A light appeared in the parlour. She came close up and looked in.

Reddin was in the easy chair, reading the paper, a pipe in the corner of his mouth. No one else was there.

'Jack Reddin!' she said.

'Hullo!' He turned. 'So you've come? I thought you'd have come long ago.'

That was all he said. But she assured herself that he was glad she had come, because he shouted to Vessons for tea. She was certain he was glad to see her. Yet there was something vaguely insolent in his manner. He was a man who must never be sure of a woman. The moment she committed herself for him and was at a disadvantage he despised her.

'Come over here!' he said. 'There! I suppose you've forgotten what it's like to be kissed, eh? And to live with a man? You can never go away again now.'

'Why?'

'Well, you are a simpleton! D'you think he'd have you back after this? The first time it was my fault, he thinks; but the second! It won't wash.' He laughed.

'This time's your fault as much as the other. You made me come both times. There's Vessons! Leave me get up.'

'No. Why should I?'

Vessons entered.

'This 'ere game of tether-ball,' he said, 'fair makes me giddy.'

'Jack,' said Hazel when he had gone, 'Martha said there was a woman here.'

'Martha's a liar.'

'Hanna there bin?'

'No. Never anyone but you.'

'Hanna you bin fond of anyone?'

'Only you.'

'She said there was a woman as had a lot of little children, as was yours.'

'Damn her!'

'And I thought she's ought to live along of you, and to be married-like, and wear the green dress.'

'No one shall wear that but you, nor have my children but you.'

She was, as he had calculated, entirely overwhelmed, and so startled that she forgot to question him any more.

'Oh, no,' she said; 'that'll never be.'

He raised his eyebrows at her extraordinary denseness, but he judged it best to say no more.

He must get rid of Sally. He supposed she would make him pay heavily. He was sick of the sight of her and the children. They were not nice children. He looked at Hazel contemplatively. If his conjecture was right, he would have to try and legalize things during the next few months. He badly wanted a son—born in wedlock. He would have to go and beg the parson to divorce her. It would be detestable, but it would have to be done. He would wait and see.

Meanwhile, Vessons also made plans, his obstinate mouth and pear-shaped face more dour than ever.

Hazel had a letter from Edward in the morning; it was very short. She could not tell what he thought of her.

He only said that if she ever wanted help she was to come to him. She cried over it, and hid it away. She knew how well Edward would have looked as he wrote it. She knew he would be grieved. She had not the slightest idea that he would be utterly overwhelmed and wrecked. She had not the least notion how he felt for her.

She was very glad to be away from Mrs. Marston and Martha. She found this household of two men a great rest after the two women, although Vessons did not relax his disapproval. If it had not been for her passionate spiritual longing for Edward, she would have been happy, for the deep law of her being was now fulfilled in thus returning to Reddin. He, for his part, liked to see her about. Roses appeared in the rooms; it was strange to him, who had never had a woman in his house, to find his bedroom scented with flowers. He liked to watch her doing her hair.

He always pretended to be asleep in the morning, so that she should get up first—shyly anxious to be dressed before he awoke. So morning after morning he would watch her through his eyelashes. He never felt that, as she obviously wished for privacy, he was mean or indelicate.

'I've got a right to. She's mine,' was his idea.

It was not till a week after Hazel's coming that Reddin pulled himself together, and went to interview Sally Haggard. Vessons, observing the fact, repaired to Sally's cottage on his master's return, and found her in tears. To see this heavy-browed, big-boned woman crying so startled him that he contemplated her in silence.

'Well, fool, can't you speak?' she said.

'I dare say now as he wants you to move on?' queried Vessons.

'Ah.'

'Because of this other young 'ooman he's brought?'

'Ah, what's the good o' mouthing it? I bin faithful to 'im; I hanna gone with others. All the chillun's his'n. And never come near me, he didna, when my time come. And now it's "go!"' She broke out crying again.

'What I come for was to show you a way to make her go. If I tell you, you mun swear never to come and live at Undern.'

''Struth I will!'

'Well, then, just you come and see 'er some time when the master's away. And bring the chillun.'

'Thank you kindly.'

'Not till I say the word, though! I wunna risk it till he's off for the day. If he found me out, it'd be notice. Eh, missus, he's like a lad with his first white mouse! And the parson! Laws, they'm two thrussels wi' one worm, and no mistake.'

'And yet she's only a bit of a thing, you tell me?'

'Ah! But she'm all on wires, to and agen like a canbottle.'

'Why canna she bide with the minister?'

'Lord only knows! It's for 'er good, and for the maister's and yours, not to speak of mine. It's werrit, werrit, all the while, missus, and the fingers in the tea-caddy the day long! It's Andrew this and Andrew that, and a terrible strong smell of flowers—enough for a burying.'

* * * * *

Vessons waited eagerly for his opportunity; but Reddin was afraid to leave Hazel alone, in case she might see Sally; so September came and drew out its shining span of days, and still Vessons and Sally were waiting.



Chapter 32

Morning by morning Hazel watched the fuchsia bushes, set with small red flowers, purple-cupped, with crimson stamens, sway in beautiful abandon. The great black bees pulled at them like a calf at its mother. Their weight dragged the slender drooping branches almost to the earth. So the rich pageantry of beauty, the honeyed silent lives went on, and would go on, it seemed for ever. And then one morning all was over; one of Undern's hard early frosts took then all—the waxen red-pointed buds, the waxen purple cups, the red-veined leaves. The bees were away, and Hazel, seeking them, found a few half alive in sheltered crevices, and many frozen stiff. She put those that were still alive in a little box near the parlour fire. Soon a low delighted humming began as they one by one recovered and set off to explore the ceiling. Into this contented buzzing came Reddin, who had just been again to Sally's, and was much put out by her refusal to go away before November.

'What the h—- is all this humming?' he asked.

'It's bees. I've fetched 'em in to see good times a bit afore they die.'

'What a child's trick!' he said, fending off an inquiring bee. 'Why, they'll stay here all winter! We shall get stung.' Then he saw the hospital full of bees by the fire.

'More?' he said. 'Good Lord!' He threw the box into the fire.

Hazel was silent with horror. At last she gasped:

'I was mothering 'em!'

'You're very keen on mothering! Wouldn't you like a kid to mother?'

'No. I'd liefer mother the bees and foxes as none takes thought on. I dunna like babies much—all bald and wrinkly. Martha said as having 'em made folk pray to die, but as it was worth anything to get one. But I dunna think so. I think they'm ugly. I seed one in a pram outside that cottage in the Hollow' (Reddin jumped), 'and it was uglier than a pig. I think you're a cruel beast, Jack Reddin, to burn my bees, and they so comforble, knowing I was taking care on 'em.'

She would not speak to him for the rest of the day. He was so bored in the evening that he went out and demanded a boxful of bees from Vessons.

'The missus wants 'em,' he said sheepishly.

Vessons was prepared to be pleasant in small matters. He fetched some from the hive.

''Ere you are,' he said patronizingly; 'but you munna be always coming to me after 'em.'

He was oblivious of the fact that they were Reddin's bees.

Reddin presented them.

'There,' he said gruffly; 'now you can be civil again.'

'But these be hive-bees!' said Hazel, 'and they was comforble to begin with! I dunna want that sort. I wanted miserable uns!'

'Hang it! how could I know?' asked Reddin irritably.

'No. I suppose you couldna,' said Hazel; 'you'm terrible stupid, Jack Reddin!'

So life went on at Undern, and Hazel adapted herself to it as well as she could. It was strange that the longer she lived there the more she thought of Edward. She always saw his face lined with grief and very pale, not tanned and ruddy with fresh air as she had known it. It was as if his mentality reached across the valley to hers and laid its melancholy upon her. Sometimes she was very homesick for Foxy, but she would not have her at Undern. She did not trust the place. She never went out anywhere, for people stared, and when Reddin, with some difficulty, persuaded her to amble round the fields with him on a pony he picked up cheap for her, she always wanted to keep in his own fields.

It was not until nearly the end of October that Vessons got his chance. Reddin had to go to a very important fair. He wanted Hazel to go with him, but she said she was tired, and, guessing the reason, he immediately gave in.

In spite of Vessons' earnest desire to get him off, he started late. He galloped most of the way, determined to get in early. He liked coming home to tea and seeing Hazel awaiting him in the firelight.

As soon as she had gone, Vessons set out for Sally's, anxious that she should be quick. But Sally would not hurry. It was washing-day, and she also insisted on making all the children very smart, unaware that their extreme ugliness was her strength. It was not till three o'clock that she arrived at the front door, baby in arms, the four children, heavily expectant, at her heels, and Vessons stage-managing in the background.

Hazel had been looking at two of the only books at Undern-'The Horse' and 'The Dog,' illustrated. Vessons had views about books. He considered them useful in their place.

'There's nought like a book,' he would say, 'one of these 'ere big fat novels or a book of sermons, to get a nice red gledy fire. A book at the front and a bit of slack behind, and there you are!'

There the books were, too.

So Hazel looked at the 'Book of the Horse' until she knew all the pictures by heart. She had fallen asleep over it, and she jumped up in panic when Sally spoke.

'Who be you?' she asked in a frightened voice as they eyed her.

'I'm Sally Haggard and these be my children.' She surveyed them proudly. 'D'you notice that they favour anyone?'

Hazel looked at them timidly.

'They favour you,' she said.

'Not Mr. Reddin?'

'Mr. Reddin?'

'Ah! They'd ought to. They'm his'n.'

'His'n?'

'Yes, parrot.'

'Be you the 'ooman as Martha said Jack lived along of?'

'He did live along of me.'

'Why, then, you'd ought to be Mrs. Reddin, and wear this gownd, and live at Undern,' said Hazel.

'Eh?' Sally was astonished.

'And he said there wunna any other but me.'

Sally laughed.

'You believed that lie? You little softie!'

Hazel looked at the children.

'Be they all his'n?' she said.

'Every man-jack of 'em, and not so much as a thank you for me!'

The children were ranged near their mother—on high chairs. They gaped at Hazel, sullen and critical. An irrepressible question broke from Hazel.

'What for did you have 'em?'

Sally stared.

'What for?' she repeated. 'Surely to goodness, girl, you're not as innicent-like as that?'

'I ain't ever going to have any,' Hazel went on with great firmness, as she eyed the children.

'God above!' muttered Sally. 'He's fooled her worse'n me!'

'Come and look at the baby, my dear,' she said in a voice astonishingly soft. She looked at Hazel keenly. 'Dunna you know?' she asked.

'What?'

'As you're going to have a baby?'

Hazel sprang up, all denial. But Sally, having told the children to play, spoke for a long time in a low tone, and finally convinced a white, sick, trembling Hazel of the fact. Not being sensitive herself, she did not realize the ghastly terror caused by her lurid details of the coming event.

Hazel looked so ill that Sally tried to administer consolation. 'Maybe it'll be a boy, and you'll be fine and pleased to see 'un growing a fine tall man like Reddin.'

Hazel burst into tears, so that the children stopped their play to watch and laugh.

'But I dunna want it to grow up like Jack,' she said. 'I want it to grow up like Ed'ard, and none else!'

'Well! You are a queer girl. If you like him as you call Ed'ard what for did you take up with Jack?'

'I dunno.'

'Well, the best you can do,' said Sally, 'is to go back to your Edward, lithermonsload and all. And if he wunna take you—'

'Eh, but he will!' A wonderful tender smile broke on Hazel's face. 'He'll come to the front door and pull me in and say, "Come in little Hazel, and get a cup of tea." And it'll be all the same as it was used to be.'

'Well, he must be a fool! But so much the better for you. If I was you, I'd go right back to-neet. Now what's you say to a cup o' tea? I'm thinking it's high time I took a bite and sup in this parlour!'

They got tea; and Vessons, hovering in the yard, was in despair. He could not appear, for Hazel must not know his part in the affair. 'Laws! If they've begun on tea, it's all up with Andrew,' he remarked to the swan in passing.

Dusk came on and still no Sally appeared. The two chimneys smoked hospitably, and he wanted his tea. He was a very miserable old man. He repaired to the farthest corner of the domain and began to cut a hedge, watching the field track. Soon Reddin appeared, and Vessons was unable to repress a chuckle.

'Rather 'im than me!' he said.

Reddin, having fruitlessly shouted for Vessons, took the cob round to the yard himself. Then he went in. As he entered the parlour, aware of a comfortable scent of tea and toast, he met the solemn gaze of seven pairs of eyes, and for a moment he was, for all his tough skin, really staggered.

Then he advanced upon Sally with his stock firmly grasped in his hand.

'Get out of this!' he said.

The baby set up a yell. Sally rose and stood with her arm raised to fend off the blow.

'Jack,' said Hazel, 'she'm got the best right to be at Undern. Leave her stay! She'm a right nice 'ooman.'

Reddin gasped. Why would Hazel always do and say exactly the opposite to what he expected?

'But you're the last person—' he began.

'You're thinking she'd ought to be jealous of me, Jack Reddin,' said Sally. 'But we'm neither of us jealous! I tell you straight! She's too good for you. You've lied to me; I'm used to it. Now you'm lied to her—the poor innicent little thing!'

'What for did you tell me lies, Jack?' asked Hazel.

What with the unfaltering gaze of the two women, and the unceasing howls of the baby, Reddin was completely routed.

'Oh, damn you all!' he said, and went hot-foot in a towering passion to look for Vessons. A man to rage at would be a very great luxury. Having at last found Vessons, harmlessly hedge-brushing, he was rather at a loss.

'How dare you let Sally in?' he began.

'Sally?'

'Yes. Why the h— did you come away here and leave the house?'

'The 'edge wanted doing.'

His tone was so innocent that Reddin was suspicious.

'You didn't bring her yourself, did you?'

'Now, is it me,' said Vessons, reasonable but hurt, 'as generally brings these packs of unruly women to Undern?'

'I believe you're lying, Vessons.'

Vessons opened his mouth to say, 'Notice is giv''; but seeing that in his master's present mood it might be accepted, he closed it again.

When Reddin went in, Sally was gone, and Hazel, much as usual, ministered to his comfort. The only signs of the recent tumult were the constrained silence and the array of cups and plates.

'You'd better understand once and for all,' he said at last, 'that I'll never have that woman here.'

'Not if I went?'

'Never! I'd kill her first.'

'What for did you tell me lies?'

'Because you were so pretty and I wanted you.'

The flattery fell on deaf ears.

'Them chillun's terrible ugly,' said Hazel wearily.

Reddin came over to her.

'But yours'll be pretty!' he said.

'Dunna come nigh me!' cried Hazel fiercely. 'She says I'm going to have a little 'un! It was a sneak's trick, that; and you're a cruel beast, Jack Reddin, to burn my bees and kill the rabbits and make me have a little 'un unbeknown.'

'But it's what all women expect!'

'You'd ought to have told me. She says it's mortal pain to have a baby, and I'm feared—I'm feared!'

'Hazel,' he said humbly, 'I may as well tell you now that I mean to marry you. The parson must divorce you. Then we'll be married. And I'll turn over a new leaf.'

'I'll ne'er marry you!' said Hazel, 'not till Doom breaks. I dunna like you. I like Ed'ard. And if I mun have a baby, I'd lief it was like Ed'ard, and not like you.'

With that she went out of the room, and he noticed that she was wearing the dress she had come in, and not the silk.

He sat by the fire, brooding; but at last managed to cheer himself by the thought that she would get over it in time. She was naturally upset by Sally just now.

'And, of course, the parson'll never take her back, nor her father,' he reflected. 'Yes, it'll all come right.'

He was upheld in this by the fact that Hazel's manner next day was much as usual, only rather quiet.



Chapter 33

It was the night of the great storm. Undern rattled and groaned; its fireless chimneys roared, and doors in unused passages banged so often that the house took on an air of being inhabited. It seemed as if all the people that had ever lived here had come back, ignoring in their mournful dignity of eternal death these momentary wraiths of life. Hazel had always been afraid of the place, and had sat up until Reddin wanted to go to bed, so that she need not traverse the long passages alone. But to-night she was afraid of Reddin also—not just a little afraid, as she had always been, but full of unreasoning terror.

All things were confused in her mind, like the sounds that were in the wind; Reddin's face, distorted with rage, as he advanced on Sally with his arm raised; the howling of the baby; the sound of her bees burning—going off like apple-pips. A scene came back to her from the week before—it seemed years ago. They had gone into the harvest-field after a hot, yellow day haunted by the sound of cutting. Only a small square of orange wheat was left; the rest of the field lay in the pale disorder of destruction. The two great horses stood at one corner, darkly shining in the level light. The men who had been tying sheaves stood about, some women and children were coming over the stubble, and several dogs lay in the shadow. They all seemed to be waiting. They were, in fact, waiting for Reddin, who was always present at the dramatic finish of a field. Hazel knew what drama was to be enacted; knew what the knobbled sticks were for; knew who crouched in the tall, kindly wheat, palpitant, unaware that escape was impossible.

'Plenty o' conies, sir!' called one of the men, whose face was a good deal more brutal than that of his mongrel dog.

Hazel knew that the small square must be packed with rabbits, stark-eyed and still as death, who had, with a fated foolishness, drawn in from the outer portions of the field all day as the reaper went round.

'Jack,' she said, 'I hanna asked for a present ever.'

'No. You didn't want the bracelets, you silly girl.'

'I want one now.'

'You do, do you?'

'Ah! If you'll give it me, Jack, I'll do aught you want. What'd you like best in the 'orld?'

He considered. He was feeling very fit and almost too much alive.

'Hunter's Spinney over again—up to when we got so gloomy.'

Hazel never wanted to think of that night, nor see the Spinney again. There had been many times since, in the grey-tinted room, that had been nearly as bad. But for evoking a shuddering, startled horror in her mind, nothing came up to that Sunday night.

The reaper was moving again. Soon the rabbits would begin to bolt.

'I'll do ought and go anywhere if you'll do this as I want, Jack.'

'Well?'

'Call 'em off! Leave the last bit till morning. Let 'em creep away in the dark and keep living a bit longer!'

'What nonsense!'

'Call 'em off, Jack! You can. You'm maister!'

'No.'

She sobbed. 'I be going, then.'

'No. You're to stay. You'll have to be cured of this damned silliness, and learn to be sensible.'

While she struggled to wrench herself free, two rabbits bolted, and hell broke loose. One would not have thought that the great calm evening under its stooping sky, the peaceful, omniscient trees, the grave, contented colours, could have tolerated such hideousness. The women and children shrieked with the best, and Hazel stood alone—the single representative, in a callous world, of God. Or was the world His representative, and she something alien, a dissentient voice to be silenced?

Such scenes, infinitely multiplied, bring that question to one's mind.

A rabbit had dashed across the field close to them, and Reddin, relaxing his grip of her, had slashed at it with his stick. The look of its eye, white and staring, as it fled past her with insensate speed, came back to her now, and its convulsive roll over and recovery under the blow; and then the next blow—She had fled from the place.

She thought again of what Sally had said, and a deep, smouldering rage was in her at this that he had done to her—this torture to which, according to Sally, he had quite consciously condemned her.

Now that she knew him better, his daily acts of callousness tormented her. She would go. She was not wanted here. Sally had said so. There had been letters from her aunt, from Reddin's vicar, from the eldest Miss Clomber. In them all she was spoken of as the culprit for being at Undern. Well, she did not want to be at Undern. She would go.

'Well, Hazel, child, what's the matter?' asked Reddin, looking up from doing his quarterly accounts. 'Haven't you got a stocking to mend or a hair-ribbon to make?'

'A many and a many things be the matter.'

'Come here, and I'll see if I can put 'em right.'

'Harkee!' she said suddenly. 'It's like as if the jeath-pack was i' full cry down the wind.'

'Anyone would think you were off your head, Hazel. But come and tell me about the things that are the matter.'

'It's you as makes 'em the matter.'

'Oh, well, sulk as long as you like.'

He returned angrily to his accounts. In the kitchen Vessons, very spondaic, was singing 'The Three Jolly Huntsmen.'

In a few minutes Hazel rose and lit a candle. She looked, as she walked to the door in her limp muslin dress, like the spectre of some unhappy creature of the past.

'Where are you going?' asked Reddin.

'I thought to go to bed.'

'I'm not ready.'

'I'll go by my lonesome.'

'All right, sulk! It doesn't hurt me.'

But it did hurt him. He wanted her to be fond of him, to cling to him. When at last he went up through the screaming house, he thought she was asleep. She lay still in the big bed and made no sign.

Reddin was soon snoring, for accounts implied a strenuous intellectual effort. He would have left them to Vessons, but Vessons always had to notch sticks when he did them, and the manual labour ensuing on any accounts running into pounds would have seriously interfered with his other work. The cheese fair accounts usually took a long time. He could be heard saying in a stupendous voice, 'One and one and one—' until the chant ended in, 'Drat it! what do 'em maken?'

So Reddin did the accounts and slept the sleep of the intellectual worker afterwards.

Hazel looked out from the tent of the bed canopy into the dark, creaking room and the darker, roaring night. She grew more afraid of Reddin and Undern as the hours dragged on.

Reddin's presence tore to pieces the things she loved—delicate leafy things—as if they were tissue-paper and he had walked through it. Her pleasures seemed to mean nothing when he was with her and before his loud laughter her wonderful faery-haunted days shrivelled. All she knew was that, now she lived at Undern, she never went out in the green dawn or came home wreathed in pansy and wild snapdragon.

Reddin had imposed a deeper change on her than the change from maid to wife. He had robbed her of a thing frailer and rarer than maidenhood—the sacramental love of Nature. It is only the fairest, the highest and fullest matings that do not rob the soul of this, even when it is an old tried joy. He had wronged her as deeply as one human being can wrong another. His theft was cruel as that of one who destroys a man's God. And the strange part of it was that never, as long as he lived, would he know that he had done so, or even guess that there had been any treasure to rifle. He would probably, as an old man, long past desire, repent of the physical part of the affair. Yet this was so much the lesser of the two. Indeed, if he had been able to win her love, it would have been, not wrong-doing, but righteousness. That a woman should, in the evolution of life, cease to be a virgin and become a mother is a thing so natural and so purely physical as hardly to need comment; but that the immortal part of her should be robbed, that she should cease to be part of an entity in a world where personality is the only rare and precious thing—this is tragic.

Reddin could not help his over-virility, nor could he help having the insensitive nature that could enjoy the physical side of sex without the spiritual; probably he could not help being the kind of man that supplies the most rabid imperialists, reactionaries, materialists. (He always spoke of the heathen Chinee, lower orders, beastly foreigners, mad fanatics, and silly sentimentalists, these last being those who showed any kind of mercy.) It seemed that he could not help seeing nothing outside his own narrow views.

But it did seem a pity that he never tried to alter in the least. It did seem a pity that, after so many centuries, so many matings and births, all his emblazoned and crested ancestors should have produced merely—Reddin, a person exactly like themselves.

* * * * *

Rain rustled on the window and the wind roared in the elms. The trees round Undern Pool stooped and swung in the attitude of mowers. Hazel knew that the Mountain would be even wilder to-night. Yet the Mountain shone in paradisic colours—her little garden; her knitting; the quiet Sundays; the nightly prayers; above all, Edward's presence, in the aura of which no harm could come—for all these things she passionately longed.

They were not home as the wild was, but they were a haven. They were not ecstasy, but they were peace.

In her revulsion from Reddin and her terror of Undern, she forgot everything except the sense of protection that Edward gave her. She forgot Mrs. Marston's silent, crushing criticism and Martha's rude righteousness. She forgot that she had sinned against the Mountain so deeply that the old life could never return.

She remembered it as on the night of her wedding—the primroses, red and white and lilac; the soothing smell of the clean sheets, that made her feel religious; the reassuring tick of the wall clock; Mrs. Marston's sliding tread; Foxy and the rabbit, the blackbird, and the one-eyed cat.

She struck a match softly and crept across the room to the old mahogany tallboy. From beneath a drawerful of clothes she took out Edward's letter. She read it slowly, for she was, as Abel said, no scholar. Edward wanted her, that was quite clear. Comfort flowed from the half-dozen lines.

The ethics of the thing held no place in her mind.

She was not made for the comforts or the duties of social life, and it was not in her-nor would it have been, however she had been educated—to consider what effect her actions might have on the race. Humanity did not interest her.

The ever-circling wheels of birth, mating, death, so all-absorbing to most women, were nothing to her. Freedom, green ways, childlike pleasures of ferny, mossy discoveries, the absence of hunger or pain, and the presence of Foxy and other salvage of her great pity—these were the great realities. She had a deeper fear than most people of death and any kind of violence or pain for herself or her following. Her idea of God had always been shadowy, but it now took shape as a kind of omnipotent Edward.

When she had read the letter, she went to the window. A tortured dawn crept up the sky. Vast black clouds, shaped like anvils for some terrific smithy-work, were ranged round the horizon, and, later, the east glowed like a forge. The gale had not abated, but was rising in a series of gusts, each one a blizzard. Hazel was not afraid of it, or of the shrieking woods. The wind had always been her playmate. The wide plain that lay before the Undern windows was shrouded in rain—not falling, but driving. Willows, comely in the evening with the pale gold of autumn, had been stripped in a moment like prisoners of a savage conqueror for sacrifice. The air was full of leaves, whirling, boiling, as in a cauldron. From every field and covert, from the lone hill-tracts behind the house, from garden and orchard, came the wail of the vanquished.

Even as she watched, one of the elms by the pool fell with a grinding crash. Reddin stirred in his sleep and muttered restlessly. She waited, frozen with suspense, until he was quiet again.

She could hear the hound baying, terrified at the noise of the tree. She dressed hurriedly, crept downstairs and went out by the back way, leaving the house, with its watchful windows, its ancient quiet which was not peace, and the grey, flapping curtains of the rain closed in behind her.

She found a little shelter in the deep lanes, but when she came to the woods leading up to the Mountain the wind was reaping them like corn. Larches lay like spellicans one on another. Some leant against those that were yet standing, and in the tops of these last there was a roaring like an incoming tide on rocks. Crackings and groanings, sudden crashes, loud reports like gun-fire, were all about her as she climbed—a tiny figure in chaos.

When she came to the graveyard, havoc was there also. Several crosses had fallen, and were smashed; the laburnum-tree, rich with grey seed-vessels, lay prone, and in its fall it had carried half the tomb away with it, so that it yawned darkly, but not as a grave from which one has risen from the dead. A headstone lay in the path, and the text, 'In sure and certain hope of the resurrection,' was half obliterated.

Hazel crept into the porch of the chapel to shelter, utterly exhausted. She went to sleep, and was awakened by the breakfast bell. She went to the front door and knocked.



Chapter 34

Edward, coming downstairs, felt such a rush of joy and youth at sight of her that he was obliged to stand still and remember that joy and youth were not for him, that his only love had gone of her own will to another man, and must be to him now only a poor waif sheltered for pity. He was very much altered. His face frightened Hazel.

'Have you come to stay, Hazel, or only for a visit?' he asked.

'Oh, dunna look at me the like o' that, and dunna talk so stern, Ed'ard!'

'I wasn't aware that I was stern.'

Edward's face was white. He looked down at her with an expression she could not gauge. For there, had come upon him, seeing her there again, so sweet in her dishevelment, so enchanting in her suppliance, the same temptation that tormented him on his wedding-day. Only now he resisted it for a different reason.

Hazel, his Hazel, was no fit mate for him. The words flamed in his brain; then fiercely, he denied them. He would not believe it. Circumstance, Hazel, his mother, even God might shout the lie at him. Still, he would not believe.

But he must have it out with her. He must know.

'Hazel,' he said, 'after breakfast I want you to come with me up the Mountain.'

'Yes, Ed'ard,' she said obediently.

She adored his sternness. She adored his look of weariness. She longed hopefully and passionately for his touch.

For now, when it was too late, she loved him—not with any love of earth; that was spoilt for her—but with a grave amorousness kin to that of the Saints, the passion that the Magdalen might have felt for Christ. The earthly love should have been Edward's, too, and would have run in the footsteps of the other love, like a young creature after its mother. But Reddin had intervened.

'First,' Edward said, 'you must have some food and a cup of tea.'

He never wavered in tenderness to her. But she noticed that he did not say 'dear,' nor did he, bringing her in, take her hand.

Breakfast was an agony to Edward, for his mother, who had from the first treated Hazel with silent contempt as a sinner, now stood, on entering with the toast, and said:

'I will not eat with that woman.'

'Mother!'

'If you bring that woman here, I will be no mother to you.'

'Mother! For my sake!'

'She is a wicked woman,' went on Mrs. Marston, in a calm but terrible voice; 'she is an adulteress.'

Edward sprang up.

'How dare you!' he said.

'Are you going to turn her out, Edward?'

'No.'

'Eddie! my little lad!'

Her voice shook.

'No.'

'My boy that I lay in pain for, two days and a night, to bring you into the world!'

Edward covered his face with his hands.

'You will put me before—her?'

'No, mother.'

'You were breast-fed, Eddie, though I was very weak.'

There was a little silence. Edward buried his face in his arms.

'Right is on my side, Edward, and what I wish is God's will. You will put duty first?'

'No. Love.'

'I am getting old, dear. I have not many more years. She has all a lifetime. You will put me first?'

He lifted his head. He looked aged and worn.

'No! And again no!' he said. 'Stop torturing me, mother!'

Mrs. Marston turned without a word to go out. Hazel sprang up, breaking into a passion of tears.

'Oh, let me go!' she cried. 'I'll go away and away! What for did you fetch me from the Calla? None wants me. I wunna miserable at the Calla. Let me go!'

She stared at Mrs. Marston with terrified eyes.

'She's as awful as death,' she said, 'the old lady. As awful as Mr. Reddin when he's loving. I'm feared, Ed'ard! I'd liefer go.'

But Edward's arm was round her. His hand was on her trembling one.

