On Lord's Day more than on any other at the mountain Hazel was like a
small derelict boat beached on a peaceful shore. There was a hypnotic
quiet about the place, with no sound of Martha's scrubbing, no smell of
cooking. There was always cold meat on Lord's Day, with pickled
cabbage, that concomitant of mysterious Sabbath blessedness. A subdued
excitement prevailed about service-time, and sank again afterwards like
a wind in the tree-tops.
Hazel felt very proud of Edward in chapel, and a little awed at his
bearing and his abstracted air. She came near to loving him on the
lilac-scented Sundays when he read those old fragrant love-stories that
he had dreaded. His voice was pleasant and deep.
'"And he took unto him his wife, and she bare him a son."'
It may have been that the modulations of Edward's voice spoke as
eloquently as words to her, or that Reddin had destroyed her childish
detachment, but she began to bring these old tales into touch with her
own life. She envied these glamorous women of the ancient world. They
were so tall, so richly clad, dwelling under their golden-fruited trees
beneath skies for ever blue. It was all so simple for them. There were
no Reddins, no old ladies.
Their stories went smoothly with unravelled thread, not like her
knitting. She began to long to be one of that dark-eyed company, clear
and changeless as polished ivory, moving with a slow and gliding
stateliness across the rose-coloured dawn, bearing on their heads with
effortless grace beautiful pitchers of water for a thirsty world.
Edward had shown her just such a picture in his mother's illustrated
Bible. Instinctively she fell back on the one link between herself and
them.
'Ed'ard's took _me_ to wife,' she thought. The sweetest of vague
new ideas stirred in her mind like leaf-buds within the bark of a
spring tree. They brought a new expression to her face.
Edward's eyes strayed continually to the bar of dusty sunlight where
she sat, her down-bent face as mysterious as all vitality is when seen
in a new aspect. The demure look she wore in chapel was contradicted by
a nascent wildness hovering about her lips.
Edward tried to keep his attention on the prayers, and wished he was an
Episcopalian, and had his prayers ready-made for him. He once mentioned
this to his mother, who was much shocked. She said home-made prayers
and home-made bread and home-made jam were the best.
'As for manufactured jam, it's a sloven's refuge, and no more to be
said. And prayer's the same. The best printed prayer's no better than
bought mixed at four-pence the pound, and a bit gone from keeping.'
Edward stumbled on, as Mr. James said afterwards, 'like my old mare
Betsy, a step and a stumble, a nod and a flop, and home in the Lord's
own time--that's to say, the small hours.'
The chapel was still hot, though cool green evening brooded without and
the birds had emerged from their day-long coma. Wood-pigeons spoke in
their deep voices from the dark pines across the batch a language older
than the oldest script of man. Cuckoos shouted in the wind-riven
larches, green beyond imagining, at the back of the chapel. A blackbird
meditated aloud in high rhapsody, very leisured, but very tireless, on
matters deeper than the Coppice Pool far below, deep as the mystery of
the chipped, freckled eggs in his nest in the thorn. In and out of the
yellow broom-coverts woodlarks played, made their small flights, and
sang their small songs. Bright orange wild bees and black bumblebees
floated in through the open windows. Mrs. Marston's black and white
hens and the minorca cockerel pecked about the open door and came in
inquiringly, upon which Martha, who sat near the door for that purpose,
swept them softly out with the clothes-prop, which she manipulated in a
masterly manner.
Mrs. Marston, eyeing Hazel at all the 'Amens,' when, as she always
said, one _ought_ to look up, like fowls after a drink, thought it
was a pity. What was a pity she did not divulge to herself. She
concluded with, 'Well, well, the childless father no sinners,' and
hastily shut her eyes, realizing that another 'Amen' had nearly come.
Edward's voice had taken a tone of relief which meant the end of a
prayer.
Mrs. Marston glanced up at him, and decided to put some aniseed in his
tea. 'High thinking's as bad as an embolus,' she thought. But Edward
was not thinking. He was doing a much more strenuous thing--feeling.
