Gone to Earth | Page 3

flame sprang out and licked at Abel's beard. He raised
a hand to it, continuing to play with the other.
Hazel laughed.
'You be fair comic-struck,' she said.
She always spoke in this tone of easy comradeship; they got on very
well; they were so entirely indifferent to each other. There was nothing
filial about her or parental about him. Neither did they ever evince the
least affection for each other.
He struck up 'It's a fine hunting day.'
'Oh! shut thy row with that drodsome thing!' said Hazel with sudden
passion. 'Look'ee! I unna bide in if you go on.'
'Ur?' queried Abel dreamily.
'Play summat else!' said Hazel, 'not that; I dunna like it.'
'You be a queer girl, 'Azel,' said Abel, coming out of his abstraction.
'But I dunna mind playing "Why do the People?" instead; it's just as
heartening.'
'Canna you stop meddling wi' the music and come to supper?' asked
Hazel. The harp was always called 'the music,' just as Abel's
mouth-organ was 'the little music.'
She reached down the flitch to cut some bacon off, and her dress,

already torn, ripped from shoulder to waist.
'If you dunna take needle to that, you'll be mother-naked afore a week's
out,' said Abel indifferently.
'I mun get a new un,' said Hazel. 'It unna mend. I'll go to town
to-morrow.'
'Shall you bide with yer auntie the night over?'
'Ah.'
'I shanna look for your face till I see your shadow, then. You can bring
a tuthree wreath-frames. There's old Samson at the Yeath unna last long;
they'll want a wreath made.'
Hazel sat and considered her new dress. She never had a new one till
the old one fell off her back, and then she usually got a second-hand
one, as a shilling or two would buy only material if new, but would
stretch to a ready-made if second-hand.
'Foxy'd like me to get a green velvet,' said Hazel. She always expressed
her intense desires, which were few, in this formula. It was her
unconscious protest against the lovelessness of her life. She put the
blackthorn in water and contemplated its whiteness with delight; but it
had not occurred to her that she might herself, with a little trouble, be
as sweet and fresh as its blossom. The spiritualization of sex would be
needed before such things would occur to her. At present she was
sexless as a leaf. They sat by the fire till it went out; then they went to
bed, not troubling to say good-night.
In the middle of the night Foxy woke. The moon filled her
kennel-mouth like a door, and the light shone in her eyes. This
frightened her--so large a lantern in an unseen hand, held so
purposefully before the tiny home of one defenceless little creature. She
barked sharply. Hazel awoke promptly, as a mother at her child's cry.
She ran straight out with her bare feet into the fierce moonlight.

'What ails you?' she whispered. 'What ails you, little un?'
The wind stalked through the Callow, and the Callow moaned. A moan
came also from the plain, and black shapes moved there as the clouds
drove onwards.
'Maybe they're out,' muttered Hazel. 'Maybe the black meet's set for
to-night and she's scented the jeath pack.' She looked about nervously.
'I can see summat driving dark o'er the pastures yonder; they'm abroad,
surely.'
She hurried Foxy into the cottage and bolted the door.
'There!' she said. 'Now you lie good and quiet in the corner, and the
death pack shanna get you.'
It was said that the death pack, phantom hounds of a bad squire, whose
gross body had been long since put to sweeter uses than any he put it to
in life--changed into the clear-eyed daisy and the ardent
pimpernel--scoured the country on dark stormy nights. Harm was for
the house past which it streamed, death for those that heard it give
tongue.
This was the legend, and Hazel believed it implicitly. When she had
found Foxy half dead outside her deserted earth, she had been quite
sure that it was the death pack that had made away with Foxy's mother.
She connected it also with her own mother's death. Hounds symbolized
everything she hated, everything that was not young, wild and happy.
She identified herself with Foxy, and so with all things hunted and
snared and destroyed.
Night, shadow, loud winds, winter--these were inimical; with these
came the death pack, stealthy and untiring, following for ever the trail
of the defenceless. Sunlight, soft airs, bright colours, kindness--these
were beneficent havens to flee into. Such was the essence of her creed,
the only creed she held, and it lay darkly in her heart, never expressed
even to herself. But when she ran into the night to comfort the