'You shall not frighten my little one!' he said to his mother; and she went to the kitchen, where, frozen with grief, she remained all morning in a kind of torpor. Martha was afraid she would have a stroke. But she dared not speak to Edward, for, hovering in the passage, she had seen his face as he shut the door.

He made Hazel eat and drink. Then they went out on the hill.

'Now, Hazel,' he said, 'we must have truth between us. Did you go with that man of your own will?'

She was silent.

'You must have done, or why go a second time? Did you?' His eyes compelled her. She shivered.

'Yes, Ed'ard. But I didna want to. I didna!'

'How can both be true?'

'They be.'

'How did he compel you to go, then?'

Hazel sought for an illustration.

'Like a jacksnipe fetches his mate out o' the grass,' she said.

'What did he say?'

'Nought.'

'Then how—?'

'There's things harder than words; words be nought.'

'Go on.'

'It was like as if there was a secret atween us, and I'd got to find it out. Dunna look so fierce, Ed'ard!'

'Did you find out?'

A tide of painful red surged over Hazel; she turned away. But Edward, rendered pitiless by pain, forcibly pulled her back, and made her look at him.

'Did you find out?' he repeated.

'There inna no more,' she whispered.

'Then it is true what he said, that you were his from head to foot?'

'Oh, Ed'ard, let me be! I canna bear it!'

'I wish I could have killed him!' Edward said. 'Then you were his—soul and body?'

'Not soul!'

'You told a good many lies.'

'Oh, Ed'ard, speak kind!'

'What a fool I was! You must have detested me for interrupting the honeymoon. Of course you went back! What a fool I was! And I thought you were pure as an angel.'

'I couldna help it, Ed'ard; the signs said go, and then he threw me in the bracken.'

Something broke in Edward's mind. The control of a life-time went from him.

'Why didn't I?' he cried. 'Why didn't I? Good God! To think I suffered and renounced for this!' He laughed. 'And all so simple! Just throw you in the bracken.'

She shuddered at the knife-edge in his voice, and also at the new realization that broke on her that Edward had it in him to be like Reddin.

'What for do you fritten me?' she whispered.

'But it's not too late,' Edward went on, and his face, that had been grey, flushed scarlet. 'No, it's not too late. I'm not particular. You're not new, but you'll do.'

He crushed her to him and kissed her.

'I'm your husband,' he said, 'and from this day on I'll have my due. You've lied to me, been unfaithful to me, made me suffer because of your purity—and you had no purity. Tonight you sleep in my room; you've slept in his.'

'Oh, let me go, Ed'ard! let me go!' She was lost indeed now. For Edward, the righteous and the loving, was no more. Where should she flee? She did not know this man who held her in desperate embrace. He was more terrible to her than all the rest—more terrible, far, than Reddin—for Reddin had never been a god to her.

'I knelt by your bedside and fought my instincts, and they were good instincts. I had a right to them. I gave up more than you can ever guess.'

'I'm much obleeged, Ed'ard,' she said tremblingly.

'I've disgraced my calling, and I've this morning hurt my mother beyond healing.'

'I'd best be going, Ed'ard. The sun'll soon be undering.'

The day blazed towards noon, but she felt the chill of darkness.

'And now,' Edward finished, 'that I have no mother, no self-respect, and no respect for you, I will at least have my pleasure and—my children.

The words softened him a little.

'Hazel,' he said, 'I will forgive you for murdering my soul when you give me a son, I will almost believe in you again, next year—Hazel—'

He knelt by her with his arms round her. She was astonished at the mastery of passion in him. She had never thought of him but as passionless.

'To-night,' he said, and tenderness crept back into his voice, 'is my bridal. There is no saving for me now in denial, only in fulfilment. I can forgive much, Hazel, for I love much. But I can't renounce any more.'

Hazel had heard nothing of what he said since the words, 'when you give me a son.'

They rang in her brain. She felt dazed. At last she looked up affrightedly.

'But,' she said, 'when I have the baby, it unna be yours, but his'n.'

'What?'

'It—it'll be his'n.'

'What?'

He questioned foolishly, like a child. He could not understand.

'It's gone four month since midsummer,' she said, 'and Sally said I was wi' child of—of—'

'You need not go on, Hazel.'

Edward's face looked pinched. The passion had gone, and a deathly look replaced it. He was robbed, utterly and cruelly. He could no longer believe in a God, or how could such things be? Manhood was denied him. The last torture was not denied him—namely, that he saw the full satire of his position, saw that it was his own love that had destroyed them both. Out of his complete ruin he arose joyless, hopeless, but great in a tenderness so vast and selfless that it almost took the place of what he had lost.

Hazel was again his inspiration, not as an ideal, but as a waif. In his passion of pity for her he forgot everything. He had something to live for again.

'Poor child!' he said. 'Come home. I will take care of you.'

'But—the old lady?'

'You are first.'

She caught his hands; she flung herself upon his shoulder in a rush of tears. If this was his tragic moment, it was also hers.

'Oh, Ed'ard, Ed'ard!' she cried, 'it's you as I'd lief have for my lover! It's you as I'm for, body and soul, if I'm for a mortal man! It's your baby as I want, Ed'ard, and I wouldna be feared o' the pain as Sally told of if it was yours. What for didna you tell me in the spring o' the year, Ed'ard? It be winter now, and late and cold.'

'There, there! you don't know what you're saying. Come home!'

Edward did not listen to her, she knew. And, indeed, his brain was weary, and could take in no more. He only knew he must care for Hazel as Christ cared for the lambs of His fold. And darkly on his dark mind loomed his new and bitter creed, 'There is no Christ.'



Chapter 35

Martha met them on the doorstep, crying, hiccoughing, and enraged.

'Why, Martha!' Edward looked at her in astonishment. It is usually the supers, and not the principals, that raise lamentation in the midst of tragedy—'why, Martha, have you lost someone dear to you?'

He knew all about that loss.

'I've lost nought, sir; thank God my good name's my own, and not gone like some folk's; but I'm bound to give notice, sir, not having fault to find, being as good a master as ever stepped. But seeing the missus is going—'

'The missus?'

'Ah. The mother as God give you, sir, the very next time the trailer goes by, and the letter wrote and all. And when she goes, I go. For I've kep' myself respectable, and I'll serve no light woman, nor yet live in a house give over to sin.'

Edward saw Martha in a new light, as he now saw all things.

'What a filthy mind you have, Martha!' he said in a strange, weary voice. 'The minds of all respectable people are obscene. You are a bad woman!'

But Martha, setting up a shriek, had fled from the house. She told her brother that the master was mad, bewitched. She never entered the house again.

Edward found his mother in the kitchen.

'Mother, you are not really going?'

'Yes, Edward, unless'—a flicker of hope lit her eyes—'unless you have sent her away.'

'Let me explain, mother. It is not as it seems in the world's eyes.'

'She is an adulteress. And you—oh, Edward, I thought you were a good man, like your father! Not even the common decency to wait till the other man's child is born. Why, the merest ploughman would do that!'

If any face could have expressed despair, torture and horror, Edward's face did now. He looked at her for a long while, until she said:

'Don't fix your eyes so, Edward! What are you looking at?'

'The world. So that is what you think of me?'

'What else can I think? Why do you say "The world" so strangely?'

'The world!' he said again. 'A place of black mud and spawning creatures. No soul, no God, no grace. Nothing but lust and foul breath and evil thoughts.'

'I will not hear such talk. I will keep my room till I go.' Mrs. Marston rose and went upstairs. She would not have his arm. And though for the next two days he waited on her with his old tenderness, she barely spoke, and there was between them an estrangement wider than death. She prayed for him night and day, but not as one that had much hope.

