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

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