yourself, certain sure!' said a
girl's voice, chidingly motherly. 'And if you'm alost, I'm alost; so
come you whome. The sun's undering, and there's bones for supper!'

With that she took to her heels, the little fox after her, racing down
the Callow in the cold level light till they came to the Woodus's
cottage.

Hazel Woodus, to whom the fox belonged, had always lived at the Callow.
There her mother, a Welsh gipsy, had born her in bitter rebellion,
hating marriage and a settled life and Abel Woodus as a wild cat hates
a cage. She was a rover, born for the artist's joy and sorrow, and her
spirit found no relief for its emotions; for it was dumb. To the linnet
its flight, to the thrush its song; but she had neither flight nor
song. Yet the tongueless thrush is a thrush still, and has golden music
in its heart. The caged linnet may sit moping, but her soul knows the
dip and rise of flight on an everlasting May morning.

All the things she felt and could not say, all the stored honey, the
black hatred, the wistful homesickness for the unfenced wild--all that
other women would have put into their prayers, she gave to Hazel. The
whole force of her wayward heart flowed into the softly beating heart
of her baby. It was as if she passionately flung the life she did not
value into the arms of her child.

When Hazel was fourteen she died, leaving her treasure--an old, dirty,
partially illegible manuscript-book of spells and charms and other
gipsy lore--to her daughter.

Her one request was that she might be buried in the Callow under the
yellow larch needles, and not in a churchyard. Abel Woodus did as she
asked, and was regarded askance by most of the community for not
burying her in Chrissen-ground. But this did not trouble him. He had
his harp still, and while he had that he needed no other friend. It had
been his absorption in his music that had prevented him understanding
his wife, and in the early days of their marriage she had been wildly
jealous of the tall gilt harp with its faded felt cover that stood in
the corner of the living-room. Then her jealousy changed to love of it,
and her one desire was to be able to draw music from its plaintive
strings. She could never master even the rudiments of music, but she
would sit on rainy evenings when Abel was away and run her thin hands
over the strings with a despairing passion of grieving love. Yet she
could not bear to hear Abel play. Just as some childless women with all
their accumulated stores of love cannot bear to see a mother with her
child, so Maray Woodus, with her sealed genius, her incapacity for
expression, could not bear to hear the easy self-expression of another.
For Abel was in his way a master of his art; he had dark places in his
soul, and that is the very core of art and its substance. He had the
lissom hands and cheerful self-absorption that bring success.

He had met Maray at an Eisteddfod that had been held in days gone by on
a hill five miles from the Callow, called God's Little Mountain, and
crowned by a chapel. She had listened, swaying and weeping to the surge
and lament of his harp, and when he won the harper's prize and laid it
in her lap she had consented to be married in the chapel at the end of
the Eisteddfod week. That was nineteen years ago, and she was fled like
the leaves and the birds of departed summers; but God's Little Mountain
still towered as darkly to the eastward; the wind still leapt sheer
from the chapel to the young larches of the Callow; nothing had changed
at all; only one more young, anxious, eager creature had come into the
towering, subluminous scheme of things. Hazel had her mother's eyes,
strange, fawn-coloured eyes like water, and in the large clear irises
were tawny flecks. In their shy honesty they were akin to the little
fox's. Her hair, too, of a richer colour than her father's, was tawny
and foxlike, and her ways were graceful and covert as a wild
creature's.

She stood in the lane above the cottage, which nestled below with its
roof on a level with the hedge-roots, and watched the sun dip. The red
light from the west stained her torn old dress, her thin face, her
eyes, till she seemed to be dipped in blood. The fox, wistfulness in
her expression and the consciousness of coming supper in her mind,
gazed obediently where her mistress gazed, and was touched with the
same fierce beauty. They stood there fronting the crimson pools over
the far hills, two small sentient things facing destiny with pathetic
courage; they had, in the chill evening on the lonely hill, a look as
of those predestined to grief, almost an air of martyrdom.

The small clouds that went westward took each in its turn the
prevailing colour, and vanished, dipped in blood.

From the cottage, as Hazel went down the path, came the faint thrumming
of the harp, changing as she reached the door to the air of 'The Ash
Grove.' The cottage was very low, one-storied, and roofed with red
corrugated iron. The three small windows had frames coloured with
washing-blue and frills of crimson cotton within. There seemed scarcely
room for even Hazel's small figure. The house was little larger than a
good pigsty, and only the trail of smoke from its squat chimney showed
that humanity dwelt there.

Hazel gave Foxy her supper and put her to bed in the old washtub where
she slept. Then she went into the cottage with an armful of logs from
the wood heap. She threw them on the open fire.

'I'm a-cold,' she said; 'the rain's cleared, and there'll be a duck's
frost to-night.'

Abel looked up absently, humming the air he intended to play next.

'I bin in the Callow, and I've gotten a primmyrose,' continued Hazel,
accustomed to his ways, and not discouraged. 'And I got a bit of
blackthorn, white as a lady.'

Abel was well on in 'Ap Jenkyn' by now.

Hazel moved about, seeing to supper, for she was as hungry as Foxy,
talking all the time in her rather shrilly sweet voice, while she
dumped the cracked cups and the loaf and margarine on the bare table.
The kettle was not boiling, so she threw some bacon-grease on the fire,
and a great tongue of flame sprang out and licked at Abel's beard. He
raised a hand to it, continuing to play with the other.

Hazel laughed.

'You be fair comic-struck,' she said.

She always spoke in this tone of easy comradeship; they got on very
well; they were so entirely indifferent to each other. There was
nothing filial about her or parental about him. Neither did they ever
evince the least affection for each other.

He struck up 'It's a fine hunting day.'

'Oh! shut thy row with that drodsome thing!' said Hazel with sudden
passion. 'Look'ee! I unna bide in if you go on.'

'Ur?' queried Abel dreamily.

'Play summat else!' said Hazel, 'not that; I dunna like it.'

'You be a queer girl, 'Azel,' said Abel, coming out of his abstraction.
'But I dunna mind playing "Why do the People?" instead; it's just as
heartening.'

'Canna you stop meddling wi' the music and come to supper?' asked
Hazel. The harp was always called 'the music,' just as Abel's
mouth-organ was 'the little music.'

She reached down the flitch to cut some bacon off, and her dress,
already torn, ripped from shoulder to waist.

'If you dunna take needle to that, you'll be mother-naked afore a
week's out,' said Abel indifferently.

'I mun get a new un,' said Hazel. 'It unna mend. I'll go to town
to-morrow.'

'Shall you bide with yer auntie the night over?'

'Ah.'

'I shanna look for your face till I see your shadow, then. You can
bring a tuthree wreath-frames. There's old Samson at the Yeath unna
last long; they'll want a wreath made.'

Hazel sat and considered her new dress. She never had a new one till
the old one fell off her back, and then she usually got a second-hand
one, as a shilling or two would buy only material if new, but would
stretch to a ready-made if second-hand.

'Foxy'd like me to get a green velvet,' said Hazel. She always
expressed her intense desires, which were few, in this formula. It was
her unconscious protest against the lovelessness of her life. She put
the blackthorn in water and contemplated its whiteness with delight;
but it had not occurred to her that she might herself, with a little
trouble, be as sweet and fresh as its blossom. The spiritualization of
sex would be needed before such things would occur to her. At present
she was sexless as a leaf. They sat by the fire till it went out; then
they went to bed, not troubling to say good-night.

In the middle of the night Foxy woke. The moon filled her kennel-mouth
like a door, and the light shone in her eyes. This frightened her--so
large a lantern in an unseen hand, held so purposefully before the tiny
home of one defenceless little creature. She barked sharply. Hazel
awoke promptly, as a mother at her child's cry. She ran straight out
with her bare feet into the fierce moonlight.

'What ails you?' she whispered. 'What ails you, little un?'

The wind stalked through the Callow, and the Callow moaned. A moan came
also from the plain, and black shapes moved there as the clouds drove
onwards.

'Maybe they're out,' muttered Hazel. 'Maybe the black meet's set for
to-night and she's scented the jeath pack.' She looked about nervously.
'I can see summat driving dark o'er the pastures yonder; they'm abroad,
surely.'

She hurried Foxy into the cottage and bolted the door.

'There!' she said. 'Now you lie good and quiet in the corner, and the
death pack shanna get you.'

It was said that the death pack, phantom hounds of a bad squire,
whose gross body had been long since put to sweeter uses than any
he put it to in life--changed into the clear-eyed daisy and the ardent
pimpernel--scoured the country on dark stormy nights. Harm was for the
house past which it streamed, death for those that heard it give tongue.

This was the legend, and Hazel believed it implicitly. When she had
found Foxy half dead outside her deserted earth, she had been quite
sure that it was the death pack that had made away with Foxy's mother.
She connected it also with her own mother's death. Hounds symbolized
everything she hated, everything that was not young, wild and happy.
She identified herself with Foxy, and so with all things hunted and
snared and destroyed.

Night, shadow, loud winds, winter--these were inimical; with these came
the death pack, stealthy and untiring, following for ever the trail of
the defenceless. Sunlight, soft airs, bright colours, kindness--these
were beneficent havens to flee into. Such was the essence of her creed,
the only creed she held, and it lay darkly in her heart, never
expressed even to herself. But when she ran into the night to comfort
the little fox, she was living up to her faith as few do; when she
gathered flowers and lay in the sun, she was dwelling in a mystical
atmosphere as vivid as that of the saints; when she recoiled from
cruelty, she was trampling evil underfoot, perhaps more surely than
those great divines who destroyed one another in their zeal for their
Maker.




Chapter 2


At six the next morning they had breakfast. Abel was busy making a hive
for the next summer's swarm. When he made a coffin, he always used up
the bits thus. A large coffin did not leave very much; but sometimes
there were small ones, and then he made splendid hives. The white
township on the south side of the lilac hedge increased as slowly and
unceasingly as the green township around the distant churchyard. In
summer the garden was loud with bees, and the cottage was full of them
at swarming-time. Later it was littered with honey-sections; honey
dripped from the table, and pieces of broken comb lay on the floor and
were contentedly eaten by Foxy.

Whenever an order for a coffin came, Hazel went to tell the bees who
was dead. Her father thought this unnecessary. It was only for folks
that died in the house, he said. But he had himself told the bees when
his wife died. He had gone out on that vivid June morning to his hives,
and had stood watching the lines of bees fetching water, their shadows
going and coming on the clean white boards. Then he had stooped and
said with a curious confidential indifference, 'Maray's jead.' He had
put his ear to the hive and listened to the deep, solemn murmur within;
but it was the murmur of the future, and not of the past, the
preoccupation with life, not with death, that filled the pale galleries
within. Today the eighteen hives lay under their winter covering, and
the eager creatures within slept. Only one or two strayed sometimes to
the early arabis, desultory and sad, driven home again by the frosty
air to await the purple times of honey. The happiest days of Abel's
life were those when he sat like a bard before the seething hives and
harped to the muffled roar of sound that came from within.

All his means of livelihood were joys to him. He had the art of
perpetual happiness in this, that he could earn as much as he needed by
doing the work he loved. He played at flower shows and country dances,
revivals and weddings. He sold his honey, and sometimes his bees. He
delighted in wreath-making, gardening, and carpentering, and always in
the background was his music--some new air to try on the gilded harp,
some new chord or turn to master. The garden was almost big enough, and
quite beautiful enough, for that of a mansion. In the summer white
lilies haunted it, standing out in the dusk with their demure cajolery,
looking, as Hazel said, like ghosses. Goldenrod foamed round the
cottage, deeply embowering it, and lavender made a grey mist beside the
red quarries of the path. Then Hazel sat like a queen in a regalia of
flowers, eating the piece of bread and honey that made her dinner, and
covering her face with lily pollen.

Now, there were no flowers in the garden; only the yew-tree by the gate
that hung her waxen blossom along the undersides of the branches. Hazel
hated the look of the frozen garden; she had an almost unnaturally
intense craving for everything rich, vivid, and vital. She was all
these things herself, as she communed with Foxy before starting. She
had wound her hair round her head in a large plait and her old black
hat made the colour richer.

'You'm nigh on thirty miles to go there and back, unless you get a
lift,' said Abel.

'A lift? I dunna want never no lifts!' said Hazel scornfully.

'You'm as good a walker as John of No Man's Parish,' replied Abel, 'and
he walks for ever, so they do say.'

As Hazel set forth in the sharp, fresh morning, the Callow shone with
radiant brown and silver, and no presage moved within it of the snow
that would hurtle upon it from mountains of cloud all night.

When Hazel had chosen her dress--a peacock blue serge--and had put it
on there and then in the back of the shop, curtained off for this
purpose, she went to her aunt's.

Her cousin Albert regarded her with a startled look. He was in a
margarine shop, and spent his days explaining that Margarine was as
good as butter. But, looking at Hazel, he felt that here _was_
butter--something that needed no apology, and created its own demand.
The bright blue made her so radiant that her aunt shook her head.

'You take after your ma, 'Azel,' she said. Her tone was irritated.

'I be glad.'

Her aunt sniffed.

'You ought to be as glad to take after one parent as another, if you
were jutiful,' she said.

'I dunna want to take after anybody but myself.' Hazel flushed
indignantly.

'Well! we _are_ conceited!' exclaimed her aunt. 'Albert, don't
give 'Azel all the liver and bacon. I s'pose your mother can eat as
well as schoolgirls?'

Albert was gazing at Hazel so animatedly, so obviously approving of all
she said, that her aunt was very much ruffled.

'No wonder you only want to be like yourself,' he said. 'Jam! my word,
Hazel, you're jam!'

'Albert!' cried his mother raspingly, with a pathetic note of pleading,
'haven't I always taught you to say preserve?' She was not pleading
against the inelegant word, but against Hazel.

When Albert went back to the shop, Hazel helped her aunt to wash up.
All the time she was doing this, with unusual care, and cleaning the
knives--a thing she hated--she was waiting anxiously for the expected
invitation to stay the night. She longed for it as the righteous long
for the damnation of their enemies. She never paid a visit except here,
and to her it was a wild excitement. The gas-stove, the pretty china,
the rose-patterned wall-paper, were all strange and marvellous as a
fairy-tale. At home there was no paper, no lath and plaster, only the
bare bricks, and the ceiling was of bulging sailcloth hung under the
rafters.

Now to all these was added the new delight of Albert's admiring gaze--an
alert, live gaze, a thing hitherto unknown to Albert. Perhaps, if she
stayed, Albert would take her out for the evening. She would see the
streets of the town in the magic of lights. She would walk out in her
new dress with a real young man--a young man who possessed a gilt
watch-chain. The suspense, as the wintry afternoon drew in, became
almost intolerable. Still her aunt did not speak. The sitting-room
looked so cosy when tea was laid; the firelight played over the cups;
her aunt drew the curtains. On one side there was joy, warmth--all that
she could desire; on the other, a forlorn walk in the dark. She had
left it until so late that her heart shook at the idea of the many
miles she must cover alone if her aunt did not ask her.

Her aunt knew what was going on in Hazel's mind, and smiled grimly at
Hazel's unusual meekness. She took the opportunity of administering a
few hometruths.

'You look like an actress,' she said.

'Do I, auntie?'

'Yes. It's a disgrace, the way you look. You quite draw men's eyes.'

'It's nice to draw men's eyes, inna it, auntie?'

'Nice! Hazel, I should like to box your ears! You naughty girl! You'll
go wrong one of these days.'

'What for will I, auntie?'

'Some day you'll get spoke to!' She said the last words in a hollow
whisper. 'And after that, as you won't say and do what a good girl
would, you'll get picked up.'

'I'd like to see anyone pick me up!' said Hazel indignantly. 'I'd
kick!'

'Oh! how unladylike! I didn't mean really picked up! I meant
allegorically--like in the Bible.'

'Oh! only like in the Bible,' said Hazel disappointedly. 'I thought you
meant summat _real_.'

'Oh! You'll bring down my grey hairs,' wailed Mrs. Prowde.

An actress was bad, but an infidel! 'That I should live to hear it--in
my own villa, with my own soda cake on the cake-dish--and my own son,'
she added dramatically, as Albert entered, 'coming in to have his
God-fearing heart broken!'

This embarrassed Albert, for it was true, though the cause assigned was
not.

'What's Hazel been up to?' he queried.

The affection beneath his heavy pleasantry strengthened his mother in
her resolve that Hazel should not stay the night.

'There's a magic-lantern lecture on tonight, Hazel,' he said. 'Like to
come?'

'Ah! I should that.'

'You can't walk home at that time of night,' said Mrs. Prowde. 'In
fact, you ought to start now.'

'But Hazel's staying the night, mother, surely?'

'Hazel must get back to her father.'

'But, mother, there's the spare-room.'

'The spare-room's being spring-cleaned.'

Albert plunged; he was desperate and forgetful of propriety.

'I can sleep on this sofa,' he said. 'She can have my room.'

'Hazel can't have your room. It's not suitable.'

'Well, let her share yours, then.'

Mrs. Prowde played her trump-card. 'Little I thought,' she said, 'when
your dear father went, that before three years had passed you'd be so
forgetful of my comfort (and his memory) as to suggest such a thing. As
long as I live, my room's mine. When I'm gone,' she concluded, knocking
down her adversary with her superior weight of years--'when I'm gone
(and the sooner the better for you, no doubt), you can put her in my
room and yourself, too.'

When she had said this she was horrified at herself. What an improper
thing to say! Even anger and jealousy did not excuse impropriety,
though they excused any amount of unkindness.

But at this Hazel cried out in her turn:

'That he never will!' The fierce egoism of the consciously weak flamed
up in her. 'I keep myself to myself,' she finished.

'If such things come to pass, mother,' Albert said, and his eyes looked
suddenly vivid, so that Hazel clapped her hands and said, 'Yer lamps
are lit! Yer lamps are lit!' and broke into peals of laughter. 'If such
a thing comes to pass,' laboured Albert, 'they'll come decent, that is,
they won't be spoken of.'

He voiced his own and his mother's creed.

At this point the argument ended, because Albert had to go back after
tea to finish some work. As he stamped innumerable swans on the
yielding material, he never doubted that his mother had also yielded.
He forgot that life had to be shaped with an axe till the chips fly.

As soon as he had gone, Mrs. Prowde shut the door on Hazel hastily, for
fear the weather might bring relenting. She had other views for Albert.
In after years, when the consequences of her action had become things
of the past, she always spoke of how she had done her best with Hazel.
She never dreamed that she, by her selfishness that night, had herself
set Hazel's feet in the dark and winding path that she must tread from
that night onward to its hidden, shadowy ending. Mrs. Prowde, through
her many contented years, blamed in turn Hazel, Abel, Albert, the
devil, and (only tacitly and, as it were, in secret from herself) God.
If there is any purgatorial fire of remorse for the hard and selfish
natures that crucify love, it must burn elsewhere. It does not touch
them in this world. They go as the three children went, in their coats,
their hosen, and their hats all complete, nor does the smell of fire
pass over them.

Hazel felt that heaven was closed--locked and barred. She could see the
golden light stream through its gates. She could hear the songs of
joy--joy unattained and therefore immortal; she could see the bright
figures of her dreams go to and fro. But heaven was shut.

The wind ran up and down the narrow streets like a lost dog, whimpering.
Hazel hurried on, for it was already twilight, and though she was not
afraid of the Callow and the fields at night, she was afraid of the
high roads. For the Callow was home, but the roads were the wide world.
On the fringe of the town she saw lights in the bedroom windows of
prosperous houses.

'My! they go to their beds early,' she thought, not having heard of
dressing for dinner. It made her feel more lonely that people should
be going to bed. From other houses music floated, or the savoury smell
of dinner. As she passed the last lamp-post she began to cry, feeling
like a lost and helpless little animal. Her new dress was forgotten;
the wreath-frames would not fit under her arm, and caused a continual
minor discomfort, and the Callow seemed to be half across the country.
She heard a trapped rabbit screaming somewhere, a thin anguished cry
that she could not ignore. This delayed her a good deal, and in letting
it out she got a large bloodstain on her dress. She cried again at this.
The pain of a blister, unnoticed in the morning journey, now made itself
felt; she tried walking without her boots, but the ground was cold and
hard.

The icy, driving wind leapt across the plain like a horseman with a
long sword, and stealthily in its track came the melancholy whisper of
snow.

When this began, Hazel was in the open, half-way to Wolfbatch. She sat
down on the step of a stile, and sighed with relief at the ease it gave
her foot. Then, far off she heard the sharp miniature sound, very neat
and staccato, of a horse galloping. She held her breath to hear if it
would turn down a by-road, but it came on. It came on, and grew in
volume and in meaning, became almost ominous in the frozen silence.
Hazel rose and stood in the fitful moonlight. She felt that the
approaching hoof-beats were for her. They were the one sound in a dead
world, and she nearly cried out at the thought of their dying in the
distance. They must not; they should not.

'Maybe it's a farmer and his missus as have drove a good bargain, and
the girl told to get supper fire-hot agen they come. Maybe they'll give
me a lift! Maybe they'll say "Bide the night over?"'

She knew it was only a foolish dream; nevertheless, she stood well in
the light, a slim, brow-beaten figure, the colour of her dress wan in
the grey world.

A trap came swaying round the corner. Hazel cried out beseechingly, and
the driver pulled the horse up short.

'I must be blind drunk,' he soliloquized, 'seeing ghosts!'

'Oh, please sir!' Hazel could say no more, for the tears that
companionship unfroze.

The man peered at her.

'What in hell are you doing here?' he asked.

'Walking home-along. She wouldna let me bide the night over. And my
foot's blistered in a balloon and blood on my dress.' She choked with
sobs.

'What's your name?'

'Hazel.'

'What else?'

With an instinct of self-protection she refused to tell her surname.

'Well, mine's Reddin,' he said crossly; 'and why you're so dark about
yours I don't know, but up you get, anyway.'

The sun came out in Hazel's face. He helped her up, she was so stiff
with cold.

'Your arm,' she said in a low tremulous voice, when he had put the rug
round her--'your arm pulling me in be like the Sunday-school tale of
Jesus Christ and Peter on the wild sea--me being Peter.'

Reddin looked at her sideways to see if she was in earnest. Seeing that
she was, he changed the subject.

'Far to go?' he asked.

'Ah! miles on miles.'

'Like to stop the night over?'

At last, late certainly, but no matter, at last the invitation had
come, not from her aunt, but from a stranger. That made it more
exciting.

'I'm much obleeged,' he said. 'Where at?'

'D'you know Undern?'

'I've heard tell on it.'

'Well, it's two miles from here. Like to come?'

'Ah! Will your mother be angry?'

'I haven't one.'

'Father?'

'No.'

'Who be there, then?'

'Only Vessons and me.'

'Who's Vessons?'

'My servant.'

'Be you a gentleman, then?'

Reddin hesitated slightly. She said it with such reverence and made it
seem so great a thing.

'Yes,' he said at last. 'Yes, that's what I am--a gentleman.' He was
conscious of bravado.

'Will there be supper, fire-hot?'

'Yes, if Vessons is in a good temper.'

'Where you bin?' she asked next.

'Market.'

'You've had about as much as is good for you,' she remarked, as if
thinking aloud.

He certainly smelt strongly of whisky.

'You've got a cheek!' said he. 'Let's look at you.'

He stared into her tired but vivid eyes for a long time, and the trap
careered from side to side.

'My word!' he said, 'I'm in luck to-night!'

'What for be you?'

'Meeting a girl like you.'

'Do I draw men's eyes?'

'Eh?' He was startled. Then he guffawed. 'Yes,' he replied.

'_She_ said so,' Hazel murmured. 'And she said I'd get spoke to,
and she said I'd get puck up. I'm main glad of it, too. She's a witch.'

'She said you'd get picked up, did she?'

'Ah.'

Reddin put his arm round her.

'You're so pretty! That's why.'

'Dunna maul me!'

'You might be civil. I'm doing you a kindness.'

They went on in that fashion, his arm about her, each wondering what
manner of companion the other was.

When they neared Undern there were gates to open, and he admired her
litheness as she jumped in and out.

In his pastures, where the deeply rutted track was already white with
snow, two foals stood sadly by their mothers, gazing at the cold world
with their peculiarly disconsolate eyes.

'Eh! look's the abron un! Abron, like me!' cried Hazel.

Reddin suddenly gripped the long coils that were loose on her
shoulders, twisted them in a rope round his neck, and kissed her. She
was enmeshed, and could not avoid his kisses.

The cob took this opportunity--one long desired--to rear, and Reddin
flogged him the rest of the way. So they arrived with a clatter, and
were met at the door by Andrew Vessons--knowing of eye as a blackbird,
straw in mouth, the poison of asps on his tongue.




Chapter 3


Undern Hall, with its many small-paned windows, faced the north
sullenly. It was a place of which the influence and magic were not
good. Even in May, when the lilacs frothed into purple, paved the lawn
with shadows, steeped the air with scent; when soft leaves lipped each
other consolingly; when blackbirds sang, fell in their effortless way
from the green height to the green depth, and sang again--still,
something that haunted the place set the heart fluttering. No place is
its own, and that which is most stained with old tumults has the
strongest fascination.

So at Undern, whatever had happened there went on still; someone who
had been there was there still. The lawns under the trees were mournful
with old pain, or with vanished joys more pathetic than pain in their
fleeting mimicry of immortality.

It was only at midsummer that the windows were coloured by dawn and
sunset; then they had a sanguinary aspect, staring into the delicate
skyey dramas like blind, bloodshot eyes. Secretly, under the heavy
rhododendron leaves and in the furtive sunlight beneath the yew-trees,
gnats danced. Their faint motions made the garden stiller; their
smallness made it oppressive; their momentary life made it infinitely
old. Then Undern Pool was full of leaf shadows like multitudinous
lolling tongues, and the smell of the mud tainted the air--half sickly,
half sweet. The clipped bushes and the twisted chimneys made inky
shadows like steeples on the grass, and great trees of roses, beautiful
in desolation, dripped with red and white and elbowed the guelder roses
and the elders set with white patens. Cherries fell in the orchard with
the same rich monotony, the same fatality, as drops of blood. They lay
under the fungus-riven trees till the hens ate them, pecking gingerly
and enjoyably at their lustrous beauty as the world does at a poet's
heart. In the kitchen-garden also the hens took their ease, banqueting
sparely beneath the straggling black boughs of a red-currant grove. In
the sandstone walls of this garden hornets built undisturbed, and the
thyme and lavender borders had grown into forests and obliterated the
path. The cattle drowsed in the meadows, birds in the heavy trees; the
golden day-lilies drooped like the daughters of pleasure; the very
principle of life seemed to slumber. It was then, when the scent of
elder blossom, decaying fruit, mud and hot yew brooded there, that the
place attained one of its most individual moods--narcotic, aphrodisiac.

In winter the yews and firs were like waving funeral plumes and
mantled, headless goddesses; then the giant beeches would lash
themselves to frenzy, and, stooping, would scourge the ice on Undern
Pool and the cracked walls of the house, like beings drunken with the
passion of cruelty. This was the second mood of Undern--brutality. Then
those within were, it seemed, already in the grave, heavily covered
with the prison of frost and snow, or shouted into silence by the wind.
On a January night the house seemed to lie outside time and space;
slow, ominous movement began beyond the blind windows, and the
inflexible softness of snow, blurred on the vast background of night,
buried summer ever deeper with invincible, caressing threats.

The front door was half glass, so that a wandering candle within
could be seen from outside, and it looked inexpressibly forlorn, like
a glow-worm seeking escape from a chloroform-box or mankind looking
for the way to heaven. Only four windows were ever lit, and of these
two at a time. They were Jack Reddin's parlour, Andrew Vessons' kitchen,
and their respective bedrooms.

Reddin of Undern cared as little for the graciousness of life as he did
for its pitiful rhapsodies, its purple-mantled tragedies. He had no
time for such trivialities. Fox-hunting, horse-breeding, and kennel
lore were his vocation. He rode straight, lived hard, exercised such
creative faculties as he had on his work, and found it very good. Three
times a year he stated in the Undern pew at Wolfbatch that he intended
to continue leading a godly, righteous, and sober life. At these times,
with amber lights from the windows playing over his well-shaped head,
his rather heavy face looked, as the Miss Clombers from Wolfbatch Hall
said, 'so chivalrous, so uplifted.' The Miss Clombers purred when they
talked, like cats with a mouse. The younger still hunted, painfully
compressing an overfed body into a riding-habit of some forgotten cut,
and riding with so grim a mouth and such a bloodthirsty expression that
she might have had a blood-feud with all foxes. Perhaps, when she rode
down the anxious red-brown streak, she thought she was riding down a
cruel fate that had somehow left her life vacant of joy; perhaps, when
the little creature was torn piece-meal, she imagined herself tearing
so the frail unconquerable powers of love and beauty. Anyway, she never
missed a meet, and she and her sister never ceased their long silent
battle for Reddin, who remained as unconscious of them as if they
were his aunts. He was, of course, beneath them, very much beneath
them--hardly more than a farmer, but still--a man.

Reddin went on his dubious and discreditable way, and the woman Sally
Haggard, of the cottage in the hollow, gained by virtue of a certain
harsh beauty what the ladies Clomber would have given all their wealth
for.

The other inhabitant of Undern, Andrew, revolved in his own orbit, and
was entirely unknown to his master. He cut the yews--the peacocks and
the clipped round trees and the ones like tables--twice a year. He was
creating a swan. He had spent twenty years on it, and hoped to complete
it in a few more, when the twigs that were to be the beak had grown
sufficiently. It never occurred to him that the place was not his, that
he might have to leave it. He had his spring work and his autumn work;
in the winter he ordained various small indoor jobs for himself; and in
the summer, in common with the rest of the place, he grew somnolent. He
sat by the hacked and stained kitchen-table (which he seldom scrubbed,
and on which he tried his knife, sawed bones, and chopped meat) and
slept the afternoons away in the ceaseless drone of flies.

When Reddin called him he rarely answered, and only deigned to go to
him when he felt sure that his order was going to be reasonable.

Everything he said was non-committal, every movement was expostulatory.
Reddin never noticed. Vessons suited his needs, and he always had such
meals as he liked. Vessons was a bachelor. Monasticism had found, in a
countryside teeming with sex, one silent but rabid disciple. If Vessons
ever felt the irony of his own presence in a breeding stable, he never
said so. He went about his work with tight disapproving lips, as if he
thought that Nature owed him a debt of gratitude for his tolerance of
her ways. Ruminative and critical, he went to and fro in the darkly
lovely domain, with pig buckets or ash buckets or barrows full of
manure. The lines of his face were always etched in dirt, and he always
had a bit of rag tied round some cut or blister. He was a lonely soul,
as he once said himself when unusually mellow at the Hunter's Arms; he
was 'wi'out mother, wi'out father, wi'out descent.' He preferred it to
the ties of family. He liked living with Reddin because they never
spoke except of necessity, and because he was quite indifferent to
Reddin's welfare and Reddin to his.

But to Undern itself he was not indifferent. Ties deep as the tangled
roots of the bindweed, strong as the great hawsers of the beeches that
reached below the mud of Undern Pool, held him to it, the bondslave of
a beauty he could not understand, a terror he could not express. When
he trudged the muddy paths, 'setting taters' or earthing up; when he
scythed the lawn, looking, with a rose in his hat, weirder and more
ridiculous than ever; and when he shook the apples down with a kind of
sour humour, as if to say, 'There! that's what you trees get by having
apples!'--at all these times he seemed less an individual than a blind
force. For though his personality was strong, that of the place was
stronger. Half out of the soil, minded like the dormouse and the
beetle, he was, by virtue of his unspoken passion, the protoplasm of a
poet.




Chapter 4


Vessons took up the pose of one seeing a new patient.

'This young lady's lost her way,' Reddin remarked.

'She 'as, God's truth! But you'll find it forra I make no doubt, sir.
"There's a way"' (he looked ironically at the poultry-basket behind the
trap, from which peered anxious, beaky faces)--'"a way as no fowl
knoweth, the way of a man with a maid."'

'Fetch the brood mares in from the lower pasture. They should have been
in this hour.'

'And late love's worse than lad's love, so they do say,' concluded
Vessons.

'There's nothing of love between us,' Reddin snapped.

'I dunna wonder at it!' Andrew cast an appraising look at his master's
flushed face and at Hazel's tousled hair, and withdrew.

Hazel went into the elaborately carved porch. She looked round the
brown hall where deep shadows lurked. Oak chests and carved chairs, all
more or less dusty, stood about, looking as if disorderly feasters had
just left them. In one corner was an inlaid sideboard piano.

Hazel did not notice the grey dust and the hearth full of matches and
cigarette ends. She only saw what seemed to her fabulous splendour. A
foxhound rose from the moth-eaten leopard-skin by the hearth as they
came in. Hazel stiffened.

'I canna-d-abear the hound-dogs,' she said. 'Nasty snabbing things.'

'Best dogs going.'

'No, they kills the poor foxes.'

'Vermin.'

Hazel's face became tense. She clenched her hands and advanced a
determined chin.

'Keep yer tongue off our Foxy, or I unna stay!' she said.

'Who's Foxy?'

'My little small cub as I took and reared.'

'Oh! you reared it, did you?'

'Ah. She didna like having no mam. I'm her mam now.'

Reddin had been looking at her as thoughtfully as his rather maudlin
state allowed.

He had decided that she should stay at Undern and be his mistress.

'You'll be wanting something better than foxes to be mothering one of
these days,' he remarked to the fire, with a half embarrassed, half
jocose air, and a hand on the poker.

'Eh?' said Hazel, who was wondering how long it would take her to learn
to play the music in the corner.

Reddin was annoyed. When one made these arch speeches at such cost of
imagination, they should be received properly.

He got up and went across to Hazel, who had played three consecutive
notes, and was gleeful. He put his hand on hers heavily, and a discord
was wrung from the soft-toned notes that had perhaps known other such
discords long ago.

'Laws! what a din!' said Hazel. 'What for d'you do that, Mr. Reddin?'

Reddin found it harder than ever to repeat his remark, and dropped it.

'What's that brown on your dress?' he asked instead.

'That? Oh, that's from a rabbit as I loosed out'n a trap. It bled
awful.'

'Little sneak, to let it out.'

'Sneak's trick to catchen un, so tiny and all,' replied Hazel
composedly.

'Well, you'd better change your dress; it's very wet, and there's
plenty here,' said he, going to a chest and pulling out an armful of
old-fashioned gowns. 'If you lived at Undern you could wear them every
day.'

'If ifs were beans and bacon, there's few'd go clemmed,' said Hazel.
'That green un's proper, like when the leaves come new, and little
small roses and all.'

Put it on while I see what Vessons is doing.'

'He's grumbling in the kitchen, seemingly,' said Hazel.

Vessons always grumbled. His mood could be judged only by the
_piano_ or _forte_ effects.

Hazel heard him reply to Reddin.

'No. Supper binna ready; I've only just put 'im on.'

He always spoke of all phases of his day's work in the masculine
gender.

Hazel stopped buttoning her dress to hear what Reddin was saying.

'Have you some hot water for the lady?' ('The lady! That's me!' she
thought.)

'No, sir, I anna. Nor yet I anna got no myrrh, aloes, nor cassher.
There's nought in my kitchen but a wold useless cat and an o'erdruv man
of six-and-sixty, a pot of victuals not yet simmering, and a gentleman
as ought to know better than to bring a girl to Undern and ruin her--a
poor innocent little creature.'

'Me again,' said Hazel. She pondered on the remark and flushed. 'Maybe
I'd best go,' she thought. Yet only vague instinct stirred her to this,
and all her soul was set on staying.

'Never shall it be said'--Andrew's voice rose like a preacher's--'never
shall it be said as a young female found no friend in Andrew Vessons;
never shall it be said'--his voice soared over various annoyed
exclamations of Reddin's--'as a female went from this 'all different
from what she came.'

'Shut up, Vessons!'

But Vessons was, as he would have phrased it himself, 'in full
honey-flow,' and not to be silenced.

'Single she be, and single she'd ought to stay. This 'ere rubbitch of
kissing and clipping!'

'But, Vessons, if there were no children gotten, the world'd be empty.'

'Let 'un be. 'Im above'll get a bit of rest, nights, from their sins.'

'Eh, I like that old chap,' thought Hazel.

The wrangle continued. It was the deathless quarrel of the world and
the monastery--natural man and the hermit. Finally Vessons concluded on
a top note.

'Well, if you take this girl's good name off'n her--'

Suddenly something happened in Hazel's brain. It was the realization of
life in relation to self. It marks the end of childhood. She no more
saw herself throned above life and fate, as a child does. She saw that
she was a part of it all; she was mutable and mortal.

She had seen life go on, had heard of funerals, courtings, confinements
and weddings in their conventional order--or reversed--and she had
remained, as it were, intact. She had starved and slaved and woven
superstitions, loved Foxy, and tolerated her father.

Girl friends had hinted of a wild revelry that went on somewhere--
everywhere--calling like a hidden merry-go-round to any who cared to
hear. But she had not heard. They had let fall such sentences as 'He
got the better of me,' 'I cried out, and he thought someone was coming,
and he let me go.' Later, she heard, 'And I thought I'd ne'er get
through it when baby came.'

She felt vaguely sorry for these girls; but she realized nothing of
their life. Nor did she associate funerals and illness with herself.

As the convolvulus stands in apparent changelessness in a silent
rose-and-white eternity, so she seemed to herself a stationary being.
But the convolvulus has budded and bloomed and closed again while you
thought her still, and she dies--the rayed and rosy cup so full of airy
sweetness--she dies in a day.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hazel got up from her chair by the fire and went restlessly, with a
rustle as of innumerable autumn leaves, to the hall door. She gazed
through the glass, and saw the sad feather-flights of snow wandering
and hesitating, and finally coming to earth. They held to their
individuality as flakes as long as they could, it seemed; but the end
came to all, and they were merged in earth and their own multitudes.

Hazel opened the door and stood on the threshold, so that snow-flakes
flattened themselves on the yellow roses of her dress. Outside there
was no world, only a waste of grey and white. Like leaves on a dead
bird, the wrappings of white grew deeper over Undern. Hazel shivered in
the cold wind off the hill, and saw Undern Pool curdling and thickening
in the frost. No sound came across the outspread country. There were no
roads near Undern except its own cart track; there were no railways
within miles. Nothing moved except the snow-flakes, fulfilling their
relentless destiny of negation. She saw them only, and heard only the
raised voices in the house arguing about herself.

'I mun go,' she said, strong in her spirit of freedom, remote and
withdrawn.

'I mun stay,' she amended, weak in her undefended smallness, and very
tired. She turned back to the fire. But the instinct that had awakened
as childhood died clamoured within her and would not let her rest.

She softly took off the silk dress, and put on her own.

She picked up the wreath-frames with a sigh and opened the door again.
She would have a long, wild walk home, but she could creep in through
her bedroom window, which would not latch, and she could make a great
fire of dry broom and brew some tea.

'And I'll let Foxy in and eat a loaf, I will, for I'm clemmed!' she
said.

She slipped out through the door that had seen so many human lives come
and go. Even as she went, the door betrayed her, for Reddin, coming
from the kitchen, saw her through the upper panes.




Chapter 5


'I be going home-along,' she said, but he pulled her in and shut the
door.

'Why did you want to go?'

'I'm alost in this grand place.'

'Your hair's grander than anything in the place. And your eyes are like
sherry.'

'Truth on your life?'

'Yes. Now you'd better change your dress again.'

He reached down an old silver candlestick, very tarnished.

'You can go upstairs. There's a glass in the first room you come to.
Then we'll have supper.'

'Sitting at the supper in a grand shining gown wi' roses on it,' said
Hazel ecstatically, her voice rising to a kind of chant, 'with a white
cloth on table like school-treat, and the old servant hopping to and
agen like thrussels after worms.'

'Thrussel yourself!' muttered Andrew, peering in at the door. He
retired again, remarking to the cat in a sour lugubrious voice, as he
always did when ruffled: 'There's no cats i' the Bible.' He began to
sing 'By the waters of Babylon.'

Upstairs Hazel coiled her hair, running her fingers through its bright
lengths, as she had no comb, and turning in her underbodice to make it
suit the low dress. Outside, his rough hair wet with snow, stood
Reddin, watching her from the vantage-ground of the darkness! He saw
her stand with head erect and bare white shoulders, smiling at herself
in the glass. He saw her slip into the rich gown and pose delightedly,
mincing to and fro like a wagtail. He noted her lissom figure and
shining coils of hair.

'She'll do,' he said, and did not wonder whether he would do himself.
Then he gave a smothered exclamation. She had opened the window,
pushing the snowy ivy aside, and she leant out, her breast under its
folds of silk resting on the snow.

She looked over his head into the immensity of night.

'Dunna let 'un take my good name, for the old feller says I'd ought to
keep it,' she said. 'And let me get back to Foxy quick in the morning
light, and no harm come to us for ever and ever.'

The night received her prayer in silence. Whether or not any heard but
Reddin none could say.

Reddin tiptoed into the house, rather downcast. This was a strange
creature that he had caught.

Vessons was still at the waters of Babylon when Hazel came down.

'Why canna he get beyond them five words?' asked Hazel. 'He allus stops
and goes back like a dog on a chain.' She sang it through in her high
clear voice. There was silence in the kitchen.

Reddin stared at Hazel.

'Who taught you to sing?' he asked.

'Father. He's wonderful with the music, is father.' Hazel found that in
the presence of strangers her feeling for her father was almost warm.
'Playing the harp nights, he makes your flesh creep; ah! and he makes
the place all on a charm, like the spinneys in May month. And he says,
"Sing!" says he, and I ups and sings, and whiles I don't never know
what I bin singing.'

'That I can well believe,' said Vessons.

Reddin swung round.

'What the devil are you doing here?' he asked.

'I've come to say'--Vessons' tone was dry--'as supper's burnt.'

'Burnt?'

'Ah, to a cinder.'

'How did you do that, you fool?'

'Harkening at the lady teaching me to sing.'

Reddin was furious. He knew why supper was burnt.

'Get out!' he said. 'Get out into the stable and stay there. I'll get
supper myself.'

Vessons withdrew composedly. Since Hazel had offended him, he had
decided that she must take care of herself.

'Couldna he bide in the house?' asked Hazel uneasily.

'No.'

They fetched in bread and beer and cold meat. Her host was jubilant,
and during supper, quite deferential. He had been awed by Hazel's
request to the night and by her beauty. But when his hunger was
satisfied, his voice grew louder and his eyes sultry.

Restraint fell between them. Looking at his face, Hazel again had an
impulse for flight. When he said, 'I want to stroke that silk dress,'
and came towards her, knocking the candle over as if by accident, she
edged away, saying sharply:

'Dunna maul me!'

He paid no attention.

'I'll do right by you,' he said; 'I swear I will. I'll--yes, I'll even
marry you to-morrow. But to-night's mine.'

It was not a question of marrying or not marrying in Hazel's eyes. It
was a matter of primitive instinct. She would be her own.

He had pulled the low dress off one shoulder. She twitched it out of
his hand and slipped from his grasp like a fish from a net. He was too
surprised to follow at once.

'Old feller!' she called, running into the yard, 'quick! quick!' A
rough grey head appeared.

'What? after the old 'un?'

'I wunna stay along of him!'

Vessons looked at her interestedly. Apparently she also was a devotee
of his religion--celibacy; one who dared to go against the explicit
decrees of nature.

'I think the better of you,' he said. 'So he's had his trouble for
nothing,' he chuckled. 'You can have my room. You shanna say Andrew
Vessons inna a man of charitable nature. Never shall you! There's a key
to it.'

He led the way to his room through the back door and up the kitchen
stairs.

Most people would have suffered anything rather than sleep in the room
he revealed when he proudly flung the door open. He had the recluse's
love of little possessions and daily comforts.

On an upturned box by the bed were his clay pipe, matches, a treacle-tin
containing whisky, and some chicken-bones. He usually kept a few bones
to pick at his ease. A goldfinch with a harassed air occupied a wooden
cage in the window, and the mantelpiece was fitted up with white mice in
home-made cages. It seemed quite a pleasant room to Hazel.

'Mind as you're very careful of all my things,' said Vessons wistfully.
'I hanna slep away from this room for nigh twenty year. That bird's
ne'er slep without me. He'll miss me. He unna sing for anybody else.'
He always asserted this, and the bird always belied it by singing to
Reddin and any chance visitor. But Vessons continued to believe it.
There are some things that it is necessary to believe; doubt of them
means despair.

Vessons was conscious that he was being generous.

'You can drink a sup of whisky if you like,' he said. 'Now I'm going,
afore that bird notices, or I shall never get away.'

The bird sat in preoccupied silence. He was probably thinking of the
woods and seeded dandelions. He was of the fellowship to which comfort
means little and freedom much. So was Hazel.

'Lock the door!' Vessons said in a sepulchral whisper from the stairs.

Hazel did so, and curled up to sleep in the creaking house, thoughtless
as the white mice, defenceless as they, as little grateful to Vessons
for his protection, and in as deep an ignorance of what the world could
do to her if it chose.




Chapter 6


Early next morning, while the finch still dreamed its heavy dream and
the mice were still motionless balls, Hazel was awakened by a knock at
the massive oak door. She ran across and opened it a crack, peering out
from amid her hair like a squirrel from autumn leaves.

Vessons stood there with a pint mug of beer, which he proffered. But
Hazel had a woman's craving for tea.

'If so be the kettle's boiling,' she said apologetically.

'Tay!' said Vessons. 'Laws! how furiously the women do rage after tay!
I s'pose it's me as is to make it?'

'If kettle's boiling.'

'Kettle! O' course kettle's boiling this hour past. Or how would the
ca'ves get their meal?'

'Well, you needna shout. You'll wake 'im.'

Fright was in her eyes, strong and inexplicable to herself.

'I mun go!' she whispered.

'Ah! You go,' said Vessons, glad that for once duty and inclination
went hand in hand.

'I'll send you,' he added. 'Where d'yer live?'

She hesitated.

'You needna be frit to tell _me,_' said Vessons. 'I'm
six-and-sixty, and you're no more to me'--he surveyed her flushing
face contemplatively--'than the wold useless cat,' he concluded.

Hazel frowned; but she wanted a promise from Vessons, so she made no
retort.

'You wunna tell 'im?' she pleaded.

''Im? Never will I! Wild 'orses shanna drag it from me, nor yet blood
'orses, nor 'unters, nor cart-'orses, nor Suffolk punches!' Vessons
waxed eloquent, for again righteousness and desire coincided. He did
not want a woman at Undern.

'Well,' said Hazel, whispering through the crack, 'I lives at the
Callow.'

'What! that lost and forgotten place t'other side the Mountain?'

'Ah! But it inna lost and forgotten; it's better'n this. We've got
bees.'

'So've I got bees.'

'And a music.'

'Music? What's a music? You canna eat it.'

'And my dad makes coffins.'

'Does 'e, now?' said Vessons, interested at last. Then he bethought him
of the credit of Undern. 'But you anna got a mulberry-tree,' he said
triumphantly. 'Now then! _I_ 'ave!'

He creaked downstairs.

In a few moments Hazel also went down, and drank her tea by the red
fire in the kitchen, watching the frost-flowers being softly effaced
from the window as if someone rubbed them away with a sponge. Snow like
sifted sugar was heaped on the sill, and the yard and outbuildings and
fields, the pools and the ricks, all had the dim radiance of antimony.

'Where be the road?' asked Hazel, standing on the door-step and feeling
rather lost. 'How'll I find it?'

'You wunna find it.'

'Oh, but I mun!'

'D'you think Andrew Vessons'll let an 'ooman trapse in the snow when
he's got good horses in stable?' queried Vessons grandly. 'I'll drive
yer.'

'I'm much obleeged, I'm sure,' said Hazel. 'But wunna he know?'

'He'll sleep till noon if I let 'im,' said Andrew.

They drove off in silence, the snow muffling the plunging hoofs. Hazel
looked back as the sky crimsoned for dawn. The house fronted her with a
look of power and patience. She felt that it had not yet done with her.
She wondered how she would feel if Reddin suddenly appeared at his
window. And a tiny traitorous wish slipped up from somewhere in her
heart. She watched the windows till a turn hid the house, and then she
sighed. Almost she wished that Reddin had awakened.

But she soon forgot everything in delight; for the snow shone, the long
slots of the rabbits and hares, the birds' tracks in orderly rows, the
deep footprints of sheep, all made her laugh by their vagaries, for
they ran in loops and in circles, and appeared like the crazy steps of
a sleep-walker to those who had not the key of their activity. Hazel's
own doings were like that; everyone's doings are like it, if one sees
the doings without the motive.

Plovers wheeled and cried desolately, seeing the soft relentless snow
between themselves and their green meadows, sad as those that see fate
drawing thick veils between themselves and the meadows of their hope
and joy.

At the foot of the Callow Hazel got out.

'Never tell him,' she said, looking up.

'Never in life,' said Vessons.

Hazel hesitated.

'Never tell him,' she added, 'unless he asks a deal and canna rest.'

'He may ask till Doomsday,' said Vessons, 'and he may be restless as
the ten thousand ghosses that trapse round Undern when the moon's low,
but I'll ne'er tell 'im.'

Hazel sighed, and turned to climb the hill.

'A missus at Undern!' said Andrew to the cob's ears as they trotted
home. 'No, never will I!'

A magpie rose from a wood near the road, jibing at him. He looked round
almost as if it had been someone laughing at his resolve, and repeated,
'Never will I!'

'Where's Hazel?' asked Reddin.

'Neither wild 'orses, nor blood 'orses, nor race 'orses nor cart
'orses, nor Suffolk punches--' began Vessons whose style was
cumulative, and who, when he had made a good phrase, was apt to work it
to death like any other artist. 'Oh, you're drunk, Vessons!' said his
master.

'Shall drag it from me,' finished Vessons.

Reddin knew this was true, and felt rather hopeless. Still, he
determined not to give up the search until he had found Hazel.

He inquired at the Hunter's Arms, but Vessons had been there before
him, and he was met by pleasant stupidity.

Vessons was of the people, Reddin of the aristocracy, so the
frequenters of the Hunter's Arms sided as one man against Reddin.

'You'll not get another bite of that apple,' said Vessons with
satisfaction, when his master returned with downcast face.

'I can't stand your manners much longer, Vessons,' said he irritably.

'Gie me notice, then,' said Vessons, falling back on the well-worn
formula, and scoring his usual triumph.