Meanwhile, Hazel managed the house. She put all her worship of Edward into it, all her passion of tenderness. And she, who had hitherto spoilt all the food she touched, now cooked almost with genius. She found an apron of Martha's and washed it; she read Mrs. Marston's receipts till her head ached; she walked over God's Little Mountain each day to buy dainties. When she asked Edward for money, he gave her the keys of his desk. Four times a day appetizing meals went up to Mrs. Marston, and were brought down again barely touched. Hazel ate them, for the urgent necessity of coming maternity was on her, and she would not waste Edward's money. Four times a day Edward's favourite dishes were set in the parlour by a bright hearth. Edward, as soon as Hazel had returned to the kitchen, threw them into the fire.

It was Hazel who packed Mrs. Marston's boxes while the old lady slept, and made up the fire in her room in the middle of the night.

Then, closing her own door, she would fling herself on her bed in passionate weeping as she thought what might have been if, when Edward had said, 'To-night is my bridal,' she had had a different reply to make.

She knew that nothing except what she had said would have made any impression on Edward; she knew he would not have listened to her. She was glad to know this. The momentary fear of him was gone. All was right that he said and did. The whole love of her being was his now. He had filled the place of nature and joy and childish pleasures. She was not meant for human love. But through her grief she loved better than those that were meant for it.

All the sweet instincts of love and wifehood; the beauty of passion; the pride of surrender; the forgetfulness of self that creates self; the crying of the spirit from its delicate marble minaret to the flesh in its grassy covert, and the wistful, ascending answer of flesh to spirit—all these were hers. And as she lay and wept, and remembered how many a time Edward had stood on her threshold and hastily, though gently, shut her door upon her, she realized what Edward meant to her, and what he was. Then she would rise and stand at her window, fingered and shaken by the autumn winds, and look up at the hard-eyed stars.

'If there's anybody there,' she would say, 'please let the time go quickly till the baby comes, and let Ed'ard have his bridal like he said, and see his little uns running up and down the batch.'

And, looking round the room at all the signs of his love, she would suddenly find unbearable the innocent stare of the buttercups and daisies on the walls, and would bury her face, flushed red with fluttering possibilities of unearthly rapture. Then she would sleep and dream that once more Edward stood upon the threshold and kissed her and turned to his cold room; but she—she had made a noble fire in her little grate; and the room was full of primroses, red and white and lilac; and the wall-clock chimed instead of striking—an intoxicating fairy chime; and there were clear sheets as of old. She forgot her shyness; she forgot to be afraid of his criticism; she caught his hands. He turned. And at the marvel of his face she woke, trembling and happy.

Mrs. Marston went without any farewell to Hazel. Edward carried her box down the quarry and helped her into the trailer. He stood and watched it bump away round the corner, Mrs. Marston sitting, as she had done on that bright May morning, majestic in her grape-trimmed hat and the mantle with the bugles. Her face and her attitude expressed the deep though unformulated conviction that God was 'not what He was.'

Then he turned and went home, numb, without vitality or hope.

A new Hazel met him on the threshold, no longer timorous, deprecating, awkward, but gravely and sweetly maternal. She led him in. Tea was laid with the meticulous reverence of a sacrament.

'Now draw your stockinged foot along the floor!' Hazel commanded.

At this remembrance of his mother and at Hazel's careful love, he broke down and wept, his face in her lap.

'Now see!' she whispered. 'She'll come back, Ed'ard, when the anger's overpast.'

'The anger of good people is never overpast, Hazel.'

'See, I'll write her a letter, Ed'ard, and I'll say I'm a wicked girl, and she's to teach me better ways. She'll come like Foxy for bones, Ed'ard.'

Comfort stole into Edward's heart.

'And see, my dear, I'll send his baby to him, and maybe, after—' She stumbled into silence.

'What, Hazel?'

'Maybe, Ed'ard, after—a long and long while after—' She began to cry, covering her face. 'Oh, what for canna you see, my soul,' she whispered, 'as I love you true?'

Edward looked into her eyes, and he did see. Strangely as an old forgotten tale, there came to him the frail hope of the possibility of joy. And with it some faith, storm-tossed and faint, but still living, in Hazel's ultimate beauty and truth. He did not know this could be. He only knew it was so. He did not know how it was that she, whom all reviled, was pure and shining to him again, while the world grovelled in slime. But so it was.

'Harkee, Ed'ard!' she said; 'I'm agoing to mother you till she comes back. And some day, when you've bin so kind as to forgive me, maybe I unna be mother to you, but—anything you want me to be. And, maybe, there'll be a—a—bridal for you yet, my soul, and your little uns running down the batch.'

'Yes, maybe. But don't let's talk of such things yet, not for many years. They are so vile.'

She was cut to the heart, but she only said softly:

'Not for many years, my soul! I'm mothering of you now!'

'That's what I want,' he said, and fell asleep while she stroked' his tired head.

Peace settled again on the chapel and parsonage, and a muted happiness. Summer weather had returned for a fleeting interval. The wild bees were busy again revelling in the late flowers, but taking their pleasure sadly; for the flowers were pale and rain-washed, and the scent and the honey were fled.

'Eh! I wish I could bring 'em all in afore the frosses, and keep 'em the winter long,' Hazel said. 'But they've seen good times. It inna so bad for folks to die as have seen good times. Afore I'm old and like to die, I want to see good times, Ed'ard—good times along with you.'

'What sort of good times?'

'Oh, going out of a May morning, you and me—and maybe Foxy on a string—and looking nests, and us with cobwebs on our boots, and setting primmyroses, red and white and laylac, in my garden as you made, and then me cooking the breakfast, and you making the toast and burning it along of reading some hard book, and maybe us laughing over a bit o' fun. And then off to read to somebody ill, and me waiting outside, pleased as a queen, and hearkening to your voice coming quiet through the window. And picking laylac, evenings, and going after musherooms at the turn of the year. Them days be coming, Ed'ard, inna they? I dunna mind ought if I know they're coming.'

'Yes, perhaps they are,' he said, smiling a little at her simple hopes, and even beginning himself to see the possibility of a future for them.

Two days went by in this calm way, for no one came near them, and while they were alone there was peace. They did not go beyond the garden, except when Hazel went to the shop. Edward did not go with her; he felt sensitive about meeting anyone.

In the evenings, by the parlour fire, Edward read aloud to her. He did not, however, read prayers, and she wondered in silence at the change. She felt a great peace in these evenings, with Foxy on the hearthrug at her feet. They neither of them looked either backward or forward, but lived in the moated present, that turreted heaven whose defences so soon fall.

On the third morning Reddin came. Hazel had gone to the shop, and, coming back, she had lingered a little to watch with a sense of old comradeship the swallows wheeling in hundreds about the quarry cliffs. Their breasts were dazzling in the clear hot air. They had no thought for her, being so filled with a rage of joy, dashing up and down the smooth white sides of the quarry, multiplied by their blue shadows. They would nestle in crevices, like bits of thistledown caught in a grass-tuft, and would there sun themselves and chirrup. So many hundreds were there, and their shadows so multiplied them, that they seemed less like birds than like some dream of a bird heaven—essential birdhood. They were so quick with life, so warm, with their red-splashed breasts and blue flashing bodies; they wove such a tireless, mazy pattern, like bobbins weaving invisible lace, that they put winter far off. They comforted Hazel inexpressibly. Yet to-morrow they would, in all likelihood, be gone, not even a shadow left. Hazel wished she could catch them as they swept by, their shining breasts brushing the grasses. She knew they were sacred birds, 'birds with forkit tails and fire on 'em.' If sacredness is in proportion to vitality and joy, Hazel and the swallow tribe should be red-letter saints.

