Gone to Earth | Page 6

room's mine. When I'm gone,' she concluded,
knocking down her adversary with her superior weight of years--'when
I'm gone (and the sooner the better for you, no doubt), you can put her
in my room and yourself, too.'
When she had said this she was horrified at herself. What an improper
thing to say! Even anger and jealousy did not excuse impropriety,
though they excused any amount of unkindness.
But at this Hazel cried out in her turn:
'That he never will!' The fierce egoism of the consciously weak flamed
up in her. 'I keep myself to myself,' she finished.
'If such things come to pass, mother,' Albert said, and his eyes looked
suddenly vivid, so that Hazel clapped her hands and said, 'Yer lamps
are lit! Yer lamps are lit!' and broke into peals of laughter. 'If such a
thing comes to pass,' laboured Albert, 'they'll come decent, that is, they
won't be spoken of.'
He voiced his own and his mother's creed.
At this point the argument ended, because Albert had to go back after
tea to finish some work. As he stamped innumerable swans on the
yielding material, he never doubted that his mother had also yielded.
He forgot that life had to be shaped with an axe till the chips fly.
As soon as he had gone, Mrs. Prowde shut the door on Hazel hastily,

for fear the weather might bring relenting. She had other views for
Albert. In after years, when the consequences of her action had become
things of the past, she always spoke of how she had done her best with
Hazel. She never dreamed that she, by her selfishness that night, had
herself set Hazel's feet in the dark and winding path that she must tread
from that night onward to its hidden, shadowy ending. Mrs. Prowde,
through her many contented years, blamed in turn Hazel, Abel, Albert,
the devil, and (only tacitly and, as it were, in secret from herself) God.
If there is any purgatorial fire of remorse for the hard and selfish
natures that crucify love, it must burn elsewhere. It does not touch them
in this world. They go as the three children went, in their coats, their
hosen, and their hats all complete, nor does the smell of fire pass over
them.
Hazel felt that heaven was closed--locked and barred. She could see the
golden light stream through its gates. She could hear the songs of
joy--joy unattained and therefore immortal; she could see the bright
figures of her dreams go to and fro. But heaven was shut.
The wind ran up and down the narrow streets like a lost dog,
whimpering. Hazel hurried on, for it was already twilight, and though
she was not afraid of the Callow and the fields at night, she was afraid
of the high roads. For the Callow was home, but the roads were the
wide world. On the fringe of the town she saw lights in the bedroom
windows of prosperous houses.
'My! they go to their beds early,' she thought, not having heard of
dressing for dinner. It made her feel more lonely that people should be
going to bed. From other houses music floated, or the savoury smell of
dinner. As she passed the last lamp-post she began to cry, feeling like a
lost and helpless little animal. Her new dress was forgotten; the
wreath-frames would not fit under her arm, and caused a continual
minor discomfort, and the Callow seemed to be half across the country.
She heard a trapped rabbit screaming somewhere, a thin anguished cry
that she could not ignore. This delayed her a good deal, and in letting it
out she got a large bloodstain on her dress. She cried again at this. The
pain of a blister, unnoticed in the morning journey, now made itself felt;

she tried walking without her boots, but the ground was cold and hard.
The icy, driving wind leapt across the plain like a horseman with a long
sword, and stealthily in its track came the melancholy whisper of snow.
When this began, Hazel was in the open, half-way to Wolfbatch. She
sat down on the step of a stile, and sighed with relief at the ease it gave
her foot. Then, far off she heard the sharp miniature sound, very neat
and staccato, of a horse galloping. She held her breath to hear if it
would turn down a by-road, but it came on. It came on, and grew in
volume and in meaning, became almost ominous in the frozen silence.
Hazel rose and stood in the fitful moonlight. She felt that the
approaching hoof-beats were for her. They were the one sound in a
dead world, and she nearly cried out at the thought of their dying in