Hazel wondered at the vividness of his eyes when he rose from his
knees.
'I'm glad I'm Ed'ard's missus, and not Mr. Reddin's,' she thought.
She had not seen Reddin for a week, having, since their last meeting in
the wood, been so much afraid of encountering him that she had scarcely
left the house.
The days were rather dull without her visits to the woods, but they
were safe.
Edward gave out his text:
'Of those that Thou hast given me have I lost none.'
All his tenderness for Hazel and her following crept into his sermon.
He spoke of the power of protection as almost the greatest good in
life, the finest work. He said it was the inevitable reward of
self-sacrifice, and that, if one were ready for self-denial, one
could protect the beloved from all harm.
There was a crunching of gravel outside, and Reddin walked in. He sat
down just behind Hazel. Edward glanced up, pleased to have so important
an addition to the congregation, and continued his sermon. Hazel, red
and white by turns, was in such a state of miserable embarrassment that
Reddin was almost sorry for her. But he did not move his gaze from her
profile.
At last Mrs. Marston, ever watchful for physical symptoms, whispered,
'Are you finding it oppressive? Would you like to go out?'
Hazel went out with awkward haste, and Mrs. Marston followed, having
mouthed incomprehensible comfort to Edward.
He went on stumblingly with the service.
Reddin, realizing that he had been femininely outwitted, smiled. Edward
wondered who this distinguished-looking man with the merciless mouth
might be. He thought the smile was one of amusement at his expense. But
Reddin was summing him up with a good deal of respect.
Here was a man who would need reckoning with.
'The parson's got a temper,' he reflected, looking at him keenly, 'and,
by the Lord, I'm going to rouse it!'
He smiled again as he always did when breaking horses.
He got up suddenly and went out. Mrs. Marston, administering raspberry
cordial in the parlour, heard him knock, and went to the front door.
'Can I help?' he asked in his pleasantest manner. 'A doctor or
anything?'
Mrs. Marston laughed softly. She liked young men, and thought Reddin 'a
nice lad,' for all his forty years. She liked his air of breeding as he
stood cap in hand awaiting orders. Above all, she was curious.
'No thank you,' she said. 'But come in, all the same. It's very kind of
you. And such a hot day! But it's very pleasant in the parlour. And
you'll have a drink of something cool. Now what shall it be?'
'Sherry,' he said, with his eyes on Hazel's.
'I misdoubt if there's any of the Christmas-pudding bottle left, but
I'll go and see,' she said, all in a flutter. How tragic a thing for
her, who prided herself on her housewifery, to have no sherry when it
was asked for!
Her steps died away down the cellar stairs.
'So you thought you'd outwitted me?' he said. 'Now you know I've not
tamed horses all my life for nothing.'
'Leave me be.'
'You don't want me to.'
'Ah! I do.'
'After I've come all these miles and miles to see you, day after day?'
'I dunna care how many miles you've acome,' said Hazel passionately;
'what for do you do it? Go back to the dark house where you come from,
and leave me be!'
Reddin dropped his pathos.
She was sitting on the horsehair sofa, he in an armchair at its head.
He flung out one arm and pulled her back so that her head struck the
mahogany frame of the sofa.
'None of that!' he said.
He kissed her wildly, and in the kisses repaid himself for all his
waiting in the past few weeks. She was crying from the pain of the
bump; his kisses hurt her; his shoulder was hard against her breast.
She was shaken by strange tremors. She struck him with her clenched
hand. He laughed.
'Will you behave yourself? Will you do what I tell you?' he asked.
'I'd be much obleeged,' she said faintly, 'if you'd draw your shoulder
off a bit.'
Something in the request touched him. He sat quite silent for a time in
Edward's armchair and they looked at one another in a haunted
immobility. Reddin was sorry for his violence, but would not say so.
Then they heard Mrs. Marston's slide, and she entered with a large
decanter.