It was while she was away that Reddin knocked at the house door, and Edward answered the knock. Something in his look made Reddin speak fast. He had triumphed at their last encounter through muscle. Edward triumphed in this through despair.

'I felt I ought to come, Marston. As things are, the straight thing is for me to marry her—if you'll divorce her.'

He looked at Edward questioningly, but Edward stared beyond him with a strange expression of utter nausea, hopeless loss, and loathing of all created things. Reddin went on:

'Her place is with me. It's my duty to look after her now, as it's my child she's going to have.'

He could not resist this jibe of the virile to the non-virile. Besides, if he could make Marston angry, perhaps he would fight again, and fighting was so much better than this uncomfortable silence.

'I should naturally pay all expenses and maintenance wherever she was; I never mind paying for my pleasures.'

Edward's eyes smouldered, but he said nothing.

'Of course, she can't expect either of us to see to her in her position' (Edward clenched his hands), 'but I intend to do the decent thing. I'm never hard on a woman in that state; some fellows would be; but I've got a memory, hang it, and I'm grateful for favours received.'

Why he should be at his very worst for Edward's benefit was not apparent, except that complete silence acts on the nerves, and nervousness brings out the real man.

'Well, think it over,' he concluded. 'You seem to be planning a sermon to-day. I shall be round here on Saturday—the meet's in the woods. I'll call then, and you can decide meanwhile. I don't mind whether she comes or not—at present. Later on, if I can't get on without her, I can no doubt persuade her to come again. But if you say divorce, I'll fetch her at once, and marry her as soon as you've got your decree. Damn you, Marston! Can't you speak? Could I say fairer than that, man to man?'

Edward looked at him, and it was such a look that his face and ears reddened.

'You are not a man,' Edward said, with complete detachment; 'you are nothing but sex organs.'

He went in and shut the door.

Edward said nothing to Hazel of Reddin's visit. He forgot it himself when she came home; it slipped into the weary welter of life as he saw it now—all life, that is, other than Hazel's. Brutality, lust, cruelty—these summed up the world of good people and bad people. He rather preferred the bad ones; their eyes were less awful, and had less of the serpent's glitter and more of the monkey's leer.

He did not shrink from Reddin as he shrank from his mother.

Hazel came running to him through the graves. She had a little parcel specially tied up, and she wrote on it in the parlour with laborious love. It was tobacco. She had decided that he ought to smoke, because it would soothe him.

They sat hand in hand by the fire that evening, and she told him of her aunt Prowde, and how she first came to know Reddin, and how he threatened to tell Edward of her first coming to Undern. She was astonished at the way his face lit up.

'Why didn't you tell me that before, dear? It alters everything. You did not go of your own choice at first, then. He had you in a snare.'

'Seems as if the world's nought but a snare, Ed'ard.'

'Yes. But I'm going to spend my life keeping you safe, little Hazel. I hope it won't make you unhappy to leave the Mountain?'

'Leave the Mountain?'

'Yes. I must give up the ministry.'

'Why ever?'

'Because I know now that Jesus Christ was not God, but only a brave, loving heart hunted to death.'

'Be that why you dunna say prayers now?'

'Yes. I can't take money for telling lies.'

'What'll you do if you inna a minister, Ed'ard?'

'Break stones—anything.'

Hazel clapped her hands.

'Can I get a little 'ammer and break, too?'

'Some day. It will only be poor fare and a poor cottage, Hazel.'

'It'll be like heaven!'

'We shall be together, little one.'

'What for be your eyes wet, Ed'ard?'

'At the sweetness of knowing you didn't go of your own accord.'

'What for did you shiver?'

'At the dark power of our fellow-creatures set against us.'

'I inna feared of 'em now, Ed'ard. Maybe it'll come right, and you'll get all as you'd lief have.'

'I only want you.'

'And me you.'

They both had happy dreams that night.

Outside, the stars were fierce with frost. The world hardened. In the bitter still air and the greenish moonlight the chapel and parsonage took on an unreal look, as if they were built of wavering, vanishing material, and stood somewhere outside space on a pale, crumbling shore.

Without, the dead slept, each alone, dreamless. Within, the lovers slept, each alone, but dreaming of a day when night should bring them home each to the other.

As the moon set, the shadows of the gravestones lengthened grotesquely, creeping and creeping as if they would dominate the world.

In the middle of the night Foxy awoke, and barked and whimpered in some dark terror, and would not be comforted.



Chapter 36

Hazel looked out next morning into a cold, hostile world. The wind had gone into its winter quarters, storming down from the top of the Mountain on to the parsonage and raging into the woods. That was why Edward and Hazel never heard the sounds—some of the most horrible of the English countryside—that rose, as the morning went on, from various parts of the lower woods, whiningly, greedily, ferociously, as the hounds cast about for scent. Once there was momentary uproar, but it sank again, and the Master was disappointed. They had not found. The Master was a big fleshy man with white eyelashes and little pig's eyes that might conceal a soul—or might not. Miss Amelia Clomber admired him, and had just ridden up to say, 'A good field. Everybody's here.' Then she saw Reddin in the distance, and waited for him to come up. She was flushed and breathless and quite silent—an extraordinary thing for her. He certainly was looking his best, with the new zest and youth that Hazel had given him heightening the blue of his eyes and giving an added hauteur of masculinity to his bearing. She would, as she watched him coming, cheerfully have become his mistress at a nod for the sake of those eyes and that hauteur.

He was entirely unconscious of it. He never was a vain man, and women were to him what a watch is to a child—something to be smashed, not studied. Also, his mind was busy about his coming interview with Edward. He was ludicrously at a loss what to say or do. Blows were the only answer he could think of to such a thing as Edward had said. But blows had lost him Hazel before, and he wanted her still. He was rather surprised at this, passion being satisfied. Still, as he reflected, passion was only in abeyance. Next May—

If Miss Clomber had seen his eyes then, she would probably have proposed to him. But he was looking away towards the heights where Edward's house was. There was in his mind a hint of better things.

Hazel had been sweet in the conquering; so many women were not. And she was a little, wild, frail thing. He was sorry for her. He reflected that if he sold the cob he could pay a first-rate doctor to attend her and two nurses. 'I'll sell the cob,' he decided. 'I can easily walk more. It'll do me good.'

'Good morning, Mr. Reddin!' cried Miss Clomber as sweetly as she could.

'May your shadow never grow less!' he replied jocosely, as he cantered by with a great laugh.

'If she'd only die when she has the child!' thought Miss Clomber fiercely.

Up on the Mountain Edward and Hazel were studying a map to decide in which part of the county they would live. Round the fire sat Foxy, the one-eyed cat, and the rabbit in a basket. From a hook hung the bird in its cage, making little chirrupings of content. On the window-sill a bowl of crocuses had pushed out white points.

But upon their love—Edward's dawn of content and Hazel's laughter—broke a loud imperious knocking. Edward went to the door. Outside stood Mr. James, the old man with the elf-locks who shared the honey prizes with Abel, two farmers from the other side of the Mountain, Martha's brother, and the man with the red braces who had won the race when Reddin turned.

They coughed.

'Will you come in?' asked Edward.

They straggled in, very much embarrassed.

Hazel wished them good morning.

'This young woman,' Mr. James said, 'might, I think, absent herself.'

'Would you rather go or stay, Hazel?'

'Stay along of you, Ed'ard.'

Hazel had divined that something threatened Edward.

They sat down, very dour. Foxy had retired under the table. The shaggy old man surveyed the bird.

