The garden at the Callow was full of old, sad-coloured flowers that had
lost all names but the country ones. Chief among them, by reason of its
hardihood, was a small plant called virgin's pride. Its ephemeral
petals, pale and bee-haunted, fluttered like banners of some lost,
forgotten cause. The garden was hazy with their demure, faintly scented
flowers, and the voices of the bees came up in a soft roar
triumphantly, as the voices of victors returning with hardwon spoil.
Abel had been putting some new sections on the hives, and, as usual,
after a long spell of listening to their low, changeless music, he
rushed in for his harp. He sat down under the hawthorn by the gate, and
looked like a patriarch beneath a pale green tint. As day declined the
music waxed; he played with a tenderness, a rage of delight, that did
not often come to him except on spring evenings. He almost touched
genius. Hazel came out, leaving the floor half scrubbed, and began to
dance on the potato flat.
'Dunna stomp the taters to jeath, 'Azel!' said he.
'They binna up!' she replied, continuing to dance.
He never wasted words. He continued the air with one hand and threw a
stone at her with the other. He hit her on the cheek.
'You wold beast!' she screamed.
'Gerroff taters!' He continued to play.
She went, hand to cheek, and frowning, off the potato patch. But she
did not stop dancing. Neither of them ever let such things as anger,
business, or cleanliness interfere with their pleasures. So Hazel
danced on, though on a smaller area among the virgin's pride.
The music, wild, crude and melancholy, floated on the soft air to
Edward as he approached. The sun slipped lower; leaf shadows began to
tremble on Hazel's pinafore, which, with its faded blue and its many
stains, was transmuted in the vivid light, and looked like the flowers
of virgin's pride.
'"The Ash Tree"!' said Abel, who always announced his tunes in this
way, as singers do at a choir supper.
The forlorn music met Edward at the gate. He stopped, startled at the
sight of Hazel dancing in the shadowy garden with her hair loose and
her abandon tempered by weariness. He stood behind the hedge until Abel
brought the tune to an early end with the laconic remark, 'Supper,' and
went indoors with his harp.
Edward opened the gate and went in.
'Eh, mister! what a start you give me!' said Hazel breathlessly.
'So this is your home?'
'Ah!'
Edward found her more disturbing to-night than at the concert; the gulf
between them was more obvious; she had been comparatively tidy before.
Now her disreputableness contrasted strongly with his correct black
coat and general air of civilized well-being.
Hazel came nearer.
'He inna bad to live along of,' she confided, with a nod towards the
cottage. 'O' course, he's crossways time and again, and a devil's
temper.'
'You mustn't speak of your father like that, Hazel.'
'What for not? He _be_ like that.'
'Are all these apple-trees yours?' he asked to change the subject.
'No, they'm father's. But I get the windfa'ls and the bruised 'uns. I
allus see'--she smiled winningly--'as there's plenty of them. Foxy
likes 'em. He found me at it once bruising of 'em. God a'mighty! what a
hiding he give me!'
Edward felt depressed. He could not harmonize Hazel's personality with
his mother's; he was shocked at her expressions; he was sufficiently
fastidious to recoil from dirt; the thought of Abel as a father-in-law
was little short of appalling. Yet, in spite of all these things, he
had felt such elation, such spring rapture when Hazel danced; the world
took on such strange new colours when she looked at him that he knew he
must love her for ever. He felt that as his emotions grew stronger--and
they were becoming more and more like a herd of young calves out at
grass--his ways of expression must increase in correctness.
'Hazel--' he began.
'I like the way you say it,' she interrupted. 'Ah! I like it right
well! Breathin' strong, like folk coming up the Monkey's Ladder.'
'Whatever's that?'
'Dunna you know Monkey's Ladder? It's that road there. Somebody's
coming up it now on a horse.'
They both looked down at Reddin climbing slowly and still some way off.
They did not know who it was, nor what destiny was pacing silently
towards them with his advancing figure, nor why he rode up and down
this road and other roads every day; but an inexplicable sense of
urgency came upon Edward. To his own surprise, he said suddenly:
'I came to ask if you'd marry me, Hazel Woodus?'
'Eh?' said she, dazed with surprise.
'Will you marry me, Hazel? I can give you a good home, and I will try
to be a good husband, and--and I love you, Hazel, dear.'
Hazel put her head on one side like a willow-wren singing. She liked to
be called dear.
'D'you like me as much as I like Foxy?'
'Far more.'
'You've bin very quick about it.'
'I'm afraid I have.'
'Will you buy me a green gown with yellow roses on?'
'If you like.' He spoke doubtfully, wondering what his mother would
think of it.
'And shall we sit down to our dinners at a table with a cloth on like
at--' She stopped. She could not tell him about Undern. 'Like the
gentry?' she finished.