'This is some of the sparkling gooseberry,' she said, 'by Susan Waine's
recipe, poor thing! Own cousin to my husband she was, and a good kind
body. Never a thing awry in her house, and twelve children had Susan. I
remember as clear as clear how the carpet (it was green jute,
reversible) was rucked up at her funeral by the bearers' feet. And
George Waine said, "That'll worry Susan," and then he remembered, and
burst out crying, poor man! And he cried till the party was quite
spoilt, and our spirits so low. Where was I? Oh yes, It's quite up, you
see, and four years old this next midsummer. But I'm sure I'm quite put
out at having no sherry, on account of Martha thinking to return the
bottle and finishing the dregs. And there, you asked for sherry!'
'Did I? Oh, well, I like this just as much, thanks.'
He felt uncomfortable at this drinking of wine in Marston's house. It
seemed unsportsmanlike to hoodwink this old lady. He had no qualms
about Hazel. He was going, if Hazel would be sensible, to give her a
life she would like, and things her instincts cried out for. Possibly
he was right in imagining that her instincts were traitors to her
personality. For Nature--that sardonic mother--while she cries with the
silver cadence of ten thousand nightingales, 'Take what you want, my
children,' sees to it, in the dark of her sorcery-chamber, that her
children want what she intends.
'Is it to your liking, Mr.--? I didn't quite catch your name,' said
Mrs. Marston.
'Reddin, ma'am. Jack Reddin of Undern.'
The name rang in the quiet room with a startling sound, like a gunshot
in a wood at night when the birds are roosting.
At that moment Edward came in, not having waited till Mr. James had
affectionately counted the collection.
'Is Hazel all right, mother?' he called when he got to the front door.
'Oh yes, my dear. It was but the heat. And here's a gentleman to see
you. Mr. Reddin of Undern.'
Edward came forward with his hand out, and Reddin took it. Their eyes
met; a curious hush fell on the room; Hazel sighed tremulously.
'Pleased to see you at our little service, Mr. Reddin,' Edward said
heartily.
Reddin smiled and said, 'Thanks.'
'Glad there's anything in our simplicity to attract you,' Edward went
on, wondering if his sermons were really not so bad, after all.
Reddin laughed again shortly. Edward put this down to shyness.
'I hope we shall often have you with us again.'
Reddin's eyes narrowed slightly. 'Yes, thanks. I shall be with you
again.'
'You'll stay and have some supper?'
'Thanks.'
He had left off feeling unsportsmanlike. He had no compunction towards
Edward. It was man to man, and the woman to the winner. This was the
code avowed by his ancestors openly, and by himself and his
contemporaries tacitly. He began to be as excited as he was in a
steeplechase.
Edward went and sat down by Hazel, asking softly: 'And how is my little
girl?'
She looked up at him, quiescent, and smiled. Reddin eyed them for a
moment, construing their attitudes in his own way. To the unclean mind
all frankness of word or action is suspect. Then he turned sharply to
Mrs. Marston.
'I can't stay, after all,' he said; 'I've just remembered--something.
Thanks very much'--he looked reflectively at Hazel--for the sherry.'
He was gone. 'My dear'--Mrs. Marston spoke triumphantly--'didn't I
always say that gooseberry wine of Susan Waine's recipe was as good as
champagne? Now you see I'm right. For Mr. Reddin of Undern--and a nice
pleasant young man he is, too, though a little set about the mouth--and
I remember when I was a girl there was a man with just such a mouth
came to the May fair with a magic wheel, and it was a curious thing
that the wheel never stopped opposite one of the prizes except when he
turned it himself; and there! I did so want the green and yellow tab
cat--real china--and I spent every penny, but the wheel went on.'
'Poor mother!'
'Yes, my dear, I cried buckets. And I've never trusted that mouth
since. But, of course, Mr. Reddin's not that kind at all, and quite
above fairs and such things.'
'I don't care for him much,' Edward said.
'No more do I,' said Hazel in a heartfelt tone.