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

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