Next day Hazel did not go into the woods. In the evening, sitting in
the quiet parlour while Edward read aloud and Mrs. Marston knitted, she
felt afraid as she remembered it. Yet she had been still more afraid at
the idea of going.
She had helped Mrs. Marston to cover rhubarb jam in the dim store-room
while Edward visited a sick man at some distance. It had been
delightful, gumming on the clean tops, and then writing on them. She
had dipped freely into the biscuit-box. Then Edward had returned, and
they had gardened again. Now they were settled for the evening, and she
was learning to knit, twisting obdurate wool round anarchic needles,
while Mrs. Marston--the pink shawl top--chanted: 'Knit, purl! Knit,
purl!'
'Will it come to aught ever?' queried Hazel. 'It's nought but a tail o'
string now!'
'It will come to anything you like to make, dear,' said the old lady.
'Is knitting so like life, mother?' Edward spoke amusedly.
'But it wunna,' said Hazel. 'It'll only come a tanglement,'
Edward suggested that he should help; there was great laughter over
this interlude, while Mrs. Marston still chanted, 'Knit, purl!'
Reddin walked lingeringly past the house in the dark, heard it, and was
very angry and miserable.
Hazel heard his step on the rough stones, and was alarmedly sure that
it was he. She was terribly afraid he would tell Edward. Then a new
idea occurred to her. Should she tell Edward herself?
She sat in the firelight with her head bent, and turned this new
thought about in her brain as incompetently as she twisted the blue
wool round the needles. And from the silent shadows, as she played with
the thread of destiny, two presences eyed each other across her bright
head--one armed, the other bearing roses. Neither Mrs. Marston, with
her antiphonal 'Double knit, double purl!' nor Edward, reading in his
pleasant voice--he rather fancied his reading, and tried not to--saw
those impalpable figures, each with a possessive hand outstretched to
Hazel pending her decision.
'Why shouldna I say? There was no harm!' she thought. Then she
remembered that there had been something--a queer feeling--that had
sent her out of the glass door into the snow.
She had never wanted to tell anyone of the episode.
She glanced at Edward through her lashes--a look that always made him
think of the pool above the parsonage, where lucent brown water shone
through rushes. He saw the look, for he always glanced round as he
read, having gathered from his book on elocution that this was correct.
He smiled across at her, and went on reading.
The book was one of those affected by Mrs. Marston and her kind. It had
no relation whatever to life. Its ideals, characters, ethics and crises
made up an unearthly whole, which, being entirely useless as a tonic or
as a balm, was so much poison. It was impossible to imagine its heroine
facing any of the facts of life, or engaging in any of those physical
acts to which all humanity is bound, and which need more than
resignation--namely, open-eyed honesty--to raise them from a
humiliation to a glory. It was impossible to imagine also how the
child, which appeared discreetly and punctually on the last page, could
have come by its existence, since it certainly, with such unexceptional
parents, could not have been begotten.
Hazel listened anxiously to hear if the heroine ever drove on a winter
night with a man who stared at her out of bold blue eyes, and whether
she got frightened and took refuge in a bedroom full of white mice. But
there were no mice, nor dark roads, nor bold men in all its pages. By
the time the reading came to an end, Hazel had quite made up her mind
that she could not possibly tell Edward. The blue wool was inextricably
tangled, and one of the shadowy presences had vanished.
Followed what Mrs. Marston called 'a little chat'; the evening tray,
containing cake and cocoa, was brought from its side-table; the kettle
was put on, and soon the candles were lit.
The presence that remained was with Hazel as she went up to her little
room, as she undressed, and when she lay down to sleep. From the
mantlepiece in the faint moonlight shone the white background of the
text, 'Not a hair of thy head shall perish.'
But the promising words were obliterated by night.
Next morning, and some time during every subsequent day, Hazel met
Reddin under the dark yew-tree.
'You're very fond of the woods, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston one
morning. 'It must be very nice and pleasant there just now.'
'No, it inna, Mrs. Marston. It's drodsome.'
'If I could start very early,' Mrs. Marston went on, 'please God I'd go
with you. For you always go while Edward is visiting, and it's lonely
for you.'
Hazel fled down the batch that morning, and back up a shadowed ride to
Reddin.
'You munna come never no more, Mr. Reddin!' she cried. 'The old lady's
coming to-morrow-day, her says.'
Reddin swore. He was getting on so nicely. Already Hazel went red and
white at his pleasure, and though he had not attempted to kiss her, he
had gained a hold on her imagination.
Whenever he saw himself as others would see him if they knew, he
hastily said, 'All's fair in love,' and shut his eyes. Also, he felt
that he was doing evil in order to bring Hazel good.
'For how a girl can live in that stuffy hole with that old woman and
that die-away fellow, Lord only knows!' he thought. 'She'll be twice
the girl she is when she lives with a man that _is_ a man, and she
can do as she likes with Undern so long as she's not stand-off with me.
No, by--! I'll have no nonsense after this! Here I am, sitting under a
tree like a dog with a treed cat!'
So now he was very angry. His look was like a lash as he said: 'You
made that up to get rid of me.'
'I didna!' cried Hazel, trembling. 'But oh! Mr. Reddin canna you leave
me be? There's Ed'ard reading the many mansions bit to old Solomon
Bache, as good as gold, and you'd ought to let me bide along of the old
lady and knit.'
'I'll give you something better to do than knit soon.'
'What for will you?'
'Oh! you women! Are you a little innocent, Hazel? Or are you a d--d
clever woman?'
'I dunno. But I canna come no more.'
'Won't, you mean. Very well.'
'What'n you mean, saying "very well" so choppy?'
'I mean that if a man chooses to see a woman, see her he will. It's his
place to find ways. It's her privilege to hide if she likes, or do any
d--d thing she likes. That only makes it more exciting. Now go back to
your knitting. Fff! knitting!'
The startled pigeons fled up with a steely clatter of wings at his
sudden laughter.
'Oh! hushee! They'll hear and come out.'
'I don't care. If the dead heard and came out and stood between us, I
shouldn't care! What are you whispering?'
Hazel had said, 'Whoever she be, have her he will, for certain sure.'
She would not repeat it, and he turned sharply away in a huff.
She also turned away with a sigh of relief, but almost immediately
looked back, and watched his retreating figure until it was lost in the
trees.