Gone to Earth, Mary Webb [fiction novels to read txt] 📗

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