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

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