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

for this news. Such hatred is abnormal. Nor did she love him. That would have been still more abnormal. But she must be in his house; she must sew for him, share his daily doings, sleep in the big four-poster, and not in the small virginal bed at the Mountain. It would be grievous to leave Edward. He was the shelter between her flickering spirit and the storms of life. She had hesitated, putting off the inevitable, feeling that Undern was always there, like an empty room, for her re-entry, so she had not hurried. Now the room was occupied, her place taken. Immediately she felt that she must go. Feverishly she decided to go this very night and peer in (no one but herself had ever drawn the blinds at Undern of late years) and see for herself. Mrs. Marston and Martha both seemed to be pushing her over the brink.

When, after tea, she crept from the house, she was crying--crying at leaving Edward, the master and the comrade of her unknown self. It was as if she gave up immortality. Yet she was relieved to be going--that is, if she could stay at Undern. Both her tears and her relief were natural. The pity was that body and soul had been put in opposition by belonging to different men.

She left a little blotted note for Edward.

'Dunna think too bad of me, Ed'ard. I be bound to go to Undern and live; I ud liefer bide along of you.'

She went through the shadow-sweet meadows where birds hopped out across green stretches in the cool, the high corn that had once been her comrade, the honeysuckle hedges that used to bring so childish a glee. They wore an air of things estranged and critical. All was so sad, like a dear friend with an altered countenance. She was an exile even in the seeing and hearing. It was strange to her as a town under the tides. There it was, clear and belfried as of old, but fathoms deep, and the bells had so faint a chime that Reddin's voice drowned them. She was turned out of the Eden of the past that she had known in wood and meadow. She was denied the Eden of the future that she might have had in Edward's love. She had the present--Reddin--unless the other woman had robbed her of him also.

She sat down in the heavy shadows of the trees at the far side of Undern Pool. The water looked cold and ghastly even on this golden day. She watched the wagtails strut magisterially, the moorhens with the worried air of overworked charwomen, all the mysterious evening life of a summer pool, but she had no smile for them to-day. The swallows slid and circled across the water; their silence was no longer intimate, but alien. She looked across at Undern. There were roses everywhere, but the house had so strong a faculty for imposing its personality that it gave to the red roses and the masses of traveller's joy that frothed over it a deep sadness, as if they had blown and dropped long since and were but memoried flowers. The shadows of swallows came and went on the white western wall, and smoke stood up blue and straight from Vessons' kitchen fire. She watched the cows go down the green lane, and the shadows go over the meadows in triumphal state. When all was shadow, and the sky was as suddenly vacant of swallows as at dawn it had been full of them, she went stealthily towards the house.

A light appeared in the parlour. She came close up and looked in.

Reddin was in the easy chair, reading the paper, a pipe in the corner of his mouth. No one else was there.

'Jack Reddin!' she said.

'Hullo!' He turned. 'So you've come? I thought you'd have come long ago.'

That was all he said. But she assured herself that he was glad she had come, because he shouted to Vessons for tea. She was certain he was glad to see her. Yet there was something vaguely insolent in his manner. He was a man who must never be sure of a woman. The moment she committed herself for him and was at a disadvantage he despised her.

'Come over here!' he said. 'There! I suppose you've forgotten what it's like to be kissed, eh? And to live with a man? You can never go away again now.'

'Why?'

'Well, you are a simpleton! D'you think he'd have you back after this? The first time it was my fault, he thinks; but the second! It won't wash.' He laughed.

'This time's your fault as much as the other. You made me come both times. There's Vessons! Leave me get up.'

'No. Why should I?'

Vessons entered.

'This 'ere game of tether-ball,' he said, 'fair makes me giddy.'

'Jack,' said Hazel when he had gone, 'Martha said there was a woman here.'

'Martha's a liar.'

'Hanna there bin?'

'No. Never anyone but you.'

'Hanna you bin fond of anyone?'

'Only you.'

'She said there was a woman as had a lot of little children, as was yours.'

'Damn her!'

'And I thought she's ought to live along of you, and to be married-like, and wear the green dress.'

'No one shall wear that but you, nor have my children but you.'

She was, as he had calculated, entirely overwhelmed, and so startled that she forgot to question him any more.

'Oh, no,' she said; 'that'll never be.'

He raised his eyebrows at her extraordinary denseness, but he judged it best to say no more.