'Yes, dear.'
'And will you tell that sleepy old lady as lives along, of you--'
('Oh, poor mother!' thought Edward.)
'--Not to stare and stare at me over the top of her spectacles like a
cow at a cornfield over the fence?'
'Yes--yes,' said Edward hastily, feeling that his mother must wait to
be reinstated until he had made sure of Hazel.
'All right, then; I'll come.'
Edward took her hand; then he kissed her cheek gently. She accepted the
kiss placidly. There was nothing in it to remind her of Reddin's.
'And you'll do always as you like,' Edward went on, 'and be my little
sister.' Then, to make matters clearer, he added: 'and you shall have a
room papered with buttercups and daisies for your very own.'
'Eh! how grand!'
'You'll like that?' His voice was wistful in its eagerness for a
denial.
'Ah! I shall like it right well.'
Edward made no reply. He was never any good at putting in a word for
himself. He was usually left out of things, and stood contentedly in
the background while inferior men pushed in front of him.
'And now,' he said, 'I'll give you a token till I can get you a ring.'
He picked a spray of the faint pink and blue flowers.
'What's its name?' he asked.
'Virgin's pride.'
Edward gave her a quick look. Then he realized that she was as innocent
as her little fox, and as free from artifice. That was its name, so she
told it to him.
'A very pretty little flower, and a very sweet name,' he said, 'And
now, where's your father?'
'Guzzling his supper.'
Edward frowned. Then the humour of the situation struck him, and he
laughed. Abel rose as they came to the door.
'Well, mister,' he inquired glumly, 'what'n you after? Money for them
missions to buy clothes for savages as 'd liefer go bare? Or money for
them poor clergy? I'm poorer nor the clergy.'
'I want to marry Hazel.'
Abel flung back his head and roared. Then he jerked his thumb over his
shoulder towards Hazel.
'What?--'er?' he queried in ecstasies of mirth. ''Er? Look at the
floor, man! Look at the apern she's got on! Laws, man! you surely dunna
want our 'Azel for your missus?'
'Yes.' Edward was nettled and embarrassed.
'Well, 'er's only eighteen.' He looked Hazel over appraisingly, as he
would have looked at a heifer. 'Still, I suppose she's an 'ooman
growed. Well, you can take her. I dunna mind. When d'you want her?'
I shall ask her when she will wish to marry me.'
Abel laughed again.
'Lord love us!' he said. 'You unna take and ax her? Tell her, that's
what! Just tell her what to do, and she'll do it if you give her one
for herself now and agen. So you mean marrying, do yer?'
Edward was angry. Abel's outlook and manner of expression rawed his
nerves.
'I leave all the arrangements to her,' he said stiffly.
'Then the devil aid you,' said Abel, 'for I canna!'
Hazel stood with downcast face, submissive, but ill at ease. She wanted
to spring at her father and scream, 'Ho'd yer row!' for she hated him
for talking so to Edward. Somehow it made her flushed and ashamed for
Edward to be told to 'give her one for herself.' She looked at him
under her lashes, and wondered if he would. There was something not
altogether unpleasant in the idea. She felt that to be ordered about by
young lips and struck by a young man's hand would be, as business men
say, 'quite in order.' She appraised Edward, and decided that he would
not. Had she been able to decide in the affirmative, she would probably
have fallen in love with him there and then.
Edward came over to her and took her hand.
'When will you be my wife, Hazel?' he said.
'I dunno. Not for above a bit.'
'Haw! haw!' laughed Abel. 'Hark at her! Throw summat at er', man!'
'I should prefer your absence,' said Edward, stung to expression at
last.
'Eh?'
'Go away!' said Edward rudely. He was surprised at himself afterwards.
Abel withdrew open-mouthed. Hazel laughed with delight.
'But why didna you hit 'un?' she asked wistfully.
'My dear girl! What a thing to say!'
'Be it?'
'Yes. But now, when shall we be married?'
'Not for years and years,' said Hazel, pleased at the dismay on his
face, and enjoying her new power. Then she reflected on the many
untried delights of the new life.
'Leastways, not for days an' days,' she amended.
'Will you gi' me pear-drops every day?'
'Pear-drops! My dear Hazel, you must think of better things than
pear-drops!'
'There's nought better,' she said, 'without it's bull's-eyes.'
'But, dear,' Edward reasoned gently, 'don't you want to think of
helping me, and going with me to chapel?'
Hazel considered.
'D'you preach long and solemn?' she asked.
'No,' said Edward rather curtly. 'But if I did, you ought to like it.'
Hazel took his measure again. Then she said naughtily:
'Tell you what I'll do if you preach long and solemn, mister. I'll put
me tongue out!'
