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

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