He must get rid of Sally. He supposed she would make him pay heavily. He was sick of the sight of her and the children. They were not nice children. He looked at Hazel contemplatively. If his conjecture was right, he would have to try and legalize things during the next few months. He badly wanted a son--born in wedlock. He would have to go and beg the parson to divorce her. It would be detestable, but it would have to be done. He would wait and see.

Meanwhile, Vessons also made plans, his obstinate mouth and pear-shaped face more dour than ever.

Hazel had a letter from Edward in the morning; it was very short. She could not tell what he thought of her.

He only said that if she ever wanted help she was to come to him. She cried over it, and hid it away. She knew how well Edward would have looked as he wrote it. She knew he would be grieved. She had not the slightest idea that he would be utterly overwhelmed and wrecked. She had not the least notion how he felt for her.

She was very glad to be away from Mrs. Marston and Martha. She found this household of two men a great rest after the two women, although Vessons did not relax his disapproval. If it had not been for her passionate spiritual longing for Edward, she would have been happy, for the deep law of her being was now fulfilled in thus returning to Reddin. He, for his part, liked to see her about. Roses appeared in the rooms; it was strange to him, who had never had a woman in his house, to find his bedroom scented with flowers. He liked to watch her doing her hair.

He always pretended to be asleep in the morning, so that she should get up first--shyly anxious to be dressed before he awoke. So morning after morning he would watch her through his eyelashes. He never felt that, as she obviously wished for privacy, he was mean or indelicate.

'I've got a right to. She's mine,' was his idea.

It was not till a week after Hazel's coming that Reddin pulled himself together, and went to interview Sally Haggard. Vessons, observing the fact, repaired to Sally's cottage on his master's return, and found her in tears. To see this heavy-browed, big-boned woman crying so startled him that he contemplated her in silence.

'Well, fool, can't you speak?' she said.

'I dare say now as he wants you to move on?' queried Vessons.

'Ah.'

'Because of this other young 'ooman he's brought?'

'Ah, what's the good o' mouthing it? I bin faithful to 'im; I hanna gone with others. All the chillun's his'n. And never come near me, he didna, when my time come. And now it's "go!"' She broke out crying again.

'What I come for was to show you a way to make her go. If I tell you, you mun swear never to come and live at Undern.'

''Struth I will!'

'Well, then, just you come and see 'er some time when the master's away. And bring the chillun.'

'Thank you kindly.'

'Not till I say the word, though! I wunna risk it till he's off for the day. If he found me out, it'd be notice. Eh, missus, he's like a lad with his first white mouse! And the parson! Laws, they'm two thrussels wi' one worm, and no mistake.'

'And yet she's only a bit of a thing, you tell me?'

'Ah! But she'm all on wires, to and agen like a canbottle.'

'Why canna she bide with the minister?'

'Lord only knows! It's for 'er good, and for the maister's and yours, not to speak of mine. It's werrit, werrit, all the while, missus, and the fingers in the tea-caddy the day long! It's Andrew this and Andrew that, and a terrible strong smell of flowers--enough for a burying.'

* * * * *

Vessons waited eagerly for his opportunity; but Reddin was afraid to leave Hazel alone, in case she might see Sally; so September came and drew out its shining span of days, and still Vessons and Sally were waiting.


Chapter 32

Morning by morning Hazel watched the fuchsia bushes, set with small red flowers, purple-cupped, with crimson stamens, sway in beautiful abandon. The great black bees pulled at them like a calf at its mother. Their weight dragged the slender drooping branches almost to the earth. So the rich pageantry of beauty, the honeyed silent lives went on, and would go on, it seemed for ever. And then one morning all was over; one of Undern's hard early frosts took then all--the waxen red-pointed buds, the waxen purple cups, the red-veined leaves. The bees were away, and Hazel, seeking them, found a few half alive in sheltered crevices, and many frozen stiff. She put those that were still alive in a little box near the parlour fire. Soon a low delighted humming began as they one by one recovered and set off to explore the ceiling. Into this contented buzzing came Reddin, who had just been again to Sally's, and was much put out by her refusal to go away before November.

'What the h--- is all this humming?' he asked.

'It's bees. I've fetched 'em in to see good times a bit afore they die.'

'What a child's trick!' he said, fending off an inquiring bee. 'Why, they'll stay here all winter! We shall get stung.' Then he saw the hospital full of bees by the fire.

'More?' he said. 'Good Lord!' He threw the box into the fire.

Hazel was silent with horror. At last she gasped: