Gone to Earth | Page 7

are you doing here?' he asked.
'Walking home-along. She wouldna let me bide the night over. And my foot's blistered in a balloon and blood on my dress.' She choked with sobs.
'What's your name?'
'Hazel.'
'What else?'
With an instinct of self-protection she refused to tell her surname.
'Well, mine's Reddin,' he said crossly; 'and why you're so dark about yours I don't know, but up you get, anyway.'
The sun came out in Hazel's face. He helped her up, she was so stiff with cold.
'Your arm,' she said in a low tremulous voice, when he had put the rug round her--'your arm pulling me in be like the Sunday-school tale of Jesus Christ and Peter on the wild sea--me being Peter.'
Reddin looked at her sideways to see if she was in earnest. Seeing that she was, he changed the subject.
'Far to go?' he asked.
'Ah! miles on miles.'
'Like to stop the night over?'
At last, late certainly, but no matter, at last the invitation had come, not from her aunt, but from a stranger. That made it more exciting.
'I'm much obleeged,' he said. 'Where at?'
'D'you know Undern?'
'I've heard tell on it.'
'Well, it's two miles from here. Like to come?'
'Ah! Will your mother be angry?'
'I haven't one.'
'Father?'
'No.'
'Who be there, then?'
'Only Vessons and me.'
'Who's Vessons?'
'My servant.'
'Be you a gentleman, then?'
Reddin hesitated slightly. She said it with such reverence and made it seem so great a thing.
'Yes,' he said at last. 'Yes, that's what I am--a gentleman.' He was conscious of bravado.
'Will there be supper, fire-hot?'
'Yes, if Vessons is in a good temper.'
'Where you bin?' she asked next.
'Market.'
'You've had about as much as is good for you,' she remarked, as if thinking aloud.
He certainly smelt strongly of whisky.
'You've got a cheek!' said he. 'Let's look at you.'
He stared into her tired but vivid eyes for a long time, and the trap careered from side to side.
'My word!' he said, 'I'm in luck to-night!'
'What for be you?'
'Meeting a girl like you.'
'Do I draw men's eyes?'
'Eh?' He was startled. Then he guffawed. 'Yes,' he replied.
'She said so,' Hazel murmured. 'And she said I'd get spoke to, and she said I'd get puck up. I'm main glad of it, too. She's a witch.'
'She said you'd get picked up, did she?'
'Ah.'
Reddin put his arm round her.
'You're so pretty! That's why.'
'Dunna maul me!'
'You might be civil. I'm doing you a kindness.'
They went on in that fashion, his arm about her, each wondering what manner of companion the other was.
When they neared Undern there were gates to open, and he admired her litheness as she jumped in and out.
In his pastures, where the deeply rutted track was already white with snow, two foals stood sadly by their mothers, gazing at the cold world with their peculiarly disconsolate eyes.
'Eh! look's the abron un! Abron, like me!' cried Hazel.
Reddin suddenly gripped the long coils that were loose on her shoulders, twisted them in a rope round his neck, and kissed her. She was enmeshed, and could not avoid his kisses.
The cob took this opportunity--one long desired--to rear, and Reddin flogged him the rest of the way. So they arrived with a clatter, and were met at the door by Andrew Vessons--knowing of eye as a blackbird, straw in mouth, the poison of asps on his tongue.
Chapter 3
Undern Hall, with its many small-paned windows, faced the north sullenly. It was a place of which the influence and magic were not good. Even in May, when the lilacs frothed into purple, paved the lawn with shadows, steeped the air with scent; when soft leaves lipped each other consolingly; when blackbirds sang, fell in their effortless way from the green height to the green depth, and sang again--still, something that haunted the place set the heart fluttering. No place is its own, and that which is most stained with old tumults has the strongest fascination.
So at Undern, whatever had happened there went on still; someone who had been there was there still. The lawns under the trees were mournful with old pain, or with vanished joys more pathetic than pain in their fleeting mimicry of immortality.
It was only at midsummer that the windows were coloured by dawn and sunset; then they had a sanguinary aspect, staring into the delicate skyey dramas like blind, bloodshot eyes. Secretly, under the heavy rhododendron leaves and in the furtive sunlight beneath the yew-trees, gnats danced. Their faint motions made the garden stiller; their smallness made it oppressive; their momentary life made it infinitely old. Then Undern Pool was full of leaf shadows like multitudinous lolling tongues, and the smell of the mud tainted the air--half sickly, half sweet. The clipped bushes and the twisted chimneys made inky shadows like steeples on the grass, and great trees of roses, beautiful in desolation, dripped with red and white and elbowed the guelder roses and the elders set