Reddin had the faults of his class, but turning an old servant adrift
was not one of them. Vessons traded on this, and invariably said and
did exactly what he liked.




Chapter 7


When Hazel got in, her father had finished his breakfast and was busy
at work.

'Brought the wreath-frames?' he asked, without looking up.

'Ah.'

'He's jead at last. At the turn of the night. They came after the
coffin but now. I'll be able to get them there new section crates I
wanted. He's doing more for me, wanting a coffin, and him stiff and
cold, than what he did in the heat of life.'

'Many folks be like that,' said Hazel out of her new wisdom. Neither of
them reflected that Abel had always been like that towards Hazel, that
she was becoming more like it to him every year.

Abel made no remark at all about Hazel's adventures, and she preserved
a discreet silence.

'That little vixen's took a chicken,' said Abel, after a time; 'that's
the second.'

'She only does it when I'm away, being clemmed,' said Hazel pleadingly.

'Well, if she does it again,' Abel announced, 'it's the water and a
stone round her neck. So now you know.'

'You durstn't.'

'We'll see if I durst.'

Hazel fled in tears to the unrepentant and dignified Foxy. Some of us
find it hard enough to be dignified when we have done right; but Foxy
could be dignified when she had done wrong, and the more wrong, the
more dignity.

She was very bland, and there was a look of deep content--digestive
content, a state bordering on the mystic's trance--in her affectionate
topaz eyes.

It had been a tender and nourishing chicken; the hours she had spent in
gnawing through her rope had been well repaid.

'Oh! you darlin' wicked little thing!' wailed Hazel. 'You munna do it,
Foxy, or he'll drown you dead. What for did you do it, Foxy, my dear?'

Foxy's eyes became more eloquent and more liquid.

'You gallus little blessed!' said Hazel again. 'Eh! I wish you and me
could live all alone by our lonesome where there was no men and women.'

Foxy shut her eyes and yawned, evidently feeling doubtful if such a
halcyon place existed in the world.

Hazel sat on her heels and thought. It was flight or Foxy. She knew
that if she did not take Foxy away, her renewed naughtiness was as
certain as sunset.

'You was made bad,' she said sadly but sympathetically. 'Leastways, you
wasn't made like watch-dogs and house-cats and cows. You was made a
fox, and you be a fox, and its queer-like to me, Foxy, as folk canna
see that. They expect you to be what you wanna made to be. You'm made
to be a fox; and when you'm busy being a fox they say you'm a sinner!'

Having wrestled with philosophy until Foxy yawned again, Hazel went in
to try her proposition on Abel. But Abel met it as the world in general
usually meets a new truth.

'She took the chick,' he said. 'Now, would a tarrier do that--a
well-trained tarrier? I says 'e would _not_'

'But it inna fair to make the same law for foxes and terriers.'

'I make what laws suit me,' said Abel. 'And what goes agen me--gets
drownded.'

'But it inna all for you!' cried Hazel.

'Eh?'

'The world wunna made in seven days only for Abel Woodus,' said Hazel
daringly.

'You've come back very peart from Silverton,' said Abel reflectively--
'very peart, you 'ave. How many young fellers told you your 'air was
abron this time? That fool Albert said so last time, and you were
neither to hold nor to bind. Abron! Carrots!'

But it was not, as he thought, this climax that silenced Hazel. It was
the lucky hit about the young fellows and the reminiscence called up by
the word 'abron.' He continued his advantage, mollified by victory.

'Tell you what it is, 'Azel; it's time you was married. You're too
uppish.'

'I shall ne'er get married.'

'Words! words! You'll take the first as comes--if there's ever such a
fool.'

Hazel wished she could tell him that one had asked her, and that no
labouring man. But discretion triumphed.

'Maybe,' she said tossing her head, 'I _will_ marry, to get away
from the Callow.'

'Well, well, things couldna be dirtier; maybe they'll be cleaner when
you'm gone. Look's the floor!'

Hazel fell into a rage. He was always saying things about the floor.
She hated the floor.

'I swear I'll wed the first as comes!' she cried--'the very first!'

'And last,' put in Abel. 'What'll you swear by?'

'By God's Little Mountain.'

'Well,' said Abel contentedly, 'now you've sworn _that_ oath,
you're bound to keep it, and so now I know that if ever an 'usband
_does_ come forrard you canna play the fool.'

Hazel was too wrathful for consideration.

'You look right tidy in that gownd,' Abel said. 'I 'spose you'll be
wearing it to the meeting up at the Mountain?'

'What meeting?'

'Didna I tell you I'd promised you for it--to sing? They'm after me to
take the music and play.'

Hazel forgot everything in delight.

'Be we going for certain sure?' she asked.

'Ah! Next Monday three weeks.'

'We mun practise.'

'They say that minister's a great one for the music. One of them sort
as is that musical he canna play. There'll be a tea.'

'Eh!' said Hazel, 'it'll be grand to be in a gentleman's house agen!'

'When've you bin in a gentleman's house?'

Hazel was taken aback.

'Yesterday!' she flashed. 'If Albert inna a gent I dunno who is, for
he's got a watch-chain brass-mockin'-gold all across his wescoat.'

Abel roared. Then he fell to in earnest on the coffin, whistling like a
blackbird. Hazel sat down and watched him, resting her cheek on her
hand. The cold snowlight struck on her face wanly.

'Dunna you ever think, making coffins for poor souls to rest in as inna
tired, as there's a tree growing somewhere for yours?' she asked.

'Laws! What's took you? Measles? What for should I think of me coffin?
That's about the only thing as I'll ne'er be bound to pay for.' He
laughed. 'What ails you?'

'Nought. Only last night it came o'er me as I'll die as well as
others.'

'Well, have you only just found that out? Laws! what a queen of fools
you be!'

Hazel looked at the narrow box, and thought of the active, angular old
man for whom it was now considered an ample house.

'It seems like the world's a big spring-trap, and us in it,' she said
slowly. Then she sprang up feverishly. 'Let's practise till we're as
hoarse as a young rook!' she cried.

So amid the hammering their voices sprang up, like two keen flames.
Then Abel threw away the hammer and began to harp madly, till the
little shanty throbbed with the sound of the wires and the lament of
the voices that rose and fell with artless cunning. The cottage was
like a tree full of thrushes.

After their twelve o'clock dinner, Abel cut holly for the wreaths, and
Hazel began to make them. For the first time home seemed dull. She
thought wistfully of the green silk dress and the supper in the old,
stately room. She thought of Vessons, and of Reddin's eyes as he pulled
her back from the door. She thought of Undern as a refuge for Foxy.

'Maybe sometime I'll go and see 'em,' she thought.

She went to the door and looked out. Frost tingled in the air; icicles
had formed round the water-butt; the strange humming stillness of
intense cold was about her. It froze her desire for adventure.

'I'll stay as I be,' she thought. 'I wunna be his'n.'

To her, Reddin was a terror and a fascination. She returned to the
prickly wreath, sewing on the variegated holly-leaves one by one, with
clusters of berries at intervals.

'What good'll it do 'im?' she asked; 'he canna see it.'

'Who wants him to see it?' Abel was amused. 'When his father died he
'ad his enjoyment--proud as proud was Samson, for there were seven
wreaths, no less.'

Hazel's thoughts returned to the coming festivity. Her hair and her
peacock-blue dress would be admired. To be admired was a wonderful new
sensation. She fetched a cloth and rubbed at the brown mark. It would
not come out. As long as she wore the dress it would be there, like the
stigma of pain that all creatures bear as long as they wear the garment
of the flesh.

At last she burst into tears.

'I want another dress with no blood on it!' she wailed. And so wailing
she voiced the deep lament, old as the moan of forests and falling
water, that goes up through the centuries to the aloof and silent sky,
and remains, as ever, unassuaged.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hazel hated a burying, for then she had to go with Abel to help in
carrying the coffin to the house of mourning. They set out on the
second day after her return. The steep road down to the plain--called
the Monkey's Ladder--was a river, for a thaw had set in. But Hazel did
not mind that, though her boots let in the water, as she minded the
atmosphere of gloom at old Samson's blind house. She would never, as
Abel always did, 'view the corpse,' and this was always taken as an
insult. So she waited in the road, half snow and half water, and
thought with regret of Undern and its great fire of logs, and the green
rich dress, and Reddin with his force and virility, loud voice, and
strong teeth. He was so very much alive in a world where old men would
keep dying.

Abel came out at last, very gay, for he had been given, over and above
the usual payment, glove-money and a glass of beer.

'Us'll get a drop at the public,' he said.

So they turned in there. Hazel thought the red-curtained, firelit room,
with its crudely coloured jugs and mugs, a most wonderful place. She
sat in a corner of the settle and watched her boots steam, growing very
sleepy. But suddenly there was a great clatter outside, the sound of a
horse, pulled up sharply, slipping on the cobbles, and a shout for the
landlord.

'Oh, my mortal life!' said Hazel, 'it met be the Black Huntsman
himself.'

'No, I won't come in,' said the rider, 'a glass out here.'

Hazel knew who it was.

'Can you tell me,' he went on, 'if there's any young lady about here
with auburn hair? Father plays the fiddle.'

'He's got it wrong,' thought Hazel.

'Young lady!' repeated the landlord. 'Hawburn? No, there's no lady of
that colour hereabouts. And what ladies there be are weathered and
case-hardened.'

'The one I'm looking for's young--young as a kitten, and as
troublesome.'

Hazel clapped her hands to her mouth.

'There's no fiddler chap hereabouts, then?'

Abel rose and went to the door.

'If it's music you want, I know better music than fiddles, and
that's harps,' he said. 'Saw! saw! The only time as ever I liked
a fiddle was when the fellow snabbed at the strings with his ten
fingers--despert-like.'

'Oh, damn you!' said Reddin. 'I didn't come to hear about harps.'

'If it's funerals or a forester's supper, a concert or a wedding,' Abel
went on, quite undaunted, 'I'm your man.'

Reddin laughed.

'It might be the last,' he said.

'Wedding or bedding, either or both, I suppose,' said the publican, who
was counted a wit.

Reddin gave a great roar of laughter.

'Both!' he said.

'Neither!' whispered Hazel, who had been poised indecisively, as if
half prepared to go to the door. She sat further into the shadow. In
another moment he was gone.

'Whoever she be,' said the publican, nodding his large head wisely,
'have her he will, for certain sure!'

All through the night, murmurous with little rivulets of snow-water,
the gurgling of full troughing, and the patter of rain on the iron roof
of the house and the miniature roofs of the beehives, Hazel, waking
from uneasy slumber, heard those words and muttered them.

In her frightened dreams she reached out to something that she felt
must be beyond the pleasant sound of falling water, so small and
transitory; beyond the drip and patter of human destinies--something
vast, solitary, and silent. How should she find that which none has
ever named or known? Men only stammer of it in such words as Eternity,
Fate, God. All the outcries of all creatures, living and dying, sink in
its depth as in an unsounded ocean. Whether this listening silence,
incurious, yet hearing all, is benignant or malevolent, who can say?
The wistful dreams of men haunt this theme for ever; the creeds of men
are so many keys that do not fit the lock. We ponder it in our hearts,
and some find peace, and some find terror. The silence presses upon us
ever more heavily until Death comes with his cajoling voice and
promises us the key. Then we run after him into the stillness, and are
heard no more.

Hazel and her father practised hard through the dark, wet evenings. She
was to sing 'Harps in Heaven,' a song her mother had taught her. He was
to accompany the choir, or glee-party, that met together at different
places, coming from the villages and hillsides of a wide stretch of
country.

'Well,' said Abel on the morning of their final rehearsal, 'it's a
miserable bit of a silly song, but you mun make the best of it. Give it
voice, girl! Dunna go to sing it like a mouse in milk!'

His musical taste was offended by Hazel's way of being more dramatic
than musical. She would sink her voice in the sad parts almost to a
whisper, and then rise to a kind of keen.

'You'm like nought but Owen's old sheep-dog,' he said, 'wowing the
moon!'

But Hazel's idea of music continued to be that of a bird. She was a
wild thing, and she sang according to instinct, and not by rule, though
her good ear kept her notes true.

They set out early, for they had a good walk in front of them, and the
April sun was hot. Hazel, under the pale green larch-trees, in her
bright dress, with her crown of tawny hair, seemed to be an incarnation
of the secret woods.

Abel strode ahead in his black cut-away coat, snuff-coloured trousers,
and high-crowned felt hat with its ornamental band. This receded to the
back of his head as he grew hotter. The harp was slung from his
shoulder, the gilding looking tawdry in the open day. Twice during the
walk, once in a round clearing fringed with birches, and once in a
pine-glade, he stopped, put the harp down and played, sitting on a
felled tree. Hazel, quite intoxicated with excitement, danced between
the slender boles till her hair fell down and the long plait swung
against her shoulder.

'If folks came by, maybe they'd think I was a fairy!' she cried.

'Dunna kick about so!' said Abel, emerging from his abstraction. 'It
inna decent, now you're an 'ooman growd.'

'I'm not an 'ooman growd!' cried Hazel shrilly. 'I dunna want to be,
and I won't never be.'

The pine-tops bent in the wind like attentive heads, as gods, sitting
stately above, might nod thoughtfully over a human destiny. Someone, it
almost seemed, had heard and registered Hazel's cry, 'I'll never be an
'ooman,' assenting, sardonic.

They came to the quarry at the mountain; the deserted mounds and chasms
looked more desolate than ever in the spring world. Here and there the
leaves of a young tree lipped the grey-white steeps, as if wistfully
trying to love them, as a child tries to caress a forbidding parent.

They climbed round the larger heaps and skirted a precipitous place.

'I canna bear this place,' said Hazel; 'it's so drodsome.'

'Awhile since, afore you were born, a cow fell down that there place,
hundreds of feet.'

'Did they save her?'

'Laws, no! She was all of a jelly.'

Hazel broke out with sudden passionate crying. 'Oh, dunna, dunna!' she
sobbed. So she did always at any mention of helpless suffering,
flinging herself down in wild rebellion and abandonment so that
epilepsy had been suspected. But it was not epilepsy. It was pity. She,
in her inexpressive, childish way, shared with the love-martyr of
Galilee the heartrending capacity for imaginative sympathy. In common
with Him and others of her kind, she was not only acquainted with
grief, but reviled and rejected. In her schooldays boys brought maimed
frogs and threw them in her lap, to watch, from a safe distance, her
almost crazy grief and rage.

'Whatever's come o'er ye?' said her father now. 'You're too nesh,
that's what you be, nesh-spirited.'

He could not understand; for the art in him was not that warm,
suffering thing, creation, but hard, brightly polished talent.

Hazel stood at the edge of the steep grey cliff, her hands folded, a
curious fatalism in her eyes.

'There'll be summat bad'll come to me hereabouts,' she said--'summat
bad and awful.'

The dark shadows lying so still on the dirty white mounds had a
stealthy, crouching look, and the large soft leaves of a plane-tree
flapped helplessly against the shale with the air of important people
who whisper 'Alas!'

Abel was on ahead. Suddenly he turned round, excited as a boy.

'They've started!' he cried. 'Hark at the music! They allus begin with
the organ.'

Hazel followed him, eager for joy, running obedient and hopeful at the
heels of life as a young lamb runs with its mother. She forgot her dark
intuitions; she only remembered that she wanted to enjoy herself, and
that if she was a good girl, surely, surely God would let her.




Chapter 8


The chapel and minister's house at God's Little Mountain were all in
one--a long, low building of grey stone surrounded by the graveyard,
where stones, flat, erect, and askew, took the place of a flower-garden.
Away to the left, just over a rise, the hill was gashed by the grey
steeps of the quarries. In front rose another curve covered with thick
woods. To the right was the batch, down which a road--in winter a
water-course--led into the valley. Behind the house God's Little
Mountain sloped softly up and away apparently to its possessor.

Not the least of the mysteries of the place, and it was tense with
mystery, was the Sunday congregation, which appeared to spring up
miraculously from the rocks, woods and graves.

When the present minister, Edward Marston, came there with his mother
he detested it; but after a time it insinuated itself into his heart,
and gave a stronger character to his religion. He had always been
naturally religious, taking on trust what he was taught; and he had an
instinctive pleasure in clean and healthy things. But on winter nights
at the mountain, when the tingling stars sprang in and out of their
black ambush and frost cracked the tombstones; in summer, when
lightning crackled in the woods and ripped along the hillside like a
thousand devils, the need of a God grew ever more urgent. He spoke of
this to his mother.

'No, dear, I can't say I have more need of our Lord here than in
Crigton,' she said. 'In Crigton there was the bus to be afraid of, and
bicycles. Here I just cover my ears for wind, put on an extra flannel
petticoat for frost, and sit in the coal-house for thunder. Not that
I'm forgetting God. God with us, of course, coal-house or elsewhere.'

'But don't you feel something ominous about the place, mother? I feel
as if something awful would happen here, don't you?'

'No, dear. Nor will you when you've had some magnesia. Martha!' (Martha
was the general who came in by the day from the first cottage in the
batch)--'Martha, put on an extra chop for the master. You aren't in
love, are you, my dear?'

'Gracious, no! Who should I be in love with, mother?'

'Quite right, dear. There is no one about here with more looks than a
brussels sprout. Not that I say anything against sprouts. Martha, just
go and see if there are any sprouts left. We'll have them for dinner.'
Edward looked at the woods across the batch, and wondered why the young
fresh green of the larches and the elm samaras was so sad, and why the
cry of a sheep from an upper slope was so forlorn.

'I hope, Edward,' said Mrs. Marston, 'that it won't be serious music. I
think serious music interferes with the digestion. Your poor father and
I went to the "Creation" on our honeymoon, and thought little of it;
then we went to the "Crucifixion," and though it was very pleasant, I
couldn't digest the oysters afterwards. And then, again, these clever
musicians allow themselves to become so passionate, one almost thinks
they are inebriated. Not flutes and cornets, they have to think of
their breath, but fiddlers can wreak their feelings on the instrument
without suffering for it.'

Edward laughed.

'I hope the gentleman that's coming to-day is a nice quiet one,' she
went on, as if Abel were a pony. 'And I hope the lady singer is not a
contralto. Contralto, to my mind,' she went on placidly, stirring her
porter in preparation for a draught, 'is only another name for roaring,
which is unseemly.' She drank her porter gratefully, keeping the spoon
in place with one finger.

If she could have seen father and daughter as they set forth,
hilarious, to superimpose tumult on the peace of God's Little Mountain,
she would have been a good deal less placid.

It was restful to sit and look at her kind old face, soft and round
beneath her lace cap, steeped in a peace deeper than lethargy. She was
one of nature's opiates, and she administered herself unconsciously to
everyone who saw much of her. Edward's father, having had an overdose,
had not survived. Mrs. Marston always spoke of him as 'my poor husband
who fell asleep,' as if he had dozed in a sermon. Sleep was her fetish,
panacea and art. Her strongest condemnation was to call a person 'a
stirring body.' She sat to-day, while preparations raged in the
kitchen, placidly knitting. She always knitted--socks for Edward and
shawls for herself. She had made so many shawls, and she so felt the
cold, that she wore them in layers--pink, grey, white, heather mixture,
and a purple cross-over.

When Martha and the friend who had come to help quarrelled shrilly, she
murmured, 'Poor things! putting themselves in such a pother!' When,
after a crash, Martha was heard to say, 'There's the cream-jug now!
Well, break one, break three!' she only shook her head, and murmured
that servants were not what they used to be. When Martha's friend's
little boy dropped the urn--presented to the late Mr. Marston by a
grateful congregation, and as large as a watering-can--and Martha's
friend shouted, 'I'll warm your buttons!' and proceeded to do so, Mrs.
Marston remained self-poised as a sun.

At last supper was set out, the cloths going in terraces according to
the various heights of the tables; the tea-sets--willow and Coalport,
the feather pattern, and the seaweed--looking like a china-shop; the
urn, now rakishly dinted, presiding. People paid for their supper on
these occasions, and expected to have as much as they could eat. Mrs.
Marston had rashly told Martha that she could have what was left as a
perquisite, which resulted later in stormy happenings.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the nook on the hillside where the chapel stood, as Abel ran
hastily down the slope--the harp jogging on his shoulders and looking
like some weird demon that clung round his neck and possessed him--came
a roar of sound. The brass band from Black Mountain was in possession
of the platform. The golden windows shone comfortably in the cold
spring evening, and Hazel ran towards them as she would have run
towards the wide-flung onyx doors of faery.

They arrived breathless and panting in the graveyard, where the
tombstones seemed to elbow each other outside the shining windows,
looking into this cave of saffron light and rosy joy as sardonically as
if they knew that those within its shelter would soon be without,
shelterless in the storm of death; that those who came in so gaily by
twos and threes would go out one by one without a word. Hazel peered
in.

'Fine raps they're having!' she whispered. 'All the band's there,
purple with pleasure, and sweating with the music like chaps haying.'

Abel looked in.

'Eh, dear,' he said, 'they're settled there for the neet. We'll ne'er
get a squeak in. There's nought for Black Mountain Band'll stop at
when they're elbow to elbow; they eggs each other on cruel, so they
do! Your ears may be dinned and deafened for life, and you lost to the
bee-keeping (for hear you must, or you'm done, with bees), but the band
dunna care! There! Now they've got a hencore--that's to say, do it
agen; and every time they get one of them it goes to their yeads, and
they play louder.'

'Ah, but you play better,' said Hazel comfortingly; for Abel's voice
had trembled, and Hazel must comfort grief wherever she found it, for
grief implied weakness.

'I know I do,' he assented; 'but what can I do agen ten strong men?'

At the mountain, as in the world of art and letters, it seemed that the
artist must elbow and push, and that if he did not often stop his
honeyed utterances to shout his wares he would not be heard at all.

'Dunna they look funny!' said Hazel with a giggle. 'All sleepy and
quiet, like smoked bees. Is that the Minister? Him by the old sleepy
lady--she's had more smoke than most!'

'Where?'

'There. He's got a black coat on and a kind face, sad-like.'

'Maybe if you took an axed him, he'd marry you--when the moon falls
down the chapel chimney and rabbits chase the bobtailed sheep-dog!'

'I'm not for marrying anybody. Let's go in,' said Hazel.

She took off her hat and coat, to enter more splendidly. On her head,
resting softly among the coils of ruddy hair, she put a wreath of
violets, which grew everywhere at the Callow; a big bunch of them was
at her throat like a cameo brooch.

When she entered the band faltered, and the cornet, a fiery young man
whom none could tire, wavered into silence. Edward, turning to find out
what had caused this most desirable event, saw her coming up the room
with the radiant fatefulness of a fairy in a dream. His heart went out
to her, not only for her morning air, her vivid eyes, her coronet of
youth's rare violets, but for the wistfulness that was not only in her
face, but in her poise and in every movement. He felt as he would to a
small bright bird that had come, greatly daring, in at his window on a
stormy night. She had entered the empty room of his heart, and from
this night onwards his only thought was how to keep her there.

When she went up to sing, his eyes dwelt on her. She was the most vital
thing he had ever seen. The tendrils of burnished hair about her
forehead and ears curled and shone with life; her eyes danced with
life; her body was taut as a slim arrow ready to fly from life's bow.

Abel sat down in the middle of the platform and began to play, quite
regardless of Hazel, who had to start when she could.

   'Harps in heaven played for you;
   Played for Christ with his eyes so blue;
   Played for Peter and for Paul,
   But never played for me at all!

   Harps in heaven, made all of glass,
   Greener than the rainy grass.
   Ne'er a one but is bespoken,
   And mine is broken--mine is broken!

   Harps in heaven play high, play low;
   In the cold, rainy wind I go
   To find my harp, as green as spring--
   My splintered harp without a string!'

She sang with passion. The wail of the lost was in her voice. She had
not the slightest idea what the words meant (probably they meant
nothing), but the sad cadence suited her emotional tone, and the ideas
of loss and exile expressed her vague mistrust of the world. Edward
imagined her in her blue-green dress and violet crown playing on a
large glass harp in a company of angels.

'Poor child!' he thought. 'Is it mystical longing or a sense of sin
that cries out in her voice?'

It was neither of those things; it was nothing that Edward could have
understood at that time, though later he did. It was the grief of rainy
forests, and the moan of stormy water; the muffled complaint of driven
leaves; the keening--wild and universal--of life for the perishing
matter that it inhabits.

Hazel expressed things that she knew nothing of, as a blackbird does.
For, though she was young and fresh, she had her origin in the old,
dark heart of earth, full of innumerable agonies, and in that heart she
dwelt, and ever would, singing from its gloom as a bird sings in a
yew-tree. Her being was more full of echoes than the hearts of those that
live further from the soil; and we are all as full of echoes as a rocky
wood--echoes of the past, reflex echoes of the future, and echoes of
the soil (these last reverberating through our filmiest dreams, like
the sound of thunder in a blossoming orchard). The echoes are in us of
great voices long gone hence, the unknown cries of huge beasts on the
mountains; the sullen aims of creatures in the slime; the love-call of
the bittern. We know, too, echoes of things outside our ken--the
thought that shapes itself in the bee's brain and becomes a waxen box
of sweets; the tyranny of youth stirring in the womb; the crazy terror
of small slaughtered beasts; the upward push of folded grass, and how
the leaf feels in all its veins the cold rain; the ceremonial that
passes yearly in the emerald temples of bud and calyx--we have walked
those temples; we are the sacrifice on those altars. And the future
floats on the current of our blood like a secret argosy. We hear the
ideals of our descendants, like songs in the night, long before our
firstborn is begotten. We, in whom the pollen and the dust, sprouting
grain and falling berry, the dark past and the dark future, cry and
call--we ask, Who is this Singer that sends his voice through the dark
forest, and inhabits us with ageless and immortal music, and sets the
long echoes rolling for evermore?

The audience, however, did not notice that there were echoes in Hazel,
and would have gaped if you had proclaimed God in her voice. They
looked at her with critical eyes that were perfectly blind to her real
self. Mrs. Marston thought what a pity it was that she looked so wild;
Martha thought it a pity that she did not wear a chenille net over her
hair to keep it neat; and Abel, peering up at her through the strings
of the harp and looking--with his face framed in wild red hair--like a
peculiarly intelligent animal in a cage, did not think of her at all.

But Edward made up for them, because he thought of her all the time.
Before the end of the concert he had got as far as to be sure she was
the only girl he would ever want to marry. His ministerial self put in
a faint proviso, 'If she is a good girl'; but it was instantly shouted
down by his other self, who asserted that as she was so beautiful she
must be good.

During the last items on the programme--two vociferous glees rendered
by a stage-full of people packed so tightly that it was marvellous how
they expanded their diaphragms--Edward was in anguish of mind lest the
cornet should monopolize Hazel at supper. The said cornet had become
several shades more purple each time Hazel sang, so Edward was prepared
for the worst. He was determined to make a struggle for it, and felt
that though his position denied him the privilege of scuffling, he
might at least use finesse--that has never been denied to any Church.

'My dear,' whispered Mrs. Marston, 'have you an unwelcome guest?'

This was her polite way of indicating a flea.

'No, mother.'

'Well, dear, there must be something preying on your mind; you have
kept up such a feeling of uneasiness that I have hardly had any nap at
all.'

'What do you think of her, mother?'

'Who, dear?'

'The beautiful girl.'

'A pretty tune, the first she sang,' said Mrs. Marston, not having
heard the others. 'But such wild manners and such hair! Like pussy
stroked the wrong way. And there is something a little peculiar about
her, for when she sings about heaven it seems somehow improper, and
that,' she added drowsily, 'heaven hardly _should_ do.'

Edward understood what she meant. He had been conscious himself of
something desperately exciting in the bearing of Hazel Woodus--something
that penetrated the underworld which lay like a covered well within him,
and, like a ray of light, set all kinds of unsuspected life moving and
developing there.

As supper went on Edward kept more and more of Hazel's attention, and
the quiet grey eyes met the restless amber ones more often.

'If I came some day--soon--to your home, would you sing to me?' he
asked.

'I couldna. I'm promised for the bark-stripping.'

'What's that?'

Hazel looked at him pityingly.

'Dunna you know what that is?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'It's fetching the bark off'n the failed trees ready for lugging.'

'Where are the felled trees?'

'Hunter's Spinney.'

'That's close here.'

'Ah.'

Edward was deep in thought. The cornet whispered to Hazel:

'Making up next Sunday's sermon!'

But Edward turned round disconcertingly.

'As it's on your way, why not come to tea with mother? I might be out,
but you wouldn't mind that?'

'Eh, but I should! I dunna want to talk to an old lady!'

'I'll stop at home,' then, he replied, very much amused, and with a
look of quiet triumph at the cornet. 'Which day?'

'Wednesday week's the first.'

'Come Wednesday, then.'

'What'll the old sleepy lady say?'

'My mother,' he said with dignity, 'will approve of anything I think
right.'

But his heart misgave. So far he had only 'thought right' what her
conventions approved. He had seldom acted on his own initiative. She
therefore had a phrase, 'Dear Edward is always right.' It was possible
that when he left off his unquestioning concordance with her, she would
leave off saying 'Dear Edward is always right.' So far he had not
wanted anything particularly, and as it was as difficult to quarrel
with Mrs. Marston as to strike a match on a damp box, there had never
been any friction. She liked things, as she said, 'nice and pleasant.'
To do Providence justice, everything always had been. Even when her
husband died it had been, in a crape-clad way, nice and pleasant, for
he died after the testimonial and the urn, and not before, as a less
considerate man would have done. He died on a Sunday, which was 'so
suitable,' and at dawn, which was 'so beautiful'; also (in the phrase
used for criminals and the dying) 'he went quietly.' Not that Mrs.
Marston did not feel it. She did, as deeply as her nature could. But
she felt it, as a well-padded boy feels a whacking, through layers of
convention. Now, at her age, to find out that life was not so pleasant
as she thought would be little short of tragedy.

'Ah, I'll come, and I'm much obleeged,' said Hazel.

'I'll meet you at Hunter's Spinney and see you home.' Edward decided.

To this also Hazel assented so delightedly that the cornet pushed back
his chair and went to another table with a sardonic laugh. But his
remarks were drowned by a voice which proclaimed:

'All the years I've bin to suppers I've 'ad tartlets! To-night they
wunna go round. I've paid the same as others. Tartlets I'll 'ave!'

'But the plate's empty,' said Martha, flushed and determined.

'I've had no finger in the emptying of it. More must be fetched.' Other
voices joined in, and Mrs. Marston was heard to murmur, 'Unpleasant.'

Edward was oblivious to it all.

'Shall you,' he asked earnestly, 'like me to come to the Spinney?'

'Ah, I shall that!' said Hazel, who already felt an aura of protection
about him. 'It'll be so safe--like when I was little, and was used to
pick daisies round grandad.'

Edward knew more definitely than before the relation in which he wished
to stand towards Hazel. It was not that of grandad.

Any reply he might have made was drowned by the uproar that broke forth
at the cry, 'She's hidden 'em! Look in the kitchen!'

Martha's cousin--in his spare time policeman of a distant village--felt
that if Martha was detected in fraud it would not look well, and
therefore put his sinewy person in the kitchen doorway. Edward seized
the moment, when there was a hush of surprise, to say grace, during
which the invincible voice murmured:

'I've not received tartlets. I'm not thankful.'

'Mother,' Edward said, when the last unruly guest had disappeared in
the wild April night, and Hazel's vivid presence and violet fragrance
and young laughter had been taken by the darkness, 'I've asked Hazel
Woodus to tea on Wednesday.'

'She is not of your class, Edward.'

'What does class matter?'

'Martha's brother calls you "sir," and Martha looks down on this young
person.'

'Don't call her "young person," mother.'

'Whether it is mistaken kindness, dear, or a silly flirtation, it will
only do you harm with the congregation.'

'Young men and women,' soliloquized Mrs. Marston as she hoisted herself
upstairs with the candlestick very much aslant in a torpid hand, 'are
not what they used to be.'




Chapter 9


Hunter's Spinney, a conical hill nearly as high as God's Little
Mountain, lay between that range and Undern. It was deeply wooded; only
its top was bare and caught the light redly. It was a silent and
deserted place, cowled in ancient legends. Here the Black Huntsman
stalled his steed, and the death-pack coming to its precincts, ceased
into the hill. Here, in November twilights, when the dumb birds cowered
in the dark pines, you might hear from the summit a horn blown-very
clearly, with tuneful devilry, and a scattered sound of deep barking
like the noise of sawing timber, and then the blood-curdling tumult of
the pack at feeding time.

To-day, as Hazel began her work, the radiant woods were full of pale
colour, so delicate and lucent that Beauty seemed a fugitive presence
from some other world trapped and panting to be free. The small patens
of the beeches shone like green glass, and the pale spired chestnuts
were candelabras on either side of the steep path. In the bright
breathless glades of larches the willow-wrens sang softly, but with
boundless vitality. On sunny slopes the hyacinths pushed out
close-packed buds between their covering leaves; soon they would
spread their grave blue like a prayer-carpet. Hazel, stooping in her
old multi-coloured pinafore, her bare arms gleaming like the stripped
trees, seemed to Edward as he came up the shady path to be the spirit
of beauty. He quite realized that her occupation was not suited to a
minister's future wife. 'But she may never be that,' he thought
despairingly.

'Have you ever thought, Hazel,' he said later, sitting down on a
log--'have you ever thought of the question of marriage?'

'I ne'er did till Foxy took the chicks.' Edward looked dazed. 'It's
like this,' Hazel went on. 'Father (he's a rum 'un, is father!), he
says he'll drown Foxy if she takes another.'

'Who is Foxy?'

'Oh! Fancy you not knowing Foxy! Her's my little cub. Pretty! you ne'er
saw anything so pretty.'

Edward thought he had.

'But she canna get used to folks' ways.' (This was a new point of view
to Edward.) 'She'm a fox, and she can't be no other. And I'd liefer
she'd _be_ a fox.'

'Foxes are very mischievous,' Edward said mildly.

'Mischievous!' Hazel flamed on him like a little thunderstorm.
'Mischievous! And who made 'em mischievous, I'd like to know? They
didna make theirselves.'

'God made them,' Edward said simply.

'What for did He, if He didna like 'em when they were done?'

'We can't know all His reasons; He walks in darkness.'

'Well, that's no manner of use to me and Foxy,' said Hazel practically.
'So all as I can see to do is to get married and take Foxy where
there's no chicks.'

'So you think of marrying?'

'Ah! And I told father I'd marry the first as come. I swore it by the
Mountain.'

'And who came?' Edward had a kind of faintness in his heart.

'Never a one.'

'Nobody at all?'

'Never a one.'

'And if anyone came and asked for you, you'd take him?'

'Well, I'm bound to, seemingly. But it dunna matter. None'll ever come.
What for should they?'

She herself answered her own question fully as she stood aureoled in
dusky light. His eyes were eloquent, but she was too busy to notice
them.

'And should you like to be married?' he asked gently.

He expected a shy affirmative. He received a flat negative.

'My mam didna like it. And she said it'd be the end of going in the
woods and all my gamesome days. And she said tears and torment, tears
and torment was the married lot. And she said, "Keep yourself to
yourself. You wunna made for marrying any more than me. Eat in company,
but sleep alone"--that's what she said, Mr. Marston.'

Edward was so startled at this unhesitating frankness that he said
nothing. But he silently buried several sweet hopes that had been
pushing up like folded hyacinths for a week. The old madness was upon
him, but it was a larger, more spiritual madness than Reddin's, as the
sky is larger and more ethereal than the clouds that obscure it. He was
always accustomed to think more of giving than receiving, so now he
concentrated himself on what he could do for Hazel. He felt that her
beauty would be an ample return for anything he could do as her husband
to make her happy. If she would confide in him, demands on his time,
run to him for refuge, he felt that he could ask no more of life. The
strength of the ancient laws of earth was as yet hidden from him. He
did not know the fierceness of the conflict in which he was engaging
for Hazel's sake--the world-old conflict between sex and altruism.

If he had known, he would still not have hesitated.

Suddenly Hazel looked round with an affrighted air.

'It's late to be here,' she said.

'Why?'

'There's harm here if you bide late. The jeath pack's about here in the
twilight, so they do say.'

They looked up into the dark steeps, and the future seemed to lower on
them.

'Maybe summat bad'll come to us in this spinney,' she whispered.

'Nothing bad can come to you when you are in God's keeping.'

There canna be many folk in His keeping, then.'

'Do you say your prayers, Hazel?' he asked rather sadly.

'Ah! I say:

   "Keep me one year, keep me seven,
   Till the gold turns silver on my head;
   Bring me up to the hill o' heaven,
   And leave me die quiet in my bed."

That's what I allus say.'

'Who taught you?'

'My mam.'

'Ah, well, it must be a good prayer if she taught it you, mustn't it?'
he said.

Suddenly Hazel clutched his arm affrightedly.

'Hark! Galloping up yonder! Run! run! It's the Black Huntsman!'

It was Reddin, skirting the wood on his way home from a search for
Hazel. If he had come into the spinney he would have seen them, but he
kept straight on.

'It's bringing harm!' cried Hazel, pulling at Edward's arm; 'see the
shivers on me! It's somebody galloping o'er my grave!'

Edward resolved to combat these superstitions and replace them by a
sane religion. He had not yet fathomed the ancient, cruel and mighty
power of these exhalations of the soil. Nor did he see that Hazel was
enchained by earth, prisoner to it only a little less than the beech
and the hyacinth--bond-serf of the sod.

When Edward and Hazel burst into the parlour, like sunshine into an old
garden, they were met by a powerful smell of burnt merino. Mrs. Marston
had been for some hours as near Paradise as we poor mortals can hope to
be. Her elastic-sided cloth boots rested on the fender, and her skirt,
carefully turned up, revealed a grey stuff petticoat with a hint of
white flannel beneath. The pink shawl was top, which meant optimism.
With Mrs. Marston, optimism was the direct result of warmth. Her
spectacles had crept up and round her head, and had a rakishly benign
appearance. On her comfortable lap lay the missionary _Word_ and a
large roll of brown knitting which was intended to imitate fur. Edward
noted hopefully that the pink shawl was top.

'Here's Hazel come to see you, mother!'

Mrs. Marston straightened her spectacles, surveyed Hazel, and asked if
she would like to do her hair. This ceremony over, they sat down to
tea.

'And how many brothers and sisters have you, my dear?' asked the old
lady.

'Never a one. Nobody but our Foxy.'

'Edward, too, has none. Who is Foxy?'

'My little cub.'

'You speak as if the animals were a relation, dear.'

'So all animals be my brothers and sisters.'

'I know, dear. Quite right. All animals in conversation should be so.
But any single animal in reality is only an animal, and can't be.
Animals have no souls.'

'Yes, they have, then! If they hanna; _you_ hanna!'

Edward hastened to make peace.

'We don't know, do we, mother?' he said. 'And now suppose we have tea?'

Mrs. Marston looked at Hazel suspiciously over the rim of her glasses.

'My dear, don't have ideas,' she said.

'There, Hazel!' Edward smiled. 'What about your ideas in the spinney?'

'There's queer things doing in Hunter's Spinney, and what for shouldna
you believe it?' said Hazel. 'Sometimes more than other times, and
midsummer most of all.'

'What sort of queer things?' asked Edward, in order to be able to watch
her as she answered.

Hazel shut her eyes and clasped her hands, speaking in a soft monotone
as if repeating a lesson.

'In Hunter's Spinney on midsummer night there's things moving as move
no other time; things free as was fast; things crying out as have been
a long while hurted.' She suddenly opened her eyes and went on
dramatically 'First comes the Black Huntsman, crouching low on his
horse and the horse going belly to earth. And John Meares o' the
public, he seed the red froth from his nostrils on the brakes one
morning when he was ketching pheasants. And the jeath's with him, great
hound-dogs, real as real, only no eyes, but sockets with a light behind
'em. Ne'er a one knows what they's after. If I seed 'em I'd die,' she
finished hastily, taking a large bite of cake.

'Myths are interesting,' said Edward, 'especially nature myths.'

'What's a myth, Mr. Marston?'

'An untruth, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston.

'This inna one, then! I tell you John seed the blood!'

'Tell us more.' Edward would have drunk in nonsense rhymes from her
lips.

'And there's never a one to gainsay 'em in all the dark 'oods,' Hazel
went on, 'except on Midsummer Eve.'

'Midsummer!'--Mrs. Marston's tone was gently wistful--'is the only time
I'm really warm. That is, if the weather's as it should be. But the
weather's not what it was!'

'Tell us more, Hazel!' pleaded Edward.

'What for do you want to hear, my soul?'

Edward flushed at the caressing phrase, and Mrs. Marston looked as
indignant as was possible to her physiognomy, until she realized that
it was a mere form of speech.

'Because I love--old tales.'

'Well, if so be you go there, then'--Hazel leant forward, earnest and
mysterious--'after the pack's gone you'll hear soft feet running, and
you'll see faces look out and hands waving. And gangs of folks come
galloping under the leaves, not seen clear, hastening above a bit. And
others come quick after, all with trouble on 'em. And the place is full
of whispering and rustling and voices calling a long way off. And my mam
said the trees get free that night--or else folk of the trees--creeping
and struggling out of the boles like a chicken from an egg--getting free
like lads out of school; and they go after the jeath-pack like birds
after a cuckoo. And last comes the lady of Undern Coppy, lagging and
lonesome, riding in a troop of shadows, and sobbing, "Lost--lost! Oh, my
green garden!" And they say the brake flowers on the eve of that night,
and no bird sings and no star falls.'

'What a pack of nonsense!' murmured Mrs. Marston drowsily.

'That it inna!' cried Hazel; 'it's the bloody truth!'

Mrs. Marston's drowsiness forsook her. Hazel became conscious for
tension.

'Mother!'--Edward's voice shook with suppressed laughter, although he was
indignant with Hazel's father for such a mistaken upbringing--'mother,
would you give Hazel the receipt for this splendid cake?'

'And welcome, my dear.' The old lady was safely launched on her
favourite topic. 'And if you'd like a seed-cake as well, you shall have
it. Have you put down any butter yet?'

Hazel never put down or preserved or made anything. Her most ambitious
cooking was a rasher and a saucepan of potatoes.

'I dunna know what you mean,' she said awkwardly.

Edward was disappointed. He had thought her such a paragon. 'Well,
well, cooking was, after all, a secondary thing. Let it go.'

'You mean to say you don't know what putting down butter is, my poor
child? But perhaps you go in for higher branches? Lemon-curd, now, and
bottled fruit. I'm sure you can do those?'

Hazel felt blank. She thought it best to have things clear.

'I canna do naught,' she said defiantly.

'Now, mother'--Edward came to the rescue again--'see how right you are
in saying that a girl's education is not what it used to be! See how
Hazel's has been neglected! Think what a lot you could teach her!
Suppose you were to begin quite soon?'

'A batter,' began Mrs. Marston, with the eagerness of a philosopher
expounding her theory, 'is a well-beaten mixture of eggs and flour.
Repeat after me, my dear.'

'Eh, what's the use? _He_ dunna know what he eats no more than a
pig! I shanna cook for 'im.'

'Who's that, dear?' Mrs. Marston inquired.

'My dad.'

Mrs. Marston held up her hands with the mock-fur knitting in them, and
looked at Edward with round eyes.

'She says her father's a--a pig, my dear!'

'She doesn't mean it,' said he loyally, 'do you, Hazel?'

'Ah, and more!'

The host and hostess sighed.

Then Edward said: 'Yes, but you won't always be keeping house for your
father, you know,' and found himself so confused that he had to go and
fetch a pipe.

Afterwards he walked part way home with Hazel, and coming back under
the driving sky--that seemed to move all in a piece like a sliding
window, and showed the moon as a slim lady waiting for unlooked-for
happenings--he could have wept at the crude sweetness of Hazel. She was
of so ruthless an honesty towards herself as well as others; she had
such strange lights and shadows in her eyes, her voice, her soul; she
was so full of faults, and so brimming with fascination.

'Oh, God, if I may have her to keep and defend, to glow in my house
like a rose, I'll ask no more,' he murmured.

The pine-tops bowed in as stately a manner as they had when Hazel
cried, 'I'll never be a woman!' They listened like grown-ups to the
prattle of a child. And the stars, like gods in silver armour sitting
afar in halls of black marble, seemed to hear and disdain the little
gnat-like voice, as they heard Vessons' defiant 'Never will I!' and
Mrs. Marston's woolly prayers, and Reddin's hoof-beats. All man's
desires--predatory, fugitive, or merely negative--wander away into
those dark halls, and are heard no more. Among the pillars of the night
is there One who listens and remembers, and judges the foolishness of
man, not by effects, but by motives? And does that One, in the majesty
of everlasting vitality and resistless peace, ever see how we run after
the painted butterflies of our desires and fall down the dark
precipice? And if He sees and hears the wavering, calamitous life of
all creatures, and especially of the most beautiful and the most
helpless, does He ever sigh and weep, as we do when we see a dead child
or a moth's wing impaled on a thorn?

Our heavy burden is that we cannot know. For all our tears and prayers
and weary dreaming, we cannot know.

Edward lay awake all night, and heard the first blackbird begin,
tentatively, his clear song--a song to bring tears by its golden
security of joy in a world where nothing is secure.

The old madness surged in upon Edward more strongly as the light
grew, and he tried to read the Gospel of St. John (his favourite),
but the words left no trace on his mind. Hazel was there, and like
a scarlet-berried rowan on the sky she held the gaze by the perfection
of the picture she made. The bent of Edward's mind and upbringing was
set against the rush of his wishes and of circumstance. She had said,
'The first that came,' and he was sure that in her state of dark
superstition she would hold by her vow. Suppose some other--some
farm-hand, who would never see the real Hazel--should have been thinking
over the matter, and should go to-day and should be the first? It was
just how things happened. And then his flower would be gone, and the
other man would never know it was a flower. He worked himself into such
a fever that he could not rest, but got up and went out into the lively
air, and saw the sun come lingeringly through aery meadows of pale
green and primrose. He saw the ice slip from the bright pointed lilac
buds, and sheep browsing the frosty grass, and going to and fro in the
unreserved way that animals have in the early hours before the
restraint of human society is imposed on them. He saw, yet noticed
nothing, until a long scarlet bar of cloud reminded him of Hazel by its
vividness, and he found a violet by the graveyard gate.

'Little Hazel!' he whispered. He pondered on the future, and tried to
imagine such an early walk as this with Hazel by his side, and could
not for the glory of it. Then he reasoned with himself. This wild haste
was not right, perhaps. He ought to wait. But that vow! That foolish,
childish vow!

'I could look after her. She could blossom here like a violet in a
quiet garden.'

Giving was never too early.

'And I am asking nothing--not for years. She shall live her own life,
and be mother's daughter and my little sister for as long as she likes.
My little sister!' he repeated aloud, as if some voice had contradicted
him. And, indeed, the whole wide morning seemed to contradict his
scheme--the mating birds, the sheep suckling their lambs, the insistent
neighing and bellowing that rose from the fields and farms, the very
tombstones, with their legends of multitudinous families, and the voice
that cried to man and woman, not in words, but in the zest of the earth
and air, '"Beget, bring forth, and then depart, for I have done with
you!"'

A sharp cold shower stung his cheeks, and he saw a slim rosebud beating
itself helplessly against the wet earth, broken and muddy. He fetched a
stake and tied it up. I think,' he said to himself, 'that I was put
into the world to tie up broken roses, and one that is not broken yet,
thank God! It is miraculous that she has never come to harm, for that
great overgrown boy, her father, takes no care of her. Yes, I was meant
for that. I can't preach.' He smiled ruefully as he remembered how
steadfastly the congregation slept through his best sermons. 'I can't
say the right things at the right time. I'm not clever. But I can take
care of Hazel. And that is my life-work,' he added naively, 'perhaps
I'd better begin at once, and go to see her to-day.'

Ah! the gold and scarlet morning as he came home after finding that
resolve, which, as a matter of fact, he had taken with him! How the
roof of the parsonage shone like the New Jerusalem! And how the fantail
pigeons, very rotund denizens of that city, cooed as they walked
gingerly--tiles being cold to pink feet on a frosty morning--up and
down in the early sun!

Edward so much wanted to keep the violet he had found that he decided
he ought to give it to his mother. So he put it on her plate, and
looked for a suitable passage to read at prayers.

The Song of Solomon seemed the only thing really in tune with the
morning, but he decided rather sadly that 'something in Corinthians'
might please his mother better. So he read, 'The greatest of these is
love,' and his voice was so husky and so unmanageable that Mrs.
Marston, who did not notice the golden undertones that matched their
beauty with the blackbird's song, went straight from the chair she
knelt at in the prayers to her store-room, and produced lemon and
honey, which Edward loathed.

'You're very throaty, my dear, and you must take a level spoonful,' she
said.

It is only in poetry that all the world understands a lover. In real
life he is called throaty, and given a level spoonful of that nauseous
compound known as common sense.




Chapter 10


The garden at the Callow was full of old, sad-coloured flowers that had
lost all names but the country ones. Chief among them, by reason of its
hardihood, was a small plant called virgin's pride. Its ephemeral
petals, pale and bee-haunted, fluttered like banners of some lost,
forgotten cause. The garden was hazy with their demure, faintly scented
flowers, and the voices of the bees came up in a soft roar
triumphantly, as the voices of victors returning with hardwon spoil.

Abel had been putting some new sections on the hives, and, as usual,
after a long spell of listening to their low, changeless music, he
rushed in for his harp. He sat down under the hawthorn by the gate, and
looked like a patriarch beneath a pale green tint. As day declined the
music waxed; he played with a tenderness, a rage of delight, that did
not often come to him except on spring evenings. He almost touched
genius. Hazel came out, leaving the floor half scrubbed, and began to
dance on the potato flat.

'Dunna stomp the taters to jeath, 'Azel!' said he.

'They binna up!' she replied, continuing to dance.

He never wasted words. He continued the air with one hand and threw a
stone at her with the other. He hit her on the cheek.

'You wold beast!' she screamed.

'Gerroff taters!' He continued to play.

She went, hand to cheek, and frowning, off the potato patch. But she
did not stop dancing. Neither of them ever let such things as anger,
business, or cleanliness interfere with their pleasures. So Hazel
danced on, though on a smaller area among the virgin's pride.

The music, wild, crude and melancholy, floated on the soft air to
Edward as he approached. The sun slipped lower; leaf shadows began to
tremble on Hazel's pinafore, which, with its faded blue and its many
stains, was transmuted in the vivid light, and looked like the flowers
of virgin's pride.

'"The Ash Tree"!' said Abel, who always announced his tunes in this
way, as singers do at a choir supper.

The forlorn music met Edward at the gate. He stopped, startled at the
sight of Hazel dancing in the shadowy garden with her hair loose and
her abandon tempered by weariness. He stood behind the hedge until Abel
brought the tune to an early end with the laconic remark, 'Supper,' and
went indoors with his harp.

Edward opened the gate and went in.

'Eh, mister! what a start you give me!' said Hazel breathlessly.

'So this is your home?'

'Ah!'

Edward found her more disturbing to-night than at the concert; the gulf
between them was more obvious; she had been comparatively tidy before.
Now her disreputableness contrasted strongly with his correct black
coat and general air of civilized well-being.

Hazel came nearer.

'He inna bad to live along of,' she confided, with a nod towards the
cottage. 'O' course, he's crossways time and again, and a devil's
temper.'

'You mustn't speak of your father like that, Hazel.'

'What for not? He _be_ like that.'

'Are all these apple-trees yours?' he asked to change the subject.

'No, they'm father's. But I get the windfa'ls and the bruised 'uns. I
allus see'--she smiled winningly--'as there's plenty of them. Foxy
likes 'em. He found me at it once bruising of 'em. God a'mighty! what a
hiding he give me!'

Edward felt depressed. He could not harmonize Hazel's personality with
his mother's; he was shocked at her expressions; he was sufficiently
fastidious to recoil from dirt; the thought of Abel as a father-in-law
was little short of appalling. Yet, in spite of all these things, he
had felt such elation, such spring rapture when Hazel danced; the world
took on such strange new colours when she looked at him that he knew he
must love her for ever. He felt that as his emotions grew stronger--and
they were becoming more and more like a herd of young calves out at
grass--his ways of expression must increase in correctness.

'Hazel--' he began.

'I like the way you say it,' she interrupted. 'Ah! I like it right
well! Breathin' strong, like folk coming up the Monkey's Ladder.'

'Whatever's that?'

'Dunna you know Monkey's Ladder? It's that road there. Somebody's
coming up it now on a horse.'

They both looked down at Reddin climbing slowly and still some way off.
They did not know who it was, nor what destiny was pacing silently
towards them with his advancing figure, nor why he rode up and down
this road and other roads every day; but an inexplicable sense of
urgency came upon Edward. To his own surprise, he said suddenly:

'I came to ask if you'd marry me, Hazel Woodus?'

'Eh?' said she, dazed with surprise.

'Will you marry me, Hazel? I can give you a good home, and I will try
to be a good husband, and--and I love you, Hazel, dear.'

Hazel put her head on one side like a willow-wren singing. She liked to
be called dear.

'D'you like me as much as I like Foxy?'

'Far more.'

'You've bin very quick about it.'

'I'm afraid I have.'

'Will you buy me a green gown with yellow roses on?'

'If you like.' He spoke doubtfully, wondering what his mother would
think of it.

'And shall we sit down to our dinners at a table with a cloth on like
at--' She stopped. She could not tell him about Undern. 'Like the
gentry?' she finished.

'Yes, dear.'

'And will you tell that sleepy old lady as lives along, of you--'

('Oh, poor mother!' thought Edward.)

'--Not to stare and stare at me over the top of her spectacles like a
cow at a cornfield over the fence?'

'Yes--yes,' said Edward hastily, feeling that his mother must wait to
be reinstated until he had made sure of Hazel.

'All right, then; I'll come.'

Edward took her hand; then he kissed her cheek gently. She accepted the
kiss placidly. There was nothing in it to remind her of Reddin's.

'And you'll do always as you like,' Edward went on, 'and be my little
sister.' Then, to make matters clearer, he added: 'and you shall have a
room papered with buttercups and daisies for your very own.'

'Eh! how grand!'

'You'll like that?' His voice was wistful in its eagerness for a
denial.

'Ah! I shall like it right well.'

Edward made no reply. He was never any good at putting in a word for
himself. He was usually left out of things, and stood contentedly in
the background while inferior men pushed in front of him.

'And now,' he said, 'I'll give you a token till I can get you a ring.'
He picked a spray of the faint pink and blue flowers.

'What's its name?' he asked.

'Virgin's pride.'

Edward gave her a quick look. Then he realized that she was as innocent
as her little fox, and as free from artifice. That was its name, so she
told it to him.

'A very pretty little flower, and a very sweet name,' he said, 'And
now, where's your father?'

'Guzzling his supper.'

Edward frowned. Then the humour of the situation struck him, and he
laughed. Abel rose as they came to the door.

'Well, mister,' he inquired glumly, 'what'n you after? Money for them
missions to buy clothes for savages as 'd liefer go bare? Or money for
them poor clergy? I'm poorer nor the clergy.'

'I want to marry Hazel.'

Abel flung back his head and roared. Then he jerked his thumb over his
shoulder towards Hazel.

'What?--'er?' he queried in ecstasies of mirth. ''Er? Look at the
floor, man! Look at the apern she's got on! Laws, man! you surely dunna
want our 'Azel for your missus?'

'Yes.' Edward was nettled and embarrassed.

'Well, 'er's only eighteen.' He looked Hazel over appraisingly, as he
would have looked at a heifer. 'Still, I suppose she's an 'ooman
growed. Well, you can take her. I dunna mind. When d'you want her?'

I shall ask her when she will wish to marry me.'

Abel laughed again.

'Lord love us!' he said. 'You unna take and ax her? Tell her, that's
what! Just tell her what to do, and she'll do it if you give her one
for herself now and agen. So you mean marrying, do yer?'

Edward was angry. Abel's outlook and manner of expression rawed his
nerves.

'I leave all the arrangements to her,' he said stiffly.

'Then the devil aid you,' said Abel, 'for I canna!'

Hazel stood with downcast face, submissive, but ill at ease. She wanted
to spring at her father and scream, 'Ho'd yer row!' for she hated him
for talking so to Edward. Somehow it made her flushed and ashamed for
Edward to be told to 'give her one for herself.' She looked at him
under her lashes, and wondered if he would. There was something not
altogether unpleasant in the idea. She felt that to be ordered about by
young lips and struck by a young man's hand would be, as business men
say, 'quite in order.' She appraised Edward, and decided that he would
not. Had she been able to decide in the affirmative, she would probably
have fallen in love with him there and then.

Edward came over to her and took her hand.

'When will you be my wife, Hazel?' he said.

'I dunno. Not for above a bit.'

'Haw! haw!' laughed Abel. 'Hark at her! Throw summat at er', man!'

'I should prefer your absence,' said Edward, stung to expression at
last.

'Eh?'

'Go away!' said Edward rudely. He was surprised at himself afterwards.
Abel withdrew open-mouthed. Hazel laughed with delight.

'But why didna you hit 'un?' she asked wistfully.

'My dear girl! What a thing to say!'

'Be it?'

'Yes. But now, when shall we be married?'

'Not for years and years,' said Hazel, pleased at the dismay on his
face, and enjoying her new power. Then she reflected on the many
untried delights of the new life.

'Leastways, not for days an' days,' she amended.

'Will you gi' me pear-drops every day?'

'Pear-drops! My dear Hazel, you must think of better things than
pear-drops!'

'There's nought better,' she said, 'without it's bull's-eyes.'

'But, dear,' Edward reasoned gently, 'don't you want to think of
helping me, and going with me to chapel?'

Hazel considered.

'D'you preach long and solemn?' she asked.

'No,' said Edward rather curtly. 'But if I did, you ought to like it.'

Hazel took his measure again. Then she said naughtily:

'Tell you what I'll do if you preach long and solemn, mister. I'll put
me tongue out!'

Edward laughed in spite of himself, and thought for the twentieth time,
'Poor mother!' But that did not prevent his being anxious to have Hazel
safely at the Mountain. It seemed to him that every man in the county
must want to marry her.

'What would you say to May, Hazel, early May--lilac-time?'

'I'd like it right well.'

'And suppose we fix it the day after the spring flower-show at
Evenwood, and go to it together?'

'I'm going with father to sing.'

'Well, when you've sung, you can have tea with me.'

'Thank you kindly, Mr. Marston.'

'Edward.'

'Ed'ard.'

Abel came round the house.

'You can come and see the bees, if you've a mind,' he said forgivingly.
In his angers and his joys he was like a child. He was, in fact, what
he looked--a barbaric child, prematurely aged. He was aged and had
lines on his face because he enjoyed life so much, for joy bites as
deep as sickness or grief or any other physical strain. Hazel would age
soon, for she lived in an intenser world than most people, as if she
saw everything through magnifying glass and coloured glass.

Edward went to the bees as he would have gone to the dogs--sadly. He
disliked the bees even more than he disliked Abel, who in his expansive
mood was much less attractive than in his natural sulkiness. Abel did
not know how near he came once or twice to frustrating an end that he
thought very desirable. A less steadfast man than Edward, with a less
altruistic object in view, would have been frightened away from Hazel
by Abel's crudeness.

'What about the bitch?' he asked Edward when they had seen the bees.
'Will you take her, or shall I drown her?'

Rage flamed in Hazel's face--rage all the more destructive because
it was caused by pity. Her father's calm taking for granted that
Foxy's fate (and her own) depended on his whim and Edward's, the
picture of Foxy tied up in a bag to be drowned--Foxy, who had all
her love--infuriated her.

Edward was troubled at the look in her eyes. He had not yet had much
opportunity for seeing those wild red lights that burn in the eyes of
the hunter, and are reflected in those of the hunted, and make life a
lurid nightmare. The scene set his teeth on edge.

'Of course,' he said, and the recklessness of it was quite clear to him
when he thought of his mother--'of course, the little fox shall come.'

'And the one-eyed cat and the blind bird and the old ancient rabbit,
I'll wager!' queried Abel. 'Well, minister, you can set up a menagerie
and make money.'

'They could go in bits of holes and corners,' Hazel put in anxiously,
'and nobody'd ever know they were there! And the bird chirrups lovely,
fine days.'

Abel shouted with laughter.

'Tuthree feathers and a beak!' he said. 'And the rabbit'd be comforbler
a muff.'

Edward hastily ended the discussion.

'Of course, they shall all come,' he said.

Somehow, Hazel made the sheltering of these poor creatures a matter of
religion. He found himself connecting them with the great 'Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto these--' He had never seen the text in that light
before. But he was dubious about the possibility of making his mother
see it thus.

'They'll be much obleeged,' Hazel said. 'Come and see 'em.'

She spoke as one conferring the freedom of a city.

Foxy--very clean in her straw, smoothly white and brown, dignified, and
golden of eye--looked mistrustfully at Edward and showed her baby white
teeth.

'She'll liven the old lady up,' said Hazel.

'I'm afraid--' began Edward; and then--'she shows her teeth a good
deal.'

'Only along of being frit.'

'She needn't be frightened. I'll take care of her and of you, and see
that no harm comes to you.'

The statement was received by the night--critical, attent--in a silence
so deep that it seemed quizzical.

On his way home he felt rather dismayed at his task, because he saw
that in making Hazel happy he must make his mother unhappy.

'Ah, well, it'll all come right,' he thought, 'for He is love, and He
will help me.'

The sharp staccato sound of a horse cantering came up behind him. It
was Reddin returning from a wide detour. He pulled up short.

'Is there any fiddler in your parish, parson?' he inquired.

Edward considered.

'There is one man on the far side of the Mountain.'

'Pretty daughter?'

'No. He is only twenty.'

'Damn!'

He was gone.

Hazel, in the untidy room at the Callow, fed her pets and had supper in
a dream of coming peace for them all. She would not have been peaceful
if she had seen the meeting of the two men in the dusk, both wanting
her with a passion equal in suddenness and force, but different in
quality. She wanted neither. Her passion, no less intense, was for
freedom, for the wood-track, for green places where soft feet scudded
and eager eyes peered out and adventurous lives were lived up in the
tree-tops, down in the moss.

She was fascinated by Reddin; she was drawn to confide in Edward; but
she wanted neither of them. Whether or not in years to come she would
find room in her heart for human passion, she had no room for it now.
She had only room for the little creatures she befriended and for her
eager, quickly growing self. For, like her mother, she had the egoism
that is more selfless than most people's altruism--the divine egoism
that is genius.




Chapter 11


When Edward got home his mother was asleep in the armchair. Her whole
person rose and fell like a tropical sea. Her shut eyes were like those
of a statue, behind the lids of which one knows there are no pupils.
Her eyebrows were slightly raised, as if in expostulation at being
obliged to breathe. Her figure expressed the dignity of old age, which
may or may not be due to rheumatism.

Edward, as he looked at her, felt as one does who has been reading a
fairy-tale and is called to the family meal. All the things he had
meant to say, that had seemed so eloquent, now seemed foolish. He awoke
her hastily in case his courage should fail before that most adamantine
thing--an unsympathetic atmosphere.

'I've got some news for you, mother.'

'Nothing unpleasant, dear?'

'No, Pleasant. It makes me very happy.'

'The good are always happy,' replied Mrs. Marston securely.

Before the bland passivity of this remark it seemed that irony itself
must soften.

'I am engaged, mother.'

'What in, dear?'

'I am going to bring home a wife.'

She was deaf and very sleepy.

'What kind of a knife, dear?' she asked.

'I am going to marry Hazel Woodus.'

'You can't do that, dear,' She spoke with unruffled calm, as if Edward
were three years old.

'I can, and shall mother.'

'Ah, well, it won't be for a long, long time,' she said, thinking aloud
as she often did, and adding with the callousness that sometimes comes
with age--arising not from hardness, but from the atrophy of the
emotions--'and, of course, she may die before then.'

'Die!' Edward's voice surprised himself, and it made his mother jump.

'The young do die,' she went on; 'we all have to go. Your poor father
fell asleep. I shall fall asleep.'

She began to do so. But his next words made her wide awake again.

'I'm going to be married in May, next month.'

Her whole weight of passive resistance was set against his purpose.

'Such unseemly haste!' she murmured. 'So inordinate--such a hurried
marriage!'

But, Edward's motives being what they were, he was proof against this.

'What will the congregation think?'

'Bother the congregation!'

'That's the second time you've said that, Edward. I'm afraid you are
going from bad to worse.'

'No. Only going to be married mother.'

'But a year's engagement is the least, the very least I could
countenance,' she pleaded, 'and a year is so soon gone. One eats and
sleeps, and Lord's Day breaks the week, and time soon passes.'

'Oh, can't you understand, mother?' He tried illustration. 'Suppose you
saw a beautiful shawl out on a hedge in the rain, shouldn't you want to
bring it in?'

'Certainly not. It would be most unwise. Besides, I have seven.'

'Well, anyway, I can't put it off. Even now something may have happened
to her.'

He spoke with the sense of the inimical in life that all lovers feel.

'But things will have to be bought,' she said helplessly, 'and things
will have to be made.'

'There is plenty of time, several weeks yet. Won't you,' he suggested
tactfully, 'see after Hazel's clothes for her? She is too poor to buy
them herself. Won't you lay out a sum of money for me mother?'

'Yes, I think,' she said, beginning to recover her benignity--'I think
I could lay out a sum of money.'

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Marston had what she called 'not a wink of sleep'--that is to say,
she kept awake for half an hour after getting into bed. The idea of a
wedding, although it was offensive by reason of being different from
every day, was still quite pleasant. It would be an opportunity for
using the multitude of things that were stored in every cupboard and
never used, being thought too good for every day. Mrs. Marston was one
of those that, having great possessions, go sadly all their days. It is
strange how generation after generation spends its fleeting years in
this fetish-worship, never daring to make life beautiful by the daily
use of things lovely, but for ever being busy about them.

Mrs. Marston's china glowed so, and was so stainless and uncracked that
it seemed as if the lives of all the beautiful young women in her
family must have been sacrificed in its behalf.

They had all drunk of the cup of death long ago, and their beauty had
long ago been broken and defaced; but the beautiful old china remained.
There were still the two dozen cups and saucers, the cream jug, sugar
basin and large plates of the feather-cups, just as when they were
first bought. Their rich gilding, which completely covered them
outside, was hardly worn at all, nor were the bright birds' feathers
and raised pink flowers. It would be very pleasant, Mrs. Marston
reflected wistfully, to use it again. There were all the bottled
fruits, too, and lemon-curd and jellies; and a wedding would be a very
pleasant, suitable opportunity for making one of her famous layer cakes
and for wearing her purple silk dress. Mingled with these ideas was the
knowledge that Edward wanted it, would be 'vexed' if it had to be put
off. 'I have never known him to be so reckless,' she pondered. 'But
still, he'll settle down once he's married. And she'll sober down, too,
when the little ones come. It will be pleasant when they come. A
grandmother has all the pleasures of a mother and none of the pains.
And she will not want to manage anything. Edward said so. I should not
have liked a managing daughter-in-law. Edward was wise in his choice.
For, though noisy, she'll quiet down a little with each of the dear
babies, and there will be plenty of them, I think and hope.'

It was characteristic of Mrs. Marston's class and creed (united with
the fact that she was Edward's mother) that she did not consider Hazel
in the matter. Hazel's point of view, personality, hopes and fears were
non-existent to her. Hazel would be absorbed into the Marston family
like a new piece of furniture. She would be provided for without being
consulted; it would be seen to that she did her duty, also without
being consulted. She would become, as all the other women in this and
the other families of the world had, the servant of the china and the
electro-plate and the furniture, and she would be the means by which
Edward's children came into the world. She would, when not
incapacitated, fetch shawls. At all times she would say 'Yes, dear' or
'As you wish, Edward.' With all this before her, what did she want with
personality and points of view? Obviously nothing. If she brought all
the grandchildren safely into the world, with their due complement of
legs and arms and noses, she would be a satisfactory asset. But Mrs.
Marston forgot, in this summing up, to find out whether Hazel cared for
Edward more than she cared for freedom.

Mrs. Marston came down to breakfast with an air of resignation.

'I have decided to make the best of it, my dear Edward,' she said; 'of
course, I had hoped there would never be anyone. But it doesn't
signify. I will lay out the money and be as good a grandmother as I
can. And now, dear' (she spoke passively, shifting the responsibility
on to Edward's shoulders)--'and now, how will you get me to town?'

Here was a problem. The little country station was several miles away,
far beyond her walking limit, and no farmer in the neighbourhood had a
horse quiet enough to please her.

'In my day, dear, I can remember horses so quiet, so well-bred, so
beautifully trained, and, above all, so fat, that an accident was,
apart from God's will, impossible. Now, my dear father, in the days
when he travelled for Jeremy's green tea (and very good tea it was, and
a very fine flavour, and a picture of a black man on every canister).
Where was I? Oh yes; he always used to allow a day for a ten-mile
round. Very pleasant it was, but the horses are not--'

Here Edward cut in with a suggestion.

'Why shouldn't you go by the traction trailer? You enjoyed it that one
time?'

The traction engine, belonging to a stone quarry, passed two or three
times a week, and was never--the country being hilly--so full that it
could not accommodate a passenger.

It was therefore arranged that Edward should go and see the driver, and
afterwards see Hazel, and arrange for her to go to town also. He was to
stay at home. Mrs. Marston would never leave the house, as she said,
'without breath in it,' though she could give no reason for this idea,
and prided herself on having no superstitions. She would not trust
Martha by herself; so Edward was ruefully obliged to undertake the
office of 'breathing', like a living bellows to blow away harm.

It was settled that they were to go on the day before the flower-show,
and Hazel was to stay the night. It would be the last night but one
before the wedding.

Meanwhile, the bark-stripping continued, and fate went on leading Jack
Reddin's horse in every direction but the right one. Edward went to
Hunter's Spinney every day. He began to find a new world among the
budding hyacinths on the soft leafy soil, breaking up on every side
with the push of eager lives coming through, and full of those elusive,
stimulating scents that only spring knows.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the day came for going to Silverton, and Hazel arrived fresh and
rosy from her early walk, he felt very rebellious. Still, it was
ordained that someone must breathe, and only his mother could choose
the clothes.

It took Mrs. Marston several hours to get ready, and Edward and Martha
were kept busy running up and down. Not that Mrs. Marston's clothes had
to be hunted for or mended--far from it. But there were so many
cupboards to be locked, their keys hidden in drawers, the keys of
which, in their turn, went into more cupboards. When such an
inextricable tangle as no burglar could tackle had been woven, Mrs.
Marston always wanted something out of the first cupboard, and all had
to be done over again. But at last she was achieved. Edward and Martha
stood back and surveyed her with pride, and looked to Hazel for
admiration of their work; but Hazel was too young and too happy to see
either the pathos or the humour of old ladies.

She danced down the steep path with an armful of wraps, at the idea of
wearing which she had made faces.

The path led steeply in a zigzag down one side of the quarry cliff,
where Abel had told Hazel of the cow falling, and where she had felt
drodsome. Once more as she came down with a more and more lagging step,
the same horror came over her.

'I'm frit!' she cried; 'canna we be quick?'

But speed was not in Mrs. Marston. She came clinging to Edward's arm,
very cautiously, like a cat on ice.

Martha, her stout red arms bare, her blue gingham dress and white apron
flying in the wind, was directed to hold on to Mrs. Marston's mantle
behind--as one tightens the reins downhill--to keep her on her feet.
Edward was carrying a kitchen chair for his mother to sit on during the
journey.

Hazel felt that they were none of them any good; they none of them knew
what it was like to be frit. So she ran away, and left the hot,
secretive, omniscient place with its fierce white and its crafty
shadows.

She reached a tiny field that ran up to the woods, and there, among the
brilliantly varnished buttercups, the bees sounded like the tides
coming in on the coasts of faery. Hazel forgot her dread--an
inexplicable sickening dread of the quarry. She chased a fat bumble-bee
all across the golden floor--one eager, fluffy, shining head after the
other. They might have been, in the all-permeating glory on their hill
terrace, with the sapphire-circled plain around--they might have been
the two youngest citizens of Paradise, circled in for ever from bleak
honeyless winter, bleak honeyless hearts.

The slow cortege came down the path, Martha being obliged, as the
descent grew steeper, to fling herself back like a person in a
tug-of-war, for Mrs. Marston gathered way as she went, and uttered
little helpless cries.

'I'm going, Martha! I'm losing control! Not by the bugles, Martha! Not
by the braid!'

When they reached the road, the traction engine was not in sight, so
they sat in the bank and waited, Mrs. Marston regal in the chair; and
Hazel held a buttercup under Edward's chin to see if he liked butter.

'Very warm and pleasant,' murmured Mrs. Marston, and dropped into a
doze.

Edward listened to the thrushes; they were flinging their voices--as
jugglers fling golden balls--against the stark sides of the quarry. Up
went a rush of bright notes, pattered on the gloomy wall, and returned
again defeated.

To Edward, as he watched Hazel, they seemed like people thanking God
for blessings, and being heard and blessed again. To Hazel, they seemed
so many other Hazels singing because it was a festal day. To Mrs.
Marston they were 'noisy birds, and very disturbing.' Martha
crotcheted. She was making edging, hundreds of yards of it, for wedding
garments. This was all the more creditable, as it was an act of faith,
for no young man had as yet seemed at all desirous of Martha.

At last the traction engine appeared, and Mrs. Marston was hoisted into
the trailer--a large truck with scarlet-painted sides, and about half
full of stone. This had been shovelled away from the front to make room
for Mrs. Marston and Hazel. A flap in the scarlet side was let down,
and with the help of one of the traction men Edward and Martha got her
safely settled. She really was a very splendid old lady. Her hat, a
kind of spoon-shape, was trimmed lavishly with black glass grapes, that
clashed together softly when she moved. There was also a veil with
white chenille spots. The hat was tied under her chin with black
ribbons, and her kind old face, very pink and plump and charming,
looked out pleasantly upon, the world. She wore her best mantle,
heavily trimmed with jet bugles, and her alpaca skirt was looped up
uncompromisingly with an old-fashioned skirt-hook made like a
butterfly. Hung on one arm was her umbrella, and she carried her
reticule in both hands for safety. So, with all her accoutrements on,
she sat, pleasantly aware that she was at once self-respecting and
adventurous.

They started in a whirl of good-byes, shrieks of delight from Hazel,
and advice of Mrs. Marston to the driver to put the brake on and keep
it on. Hazel was perched on the side of the truck near her. They
rounded a turn with great dignity, the trailer, with Mrs. Marston
as its figure-head--wearing an expression of pride, fear, and
resignation--swinging along majestically.

'Please, Mrs. Marston, can I buy a green silk gown wi' yellow roses
on?'

'Certainly not, my dear. It would be most unsuitable. So very far from
quiet.'

'What's quiet matter?'

'Quietness is the secret of good manners. The quieter you are, the more
of a lady you'll be thought. All truly good people are quiet in
manners, dress, and speech, just as all the best horses are advertised
as quiet to ride and drive, but few are really so.'

'Han you got to be ever and ever so quiet to be a lady?'

'Yes.'

'What for have you?'

'Because, dear, it is the proper thing. Now my poor husband was quiet,
so quiet that you never knew if he was there or not. And Edward is
quiet too,--as quiet as--'

'Oh! dunna, dunna!' wailed Hazel.

'Is a pin sticking into you dear?'

'No. Dunna say Ed'ard's quiet!'

Mrs. Marston looked amicably over her spectacles.

'My dear, why not?' she asked.

'I dunna like that sort.'

'Could you explain a little, dear?'

'I dunna like quiet men--nor quiet horses. My mam was quiet when she
was dead. Everybody's quiet when they're dead.'

'Very, very quiet,' crooned Mrs. Marston. 'Yes, we all fall asleep in
our turn.'

'I like,' went on Hazel in her rather crude voice, harsh with youth
like a young blackbird's--'I like things as go quick and men as talk
loud and stare hard and drive like the devil!'

She broke off, flushing at Mrs. Marston's expression, and at the sudden
knowledge that she had been describing Reddin.

'It doesn't signify very much,' said Mrs. Marston (severely for her),
'what you like, dear. But I suppose'--she softened--'that you do really
like Edward, since he has chosen you and you are pledged?'

Hazel shook her shoulders as if she wanted to get rid of a yoke. They
fell into silence, and as Mrs. Marston dozed, Hazel was able to fulfil
her desire that had sprung into being at the moment of seeing Mrs.
Marston's hat--namely, to squash one of those very round and brittle
grapes.

Her quick little hand, gleaming in the sun, hovered momentarily above
the black hat like a darting dragon-fly, and the mischief was done--bland
respectability smashed and derided.




Chapter 12


They went gallantly, if slowly, on through narrow ways, lit on either
side by the breath-taking freshness of new hawthorn leaves. Primroses,
wet and tall, crisply pink of stalk and huge of leaf, eyed them, as
Madonnas might, from niches in the isles of grass and weed.

Carts had to back into gates to let them go by, and when they came into
the main road horses reared and had to be led past. Hazel found it all
delightful. She liked, when the driver pulled up outside little wayside
inns, to peer into the brown gloom where pewter pots and rows of china
jugs shone, and from which, over newly washed floors of red tiles,
landlords advanced with foaming mugs.

Mrs. Marston strongly disapproved of these proceedings, but did not
think it polite to expostulate, as she was receiving a favour.

In Silverton Mrs. Marston lingered a long while before any shop where
sacred pictures were displayed. The ones she looked at longest were
those of that peculiarly seedy and emasculated type which modern
religion seems to produce. Hazel, all in a fidget to go and buy her
clothes, looked at them, and wondered what they had to do with her.
There was one of an untidy woman sitting in a garden of lilies--evidently
forced--talking to an anaemic-looking man with uncut hair and a
phosphorescent head. Hazel did not know about phosphorus or haloes,
but she remembered how she had gone into the kitchen one night in the
dark and screamed at sight of a sheep's head on the table, shining with
a strange greenish light. This picture reminded her of it. She hastily
looked at the others. She liked the one with sheep in it best, only the
artist had made them like bolsters, and given the shepherd saucer eyes.
Then she came to one of the Crucifixion, a subject on which the artist
had lavished all the slumbering instincts of torture that are in so
many people.

'Oh! what a drodsome un! I dunna like this shop,' said Hazel tearfully.
'What'm they doing to 'im? Oh, they'm great beasts!'

Perhaps she had seen in her dim and childish way the everlasting
tyranny of the material over the abstract; of bluster over nerves;
strength over beauty; States over individuals; churches over souls; and
fox-hunting squires over the creatures they honour with their
attention.

'What is it, my dear?' Mrs. Marston looked over her spectacles, and her
eyes were like half moons peering over full moons.

'That there picture! They'm hurting Him so cruel. And Him fast and
all.'

'Oh!' said Mrs. Marston wonderingly, 'that's nothing to get vexed
about. Why, don't you know that's Jesus Christ dying for us?'

'Not for me!' flashed Hazel.

'My dear!'

'No, what for should He? There shall none die along of me, much less be
tormented.'

'Needs be that one man die for the people,' quoted Mrs. Marston easily.
'Only through blood can sin be washed white.'

'Blood makes things raddled, not white; and if so be any's got to die;
I'll die for myself.'

The old gabled houses, dark and solemn with heavy carved oak, the smart
plate-glass windows of the modern shops, the square dogmatic church
towers and the pointed insinuating spires--all seemed to listen in
surprise to this being who was not content to let another suffer for
her. For civilization as it now stands is based solely on this one
thing--vicarious suffering. From the central doctrine of its chief
creed to the system of its trade; from the vivisection-table to the
consumptive genius dying so that crowds of fat folk may get his soul in
a cheap form, it is all built up on sacrifice of other creatures.

'What'd you say if Ed'ard died for yer?' queried Hazel crudely.

'My dear! How unseemly! In the street!'

'And what'd I do if Foxy died for me?'

'Well, well, Foxy's only an animal.'

'So're you and me animals!' said Hazel so loudly that poor Mrs. Marston
flushed all over her gentle old face.

'So indecent!' she murmured. 'My dear,' she said, when she had steered
Hazel past the shop, 'you want a nice cup of tea. And I do hope,' she
went on softly, putting a great deal of cream in Hazel's cup as she
would have put lubricating oil on a stiff sewing-machine--'I do hope,
my dear, you'll become more Christian as time goes on.'

'If Foxy died along of me,' said Hazel stubbornly--for, although
grateful for the festive meal, she could not let her basic rule of life
slip--'if Foxy died along of me, I'd die too. I couldna do aught else.'

'Things are very different,' said Mrs. Marston, flustered, flushed and
helpless--'very different from what they used to be.'

'What for are they, Mrs. Marston?'

But that question Mrs. Marston was quite unable to answer. If she had
known the answer--that the change was in herself, and that the world
was not different, but still kept up its ancient war between love and
respectability, beauty and mass--she would not have liked it, and so
she would not have believed it.

It was seven o'clock when they were put down, tired and laden with
parcels, at the quarry half-way up God's Little Mountain. Edward had
been there for more than an hour, tormented with fears for Hazel's
safety, angry with himself for letting her go. All afternoon he had
fidgeted, worried Martha with suggestions about tea, finally gone to
the shop several miles away for some of Hazel's favourite cake, quite
forgetting that he ought to be in the house breathing. It all resulted
in a most beautiful tea, as Hazel thought when they had pushed and
pulled Mrs. Marston home.

What with the joy of staying the night and the wonder of her new
clothes, Hazel was as radiant and talked so fast that Edward could do
nothing but watch her.

In her short life there had not been many moments of such rose and
gold. It was the happiest hour of Edward's life also; for she looked to
him as flowers to warm heaven, as winter birds to a fruited tree. As he
watched her opening parcel after parcel with frank innocence and little
bird-like cries of rapture, he knew the intolerable sweetness of
bestowing delight on the beloved--a sweetness only equalled by the
intolerable agony of seeing helpless and incurable pain on the loved
face.

'And what's that one?' he asked, like a mother helping in a child's
game. He pointed to a parcel which contained chemises and nightdresses.

'That,' said Mrs. Marston, frowning portentously at Hazel, who was
tearing it open--'that is other useful garments.'

'What for canna I show 'em Ed'ard? I want to show all. The money was
his'n.'

It was a tribute to Edward's self-control that she was so entirely
lacking in shyness towards him.

'My dear! A young man!' whispered Mrs. Marston.

Suddenly, by some strange necromancy, there was conjured in Hazel's
mind a picture of Reddin--flushed, hard-eyed, with an expression
that aroused in her misgiving and even terror. So she had seen him
just before she fled to Vessons. At the remembrance she flushed so
deeply that Mrs. Marston congratulated herself on the fact that her
daughter-in-law had _some_ modesty and right feeling.

If she had known who caused the flush, who it was that had awakened the
love of pretty clothes which Edward was satisfying, she would have
thought very different thoughts, and would have been utterly miserable.
For her love for Edward was deep enough to make her wish him to have
what he wanted, and not what she thought he ought to want, as long as
he did not clash with her religion. For Edward to know it, though so
early in his love for Hazel, would have meant a rocking of heaven and
earth around him. Even she, with her childish egotism like a shell
about her, realized that this was a thing that could not be.

'But it be all right,' she thought, as she curled up luxuriously in the
strangely clean and comfortable bed, 'it'll be all right. Him above'll
see as Mr. Reddin ne'er shows his face here; for the old lady said Him
above looked after good folks, and Ed'ard's good. But I wish some un
'ud look after the bad uns,' she thought, looking across the room to
the north where Undern lay.

       *       *       *       *       *

'My dear, wait a moment!' said Mrs. Marston to Edward downstairs, as he
was lighting her candle. I have something to tell you. I fear you must
brace yourself.'

'Well, mother?' Edward smiled.

'Hazel's not a Christian!' She spoke in a sepulchral whisper, and
looked at him afterwards, as if to say, 'There, now, I _have_
surprised you!'

'And how do you make that out, mother?'

Edward found in his heart this fact, that it made no difference to his
love whether Hazel were a Christian or not; this troubled him.

'No. She's not a Christian, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston in a kind of
gasp; 'she refuses to be died for!'

Upstairs, Hazel was saying her orisons at the window.

'If there's anybody there,' she murmured, staring out into the
consuming darkness that had absorbed every colour, every form,
except the looming outline of God's Little Mountain against a watery
moon-rise--'if there's anybody there, I'd be obleeged if you'd give
an eye to our Foxy, as is lonesome in tub. It dunna matter about me,
being under Ed'ard's roof.'

Hazel had never felt so like a child in its mother's lap. Her own
mother had not made her feel so. She had been a vague, abstracted woman
with an air of bepuzzlement and lostness. She looked so long out of the
door--never shut, except when Abel insisted on it--that there was no
time for Hazel. Only occasionally she would catch her by the shoulders
and look into her eyes and tell her strange news of faery. But now she
felt cared for as she looked round the low room with its chair-bed and
little dressing-table hung with pink glazed calico. There was a text
over the fireplace:

'"Not a hair of thy head shall perish."'

It seemed particularly reassuring to Hazel as she brushed her long
shining coils before the hanging mirror. There was a bowl of double
primroses--red, mauve and white--on the window-sill, and a card 'with
Edward's love.'

Flowers in a bedroom were something very new. To her, as to so many
poor people, a bedroom was a stuffy place to crawl into at night and
get out of as quickly as possible in the morning.

'Eh! it'll be grand to live here,' she thought drowsily, as she lay
down in the cool clean sheets and heard the large clock on the wall of
the landing ticking slumbrously in a measured activity that deepened
the peace. She heard Mrs. Marston slide past in her soft slippers with
her characteristic walk, rather like skating. Then Edward came up
(evidently in stockinged feet, for he was only heralded by creakings).
Hazel never dreamt that he had taken his shoes off for her sake.

The moon, riding clear of cloud, flung the shadow of Edward's primroses
on the bed--a large round posy like a Christmas-pudding with
outstanding leaves and flowers clearly defined, all very black on the
counterpane.

Undern seemed very far off.

'I like this better'n that old dark place, green dress or no green
dress,' she thought, 'and I'll ne'er go back there. It inna true what
he said, "Have her he will for certain sure," for I'm going to live
along of Ed'ard, and the old sleepy lady'll learn me to make batter for
ever and ever. Batter's a well-beaten mixture of eggs and summat.'

She fell asleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

In his room Edward walked up and down, too happy to go to bed.

'My little one! my little one!' he whispered. And he prayed that Hazel
might have rosy and immortal happiness, guarded by strong angels along
a path of flowers all her life long, and at last running in through the
celestial gates as a child runs home.

The spring wind, rainy and mournful, came groping out of the waste
places and cried about the house like a man mourning for his love. The
cavern of night, impenetrable and vast, was full of echoes, as if some
voice, terrible and violent, had shouted there a long while since, and
might, even before the age-long reverberations had died away, be
uplifted again, if it was the will of the Power (invisible but so
immanent that it pressed upon the brain) that inhabited the obscure,
star-dripping cavern.




Chapter 13


Next morning Mrs. Marston came in from the kitchen with the toast,
which she would not trust anyone but herself to make, with a face
portending great happenings.

'Mind you see that they are all properly placed, Edward; they should be
all together in one part of the room.'

'Who'd that be?' Hazel inquired.

'1906, plums; 1908, gooseberries; 1909, cherries, sugarless. The
sugared ones are older.' Mrs. Marston spoke so personally that Hazel
stared.

'It's mother's exhibits, Hazel,' explained Edward.

'Yes. They've been to shows year by year, and very well they've stood
it. I only hope the constant travelling won't set up fermentation. I
should like those Morellas to outlive me. A receipt I had of Jane
Thorn, and she died of dropsy, poor thing, and bottled to the end.'

'Dunna you ever eat 'em?' asked Hazel.

This was blasphemy. To eat 1909 Morellas! It was passed over in tense
silence, allowances being made for a prospective bride. 'Poor thing!
she's upset.'

The exhibits, packed in a great bed of the vivid star-moss that grew in
the secret recesses of the woods, were waiting on the front step in
their usual box. There were some wonderful new jellies that made Hazel
long to be Mrs. Marston and have control of the storeroom. This was a
dim place where ivy leaves scraped the cobwebby window, and tall green
canisters stood on shelves in company with glass jars, neatly labelled,
and barrels of home-made wine; where hams hung from the ceiling, and
herbs in bunches and on trays sent out a pungent sweetness. In there
the magic was now heightened by the presence--dignified even in
deshabille--of a wedding-cake which was being slowly but thoroughly
iced.

People often wondered how Mrs. Marston did it. No one ever saw her
hurried or busy, yet the proofs of her industry were here. She worked
like the coral insect, in the dark, as it were, of instinct unlit by
intellect, and, like the coral insect, she raised a monumental
structure that hemmed her in.

They had to start early, driven by Edward's one substantial
parishioner, who was principal judge, chief exhibitor, and organizer of
the show. The exhibits must be there by ten; but Edward did not care in
the least how many hours he spent there. The day was only darkened for
him by one thing.

When the trap came round, and Hazel climbed in joyously, Edward forgot
the exhibits. He would have gone off without them had not Martha come
flying down the path shouting:

'Mr. Ed'ard! Mr. Ed'ard! Nineteen six! Nineteen nine! Jam!'

'What for's Martha cursing?' asked Hazel.

Edward, looking round, saw his mother's face in the doorway, dismayed,
surprised, wounded. He jumped out and ran up the path.

'Oh, mother! How could I?' he said miserably.

Mrs. Marston looked up; her mouth, that had fallen in a little,
trembling pitifully, and her eyes smarting with the thick, painful
tears of age.

'It wasn't you, my dear,' she said; 'you never forget; it was--the
young woman.'

One's god must at all hazards go clear of blame.

Edward kissed her, but with reserve, and when he got into the trap he
put an arm protectingly round Hazel.

'What a fool I am!' he thought. 'Now everything's spoilt.'

In the silent store-room, hour by hour, Mrs. Marston propelled the
mixture of sugar and egg through her icing syringe, building complex
designs of frosty whiteness.

Her back ached, and it seemed a long way round the cake, but she went
on until Martha, with a note of sympathetic understanding in her voice,
announced:

'Yer dinner's in, mum, and a cup of tea along of it.'

Mrs. Marston sighed gratefully.

'How nice and pleasant!' she said; 'but not as nice and pleasant as it
was--before.'

'Not by a long mile!' said Martha heartily. For Hazel had 'taken the
eye' of all the eligibles at the concert, and was altogether
disturbing.

'Perhaps, Martha,' said Mrs. Marston wistfully, 'when she's been here a
long while, and we're used to her, and she's part of the house--perhaps
it'll be as nice and pleasant as before?'

'When the yeast's in,' said Martha pessimistically, 'the dough's
leavened!'

       *       *       *       *       *

As Edward and Hazel drew near the show-ground they passed people
walking and were overtaken by traps.

A man passed at full gallop, and Hazel was reminded of Reddin. Later,
she said:

'How'd you like it, Ed'ard, if somebody was after you, like a weasel
after a rabbit or a terrier at a fox-earth? What'd you do?'

'What morbid things you think of, dear!'

'What'd you do?'

'I don't know.'

'There's nought to do.'

Edward remembered his creed.

'I should pray, Hazel.'

'What good'd that do?'

'God answers prayers.'

'That He dunna! Or where'd the fox-hunting gents be, and who'd have
rabbit-pie? I dunna see as He _can_ answer 'em.'

'Little girls mustn't bother their pretty heads.'

'If you'd found as many creatures in traps as me, and loosened 'em, and
seed their broken legs, and eyes as if they'd seed ghosses, and onst a
dog caught by the tongue--eh! you'd bother! You would that! And feyther
killing the pigs Good Fridays.'

'Why Good Fridays, of all days?'

'That was the day. Ah! every Good Friday I was used to fight feyther!'

'My dear child!'

'You would if you'd seed the pig that comforble and contented, and
know'd what it'd look like in a minute. I'd a killed feyther if I
could.'

'But why? Surely it was worse of you to want to kill your father than
of him to want to kill the pig?'

'I dunno. But I couldn't abear it. I bit him awful one time, and he hit
me on the head with a rake, and I went to sleep.'

Edward's forehead was damp with sweat.

'Merciful God!' he thought, 'that such things should be!'

'And when I've heard things screaming and crying to be loosed, and them
in traps, and never a one coming to 'em but me, it's come o'er me to
won'er who'd loose _me_ out if I was in a trap.'

'God would.'

'I dunna think so. He ne'er lets the others out.'

Edward was silent. The radiant day had gone dark, and he groped in it.

'What for dunnot He, my soul? What for dun He give 'em mouths so's they
can holla, and not listen at 'em? I listen when Foxy shouts out.'

At this moment Edward saw Abel approaching, swaggering along with the
harp. He had never been glad to see him so far; now he was almost
affectionate.

'Laws, Ed'ard!' said Abel, straining the affection to breaking-point,
'you'm having a randy, and no mistake! Dancing and all, I s'pose?'

'No. I shall go before the dancing.'

'You won't get our 'Azel to go along of you, then. Dance her will, like
a leaf in the fall.'

'You'd rather come home with me on your wedding-eve, Hazel, wouldn't
you?'

Abel, seeing Hazel's dismayed face, laughed loudly. Edward hated him as
only sensitive temperaments can, and was conscience-stricken when he
realized the fact.

'Well, Hazel?' he asked gently, and created a situation.

'I dunno,' said Hazel, awkwardly. A depressed silence fell between
them; both were so bitterly disappointed. Abel, like an ancient
mischievous gnome, went off, calling to Hazel:

'Clear your throat agen the judgin's over!'

The judges were locked into the barn where the exhibits were. They took
a long while over the judging, presumably because they tasted
everything, even to the turnips (Mrs. James was partial to early
turnips). Edward and Hazel passed a window and looked in.

'Look at 'em longing after the old lady's jam!' said Hazel. 'It's a
mercy the covers are well stuck on or they'd be in like wasps! Look at
Mr. Frodley wi' the eggs! Dear now, he's sucking one like a lad at a
throstles' nest! Oh! Father'd ought to be there! He ne'er eats a cooked
egg. Allus raw. Oh! Mr. James has unscrewed a bottle of father's honey
and dipped! Look at 'im sucking his fingers!'

'Do people buy the remnants?' asked Edward, amused and disgusted.

'Ah! What for not?'

The judges are now making a hearty meal off some cheeses.

'I wonder whose cheeses they are?' Edward mused.

They were, in fact, Vessons'. He always insisted on making cheeses for
some obscure reason; possibly it was the pride of the old-fashioned
servant in being worth more than his wages. Vessons certainly was. He
made stacks of cheeses, and took them to fairs and shows without the
slightest encouragement from his master, who, when Vessons returned,
red with conflict, and said, planking down the money with intense
pride--''Ere it is! I 'ad to labour for thre'pences, though,' would
merely nod uninterestedly. But still the Undern cheeses went to shows
labelled 'John Reddin, Esquire, per A. Vessons.'

At last the judges came out. The mere judging did not take long, for
Mr. James usually considered his exhibit the best, and said so; the
others, being only small-holders, were generally too polite to gainsay
him.

Edward and Hazel went into the barn where the exhibits were set out
with stern simplicity, looking brave and beautiful with their earthly
glamour. There were rolls of golden butter, nut-brown eggs, snowy
bouquets of broccoli, daffodils with the sun striking through their
aery petals, masses of dark wallflower where a stray bee revelled.
There was Abel's honey, with a large placard drawn by himself
proclaiming in drunken capitals:

   ABEL WOODUS. BEE-MAN.
   COFFINS. HONEY. WREATHS.

   OPEN TO ENGAGEMENTS TO PLAY THE HARP AT
   WEDDINGS, WAKES AND CLUB-DAYS.

The golden jars shone; the sections in their lace-edged boxes, whitely
sealed, were as provocative as the reserve of a fair woman.

Edward bought one for Hazel. 'To open on your wedding-day,' he said.
But the symbolism, so apparent to him, was lost on Hazel.

Between the judging and the tea hour was a dull time. The races had not
begun, and though an ancient of benign aspect announced continually,
'I'll take two to one!' no one responded.

The people stood about, taking their pleasure like an anaesthetic, and
looking like drugged bees. Now and then an old man from a far hill-side
would meet another old man from a farther one, and there would be
handshaking lasting, perhaps, a quarter of an hour.

When Abel played, they remained stoical and silent, however madly or
mournfully the harp cried. They took good music as their right.

Then Hazel sang, gazing up at the purple ramparts of the hills that
hung above the show-ground, and Edward's eyes were full of tears.

A very old man, smooth-faced, and wondering as a baby, came, leaning on
his stick, and stood before Hazel, gazing into her mouth with the
steadfast curiosity of a dog at a gramophone. If she moved, he moved,
absorbed, his jaw dropped with interest. Hazel did not notice him. She
was free on the migratory wings of music. She did not see Vessons
looking across the crowd with dismay, nor know that he edged away,
muttering, 'That gel agen! Never will I!'

Edward was glad when the singing and collection were over, and he could
take Hazel into the shilling tent, where sat the elite, and give her
tea. People remained in a sessile state over tea for a long time
while the chief race of the afternoon was begun by the ringing of a
dinner-bell. The race took so long, the riders having to go round the
course so many times, that people went on complacently with their tea,
only looking out occasionally to see how things progressed, watching the
riders go by--one with bright red braces, one in a blue cotton coat,
two middle-aged men in their best bowlers, and one, obviously too well
mounted for the rest, in correct riding-dress. They came round each
time in the same order--the correct one, red braces, blue coat, and the
bowlers last. Evidently the foremost one knew he could easily win, and
the others had decided that 'it was to be.' In the machine-like
regularity of their advent, their unaltered positions, and leisured
pace, they were like hobby-horses.

'How many times have they bin round?' Hazel asked the waitress, who
poured tea and made conversation in a sociable manner.

'It'll be the seventh. They might as well give over. They're only
labouring to stay in the same place.'

'I want to see 'em come in,' said Hazel. They went out, but Abel
waylaid them, and took Edward off to show him a queen bee in a box
from Italy. Edward loathed bees in or out of boxes, but he was too
kind-hearted to refuse. Abel was so unperceptive that he touched pathos.

Hazel found a place some distance down the course where she could look
along the straight to the winning-post; she loved to hear them thunder
past. She leaned over the rail and watched them come, still fatalistic,
but gallant, bent on a dramatic finish, stooping and 'cutting' their
horses. The first man was on her side of the course. She stared at him
in amazed consternation as he came towards her. His strong blue eyes,
caught by the fixity of her glance or by her bright hair, saw her, and
became triumphant. He pulled the horse in sharply, and within a few
yards of the winning-post wheeled and went back, amid the jeers and
howls of the crowd, who thought he must be drunk.

'You've given me a long enough chase,' he said, leaning towards her.
'Where the devil _do_ you live?'

'Oh, dunna stop! He's coming.'

'Who?'

'Mr. Marston, the minister.'

'What do I care if he's a dozen ministers?'

'But he'll be angered.'

'I'll make his nose bleed if he's got such cheek.'

'Oh, he's coming, Mr. Reddin! I mun go.' She turned away. Reddin
followed.

'Why should he be angry?'

'Because we're going to be wed to-morrow'

Reddin whistled.

'And Foxy's coming, and all of 'em. And there's a clock as tick-tacks
ever so sleepy, and a sleepy old lady, and Ed'ard's bought me a box
full of clothes.'

'I gave you a box full too,' he said with a note of pleading. 'You
little runaway!'

Hazel was annoyed because he disturbed her so. She wanted to get rid of
him, and she desired to exercise her power. So she looked up and said
impishly:

'Yours were old 'uns. His be new--new as morning.'

He was too angry to swear.

'You've got to come and talk to me while they're dancing to-night,' he
said.

'I wunna.'

'You must. If you don't, I'll tell the parson you stopped the night at
Undern. Surely you know that he wouldn't marry you then?'

He was bluffing. He knew Vessons would tell Marston the truth if he
spoke. But it served his turn.

'You wouldna!' she pleaded.

He laughed.

'A'right, then,' she said, 'if you wunna tell 'un.'

'Will he stay for the dancing?'

'No. I mun go along of him.'

'You know better.'

He turned away sharply as Edward came up. He knew him for the minister
he had met near the Callow. Edward was tying up some daffodils for
Hazel, and did not see Reddin.

Scarlet braces, a fatalist no more, came trotting up.

'What went wrong?' he asked with thinly veiled triumph.

'Everything,' snapped Reddin, and calling Vessons, he went off to the
beer-tent to wait till the dancing began.

'These are for your room, Hazel,' Edward was saying, 'because the time
of the singing of birds is come.'

He was thinking that God was indeed leading him forth by the waters of
comfort.

Hazel said nothing. She was wondering what excuse she could make for
staying.

'Don't frown, little one. There are no more worries for you now.'

'Binna there?'

'No. You are coming to God's Little Mountain. What harm can come there?
Now look up and smile, Hazel.'

She met his grey eyes, very tender and thoughtful. What she saw,
however, were blue eyes, hard, and not at all thoughtful.




Chapter 14


Prize-giving time came, and the younger Miss Clomber, who was to
present them, tried to persuade Reddin to go up on the platform, a
lorry with chairs on it. There already were Mr. James and the
secretary, counting the prize-money. Below stood the winners, Vessons
conspicuous in his red waistcoat. Miss Clomber felt that she looked
well. She was dressed in tweeds to show that this was not an occasion
to her as to the country damsels.

'No. I shall stay here,' said Reddin, answering her stare, intended to
be inviting, with a harder stare of indifference.

'As the last representative of such an old family--'

'Oh, damn family' he said peevishly, having lost sight of Hazel.

As Miss Clomber still persisted, he quenched the argument.

'Young families are more in my line than old 'uns.'

She blushed unbecomingly, and hastily got on to the lorry.

Reddin went in search of Hazel, while Mr. James began to read the
names.

'Mr. Thomas. Mr. James. Mrs. Marston. Mr. James--'

He handed the pile of shillings to Miss Clomber, who presented them
with the usual fatuous remarks. When he had won the prize he received it
back from her with a bow, taking off his hat. As his own name occurred
more frequently than usual, he began to get rather self-conscious. He
looked round the ring of faces, and translated their stodginess as
self-consciousness dictated.

Perhaps it would be as well to carry it off as a jest? So his hat came
off with a flourish, and he said jocosely as he took the next heap,
'Keeping-apples, Mr. James. I'll put it in me pocket!'

This attitude wearing thin, he took refuge in that of unimpeachable
honesty. 'Fair and square! The best man wins!' This lasted for some
time, but was not proof against 'Swedes, Mr. James. Mangolds, Mr.
James. Stewing pears, Mr. James.' He began to get in a panic. His bow
was cursory. He pocketed the money furtively and read his name in a
low, apologetic tone. But this would never do! He must pull himself
together. He tried bravado.

'Mr. Vessons. Mr. James.'

Vessons stood immovable within arm's reach of Miss Clomber. When he got
a prize, which he did three times, no one else having sent any cheeses,
he extended his arm like one side of a pair of compasses, and
vouchsafed neither bow nor smile. He disliked Miss Clomber because he
knew that she meant to be mistress of Undern. Mr. James was getting on
well with the bravado.

'What do I care what people think? Dear me! All the world may see me
get my prize.'

Then he caught Abel's satiric eye, and went all to pieces. He clutched
at his first attitude--the business-like--and so began all over again,
and managed to get through by not looking in Abel's direction, being
upheld by the knowledge that his pockets were getting very full.

When he read out, 'Cherries, bottled. Mrs. Marston,' and Edward went to
receive the prize, Reddin shouldered up to Hazel and asked:

'What time's he going?'

'I dunno.'

'Don't forget, mind.'

'Oh, Mr. Reddin, I mun go! What for wunna you let me be?'

But Reddin, finding Miss Clomber's eye on him, was gone.

Mr. James had come to the end of the list. He read out Abel's name and
that of an old bent man with grey elf-locks, a famous bee-master. Mr.
James looked at Abel as much as to say, 'You've got your prize, you
see! It's quite fair.'

'Thank yer,' said Abel to Miss Clomber, and then to James with fine
irony: 'You dunna keep bees, do yer, Mr. James?'

       *       *       *       *       *

The hills loomed in the dusk over the show-ground. They were of a cold
and terrific colour, neither purple nor black nor grey, but partaking
of all. Kingly, mournful, threatening, they dominated the life below as
the race dominates the individual. Hazel gazed up at them. She stood in
the attitude of one listening, for in her ears was a voice that she had
never heard before, a deep inflexible voice that urged her to do--she
knew not what. She looked up at the round wooded hill that hid God's
Little Mountain--so high, so cold for a poor child to climb. She felt
that the life there would be too righteous, too well-mannered. The
thought of it suddenly made her homesick for dirt and the Callow.

She thought of Undern crouched under its hill like a toad. She
remembered its echoing rooms and the sound as of dresses rustling that
came along the passages while she put on the green gown. Undern made
her more homesick than the parsonage.

Edward had gone. She had said she wanted to stay with her father, and
Edward had thought her a sweet daughter and had acquiesced, though
sadly.

Now she was awaiting Reddin. The dancing had not begun, though the tent
was ready. Yellow light flowed from every gap in the canvas, and Hazel
felt very forlorn out in the dark; for light seemed her natural sphere.
As she stood there, looking very small and slight, she had a cowering
air. Always, when she stood under a tree or sheltered from the rain,
she had this look of a refugee, furtive and brow-beaten. When she ran
she seemed a fugitive, fleeing across the world with no city or refuge
to flee into.

Miss Clomber's approach made her start.

'A word with you!' said Miss Clomber in her brisk, unsympathetic voice.
'I saw you with Mr. Reddin twice. I just wanted to say in a sisterly
and Christian spirit'--she lowered her voice to a hollow whisper--'that
he is not a good man.'

'Well,' said Hazel, with a sigh of relief in the midst of her shyness
and her oppression about the mountain, 'that's summat, anyway!'

Miss Clomber, outraged and furious, strode away.

Hazel was again left to the hills. The taciturnity of winter was upon
them still, and in the sky beyond was the cynical aloofness that comes
with frost after sunset.

She turned from them to the lighted tent. The golden glow was like some
bright creature imprisoned. Abel had prorogued an interminable argument
with the old man with the elf-locks, and now began thrumming inside the
tent.

Young men and women converged upon it at the sound of the music, as
flies flock to the osier blossom. They went in, as the blessed to
Paradise. The canvas began to sway and billow in the wind of the
dancing. Hazel felt that life was going on gaily without her--she shut
away in the dark. Her feet began to dance.

'I'll go in!' she said defiantly. 'What for not?'

But just as she was lifting the flap she heard Reddin's voice at her
elbow.

'Hazel, why did you run away?'

'I dunno.'

'Why didn't you tell me your name? Here have I been going
hell-for-leather up and down the country.'

'Ah! That's gospel! That's righteous! I seed you.'

Reddin was speechless.

'Me and father was in the public, and you came. I thought it was the
Black Huntsman.'

'Thanks. Not a pin to choose, I suppose.'

'Not all that.'

'We're wasting time. What's all this about the parson?'

'I told 'ee.'

'But it isn't true. You and the parson!'

He laughed. Hazel looked at him with disfavour.

'You're like a hound-dog when you laugh like to that,' she said, 'and I
dunna like the hound-dogs.'

He stopped laughing.

Abel's harp beat upon them, and the soft thudding of feet on the turf,
like sheep stamping, had grown in volume as the shyest were gradually
drawn into the revelry.

A rainstorm, shaped like a pillar, walked slowly along the valley,
skirting the base of the hills. It was like a grey god with folded arms
and head aloof in the sky. As it drew slowly nearer to the two who
stood there like lovers and were not lovers, and as it lashed them
across the eyes, it might have been fate.

'Hazel, can't you see I'm in love with you?'

'What for are you?' There was a wailing note in Hazel's voice, and the
rain ran down her face like tears. 'There's you and there's Ed'ard Oh,
what for are you?'

Reddin looked at her in astonishment. A woman not to like a man to be
in love with her. It was uncanny. He stood square-set against the
darkening sky, his fine massive head slightly bent, looking down at
her.

'I never thought,' he said helplessly--'I never thought, when I had
come to forty years without the need of women' ('of love,' he corrected
himself), 'that I should be like this.'

He looked at Hazel accusingly; then he gazed up at the coming night as
a lion might at the sound of thunder.

'Be you forty?' Hazel's voice was on the top note of wonder. 'Laws!
what an age!'

'It's not really old,' he pleaded, very humbly for him.

She laughed.

'The parson, now, I suppose he's young?' His voice was wistful.

'He'm the right age.'

Reddin's temper flamed.

'I'll show you if I'm old! I'll show you who makes the best lover, me
or a silly lad!'

'Hands off, Mr. Reddin!'

But her words went down the lonely wind that had begun to drag at the
lighted tent.

'There' said Reddin, pleased with his kisses. 'Now come and dance, and
you'll see if a chap of forty can't tire you. Afterwards we'll settle
the parson's hash.'

He lifted the tent-flap, and they went in and were taken by the bright,
slow-whirling life.

Hazel was glad to dance with him or anyone, so that she might dance.
Reddin held his head high, for he was a lover to-night, and he had
never been that before in any of his amours.

He was angry and enthralled with Hazel, and the two emotions together
were intoxicating.

Hazel was a flower in a gale when she danced, a slim poplar tremulous
and swaying in the dawn, a young beech assenting to the wind's will.

Abel watched her with pride. She was turning out a credit to him, after
all. It was astonishing.

'It's worth playing for our 'Azel's feet. The others just stomps,' he
thought. 'Who's the fellow she's along with? I'd best keep an eye. A
bargain's a bargain.'

'You'm kept your word,' said Hazel suddenly to Reddin.

'H'm?'

'Tired me out.'

'Come outside, then, and I'll get you a cup of tea.'

He fetched it and sat down by her on an orange-box.

'Now look here,' he said, 'fair and square, will you marry me?'

He was surprised at himself.

Andrew Vessons, who had tiptoed after them from the tent, spread out
his hands and gazed at heaven with a look of supreme despair, all the
more intense because he could not speak. He returned desolately to the
tent, where he stood with a cynical smile, leaning a little forward
with his arms behind him, watching the dancing, an apotheosis of sex,
to him not only silly and pitiful, but disgusting. Now and then he
shook his head, went to the door to see if his master was coming, and
shook it again. A friend came up.

'Why did the gaffer muck up the race?' he asked.

'Why,' asked Vessons, with a far-off gaze, 'did 'Im as made the 'orld
put women in?'

Outside things were going more to his liking than he knew.

'What's the good of keeping on, Mr. Reddin? I told 'ee I was promised
to Ed'ard.'

'But you like me a bit? Better than the parson?'

'I dunno.'

'Come off with me now. I swear I'll play fair.'

'_I_ swore!' she cried. 'I swore by the Mountains, and that can
ne'er be broke.'

'What did you swear?'

'To marry the first as come. That's Ed'ard. If I broke that oath, when
I was jead, my cold soul 'ud wander and find ne'er a bit of rest,
crying about the Mountains and about, nights, and Ed'ard thinking it
was the wind.

'If you chuck him, he'll soon get over it; if you chuck me, I shan't.
He's never gone after the drink and women.'

It was a curious plea for a lover.

'Miss Clomber said you wunna a good man.'

'Well, I'm blowed! But look here. If he loses you, he'll be off his
feed for a bit; but if I lose you, there'll be the devil to pay. Has he
kissed you?'

'Time and agen.'

'I won't have it!'

''Azel!' called her father.

'You won't go?'

'I mun. It's father.'

'And I shan't see you again-till you're married? Oh, marry _me_,
Hazel! Marry _me_!'

His voice shook. At the mysterious grief in his face--a grief that was
half rage, and the more pitiful for that--she began to sob. Abel came
up.

'A mourning-party, seemingly,' he said, holding his lantern so as to
light each face in turn.

'I want to marry your daughter.'

Abel roared.

'Another? First 'er bags a parson and next a squire!'

'Farmer.'

'It'll be the king on his throne next. Laws, girl! you're like beer and
treacle.'

'You've not answered me,' said Reddin.

'She's set.'

'Eh?'

'Set. Bespoke. Let.'

'She's a right to change her mind.'

'Nay! A bargain's a bargain. Why, they've bought the clothes, mister,
and the furniture and the cake!'

'If she comes with me, you'll go home with a cheque for fifty pounds,
and that's all I've got,' said Reddin naively.

'I tell you, sir, she's let,' Abel repeated. 'A bargain's a bargain!'

It occurred to him that the Callow garden might, with fifty pounds, be
filled with beehives from end to end.

'Mister,' he said, almost in tears, 'you didn't ought to go for to
'tice me! Eh! dear 'eart, the wood I could buy, and the white paint and
a separator and queens from foreign parts!' He made a gesture of
despair and his face worked.

'You could have a new harp if you wanted one.' Reddin suggested.

Abel gulped.

'A bargain's a bargain!' he repeated. 'And I promised the parson.' He
turned away.

''Azel,' he said over his shoulder, 'you munna go along of this gent.
Many's the time,' he added turning round and surveying her moodily, 'as
you've gone agen me and done what I gainsayed.'

With a long imploring look he hitched the harp on his back and trudged
away.

Hazel followed. But Reddin stepped in front of her.

'Look here, Hazel! You say you don't like hurting things. You're
hurting me!'

Looking at his haggard face, she knew it was true.

She wiped her tears away with her sleeve.

'It inna my fault. I'm allus hurting things. I canna set foot in the
garden nor cook a cabbage but I kill a lot of little pretty flies and
things. And when we take honey there's allus bees hurted. I'm bound to
go agen you or Ed'ard, and I canna go agen Ed'ard; he sets store by me,
does Ed'ard. You should 'a seen the primmyroses he put in my room last
night; I slep' at the parsonage along of us being late.'

Reddin frowned as if in physical pain.

'And he bought me stockings, all thin, and a sky-blue petticoat.'

Reddin looked round. He would have picked her up then and there and
taken her to Undern, but the road was full of people.

'I couldna go agen Ed'ard! He'm that kind. Foxy likes him, too; she'd
ne'er growl at 'im.'

'Perhaps,' Reddin said hoarsely, 'Foxy'd like me if I gave her bones.'

'She wouldna! You'm got blood on you.'

She drew away coldly at this remembrance, which had been obliterated by
Reddin's grief.

'You'm got the blood of a many little foxes on you,' she said, and her
voice cut him like sharp sleet--'little foxes as met have died quick
and easy wi' a gunshot. And you've watched 'em minced alive.'

'I'll give it up if you'll chuck the parson.'

'I won'er you dunna see 'em, nights, watching you out of the black dark
with their gold eyes, like kingcups, and the look in 'em of things
dying hard. I won'er you dunna hear 'em screaming.'

His cause was lost, and he knew it, but he pleaded on.

'No. If I hadna swore by the Mountain I wouldna come,' she said.
'You've got blood on you.'

At that moment a neighbour passed and offered Hazel a lift. Now that
she was marrying a minister, she had become a personality. Hazel
climbed in and drove off, and Reddin's tragic moment died, as great
fires die, into grey ash.

He went home heavily. His way lay past the parsonage where Edward and
his mother slept peacefully. The white calm of unselfish love wrapped
Edward, for he felt that he could make Hazel happy. As he fell asleep
that night he thought:

'She was made for a minister's wife.'

Reddin, leaning heavily on the low wall, staring at the drunken
tombstones and the quiet moon-silvered house, thought:

'She was made for me.'

Both men saw her as what they wanted her to be, not as she was.

Many thoughts darkened Reddin's face as he stood there hour after hour
in the cold May night. The rime whitened his broad shoulders as he
leaned on the wall, and in the moonlight the sprinkling of white hairs
at his temples shone out from the black as if to mock this young
passion that had possessed him.

God's Little Mountain lay shrugged in slumber; the woods crouched like
beaten creatures under the night; the small soft leaves hung limply in
the frost.

Still Reddin stood there, chilled through and through, brooding upon
the house.

Not until dawn, like a knife, gashed the east with blood did he stir.

He sighed. 'Too late!' he said.

Then he laughed. 'Beaten by the parson!'

A demoniac rage surged in him. He picked up a piece of rock, and
lifting it in both arms, flung it at the house. It smashed the kitchen
window. But before Edward came to his window Reddin was out of sight in
the batch.

'My dear,' said Mrs. Marston tremulously, 'I always feared disaster
from this strange match.'

'How _can_ Hazel have anything to do with it, mother?'

'I think, dear, it is a sign from God. On your wedding-morning! Broken
glass! Yes, it is a sign from God. I wish it need not have been quite
so violent. But, of course, He knows best.'




Chapter 15


At the parsonage everything was ready early. Edward, restless after his
rough awakening, had risen at three and finished his own preparations,
being ready to help Mrs. Marston when she came down, still a good deal
upset. Whenever she passed Hazel's room, or saw Edward take flowers
there, she said, 'Oh, my dear!' and shook her head sadly. For the kind
of life that seemed to be mapped out by Edward would, she feared, not
include grandchildren. And grandchildren had acquired, through long
cogitations, the glamour of the customary. She was also ruffled by
Martha, who, unlike her own pastry, was 'short.' What with the two
women, angry and grieved, and the fact that his wedding-day held only
half the splendour that it should have held, Edward's spirits might
have been expected to be low; but they were not. He ran up and down,
joked with Martha, soothed his mother, and sang until Martha, who
thought that a minister's deportment at a wedding should be only a
little less grandiloquent than at a funeral, said:

'He'm less like a minister than a nest of birds.' She and Mrs. Marston
were setting out the feather-cups in the best parlour.

At that moment Edward stood at the door of Hazel's room, and realized
that he would enter it no more. He must not see the sweet disarray of
her unpacking, nor rest night by night in the charmed circle of her
presence. Almost he felt, in this agony of loss--loss of things never
possessed, the most bitter loss of all--that, if he could have had
these things, even the ruddy-haired, golden-eyed children of his dreams
might go. He knelt by Hazel's bed and laid his dark head on the pillow,
torn by physical and spiritual passion. His hair was clammy, and a new
line marked his forehead from that day. Anyone seeing him would have
thought that he was praying; he was so still. It was Edward's fate to
be thought 'so quiet,' because the fires within him made no sound,
burning at a still-white heat.

He was not praying. Prayer had receded to a far distance, like a
signpost long passed. Perhaps he would come round to it again; but now
he was in the trackless desert. It is only those that have suffered
moderately that speak of prayer as the sufferer's refuge. By that you
know them. Those that have been tortured remember that the worst part
of the torture was the breaking of the prayer in their hands, piercing,
and not upholding.

Edward knew, kneeling there with his eyes shut, how Hazel's hair would
flow sweetly over the pillow; how her warm arm would feel about his
neck; how wildly sweet it would be, in some dark hour, to allay
dream-fears and hush her to sleep. Never before had the gracious
intimacy of marriage so shone in his eyes. And he was going to have
just the amount of intimacy that his mother would have, perhaps rather
less. Every night he would stand on the threshold, kiss Hazel with a
brotherly kiss, and turn away. His life would be a cold threshold. Month
by month, year by year, he would read the sweet, frank love-stories of
the Bible--stories that would, if written by a novelist, be banned, so
true are they; year by year he would see nest and young creatures, and go
into cottages where babies in fluffy shawls gazed at him anciently and
caught his fingers in a grip of tyrannous weakness. And always there
would be Hazel, alluring him with an imperishable magic even stronger
than beauty, startling him from his hard-won calm by the turn of a
wrist, the curve of a waist-ribbon, a wave of her hair. And then the
stern hour of crisis rode him down, and a great voice cried, not with
the cunning that he would have expected of a temper, but with the
majesty of morning on the heights:

'Take her. She is yours.'

He knew that it was true. Who would gainsay him? She was his. In a few
hours she would be his wife, in his own house, giving him every law of
creed and race. In fact, by not pleasing himself he would be outraging
creed and race. The latch of her door was his to lift at any time. That
chamber of roses and gold, rainbows and silver cries like the dawn-notes
of birds, was there for him like the open rose for the bee. His mother,
too, would be pleased. She had expostulated gelatinously about 'this
marriage which was no marriage.' He would be that companionable and
inspiring thing--the norm. He would be one of the world-wide company
of men that work, marry, bring up children, maybe see their grandchildren,
and then, in the glory of fulfilment, lay their silver heads on the
pillow of sleep. He had always loved normal things. He was not one
of those who are set apart by the strange aloofness of genius, whose
souls burn with a wild light, instead of with the comfortable glow of
the hearth fire. He was an ordinary man, loved ordinary things. Neither
was he effeminate or a celibate by instinct, though he had not Reddin's
fury of masculinity. Sex would never have awakened in him but at the
touch of spiritual love. But the touch had come; it had awakened; it
threatened to master him.

Pictures came dimly and yet radiantly before him: Hazel as she would
stand to-night brushing out her hair; this room as it would be when
she had put the light out and only starlight illuminated it; the
flowery scent, the sound of her soft breathing; and then, in a
tempestuous rush, the emotions he would feel as he laid his hand on
the latch--love, triumph, intoxication.

How would she look? What would she say? She could not forbid him. She
would, perhaps, when she awoke to the sweetness of marriage, love him
as passionately as he loved her.

A wild mastery possessed him. He would have what he wanted of life.
What need was there to renounce? And then, like a minor chord, soft and
plaintive, he heard Hazel's voice in bewildered accents murmur:

'What for do you, my soul?' and, 'I'm much obleeged, I'm sure.'

What stood between him and his desire was Hazel's helplessness, her
personality, like a delicate glass that he would break if he stirred.
Creed and convention pushed him on. For Church and State are for
material righteousness, the letter of the law. Spiritual flowerings,
high motives clad in apparent lawlessness--these are hardly in their
province since they are for those who still need crude rules. To the
scribes, and still more to them that sold doves, Christ was a brawler.

Rather than break that glass he would not stir. What were the race and
public opinion to him compared with her spirit? His tenets must make an
exception for her. These things were negligible. All that mattered was
himself and Hazel; his passion, Hazel's freedom; his longing for
husbandhood and fatherhood, her elvish incapacity for wifehood and
motherhood. He suddenly detested himself for the rosy pictures he had
seen. He was utterly abased at the knowledge that he had really meant
at one moment to enforce his rights, to lift the latch. The selfish use
of strength always seemed to him a most despicable thing. From all
points he surveyed his crisis with shame. He had made his decision; but
he knew how easy it would have been to make the opposite one. How easy
and how sweet! He stayed where he was for a long time, too tired to get
up, weary with a conflict that was hardly yet begun. Then he heard his
mother calling, and got up, closing the door as one surrenders a dream.
He still held in one hand the bunch of rosy tulips he had bought for
Hazel at the show. They hung their heads.

'Oh, my dear boy,' said Mrs. Marston, 'I've called and better called,
and no answer! Where were you?'

Edward might have said with truth, 'In hell.' He only said: 'In a
valley of this restless mind.'

'What valley, dear? Oh, no valley, only a poem?' How very peculiar!
Dear, dear! she thought; I hope all this isn't turning his brain; it
seemed so like nonsense what he said. 'You look so pale, my dear, and
so distraught,' she went on; 'I think you want a--'

'No, mother. Thank you, I want nothing.'

He was half conscious of the bitter irony of it as he said it.

Mrs. Marston was looking at his knees.

'Oh, my dear, I know now,' she said; 'I beg your pardon for saying you
wanted a powder. You were with the Lord. You could not have been better
occupied on your wedding morning!'

She was very much touched. Edward flushed darkly, conscious of how he
had been occupied.

'There!' cried she; 'now you're as flushed as you were pale. It's the
fever. I'll mix you something that will soon put you all right.'

'I only wish you could,' he sighed.

'And what I wanted,' said she, catching at her previous thought in the
same blind way as she caught at her skirts on muddy days--'what I
wanted, dear, was--it's so heavy, the cake--'

'You want me to lift it, mother?'

'Yes, my dear. How well you know! And mind not to spoil the icing; it's
so hard not to, it being so white and brittle.'

'No, I won't spoil the white,' he said earnestly, 'however hard it is.'

She did not notice that the earnestness was unnatural; intense
earnestness in household matters was her normal state.




Chapter 16


The stately May morning, caparisoned in diamonds, full of the solemnity
that perfect beauty wears, had come out of the purple mist and shamed
the hovel where Hazel dressed for her bridal. The cottage had sunk
almost out of recognition in the foam of spring. Ancient lilacs stood
about it and nodded purple-coroneted heads across its one chimney.
Their scent bore down all other scents like a strong personality and
there was no choice but to think the thoughts of the lilac. Two
laburnums, forked and huge of trunk, fingered the roof with their lower
branches and dripped gold on it. The upper branches sprang far into the
blue.

The may-tree by the gate knew its perfect moment, covered with crystal
buds that shone like rain among the bright green leaves. From every
pear-tree--full-blossomed, dropping petals--and from every shell-pink
apple-tree came the roar of the bees.

Abel rose very early, for he considered it the proper thing to
make a wreath for Hazel, being an artist in such matters. The
lilies-of-the-valley-were almost out; he had put some in warm
water overnight, and now he sat beneath the horse-chestnut and
worked at the wreath. The shadows of the leaves rippled over him
like water, and often he looked up at the white spires of bloom
with a proprietary eye, for his bees were working there with a
ferocity of industry.

He was moody and miserable, for he thought of the township of hives
that Hazel might have won for him. He comforted himself with the
thought that there would be something saved on her keep. It never
occurred to him to be sorry to lose her; in fact, there was little
reason why he should be. Each had lived a lonely, self-sufficing life;
they were entirely unsuitable companions for each other.

He wove the wet lilies, rather limp from the hot water, on to a piece
of wire taken from one of his wreath-frames.

So Hazel went to her bridal in a funeral wreath.

She awoke very tired from the crisis yesterday, but happy. She and Foxy
and the one-eyed cat, her rabbit, and the blackbird, were going to a
country far from troublous things, to the peace of Edward's love on the
slope of God's Little Mountain.

The difficulties of the new life were forgotten. Only its joys
were visible to-day. Mrs. Marston seemed to smile and smile in an
eternal loving-kindness, and Martha's heavy face wore an air of
good-fellowship. The loud winds, lulled and bearing each its gift
of balm, would blow softly round Edward's house. Frost, she thought,
would not come to God's Little Mountain as to the cold Callow.

She had not seen Reddin's rimy shoulders, nor the cold glitter of the
tombs.

She sang as she dressed with the shrill sweetness of a robin. She had
never seen such garments; she hardly knew how to put some of them on.
She brushed her hair till it shone like a tiger-lily, and piled it on
her small head in great plaits. When her white muslin frock was on, she
drew a long breath, seeing herself in bits in the small glass.

'I be like a picture!' she gasped. Round her slim sun-burnt neck was a
small gold chain holding a topaz pendant, which matched her eyes.

When she came forth like a lily from the mould, Abel staggered
backwards, partly in clownish mirth, partly in astonishment. He was so
impressed that he got breakfast himself, and afterwards went and
sandpapered his hands until they were sore. Hazel, enthroned in one of
the broken chairs, fastened on Foxy's wedding-collar, made of blue
forget-me-not.

Foxy, immensely dignified, sat on her haunches, her chin tucked into
the forget-me-nots, immovably bland. She was evidently competent for
her new role; she might have been ecclesiastically connected all her
life. The one-eyed cat was beside her, blue-ribboned, purring her best,
which was like a broken bagpipe on account of her stormy youth.

'Ah! you'd best purr!' said Hazel. 'Sitting on cushions by the fireside
all your life long you'll be, and Foxy with a brand new tub!'

Not many brides think so little of themselves, so much of small
pensioners, as Hazel did this morning. Breakfast was a sociable meal,
for Abel made several remarks. Now and then he looked at Hazel and
said, 'Laws!' Hazel laughed gleefully. When she stood by the gate
watching for the neighbour's cart that was to take them, she looked as
full of white budding promise as the may-tree above her.

She did not think very much about Edward, except as a protecting
presence. Reddin's face, full of strong, mysterious misery; the feel of
Reddin's arm as they danced; his hand, hot and muscular, on hers--these
claimed her thoughts. She fought them down, conscious that they were
not suitable in Edward's bride.

At last the cart appeared, coming up the hill with the peculiar
lurching deportment of market carts. The pony had a bunch of marigolds
on each ear, and there was lilac on the whip. They packed the animals
in--the cat giving ventriloquial mews from her basket, the rabbit in
its hutch, the bird in its wooden cage, and Foxy sitting up in front of
Hazel. The harp completed the load. They drove off amid the cheers of
the next-door children, and took their leisurely way through the
resinous fragrance of larch-woods.

The cream-coloured pony was lame, which gave the cart a peculiar roll,
and she was tormented with hunger for the marigolds, which hung down
near her nose and caused her to get her head into strange contortions
in the effort to reach them. The wind sighed in the tall larches, and
once again, as on the day of the concert, they bent attentive heads
towards Hazel. In the glades the wide-spread hyacinths would soon be
paling towards their euthanasia, knowing the art of dying as well as
that of living, fortunate, as few sentient creatures are, in keeping
their dignity in death.

When they drove through the quarry, where deep shadows lay, Hazel
shivered suddenly.

'Somebody walking over your grave,' said Abel.

'Oh, dunna say that! It be unlucky on my wedding-day,' she cried. As
they climbed the hill she leaned forward, as if straining upwards out
of some deep horror.

When their extraordinary turn-out drew up at the gate, Abel
boisterously flourishing his lilac-laden whip and shouting elaborate
but incomprehensible witticisms, Edward came hastily from the house.
His eyes rested on Hazel, and were so vivid, so brimful of tenderness,
that Abel remained with a joke half expounded.

'My Hazel,' Edward said, standing by the cart and looking up, 'welcome
home, and God bless you!'

'You canna say fairer nor that,' remarked Abel. 'Inna our 'Azel peart?
Dressed up summat cruel inna she?'

Edward took no notice. He was looking at Hazel, searching hungrily for
a hint of the same overwhelming passion that he felt. But he only found
childlike joy, gratitude, affection, and a faint shadow for which he
could not account, and from which he began to hope many things.

If in that silent room upstairs he had come to the opposite decision;
if he had that very day told Hazel what his love meant, by the irony of
things she would have loved him and spent on him the hidden passion of
her nature.

But he had chosen the unselfish course.

'Well,' he said in a business-like tone, 'suppose we unpack the little
creatures and Hazel first?'

Mrs. Marston appeared.

'Oh, are you going to a show, Mr. Woodus?' she asked Abel. 'It would
have been so nice and pleasant if you would have played your
instrument.'

'Yes, mum. That's what I've acome for. I inna going to no show. I've
come to the wedding to get my belly-full.'

Mrs. Marston, very much flustered, asked what the animals were for.

'I think, mother, they're for you.' Edward smiled.

She surveyed Foxy, full of vitality after the drive; the bird, moping
and rough; the rabbit, with one ear inside out, looking far from
respectable. She heard the ventriloquistic mews.

'I don't want them, dear,' she said with great decision.

'It's a bit of a cats' 'ome you're starting, mum,' said Abel.

Mrs. Marston found no words for her emotions.

But while Edward and Abel bestowed the various animals, she said to
Martha:

'Weddings are not what they were, Martha.'

'Bride to groom,' said Martha, who always read the local weddings: 'a
one-eyed cat; a foolish rabbit as'd be better in a pie; an ill-contrived
bird; and a filthy smelly fox!'

Mrs. Marston relaxed her dignity so far as to laugh softly. She decided
to give Martha a rise next year.




Chapter 17


Hazel sat on a large flat gravestone with Foxy beside her. They were
like a sculpture in marble on some ancient tomb. Coming, so soon after
her strange moment of terror in the quarry, to this place of the dead,
she was smitten with formless fear. The crosses and stones had, on that
storm-beleaguered hillside, an air of horrible bravado, as if they knew
that although the winds were stronger than they, yet they were stronger
than humanity; as if they knew that the whole world is the tomb of
beauty, and has been made by man the torture-chamber of weakness.

She looked down at the lettering on the stone. It was a young girl's
grave.

'Oh!' she muttered, looking up into the tremendous dome of blue, empty
and adamantine--'oh! dunna let me go young! What for did she dee so
young? Dunna let me! dunna!'

And the vast dome received her prayer, empty and adamantine.

She was suddenly panic-stricken; she ran away from the tombs calling
Edward's name.

And Edward came on the instant. His hands were full of cabbage which he
had been taking to the rabbit.

'What is it, little one?'

'These here!'

'The graves?'

'Ah. They'm so drodsome.'

Edward pointed to a laburnum-tree which had rent a tomb, and now waved
above it.

'See,' he said. 'Out of the grave and gate of death--'

'Ah! But her as went in hanna come out. On'y a new tree. I'll be bound
she wanted to come out.'

At this moment Edward's friend, who was to marry them, arrived.

'Now I shall go and wait for you to come,' Edward whispered.

Waiting in the dim chapel, with its whitewashed walls and few leaded
windows half covered with ivy, his mind was clear of all thoughts but
unselfish ones.

His mother, trailing purple, came in, and thought how like a sacred
picture he looked; this, for her, was superlative praise. Martha's
brother was there, ringing the one bell, which gave such a small
fugitive sound that it made the white chapel seem like a tinkling
bell-wether lost on the hills.

Mr. James was there, and several of the congregation, and Martha, with
her best dress hastily donned over her print, and a hat of which her
brother said 'it 'ud draw tears from an egg.'

Mr. James' daughter played a voluntary, in the midst of which an
altercation was heard outside.

'Her'll be lonesome wi'out me!'

'They wunna like it. It's blasphemy.'

Then the door opened, and Abel, very perspiring, and conscious of the
greatness of the occasion, led in Hazel in her wreath of drooping
lilies. The green light touched her face with unnatural pallor, and her
eyes, haunted by some old evil out of the darkness of life, looked
towards Edward as to a saviour.

She might have been one of those brides from faery, who rose wraith-like
out of a pool or river, and had some mysterious ichor in their veins,
and slipped from the grasp of mortal lover, melting like snow at a
touch. Edward, watching her, was seized with an inexplicable fear.
He wished she had not been so strangely beautiful, that the scent
of lilies had not brought so heavy a faintness, reminding him of
death-chambers.

It was not till Hazel reached the top of the chapel that the
congregation observed Foxy, a small red figure, trotting willingly in
Hazel's wake--a loving though incompetent bridesmaid.

Mr. James arose and walked up the chapel.

'I will remove the animal' he said; then he saw that Hazel was leading
Foxy. This insult was, then, deliberate. 'A hanimal,' he said, 'hasn't
no business in a place o' worship.'

'What for not?' asked Hazel.

'Because--' Mr. James found himself unable to go on. 'Because not,' he
finished blusterously. He laid his hand on the cord, but Foxy prepared
for conflict.

Edward's colleague turned away, hand to mouth. He was obliged to
contemplate the ivy outside the window while the altercation lasted.

'Whoever made you,' Hazel said, 'made Foxy. Where you can come, Foxy
can come. You'm deacon, Foxy's bridesmaid!'

'That's heathen talk,' said Mr. James.

'How very naughty Hazel is!' thought poor Mrs. Marston. She felt that
she could never hold up her head again. The congregation giggled. The
black grapes and the chenille spots trembled. 'How very unpleasant!'
thought the old lady.

Then Edward spoke, and his voice had an edge of masterfulness that
astonished Mr. James.

'Let be,' he said. '"Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.
Them also will I bring." She has the same master, James.'

Silence fell. The other minister turned round with a surprised,
admiring glance at Edward, and the service began. It was short and
simple, but it gathered an extraordinary pathos as it progressed.

The narcissi on the window-sills eyed Hazel in a white silence, and
their dewy golden eyes seemed akin to Foxy's and her own. The fragrance
of spring flowers filled the place with wistful sadness. There are no
scents so tearful, so grievous, as the scents of valley-lilies and
narcissi clustered ghostly by the dark garden hedge, and white lilac,
freighted with old dreams, and pansies, faintly reminiscent of
mysterious lost ecstasy.

Edward felt these things and was oppressed. A great pity for Hazel and
her following of forlorn creatures surged over him. A kind of dread
grew up in him that he might not be able to defend them as he would
wish. It did seem that helplessness went to the wall. Since Hazel had
come with her sad philosophy of experience, he had begun to notice
facts.

He looked up towards the aloof sky as Hazel had done.

'He is love,' he said to himself.

The blue sky received his certainty, as it had received Hazel's
questioning, in regardless silence.

Mrs. Marston observed Edward narrowly. Then she wrote in her hymn-book:
'Mem: Maltine; Edward.'

The service was over. Edward smiled at her as he passed, and met Mr.
James' frown with dignified good-humour.

Foxy, even more willing to go out than to come in, ran on in front, and
as they entered the house they heard from the cupboard under the stairs
the epithalamium of the one-eyed cat.

'Oh, dear heart!' said Hazel tremulously, looking at the cake, 'I ne'er
saw the like!'

'Mother iced it, dear.'

Hazel ran to Mrs. Marston and put both her thin arms round her neck,
kissing her in a storm of gratitude.

'There, there! quietly, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston. 'I'm glad it
pleases.' She smoothed the purple silk smilingly. Hazel was forgiven.

'I'd a brought the big saw if I'd 'a thought,' said Abel jocosely.

Only Mr. James was taciturn.

Foxy was allowed in, and perambulated the room, to Mrs. Marston's
supreme discomfort; every time Foxy drew near she gave a smothered
scream. In spite of these various disadvantages, it was a merry party,
and did not break up till dusk.

After tea Abel played, Mr. James being very patronizing, saying at the
end of each piece, 'Very good'; till Abel asked rudely, 'Can yer play
yourself?'

Edward came to the rescue by offering Mr. James tobacco. They drew
round the fire, for the dusk came coldly, only Abel remaining in his
corner playing furiously. He considered it only honest, after such a
tea, to play his loudest.

Hazel, happy but restless, played with Foxy beside the darkening
window, low and many-paned and cumbered with bits of furniture dear to
Mrs. Marston.

Edward was showing his friend a cycle map of the country.

Mrs. Marston was sleepily discussing hens--good layers, good sitters,
good table-fowl--with Mr. James. Hazel, tired of playing with Foxy,
knelt on the big round ottoman with its central peak of stuffed
tapestry and looked idly from the window.

Suddenly she cried out. Edward was alert in a moment.

'What is it, dear?'

Hazel had sunk back on the ottoman, pale and speechless; but she
realized that she must pull herself together.

'I stuck a pin in me,' she said.

Tins in a wedding-dress? Oh, fie!' said Mrs. Marston. Tricked at your
wedding, pricked for aye.'

'Oh, dear, dearie me!' cried Hazel, bursting into tears, and flinging
herself at Edward's feet.

Wondering, he comforted her.

Mrs. Marston called for the lamp; the blinds were drawn, and all was
saffron peace.

Outside, in the same attitude as before, bowed, and motionless, stood
Reddin. He saw Hazel, watched her withdraw, and knew that she had seen
him. When the window suddenly shone like daffodils, he recoiled as if
at a lash, and, turning, went heavily down the batch. He turned into
the woods, and made his way back till he was opposite the house. Thence
he watched the guests depart, and later saw Martha go to her cottage.
The lights wavered and wandered. He saw one go up the stairs.

Inside the house Mrs. Marston confronted with a bridal which she did
not quite know how to regard, very tactfully said good night, and left
them together in the parlour. They sat there for a time and Edward
tried not to realize how much he was missing. He got up at last and lit
Hazel's candle. At her door he said good night hastily. Hazel took the
arrangements for granted, partly because she had slept in this same
room two nights ago, partly because Edward had never shown her a hint
of passion.

The higher the nature, the more its greatness is taken for granted.
Edward turned and went to his room.

Reddin, under his black roof of pines, counted the lights, and seeing
that there were three, turned homewards with a sigh of relief. But as
he went through the fields he remembered how Hazel had looked last
night; how she had danced like a leaf; how slender and young she was.
He was a man everlastingly maddened by slightness and weakness. As a
boy, when his father and mother still kept up their position a little,
he had broken a priceless Venetian glass simply because he could not
resist the temptation to close his hand on it. His father had flogged
him, being of the stupid kind who believe that corporal punishment can
influence the soul. And Reddin had done the same thing next day with a
bit of egg-shell china.

So now, as he thought of Hazel's lissom waist, her large eyes, rather
scared, her slender wrists he cursed until the peewits arose mewing all
about him. In the thick darkness of the lonely fields he might have
been some hero of the dead, mouthing a satanic recitative amid a chorus
of lost souls.

The long search for Hazel, begun in a whim, had ended in passion. If he
had never looked for her, never felt the nettled sense of being foiled,
or if he had found her at once, he would never have desired her so
fiercely. Now, for the first time in his life impassioned, he felt
something mysterious and unwelcome to him begin to mingle with his
desire. Above all, life without her meant dullness, lack of vitality,
the swift onset of middle-age. He saw this with shrinking. He walked
wearily, looking older than he was in the pathos of loss.

Life with her meant an indefinitely prolonged youth, an ecstasy he had
not dreamt of, the well-being of his whole nature. He walked along
moodily, thinking how he would have started afresh, smartened up
Undern, worked hard, given his children--his and Hazel's--a good
education, become more sober.

But he had been a fortnight too late. A miserable fortnight! He, who
had raved over the countryside, had missed her. Marston, who had simply
remained on his mountain, had won her.

'It's damned unfair!' he said, and pathos faded from him in his rage.
All the vague thoughts, dark and turgid, of the last two nights took
shape slowly.

He neither cursed nor brooded any more. He thought keenly as he walked.
His face took a more powerful cast--it had never been a weak face at
the worst--and he looked a man that it would not be easy to combat.
Bitter hatred of Edward possessed him, silent fury against fate,
relentless determination to get Hazel whether she would or not. He had
a purpose in life now. Vessons was surprised at his quick,
authoritative manner.

'Make me some sandwiches early to-morrow,' he said, 'and you'll have to
go to the auction. I shan't go myself.'

''Ow can I go now? Who's to do the cheeses?'

'Give 'em to the pigs.'

'Who's to meet the groom from Farnley? Never will I go!'

'If you're so damned impudent, you'll have to leave.'

'Who's to meet the groom?' Vessons spoke with surly, astonished
meekness.

'Groom? Groom be hanged! Wire to him.'

'It'll take me the best part of two hour to go and telegrapht. And it
cosses money. And dinner at the auction cosses money.'

'Oh!' cried Reddin with intense irritation, 'take this, you fool!'

He flung his purse at Vessons.

'Well, well,' thought Vessons, 'I mun yumour 'im. He's fretched along
of her marrying the minister. "Long live the minister!" says Andrew.'




Chapter 18


Next morning Vessons went off in high feather; Hazel was so safely
disposed of. Reddin left at the same time, and all the long May day
Undern was deserted, and lay still and silent as if pondering on its
loneliness. Reddin did not return until after night-fall.

He spent the day in a curious manner for a man of his position, under a
yew-tree, riven of trunk, gigantic, black, commanding Edward's house.
He leant against the trunk that had seen so many generations, shadowed
so many fox-earths, groaned in so many tempests.

Above his tent sailed those hill-wanderers, the white clouds of May.
They were as fiercely pure, as apparently imperishable, as a great
ideal. With lingering majesty they marched across the sky, first over
the parsonage, then over Reddin, laying upon each in turn a hyacinth
shadow.

Reddin watched the house indifferently, while Martha went to and fro
cleaning the chapel after the wedding.

Then Mrs. Marston came to the front door and shut it.

After that, for a long time, nothing moved but the slow shadows of the
gravestones, shortening with the climbing sun. The laburnum waved
softly, and flung its lacy shadow on the grave where the grass was long
and daisied.

A wood-pigeon began in its deep and golden voice a low soliloquy
recollected as a saint's, rich as a lover's. Reddin stirred
disconsolately, trampling the thin leaves and delicate flowers of the
sorrel.

At last the door opened, and Edward came out carrying a spade.

Hazel followed. They went round to the side of the house away from the
graveyard, and Edward began to dig, Hazel sitting on the grass and
evidently making suggestions. With the quickness of jealousy, Reddin
knew that Edward was making a garden for Hazel. It enraged him.

'I could have made her a garden, and a deal better than that!' he
thought. 'She could have had half an acre of the garden at Undern; I
could have it made in no time.'

He uttered an exclamation of contempt. 'The way he fools with that
spade! He's never dug in his life.'

Before long Hazel brought out the bird-cage and hung it in the sun. And
surprisingly, almost alarmingly, the ancient bird began to sing. It was
like hearing an old man sing a love-song. The bird sat there, rough and
purblind, and chanted youth with the magic of a master.

Hazel and Edward stood still to hear it, holding each other's hands.

'He's ne'er said a word afore,' breathed Hazel. 'Eh! but he likes the
Mountain!'

In the little warm garden with Hazel, among the thick daisies, with the
mirth of the once desolate ringing in his ears, Edward knew perfect
happiness.

He stood looking at Hazel, his eyes dark with love. She seemed to
blossom in the quiet day. He stooped and kissed her hand.

To Reddin in his deep shadow every action was clear, for they stood in
the sunlight. He ground the sorrel into the earth. After a time Martha
rang the dinner-bell, not because she could not both see and hear her
master, but because it was the usual thing. To Reddin the bell's rather
cracked note was sardonic, for it was summoning another man to eat and
drink with Hazel. He ate his sandwiches, not being so much in love that
he lost his appetite. Then he sat down and read the racing news. There
was no danger of anyone seeing him, for the place was entirely solitary
with the double loneliness of hill and woodland. There were no children
in the batch except Martha's friend's little boy, and he was timid and
never went bird's-nesting. The only sound except the intermittent song
of birds, was the far-away noise of a woodman's axe, like the deep
scattered barking of hungry hounds. Nothing else stirred under the
complex arches of the trees except the sunlight, moving like a ghost.

These thick woods, remote on their ridges, were to the watchful eye
rich with a half-revealed secret, to the attentive ear full of urgent
voices. The solving of all life's riddles might come to one here at any
moment. In this hour or in the next, from a grey ash-bole or a blood-red
pine-trunk, might come the naked spirit of life with a face fierce
or lovely. Coiled in the twist of long honeysuckle ropes that fell
from the dead yews; curled in a last year's leaf; embattled in a mailed
fir-cone, or resting starrily in the green moss, it seemed that God
slumbered. At any moment He might wake, to bless or curse.

Reddin, not having a watchful eye or an attentive ear for such things,
was not conscious of anything but a sense of loneliness. He read the
paper indefatigably. In an hour or so Edward and Hazel came out again,
she in her new white hat. They went up God's Little Mountain where it
sloped away in pale green illuminated vistas till it reached the dark
blue sky. They disappeared on the skyline, and Reddin impatiently
composed himself for more waiting. Was he never to get a chance of
seeing Hazel alone?

'That fellow dogs her steps,' he said.

The transfigured slopes of the mountain were, it seemed to Edward, a
suitable place for a thing he wished to tell Hazel.

'Hazel,' he said, 'if you ever feel that you would rather have a
husband than a brother, you have only to say so.'

Hazel flushed. Although it was such a muted passion that sounded in his
voice, it stirred her. Since she had known Reddin, her ignorance had
come to recognize the sound of it, and she had also begun to flush
easily.

If Edward had understood women better, he would have seen that this
speech of his was a mistake; for even if a woman knows whether she
wishes for a husband, she will never tell him so.

They turned home in a constrained silence. Foxy, frightened by a covey
of partridges, created a diversion by pulling her cord from Hazel's
inattentive hand and setting off for the parsonage.

'Oh! she'll be bound to go to the woods!' cried Hazel, beginning to
run. 'Do 'ee see if she's in tub, Ed'ard, and I'll go under the trees
and holla.'

Reddin was startled when he saw Hazel, who had out-distanced Edward,
making straight for his hiding-place. She came running between the
boles with an easy grace, an independence that drove him frantic. A
pretty woman should not have that easy grace; she should have exchanged
it for a matronly bearing by this time, and independence should have
yielded to subservience--to the male, to him. With her vivid hair and
eyes and her swift slenderness, Hazel had a fawn-like air as she
traversed the wavering shadows. She passed his tree without seeing him,
and stood listening. Then she began to plead with the truant. 'What for
did you run away, Foxy, my dear? Where be you? Come back along with me,
dear 'eart, for it draws to night!'

Reddin stepped from his tree and spoke to her.

With a stifled scream she turned to run away, but he intercepted her.

'No. I've waited long enough for this. So you're married to the parson,
after all?'

'Ah.'

'You'll be sorry.'

'What for do you come tormenting of me, Mr. Reddin?'

'You were meant for me. You're mine.'

'Folk allus says I'm theirs. I'd liefer be mine.'

'As you wouldn't marry me, Hazel, the least you can do is to come and
talk to me sometimes.'

'Oh, I canna!'

'You must. Any spare time come to this tree. I shall generally be
here.'

'But why ever? And you a squire with a big place and fine ladies after
you!'

'Because I choose.'

'Leave me be, Mr. Reddin. I be comforble, and Foxy be, and they're all
settling so nice. The bird's sung.'

'The parson, too, no doubt. If you don't come often enough, I shall
walk past the house and look in. If you go on not coming, I shall tell
the parson you stayed the night with me, and he'll turn you out.'

'He wouldna! You wouldna!'

'Yes, I would. He would, too. A parson doesn't want a wife that isn't
respectable. So as you've got to'--he dropped his harshness and became
persuasive--'you may as well come with a good grace.'

'But it wunna my fault as I stayed the night over. It was aunt
Prowde's. What for should folk chide me and not auntie?'

'Lord, I don't know! Because you're pretty.'

'Be I?'

'Hasn't that fellow told you so?'

'No. He dunna say much.'

'You could make such a good chap of me if you liked, Hazel.'

'How ever?'

'I'd give up the drink.'

'And fox-hunting?'

'Well, I might give up even that--for you. Be my friend, Hazel.'

He spoke with an indefinable charm inherited from some courtly
ancestor. Hazel was fascinated.

'But you've got blood on you!' she protested.

'So have you!' he retorted unexpectedly. 'You say you kill flies, so
you're as bad as I am, Hazel. So be my friend.'

'I mun go!'

'Say you'll come tomorrow.'

'Not but for a minute, then.'

Edward's voice came from the house.

'I've found her!'

Hazel ran home. But as she left the wood she turned and looked down the
shadowy steeps of green at Reddin as he strode homewards. She watched
him until he passed out of sight; then, sighing, she went home.




Chapter 19


Next day Hazel did not go into the woods. In the evening, sitting in
the quiet parlour while Edward read aloud and Mrs. Marston knitted, she
felt afraid as she remembered it. Yet she had been still more afraid at
the idea of going.

She had helped Mrs. Marston to cover rhubarb jam in the dim store-room
while Edward visited a sick man at some distance. It had been
delightful, gumming on the clean tops, and then writing on them. She
had dipped freely into the biscuit-box. Then Edward had returned, and
they had gardened again. Now they were settled for the evening, and she
was learning to knit, twisting obdurate wool round anarchic needles,
while Mrs. Marston--the pink shawl top--chanted: 'Knit, purl! Knit,
purl!'

'Will it come to aught ever?' queried Hazel. 'It's nought but a tail o'
string now!'

'It will come to anything you like to make, dear,' said the old lady.

'Is knitting so like life, mother?' Edward spoke amusedly.

'But it wunna,' said Hazel. 'It'll only come a tanglement,'

Edward suggested that he should help; there was great laughter over
this interlude, while Mrs. Marston still chanted, 'Knit, purl!'

Reddin walked lingeringly past the house in the dark, heard it, and was
very angry and miserable.

Hazel heard his step on the rough stones, and was alarmedly sure that
it was he. She was terribly afraid he would tell Edward. Then a new
idea occurred to her. Should she tell Edward herself?

She sat in the firelight with her head bent, and turned this new
thought about in her brain as incompetently as she twisted the blue
wool round the needles. And from the silent shadows, as she played with
the thread of destiny, two presences eyed each other across her bright
head--one armed, the other bearing roses. Neither Mrs. Marston, with
her antiphonal 'Double knit, double purl!' nor Edward, reading in his
pleasant voice--he rather fancied his reading, and tried not to--saw
those impalpable figures, each with a possessive hand outstretched to
Hazel pending her decision.

'Why shouldna I say? There was no harm!' she thought. Then she
remembered that there had been something--a queer feeling--that had
sent her out of the glass door into the snow.

She had never wanted to tell anyone of the episode.

She glanced at Edward through her lashes--a look that always made him
think of the pool above the parsonage, where lucent brown water shone
through rushes. He saw the look, for he always glanced round as he
read, having gathered from his book on elocution that this was correct.
He smiled across at her, and went on reading.

The book was one of those affected by Mrs. Marston and her kind. It had
no relation whatever to life. Its ideals, characters, ethics and crises
made up an unearthly whole, which, being entirely useless as a tonic or
as a balm, was so much poison. It was impossible to imagine its heroine
facing any of the facts of life, or engaging in any of those physical
acts to which all humanity is bound, and which need more than
resignation--namely, open-eyed honesty--to raise them from a
humiliation to a glory. It was impossible to imagine also how the
child, which appeared discreetly and punctually on the last page, could
have come by its existence, since it certainly, with such unexceptional
parents, could not have been begotten.

Hazel listened anxiously to hear if the heroine ever drove on a winter
night with a man who stared at her out of bold blue eyes, and whether
she got frightened and took refuge in a bedroom full of white mice. But
there were no mice, nor dark roads, nor bold men in all its pages. By
the time the reading came to an end, Hazel had quite made up her mind
that she could not possibly tell Edward. The blue wool was inextricably
tangled, and one of the shadowy presences had vanished.

Followed what Mrs. Marston called 'a little chat'; the evening tray,
containing cake and cocoa, was brought from its side-table; the kettle
was put on, and soon the candles were lit.

The presence that remained was with Hazel as she went up to her little
room, as she undressed, and when she lay down to sleep. From the
mantlepiece in the faint moonlight shone the white background of the
text, 'Not a hair of thy head shall perish.'

But the promising words were obliterated by night.

Next morning, and some time during every subsequent day, Hazel met
Reddin under the dark yew-tree.

'You're very fond of the woods, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston one
morning. 'It must be very nice and pleasant there just now.'

'No, it inna, Mrs. Marston. It's drodsome.'

'If I could start very early,' Mrs. Marston went on, 'please God I'd go
with you. For you always go while Edward is visiting, and it's lonely
for you.'

Hazel fled down the batch that morning, and back up a shadowed ride to
Reddin.

'You munna come never no more, Mr. Reddin!' she cried. 'The old lady's
coming to-morrow-day, her says.'

Reddin swore. He was getting on so nicely. Already Hazel went red and
white at his pleasure, and though he had not attempted to kiss her, he
had gained a hold on her imagination.

Whenever he saw himself as others would see him if they knew, he
hastily said, 'All's fair in love,' and shut his eyes. Also, he felt
that he was doing evil in order to bring Hazel good.

'For how a girl can live in that stuffy hole with that old woman and
that die-away fellow, Lord only knows!' he thought. 'She'll be twice
the girl she is when she lives with a man that _is_ a man, and she
can do as she likes with Undern so long as she's not stand-off with me.
No, by--! I'll have no nonsense after this! Here I am, sitting under a
tree like a dog with a treed cat!'

So now he was very angry. His look was like a lash as he said: 'You
made that up to get rid of me.'

'I didna!' cried Hazel, trembling. 'But oh! Mr. Reddin canna you leave
me be? There's Ed'ard reading the many mansions bit to old Solomon
Bache, as good as gold, and you'd ought to let me bide along of the old
lady and knit.'

'I'll give you something better to do than knit soon.'

'What for will you?'

'Oh! you women! Are you a little innocent, Hazel? Or are you a d--d
clever woman?'

'I dunno. But I canna come no more.'

'Won't, you mean. Very well.'

'What'n you mean, saying "very well" so choppy?'

'I mean that if a man chooses to see a woman, see her he will. It's his
place to find ways. It's her privilege to hide if she likes, or do any
d--d thing she likes. That only makes it more exciting. Now go back to
your knitting. Fff! knitting!'

The startled pigeons fled up with a steely clatter of wings at his
sudden laughter.

'Oh! hushee! They'll hear and come out.'

'I don't care. If the dead heard and came out and stood between us, I
shouldn't care! What are you whispering?'

Hazel had said, 'Whoever she be, have her he will, for certain sure.'

She would not repeat it, and he turned sharply away in a huff.

She also turned away with a sigh of relief, but almost immediately
looked back, and watched his retreating figure until it was lost in the
trees.




Chapter 20


On Lord's Day more than on any other at the mountain Hazel was like a
small derelict boat beached on a peaceful shore. There was a hypnotic
quiet about the place, with no sound of Martha's scrubbing, no smell of
cooking. There was always cold meat on Lord's Day, with pickled
cabbage, that concomitant of mysterious Sabbath blessedness. A subdued
excitement prevailed about service-time, and sank again afterwards like
a wind in the tree-tops.

Hazel felt very proud of Edward in chapel, and a little awed at his
bearing and his abstracted air. She came near to loving him on the
lilac-scented Sundays when he read those old fragrant love-stories that
he had dreaded. His voice was pleasant and deep.

'"And he took unto him his wife, and she bare him a son."'

It may have been that the modulations of Edward's voice spoke as
eloquently as words to her, or that Reddin had destroyed her childish
detachment, but she began to bring these old tales into touch with her
own life. She envied these glamorous women of the ancient world. They
were so tall, so richly clad, dwelling under their golden-fruited trees
beneath skies for ever blue. It was all so simple for them. There were
no Reddins, no old ladies.

Their stories went smoothly with unravelled thread, not like her
knitting. She began to long to be one of that dark-eyed company, clear
and changeless as polished ivory, moving with a slow and gliding
stateliness across the rose-coloured dawn, bearing on their heads with
effortless grace beautiful pitchers of water for a thirsty world.

Edward had shown her just such a picture in his mother's illustrated
Bible. Instinctively she fell back on the one link between herself and
them.

'Ed'ard's took _me_ to wife,' she thought. The sweetest of vague
new ideas stirred in her mind like leaf-buds within the bark of a
spring tree. They brought a new expression to her face.

Edward's eyes strayed continually to the bar of dusty sunlight where
she sat, her down-bent face as mysterious as all vitality is when seen
in a new aspect. The demure look she wore in chapel was contradicted by
a nascent wildness hovering about her lips.

Edward tried to keep his attention on the prayers, and wished he was an
Episcopalian, and had his prayers ready-made for him. He once mentioned
this to his mother, who was much shocked. She said home-made prayers
and home-made bread and home-made jam were the best.

'As for manufactured jam, it's a sloven's refuge, and no more to be
said. And prayer's the same. The best printed prayer's no better than
bought mixed at four-pence the pound, and a bit gone from keeping.'

Edward stumbled on, as Mr. James said afterwards, 'like my old mare
Betsy, a step and a stumble, a nod and a flop, and home in the Lord's
own time--that's to say, the small hours.'

The chapel was still hot, though cool green evening brooded without and
the birds had emerged from their day-long coma. Wood-pigeons spoke in
their deep voices from the dark pines across the batch a language older
than the oldest script of man. Cuckoos shouted in the wind-riven
larches, green beyond imagining, at the back of the chapel. A blackbird
meditated aloud in high rhapsody, very leisured, but very tireless, on
matters deeper than the Coppice Pool far below, deep as the mystery of
the chipped, freckled eggs in his nest in the thorn. In and out of the
yellow broom-coverts woodlarks played, made their small flights, and
sang their small songs. Bright orange wild bees and black bumblebees
floated in through the open windows. Mrs. Marston's black and white
hens and the minorca cockerel pecked about the open door and came in
inquiringly, upon which Martha, who sat near the door for that purpose,
swept them softly out with the clothes-prop, which she manipulated in a
masterly manner.

Mrs. Marston, eyeing Hazel at all the 'Amens,' when, as she always
said, one _ought_ to look up, like fowls after a drink, thought it
was a pity. What was a pity she did not divulge to herself. She
concluded with, 'Well, well, the childless father no sinners,' and
hastily shut her eyes, realizing that another 'Amen' had nearly come.
Edward's voice had taken a tone of relief which meant the end of a
prayer.

Mrs. Marston glanced up at him, and decided to put some aniseed in his
tea. 'High thinking's as bad as an embolus,' she thought. But Edward
was not thinking. He was doing a much more strenuous thing--feeling.
Hazel wondered at the vividness of his eyes when he rose from his
knees.

'I'm glad I'm Ed'ard's missus, and not Mr. Reddin's,' she thought.

She had not seen Reddin for a week, having, since their last meeting in
the wood, been so much afraid of encountering him that she had scarcely
left the house.

The days were rather dull without her visits to the woods, but they
were safe.

Edward gave out his text:

'Of those that Thou hast given me have I lost none.'

All his tenderness for Hazel and her following crept into his sermon.
He spoke of the power of protection as almost the greatest good in
life, the finest work. He said it was the inevitable reward of
self-sacrifice, and that, if one were ready for self-denial, one
could protect the beloved from all harm.

There was a crunching of gravel outside, and Reddin walked in. He sat
down just behind Hazel. Edward glanced up, pleased to have so important
an addition to the congregation, and continued his sermon. Hazel, red
and white by turns, was in such a state of miserable embarrassment that
Reddin was almost sorry for her. But he did not move his gaze from her
profile.

At last Mrs. Marston, ever watchful for physical symptoms, whispered,
'Are you finding it oppressive? Would you like to go out?'

Hazel went out with awkward haste, and Mrs. Marston followed, having
mouthed incomprehensible comfort to Edward.

He went on stumblingly with the service.

Reddin, realizing that he had been femininely outwitted, smiled. Edward
wondered who this distinguished-looking man with the merciless mouth
might be. He thought the smile was one of amusement at his expense. But
Reddin was summing him up with a good deal of respect.

Here was a man who would need reckoning with.

'The parson's got a temper,' he reflected, looking at him keenly, 'and,
by the Lord, I'm going to rouse it!'

He smiled again as he always did when breaking horses.

He got up suddenly and went out. Mrs. Marston, administering raspberry
cordial in the parlour, heard him knock, and went to the front door.

'Can I help?' he asked in his pleasantest manner. 'A doctor or
anything?'

Mrs. Marston laughed softly. She liked young men, and thought Reddin 'a
nice lad,' for all his forty years. She liked his air of breeding as he
stood cap in hand awaiting orders. Above all, she was curious.

'No thank you,' she said. 'But come in, all the same. It's very kind of
you. And such a hot day! But it's very pleasant in the parlour. And
you'll have a drink of something cool. Now what shall it be?'

'Sherry,' he said, with his eyes on Hazel's.

'I misdoubt if there's any of the Christmas-pudding bottle left, but
I'll go and see,' she said, all in a flutter. How tragic a thing for
her, who prided herself on her housewifery, to have no sherry when it
was asked for!

Her steps died away down the cellar stairs.

'So you thought you'd outwitted me?' he said. 'Now you know I've not
tamed horses all my life for nothing.'

'Leave me be.'

'You don't want me to.'

'Ah! I do.'

'After I've come all these miles and miles to see you, day after day?'

'I dunna care how many miles you've acome,' said Hazel passionately;
'what for do you do it? Go back to the dark house where you come from,
and leave me be!'

Reddin dropped his pathos.

She was sitting on the horsehair sofa, he in an armchair at its head.
He flung out one arm and pulled her back so that her head struck the
mahogany frame of the sofa.

'None of that!' he said.

He kissed her wildly, and in the kisses repaid himself for all his
waiting in the past few weeks. She was crying from the pain of the
bump; his kisses hurt her; his shoulder was hard against her breast.
She was shaken by strange tremors. She struck him with her clenched
hand. He laughed.

'Will you behave yourself? Will you do what I tell you?' he asked.

'I'd be much obleeged,' she said faintly, 'if you'd draw your shoulder
off a bit.'

Something in the request touched him. He sat quite silent for a time in
Edward's armchair and they looked at one another in a haunted
immobility. Reddin was sorry for his violence, but would not say so.

Then they heard Mrs. Marston's slide, and she entered with a large
decanter.

'This is some of the sparkling gooseberry,' she said, 'by Susan Waine's
recipe, poor thing! Own cousin to my husband she was, and a good kind
body. Never a thing awry in her house, and twelve children had Susan. I
remember as clear as clear how the carpet (it was green jute,
reversible) was rucked up at her funeral by the bearers' feet. And
George Waine said, "That'll worry Susan," and then he remembered, and
burst out crying, poor man! And he cried till the party was quite
spoilt, and our spirits so low. Where was I? Oh yes, It's quite up, you
see, and four years old this next midsummer. But I'm sure I'm quite put
out at having no sherry, on account of Martha thinking to return the
bottle and finishing the dregs. And there, you asked for sherry!'

'Did I? Oh, well, I like this just as much, thanks.'

He felt uncomfortable at this drinking of wine in Marston's house. It
seemed unsportsmanlike to hoodwink this old lady. He had no qualms
about Hazel. He was going, if Hazel would be sensible, to give her a
life she would like, and things her instincts cried out for. Possibly
he was right in imagining that her instincts were traitors to her
personality. For Nature--that sardonic mother--while she cries with the
silver cadence of ten thousand nightingales, 'Take what you want, my
children,' sees to it, in the dark of her sorcery-chamber, that her
children want what she intends.

'Is it to your liking, Mr.--? I didn't quite catch your name,' said
Mrs. Marston.

'Reddin, ma'am. Jack Reddin of Undern.'

The name rang in the quiet room with a startling sound, like a gunshot
in a wood at night when the birds are roosting.

At that moment Edward came in, not having waited till Mr. James had
affectionately counted the collection.

'Is Hazel all right, mother?' he called when he got to the front door.

'Oh yes, my dear. It was but the heat. And here's a gentleman to see
you. Mr. Reddin of Undern.'

Edward came forward with his hand out, and Reddin took it. Their eyes
met; a curious hush fell on the room; Hazel sighed tremulously.

'Pleased to see you at our little service, Mr. Reddin,' Edward said
heartily.

Reddin smiled and said, 'Thanks.'

'Glad there's anything in our simplicity to attract you,' Edward went
on, wondering if his sermons were really not so bad, after all.

Reddin laughed again shortly. Edward put this down to shyness.

'I hope we shall often have you with us again.'

Reddin's eyes narrowed slightly. 'Yes, thanks. I shall be with you
again.'

'You'll stay and have some supper?'

'Thanks.'

He had left off feeling unsportsmanlike. He had no compunction towards
Edward. It was man to man, and the woman to the winner. This was the
code avowed by his ancestors openly, and by himself and his
contemporaries tacitly. He began to be as excited as he was in a
steeplechase.

Edward went and sat down by Hazel, asking softly: 'And how is my little
girl?'

She looked up at him, quiescent, and smiled. Reddin eyed them for a
moment, construing their attitudes in his own way. To the unclean mind
all frankness of word or action is suspect. Then he turned sharply to
Mrs. Marston.

'I can't stay, after all,' he said; 'I've just remembered--something.
Thanks very much'--he looked reflectively at Hazel--for the sherry.'

He was gone. 'My dear'--Mrs. Marston spoke triumphantly--'didn't I
always say that gooseberry wine of Susan Waine's recipe was as good as
champagne? Now you see I'm right. For Mr. Reddin of Undern--and a nice
pleasant young man he is, too, though a little set about the mouth--and
I remember when I was a girl there was a man with just such a mouth
came to the May fair with a magic wheel, and it was a curious thing
that the wheel never stopped opposite one of the prizes except when he
turned it himself; and there! I did so want the green and yellow tab
cat--real china--and I spent every penny, but the wheel went on.'

'Poor mother!'

'Yes, my dear, I cried buckets. And I've never trusted that mouth
since. But, of course, Mr. Reddin's not that kind at all, and quite
above fairs and such things.'

'I don't care for him much,' Edward said.

'No more do I,' said Hazel in a heartfelt tone.




Chapter 21


Hazel was up early next morning. She could not sleep, and thought she
would go down into the valley and look for spring mushrooms.

She crept out of the house, still as death, except for Mrs. Marston's
soft yet all-pervading snores. Out in the graveyard, where as yet no
bird sang, it was as if the dead had arisen in the stark hours between
twelve and two, and were waiting unobtrusively, majestically, each by
his own bed, to go down and break their long fast with the bee and the
grass-snake in refectories too minute and too immortal to be known by
the living. The tombstones seemed taller, seemed to have a presence
behind them; the lush grass, lying grey and heavy with dew, seemed to
have been swept by silent passing crowds. A dank smell came up, and the
place had at once the unkempt look worn by the scene of some past
revelry and the expectant air of a stage prepared for a coming drama.

Foxy barked sharply, urgently alive in the stronghold of the dead, and
Hazel went to explain why she could not come. They held a long
conversation, Hazel whispering. Foxy eloquent of eye. Foxy had a marked
personality. Dignity never failed her, and she could be hilarious,
loving, or clamorous for food without losing a jot of it. She was
possessed of herself; the wild was her kingdom. If she was in a
kennel--so her expression led you to understand--she was there
incognito and of her own choice. Hazel, sitting at Edward's table,
had the same look.

When the conversation was over, and Foxy had obediently curled herself
to sleep with one swift motion like a line of poetry, Hazel went down
the hill. She felt courageous; going to the valley was braving
civilization. She had Mrs. Marston's skirt-fastener--the golden
butterfly, complicated by various hooks--to keep her petticoats up
later on. She also had the little bag in which Edward was accustomed to
take the Lord's Supper to a distant chapel. To her, mushrooms were as
clean as the Lord's Supper, no less mysterious, equally incidental to
human needs. In her eyes nothing could be more magical and holy than
silken, pink-lined mushrooms placed for her in the meadows overnight by
the fairies, or by someone greater and more powerful called God.

As she went down the mountain it seemed that the whole country was
snowed over. Mist--soft, woolly, and intensely white--lay across the
far plain in drifts, filled the valley, and stood about the distant
hills almost to their summits. The tops of Hunter's Spinney, God's
Little Mountain, and the hill behind Undern stood out darkly green. The
long rose-briars, set with pale coral buds, looked elvish against the
wintry scene.

As Hazel descended the mist rose like a wall about her, shutting her
off from Undern and the Mountain. She felt like a child out of school,
free of everyone, her own for the pearly hours of morning. When she
came to the meadows she gathered up her skirts well above her knees,
took off her shoes and stockings, and pinned her sleeves to the
shoulders. She ran like a tightly swathed nymph, small and slender,
with her slim legs and arms shining in the fresh cold dew. She looked
for nests and called 'Thuckoo!' to the cuckoos, and found a young one,
savagely egotistic, not ready for flight physically, but ready for
untold things psychically.

'You'm proud-stomached, you be!' said Hazel. 'You'd ought to be me,
with an old sleepy lady drawing her mouth down whatever you do, and a
young fellow--' She stopped. She could not even tell a bird about
Reddin. She danced among the shut daisies, wild as a fairy, and when
the sun rose her shadow mocked her with delicate foolery. In her hand,
and in that of the shadow, bobbed the little black Lord's Supper bag.

She went on, regardless of direction. At last she found an old pasture
where heavy farm-horses looked round at her over their polished flanks
and a sad-eyed foal rose to greet her. There she found button mushrooms
to her heart's content. Ancient hedges hung above the field and spoke
to her in fragrant voices. The glory of the may was just giving place
to the shell-tint of wild-roses. She reached up for some, and her hair
fell down; she wisely put the remaining pins in the bag for the return
journey. She was intensely happy, as a fish is when it plunges back
into the water. For these things, and not the God-fearing comfort
of the Mountain, nor the tarnished grandeur of Undern, were her life.
She had so deep a kinship with the trees, so intuitive a sympathy with
leaf and flower, that it seemed as if the blood in her veins was not
slow-moving human blood, but volatile sap. She was of a race that will
come in the far future, when we shall have outgrown our egoism--the
brainless egoism of a little boy pulling off flies' wings. We shall
attain philosophic detachment and emotional sympathy. We have even now
far outgrown the age when a great genius like Shakespeare could be so
clumsy in the interpretation of other than human life. We have left
behind us the bloodshot centuries when killing was the only sport, and
we have come to the slightly more reputable times when lovers of
killing are conscious that a distinct effort is necessary in order to
keep up 'the good old English sports.' Better things are in store for
us. Even now, although the most expensively bound and the most
plentiful books in the stationers' shops are those about killing and
its thousand ramifications, nobody reads them. They are bought at
Christmas for necessitous relations and little boys.

Hazel, in the fields and woods, enjoyed it all so much that she walked
in a mystical exaltation.

Reddin in the fields and woods enjoyed himself only. For he took his
own atmosphere with him wherever he went, and before his footsteps
weakness fled and beauty folded.

The sky blossomed in parterres of roses, frailer and brighter than the
rose of the briar, and melted beneath them into lagoons greener and
paler than the veins of a young beech-leaf. The fairy hedges were so
high, so flushed with beauty, the green airy waters ran so far back into
mystery, that it seemed as if at any moment God might walk there as
in a garden, delicate as a moth. Down by the stream Hazel found tall
water-plantains, triune of cup, standing above the ooze like candelabras,
and small rough-leaved forget-me-nots eyeing their liquid reflections
with complaisance. She watched the birds bathe--bullfinches, smooth-coated
and well-found; slim willow-wrens; thrushes, ermine-breasted; lusty
blackbirds with beaks of crude yellow. They made neat little tracks
over the soft mud, drank, bathed, preened, and made other neat little
tracks. Then they 'took off,' as Hazel put it, from the top of the bank,
and flew low across the painted meadow or high into the enamelled tree,
and piped and fluted till the air was full of silver.

Hazel stood as Eve might have stood, hands clasped, eyes full of
ecstasy, utterly self-forgetful, enchanted with these living toys.

'Eh, yon's a proper bird!' she exclaimed, as a big silken cuckoo
alighted on the mud with a gobble, drank with dignity, and took its
vacillating flight to a far ash-tree. 'Foxy ought to see that,' she
added.

Silver-crested peewits circled and cried with their melancholy
cadences, and a tawny pheasant led out her young. Now that the dew was
gone, and cobwebs no longer canopied the field with silver, it was blue
with germander speedwell--each flower painted with deepening colour,
eyed with startling white, and carrying on slender stamens the round
white pollen-balls--worlds of silent, lovely activity. Every
flower-spike had its family of buds, blue jewels splashed with white,
each close-folded on her mystery. To see the whole field not only
bright with them, but brimming over, was like watching ten thousand
saints rapt in ecstasy, ten thousand children dancing. Hazel knew
nothing of saints. She had no words for the wonder in which she walked.
But she felt it, she enjoyed it with a passion no words could express.

Mrs. Marston had said several times, 'I'm almost afraid Hazel is
a great one for wasting her time.' But what is waste of time? Eating
and sleeping; hearing grave, sedulous men read out of grave,
sedulous book what we have heard a hundred times; besieging God
(whom we end by imagining as a great ear) for material benefits;
amassing property--these, the world says, are not waste of time.
But to drink at the stoup of beauty; to lift the leafy coverlet of
earth and seek the cradled God (since here, if anywhere, He dwells),
this in the world's eye is waste of time. Oh, filthy, heavy-handed,
blear-eyed world, when will you wash and be clean?

Hazel came to a place where the white water crossed the road in a
glittering shallow ford. Here she stayed, leaning on the wooden bridge,
hearing small pebbles grinding on one another; seeing jewel-flashes of
ruby, sapphire and emerald struck from them by the low sunlight;
smelling the scent that is better than all (except the scent of air on
a barren mountain, or of snow)--the scent of running water. She watched
the grey wagtails, neat and trim in person, but wild in bearing, racing
across the wet gravel like intoxicated Sunday-school teachers. Then, in
a huge silver-willow that brooded, dove-like, over the ford, a blackcap
began to sing. The trills and gushes of perfect melody, the golden
repetitions, the heart-lifting ascents and wistful falls drooping
softly as a flower, seemed wonderful to her as an angel's song. She and
the bird, sheltered under the grey-silver feathers of the trees, lived
their great moments of creation and receptivity until suddenly there
was a sharp noise of hoofs, the song snapped, the willow was
untenanted, and Reddin's horse splashed through the ford.

'Oh!' cried Hazel, 'what for did you break the song? A sacred bird, it
was. And now it's fled!'

He had been riding round the remnant of his estate, a bit of hill
sheep-walk that faced the Mountain and overlooked the valley. He had
seen Hazel wander down the road, white-limbed and veiled in tawny hair.
He thought there must be something wrong with his sight. Bare legs!
Bare arms! Hair all loose, and no hat! As a squire-farmer, he was very
much shocked. As a man, he spurred downhill at the risk of a bad fall.

Hazel, unlike the women of civilization, who are pursued by
looking-glasses, was apt to forget herself and her appearance. She
had done so now. But something in Reddin's face recalled her. She
hastily took the butterfly out of her skirt and put on her shoes
and stockings.

'What song?' asked Reddin.

'A bird in the tree. What for did you fritten it?'

Reddin was indignant. Seeing Hazel wandering thus so near his own
domain, he thought she had come in the hope of seeing him. He also
thought that the strangeness of her dress was an effort to attract him.

To the pure all things are pure.

'But you surely wanted to see me? Wasn't that why you came?' he asked.

'No, it wasna. I came to pick the little musherooms as come wi' the
warm rain, for there's none like spring musherooms. And I came to see
the flowers, and hearken at the birds, and look the nesses.'

'You could have lots of flowers and birds at Undern.'

'There's plenty at the Mountain.'

'Then why did you come here?'

'To be by my lonesome.'

'Snub for me!' he smiled. He liked opposition. 'But look here, Hazel,'
he reasoned. 'If you'd come to Undern, I'd make you enjoy life.'

'But I dunna want to. I be Ed'ard's missus.'

'Be missus!' At the phrase his weather-coarsened face grew redder. It
intoxicated him.

He slipped off his horse and kissed her.

'I dunna want to be anybody's missus!' she cried vexedly. 'Not yourn
nor Ed'ard's neither! But I Ed'ard's, and so I mun stay.' She turned
away.

'Good morning to you,' she said in her old-fashioned little way. She
trudged up the road. Reddin watched her, a forlorn, slight figure armed
with the black bag, weary with the sense of reaction. Reddin was angry
and depressed. The master of Undern had been for the second time
refused.

'H'm,' he said, considering her departing figure, 'it won't be asking
next time, my lady! And it won't be for you to refuse.'

He turned home, accompanied by that most depressing companion--the
sense of his own meanness. He was unable to help knowing that the
exercise of force against weakness is the most cur-like thing on earth.




Chapter 22


Hazel was picking wimberry-flowers from their stalks. She sucked out
the drop of honey from each flower like a bee. The blossoms were like
small, rose-coloured tulips upside down, very magical and clear of
colour. The sky also was like a pink tulip veined and streaked with
purple and saffron. In its depth, like the honey in the flowers, it
held the low, golden sun. Evening stood tiptoe upon the windy hill-top.

Hazel had eaten quite a quantity of honey, and had made an appreciable
difference in the wimberry yield of half an acre, for she sipped
hastily like a honey-fly. She was one of those who are full of
impatience and haste through the sunny hours of day, clamorous for
joy, since the night cometh. Some prescience was with her. She snatched
what her eyes desired, and wept with disappointment. For it is the
calm natures, wrapt in timeless quiet, taking what comes and asking
nothing, that really enjoy. Hazel ate the fairy tulips as a pixie might,
sharp-toothed, often consuming them whole. So she partook of her
sacrament in both kinds, and she partook of it alone, taking her
wafers and her honeyed wine from hands she never saw, in a presence
she could not gauge. She did not even wonder whether it meant ill or
well by her. She was barely conscious of it. When she found an
unusually large globe of honey in a flower, she sang. Her song was
as inconsequent as those of the woodlarks, who, with their hurried
ripple of notes and their vacillating flights, were as eager and
as soon discouraged as she was herself. Her voice rang out over
the listening pastures, and the sheep looked up in a contemplative,
ancient way like old ladies at a concert with their knitting. Hazel
had fastened two foxgloves round her head in a wreath, and as she
went their deep and darkly spotted bells shook above her, and she
walked, like a jester in a grieving world, crowned with madness.

Suddenly a shout rang across the hill and silenced her and the
woodlarks. She saw against the full-blown flower of the west--black on
scarlet--Reddin on his tall black horse, galloping towards her. Clouds
were coming up for night. They raced with him. From one great round
rift the light poured on Hazel as it does from a burning-glass held
over a leaf. It burned steadily on her, and then was moved, as if by an
invisible hand. Reddin came on, and the thunder of his horse's hoofs
was in her ears. Hurtling thus over the pastures, breaking the year-long
hush, he was the embodiment of the destructive principle, of cruelty,
of the greater part of human society--voracious and carnivorous--with
its curious callousness towards the nerves of the rest of the world.

'I a'most thought it was the death-pack,' said Hazel, speaking first,
as the more nervous always does.

She stood uncomfortably looking up at him as a rabbit looks, surprised
half-way out of its burrow.

'Where be going?' she asked at last.

'Looking for you.'

Hazel could not enjoy the flattery of this; she was so perturbed by his
nearness.

'Where's your lord and master?'

'Ed'ard inna my master. None is.' A hot indignant flush surged over
her.

'Yes,' said he; 'I am.'

'That you're not, and never will be.'

Reddin said nothing. He sat looking down at her. In the large landscape
his figure was carved on the sky, slenderly minute; yet it was instinct
with forces enough to uproot a thousand trees and become, by virtue of
these, the centre of the picture. He looked at his best on horse-back,
where his hardness and roughness appeared as necessary qualities, and
his too great share of virility was used up in courage and will-power.

Hazel gazed defiantly back; but at last her eyelids flickered, and she
turned away.

'I am,' Reddin repeated softly.

He was as sure of her as he was of the rabbits and hares he caught in
spring-traps when hunger drove them counter to instinct. A power was on
Hazel now, driving her against the one instinct of her life hitherto--the
wild creature's instinct for flight and self-preservation. She said
nothing.

Reddin was filled with a tumultuous triumph that Sally Haggard had
never roused.

'I am,' he said again, and laughed as if he enjoyed the repetition.
'Come here!'

Hazel came slowly, looked up, and burst into tears.

'Hello! Tears already?' he said, concerned. 'Keep 'em till there's
something to cry for.'

He dismounted and slipped the rein over his arm.

'What's up, Hazel Woodus?' He put one arm round her.

The sheep looked more ancient than ever, less like old ladies at a
concert than old ladies looking over their prayer-books at a
blasphemer.

'My name inna Woodus. You'd ought to call me Mrs. Marston.'

For answer, he kissed her so that she cried out.

'That's to show if I'll call you Mrs. Marston.'

'I'd liefer be.'

'What?'

'Ed'ard's missus than yourn.'

He ground a foxglove underfoot.

'And there's Foxy in a grand new kennel, and me in a seat in chapel,
and a bush o' laylac give me for myself, and a garden and a root o'
virgin's pride.'

'I shall have that!' said Reddin, and stopped, having blundered into
symbolism, and not knowing where he was. Hazel was silent also, playing
with a foxglove flower.

'What are you up to?' he asked.

She was glad of something to talk about.

'Look! When you get 'un agen the light you can see two little green
things standing inside like people in a tent. They think they're safe
shut in!' She bent down and called: 'I see yer! I see yer!' laughing.

Reddin was bent on getting back to more satisfactory topics.

'They're just two, like us,' he said.

'Ah! We're like under a tent,' she answered, looking at the arching
sky.

'Only there's nobody looking at us.'

'How do you know?' she whispered, looking up gravely. 'I'm thinking
there _be_ somebody somewhere out t'other side of that there blue,
and looking through like us through this here flower. And if so be he
likes he can tear it right open, and get at us.'

Reddin looked round almost apprehensively. Then, as the best way of
putting a stop to superstition, he caught her to him and kissed her
again.

'That's what tents are for, and what you're for,' he said. But he felt
a chill in the place, and Hazel had frightened herself so much that she
could not be lured from her aloofness.

'I mun go home-along,' she said; 'the sun's undering.'

'Will you come to Hunter's Spinney on Sunday?'

'Why ever?'

'Because I say so.'

'But why so far, whatever?' she asked amazedly.

'Because I want you to.'

'But I mun go to chapel along of Ed'ard, and sing 'ymns proper wi' the
folks--and me singing higher nor any of them can go, for all I'm new to
it--and the old lady'--her face grew mischievous--'the old lady in a
shiny silk gownd as creaks and creaks when she stirs about!'

Reddin lost patience.

'You're to start as soon as they're in church, d'you see?'

'Maybe I 'unna come.'

'You've got to. Look here, Hazel, you like having a lover, don't you?'

'I dunno.'

'Hazel! I'll bring you a present.'

'I dunna want it. What is it?' she said in a breath.

'Something nice. Then you promise to come?'

There was a long silence.

Her eyes seemed to her to be caught by his. She could not look away.
And his eyes said strange, terrific things to her, things for which she
had no words, wakening vitality, flattering, commanding, stirring a new
curiosity, robbing her of breath.

They stood thus for a long time, as much alone under the flaming sky as
a man and woman of the stone age.

When at least he released her eyes, he swung silently into the saddle
and was gone.

When he got home, Vessons came shambling to the door.

'Supper and a tot of whisky!' ordered his master.

Vessons took no notice, but eyed the horse.

'You dunna mind how much work you give me at the day's end, do you?' he
inquired conversationally.

'Get on with your jobs!'

'Now, what wench'll cry for this night's work?' mused Vessons.




Chapter 23


Hazel ran home through the dew, swift as a hare to her form. Mrs.
Marston, communing with a small wood fire and a large Bible, looked
over her spectacles as Hazel came in, and said:

'Draw your stockinged foot along the boards, my dear. Yes, I thought
so, damp.'

Hazel changed her stockings by the fire, and felt very cared for and
very grand. A fire to change in the parlour! And several pairs of new
stockings! She had never had more than one pair before, and those with
'ladders' in them. 'These here be proper stockings,' she said
complacently--'these with holes in 'em as Edward bought me. Holes as
_ought_ to be there, I mane. They show my legs mother-naked, and
they look right nice.'

'Don't say that word, dear.'

'What 'un?'

Mrs. Marston was silent for a moment. 'The sixth from the end,' she
said; 'it's not nice for a minister's wife.'

'What mun I say?'

Mrs. Marston was in a difficulty. 'Well,' she said at last, 'Edward
should not have given you any cause to say anything.'

Hazel blazed into loyalty.

'I'm sure I'm very much obleeged to Ed'ard,' she said, 'and I like 'em
better for showing my legs. Oh, here _be_ Ed'ard! Ed'ard, these be
proper stockings, inna they?'

Edward glanced at them, and said indifferently that they were. As he
did so, a line that had lately appeared on his forehead became very
apparent.

In her room upstairs, papered with buttercups and daisies by Edward
himself, and scented by a bunch of roses he had given her, Hazel
thought about Hunter's Spinney. Edward would not like her to go, and
Edward had been kind--kinder than anyone had ever been. He had extended
his kindness to Foxy also. 'I'm sure Foxy's much obleeged,' she
thought. 'No, she could never tell Edward about Hunter's Spinney. If he
questioned her, she knew that she would lie. He would certainly not be
pleased. He might be very angry. Mrs. Marston would not like it at all;
she would talk about a minister's wife. Reddin had said she must go,
but she must not.' She smelt the roses.

'No,' she said, 'I must ne'er go to the Hunter's Spinney--not till doom
breaks!' She said her prayers under the shelter of that resolve, with a
supplementary one written out very neatly in gold ink by Edward, who
wrote, as his mother said, 'a parchment script.'

But when she lay down she could not keep her mind clear of Reddin;
during each meeting with him she had been more perturbed. His
personality dragged at hers. Already he was stronger than her fugitive
impulses, her wilding reserve. He was like a hand tearing open a
triplet of sorrel leaves folded for rain, so strong in their impulse
for self-protection that they could only be conquered by destruction.
She was afraid of him, yet days without him were saltless food. There
was a ruthlessness about him--the male instinct unaccompanied by
humility, the patrician instinct unaccompanied by sympathy, the
sportsman's instinct unaccompanied by pity. Whatever he began he would
finish. What had he now begun?

Innocence and instinct, ignorance and curiosity, struggled in her mind.
The attitude of civilization and the Churches towards sex is not one to
help a girl in such an hour. For while approving of, and even insisting
on, children, they treat with a secrecy that implies disapproval the
necessary physical factors that result in children. Tacitly, though not
openly, they consider sex disgraceful. Though Hazel had come in contact
with the facts of life less than most cottage girls, she was not
completely ignorant. But the least ignorant woman knows nothing at all
about sex until she has experienced it. So Hazel was dependent on
intuition. Intuition told her that if the peaceful life at the
parsonage was to continue, she must keep away from Hunter's Spinney.
But she could not keep away. It was as if someone had spun invisible
threads between her and Reddin, and was slowly tightening them.

Long after Edward had locked the house up and shut his door, after the
ticking of the clock had ceased to be incidental and become portentous,
Hazel lay and tried to think. But she only heard two voices in endless
contradiction, 'I munna go. I mun go.' At last she got up and fetched
the book of charms, written in a childish, illiterate hand, and nearly
black with use.

'I'll try a midsummer 'un, for it's Midsummer Eve come Saturday,' she
thought.

She searched the book and found a page headed 'The Flowering of the
Brake.' That one she decided to work on Saturday.

'And to-morrow the Harpers, and Friday the Holy Sign,' she said. 'And
if they say go, I'll go, and if they say stay, I'll stay.'

She fell asleep, feeling that she had shifted the responsibility.

Her mother had said that before any undertaking you should work the
Harper charm. The book directed that on a lonely hill, you must listen
with your eyes shut for the fairy playing. If the undertaking was good
you would hear, coming from very far away, a sound of harping. Silver
folk with golden harps, so the book said, keep on a purple hill
somewhere beyond seeing, and there they play the moon up and the moon
down. And at sun-up they cry for those that have not heard them. If you
hear them ever so faintly, you can go on to the end of your
undertaking, and there'll be no tears in it. But you must never tire of
waiting, nor tell anyone what you have heard.

The next night Hazel stole out in the heavy dew to a hummock of the
mountain, and sat down there to wait for moonrise. But when the moon
came--the thinnest of silver half-hoops, very faint in the reflected
rose from the west--there was no sound except the song of the wood-larks.
They persevered, although the sun was gone. Soon they, too, were hushed,
and Hazel was folded in silence.

She waited a long while. The chapel and the minister's house sank into
the deepening night as into water. The longer the omen tarried, the
more she wanted it to come. Then fatalism reasserted itself, and she
relapsed into her usual state of mind.

'I dunna care,' she said. 'It inna no use to tarry. They unna play.
I'll bide along of Ed'ard at chapel on Sunday, and sing higher than
last time.' She turned home.

At that moment a note of music, strayed, it seemed, out of space,
wandered across the hill-top. Then a few more, thin and silvery, ran
down the silence like a spray of water. The air was lost in distance,
but the notes were undoubtedly those of a harp.

'It's them!' whispered Hazel. 'I'm bound to go.' Then she remembered
her mother's injunctions, and took to her heels. At home in her quiet
room, she thought of the strange shining folk playing on their purple
mountain.

She never knew that the harper was her father returning by devious
roads from one of the many festivals at which he played in summer-time,
and having frequent rests by the way, owing to the good ale he had
drunk. Her bright galaxy of faery was only a drunken man. Her fate had
been settled by a passing whim of his, but so had been her coming into
the world.

When she went in, Edward was sitting up for her, anxious, but trying to
reason himself into calm, as Hazel was given to roaming.

'Where have you been?' he asked rather sternly, for he had suffered
many things from anxiety and from his mother.

'Only up to'erts the pool, Ed'ard.'

'Don't go there again.'

'Canna I go walking on the green hill by my lonesome?'

'No. You can go in the woods. They're safe enough.'

'Foxy's a bad dog!' came Mrs. Marston's voice from upstairs. 'She bit
the rope and took the mutton!'

'Eh, I'm main sorry!' cried Hazel. 'But she inna a bad dog, Mrs.
Marston; she's a good fox.'

'According to natural history she may be, but in my sight she's a bad
dog.' She shut her door with an air of finality.

'The old lady canna'd abear Foxy,' said Hazel. 'Nobody likes Foxy.'

She was stubbornly determined that the world bore her a grudge because
she loved Foxy. Perhaps she had discovered that the world has a sharp
sword for the vulnerable, and that love is easily wounded.

'Don't call mother the old lady, dear.'

'Well, she is. And she says animals has got no souls. She'm only got a
little small 'un herself.'

'Hazel!'

'Well, it's God's truth.'

'Why?'

'If she'd got a nice tidy bit herself, she'd know Foxy'd got one, too.
Now I've got a shimmy with lace on, I know lots of other girls sure to
have 'em. Afore I couldna have believed it.'

Edward could find no reply to this.

'Are you happy here, Hazel?' he asked.

'Ah! I be.'

'You don't miss--'

'Father? Not likely!' She looked up with her clear golden eyes. 'You'm
mother and father both!'

'Only that, dear?'

'Brother.'

'You've forgotten one, Hazel--husband.' His eyes were wistful. 'And
lover, perhaps, some day,' he added. 'Good night, dear.'

She lifted a childish mouth, grateful and ready to be affectionate. Too
ready, he thought. He looked so eagerly for shyness--a flicker of the
eyelids, a mounting flush. He was no fool, nor was he in the least
ascetic. In his dreamy life before Hazel came, he had thought of a sane
and manly and normal future when he thought of it at all. Now he found
that the reality was not like his dreams. The saneness and manliness
were still needed, but the joy had gone, or at least was veiled.

'It will come all right,' he told himself, and waited. His face took
an expression of suspense. He was like one that watches, rapt, for
the sunrise. Only the sun stayed beneath the horizon. He called
Hazel in his mind by the country name for wood-sorrel--the Sleeping
Beauty. He left her to sleep as long as she would. He kept a hand
on himself, and never tried to waken her by easier ways than through
the spirit--through the senses, or vanity, or by taking advantages
of his superior intellect.

He would win her fairly or not at all. So, though to glance into her
empty white room set him trembling, though the touch of her hand set
his pulses going, he never schemed to touch her, never made pretexts to
go into her room. A stormed citadel was in his eyes a thing spoilt in
the capturing. So he waited for the gates to open. The irony was that
if he had listened to sex--who spoke to him with her deep beguiling
voice, like a purple-robed Sibyl--if he had for once parted company
with his exacting spiritual self, Hazel would have loved him. We cannot
love that in which is nothing of ourselves, and there was no white fire
of spiritual exaltation in Hazel. The nearest she approached to that
was in her adoration of sensuous beauty, a green flame of passionless
devotion to loveliness as seen in inanimate things. But that there
should be anything between a man and a woman except an obvious
affection, a fraternal sort of thing, or an uncomfortable excitement
such as she felt with Reddin, was quite beyond her ideas. She did not
know that there could be a fervour of mind for mind, a clasp more
frantic than that of the arms, a continuous psychic state more
passionate than the great moments of physical passion. If Edward had
told her, she could not at this time have understood it. She would have
gazed up at him trustingly out of her autumn-tinted eyes; she would
have embodied all the spiritual glories of which he dreamed; and she
would have understood nothing. Once he tried to share with her a
passage in Drummond's 'Natural Law in the Spiritual World.' He was
reading it with young delight a good many years behind the times,
for books had usually grown very out of date before they percolated
through the country libraries to him. He had read it in his pleasant,
half-educated voice, dramatically and tenderly; his cheeks had flushed;
he had challenged her criticism with keen, attentive eyes. She had said:
'I wonder if that's our Foxy barking, or a strange 'un?'

Hazel looked long from her window that night.

'Oh, I canna go! I canna go! Ed'ard setting store by me and all!' she
said. 'Maybe the other signs wunna come.'

       *       *       *       *       *

On Friday she waited until after the others had gone to bed, and then
slipped out. She went into the silent woods as the moths went,
purposeless, yet working out destiny. It was a very warm, wet evening,
and glow-worms shone incandescently in the long grass, each with her
round, wonderful, greenish lamp at its brightest. They beckoned on to
faery, though they glowed in perfect stillness. They spoke of
marvellous things, though they lit the night in silence. It was a very
grave, a very remote personality, surely, that lit those lamps. A more
intent eye, a more careful hand were needed, one thinks, to make these
than to make the planets, and a mind more vast, big enough to include
minuteness. But Hazel felt no awe of them; she was too bounded and
earthly a creature to be afraid of mystery. It is the spirit that
maketh afraid. She was sure that they were not the Holy Sign, for she
had seen them often. The Holy Sign was quite different.

'If I be to go to Hunter's Spinney,' she said, looking up through the
black branches and twigs that were like great fowling-nets spread over
her--'if I be to go, show me the Holy Sign.'

She wandered down the narrow paths. It was very dark and warm and damp.
Once the moon came out, and she saw a long pool startle the woods with
its brightness, like lightning on steel. The yellow irises that stood
about its marges held a pale radiance, and were like butterflies
enchanted into immobility. Huge toadstools, vividly tawny as leopards,
clumps of ladyfern not yet their full height and thick with curled
fronds, stood proudly on their mossy lawns.

But none of these was the Sign.

'If it dunna come soon I'll go home-along,' she said.

And then, round the next bend, she saw it. At first she thought it was
an angel just beginning to appear. The phantom was of a man's height,
and it shone as the glow-worms did, only its light would have been
enough to read by. It had a strange effect, standing there bathed
in its own light in the black unbroken silence. It had a look of
life--subdued, but passionate--as a spirit might have when it has just
reintegrated its body out of the air. Hazel was terrified. As a rule,
she was never afraid in the woods and fields, but only in the haunts of
men. But from this, after one paralysed moment, she fled in panic. So
she never knew that her second sign was only a rotten tree, shining
with the phosphorescence of corruption.

Next morning she asked Edward:

'Could folks see angels now?'

'Yes, if it was God's will.'

'If one came, would it be a sign?'

'I suppose so, dear.'

'What'd you do, Ed'ard, if you were bound to find out summat?'

Edward was thinking out heads of a discourse on the power of prayer.

'I should pray, dear,' he said absently.

'Who'd answer?'

'God.'

'Would you hear 'Im?'

'No, dear; of course not.'

He wanted quiet to finish his sermon, but he tried to be patient.

'You would know by intuition,' he said, 'little signs.'

'The Holy Sign!' murmured Hazel. 'I saw it yester-night--a burning
angel.' 'I'm afraid you are too superstitious,' Edward said, and
returned to his remarks on ejaculatory prayer.

Some people would have found it hard to decide which was the more
superstitious, the more pathetic.




Chapter 24


In the early morning of Midsummer Eve, Hazel wandered up the
hill-slopes. There the sheep, golden, and gospel-like in the early
light, fed on wet lawns pale and unsubstantial as gauze. She did not,
as the more self-conscious creatures of civilization would have done,
envy their peace in so many words. But she did say wistfully to a
particularly ample and contented one, 'You'm pretty comfortable, binna
you?' When she went in to breakfast she thought the same of Mrs.
Marston.

Afterwards they picked black currants, Mrs. Marston seated on a
camp-stool and wearing her large mushroom hat, which always tilted
slightly and made her look rakish. Whenever a blackbird dashed out
of the grove of half-ripe red currants, scolding with demoniac
vitality, she would look up and say, 'Naughty bird.' She picked
with deliberation, and placed the currants in the basket with an
air of benediction. The day was hot and splendid, a day to make the
leaves limp and crack the flower-beds. But it was cool in the shadow
of the mountain-ash that grew near the currants, and a breeze laden
with wild thyme and moss fragrance played about the garden like an
invisible child.

At eleven Martha appeared with cake and milk, and Edward returned from
old Solomon's bedside. Then they went on picking, while Edward read
them snatches of 'Natural Law.' Hazel was soothed by the reading, to
the sense of which she paid no heed. It mingled with the drone of the
hot bees falling in and out of the big red peonies, the far-off sound
of grass-cutting, the grave, measured soliloquy of a blackbird hidden
in the flame-flowered chestnut. Hazel felt that she would like to go on
picking currants for ever, growing more and more like Mrs. Marston
every day, and at least becoming (possibly through sheer benignity) a
grandmother. There seemed no place in her life for Reddin, no time for
Hunter's Spinney. She thought, 'I wunna go. I'll stay along of Ed'ard,
and no harm'll come to me.' But a peremptory voice said that she must
go, and once more her soul became the passive battleground of strange
emotions of which she had never even dreamed. While they fought there
like creatures in the dark, Hazel, sitting in the aromatic shadow of
the currants, fell fast asleep; and as Mrs. Marston could never bring
herself to wake anyone, she slept until Martha rang the dinner-bell. So
the peaceful, golden day wore on to green evening. It was a day that
Hazel always remembered.

When the shadows grew long and dew fell, and the daisies on the graves
filled the house with their faint, innocent fragrance, and closed their
pink-lined petals for the night, Hazel felt very miserable. This very
night she was going to work the last charm--the charm of the bracken
flower--and whoso she dreamed of with that flower beneath her pillow
must be her lover. She felt traitorous to Edward in doing this. She and
Edward were handfasted. How, then, could she have any lover but Edward?
Why should she work the charm? She puzzled over this during prayers,
but no answer came to her questioning. Life is a taciturn mother, and
teaches not so much by instruction as by blows. Edward was reading the
twenty-third Psalm, which always affected his mother to tears, and in
reading which his voice was very tender, '... And lead thee forth
beside the waters of comfort.'

The room was full of a deep exaltation, a passion of trustfulness.

'I went along by the water,' Hazel thought, 'and watched the piefinches
and the canbottlins flying about. And I thought it was the waters of
comfort. Only Mr. Reddin came and frit the birds and made the water
muddy.' She did not feel as sure as the others did of the waters of
comfort.

'So beautiful, dear,' murmured Mrs. Marston, 'so like your poor dear
father.'

Edward's good night to Hazel was more curt than usual. She was looking
so mysteriously lovely. Her stress of mind had given a touch of
spirituality to her face, and there is nothing that stirs passion as
spirituality does. She had on a print frock of a neat design
reminiscent of old-fashioned china, and she had pinned a posy of
daisies on her shoulder.

For one second, as she held up her cheek to be kissed, standing on the
threshold of her moonlit room, Edward hesitated. Then he abruptly
turned and shut his door.

His hour had struck. His hour had passed.

Hazel stood in the window reading the charm.

'On Midsummer Eve, when it wants a little of midnight, spread your
smock where the bracken grows. For this is the night of the flowering
of the brake, that beareth a blue flower on the stroke of midnight. But
it is withered afore morning. Come you again about the time of the
first bird-call. If aught is in the smock, take it; it is the dust of
the flower. Sleep above it, and he you dream of is your lover. This is
a sure charm, and cannot be broke.'

       *       *       *       *       *

She took a clean chemise from the drawer, and when the landing clock
struck the half-hour she slipped out on to the hillside and laid it
under a clump of bracken. As she stooped to set it smooth and straight,
the moon swam out of cloud and flung her shadow, black and gigantic, up
the hillside. Frightened, she ran home, raked the fire together, and
made herself a cup of tea to keep her awake.

Sipping it in the dim parlour, where familiar things looked eerie, she
thought of Reddin and his strange doings since her wedding.

'Eh, but it ud anger Ed'ard sore if he came to know,' she thought.
'What for does Mr. Reddin come, when he can see I dunna want him?'

A slow flush crept over neck and temples as she half guessed the
answer.

She waited in the dove-grey hour that precedes dawn--an hour pregnant
with the future. It is full of hope; for what great deed may not be
done, what ethereal idea caged in music or poetry or colour, what rare
emotion struck out of pain in the coming day? It is full of grief; for
how many beautiful things will be trampled, great dreams torn,
sensitive spirits crucified in the time between dusk and dusk? For the
death-pack hunts at all hours, light and dark; it is no pale phantom of
dreams. It is made not of spirit hounds with fiery eyes--a ghastly
'Melody,' a grisly 'Music'--, but of our fellows, all that have
strength without pity. Sometimes our kith and kin, our nearest
intimates, are in the first flight; give a view-hallo as we slip
hopefully under a covert; are in at the death. It is not the killing
that gives horror to the death-pack so much as the lack of the impulse
not to kill. One flicker of merciful intention amid relentless action
would redeem it. For the world is founded and built up on death, and
the reality of death is neither to be questioned nor feared. Death is a
dark dream, but it is not a nightmare. It is mankind's lack of pity,
mankind's fatal propensity for torture, that is the nightmare. When a
man or woman, confronted by helpless terror, is without the impulse to
save, the world becomes hell. It was this, dimly but passionately felt,
that made Hazel shrink from Reddin. For unless Reddin was without this
impulse to save, and had the mind of a fiend without pity, how could he
in the mere pursuit of pleasure inflict wholly unnecessary torture, as
in fox-hunting?

She watched Venus shrink from a silver pool to a silver point. She was
full of trouble and unrest. Would she dream of Reddin? Would she go to
sleep at all? Mrs. Marston's armchair loomed in the gathering light,
and she felt guilty again.

The east quickened, as if someone had turned up a light there. She
opened the window, and in rushed the inexpressible sweetness of dawn.
The bush of syringa by the kitchen window swept in its whole fragrance,
heady and sensuous. She took long breaths of it, and thought of
Reddin's green dress, of the queer look in his eyes when he stared long
at her. A curious passivity quite foreign to her came over her now at
the thought of Reddin. What would he look like, what would he say,
would he hold her roughly, if she went to Hunter's Spinney? An
unwilling elation possessed her as she thought of it. It did not occur
to her to wonder why Edward did not kiss her as Reddin did. She took
him as much for granted as a child takes its parents.

Suddenly the first bird called silverly, startling the dusk. It was a
woodlark, and its song seemed even more vacillating than usual in the
vast hush. At the first note all Hazel's thoughts of Reddin fled. It
seemed that clarity, freshness, and music were bound up in her mind
with Edward. She thought only of him as she ran up the hill over the
minute starry carpet of mountain bedstraw.

'Maybe there'll be no flower, and then the charm's broke,' she thought
hopefully. 'If the charm's broke, I canna dream, and I shanna go.'

But when she came to the white garment lying wet and pale in the
half-light she drew a sharp breath. There in the centre lay one minute
blue petal. Its very smallness proved to her its magic. It was a faery
flower. She took it up reverently and went home solemn as a child in
church. When, with blue petal under her pillow, she lay down, she fell
asleep in a moment. She dreamt of Reddin, for he had more control over
her thoughts than Edward, who appealed to her emotions, while Reddin
stirred her instincts. Waking at Martha's knock, she said to herself,
with mingled heart-sickness and elation:

'The signs say go. I mun go. Foxy wants me to go.' She would not have
believed that her third sign was no faery flower, but only a petal of
blue milk-wort--little sister of the bracken--loosened by her own
nervous hands the night before.




Chapter 25


On Sunday evening, as usual, the little bell began to sound plaintively
in the soft air which was like a pale wild-rose. Mrs. Marston had
betaken herself out of her own door into that of the chapel with a good
many sighs at the disturbance of her nap, and with injunctions to
Martha to put a bit of fire in the parlour. Edward had gone with his
sermon to the back of the house where the tombstones were fewer and it
was easier to walk while he read. Hazel ran up to her room and put on
her white dress, which was considered by Mrs. Marston 'too flighty' for
chapel. She leant out of her window and looked away up the purple hill.
Then she gathered a bunch of the tea-roses that encircled it. They were
deep cream flushed with rose. She pinned them into her breast, and they
matched her flushed face. She was becoming almost dainty in her ways;
this enormously increased her attraction for both men. She put on her
broad white wedding-hat, and slipped downstairs and out by the kitchen
door while Martha was in the parlour. She shut the door behind her like
a vanished life. She felt, she did not know why, a sense of excitement,
of some great happening, something impending, in her appointment with
Reddin.

She met no one as she ran down the batch, for the chapel-goers were all
inside. The hedges were full of white 'archangel' and purple vetch.
When she came to the beginning of Hunter's Spinney she felt frightened;
the woods were so far-reaching, so deep with shadow; the trees made so
sad a rumour, and swayed with such forlorn abandon. In the dusky places
the hyacinths, broken but not yet faded, made a purple carpet, solemn
as a pall. Woodruff shone whitely by the path and besieged her with
scent. Early wild-roses stood here and there, weighed down with their
own beauty, set with rare carmine and tints of shells and snow, too
frail to face the thunderstorm that even now advanced with unhurrying
pomp far away beyond the horizon. She hurried along, leaving the beaten
track, creeping under the broad skirts of the beeches and over the
white prostrate larch-boles where the resin ran slowly like the dark
blood of creatures beautiful, defeated, dying. She began to climb,
holding to the grey, shining boles of mountain ash-trees. The bracken,
waist-high at first, was like small hoops at the top of the wood, where
the tiny golden tormentil made a carpet and the yellow pimpernel was
closing her eager eyes.

Hazel came out on the bare hill-top where gnarled may-trees, dropping
spent blossom, were pink-tinted as if the colours of the sunsets they
had known had run into their whiteness. Hazel sat down on the hilltop
and saw the sleek farm-horses far below feeding with their shadows,
swifts flying with their shadows, and hills eyeing theirs stilly. So
with all life the shadow lingers--incurious, mute, yet in the end
victorious, whelming all. As Hazel sat there her own shadow lay darkly
behind her, growing larger than herself as the sun slipped lower.

Bleatings and lowings, the evening caw of the rooks ascended to her; a
horse neighed, aggressively male. From some distance came the loud,
crude voice of a man singing. He sang, not in worship, not for the sake
of memory or melody or love, but for the same reason that people sing
so loudly in church--in the urgent need of expending superabundant
vitality. His voice rolled out under the purple sky as if he were the
first man, but half emerged from brutishness, pursuing his mate in a
world all fief to him, a world that revealed her as she fled through
the door of morning and the door of evening, rolling its vaporous
curtains back as she went through. It was Reddin, come forth from his
dark house, as his foraging ancestors had done, to take his will of the
weaponless and ride down the will of others. He did not confess even to
himself why he had come. His thoughts on sex were so prurient that, in
common with many people, he considered any frankness about it most
indecent. Sex was to him a thing that made the ears red. It is hard for
them that have breeding-stables to enter the kingdom of heaven. Too
often the grave, the majestic significance of the meeting of the
sexes--holding as it does the fate of the golden pageantry of life,
sacrificially spending as it does the present for the future--is
nothing to them. They see it only as a fillip to appetite. So Sally
Haggard usually spent most of the money earned by Reddin's stallion,
'The Pride of Undern.'

He put the horse to a gallop as he came up Hunter's Spinney, to quench
the voice that spoke within him, saying things he would not hear, that
spoke of love, and the tenderness and humility of love, and of how
these did not detract from the splendour of manhood, the fine rage of
passion, but rather glorified them. Something in his feeling for Hazel
answered that voice, and it worried him. By heredity and upbringing he
had been taught to dislike and mistrust everything that savoured of
emotion or ideas, to consider unmanly all that was of the spirit.
Therefore he sang more loudly as he saw on the hill-top the flutter of
Hazel's white dress, to quench the voice that steadfastly spoke of
mutual love as the one reason, the one consecration of passion in man
and woman. The hoof-beats thudded like a full pulse.

Hazel got up. Suddenly she was afraid of the place, more afraid than
she had ever been of the death-pack, which, this evening, she had
forgotten.

But before she could move away Reddin shouted to her and came up the
bridle-path. Hazel hesitated, swayed like the needle of a compass, and
finally stood still.

'What'n you wanting me for, Mr. Reddin?'

'Don't you know?'

'If I knew, I shouldna ask.'

'What do men generally want women for?'

'I'm not a woman. I dunna want to be. But what be it, anyway?'

He felt in his pocket and drew out a small parcel.

'There! Don't say the giving's all on your side,' he remarked.

She opened the parcel. It contained two heavy old-fashioned gold
bracelets. Each was set with a large ruby that stared unwinkingly from
its setting of pale gold.

'Eh! they'm like drops of blood!' said Hazel. 'Like when fayther starts
a-killing the pig. He's a hard un, is fayther, hard as b'rytes. I'm
much obleeged to you, Mr. Reddin, but I dunna want 'em. I canna'd abear
the sight of blood.'

'Little fool!' said Reddin. 'They're worth pounds.'

He caught her wrists and fastened one bracelet on each. She struggled,
but could not get free or undo the clasps.

She began to cry, loudly and easily, as she always did. All her
emotions were sudden, transparent and violent. She also, since her
upbringing had not been refined, began to swear.

'Damn your clumsy fists and your bloody bracelets!' she screamed. 'Take
'em off, too! I 'unna stay if you dunna!'

Reddin laughed, and in his eyes a glow began; nothing could have so
suited his mood.

'You've got to wear 'em,' he said, 'to show you're mine.'

'I binna!'

'Yes.'

'I won't never be!'

'Yes, you will, now.'

She raved at him like a little wild-cat, pulling at the bracelets like
a kitten at its neck ribbon.

He laughed again, stilly.

He knew there was not a soul near, for the people from the farm at the
foot of the spinney had all gone to church.

'Look here, Hazel,' he said, not unkindly; 'you've got to give in,
see?'

'I see nought.'

'You've got to come and live with me at Undern. You can wear those fine
dresses.'

'I'm a-cold,' said Hazel; 'the sun's undering; I'd best go home-along.'

'Come on, then. Up you get. We'll be there in no time. You shall have
some supper and--'

'What'n I want trapsing to Undern when I live at the Mountain?'

'You'll be asking to come soon,' he said, with the crude wisdom of his
kind. 'You like me better than that soft parson even now.'

She shook her head.

'I'm a man, anyway.'

She looked him over, and owned he was. But she did not want him; she
wanted freedom and time to find out how much she liked Edward.

'Well, good neet to you,' she said. 'I'm off.'

She ran downhill into the wood.

Reddin hitched the reins to a tree and followed. He caught her and
flung her into the bracken, and suddenly it seemed to her that the
whole world, the woods, herself, were all Reddin. He was her sky, her
cloak. The tense silence of the place was heavy on her.

Away at God's Little Mountain Edward preached his sermon on the power
of prayer--how he could plant a hedge of prayer round the beloved to
keep them from all harm.

The clock at Alderslea down the valley struck eight in muffled tones.
They were burnt into Hazel's brain. The plovers wheeled and cried sadly
like the spirits of creatures too greatly outnumbered.

Edward was a dream; God's Little Mountain was an old tale--something
forgotten, mist-begirt.

Twilight thickened, and birds began to shrill in the dew. Voices came
up from the farm. They were back from church. Hazel felt crushed,
bruised, robbed.

'Now, up you get, Hazel!' said Reddin, who wanted his supper badly, and
no longer wanted Hazel. 'Up you get and tidy yourself, and then home.'
He felt rather sorry for her.

She made no comment, no demur. Instinctively she felt that she belonged
to Reddin now, though spiritually she was still Edward's. She looked at
Reddin, passive, doubtful; the past evening had become unreal to her.

So they regarded one another mistrustfully, like two creatures taken in
a snare. They both felt as if they had been trapped by something vast
and intangible. Reddin was dazed. For the first time in his life he had
felt passion instead of mere lust. The same ideas that had striven
within him on his way here uplifted their voices again.

Staring dully at Hazel, he felt a smarting at the back of his eyes and
a choking in his throat.

'What ails you, catching your breath?' she asked.

He could not speak.

'You've got tears in your eyne.'

Reddin put his hand up.

'Tell us what ails you?'

He shook his head.

'What for not, my--what for not?'

She never called Reddin 'my soul.'

But he could not or would not speak.

Hazel's eyes were red also, with tears of pain. Now she wept again in
sympathy with a grief she could not understand.

So they sat beneath the black, slow-waving branches under the threat of
the oncoming night, weeping like children. They cowered, it seemed,
beneath a hand raised to strike. All that they did was wrong; all that
they did was inevitable. Two larches bent by the gales kept up a
groaning as bole wore on bole, wounding each other every time they
swayed. In the indifferent hauteur of the dark steeps, the secret
arcades, the avenues leading nowhere, crouched these two incarnations
of the troubled earth, sentient for a moment, capable of sadness,
cruelty, terror and revolt, and then lapsed again into the earth.

Forebodings of that lapse--forebodings that follow the hour of climax
as rooks follow the plough--haunted them now, though they found no
words for what they felt, but only knew a sense of the pressure of
night. It appeared to stoop nearer, blind, impassive, but intensely
aware of them under their dark canopy of leaves. Some Being, it seemed,
was listening there, and not only listening, but imposing in an
effortless but inevitable way its veiled purpose. Hazel and Reddin--he
no less than she--appeared to be deprived of identity, like hypnotic
mediums. His hardness and strength took on a pitiful dolt-like air
before this prescient power.

When he at last stopped choking and licking the tears away
surreptitiously as they rolled down his cheeks, he was very angry--with
himself for crying, with Hazel for witnessing his disgrace. That she
should cry was nothing, he thought. Women always cried at these times.
Nor did he distinguish between her tears of pain and of sympathy.

'You needn't stare,' he snapped. 'If I've got a cold, there's no reason
to gape.'

'What for be you--'

'Shut up! I'm not.'

They climbed the crackling wood, ghastly with a sound as of feet
passing tiptoe into silence--the multitudinous soft noises of a wood,
cones falling, twigs snapping, the wind in old driven leaves, the
subdued rustle of the trees. They passed the place where she had talked
with Edward at the bark-stripping. The prostrate larches shone as
whitely as her shoulder did through her torn gown. She remembered
Edward's look, and wept again.

'What is it now?' he asked.

'I was i' this place afore the bluebells died, along with--Ed'ard.'

'Why d'you say the man's name like that? It's no better than other
names.'

She had no reply for that, and they came in silence to the tormented
may-tree where the horse was tied, his black mane and smooth back
strown with faded, faintly coloured blossom.

Reddin lifted her on and swung into the saddle.

She leant against him, silent and passive, as with one arm round her he
guided the horse down the difficult path.

A star shone through the trees, but it was not a friendly star. It was
more like a stare than a tear.

When the rest of them sprang out like an army at the reveille, they
were aloof and cold, and they rode above in an ironic disdain too
terrible to be resented.

Reddin put the horse to a gallop. He wanted fierce motion to still the
compunction that Hazel's quiet crying brought.

A sense of immanent grief was on her, grey loneliness and fear of the
future. He tried to comfort her.

'Dunna say ought!' she sobbed. 'You canna run the words o'er your
tongue comfortable like Ed'ard can!'

'What do you want me to say?'

'I dunno. I want our Foxy.'

'I'll fetch her in the morning.'

'No, you munna. She'm safe at Ed'ard's. Let her bide. I want to be at
Ed'ard's, too.'

'Who comes wailing in the black o' night?' said the voice of Vessons as
they neared the hall door. 'I thought it was the lady as no gold
comforts--her as hollas "Lost! Alost!" in the Undern Coppy.'




Chapter 26


Undern was in its June mood. Pinks frothed over the edges of the
borders, and white bush-roses flung their arms high over the porch. All
was heavily fragrant, close, muffling the senses. The trees brooded;
the house brooded; the hill hung above, deeply recollected; the bats
went with a lagging flight. It was like one of those spell-bound places
built for an hour or an aeon or a moment on the borders of elfdom, full
of charms and old wizardry, ready to fall inwards at a word, but
invincible to all but that word. The hot scent of the trees and the
garden mingled with the smell of manure, pigsties, cooking pig-wash and
Vessons' 'Tom Moody' tobacco. It made Hazel feel faint--a strange
sensation to her.

Vessons stood surveying them as he had done on the bleak night of
Hazel's first coming.

'Where,' he said at last, the countless fine lines that covered his
upper lip from nostril to mouth deepening--'where's the reverent?'
Receiving no reply but a scowl from his master, he led the horse away.

Reddin, with a kind of gauche gentleness, said: 'I'll show you the
house.'

They went through the echoing rooms, and looked out of the low,
spider-hung casements, where young ivy-leaves, soft and vivid, had
edged their way through the cracks. They stood under ceilings dark
with the smoke of fires and lamps that had been lit unnumbered years
ago for some old pathetic revelry. In cupboards left ajar by a hurried
hand that had long been still, hung gowns with flower-stains or
wine-stains on their faded folds. The doors creaked and sighed after
them, the floors groaned, and all about the house, though the summer
air was so light and low, there was a moaning of wind. It was as if
all the storms that had blown round it, the terror that had been felt
in it, the tears that had fallen in it, had crept like forgotten spirits
into its innermost recesses and now made complaint there for ever. A
lonely listener on a stormy night might hear strange voices uplifted--the
sobbing of children; songs of feasters; cries of labouring women; young
men's voices shouting in triumph; the long intonations of prayer; the
death-rattle.

And as Reddin and Hazel--surely the most strangely met of all couples
that had owned and been owned by this house--went through the darkening
rooms, they were not, it seemed, alone. A sense of witnesses perturbed
Hazel, a discomfort as from surveillance. A soft rumour, as of a mute
but moving multitude crept along the passages in their wake.

'Be there ghosses?' she whispered. 'I'd liefer sleep under the blue
roof-tree. I feel like corn under a millstone in this dark place.'

'It's said to be haunted, but I don't believe it.' He glanced over his
shoulder.

'Who by?'

'People that failed. Weaklings. Men that lost their money or their
women, and wives and daughters of the family that died young.'

'What for did they fail?'

'Silly ideas. Not knowing what they wanted.'

'Dear now! Foxy and me, we dunna allus know what we want.'

'You want me.'

'Maybe.'

'If you don't, you must learn to. And if you don't know what you want,
you'll come to smash.'

'But when I do know, folk take it off me.'

A long, mournful cry came down the passages.

Hazel screamed.

'Be that the lady as no gold comforts?' she whispered.

'No, you silly girl. It's a barn owl. But she's said to cry in the
coppy on Midsummer night.'

'Things crying out as have been a long while hurted,' murmured Hazel.
'To-night's Midsummer. Was she little, like me?'

'I don't know.'

'Did summat strong catch a holt of her?'

'A man did.' He laughed.

'Did she go young?'

'Yes, she died at nineteen.'

'And so'll it be with me!' she cried suddenly. 'So'll it be with me!
Dark and strong in the full of life.'

She flung herself on a faded blue settee and wept.

The impression of companionship--of whisperers breaking out, hands
stretched forth, the steady magnetism of countless unseen eyes--was so
strong that Hazel could not bear it, and even Reddin was glad to follow
her back to the inhabited part of the house.

'This is the bedroom,' Reddin said, opening the door of a big room
papered in faded grey, and full of the smell of bygone days. The great
four-poster, draped with a chintz of roses on a black ground, awed her.
Reddin opened a chest and took out the green dress. He watched her with
an air of proud proprietorship as she put it on. She went down the
shallow stairs like a leaf loosened from the tree.

Vessons, a beer-bottle in either hand, was so aghast at the pale
apparition that he nearly dropped them.

'I thought it was a ghost,' he said--'a comfortless ghost.'

'So I be comfortless,' Hazel said to Reddin when Vessons had retired.
Her voice had a sound of tears in it, like a dark tide broken on rocks.
'And when I was comfortless at the Mountain Ed'ard was used to read
"Comfort ye, my people," as nice as nice.'

'Are you fonder of Marston than of me?'

'I dunno.'

She sat down sadly in the home that was not home. She remembered the
half-finished collar she was knitting for Foxy. Also, a custom had
grown up that she sang hymns in the evenings to Edward's accompaniment.
She missed these things. She missed the irritations of that peaceful
life--Mrs. Marston's way of clearing her throat softly and
pertinaciously; Martha's habit of tidying all her little treasures into
the kitchen grate; Edward's absurd determination that she should have
clean nails; the ever-renewed argument, 'Foxy's a bad dog!' 'She inna.
She's a good fox.' 'In my sight she's a bad dog.'

Now she had floated free of all this. She was out of haven on the high
seas. She felt very lonely--as the dead might feel, free of the
shackles of life. It was certainly pleasant to wear the green dress.
But she missed her little duties--clearing away the supper, Martha
being gone; fetching the candles (Mrs. Marston always shook her head at
the third, not from economy, but from vicarious philoprogenitiveness).

Edward's reading of the Book last thing had made her restless; she had
thought it a bother. Now it seemed a privilege. To most girls, God's
Little Mountain would have been purgatory. To her it was wonderful. It
was the first time she had shared in the peculiar beauty of home, the
daily sacrament of love. Edward never forgot to kiss them both when he
came in; brought them flowers; was always carpentering at surprises for
them. These last never turned out very well, his technical skill not
keeping pace with his enthusiasm; but Hazel was not critical.

She, in common with the other little creatures, sat down in his shadow
as in a city of refuge. Mrs. Marston shared this feeling. She always
fell asleep at once when Edward was at home in the evening, ceasing to
invent alarms about black men creeping through the kitchen window, Foxy
getting into the larder, and a great tempest from the Lord blowing them
all to perdition because Lord's Day was not kept as it used to be.

Into the parlour, at his own good time, Vessons brought the supper, and
dumped it on the large round table, veneered like mahogany, heavily
Victorian and ornamented with brass feet. There were bread and cheese,
bacon, and a good deal of beer.

Hazel saw nothing amiss with it, for though she had begun to grow
accustomed to respectable middle-class meals, life at the Callow still
seemed the homelier. Reddin looked up from cutting bacon to say with
unwonted thoughtfulness, 'Like some tea and toast?' He felt that toast
was a triumph of imagination. He was rather dubious about asking
Vessons to do it, so instead he repeated, 'You'll have some tea and
toast?'

Vessons went into the kitchen and shut the door. They waited for some
time, and Hazel, who, whatever her fate, her faults and sorrows, was
always as hungry as Foxy, looked longingly at Reddin's cheese and beer.
Physical exhaustion brought tears of appetite to her eyes. At last
Reddin went to the kitchen door.

'Where's that tea?' he asked.

'Tay?'

'Yes, you fool!'

'I know nothing about no tay.'

'I said you were to make some.'

'Not to me.'

'And toast.'

'I've douted the fire.'

He had just done so.

'Look here, my man, there's a missus at Undern now. You please her or
go. She tells me what she wants. I tell you. You do it.'

'I'll 'ave no woman over me!' said Vessons sullenly. 'Never will I!
Never a missus did I take, not for all the pleasures of bed and
board--no, ne'er a one I ever took. Maiden I am to my dying day.'

The coupling of the ideas of Vessons and maidenhood was so funny that
Reddin burst out laughing and forgot his anger.

'Now, make that tea, Vessons.'

'She unna be here long?' asked Vessons craftily.

'Yes, for good.'

Hazel heard him.

'For good.' Did she want to be in this whispering house for good? Who
did she want to be with for good? Not Reddin. Edward? But he had not
the passion of the greenwood in him, the lust of the earth. He was not
of the tremulously ecstatic company of wild, hunted creatures. If
Reddin was definitely antagonistic, a hunter, Edward was neutral, a
looker-on. They were not her comrades. They did not live her life. She
had to live theirs. She wished she had never seen Reddin, never gone to
Hunter's Spinney. Edward's house was at least peaceful.

'And what,' she heard Vessons say, 'will yer lordship's Sally Virtue
say?'

She did not hear Reddin's reply; it was fierce and low. She wondered
who Sally Virtue was, but she was too tired to think much about it.
Afterwards Reddin had some whisky, and Vessons drank his health. Then
Reddin picked out 'It's a Fine Hunting Day' on the old piano, and sang
it in a rough tenor. Vessons joined in from the kitchen in a voice
quite free from any music, and the roaring chorus echoed through the
house.

'Eh, stop! I canna abide it!' cried Hazel; but they did not hear.

Vessons came and stood in the doorway with the teapot in one hand and
the expression of acute agony he always wore when singing.

   'All trouble and care
   Will be left far behind us at home!'

'Not for the little foxes!' cried Hazel, and she plucked the music from
the piano and ran past Vessons, knocking the teapot out of his hand.
She stuffed the music into the kitchen grate.

Vessons was petrified.

'Well,' he said, 'you've got the ways of wild-cats and spinsters the
world over.' This was an unwilling compliment. 'And I'll say this for
you, whatever else I canna say, you've got sperit enough for the eleven
thousand virgins!'

Reddin felt that the scene was hardly festive enough. He wondered that
he himself did not feel more jubilant; reaction had set in. He wished
that all should be gay as for a bridal, for he felt that this was a
bridal in all but the name.

But the old house, like a being lethargic after long revelry, clad in
torn and stained garments, seemed unready for mirth. Andrew was highly
antagonistic. The hound had bristled, growling, at the intruder; and
Hazel--?

He looked at Hazel under half-closed lids. Did she know what had
happened? He thought not. Perhaps intuition whispered to her. Certainly
she avoided his eyes. She sat drinking the tea, which Reddin, with much
exertion of authority, at last caused to appear. She was wan, and her
face looked very thin. Panic lingered about her eyes, at the corner of
her lips.

He realized that she was afraid of him--his look, his touch.
Immediately he wanted to exercise his power. He went across and took
her chin in his hand, laying the other on her shoulder.

Her eyelids trembled.

'What'n you after, mauling me?' she said.

Then a passion of tears shook her.

'Oh, I want Ed'ard and the old lady! I want to go back to the Mountain,
I do! Ed'ard'll be looking me up and down the country.'

'Good Lord, so he will!' said Reddin, 'and rousing the whole place. You
must write a letter, Hazel, to say you're safe and happy, and he's not
to worry.'

'But I amna.'

Reddin frowned at the spontaneity of this. But he made her write the
note.

'Saddle the mare, Vessons, and take this to the Mountain.'

'You dunna mind how much--' began Vessons. But Reddin cut him short.

'Get on,' he said, and Vessons knew by the tone that he had better.
'Push it under the parson's door, knock, and make yourself scarce,
Vessons,' Reddin ordered.

'You can go up to bed if you like, Hazel.'

Left alone, he walked up and down the room, puzzled and uneasy.

According to his idea, he had done Hazel the greatest honour a man can
pay to a woman. He could not see in what he had failed. He was
irritated with his conscience for being troublesome. He had, as he put
it, merely satisfied a need of his nature--a need simple and urgent as
eating and drinking. He did not understand that in failing to find out
whether it was also a need of Hazel's nature--and in nothing else at
all--lay his unpardonable crime.

That he had offended against the views of his Church did not worry him.
For, like many churchmen, he had the happy gift of keeping profession
and practice, dogma and deeds, in airtight compartments. How many of
the most fervent churchmen are not, or have not been at some period of
their lives, exactly like Reddin?

'Of course, I've been a bit of a beast in the past,' he thought. 'But
that's done with. Besides, she doesn't know.'

He reflected again.

'I suppose I was a bit rough, but she ought to have forgotten that by
now. I do wish she wouldn't keep on so about the parson.'

He ran upstairs.

'Sorry I was rough, Hazel,' he said shamefacedly.

Hazel stood at the open window in a nightdress that she had found in
one of the chests--a frail, yellowish thing with many frills of
cobwebby lace made and worn by some dead woman on a forgotten bridal.
It was symbolic of Hazel's whole life that she came in this way both to
Undern and the Mountain--as bare of woman's regalia as a winter leaf is
of substance.

Hazel was speaking when he entered. He stood still, astonished and
suspicious.

'Who are you talking to?' he asked.

She turned. 'Him above,' she said. 'I was saying the prayer Ed'ard
learnt me. I said it three times, it being Midsummer, and ghosses going
to-and-agen and the death-pack about. He'll be bound to hearken to
Ed'ard's prayer.'

She looked small and pitiful standing in the flickering candlelight.
She turned again to the window, and Reddin went downstairs, quite
overwhelmed and abashed.

The house seemed eerier than ever, full of subdued complaints and
whisperings. The faces of the roses round the window were woe-begone in
the lamplight. The rustle of the leaves had an expostulatory sound. The
wan poplars down the meadow looked accusing. It was almost as if the
freemasonry of the green world was up in arms for Hazel. She had its
blood in her veins, and shared with it the silent worship of freedom
and beauty, and had now been plunged so deeply into human life that she
was lost to it. It was as if every incarnation of perfection that she
had seen in leaf and flower (and she had seen much, though remaining
without expression of it), every moment of deep comradeship with
earthy, dewy things, every illumined memory of colours and lights that
her vivid mind had gathered and cherished in its rage of love and
rapture, had come now, pacing disdainfully through this old haunt
of crude humanity; passing up the stairs; standing about the great
four-poster where so many Reddins had died and been born; gazing upon
this face that had known dreams (however childish) of their eternal
magic; grieving as the tree for the leaf that has fallen. They grieved,
but they did not forgive. For the spirits of beauty and magic are
(as the bondsman of colour knows and the bondsman of poetry) inimical
to the ordinary life and destiny of man. They break up homes. They lead
a thousand wanderers into the unknown. They brook no half service.

It is only the rarest exception when a man loves a woman and yet excels
in his art, and a woman must have an amazing genius if she is still a
poet after childbirth.

But though sometimes these proud spirits will tolerate, will even be
sworn companions of human love, it is only when it is a passion pure
and burning that they know it for a sister spirit. In the sexual
meeting of Hazel and Reddin there was nothing of this. Though it
brought out the best in Reddin, the best was so very poor. And Hazel
was merely passive.

So they stood and wept above her, and they foreswore her company for
ever. She might regard the primrose eye to eye, but she would receive
no dewy look of comprehension.

No lift of the heart would come with the lifting leaves, no pang of
mysterious pain with bird-song, star-set, dewfall. Even her love of
Foxy would become a groping thing, and not any longer would she know,
when her blind bird made its tentative music, all it meant and all it
dreamed. This very night she had forgotten to lean out and listen as of
old to the soft voices of the trees. She had said her prayer, and then
she had been so tired, and pains had shot through her, and her back had
ached, and she had cried herself to sleep.

'What for did I go to the Hunter's Spinney?' she asked herself. But the
answer was too deep for her, the traitorous impulse of her whole being
too mysterious. She could not answer her question.

Reddin, pacing the room downstairs, drinking whisky, and fuming at his
own compunction, at last grew tired of his silent house.

'Damn it! Why shouldn't I go up?' he said.

He opened Hazel's door.

'Look here,' he said; 'the house is mine, and so are you. I'm coming to
bed.' He was met by that most intimidating reply to all bluster--silence.

She was asleep; and all night long, while he snored, she tossed in her
sleep and moaned.




Chapter 27


Early next morning Vessons was calling the cows in for milking. He
leant over the lichen-green gate contemplatively.

All the colours were so bright that they were grotesque and startling.
Above the violently green fields the sky shone like blue glass, and
across the east were two long vermilion clouds. Behind the black hill
the sun had shouldered up, molten, and the shadow of Vessons, standing
monkey-like on the lowest bar of the gate, lay on the stretch of wet
clover behind him--a purple, elfin creature, gifted with a prehensile
dignity. The cows did not appear after his first call. He lifted his
head and called again in a high plaintive tone, as one reasons with a
fretful child. 'Come o-on, come o-on!' Then he sank into the landscape
again. After an interval, a polished red and white cow appeared at a
distance of five fields, coming serenely on at her own pace. A white
one and a roan followed her at long distances. They advanced through
the shadows, each going through the exact middle of the many gateways,
always kept open like doors in a suite of rooms at a reception. Vessons
waited patiently--more as a slave than a ruler--only uttering his
plaintive 'Come o-on!' once, when the last cow dallied overlong with a
tuft of lush grass in the hedge. This was the daily ritual. Every
morning he appeared, neutral-tinted, from the house, and cried upon an
apparently empty landscape; every morning they meandered through the
seven gates from the secret leafy purlieus where they spent the night.

Mysterious of eye, leisured, vividly red and white, they followed the
old man as queens might follow an usher.

Hazel was coming down the path from the house. With morning, her
abundant vitality had returned. The outer world was new and bright, and
she wanted, shyly, to be up and dressed before Reddin awoke.

She was full of merriment at the subservience of Vessons to the cows.

'D'you say "mum" to 'em?' she inquired.

Vessons looked her up and down. He was very angry, not only at her
criticism, but at the difficulty of retort, since he supposed she was
now 'missus.' His friendliness for her had entirely gone, not, as would
have seemed natural, since her last night's instalment at Undern, but
since her marriage with Edward. He felt that she had 'gone back on
him.' He had taken her as a comrade, and now she had gone over to the
enemy. He was also injured at having been kept up so late last night.

He chumbled his straw for some time, until the last cow had
disappeared. Then he said: 'You'm up early for a married 'ooman, or
whatever you be, missus.'

Hazel laughed. She had lived so completely outside the influence of the
canons of society that the taunt had no sting.

'Ha! you're jealous!' she said.

Then, with a mercilessly accurate imitation of his voice and face, she
added:

'A missus at Undern! Never will I!'

He quailed under her mocking amber eyes, her impish laughter. Then,
looking from side to side with suppressed fury, he said: 'Them birds is
after the cherries! I'll get a gun. I'll shoot 'em dead!'

'If you shoot a blackbird, the milk'll turn bloody,' said Hazel; but
Vessons paid no heed.

All morning, at any spare moment, and after dinner (which he brought in
in complete silence, and which was exceedingly unpalatable), he lurked
behind trees and crept along hedges, shooting birds. Even Reddin felt
awed and could not gather courage to expostulate with him. In and out
of the stealthy afternoon shadows, black and solemn, went the shambling
old figure with his relentless face and outraged heart. He shot
thrushes as they fluted after a meal of wild raspberries; he shot tiny
silky willow-wrens, robins, and swallows--their sacredness did not awe
him--a pigeon on its nest, blackbirds, a dipper, a goldfinch, and a
great many sparrows. The garden and fields were struck into silence
because of him; only a flutter of terrified wings showed his
whereabouts. He piled his trophies--all the delicate ruffled plumage of
summer's prime--on the kitchen table, draggled and bloody.

Hazel and Reddin crept from window to window, silent, watching his
movements. Undern grew ghostlier than ever, seeming, as the shots rang
out startlingly loud in the quiet, like a moribund creature electrified
by blows.

'He'd liefer it was me than the birds!' said Hazel. 'Wheresoever I go,
folk kill things. What for do they?'

'Things must be killed.'

'It seems like the earth's all bloody,' said Hazel. 'And it's allus the
little small uns. There! He's got a jenny-wren. Oh, dearie me! it's
like I've killed 'em; it's all along of me coming to Undern.'

'Hush!' said Reddin sharply. 'What I'm afraid of is that he'll shoot
himself, he's so damned queer.'

The last cow had sauntered to the gate before Vessons opened it and
milked them that night. Afterwards he went in with the pails, set them
on the parlour floor, and said with fury to Hazel: 'Bloody, is it?'

She owned, faintly, that it was not.

'And now,' said Vessons, turning on Reddin, 'it's notice. Notice has
been give--one month--by Andrew Vessons to John Reddin, Esquire, of
Undern.'

With tragic dignity he turned to go.

He saw neither Hazel nor Reddin, but only the swan, the yew-tree swan,
his creation, now doomed to be for ever unfinished. The generations to
come would look upon a beakless swan, and would think he had meant it
so. Tears came into his eyes--smarting, difficult tears. The room was
full of brooding misery. Reddin felt awkward and astounded.

'Why, Vessons?' he said in rather a sheepish tone.

Vessons did not turn. He fumbled with the door-handle. Reddin got up
and went across to him.

'Why, Vessons?' he said again, with a hand on his shoulder. 'You and I
can't part, you know.'

'We mun.'

'But why, man? What's up with you, Andrew?'

The rare Christian name softened Vessons. He deigned to explain. 'She
is,' he said, with a sidelong nod at Hazel. 'She mocked me.'

'Did you, Hazel?'

'Now then, missus!' Vessons glared at her.

'I only said--'

'Her said, "Never will I!"' shouted Vessons. 'Ah, that's what her
said--"Never will I!" That's what _I_ say,' he added with the
pride of a phrase-maker.

Reddin could make nothing of them, one so red and angry, the other in
tears.

'I'll do no 'ooman's will!' said Vessons.

'Look here, Vessons! Be reasonable. Listen to me. I'm your master,
aren't I?'

'Ah! Till a month.'

'Well, you take orders from me; that's all that matters. I'm master
here.'

The tones of his ancestry were in his voice--an ancestry that ruled
over and profited by men and women as good as themselves, or better.

'So we'll say no more about it,' he finished, with the frank and
winning smile that was one of his few charms.

Vessons stared at him for some time, and, as he stared, an idea
occurred to him. It was, he felt, a good idea. It would enable him to
keep his swan and his self-respect and to get rid of Hazel. As he
pondered it, his face slowly creased into smiles. He touched his
forelock--a thing only done on pay-days--and withdrew, murmuring,
'Notice is took back.'

They saw him go past the window with the steps and the shears,
evidently to attend to the swan.

Reddin thought how easy it was to manage these underlings--a little
authority, a little tact. He turned to Hazel, crying in the high
armchair of black oak with its faded rose-coloured cushions. She was
crying not only because Vessons had come off victorious, but because
her position was now defined, and was not what she would have liked,
but also because Reddin's manner to her jarred after last night.

Last night, in the comfortless darkness of Hunter's Spinney, he had
seemed for a little while to be a fellow-fugitive of hers, one of the
defenceless, fleeing from the vague, unknown power that she feared.
Then she had pitied him--self-forgetfully, fiercely--gathered his head
to her breast as she so often gathered Foxy's. But now he seemed to
have forgotten--seemed once more to be of the swift and strong ones
that rode down small creatures.

She sobbed afresh.

'Look here, Hazel,' said he, in a tone that he intended to be kind but
firm--'look here: I'm not angry with you, only you must leave Vessons
alone, you know.'

'You want that old fellow more than you want me!'

'Don't be silly! He has his uses; you have yours.'

He spoke with a quite unconscious brutality; he voiced the theory of
his class and his political party, which tacitly or openly asserted
that woman, servants, and animals were in the world for their benefit.

'I'm not grass to be trod on,' said Hazel, 'and if you canna be
civil-spoken, I'll go.'

'You can't,' he replied, 'not now.'

She knew it was true, and the knowledge that her own physical nature
had proved traitorous to her freedom enraged her the more.

'You can't go,' he went on, coming towards her chair to caress her.
'Shall I tell you why?'

Hazel sat up and looked at him, her eyes gloomy, her forehead red with
crying. He thought she was awaiting for his answer; but Hazel seldom
did or said what he expected. She let him kneel by her chair on one
knee; then, frowning, asked: 'Who cried in Hunter's Spinney?' He jumped
up as if he had knelt on a pin. He had been trying to forget the
incident, and hoped that she had. He was bitterly ashamed of that
really fine moment of his life.

'Don't Hazel!' he said.

He felt quite frightened when he remembered how he had behaved. A
strange doubt of himself, born that night, stirred again. Was he all he
had thought? Was the world what he had thought? Misgivings seized him.
Perhaps he ought not to have brought Hazel here or to the Spinney. An
older code than those of Church and State began to flame before him,
condemning him.

Suddenly he wanted reassurance. 'You did want to come, didn't you? I
didn't take advantage of you very much, did I?' he asked. 'You want to
stay?'

'No, I didna want to come till you made me. You got the better of me.
But maybe you couldna help it. Maybe you were druv to it.'

'Who by?' he asked, with an attempt at flippancy.

Hazel's eyes were dark and haunted.

'Summat strong and drodsome, as drives us all,' she said.

She had a vision of all the world racing madly round and round, like
the exhausted and terrified horse Reddin had that morning lunged. But
what power it was that stood in the centre, breaking without an effort
the spirit of the mad, fleeing, tethered creature, she could not tell.

Reddin sat brooding until Hazel, recovering first in her mercurial way,
said:

'Now I've come, I mun bide. D'you think the old fellow'd let me cook
summat for supper? It's been pig-food for us to-day.'

But when they went to investigate, they found Vessons preparing a
tremendous meal, hot and savoury as a victorious and penitent old man
could make it. He showed in his manner that bygones were to be bygones,
and night came down in peace on Undern. But it was a curious, torrid
peace, like the hush before thunder.




Chapter 28


It was the Friday after Hazel's coming, and Reddin was away, much
against his will, at a horse fair. He was quite surprised at the hurt
it gave him to be away from Hazel. So far he had never been, in the
smallest sense, any woman's lover. He had taken what he wanted of them
in a kind of animal semi-consciousness that amounted to a stark
innocence. Virility, he felt, was not of his seeking. There it was, and
it must be satisfied. Now he was annoyed to find that he felt guilty
when he remembered these women, and that he wanted Hazel, not, as with
them, occasionally, but all the time. He had been accustomed to say at
farmers' dinners, after indulging pretty freely:

'Oh, damn it! what d'you want with women between sun-up and sun-down?'
His coarseness had been received with laughter and reproof. Now he felt
that the reproof was juster than the laughter. It was curious, too, how
dull things became when Hazel was not there. Hazel had something fresh
to say about everything, and their quarrels were the most invigorating
moments he had known. Hazel was primitive enough to be feminine,
original enough to be boyish, and mysterious enough to be exciting. As
Vessons remarked to the drake, 'Oh, maister! you ne'er saw the like.
It's 'Azel, 'Azel, 'Azel the day long, and a good man spoilt as was
only part spoilt afore.'

Vessons and Hazel were spending the afternoon quarrelling about the
bees. When Reddin was away, Hazel put off her new dignity and was
Vessons' equal, because it was so dull to be anything else. Vessons
tolerated her presence for the sake of the subacid remarks it enabled
him to make, but chiefly because of the sardonic pleasure it gave him
to remember how soon his resolve would be put into action.

They were in the walled garden, and the bees were coming and going so
fast that they made, when Hazel half closed her eyes, long black
threads swaying between the hive doors and the distant fields and the
hill-top. They hung in cones on the low front walls, and lumped on the
hive-shelves in that apparently purposeless unrest that precedes
creation. But whether they intended, any of them, to create a new city
that day, none might know. Vessons said not. Hazel, always for
adventure, said they would, and said also that she could hear the queen
in one hive 'zeep-zeeping'--that strange music which, like the
maddeningly soft skirl of bagpipes or the fiddling of Ned Pugh, has
power to lure living creatures away from comfort and full hives into
the unknown--so darkly sweet.

'I canna hear it,' said Vessons obstinately.

'Go on! You're deaf, Mr. Vessons.'

'Deaf, am I? Maybe I hear as much as I want to, and more. Ah! that I
do!'

'Well, then, why canna you hear 'em? Listen at 'em now. D'you know the
noise I mean?'

'Do I know the noise?' Vessons' voice grew almost tearful with rage.
'Do I know? Me! As can make a thousand bees go through the neck of a
pint bottle each after other, like cows to the milking! Me! Maybe you'd
like to learn me beekeeping?' he continued with salty humility. 'Maybe
you would! Never will I!'

He began to tear off the tops of the hives.

'Oh, Mr. Vessons, dunna be so cross!' Hazel was afraid there would be
another scene like Monday's. 'You take 'em off very neat,' she added,
with a pathetic attempt to be tactful--'as neat as my dad.'

'I'd have you know,' said Vessons, 'as I take 'em off neater--ah! a
deal neater. Bees and cows and yew-tree swans,' he went on
reflectively, 'I can manage better than any married man. For what he
puts into matrimony I put into my work. Now I ask you'--he fixed his
eyes on her with the expression of a fanatic--'I ask you, was there
ever a beekeeper or a general or a sea-captain as was anything to boast
of, being married? Never! Marriage kills the mind! Why's bees clever?
Why's the skip allus full of honey at summer's end? Because they're all
old maids!'

'The queen inna. They all come from her.'

Vessons glared for a moment; then, realizing defeat, turned on his heel
and went to feed the calves. He had an ingenious way of getting the
calves in. He had no dog; it was one of his dreams to have one. But he
managed very well. First he opened the calfskit door; then he loosed
the pigs; then he fetched a bucket and went to the field where the
calves were, followed by a turbulent, squealing, ferocious crowd of
pigs. He walked round the calves, and the calves fled homewards, far
more afraid of the pigs than of a dog. This piece of farm economy
pleased Vessons, and, peace being restored, they laid tea amicably.

When Reddin came home to a pleasant scent of toast and the sight of
Hazel's shining braids of hair, new brushed and piled high on her head,
he felt very well pleased with himself. He stretched in the red
armchair and flung an arm round her. His hard blue eyes, his hard
mouth, smiled; he felt that he could make a success of marriage, though
the parson (as he called Edward) could not. Women, he reflected, were
quite easy to manage. 'Just show them who's master straight off, and
all's well.' Here was Hazel, radiant, soft, submissive, all the rough
prickly husk gone since Sunday. Why had he behaved so strangely in the
Spinney?

Well, well, he must forget about that.

The hot tea ran very comfortably down his throat; the toast was
pleasantly resistant to his strong teeth. He felt satisfied with life.
Later on, no doubt, Hazel would have a child. That, too, would be a
good thing. Two possessions are better than one, and he could well
afford children. It never occurred to him to wonder whether Hazel would
like it, or to be sorry for the pain in store for her. He felt very
unselfish as he thought, 'When she can't go about, I'll sit with her
now and again.' It really was a good deal for him to say. He had never
taken the slightest notice of Sally Haggard at such times.

'Got something for you,' he said, pulling at his pocket.

'Oh! It's an urchin!' cried Hazel delightedly.

Reddin began bruising and pulling at its spines with his gloved hands.

'Dunna!' cried Hazel.

Reddin pulled and wrenched until at last the hedgehog screamed--a thin,
piercing wail, most ghastly and pitiful and old, ancient as the cry of
the death's-head moth, that faint ghostly shriek as of a tortured
witch. Centuries of pain were in it, the age-long terror of weakness
bound and helpless beneath the knife, and that something vindictive and
terrifying that looks up at the hunter from the eyes of trapped animals
and sends the cuckoo fleeing in panic before the onset of little birds.
Hazel knew the sound well. It was the watchword of the little children
of despair, the password of the freemasonry to which she belonged.

Before the cry had ceased to horrify the quiet room, she had flung
herself at Reddin, a pattern of womanly obedience no longer, but a
desperate creature fighting in that most intoxicating of all crusades,
the succouring of weakness.

On Reddin's head, a moment ago so smooth, on his face, a moment ago so
bland, rained the blows of Hazel's hard little fists. Her blows were by
no means so negligible as most women's, for her hands were muscular and
strong from digging and climbing, and in her heart was the root of pity
which nerves the most trembling hands to do mighty deeds.

'What the devil!' spluttered Reddin. 'Here, stop it, you little vixen!'

He caught one of her hands, but the other was too quick for him.

'Give over tormenting of it, then!'

The hedgehog rolled on the floor, and the foxhound came and sniffed it.
Reddin had her other hand now.

'What d'you mean by it?' he asked, very angry, and tingling about the
ears.

'Leave it be! It's done you no harm. Lookee! The hound-dog!' she cried.
'Drive him off!'

'I'm going to have some fun seeing the dog kill it.'

Hazel went quite white.

'You shanna! Not till I'm jead,' she said. 'It's come to me to be took
care of, and took care of it shall be.' She reached a foot out and
kicked the hound.

Reddin's mood changed. He burst out laughing.

'You're a sight more amusing than hedgehogs,' he said; 'the beast can
go free, for all I care.'

He pulled her on to his knee and kissed her.

'Send the hound-dog out, then.'

When the hound had gone, resentfully, the hedgehog--a sphinx-like,
protestant ball--enjoyed the peace, and Hazel became again (as Reddin
thought) quite the right sort of girl to live with.

During the uproar they had not heard wheels in the drive, so they were
startled by Vessons' intrigue insertion of himself into a small opening
of the door, his firm shutting of it as if in face of a beleaguering
host, and his stentorian whisper:

'Ere's Clombers now!' as if to say, 'When you let a woman in you never
know what'll become of it.'

'Tell 'em I'm ill--dead!' said his master. 'Tell 'em I'm in the
bath--anything, only send them away!'

They heard Vessons recitative.

'The master's very sorry, mum, but he's got the colic too bad to see
you. It's heave, curse, heave, curse, till I pray for a good vomit!'

The Clombers, urgent upon his track, shouldered past and strode in.

'What the devil do they want?' muttered Reddin. He rose sulkily.

'I hear,' said the eldest Miss Clomber, who had read Bordello and was
very clever, 'that young Lochinvar has taken to himself a bride.'

This was quite up to her usual standard, for not only had it the true
literary flavour, but it was ironic, for she knew who Hazel was.

''Er?' queried Reddin, shaking hands in his rather race-course manner.

'Introduce me, Mr. Reddin!' simpered Amelia Clomber. It was painful
when she simpered; her mouth was made for sterner uses.

They surveyed Hazel, who shrank from their gaze. Something in their
eyes made her feel as if they were her judges, and as if they knew all
about Hunter's Spinney.

They looked at her with detestation. They thought it was detestation
for a sinner. Really, it was for the woman who had, in a few weeks
after meeting him, found favour in Reddin's eyes, and attained that
defeat which, to women even so desiccated as the Clombers, is the one
desired victory.

They had come, as they told each other before and after their visit, to
snatch a brand from the burning. What was in the heart of each--the
frantic desire to be mistress of Undern--they did not mention.

Miss Clomber had taken exception to Amelia's tight dress. For Amelia
had a figure, and Miss Clomber had not. She always flushed at the text,
'We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts.'

Amelia was aware of her advantage as she engaged Reddin in
conversation. He fell in with the arrangement, for he detested her
sister, who always prefaced every remark with 'Have you read--?'

As he never read anything, he thought she was making fun of him.

'And what,' asked Miss Clomber of Hazel, lowering her lids like blinds,
'was your maiden name?'

'Woodus.'

'Where were you married?'

'The Mountain.'

'Shawly there's no charch there?'

'Ah! Ed'ard's church.'

'Edward?'

'Ah! He's minister.'

'You mean the chapel. So that's your persuasion. Now Mr. Reddin is such
a sta'nch Charchman.'

Reddin looked exceedingly discomfited.

'And when did this happy event take place?'

A cat with a mouse was nothing to Miss Clomber with a sinner.

At this point Reddin saw, as he put it, what she was driving at. He was
very sleepy, having been out all day and eaten a large tea, and he
never combated a physical desire. So he cut across a remark of Amelia's
to the effect that marriage with the _right_ woman so added to a
man's comfort, and said:

'I'm not married if that's what you mean.'

'Then who--' said Miss Clomber, feeling that she had him now.

'My keep,' he said baldly. He thought they would go at that. But they
sat tight. They had, as Miss Clomber said afterwards, a soul to save.
They both realized how pleasant might be the earthly lot of one engaged
in this heavenly occupation.

'Hah! You call a spade a spade, Mr. Reddin,' said Miss Clomber, with a
frosty glance at Hazel; 'you are not, as our dear Browning has it,
"mealy mouthed".'

'In the breast of a true woman,' said Amelia authoritatively, as a
fishmonger might speak of fish, 'is no room for blame.'

'True woman be damned!'

Miss Clomber saw that for to-day the cause was lost.

At this point Miss Amelia uttered a piercing yell. The hedgehog,
encouraged by being left to itself, and by the slight dusk that had
begun to gather in the northerly rooms of Undern--where night came
early--had begun to creep about. Surreptitiously guided by Hazel's
foot, it had crept under Amelia's skirt and laid its cold inquiring
head on her ankle, thinly clad for conquest.

Hazel went off into peals of laughter, and Miss Amelia hated her more
than before.

Vessons, in the kitchen, shook his head.

'I never heerd the like of the noise there's been since that gel come.
Never did I!' he said.

'Leave him!' said Miss Clomber to Hazel on the doorstep. She was going
to add 'for my sake,' but substituted 'his.' 'You are causing him to
sin,' she added.

'Be I?' Hazel felt that she was always causing something wrong. Then
she sighed. 'I canna leave 'im.'

'Why not?'

'He wunna let me.'

With that phrase, all unconsciously, she took a most ample revenge on
the Clombers; for it rang in their ears all night, and they knew it was
true.




Chapter 29


On Sunday Vessons put his resolve--to go to the Mountain and reveal
Hazel's whereabouts--into practice. If he had waited, gossip would have
done it for him. He set out in the afternoon, having 'cleaned' himself
and put on his pepper-and-salt suit, buff leggings, red waistcoat, and
the jockey-like cap he affected. He arrived at the back door just as
Martha was taking in supper.

'Well?' said Martha, who wanted to have her meal and go home.

'Well?' said Vessons.

'When I say "well," I mean what d'you want?'

'Allus say what you mean.'

'Who d'you want? Me?'

'The master.'

'The master's out.'

'I'll wait, then.'

He sat down by the fire, and looked so fixedly at Martha as she poured
out her tea that she offered him some in self-defence. He drew up his
chair. Now that he was receiving hospitality, he felt that he must be
agreeable and complimentary.

'Single, I suppose?' he asked.

'Ah,' said Martha coyly, 'I'm single; but I've no objection to
matrimony.'

'Oh!' Vessons spoke sourly, 'I'm sorry for you, then.'

'Maybe you're a married man yourself?'

'Never.'

'Better late than never!'

'If I've kep' out of it in the heat of youth, is it likely I'll go into
it in the chilly times? Maiden I am to my dying day!'

'But if you was to meet a nice tidy woman as had a bit saved?' To
Martha, a bridegroom of sixty-five seemed better than nothing.

'If I met a score nice tidy women, if I met a gross nice tidy women, it
'ud be no different.'

'Not if she could make strong ale?'

'I can make ale myself. No woman shall come into my kitchen for
uncounted gold.'

Martha sighed as she changed the subject.

'What do you want the master for?'

'Never tell your tidings,' said Vessons, 'till you meet the king.'

'Martha!'

Mrs. Marston stood at the kitchen door in the most splendid of her
caps--a pagoda of white lace--and her voice was, as she afterwards
said, 'quite sharp,' its mellifluousness being very slightly reduced.

Vessons rose, touching his hair.

'What is it, my good man?'

'A bit of news, mum.'

'For my son?'

'Ah!'

'You may go, Martha,' said Mrs. Marston, and Martha went without
alacrity.

'Now.' Mrs. Marston spoke encouragingly.

'It's for the master.'

'He cannot see you.'

The two old faces regarded each other with silent obstinacy, and
Vessons recognized that, for all Mrs. Marston's soft outlines, she was
as obstinate as he was. He cleared his throat several times.

Mrs. Marston produced a lozenge, which he ate reluctantly, chumbling it
with nervous haste. He was so afraid that she would give him another
that he told her his news.

'Thank you,' she said, keeping her dignity in a marvellous manner.
'Mrs. Edward Marston, of course, wrote to the minister, but she forgot
to give her address.'

'Accidents will 'appen,' Vessons remarked, as he went out.

It was some time before Edward came in. He had spent most of his time
since last Sunday tramping the hillsides. It was not till he had
finished his very cursory meal that his mother said calmly, looking
over her spectacles:

'I know where Hazel is.'

'You _know_, mother? Why didn't you tell me?'

'I am telling you, dear. There's nothing to be in a taking about.
You've had no supper yet. A little preserve?'

Edward, in a sudden passion that startled her, threw the jam-dish
across the room. It made a red splash on the wall. Mrs. Marston stopped
chumbling her toast, and remained with the rotary motions of her mouth
in abeyance. Then she said slowly:

'Your poor father always said, dear, that you'd break out some day. And
you have. The best dish! Of course the jam I say little about; jam is
but jam, after all; but the cut-glass dish--!'

'Can't you go on with the tale, mother?'

'Yes, my dear, yes. But you fluster me like the Silverton Cheap-jack
does; I never _can_ buy the dish he holds up, for I get in such a
fluster for fear he'll break it, and then he does. And now you have.'

Edward pushed back his chair in desperation.

'For pity's sake!' he said.

'I'm telling you. I never thought Hazel was steadfast, you know.'

'Where _is_ she? Why will you torment me?'

'An old man came. A very untrustworthy old man, I fear. A defiant
manner, and that is never pleasant. There he was in the kitchen with
Martha! Age is no barrier to wrong, and Martha was very flushed. There
was a deal of laughter, too.'

'Mother! If you keep on like this, I shall go mad.'

'Why, Edward, you are all in a fever. There, there! It's more peaceful
without her, and I wish Mr. Reddin well of her.'

'Reddin? What Reddin?'

'Mr. Reddin of Undern. Who else?'

'Damn the fellow!'

'Edward! What words you take on your lips! And just think,' she went on
sorrowfully, 'that he seemed such a nice man. He liked the gooseberry
wine so much, and gave me a "ma'am," which is more than Martha does
half her time. Where are you going?'

'To Undern.'

'What for?'

'Hazel.'

Mrs. Marston sat bolt upright.

'But, of course, she'll never darken the door again!'

'I shall bring her back to-night, of course.'

'But, my dear! You must divorce her, however unpleasant on account of
the papers. Remember, she has been there a week.'

'What of that?'

'But a week, dear!'

'Mother, I did not think to hear the talk of the filthy world from
you.'

Mrs. Marston quailed a little. There is nothing in the world so pure,
so wonderful, so strong, as a young man's love can be--nothing so
spiritual, nothing so brave.

Mrs. Marston, in her own words, 'shed tears.'

'Don't cry, mother, but help me,' Edward said. 'Be ready for her, love
her. She is as pure as a dew-drop. I know it. And I want her more than
life.'

'But if she doesn't want you, Edward, what more is to do?'

'To seek and to save,' snapped Edward, and he banged the door and went
hatless down the path between the heavy-browed tombstones. But he came
back to suggest that there should be some tea ready.

As he went down the batch, owls were shrieking in the woods, and the
sky was pied with grey and crimson, like bloodstained marble. The cries
of the owls were hard as marble also, and of a polished ferocity. They
would have their prey.

He walked fast through the lonely fields where Hazel had passed on her
mushrooming morning. The roses that had then been in the bud were
falling.

At Alderslea people stared at him as he went by, flushed and hatless.

From Alderslea to Wolf batch was some miles; from there to Undern the
way lay over Bitterly Hill, where he missed the path. So it was quite
dark when he came past Undern Pool, lying black and ghastly in its ring
of skeleton trees. The foxhound set up a loud baying within. Only one
window was lit.

Edward hammered on the knocker, and the sound echoed in the hollow
house.

There was a noise within of a door opening, and Hazel's voice cried: 'I
wouldna go. It's a tramp, likely.'

Then Reddin laughed, and Edward clenched his hands in rage at the easy
self-confidence of him. The bolt was drawn back, and Reddin stood in
the doorway, outlined by pale light.

'Who is it?' he asked in rather a jovial tone. He felt at peace with
the world now Hazel was here.

'Beast!' Edward said tersely.

'Just come in a minute, my lad, and let's have a look at you. People
don't call me names twice.'

Hazel had heard Edward's voice.

She ran to the door, and the apple-green gown rustled about her.

'Ed'ard! Ed'ard! Dunna go for to miscall him! He'll hurt 'ee! He's
stronger'n you. Do 'ee go back, Ed'ard!'

'Never! till you come, too.'

'I like that,' said Reddin. 'Can't you see she's got my gown on her
back? She's mine. She was never yours.'

He looked meaningly and triumphantly at Edward.

'Oh, dunna, Jack! What for do you go to shame me?' said Hazel, twisting
her hands.

Edward took no notice of her.

'I don't know what evil means you used, or how you brought the poor
child here,' he said, controlling himself with an effort. 'But you have
tried to rob me, and you have insulted her--'

'Oh, don't come here talking like an injured husband,' Reddin said;
'you know you aren't her husband.'

'Keep your foul mouth shut before innocence! To try and rob a poor
child of her freedom, of her soul--'

Hazel wondered at him. His eyes darkened so upon Reddin, his face was
so powerful, irradiated with love and anger.

'So young!' he went on--'so young, and as wild as a little bird. How
could anyone help letting her take her own way? She wanted to go free
in the woods. I let her; and there you were like a sneaking wolf.'

He threw a look at Hazel so full of wistful tenderness that she flung
the green skirt over her head and sobbed.

'Stow it, can't you?' said Reddin. 'If you want a fight, say so; but
don't preach all night.'

His tone was injured. He felt that he had been particularly considerate
to Edward in sending him the letter. Also, he was convinced that he had
only taken what Edward did not want. That Edward could love Hazel was
beyond his comprehension. If a man loved a woman, he possessed her,
took his pleasure of her. Love that was abnegation was to his idea
impossible. So that, now, when Edward spoke of his love, Reddin simply
thought he was posing.

'Why didn't you let her be?'

'Women don't want to be let be,' said Reddin with a very unpleasant
laugh.

'Oh! stop talking about me as if I wunna here!' cried Hazel.

'If she loved you, I'd say nothing,' Edward went on, staring at Reddin
fixedly. 'The fact that I'm her husband would not have counted with me,
if you'd loved her and she you.'

'A fine pastor!'

'But you don't. You only wanted--Oh! you make me sick!'

'Indeed! Well, I'm man enough to take what I want; you're not.'

'You trapped her; you would have betrayed her. But, thank God! a young
girl's innocence is a wonderful and powerful thing.'

Reddin was astounded. Could Marston really be such a fool as to believe
in Hazel still?

'The innocent young girl--' he began, but Hazel struck him on the
mouth.

'All right, spitfire!' he said; 'mum's the word.' He was surprisingly
good-humoured.

'Well, Hazel'--Edward spoke in a matter-of-fact tone--'shall we go home
now?'

'Dunnat ask me, Ed'ard! I mun bide.'

'Why?'

Hazel was silent. She could not explain the strange instinct, stronger
than her wildness, that Reddin had awakened in her, and that chained
her here with invisible chains.

'Come home, little Hazel!' he pleaded.

'I canna,' she whispered.

'Why? You can if you want to. Don't you want to?'

'Ah! I do that.'

She was torn between her longing to go and her powerlessness to leave
Reddin.

The light went out of Edward's face.

'Do you love this man?' he asked.

'No.'

'Does it make you better to live with him?'

'No. It was living with you as did that.'

Reddin was so enraged that he struck her, and her expression of
submission as she cowered under the blow was worse to Edward than the
blow itself. He forgot his views about violence, and struck Reddin
back.

'Come outside,' said Reddin in a tone of relief. The situation had now
taken a comprehensible turn for him.

'If it's fighting you're after, I'm with you; that's settling it like
gentlemen. What are you grinning at?' He spoke huffily.

'Dunna snab at each other! What for do you?' said Hazel.

'Because you're husband's jealous.'

Edward was exasperated by the realization that his action in coming did
look like that of the commonplace husband. But, after all, what did it
matter? Nothing mattered but Hazel. He looked across at her crouched in
the armchair sobbing. He went to her and patted her shoulder.

'No one's angry with you, dear,' he said. 'Afterwards, when we're home,
you shall explain it all to me.'

'If you win!' put in Reddin.

Edward stooped and kissed Hazel's hand. The momentary doubt of her--cruel
as hell--had gone. She was his lady, and he was going to fight for her.
Hazel looked up at him, and in that instant she almost loved him.

They went out. It was a black moonless night. They stood near the lit
window.

'Draw the blind up!' shouted Reddin.

Hazel drew it up. They faced each other in the square of light. They
were both quite collected. It seemed difficult to begin. The humour of
this struck Reddin, and he laughed.

Edward looked at him disgustedly. Reddin began to feel a fool.

'We must begin,' he said.

Seeing that Edward was waiting for him to strike the first blow, and
not being angry enough to do so, Reddin said coarsely:

'No good fighting, parson! She's mine--from head to foot.'

He received as good a blow as Edward was capable of. They fought with
hard-drawn breath, for they were neither of them in training. To Edward
it seemed ridiculous to be fighting; to Reddin it seemed ridiculous to
be fighting such an opponent.

They moved out of the light and back again in the tense silence of the
night. A rat splashed in the pool, and silence fell again.

Edward could not do much more than defend himself, and Reddin's eyes
shone triumphantly. Within, Hazel leaned against the glass faintly. It
was as if evil and good, angels and devils, fought for her. And
whichever won, she was equally forlorn. She did not want heaven; she
wanted earth and the green ways of earth.

'Oh, he'll kill Ed'ard!' she moaned.

Edward staggered under a blow, and she hid her eyes. Suddenly she
thought of Vessons. Where was he? She ran to the kitchen calling him.
He was not there. She went to the stables. He was nowhere to be found.
Drawn by an irresistible curiosity, she rushed back to the front of the
house. Under the yew-tree she ran into Vessons.

'Sh!' he whispered. 'Say nought! I'll tell you what's a mortal good
thing for a dog-fight--pepper!' He held up the kitchen pepper-pot. In
the other hand he had the poker.

'Now I'll part 'em, missus, you see!'

'Quick, then!'

But as she spoke Reddin got in a blow on Edward's jaw, and he fell.

Hazel rushed forward.

'You murderer!'--she screamed, and she bit Reddin's hand as he
stretched it out to catch her, and bent over Edward. The victor in the
fight was fated to be the loser with Hazel, for she had a never-broken
compact with all creatures defeated.

She ran to the pool for water.

'Catch a holt on him!' she cried to Vessons; 'he's a murderer!'

Reddin stood by, confused and mystified at Hazel's unlooked-for
behaviour. Vessons bent over Edward. He struck a match and held it to
the end of his nose, chuckling as Edward winced.

'I'll tell you summat as is mortal tough!' he remarked. 'A minister of
the Lord! Will the gen'leman stay supper?' he inquired of Reddin.

'No!' said Hazel; 'Mr. Reddin'll take supper alone, for allus, to his
dying day. Put the horse in, please, Mr. Vessons.'

'Right you are, missus.'

Reddin was so taken aback by the turn of events, and his head ached so
much, that he had nothing to say. He watched Vessons bring the horse
round, blinked at Hazel as she tore off the silk dress and borrowed
Edward's coat instead, and glowered dumbly at Edward as he was helped
into the trap. Hazel sat between the two men.

'Pluck up!' said Vessons to the cob unemotionally, and the trap jogged
through the gate and out on to the open hill.

'And if it cosses me my place, I'll tell ye one thing!' Vessons said to
himself: 'There's as good to be had, and better.'

'Well, I'm damned, said Reddin as they disappeared in the darkness. He
went in and finished the whisky in a state of mystification that ended
in sleep.




Chapter 30


As the horse trotted along the hard road, rabbits scuttled across in
the momentary lamplight. Hazel tied her handkerchief round Edward's
head.

All the windows were dark in Alderslea, except one faint dormer where
an old woman was dying. They began to climb the lane that led up to the
Mountain. Cattle looked over hedges, breathing hard with curiosity. In
an upland field a flock of horned sheep were racing to and fro through
a gap in the hedge, coughing and stamping at intervals, and looking, as
the moon rose, like fantastic devils working sorcery with their own
shadows.

The lamps dimmed in the moonlight and the world seemed to widen
infinitely, like life at the coming of love. The country lay below like
a vast white mere, and the hill sloped vaguely to a silver sky. Vessons
walked up the batch to ease the cob, and Edward looked down at Hazel
and murmured:

'My little child!'

'Dunna talk,' said Hazel quickly; 'it's bad for 'ee!' She was afraid to
break the magical silence, afraid that the new peace that came with
Marston's presence would vanish like the moon in driving cloud, and
that she would feel the dragging chain that pulled her back to Reddin.

Edward was silent, puzzling over the question, Why had not Hazel asked
for his help? Reddin must have seen her at least several times, must
have persecuted her. He grew very uneasy. He must ask Hazel.

They drew up before the white-sentried graveyard. Vessons went up the
path and knocked at the silent house. Then he threw handfuls of white
spar off a grave at the windows. The Minorca cockerel crew reedily.

'That's unlucky,' said Hazel.

Mrs. Marston put her head out, very sleepy, and asked who it was.

'The conquering 'ero!' said Vessons, as Edward and Hazel came up the
path, deeply shadowed. He got into the trap and drove off.

'Well, Undern'll be summat like itself again now,' he thought.

'It was a deal more peaceable without her, naughty girl!' thought Mrs.
Marston as she sadly and lethargically put on her clothes.

'Well, Edward!' she exclaimed, when she came down in her crimson shawl
with the ball fringe, 'here's a to-do! A minister of grace with a
pocket-handkerchief round his head coming to his house in the dead of
night with a wild old man. What's happened? Oh, my dear, is it your
arteries? We wondered where you were, Hazel Marston!'

'I'm very shivery, mother,' Edward said.

'Something hot and sweet!' She bustled off. They were alone for the
first time.

'Hazel, why didn't you tell me about this man? It was not kind or right
of you.'

'There was nought to tell.' She fidgeted.

'But he must have seen you several times.'

'I was near telling you, but I thought you'd be angered.'

'Angry! With you! Oh, to think of you in such danger!'

'What danger?'

'Of things that, thank God, you never dream of. He forged that letter,
I suppose? Or did he frighten you into writing it?'

'Ah.'

'But why did you ever go?'

'He pulled me up on the horse and took me.'

'The man's a savage.'

Hazel checked a hasty denial that was on her lips.

'What a pity you happened to meet him!' Edward said.

'Ah!'

'But why didn't you want to come at once when I came to fetch you? Were
you so afraid of him as that?'

'Ah!'

'Well, it's over now. He won't show his face here again; we've done
with him.'

Hazel sighed. But whether it was her spiritual self sighing with relief
at being with Edward, or her physical self longing for Reddin, she
could not have said.

'Only you could come through such an experience unchanged, my sweet,'
Edward said.

'I mun go to Foxy!' she cried desperately. 'Foxy wants me.'

'Foxy wants a good beating,' said Mrs. Marston benignly, looking
mercifully over her spectacles. Her wrath was generally like the one
drop of acid in a dell of honey, smothered in loving-kindness and
_embonpoint_.

When Hazel had gone, she said:

'You will send her away from here, of course?'

Edward went out into the graveyard without a word. He sat on one of the
coffin-shaped stones.

'God send me some quiet!' he said.

Mrs. Marston came and draped her shawl round him. He got up, despairing
of peace, and said he would go to bed.

'There's a good boy! So will I. You'll be as bright as ever in the
morning.' Then she whispered: 'You won't keep her here?'

'Keep her! Who? Hazel? Of course Hazel will stay here.'

'It's hardly right.'

'Pleasant, you mean, mother. You never liked her. You want to be rid of
her. But how you can so misjudge a beautiful soul I cannot think. I
tell you she's as pure as a daisy. Why, she could not even bear, in her
maidenly reserve, the idea of marriage. It is sheer blasphemy to say
such things.'

'Blasphemy, my dear, is not a thing you can do against people. It is
disagreeing with the Lord that is blasphemy.'

'I must ask you, anyway, never to mention Hazel's name to me until you
can think of her differently.'

When, after saying good night to Hazel and Foxy, Edward had gone to
bed, Mrs. Marston shook her head.

'Edward,' she said, 'is not what he was.' She waited till Hazel came
in.

'You're no wife for my son,' she said, 'you've sinned with another
man.'

'I hanna done nought nor said nought; it's all other folk's doing and
saying, so I dunna see as I've sinned. And I never could abear 'ee,'
Hazel cried; 'I'd as lief you was dead as quick!'

She rushed up to her room and flung herself on her bed sobbing. She
felt dazed, like a child taken into a big toy-shop and told to choose
quickly. Life had been too hasty with her. There were things, she knew,
that she would have liked; but she had so far not had time to find out
what they were.

She wished she could tell Edward all about it. But how could she
explain that strange inner power that had driven her to Hunter's
Spinney? How could she make him understand that she did not want to go,
and was yet obliged to go? She could not tell him that. Although she
was furious with Reddin on his behalf, although she hated Reddin for
the coarseness and cruelty in him, yet parting with him had hurt her.

How could this be? She did not know. She only knew that as she lay in
her little bed she wanted Reddin, his bodily presence, his kisses or
his blows. He had betrayed her utterly, bringing to his aid forces he
could not gauge or understand. His crime was that he had made of a
woman who could not be his spiritual bride (since her spirit was
unawakened, and his was to seek) his body's bride. All the divine
paradoxes of sex--the mastery of the lover and his deep humility, his
idealization of his bride and her absolute surrender--these he had
dragged in the mud. So instead of the mysterious, transcendant
illumination that passion brings to a woman, she had only confusion,
darkness, and a sense of something dragging at the roots of her being
in the darkness.

Her eyes needed his eyes to stare them down. The bruises on her arms
ached for his hard hands. Her very tears desired his roughness to set
them flowing.

'Oh, Jack Reddin! Jack Reddin! You've put a spell on me!' she moaned.
'I want to be along of Ed'ard, and you've bound me to be along of you.
I dunna like you, but I canna think of ought else!'

She fought a hard battle that night. The compulsion to get up and go
straight to Undern was so strong that it could only be compared to the
pull of matter on matter. She tried to call up Edward's voice--quiet,
tender, almost religious in its tone to her. But she could only hear
Reddin's voice, forceful and dictatorial, saying, 'I'm master here!'
And every nerve assented, in defiance of her wistful spirit, that he
_was_ master.

That, when morning came, she was still at the Mountain showed an
extraordinary power of resistance, and was simply owing to the fact
that Reddin had, in what he called 'giving the parson a good hiding,'
opened her eyes very completely to his innate callousness, and to his
temperamental and traditional hostility to her creed of love and pity.
Soon, in the mysterious woods, the owls turned home--mysterious as the
woods--strong creatures driven on to the perpetual destruction of the
defenceless, destroyed in their turn and blown down the wind--a few
torn feathers.




Chapter 31


Edward did not notice the strained relationship between Mrs. Marston
and Hazel. He supposed that his mother's suspicions had faded before
Hazel's frank presence.

Outwardly there was little change in the bearings of the two women; it
was only in feminine pinpricks and things implied that Mrs. Marston
showed her anger and Hazel her dislike, and it was when he was out that
Martha spoke so repeatedly and emphatically of being respectable. His
coming into the house brought an armoured peace, but no sooner was he
outside the door than the guns were unmasked again.

Hazel wished more and more that she had stayed at Undern.

She found a man's roughness preferable to women's velvet slaps, his
most masterful demands less wearing than their silent criticism. At
Undern she could not call her physical self her own. Here, her heart
and mind were attacked. She could not explain to Mrs. Marston that
something had made her go. Mrs. Marston would simply have said
'Fiddlesticks!' She could not explain that Reddin's touch drugged her.
If Mrs. Marston had ever been made to feel that madness of passivity--
which seemed impossible, so that Edward's existence was a paradox--she
had long since forgotten it. Besides, Hazel had no words in which to
express these things; she was not even clear about them herself.

She never tried to explain anything to Edward. She dreaded his anger,
and she felt that only by complete silence could she keep the look of
loving reverence in his eyes. She understood how very differently
Reddin looked at her. It did not matter with him, but Edward--it was
everything to her in Edward.

Only once there had been a keen look of criticism in Edward's eyes, and
her heart had fluttered. Edward said:

'Why, when you were dragged to Undern against your will, did you wear
the man's gown? It wasn't dignified. And why did you cry out on him not
to shame you? He could not shame you. You had done nothing wrong.'

'He said such awful things, Ed'ard, and the dress--the dress was so
pretty.'

'You poor child! you dear little one! So it was a pretty colour, was
it?'

'Ah!'

'You shall have one like it.'

He went off whistling.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was when she had been back nearly six weeks, and the August days
were scorching the Mountain, that the strain became unbearable. She was
not feeling well.

Reddin had made no sign. This had at first calmed her, then piqued her;
now it hurt her. Mysteriously she felt that she must be with him.

'He'm that proud, he'd ne'er ask me to go back. And if I went, there'd
be no peace. Oh, Jack Reddin, Jack Reddin! You've put a spell on me!
There inna much peace, days, nor much rest, nights, in your dark house.
And yet--'

Yet, whenever she went for a walk, she felt her feet taking her towards
Undern.

Then, quite suddenly, one morning Reddin rode past the house. Mrs.
Marston saw him.

'Edward must know of this,' she said, very much flustered. 'You ought
to go away somewhere, Hazel.'

'Away? Why ever?'

'Out of temptation. Why not to your aunt's?'

'Aunt Prowde wouldna have me. And Ed'ard wouldna like me to go.'

'Edward, I am sure, thinks as I do.'

'Gospel?'

'Do not be irreverent.'

'I dunna think you know what Ed'ard thinks as well as me.'

'Don't say "dunna," Hazel. Of course, I know what Edward thinks a great
deal better than you. I've known him all his life.'

Afterwards, when Mrs. Marston was not in the room, Martha said in her
contemptuous tones:

'I s'pose you know, Mrs. Ed'ard, how he's going on?'

'Who?'

'Why, that Mr. Reddin.'

'What's he done?'

'Oh, I know! But I wouldn't soil me mouth, only I'm thinking you'd
ought to know.'

She looked triumphant.

'He's after that there Sally something as lives nearby. They do say as
all her brats be his.'

'Mr. Reddin's? Is he--like--married to her, Martha?'

'About as much as he was to you, I reckon!'

'And does she--live there now?'

'I dunno.'

'Is she pretty?'

'It inna allus the prettiest as get lovers.'

'But is she prettier than me?'

'I've heard she's bigger and finer.'

'But she hanna got abron hair?'

'How should I know?'

This was desolate news to Hazel; for Reddin, now that she was going to
bear his child, had become necessary to her. She was unconscious of the
reason of this need--not a spiritual one, but purely physiological. She
did not hate him for this news. Such hatred is abnormal. Nor did she
love him. That would have been still more abnormal. But she must be in
his house; she must sew for him, share his daily doings, sleep in the
big four-poster, and not in the small virginal bed at the Mountain. It
would be grievous to leave Edward. He was the shelter between her
flickering spirit and the storms of life. She had hesitated, putting
off the inevitable, feeling that Undern was always there, like an empty
room, for her re-entry, so she had not hurried. Now the room was
occupied, her place taken. Immediately she felt that she must go.
Feverishly she decided to go this very night and peer in (no one but
herself had ever drawn the blinds at Undern of late years) and see for
herself. Mrs. Marston and Martha both seemed to be pushing her over the
brink.

When, after tea, she crept from the house, she was crying--crying at
leaving Edward, the master and the comrade of her unknown self. It was
as if she gave up immortality. Yet she was relieved to be going--that
is, if she could stay at Undern. Both her tears and her relief were
natural. The pity was that body and soul had been put in opposition by
belonging to different men.

She left a little blotted note for Edward.

'Dunna think too bad of me, Ed'ard. I be bound to go to Undern and
live; I ud liefer bide along of you.'

She went through the shadow-sweet meadows where birds hopped out across
green stretches in the cool, the high corn that had once been her
comrade, the honeysuckle hedges that used to bring so childish a glee.
They wore an air of things estranged and critical. All was so sad, like
a dear friend with an altered countenance. She was an exile even in the
seeing and hearing. It was strange to her as a town under the tides.
There it was, clear and belfried as of old, but fathoms deep, and the
bells had so faint a chime that Reddin's voice drowned them. She was
turned out of the Eden of the past that she had known in wood and
meadow. She was denied the Eden of the future that she might have had
in Edward's love. She had the present--Reddin--unless the other woman
had robbed her of him also.

She sat down in the heavy shadows of the trees at the far side of
Undern Pool. The water looked cold and ghastly even on this golden day.
She watched the wagtails strut magisterially, the moorhens with the
worried air of overworked charwomen, all the mysterious evening life of
a summer pool, but she had no smile for them to-day. The swallows slid
and circled across the water; their silence was no longer intimate, but
alien. She looked across at Undern. There were roses everywhere, but
the house had so strong a faculty for imposing its personality that it
gave to the red roses and the masses of traveller's joy that frothed
over it a deep sadness, as if they had blown and dropped long since and
were but memoried flowers. The shadows of swallows came and went on the
white western wall, and smoke stood up blue and straight from Vessons'
kitchen fire. She watched the cows go down the green lane, and the
shadows go over the meadows in triumphal state. When all was shadow,
and the sky was as suddenly vacant of swallows as at dawn it had been
full of them, she went stealthily towards the house.

A light appeared in the parlour. She came close up and looked in.

Reddin was in the easy chair, reading the paper, a pipe in the corner
of his mouth. No one else was there.

'Jack Reddin!' she said.

'Hullo!' He turned. 'So you've come? I thought you'd have come long
ago.'

That was all he said. But she assured herself that he was glad she had
come, because he shouted to Vessons for tea. She was certain he was
glad to see her. Yet there was something vaguely insolent in his
manner. He was a man who must never be sure of a woman. The moment she
committed herself for him and was at a disadvantage he despised her.

'Come over here!' he said. 'There! I suppose you've forgotten what it's
like to be kissed, eh? And to live with a man? You can never go away
again now.'

'Why?'

'Well, you are a simpleton! D'you think he'd have you back after this?
The first time it was my fault, he thinks; but the second! It won't
wash.' He laughed.

'This time's your fault as much as the other. You made me come both
times. There's Vessons! Leave me get up.'

'No. Why should I?'

Vessons entered.

'This 'ere game of tether-ball,' he said, 'fair makes me giddy.'

'Jack,' said Hazel when he had gone, 'Martha said there was a woman
here.'

'Martha's a liar.'

'Hanna there bin?'

'No. Never anyone but you.'

'Hanna you bin fond of anyone?'

'Only you.'

'She said there was a woman as had a lot of little children, as was
yours.'

'Damn her!'

'And I thought she's ought to live along of you, and to be
married-like, and wear the green dress.'

'No one shall wear that but you, nor have my children but you.'

She was, as he had calculated, entirely overwhelmed, and so startled
that she forgot to question him any more.

'Oh, no,' she said; 'that'll never be.'

He raised his eyebrows at her extraordinary denseness, but he judged it
best to say no more.

He must get rid of Sally. He supposed she would make him pay heavily.
He was sick of the sight of her and the children. They were not nice
children. He looked at Hazel contemplatively. If his conjecture was
right, he would have to try and legalize things during the next few
months. He badly wanted a son--born in wedlock. He would have to go and
beg the parson to divorce her. It would be detestable, but it would
have to be done. He would wait and see.

Meanwhile, Vessons also made plans, his obstinate mouth and pear-shaped
face more dour than ever.

Hazel had a letter from Edward in the morning; it was very short. She
could not tell what he thought of her.

He only said that if she ever wanted help she was to come to him. She
cried over it, and hid it away. She knew how well Edward would have
looked as he wrote it. She knew he would be grieved. She had not the
slightest idea that he would be utterly overwhelmed and wrecked. She
had not the least notion how he felt for her.

She was very glad to be away from Mrs. Marston and Martha. She found
this household of two men a great rest after the two women, although
Vessons did not relax his disapproval. If it had not been for her
passionate spiritual longing for Edward, she would have been happy, for
the deep law of her being was now fulfilled in thus returning to
Reddin. He, for his part, liked to see her about. Roses appeared in the
rooms; it was strange to him, who had never had a woman in his house,
to find his bedroom scented with flowers. He liked to watch her doing
her hair.

He always pretended to be asleep in the morning, so that she should get
up first--shyly anxious to be dressed before he awoke. So morning after
morning he would watch her through his eyelashes. He never felt that,
as she obviously wished for privacy, he was mean or indelicate.

'I've got a right to. She's mine,' was his idea.

It was not till a week after Hazel's coming that Reddin pulled himself
together, and went to interview Sally Haggard. Vessons, observing the
fact, repaired to Sally's cottage on his master's return, and found her
in tears. To see this heavy-browed, big-boned woman crying so startled
him that he contemplated her in silence.

'Well, fool, can't you speak?' she said.

'I dare say now as he wants you to move on?' queried Vessons.

'Ah.'

'Because of this other young 'ooman he's brought?'

'Ah, what's the good o' mouthing it? I bin faithful to 'im; I hanna
gone with others. All the chillun's his'n. And never come near me, he
didna, when my time come. And now it's "go!"' She broke out crying
again.

'What I come for was to show you a way to make her go. If I tell you,
you mun swear never to come and live at Undern.'

''Struth I will!'

'Well, then, just you come and see 'er some time when the master's
away. And bring the chillun.'

'Thank you kindly.'

'Not till I say the word, though! I wunna risk it till he's off for the
day. If he found me out, it'd be notice. Eh, missus, he's like a lad
with his first white mouse! And the parson! Laws, they'm two thrussels
wi' one worm, and no mistake.'

'And yet she's only a bit of a thing, you tell me?'

'Ah! But she'm all on wires, to and agen like a canbottle.'

'Why canna she bide with the minister?'

'Lord only knows! It's for 'er good, and for the maister's and yours,
not to speak of mine. It's werrit, werrit, all the while, missus, and
the fingers in the tea-caddy the day long! It's Andrew this and Andrew
that, and a terrible strong smell of flowers--enough for a burying.'

       *       *       *       *       *

Vessons waited eagerly for his opportunity; but Reddin was afraid to
leave Hazel alone, in case she might see Sally; so September came and
drew out its shining span of days, and still Vessons and Sally were
waiting.




Chapter 32


Morning by morning Hazel watched the fuchsia bushes, set with small red
flowers, purple-cupped, with crimson stamens, sway in beautiful
abandon. The great black bees pulled at them like a calf at its mother.
Their weight dragged the slender drooping branches almost to the earth.
So the rich pageantry of beauty, the honeyed silent lives went on, and
would go on, it seemed for ever. And then one morning all was over; one
of Undern's hard early frosts took then all--the waxen red-pointed
buds, the waxen purple cups, the red-veined leaves. The bees were away,
and Hazel, seeking them, found a few half alive in sheltered crevices,
and many frozen stiff. She put those that were still alive in a little
box near the parlour fire. Soon a low delighted humming began as they
one by one recovered and set off to explore the ceiling. Into this
contented buzzing came Reddin, who had just been again to Sally's, and
was much put out by her refusal to go away before November.

'What the h--- is all this humming?' he asked.

'It's bees. I've fetched 'em in to see good times a bit afore they
die.'

'What a child's trick!' he said, fending off an inquiring bee. 'Why,
they'll stay here all winter! We shall get stung.' Then he saw the
hospital full of bees by the fire.

'More?' he said. 'Good Lord!' He threw the box into the fire.

Hazel was silent with horror. At last she gasped:

'I was mothering 'em!'

'You're very keen on mothering! Wouldn't you like a kid to mother?'

'No. I'd liefer mother the bees and foxes as none takes thought on. I
dunna like babies much--all bald and wrinkly. Martha said as having 'em
made folk pray to die, but as it was worth anything to get one. But I
dunna think so. I think they'm ugly. I seed one in a pram outside that
cottage in the Hollow' (Reddin jumped), 'and it was uglier than a pig.
I think you're a cruel beast, Jack Reddin, to burn my bees, and they so
comforble, knowing I was taking care on 'em.'

She would not speak to him for the rest of the day. He was so bored in
the evening that he went out and demanded a boxful of bees from
Vessons.

'The missus wants 'em,' he said sheepishly.

Vessons was prepared to be pleasant in small matters. He fetched some
from the hive.

''Ere you are,' he said patronizingly; 'but you munna be always coming
to me after 'em.'

He was oblivious of the fact that they were Reddin's bees.

Reddin presented them.

'There,' he said gruffly; 'now you can be civil again.'

'But these be hive-bees!' said Hazel, 'and they was comforble to begin
with! I dunna want that sort. I wanted miserable uns!'

'Hang it! how could I know?' asked Reddin irritably.

'No. I suppose you couldna,' said Hazel; 'you'm terrible stupid, Jack
Reddin!'

So life went on at Undern, and Hazel adapted herself to it as well as
she could. It was strange that the longer she lived there the more she
thought of Edward. She always saw his face lined with grief and very
pale, not tanned and ruddy with fresh air as she had known it. It was
as if his mentality reached across the valley to hers and laid its
melancholy upon her. Sometimes she was very homesick for Foxy, but she
would not have her at Undern. She did not trust the place. She never
went out anywhere, for people stared, and when Reddin, with some
difficulty, persuaded her to amble round the fields with him on a pony
he picked up cheap for her, she always wanted to keep in his own
fields.

It was not until nearly the end of October that Vessons got his chance.
Reddin had to go to a very important fair. He wanted Hazel to go with
him, but she said she was tired, and, guessing the reason, he
immediately gave in.

In spite of Vessons' earnest desire to get him off, he started late. He
galloped most of the way, determined to get in early. He liked coming
home to tea and seeing Hazel awaiting him in the firelight.

As soon as she had gone, Vessons set out for Sally's, anxious that she
should be quick. But Sally would not hurry. It was washing-day, and she
also insisted on making all the children very smart, unaware that their
extreme ugliness was her strength. It was not till three o'clock that
she arrived at the front door, baby in arms, the four children, heavily
expectant, at her heels, and Vessons stage-managing in the background.

Hazel had been looking at two of the only books at Undern-'The Horse'
and 'The Dog,' illustrated. Vessons had views about books. He
considered them useful in their place.

'There's nought like a book,' he would say, 'one of these 'ere big fat
novels or a book of sermons, to get a nice red gledy fire. A book at
the front and a bit of slack behind, and there you are!'

There the books were, too.

So Hazel looked at the 'Book of the Horse' until she knew all the
pictures by heart. She had fallen asleep over it, and she jumped up in
panic when Sally spoke.

'Who be you?' she asked in a frightened voice as they eyed her.

'I'm Sally Haggard and these be my children.' She surveyed them
proudly. 'D'you notice that they favour anyone?'

Hazel looked at them timidly.

'They favour you,' she said.

'Not Mr. Reddin?'

'Mr. Reddin?'

'Ah! They'd ought to. They'm his'n.'

'His'n?'

'Yes, parrot.'

'Be you the 'ooman as Martha said Jack lived along of?'

'He did live along of me.'

'Why, then, you'd ought to be Mrs. Reddin, and wear this gownd, and
live at Undern,' said Hazel.

'Eh?' Sally was astonished.

'And he said there wunna any other but me.'

Sally laughed.

'You believed that lie? You little softie!'

Hazel looked at the children.

'Be they _all_ his'n?' she said.

'Every man-jack of 'em, and not so much as a thank you for me!'

The children were ranged near their mother--on high chairs. They gaped
at Hazel, sullen and critical. An irrepressible question broke from
Hazel.

'What for did you have 'em?'

Sally stared.

'What for?' she repeated. 'Surely to goodness, girl, you're not as
innicent-like as that?'

'I ain't ever going to have any,' Hazel went on with great firmness, as
she eyed the children.

'God above!' muttered Sally. 'He's fooled her worse'n me!'

'Come and look at the baby, my dear,' she said in a voice astonishingly
soft. She looked at Hazel keenly. 'Dunna you know?' she asked.

'What?'

'As you're going to have a baby?'

Hazel sprang up, all denial. But Sally, having told the children to
play, spoke for a long time in a low tone, and finally convinced a
white, sick, trembling Hazel of the fact. Not being sensitive herself,
she did not realize the ghastly terror caused by her lurid details of
the coming event.

Hazel looked so ill that Sally tried to administer consolation. 'Maybe
it'll be a boy, and you'll be fine and pleased to see 'un growing a
fine tall man like Reddin.'

Hazel burst into tears, so that the children stopped their play to
watch and laugh.

'But I dunna want it to grow up like Jack,' she said. 'I want it to
grow up like Ed'ard, and none else!'

'Well! You _are_ a queer girl. If you like him as you call Ed'ard
what for did you take up with Jack?'

'I dunno.'

'Well, the best you can do,' said Sally, 'is to go back to your Edward,
lithermonsload and all. And if he wunna take you--'

'Eh, but he will!' A wonderful tender smile broke on Hazel's face.
'He'll come to the front door and pull me in and say, "Come in little
Hazel, and get a cup of tea." And it'll be all the same as it was used
to be.'

'Well, he must be a fool! But so much the better for you. If I was you,
I'd go right back to-neet. Now what's you say to a cup o' tea? I'm
thinking it's high time I took a bite and sup in this parlour!'

They got tea; and Vessons, hovering in the yard, was in despair. He
could not appear, for Hazel must not know his part in the affair.
'Laws! If they've begun on tea, it's all up with Andrew,' he remarked
to the swan in passing.

Dusk came on and still no Sally appeared. The two chimneys smoked
hospitably, and he wanted his tea. He was a very miserable old man. He
repaired to the farthest corner of the domain and began to cut a hedge,
watching the field track. Soon Reddin appeared, and Vessons was unable
to repress a chuckle.

'Rather 'im than me!' he said.

Reddin, having fruitlessly shouted for Vessons, took the cob round to
the yard himself. Then he went in. As he entered the parlour, aware of
a comfortable scent of tea and toast, he met the solemn gaze of seven
pairs of eyes, and for a moment he was, for all his tough skin, really
staggered.

Then he advanced upon Sally with his stock firmly grasped in his hand.

'Get out of this!' he said.

The baby set up a yell. Sally rose and stood with her arm raised to
fend off the blow.

'Jack,' said Hazel, 'she'm got the best right to be at Undern. Leave
her stay! She'm a right nice 'ooman.'

Reddin gasped. Why would Hazel always do and say exactly the opposite
to what he expected?

'But you're the last person--' he began.

'You're thinking she'd ought to be jealous of me, Jack Reddin,' said
Sally. 'But we'm neither of us jealous! I tell you straight! She's too
good for you. You've lied to me; I'm used to it. Now you'm lied to
her--the poor innicent little thing!'

'What for did you tell me lies, Jack?' asked Hazel.

What with the unfaltering gaze of the two women, and the unceasing
howls of the baby, Reddin was completely routed.

'Oh, damn you all!' he said, and went hot-foot in a towering passion to
look for Vessons. A man to rage at would be a very great luxury. Having
at last found Vessons, harmlessly hedge-brushing, he was rather at a
loss.

'How dare you let Sally in?' he began.

'Sally?'

'Yes. Why the h-- did you come away here and leave the house?'

'The 'edge wanted doing.'

His tone was so innocent that Reddin was suspicious.

'You didn't bring her yourself, did you?'

'Now, _is_ it me,' said Vessons, reasonable but hurt, 'as
generally brings these packs of unruly women to Undern?'

'I believe you're lying, Vessons.'

Vessons opened his mouth to say, 'Notice is giv''; but seeing that in
his master's present mood it might be accepted, he closed it again.

When Reddin went in, Sally was gone, and Hazel, much as usual,
ministered to his comfort. The only signs of the recent tumult were the
constrained silence and the array of cups and plates.

'You'd better understand once and for all,' he said at last, 'that I'll
never have that woman here.'

'Not if I went?'

'Never! I'd kill her first.'

'What for did you tell me lies?'

'Because you were so pretty and I wanted you.'

The flattery fell on deaf ears.

'Them chillun's terrible ugly,' said Hazel wearily.

Reddin came over to her.

'But yours'll be pretty!' he said.

'Dunna come nigh me!' cried Hazel fiercely. 'She says I'm going to have
a little 'un! It was a sneak's trick, that; and you're a cruel beast,
Jack Reddin, to burn my bees and kill the rabbits and make me have a
little 'un unbeknown.'

'But it's what all women expect!'

'You'd ought to have told me. She says it's mortal pain to have a baby,
and I'm feared--I'm feared!'

'Hazel,' he said humbly, 'I may as well tell you now that I mean to
marry you. The parson must divorce you. Then we'll be married. And I'll
turn over a new leaf.'

'I'll ne'er marry you!' said Hazel, 'not till Doom breaks. I dunna like
you. I like Ed'ard. And if I mun have a baby, I'd lief it was like
Ed'ard, and not like you.'

With that she went out of the room, and he noticed that she was wearing
the dress she had come in, and not the silk.

He sat by the fire, brooding; but at last managed to cheer himself by
the thought that she would get over it in time. She was naturally upset
by Sally just now.

'And, of course, the parson'll never take her back, nor her father,' he
reflected. 'Yes, it'll all come right.'

He was upheld in this by the fact that Hazel's manner next day was much
as usual, only rather quiet.




Chapter 33


It was the night of the great storm. Undern rattled and groaned; its
fireless chimneys roared, and doors in unused passages banged so often
that the house took on an air of being inhabited. It seemed as if all
the people that had ever lived here had come back, ignoring in their
mournful dignity of eternal death these momentary wraiths of life.
Hazel had always been afraid of the place, and had sat up until Reddin
wanted to go to bed, so that she need not traverse the long passages
alone. But to-night she was afraid of Reddin also--not just a little
afraid, as she had always been, but full of unreasoning terror.

All things were confused in her mind, like the sounds that were in the
wind; Reddin's face, distorted with rage, as he advanced on Sally with
his arm raised; the howling of the baby; the sound of her bees
burning--going off like apple-pips. A scene came back to her from
the week before--it seemed years ago. They had gone into the
harvest-field after a hot, yellow day haunted by the sound of
cutting. Only a small square of orange wheat was left; the rest
of the field lay in the pale disorder of destruction. The two great
horses stood at one corner, darkly shining in the level light. The men
who had been tying sheaves stood about, some women and children were
coming over the stubble, and several dogs lay in the shadow. They all
seemed to be waiting. They were, in fact, waiting for Reddin, who was
always present at the dramatic finish of a field. Hazel knew what drama
was to be enacted; knew what the knobbled sticks were for; knew who
crouched in the tall, kindly wheat, palpitant, unaware that escape
was impossible.

'Plenty o' conies, sir!' called one of the men, whose face was a good
deal more brutal than that of his mongrel dog.