Edward laughed in spite of himself, and thought for the twentieth time,
'Poor mother!' But that did not prevent his being anxious to have Hazel
safely at the Mountain. It seemed to him that every man in the county
must want to marry her.
'What would you say to May, Hazel, early May--lilac-time?'
'I'd like it right well.'
'And suppose we fix it the day after the spring flower-show at
Evenwood, and go to it together?'
'I'm going with father to sing.'
'Well, when you've sung, you can have tea with me.'
'Thank you kindly, Mr. Marston.'
'Edward.'
'Ed'ard.'
Abel came round the house.
'You can come and see the bees, if you've a mind,' he said forgivingly.
In his angers and his joys he was like a child. He was, in fact, what
he looked--a barbaric child, prematurely aged. He was aged and had
lines on his face because he enjoyed life so much, for joy bites as
deep as sickness or grief or any other physical strain. Hazel would age
soon, for she lived in an intenser world than most people, as if she
saw everything through magnifying glass and coloured glass.
Edward went to the bees as he would have gone to the dogs--sadly. He
disliked the bees even more than he disliked Abel, who in his expansive
mood was much less attractive than in his natural sulkiness. Abel did
not know how near he came once or twice to frustrating an end that he
thought very desirable. A less steadfast man than Edward, with a less
altruistic object in view, would have been frightened away from Hazel
by Abel's crudeness.
'What about the bitch?' he asked Edward when they had seen the bees.
'Will you take her, or shall I drown her?'
Rage flamed in Hazel's face--rage all the more destructive because
it was caused by pity. Her father's calm taking for granted that
Foxy's fate (and her own) depended on his whim and Edward's, the
picture of Foxy tied up in a bag to be drowned--Foxy, who had all
her love--infuriated her.
Edward was troubled at the look in her eyes. He had not yet had much
opportunity for seeing those wild red lights that burn in the eyes of
the hunter, and are reflected in those of the hunted, and make life a
lurid nightmare. The scene set his teeth on edge.
'Of course,' he said, and the recklessness of it was quite clear to him
when he thought of his mother--'of course, the little fox shall come.'
'And the one-eyed cat and the blind bird and the old ancient rabbit,
I'll wager!' queried Abel. 'Well, minister, you can set up a menagerie
and make money.'
'They could go in bits of holes and corners,' Hazel put in anxiously,
'and nobody'd ever know they were there! And the bird chirrups lovely,
fine days.'
Abel shouted with laughter.
'Tuthree feathers and a beak!' he said. 'And the rabbit'd be comforbler
a muff.'
Edward hastily ended the discussion.
'Of course, they shall all come,' he said.
Somehow, Hazel made the sheltering of these poor creatures a matter of
religion. He found himself connecting them with the great 'Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto these--' He had never seen the text in that light
before. But he was dubious about the possibility of making his mother
see it thus.
'They'll be much obleeged,' Hazel said. 'Come and see 'em.'
She spoke as one conferring the freedom of a city.
Foxy--very clean in her straw, smoothly white and brown, dignified, and
golden of eye--looked mistrustfully at Edward and showed her baby white
teeth.
'She'll liven the old lady up,' said Hazel.
'I'm afraid--' began Edward; and then--'she shows her teeth a good
deal.'
'Only along of being frit.'
'She needn't be frightened. I'll take care of her and of you, and see
that no harm comes to you.'
The statement was received by the night--critical, attent--in a silence
so deep that it seemed quizzical.
On his way home he felt rather dismayed at his task, because he saw
that in making Hazel happy he must make his mother unhappy.
'Ah, well, it'll all come right,' he thought, 'for He is love, and He
will help me.'
The sharp staccato sound of a horse cantering came up behind him. It
was Reddin returning from a wide detour. He pulled up short.
'Is there any fiddler in your parish, parson?' he inquired.
Edward considered.
'There is one man on the far side of the Mountain.'
'Pretty daughter?'
'No. He is only twenty.'
'Damn!'
He was gone.
Hazel, in the untidy room at the Callow, fed her pets and had supper in
a dream of coming peace for them all. She would not have been peaceful
if she had seen the meeting of the two men in the dusk, both wanting
her with a passion equal in suddenness and force, but different in
quality. She wanted neither. Her passion, no less intense, was for
freedom, for the wood-track, for green places where soft feet scudded
and eager eyes peered out and adventurous lives were lived up in the
tree-tops, down in the moss.
She was fascinated by Reddin; she was drawn to confide in Edward; but
she wanted neither of them. Whether or not in years to come she would
find room in her heart for human passion, she had no room for it now.
She had only room for the little creatures she befriended and for her
eager, quickly growing self. For, like her mother, she had the egoism
that is more selfless than most people's altruism--the divine egoism
that is genius.