Hazel knew that the small square must be packed with rabbits, stark-eyed
and still as death, who had, with a fated foolishness, drawn in from the
outer portions of the field all day as the reaper went round.

'Jack,' she said, 'I hanna asked for a present ever.'

'No. You didn't want the bracelets, you silly girl.'

'I want one now.'

'You do, do you?'

'Ah! If you'll give it me, Jack, I'll do aught you want. What'd you
like best in the 'orld?'

He considered. He was feeling very fit and almost too much alive.

'Hunter's Spinney over again--up to when we got so gloomy.'

Hazel never wanted to think of that night, nor see the Spinney again.
There had been many times since, in the grey-tinted room, that had been
nearly as bad. But for evoking a shuddering, startled horror in her
mind, nothing came up to that Sunday night.

The reaper was moving again. Soon the rabbits would begin to bolt.

'I'll do ought and go anywhere if you'll do this as I want, Jack.'

'Well?'

'Call 'em off! Leave the last bit till morning. Let 'em creep away in
the dark and keep living a bit longer!'

'What nonsense!'

'Call 'em off, Jack! You can. You'm maister!'

'No.'

She sobbed. 'I be going, then.'

'No. You're to stay. You'll have to be cured of this damned silliness,
and learn to be sensible.'

While she struggled to wrench herself free, two rabbits bolted, and
hell broke loose. One would not have thought that the great calm
evening under its stooping sky, the peaceful, omniscient trees, the
grave, contented colours, could have tolerated such hideousness. The
women and children shrieked with the best, and Hazel stood alone--the
single representative, in a callous world, of God. Or was the world His
representative, and she something alien, a dissentient voice to be
silenced?

Such scenes, infinitely multiplied, bring that question to one's mind.

A rabbit had dashed across the field close to them, and Reddin,
relaxing his grip of her, had slashed at it with his stick. The look of
its eye, white and staring, as it fled past her with insensate speed,
came back to her now, and its convulsive roll over and recovery under
the blow; and then the next blow--She had fled from the place.

She thought again of what Sally had said, and a deep, smouldering rage
was in her at this that he had done to her--this torture to which,
according to Sally, he had quite consciously condemned her.

Now that she knew him better, his daily acts of callousness tormented
her. She would go. She was not wanted here. Sally had said so. There
had been letters from her aunt, from Reddin's vicar, from the eldest
Miss Clomber. In them all she was spoken of as the culprit for being at
Undern. Well, she did not want to be at Undern. She would go.

'Well, Hazel, child, what's the matter?' asked Reddin, looking up from
doing his quarterly accounts. 'Haven't you got a stocking to mend or a
hair-ribbon to make?'

'A many and a many things be the matter.'

'Come here, and I'll see if I can put 'em right.'

'Harkee!' she said suddenly. 'It's like as if the jeath-pack was i'
full cry down the wind.'

'Anyone would think you were off your head, Hazel. But come and tell me
about the things that are the matter.'

'It's you as makes 'em the matter.'

'Oh, well, sulk as long as you like.'

He returned angrily to his accounts. In the kitchen Vessons, very
spondaic, was singing 'The Three Jolly Huntsmen.'

In a few minutes Hazel rose and lit a candle. She looked, as she walked
to the door in her limp muslin dress, like the spectre of some unhappy
creature of the past.

'Where are you going?' asked Reddin.

'I thought to go to bed.'

'I'm not ready.'

'I'll go by my lonesome.'

'All right, sulk! It doesn't hurt me.'

But it did hurt him. He wanted her to be fond of him, to cling to him.
When at last he went up through the screaming house, he thought she was
asleep. She lay still in the big bed and made no sign.

Reddin was soon snoring, for accounts implied a strenuous intellectual
effort. He would have left them to Vessons, but Vessons always had to
notch sticks when he did them, and the manual labour ensuing on any
accounts running into pounds would have seriously interfered with his
other work. The cheese fair accounts usually took a long time. He could
be heard saying in a stupendous voice, 'One and one and one--' until
the chant ended in, 'Drat it! what _do_ 'em maken?'

So Reddin did the accounts and slept the sleep of the intellectual
worker afterwards.

Hazel looked out from the tent of the bed canopy into the dark,
creaking room and the darker, roaring night. She grew more afraid of
Reddin and Undern as the hours dragged on.

Reddin's presence tore to pieces the things she loved--delicate leafy
things--as if they were tissue-paper and he had walked through it. Her
pleasures seemed to mean nothing when he was with her and before his
loud laughter her wonderful faery-haunted days shrivelled. All she knew
was that, now she lived at Undern, she never went out in the green dawn
or came home wreathed in pansy and wild snapdragon.

Reddin had imposed a deeper change on her than the change from
maid to wife. He had robbed her of a thing frailer and rarer than
maidenhood--the sacramental love of Nature. It is only the fairest,
the highest and fullest matings that do not rob the soul of this,
even when it is an old tried joy. He had wronged her as deeply as
one human being can wrong another. His theft was cruel as that of
one who destroys a man's God. And the strange part of it was that
never, as long as he lived, would he know that he had done so, or
even guess that there had been any treasure to rifle. He would
probably, as an old man, long past desire, repent of the physical
part of the affair. Yet this was so much the lesser of the two.
Indeed, if he had been able to win her love, it would have been,
not wrong-doing, but righteousness. That a woman should, in the
evolution of life, cease to be a virgin and become a mother is a
thing so natural and so purely physical as hardly to need comment;
but that the immortal part of her should be robbed, that she should
cease to be part of an entity in a world where personality is the only
rare and precious thing--this is tragic.

Reddin could not help his over-virility, nor could he help having the
insensitive nature that could enjoy the physical side of sex without
the spiritual; probably he could not help being the kind of man that
supplies the most rabid imperialists, reactionaries, materialists. (He
always spoke of the heathen Chinee, lower orders, beastly foreigners,
mad fanatics, and silly sentimentalists, these last being those who
showed any kind of mercy.) It seemed that he could not help seeing
nothing outside his own narrow views.

But it did seem a pity that he never tried to alter in the least. It
did seem a pity that, after so many centuries, so many matings and
births, all his emblazoned and crested ancestors should have produced
merely--Reddin, a person exactly like themselves.

       *       *       *       *       *

Rain rustled on the window and the wind roared in the elms. The trees
round Undern Pool stooped and swung in the attitude of mowers. Hazel
knew that the Mountain would be even wilder to-night. Yet the Mountain
shone in paradisic colours--her little garden; her knitting; the quiet
Sundays; the nightly prayers; above all, Edward's presence, in the aura
of which no harm could come--for all these things she passionately
longed.

They were not home as the wild was, but they were a haven. They were
not ecstasy, but they were peace.

In her revulsion from Reddin and her terror of Undern, she forgot
everything except the sense of protection that Edward gave her. She
forgot Mrs. Marston's silent, crushing criticism and Martha's rude
righteousness. She forgot that she had sinned against the Mountain so
deeply that the old life could never return.

She remembered it as on the night of her wedding--the primroses, red
and white and lilac; the soothing smell of the clean sheets, that made
her feel religious; the reassuring tick of the wall clock; Mrs.
Marston's sliding tread; Foxy and the rabbit, the blackbird, and the
one-eyed cat.

She struck a match softly and crept across the room to the old mahogany
tallboy. From beneath a drawerful of clothes she took out Edward's
letter. She read it slowly, for she was, as Abel said, no scholar.
Edward wanted her, that was quite clear. Comfort flowed from the
half-dozen lines.

The ethics of the thing held no place in her mind.

She was not made for the comforts or the duties of social life,
and it was not in her-nor would it have been, however she had been
educated--to consider what effect her actions might have on the race.
Humanity did not interest her.

The ever-circling wheels of birth, mating, death, so all-absorbing to
most women, were nothing to her. Freedom, green ways, childlike
pleasures of ferny, mossy discoveries, the absence of hunger or pain,
and the presence of Foxy and other salvage of her great pity--these
were the great realities. She had a deeper fear than most people of
death and any kind of violence or pain for herself or her following.
Her idea of God had always been shadowy, but it now took shape as a
kind of omnipotent Edward.

When she had read the letter, she went to the window. A tortured dawn
crept up the sky. Vast black clouds, shaped like anvils for some
terrific smithy-work, were ranged round the horizon, and, later, the
east glowed like a forge. The gale had not abated, but was rising in a
series of gusts, each one a blizzard. Hazel was not afraid of it, or of
the shrieking woods. The wind had always been her playmate. The wide
plain that lay before the Undern windows was shrouded in rain--not
falling, but driving. Willows, comely in the evening with the pale
gold of autumn, had been stripped in a moment like prisoners of a
savage conqueror for sacrifice. The air was full of leaves, whirling,
boiling, as in a cauldron. From every field and covert, from the lone
hill-tracts behind the house, from garden and orchard, came the wail
of the vanquished.

Even as she watched, one of the elms by the pool fell with a grinding
crash. Reddin stirred in his sleep and muttered restlessly. She waited,
frozen with suspense, until he was quiet again.

She could hear the hound baying, terrified at the noise of the tree.
She dressed hurriedly, crept downstairs and went out by the back way,
leaving the house, with its watchful windows, its ancient quiet which
was not peace, and the grey, flapping curtains of the rain closed in
behind her.

She found a little shelter in the deep lanes, but when she came to the
woods leading up to the Mountain the wind was reaping them like corn.
Larches lay like spellicans one on another. Some leant against those
that were yet standing, and in the tops of these last there was a
roaring like an incoming tide on rocks. Crackings and groanings,
sudden crashes, loud reports like gun-fire, were all about her as
she climbed--a tiny figure in chaos.

When she came to the graveyard, havoc was there also. Several crosses
had fallen, and were smashed; the laburnum-tree, rich with grey
seed-vessels, lay prone, and in its fall it had carried half the
tomb away with it, so that it yawned darkly, but not as a grave from
which one has risen from the dead. A headstone lay in the path, and
the text, 'In sure and certain hope of the resurrection,' was half
obliterated.

Hazel crept into the porch of the chapel to shelter, utterly exhausted.
She went to sleep, and was awakened by the breakfast bell. She went to
the front door and knocked.




Chapter 34


Edward, coming downstairs, felt such a rush of joy and youth at sight
of her that he was obliged to stand still and remember that joy and
youth were not for him, that his only love had gone of her own will to
another man, and must be to him now only a poor waif sheltered for
pity. He was very much altered. His face frightened Hazel.

'Have you come to stay, Hazel, or only for a visit?' he asked.

'Oh, dunna look at me the like o' that, and dunna talk so stern,
Ed'ard!'

'I wasn't aware that I was stern.'

Edward's face was white. He looked down at her with an expression she
could not gauge. For there, had come upon him, seeing her there again,
so sweet in her dishevelment, so enchanting in her suppliance, the same
temptation that tormented him on his wedding-day. Only now he resisted
it for a different reason.

Hazel, his Hazel, was no fit mate for him. The words flamed in his
brain; then fiercely, he denied them. He would not believe it.
Circumstance, Hazel, his mother, even God might shout the lie at him.
Still, he would not believe.

But he must have it out with her. He must know.

'Hazel,' he said, 'after breakfast I want you to come with me up the
Mountain.'

'Yes, Ed'ard,' she said obediently.

She adored his sternness. She adored his look of weariness. She longed
hopefully and passionately for his touch.

For now, when it was too late, she loved him--not with any love of
earth; that was spoilt for her--but with a grave amorousness kin to
that of the Saints, the passion that the Magdalen might have felt for
Christ. The earthly love should have been Edward's, too, and would have
run in the footsteps of the other love, like a young creature after its
mother. But Reddin had intervened.

'First,' Edward said, 'you must have some food and a cup of tea.'

He never wavered in tenderness to her. But she noticed that he did not
say 'dear,' nor did he, bringing her in, take her hand.

Breakfast was an agony to Edward, for his mother, who had from the
first treated Hazel with silent contempt as a sinner, now stood, on
entering with the toast, and said:

'I will not eat with that woman.'

'Mother!'

'If you bring that woman here, I will be no mother to you.'

'Mother! For my sake!'

'She is a wicked woman,' went on Mrs. Marston, in a calm but terrible
voice; 'she is an adulteress.'

Edward sprang up.

'How dare you!' he said.

'Are you going to turn her out, Edward?'

'No.'

'Eddie! my little lad!'

Her voice shook.

'No.'

'My boy that I lay in pain for, two days and a night, to bring you into
the world!'

Edward covered his face with his hands.

'You will put me before--her?'

'No, mother.'

'You were breast-fed, Eddie, though I was very weak.'

There was a little silence. Edward buried his face in his arms.

'Right is on my side, Edward, and what I wish is God's will. You will
put duty first?'

'No. Love.'

'I am getting old, dear. I have not many more years. She has all a
lifetime. You will put me first?'

He lifted his head. He looked aged and worn.

'No! And again no!' he said. 'Stop torturing me, mother!'

Mrs. Marston turned without a word to go out. Hazel sprang up, breaking
into a passion of tears.

'Oh, let me go!' she cried. 'I'll go away and away! What for did you
fetch me from the Calla? None wants me. I wunna miserable at the Calla.
Let me go!'

She stared at Mrs. Marston with terrified eyes.

'She's as awful as death,' she said, 'the old lady. As awful as Mr.
Reddin when he's loving. I'm feared, Ed'ard! I'd liefer go.'

But Edward's arm was round her. His hand was on her trembling one.

'You shall not frighten my little one!' he said to his mother; and she
went to the kitchen, where, frozen with grief, she remained all morning
in a kind of torpor. Martha was afraid she would have a stroke. But she
dared not speak to Edward, for, hovering in the passage, she had seen
his face as he shut the door.

He made Hazel eat and drink. Then they went out on the hill.

'Now, Hazel,' he said, 'we must have truth between us. Did you go with
that man of your own will?'

She was silent.

'You must have done, or why go a second time? Did you?' His eyes
compelled her. She shivered.

'Yes, Ed'ard. But I didna want to. I didna!'

'How can both be true?'

'They be.'

'How did he compel you to go, then?'

Hazel sought for an illustration.

'Like a jacksnipe fetches his mate out o' the grass,' she said.

'What did he say?'

'Nought.'

'Then how--?'

'There's things harder than words; words be nought.'

'Go on.'

'It was like as if there was a secret atween us, and I'd got to find it
out. Dunna look so fierce, Ed'ard!'

'Did you find out?'

A tide of painful red surged over Hazel; she turned away. But Edward,
rendered pitiless by pain, forcibly pulled her back, and made her look
at him.

'Did you find out?' he repeated.

'There inna no more,' she whispered.

'Then it is true what he said, that you were his from head to foot?'

'Oh, Ed'ard, let me be! I canna bear it!'

'I wish I could have killed him!' Edward said. 'Then you were his--soul
and body?'

'Not soul!'

'You told a good many lies.'

'Oh, Ed'ard, speak kind!'

'What a fool I was! You must have detested me for interrupting the
honeymoon. Of course you went back! What a fool I was! And I thought
you were pure as an angel.'

'I couldna help it, Ed'ard; the signs said go, and then he threw me in
the bracken.'

Something broke in Edward's mind. The control of a life-time went from
him.

'Why didn't I?' he cried. 'Why didn't I? Good God! To think I suffered
and renounced for this!' He laughed. 'And all so simple! Just throw you
in the bracken.'

She shuddered at the knife-edge in his voice, and also at the new
realization that broke on her that Edward had it in him to be like
Reddin.

'What for do you fritten me?' she whispered.

'But it's not too late,' Edward went on, and his face, that had been
grey, flushed scarlet. 'No, it's not too late. I'm not particular.
You're not new, but you'll do.'

He crushed her to him and kissed her.

'I'm your husband,' he said, 'and from this day on I'll have my due.
You've lied to me, been unfaithful to me, made me suffer because of
your purity--and you had no purity. Tonight you sleep in my room;
you've slept in his.'

'Oh, let me go, Ed'ard! let me go!' She was lost indeed now. For
Edward, the righteous and the loving, was no more. Where should she
flee? She did not know this man who held her in desperate embrace. He
was more terrible to her than all the rest--more terrible, far, than
Reddin--for Reddin had never been a god to her.

'I knelt by your bedside and fought my instincts, and they were good
instincts. I had a right to them. I gave up more than you can ever
guess.'

'I'm much obleeged, Ed'ard,' she said tremblingly.

'I've disgraced my calling, and I've this morning hurt my mother beyond
healing.'

'I'd best be going, Ed'ard. The sun'll soon be undering.'

The day blazed towards noon, but she felt the chill of darkness.

'And now,' Edward finished, 'that I have no mother, no self-respect,
and no respect for you, I will at least have my pleasure and--my
children.

The words softened him a little.

'Hazel,' he said, 'I will forgive you for murdering my soul when you
give me a son, I will almost believe in you again, next year--Hazel--'

He knelt by her with his arms round her. She was astonished at the
mastery of passion in him. She had never thought of him but as
passionless.

'To-night,' he said, and tenderness crept back into his voice, 'is my
bridal. There is no saving for me now in denial, only in fulfilment. I
can forgive much, Hazel, for I love much. But I can't renounce any
more.'

Hazel had heard nothing of what he said since the words, 'when you give
me a son.'

They rang in her brain. She felt dazed. At last she looked up
affrightedly.

'But,' she said, 'when I have the baby, it unna be yours, but his'n.'

'What?'

'It--it'll be his'n.'

'What?'

He questioned foolishly, like a child. He could not understand.

'It's gone four month since midsummer,' she said, 'and Sally said I was
wi' child of--of--'

'You need not go on, Hazel.'

Edward's face looked pinched. The passion had gone, and a deathly look
replaced it. He was robbed, utterly and cruelly. He could no longer
believe in a God, or how could such things be? Manhood was denied him.
The last torture was not denied him--namely, that he saw the full
satire of his position, saw that it was his own love that had destroyed
them both. Out of his complete ruin he arose joyless, hopeless, but
great in a tenderness so vast and selfless that it almost took the
place of what he had lost.

Hazel was again his inspiration, not as an ideal, but as a waif. In his
passion of pity for her he forgot everything. He had something to live
for again.

'Poor child!' he said. 'Come home. I will take care of you.'

'But--the old lady?'

'You are first.'

She caught his hands; she flung herself upon his shoulder in a rush of
tears. If this was his tragic moment, it was also hers.

'Oh, Ed'ard, Ed'ard!' she cried, 'it's you as I'd lief have for my
lover! It's you as I'm for, body and soul, if I'm for a mortal man!
It's your baby as I want, Ed'ard, and I wouldna be feared o' the pain
as Sally told of if it was yours. What for didna you tell me in the
spring o' the year, Ed'ard? It be winter now, and late and cold.'

'There, there! you don't know what you're saying. Come home!'

Edward did not listen to her, she knew. And, indeed, his brain was
weary, and could take in no more. He only knew he must care for Hazel
as Christ cared for the lambs of His fold. And darkly on his dark mind
loomed his new and bitter creed, 'There is no Christ.'




Chapter 35


Martha met them on the doorstep, crying, hiccoughing, and enraged.

'Why, Martha!' Edward looked at her in astonishment. It is usually the
supers, and not the principals, that raise lamentation in the midst of
tragedy--'why, Martha, have you lost someone dear to you?'

He knew all about that loss.

'I've lost nought, sir; thank God my good name's my own, and not gone
like some folk's; but I'm bound to give notice, sir, not having fault
to find, being as good a master as ever stepped. But seeing the missus
is going--'

'The missus?'

'Ah. The mother as God give you, sir, the very next time the trailer
goes by, and the letter wrote and all. And when she goes, I go. For
I've kep' myself respectable, and I'll serve no light woman, nor yet
live in a house give over to sin.'

Edward saw Martha in a new light, as he now saw all things.

'What a filthy mind you have, Martha!' he said in a strange, weary
voice. 'The minds of all respectable people are obscene. You are a bad
woman!'

But Martha, setting up a shriek, had fled from the house. She told her
brother that the master was mad, bewitched. She never entered the house
again.

Edward found his mother in the kitchen.

'Mother, you are not really going?'

'Yes, Edward, unless'--a flicker of hope lit her eyes--'unless you have
sent her away.'

'Let me explain, mother. It is not as it seems in the world's eyes.'

'She is an adulteress. And you--oh, Edward, I thought you were a good
man, like your father! Not even the common decency to wait till the
other man's child is born. Why, the merest ploughman would do that!'

If any face could have expressed despair, torture and horror, Edward's
face did now. He looked at her for a long while, until she said:

'Don't fix your eyes so, Edward! What are you looking at?'

'The world. So that is what you think of me?'

'What else can I think? Why do you say "The world" so strangely?'

'The world!' he said again. 'A place of black mud and spawning
creatures. No soul, no God, no grace. Nothing but lust and foul breath
and evil thoughts.'

'I will not hear such talk. I will keep my room till I go.' Mrs.
Marston rose and went upstairs. She would not have his arm. And though
for the next two days he waited on her with his old tenderness, she
barely spoke, and there was between them an estrangement wider than
death. She prayed for him night and day, but not as one that had much
hope.

Meanwhile, Hazel managed the house. She put all her worship of Edward
into it, all her passion of tenderness. And she, who had hitherto
spoilt all the food she touched, now cooked almost with genius. She
found an apron of Martha's and washed it; she read Mrs. Marston's
receipts till her head ached; she walked over God's Little Mountain
each day to buy dainties. When she asked Edward for money, he gave her
the keys of his desk. Four times a day appetizing meals went up to Mrs.
Marston, and were brought down again barely touched. Hazel ate them,
for the urgent necessity of coming maternity was on her, and she would
not waste Edward's money. Four times a day Edward's favourite dishes
were set in the parlour by a bright hearth. Edward, as soon as Hazel
had returned to the kitchen, threw them into the fire.

It was Hazel who packed Mrs. Marston's boxes while the old lady slept,
and made up the fire in her room in the middle of the night.

Then, closing her own door, she would fling herself on her bed in
passionate weeping as she thought what might have been if, when Edward
had said, 'To-night is my bridal,' she had had a different reply to
make.

She knew that nothing except what she had said would have made any
impression on Edward; she knew he would not have listened to her. She
was glad to know this. The momentary fear of him was gone. All was
right that he said and did. The whole love of her being was his now. He
had filled the place of nature and joy and childish pleasures. She was
not meant for human love. But through her grief she loved better than
those that were meant for it.

All the sweet instincts of love and wifehood; the beauty of passion;
the pride of surrender; the forgetfulness of self that creates self;
the crying of the spirit from its delicate marble minaret to the flesh
in its grassy covert, and the wistful, ascending answer of flesh to
spirit--all these were hers. And as she lay and wept, and remembered
how many a time Edward had stood on her threshold and hastily, though
gently, shut her door upon her, she realized what Edward meant to her,
and what he was. Then she would rise and stand at her window, fingered
and shaken by the autumn winds, and look up at the hard-eyed stars.

'If there's anybody there,' she would say, 'please let the time go
quickly till the baby comes, and let Ed'ard have his bridal like he
said, and see his little uns running up and down the batch.'

And, looking round the room at all the signs of his love, she would
suddenly find unbearable the innocent stare of the buttercups and
daisies on the walls, and would bury her face, flushed red with
fluttering possibilities of unearthly rapture. Then she would sleep and
dream that once more Edward stood upon the threshold and kissed her and
turned to his cold room; but she--she had made a noble fire in her
little grate; and the room was full of primroses, red and white and
lilac; and the wall-clock chimed instead of striking--an intoxicating
fairy chime; and there were clear sheets as of old. She forgot her
shyness; she forgot to be afraid of his criticism; she caught his
hands. He turned. And at the marvel of his face she woke, trembling and
happy.

Mrs. Marston went without any farewell to Hazel. Edward carried her box
down the quarry and helped her into the trailer. He stood and watched
it bump away round the corner, Mrs. Marston sitting, as she had done on
that bright May morning, majestic in her grape-trimmed hat and the
mantle with the bugles. Her face and her attitude expressed the deep
though unformulated conviction that God was 'not what He was.'

Then he turned and went home, numb, without vitality or hope.

A new Hazel met him on the threshold, no longer timorous, deprecating,
awkward, but gravely and sweetly maternal. She led him in. Tea was laid
with the meticulous reverence of a sacrament.

'Now draw your stockinged foot along the floor!' Hazel commanded.

At this remembrance of his mother and at Hazel's careful love, he broke
down and wept, his face in her lap.

'Now see!' she whispered. 'She'll come back, Ed'ard, when the anger's
overpast.'

'The anger of good people is never overpast, Hazel.'

'See, I'll write her a letter, Ed'ard, and I'll say I'm a wicked girl,
and she's to teach me better ways. She'll come like Foxy for bones,
Ed'ard.'

Comfort stole into Edward's heart.

'And see, my dear, I'll send his baby to him, and maybe, after--' She
stumbled into silence.

'What, Hazel?'

'Maybe, Ed'ard, after--a long and long while after--' She began to cry,
covering her face. 'Oh, what for canna you see, my soul,' she
whispered, 'as I love you true?'

Edward looked into her eyes, and he did see. Strangely as an old
forgotten tale, there came to him the frail hope of the possibility of
joy. And with it some faith, storm-tossed and faint, but still living,
in Hazel's ultimate beauty and truth. He did not know this could be. He
only knew it was so. He did not know how it was that she, whom all
reviled, was pure and shining to him again, while the world grovelled
in slime. But so it was.

'Harkee, Ed'ard!' she said; 'I'm agoing to mother you till she comes
back. And some day, when you've bin so kind as to forgive me, maybe I
unna be mother to you, but--anything you want me to be. And, maybe,
there'll be a--a--bridal for you yet, my soul, and your little uns
running down the batch.'

'Yes, maybe. But don't let's talk of such things yet, not for many
years. They are so vile.'

She was cut to the heart, but she only said softly:

'Not for many years, my soul! I'm mothering of you now!'

'That's what I want,' he said, and fell asleep while she stroked' his
tired head.

Peace settled again on the chapel and parsonage, and a muted happiness.
Summer weather had returned for a fleeting interval. The wild bees were
busy again revelling in the late flowers, but taking their pleasure
sadly; for the flowers were pale and rain-washed, and the scent and the
honey were fled.

'Eh! I wish I could bring 'em all in afore the frosses, and keep 'em
the winter long,' Hazel said. 'But they've seen good times. It inna so
bad for folks to die as have seen good times. Afore I'm old and like to
die, I want to see good times, Ed'ard--good times along with you.'

'What sort of good times?'

'Oh, going out of a May morning, you and me--and maybe Foxy on a
string--and looking nests, and us with cobwebs on our boots, and
setting primmyroses, red and white and laylac, in my garden as you
made, and then me cooking the breakfast, and you making the toast and
burning it along of reading some hard book, and maybe us laughing over
a bit o' fun. And then off to read to somebody ill, and me waiting
outside, pleased as a queen, and hearkening to your voice coming quiet
through the window. And picking laylac, evenings, and going after
musherooms at the turn of the year. Them days be coming, Ed'ard, inna
they? I dunna mind ought if I know they're coming.'

'Yes, perhaps they are,' he said, smiling a little at her simple hopes,
and even beginning himself to see the possibility of a future for them.

Two days went by in this calm way, for no one came near them, and while
they were alone there was peace. They did not go beyond the garden,
except when Hazel went to the shop. Edward did not go with her; he felt
sensitive about meeting anyone.

In the evenings, by the parlour fire, Edward read aloud to her. He did
not, however, read prayers, and she wondered in silence at the change.
She felt a great peace in these evenings, with Foxy on the hearthrug at
her feet. They neither of them looked either backward or forward, but
lived in the moated present, that turreted heaven whose defences so
soon fall.

On the third morning Reddin came. Hazel had gone to the shop, and,
coming back, she had lingered a little to watch with a sense of old
comradeship the swallows wheeling in hundreds about the quarry cliffs.
Their breasts were dazzling in the clear hot air. They had no
thought for her, being so filled with a rage of joy, dashing up
and down the smooth white sides of the quarry, multiplied by their
blue shadows. They would nestle in crevices, like bits of thistledown
caught in a grass-tuft, and would there sun themselves and chirrup.
So many hundreds were there, and their shadows so multiplied them,
that they seemed less like birds than like some dream of a bird
heaven--essential birdhood. They were so quick with life, so warm,
with their red-splashed breasts and blue flashing bodies; they wove
such a tireless, mazy pattern, like bobbins weaving invisible lace,
that they put winter far off. They comforted Hazel inexpressibly.
Yet to-morrow they would, in all likelihood, be gone, not even a
shadow left. Hazel wished she could catch them as they swept by,
their shining breasts brushing the grasses. She knew they were sacred
birds, 'birds with forkit tails and fire on 'em.' If sacredness
is in proportion to vitality and joy, Hazel and the swallow tribe
should be red-letter saints.

It was while she was away that Reddin knocked at the house door, and
Edward answered the knock. Something in his look made Reddin speak
fast. He had triumphed at their last encounter through muscle. Edward
triumphed in this through despair.

'I felt I ought to come, Marston. As things are, the straight thing is
for me to marry her--if you'll divorce her.'

He looked at Edward questioningly, but Edward stared beyond him with a
strange expression of utter nausea, hopeless loss, and loathing of all
created things. Reddin went on:

'Her place is with me. It's my duty to look after her now, as it's my
child she's going to have.'

He could not resist this jibe of the virile to the non-virile. Besides,
if he could make Marston angry, perhaps he would fight again, and
fighting was so much better than this uncomfortable silence.

'I should naturally pay all expenses and maintenance wherever she was;
I never mind paying for my pleasures.'

Edward's eyes smouldered, but he said nothing.

'Of course, she can't _expect_ either of us to see to her in her
position' (Edward clenched his hands), 'but I intend to do the decent
thing. I'm never hard on a woman in that state; some fellows would be;
but I've got a memory, hang it, and I'm grateful for favours received.'

Why he should be at his very worst for Edward's benefit was not
apparent, except that complete silence acts on the nerves, and
nervousness brings out the real man.

'Well, think it over,' he concluded. 'You seem to be planning a sermon
to-day. I shall be round here on Saturday--the meet's in the woods.
I'll call then, and you can decide meanwhile. I don't mind whether she
comes or not--at present. Later on, if I can't get on without her, I
can no doubt persuade her to come again. But if you say divorce, I'll
fetch her at once, and marry her as soon as you've got your decree.
Damn you, Marston! Can't you speak? Could I say fairer than that, man
to man?'

Edward looked at him, and it was such a look that his face and ears
reddened.

'You are not a man,' Edward said, with complete detachment; 'you are
nothing but sex organs.'

He went in and shut the door.

Edward said nothing to Hazel of Reddin's visit. He forgot it himself
when she came home; it slipped into the weary welter of life as he saw
it now--all life, that is, other than Hazel's. Brutality, lust,
cruelty--these summed up the world of good people and bad people. He
rather preferred the bad ones; their eyes were less awful, and had less
of the serpent's glitter and more of the monkey's leer.

He did not shrink from Reddin as he shrank from his mother.

Hazel came running to him through the graves. She had a little parcel
specially tied up, and she wrote on it in the parlour with laborious
love. It was tobacco. She had decided that he ought to smoke, because
it would soothe him.

They sat hand in hand by the fire that evening, and she told him of her
aunt Prowde, and how she first came to know Reddin, and how he
threatened to tell Edward of her first coming to Undern. She was
astonished at the way his face lit up.

'Why didn't you tell me that before, dear? It alters everything. You
did not go of your own choice at first, then. He had you in a snare.'

'Seems as if the world's nought but a snare, Ed'ard.'

'Yes. But I'm going to spend my life keeping you safe, little Hazel. I
hope it won't make you unhappy to leave the Mountain?'

'Leave the Mountain?'

'Yes. I must give up the ministry.'

'Why ever?'

'Because I know now that Jesus Christ was not God, but only a brave,
loving heart hunted to death.'

'Be that why you dunna say prayers now?'

'Yes. I can't take money for telling lies.'

'What'll you do if you inna a minister, Ed'ard?'

'Break stones--anything.'

Hazel clapped her hands.

'Can I get a little 'ammer and break, too?'

'Some day. It will only be poor fare and a poor cottage, Hazel.'

'It'll be like heaven!'

'We shall be together, little one.'

'What for be your eyes wet, Ed'ard?'

'At the sweetness of knowing you didn't go of your own accord.'

'What for did you shiver?'

'At the dark power of our fellow-creatures set against us.'

'I inna feared of 'em now, Ed'ard. Maybe it'll come right, and you'll
get all as you'd lief have.'

'I only want you.'

'And me you.'

They both had happy dreams that night.

Outside, the stars were fierce with frost. The world hardened. In the
bitter still air and the greenish moonlight the chapel and parsonage
took on an unreal look, as if they were built of wavering, vanishing
material, and stood somewhere outside space on a pale, crumbling shore.

Without, the dead slept, each alone, dreamless. Within, the lovers
slept, each alone, but dreaming of a day when night should bring them
home each to the other.

As the moon set, the shadows of the gravestones lengthened grotesquely,
creeping and creeping as if they would dominate the world.

In the middle of the night Foxy awoke, and barked and whimpered in some
dark terror, and would not be comforted.




Chapter 36


Hazel looked out next morning into a cold, hostile world. The wind had
gone into its winter quarters, storming down from the top of the
Mountain on to the parsonage and raging into the woods. That was why
Edward and Hazel never heard the sounds--some of the most horrible of
the English countryside--that rose, as the morning went on, from
various parts of the lower woods, whiningly, greedily, ferociously, as
the hounds cast about for scent. Once there was momentary uproar, but
it sank again, and the Master was disappointed. They had not found. The
Master was a big fleshy man with white eyelashes and little pig's eyes
that might conceal a soul--or might not. Miss Amelia Clomber admired
him, and had just ridden up to say, 'A good field. Everybody's here.'
Then she saw Reddin in the distance, and waited for him to come up. She
was flushed and breathless and quite silent--an extraordinary thing for
her. He certainly was looking his best, with the new zest and youth
that Hazel had given him heightening the blue of his eyes and giving an
added hauteur of masculinity to his bearing. She would, as she watched
him coming, cheerfully have become his mistress at a nod for the sake
of those eyes and that hauteur.

He was entirely unconscious of it. He never was a vain man, and women
were to him what a watch is to a child--something to be smashed, not
studied. Also, his mind was busy about his coming interview with
Edward. He was ludicrously at a loss what to say or do. Blows were the
only answer he could think of to such a thing as Edward had said. But
blows had lost him Hazel before, and he wanted her still. He was rather
surprised at this, passion being satisfied. Still, as he reflected,
passion was only in abeyance. Next May--

If Miss Clomber had seen his eyes then, she would probably have
proposed to him. But he was looking away towards the heights where
Edward's house was. There was in his mind a hint of better things.

Hazel had been sweet in the conquering; so many women were not. And she
was a little, wild, frail thing. He was sorry for her. He reflected
that if he sold the cob he could pay a first-rate doctor to attend her
and two nurses. 'I'll sell the cob,' he decided. 'I can easily walk
more. It'll do me good.'

'Good morning, Mr. Reddin!' cried Miss Clomber as sweetly as she could.

'May your shadow never grow less!' he replied jocosely, as he cantered
by with a great laugh.

'If she'd only die when she has the child!' thought Miss Clomber
fiercely.

Up on the Mountain Edward and Hazel were studying a map to decide in
which part of the county they would live. Round the fire sat Foxy, the
one-eyed cat, and the rabbit in a basket. From a hook hung the bird in
its cage, making little chirrupings of content. On the window-sill a
bowl of crocuses had pushed out white points.

But upon their love--Edward's dawn of content and Hazel's laughter--broke
a loud imperious knocking. Edward went to the door. Outside stood Mr.
James, the old man with the elf-locks who shared the honey prizes with
Abel, two farmers from the other side of the Mountain, Martha's brother,
and the man with the red braces who had won the race when Reddin turned.

They coughed.

'Will you come in?' asked Edward.

They straggled in, very much embarrassed.

Hazel wished them good morning.

'This young woman,' Mr. James said, 'might, I think, absent herself.'

'Would you rather go or stay, Hazel?'

'Stay along of you, Ed'ard.'

Hazel had divined that something threatened Edward.

They sat down, very dour. Foxy had retired under the table. The shaggy
old man surveyed the bird.

'A nice pet, a bird,' he said. 'Minds me of a throstle I kep'

'Now, now, Thomas! Business!' said Mr. James.

'Yes. Get to the point,' said Edward.

James began.

'We've come, minister, six God-fearing men, and me spokesman, being
deacon; and we 'ope as good will come of this meeting, and that the
Lord'll bless our endeavour. And now, I think, maybe a little prayer?'

'I think not.'

'As you will, minister. There are times when folk avoid prayer as the
sick avoid medicine.'

James had a resonant voice, and it was always pitched on the intoning
note. Also, he accented almost every other syllable.

'We bring you the Lord's message, minister. I speak for 'Im.'

'You are sure?'

'Has not He answered us each and severally with a loud voice in the
night-watches?'

'Ah! He 'as! True! Yes, yes!' the crowd murmured.

'And what we are to say,' James went on, 'is that the adulteress must
go. You must put her away at once and publicly; and if she will make
open confession of the sin, it will be counted to you for
righteousness.'

Edward came and stood in front of Hazel.

'Had you,' James continued in trumpet tones--'had you, when she played
the sinner with Mr. Reddin, Esquire, leading a respectable gentleman
into open sin, chastened and corrected her--ay, given her the bread of
affliction and the water of affliction and taken counsel with us--'

'Ah! there's wisdom in counsel!' said one of the farmers, a man with
crafty eyes.

'Then,' James went on, 'all would 'a been well. But now to spare would
be death.'

'Ah, everlasting death!' came the echoes.

'And now' (James' face seemed to Hazel to wear the same expression as
when he pocketed the money)--'now there is but one cure. She must go to
a reformatory. There she'll be disciplined. She'll be made to repent.'

He looked as if he would like to be present.

They all leant forward. The younger men were sorry for Edward. None of
them was sorry for Hazel. There was a curious likeness, as they leant
forward, between them and the questing hounds below.

'And then?' Edward prompted, his face set, tremors running along the
nerves under the skin.

'Then we would expect you to make a statement in a sermon, or in any
way you chose, that you'd cast your sins from you, that you would never
speak or write to this woman again, and that you were at peace with the
Lord.'

'And then?'

'Then, sir'--Mr. James rose--'we should onst again be proud to take our
minister by the 'and, knowing it was but the deceitfulness of youth
that got the better of you, and the wickedness of an 'ooman.'

Feeling that this was hardly enough to tempt Edward, the man with the
crafty eyes said:

'And if in the Lord's wisdom He sees fit to take her, then, sir, you
can choose a wife from among us.' (He was thinking of his daughter.) He
said no more.

Edward was speaking. His voice was low, but not a man ever forgot a
word he said.

'Filthy little beasts!' he said, but without acrimony, simply in
weariness. 'I should like to shoot you; but you rule the world--little
pot-bellied gods. There is no other God. Your last suggestion (he
looked at them with a smile of so peculiar a quality and such strange
eyes that the old beeman afterwards said "It took you in the stomach")
was worthy of you. It's not enough that unselfish love can't save. It's
not enough (his face quivered horribly) that love is allowed to torture
the loved one; but you must come with your foul minds and eyes to "view
the corpse." And you know nothing--nothing.'

'We know the facts,' said James.

'Facts! What are facts? I could flog you naked through the fields,
James, for your stupidity alone.'

There was a general smile, James being a corpulent man. He shrank. Then
his feelings found relief in spite.

'If you don't dismiss the female, I'll appeal to the Presbytery,' he
said, painfully pulling himself together.

'What for?'

'Notice for you.'

'No need. We're going. What d'you suppose I should do here? There's no
Lord's Day and no Lord's house, for there's no Lord. For goodness'
sake, turn the chapel into a cowhouse!'

They blinked. Their minds did not take in his meaning, which was like
the upper wind that blows coldly from mountain to mountain and does not
touch the plain. They busied themselves with what they could grasp.

'If you take that woman with you, you'll be accurst,' said James. 'I
suppose,' he went on, and his tone was, as he afterwards said to his
wife with complacency, 'very nasty'--'I suppose you dunno what they're
all saying, and what I've come to believe, in this shocking meeting, to
be God's truth?'

'I don't know or care.'

'They're saying you've made a tidy bit.'

'What d'you mean?'

James hesitated. Filthy thoughts were all very well, but it was awkward
to get them into righteous words.

'Well, dear me! they're saying as there was an arrangement betwixt you
and 'im--on the gel's account--(the old beeman tried to hush him)--and
as cheques signed "John Reddin" went to your bank. Dear me!'

Slowly the meaning of this dawned on Edward. He sat down and put his
hands up before his face. He was broken, not so much by the insult to
himself as by the fixed idea that he had exposed Hazel to all this. He
traced all her troubles and mistakes back to himself, blaming his own
love for them. While he had been fighting for her happiness, he had
given her a mortal wound, and none had warned him. That was why he was
sure there was no God.

They sat round and looked at their work with some compunction. The old
beeman cleared his throat several times.

'O' course,' he said, 'we know it inna true, minister. Mr. James
shouldna ha' taken it on his lips.' He looked defiantly at James out of
his mild brown eyes.

Edward did not hear what he said. Hazel was puzzling over James'
meaning. Why had he made Edward like this? Love gave her a quickness
that she did not naturally possess, and at last she understood. It was
one of the few insults that could touch her, because it was levelled at
her primitive womanhood. Her one instinct was for flight. But there was
Edward. She turned her back on the semi-circle of eyes, and put a
trembling hand on Edward's shoulder. He grasped it.

'Forgive me, dear!' he whispered. 'And go, now, go into the woods;
they're not as cold as these. When I've done with them we'll go away,
far away from hell.'

'I dunna mind 'em,' said Hazel. 'What for should I, my soul?'

Then she saw how dank and livid Edward's face had become, and the
anguished rage of the lover against what had hurt her darling flamed up
in her.

'Curse you!' she said, letting her eyes, dark-rimmed and large with
tears, dwell on each man in turn. 'Curse you for tormenting my Ed'ard,
as is the best man in all the country--and you'm nought, nought at
all!'

The everlasting puzzle, why the paltry and the low should have power to
torment greatness, was brooding over her mind.

'The best!' said James, avoiding her eyes, as they all did. 'A
hinfidel!'

'I have become an unbeliever,' Edward said, 'not because I am unworthy
of your God, but because He is unworthy of me. Hazel, wait for me at
the edge of the wood.'

Hazel crept out of the room. As she went, she heard him say:

'The beauty of the world isn't for the beautiful people. It's for
beef-witted squires and blear-eyed people like yourselves--brutish,
callous. Your God stinks like carrion, James.' _Nunc Dimittis_.

Hazel passed the tombstone where she had sat on her wedding-day. She
went through the wicket where she and her mother had both passed as
brides, and down the green slope that led near the quarry to the woods.
The swallows had gone. She came to Reddin's black yew-tree at the
fringe of the wood, and sat down there, where she could watch the front
door. In spite of her bird-like quickness of ear, she was too much
overwhelmed by the scene she had just left to notice an increasing,
threatening, ghastly tumult that came, at first fitfully, then
steadily, up through the woods. At first it was only a rumour, as if
some evil thing, imprisoned for the safety of the world, whined and
struggled against love in a close underground cavern. But when it came
nearer--and it seemed to be emerging from its prison with sinister
determination--the wind had no longer any power to disguise its
ferocity, although it was still in a minor key, still vacillating and
scattered. Nor had it as yet any objective; it was only vaguely
clamorous for blood, not for the very marrow of the soul. Yet, as Hazel
suddenly became aware of it, a cold shudder ran down her spine.

'Hound-dogs!' she said. She peered through the trees, but nothing was
to be seen, for the woods were steep. With a dart of terror she
remembered that she had left Foxy loose in the parlour. Would they have
let her out?

She ran home.

'Be Foxy here?' she asked.

Edward looked up from the chapel accounts. James was trying to browbeat
him over them.

'No. I expect she went out with you.'

Hazel fled to the back of the house, but Foxy was not there. She
whistled, but no smooth, white-bibbed personality came trotting round
the corner. Hazel ran back to the hill. The sound of the horn came up
intermittently with tuneful devilry.

She whistled again.

Reddin, coming up the wood at some distance from the pack, caught the
whistle, and seeing her dress flutter far up the hill, realized what
had happened.

'Bother it!' he said. He did not care about Foxy, and he thought
Hazel's affection for her very foolish; but he understood very well
that if anything happened to Foxy, he would be to blame in Hazel's
eyes. Between him and Hazel was a series of precipitous places. He
would have to go round to reach her. He spurred his horse, risking a
fall from the rabbit-holes and the great ropes of honeysuckle that
swung from tree to tree.

Hazel ran to and fro, frantically calling to Foxy.

Suddenly the sound, that had been querulous, interrogative and various,
changed like an organ when a new stop is pulled out.

The pack had found.

But the scent, it seemed, was not very hot. Hope revived in Hazel.

'It'll be the old scent from yesterday,' she thought. 'Maybe Foxy'll
come yet!'

Seeing Reddin going in so devil-may-care a manner, a little clergyman
(a 'guinea-pig' on Sundays and the last hard-riding parson in the
neighbourhood on weekdays) thought that Reddin must have seen the fox,
and gave a great view-hallo. He rode a tall raw-boned animal, and
looked like a monkey.

Hazel did not see either him or Reddin. With fainting heart she had
become aware that the hounds were no longer on an old scent. They were
not only intent on one life now, but they were close to it. And whoever
it was that owned the life was playing with it, coming straight on in
the teeth of the wind instead of doubling with it.

With an awful constriction of the heart, Hazel knew who it was. She
knew also that it was her momentary forgetfulness that had brought
about this horror. Terror seized her at the dogs' approach, but she
would not desert Foxy.

Then, with the fearful inconsequence of a dream, Foxy trotted out of
the wood and came to her. Trouble was in her eyes. She was disturbed.
She looked to Hazel to remove the unpleasantness, much as Mrs. Marston
used to look at Edward.

And as Hazel, dry-throated, whispered 'Foxy!' and caught her up, the
hounds came over the ridge like water. Riding after them, breaking from
the wood on every side, came the Hunt. Scarlet gashed the impenetrable
shadows. Coming, as they did, from the deep gloom, fiery-faced and
fiery-coated, with eyes frenzied by excitement, and open, cavernous
mouths, they were like devils emerging from hell on a foraging
expedition. Miss Clomber, her hair loose and several of her pin-curls
torn off by the branches, was one of the first, determined to be in at
the death.

The uproar was so terrific that Edward and the six righteous men came
out to see what the matter was. Religion and society were marshalled
with due solemnity on God's Little Mountain.

Hazel saw nothing, heard nothing. She was running with every nerve at
full stretch, her whole soul in her feet. But she had lost her old
fleetness, for Reddin's child had even now robbed her of some of her
vitality. Foxy, in gathering panic, struggled and impeded her. She was
only half-way to the quarry, and the house was twice as far.

'I canna!' she gasped on a long terrible breath. She felt as if her
heart was bursting.

One picture burnt itself on her brain in blood and agony. One sound was
in her ears--the shrieking of the damned. What she saw was Foxy, her
smooth little friend, so dignified, so secure of kindness, held in
the hand of the purple-faced huntsman above the pack that raved for
her convulsive body. She knew how Foxy's eyes would look, and she
nearly fainted at the knowledge. She saw the knife descend--saw Foxy,
who had been lovely and pleasant to her in life, cut in two and flung
(a living creature, fine of nerve) to the pack, and torn to fragments.
She heard her scream.

Yes; Foxy would cry to her, as she had cried to the Mighty One dwelling
in darkness. And she? What would she do? She knew that she could not go
on living with that cry in her ears. She clutched the warm body closer.

Though her thoughts had taken only an instant, the hounds were coming
near.

Outside the chapel James said:

'Dear me! A splendid sight! We'll wait to verify the 'apenny columns
till they've killed.'

They all elbowed in front of Edward. But he had seen. He snatched up
his spade from the porch, and knocked James out of the way with the
flat of it.

'I'm coming, dear!' he shouted.

But she did not hear. Neither did she hear Reddin, who was still at a
distance, and was spurring till the blood ran, as in the tale of the
death-pack, yelling: 'I'm coming! Give her to me!' Nor the little
cleric, in his high-pitched nasal voice, calling: 'Drop it! They'll
pull you down!' while the large gold cross bumped up and down on his
stomach. The death that Foxy must die, unless she could save her,
drowned all other sights and sounds.

She gave one backward glance. The awful resistless flood of liver and
white and black was very near. Behind it rose shouting devils.

It was the death-pack.

There was no hope. She could never reach Edward's house. The green turf
rose before her like the ascent to Calvary.

The members of the hunt, the Master and the huntsmen, were slow to
understand. Also, they were at a disadvantage, the run being such an
abnormal one--against the wind and up a steep hill. They could not beat
off the hounds in time. Edward was the only one near enough to help. If
she had seen him and made for him, he might have done something.

But she only saw the death-pack; and as Reddin shouted again near at
hand, intending to drag her on to the horse, she turned sharply. She
knew it was the Black Huntsman. With a scream so awful that Reddin's
hands grew nerveless on the rein, she doubled for the quarry.

A few woodlarks played there, but they fled at the oncoming tumult.

For one instant the hunt and the righteous men, Reddin the destroyer,
and Edward the saviour, saw her sway, small and dark, before the
staring sky. Then, as the pack, with a ferocity of triumph, was
flinging itself upon her, she was gone.

She was gone with Foxy into everlasting silence. She would suck no more
honey from the rosy flowers, nor dance like a leaf in the wind. Abel
would sit, these next nights, making a small coffin that would leave
him plenty of beehive wood.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was silence on God's Little Mountain for a space.

Afterwards a voice, awful and piercing, deep with unutterable
horror--the voice of a soul driven mad by torture--clutched the
heart of every man and woman. Even the hounds, raging on the quarry
edge, cowered and bristled.

It echoed in the freezing arches of the sky, and rolled back unanswered
to the freezing earth. The little cleric, who had pulled a Prayer-Book
from his pocket, dropped it.

Once again it rang out, and at its awful reiteration the righteous men
and the hunt ceased to be people of any class or time or creed, and
became creatures swayed by one primeval passion--fear. They crouched
and shuddered like beaten dogs as the terrible cry once more roused the
shivering echoes:

'Gone to earth! Gone to earth!'





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