'A nice pet, a bird,' he said. 'Minds me of a throstle I kep'

'Now, now, Thomas! Business!' said Mr. James.

'Yes. Get to the point,' said Edward.

James began.

'We've come, minister, six God-fearing men, and me spokesman, being deacon; and we 'ope as good will come of this meeting, and that the Lord'll bless our endeavour. And now, I think, maybe a little prayer?'

'I think not.'

'As you will, minister. There are times when folk avoid prayer as the sick avoid medicine.'

James had a resonant voice, and it was always pitched on the intoning note. Also, he accented almost every other syllable.

'We bring you the Lord's message, minister. I speak for 'Im.'

'You are sure?'

'Has not He answered us each and severally with a loud voice in the night-watches?'

'Ah! He 'as! True! Yes, yes!' the crowd murmured.

'And what we are to say,' James went on, 'is that the adulteress must go. You must put her away at once and publicly; and if she will make open confession of the sin, it will be counted to you for righteousness.'

Edward came and stood in front of Hazel.

'Had you,' James continued in trumpet tones—'had you, when she played the sinner with Mr. Reddin, Esquire, leading a respectable gentleman into open sin, chastened and corrected her—ay, given her the bread of affliction and the water of affliction and taken counsel with us—'

'Ah! there's wisdom in counsel!' said one of the farmers, a man with crafty eyes.

'Then,' James went on, 'all would 'a been well. But now to spare would be death.'

'Ah, everlasting death!' came the echoes.

'And now' (James' face seemed to Hazel to wear the same expression as when he pocketed the money)—'now there is but one cure. She must go to a reformatory. There she'll be disciplined. She'll be made to repent.'

He looked as if he would like to be present.

They all leant forward. The younger men were sorry for Edward. None of them was sorry for Hazel. There was a curious likeness, as they leant forward, between them and the questing hounds below.

'And then?' Edward prompted, his face set, tremors running along the nerves under the skin.

'Then we would expect you to make a statement in a sermon, or in any way you chose, that you'd cast your sins from you, that you would never speak or write to this woman again, and that you were at peace with the Lord.'

'And then?'

'Then, sir'—Mr. James rose—'we should onst again be proud to take our minister by the 'and, knowing it was but the deceitfulness of youth that got the better of you, and the wickedness of an 'ooman.'

Feeling that this was hardly enough to tempt Edward, the man with the crafty eyes said:

'And if in the Lord's wisdom He sees fit to take her, then, sir, you can choose a wife from among us.' (He was thinking of his daughter.) He said no more.

Edward was speaking. His voice was low, but not a man ever forgot a word he said.

'Filthy little beasts!' he said, but without acrimony, simply in weariness. 'I should like to shoot you; but you rule the world—little pot-bellied gods. There is no other God. Your last suggestion (he looked at them with a smile of so peculiar a quality and such strange eyes that the old beeman afterwards said "It took you in the stomach") was worthy of you. It's not enough that unselfish love can't save. It's not enough (his face quivered horribly) that love is allowed to torture the loved one; but you must come with your foul minds and eyes to "view the corpse." And you know nothing—nothing.'

'We know the facts,' said James.

'Facts! What are facts? I could flog you naked through the fields, James, for your stupidity alone.'

There was a general smile, James being a corpulent man. He shrank. Then his feelings found relief in spite.

'If you don't dismiss the female, I'll appeal to the Presbytery,' he said, painfully pulling himself together.

'What for?'

'Notice for you.'

'No need. We're going. What d'you suppose I should do here? There's no Lord's Day and no Lord's house, for there's no Lord. For goodness' sake, turn the chapel into a cowhouse!'

They blinked. Their minds did not take in his meaning, which was like the upper wind that blows coldly from mountain to mountain and does not touch the plain. They busied themselves with what they could grasp.

'If you take that woman with you, you'll be accurst,' said James. 'I suppose,' he went on, and his tone was, as he afterwards said to his wife with complacency, 'very nasty'—'I suppose you dunno what they're all saying, and what I've come to believe, in this shocking meeting, to be God's truth?'

'I don't know or care.'

'They're saying you've made a tidy bit.'

'What d'you mean?'

James hesitated. Filthy thoughts were all very well, but it was awkward to get them into righteous words.

'Well, dear me! they're saying as there was an arrangement betwixt you and 'im—on the gel's account—(the old beeman tried to hush him)—and as cheques signed "John Reddin" went to your bank. Dear me!'

Slowly the meaning of this dawned on Edward. He sat down and put his hands up before his face. He was broken, not so much by the insult to himself as by the fixed idea that he had exposed Hazel to all this. He traced all her troubles and mistakes back to himself, blaming his own love for them. While he had been fighting for her happiness, he had given her a mortal wound, and none had warned him. That was why he was sure there was no God.

They sat round and looked at their work with some compunction. The old beeman cleared his throat several times.

'O' course,' he said, 'we know it inna true, minister. Mr. James shouldna ha' taken it on his lips.' He looked defiantly at James out of his mild brown eyes.

Edward did not hear what he said. Hazel was puzzling over James' meaning. Why had he made Edward like this? Love gave her a quickness that she did not naturally possess, and at last she understood. It was one of the few insults that could touch her, because it was levelled at her primitive womanhood. Her one instinct was for flight. But there was Edward. She turned her back on the semi-circle of eyes, and put a trembling hand on Edward's shoulder. He grasped it.

'Forgive me, dear!' he whispered. 'And go, now, go into the woods; they're not as cold as these. When I've done with them we'll go away, far away from hell.'

'I dunna mind 'em,' said Hazel. 'What for should I, my soul?'

Then she saw how dank and livid Edward's face had become, and the anguished rage of the lover against what had hurt her darling flamed up in her.

'Curse you!' she said, letting her eyes, dark-rimmed and large with tears, dwell on each man in turn. 'Curse you for tormenting my Ed'ard, as is the best man in all the country—and you'm nought, nought at all!'

The everlasting puzzle, why the paltry and the low should have power to torment greatness, was brooding over her mind.

'The best!' said James, avoiding her eyes, as they all did. 'A hinfidel!'

'I have become an unbeliever,' Edward said, 'not because I am unworthy of your God, but because He is unworthy of me. Hazel, wait for me at the edge of the wood.'

Hazel crept out of the room. As she went, she heard him say:

'The beauty of the world isn't for the beautiful people. It's for beef-witted squires and blear-eyed people like yourselves—brutish, callous. Your God stinks like carrion, James.' Nunc Dimittis.

Hazel passed the tombstone where she had sat on her wedding-day. She went through the wicket where she and her mother had both passed as brides, and down the green slope that led near the quarry to the woods. The swallows had gone. She came to Reddin's black yew-tree at the fringe of the wood, and sat down there, where she could watch the front door. In spite of her bird-like quickness of ear, she was too much overwhelmed by the scene she had just left to notice an increasing, threatening, ghastly tumult that came, at first fitfully, then steadily, up through the woods. At first it was only a rumour, as if some evil thing, imprisoned for the safety of the world, whined and struggled against love in a close underground cavern. But when it came nearer—and it seemed to be emerging from its prison with sinister determination—the wind had no longer any power to disguise its ferocity, although it was still in a minor key, still vacillating and scattered. Nor had it as yet any objective; it was only vaguely clamorous for blood, not for the very marrow of the soul. Yet, as Hazel suddenly became aware of it, a cold shudder ran down her spine.

'Hound-dogs!' she said. She peered through the trees, but nothing was to be seen, for the woods were steep. With a dart of terror she remembered that she had left Foxy loose in the parlour. Would they have let her out?

She ran home.

'Be Foxy here?' she asked.

Edward looked up from the chapel accounts. James was trying to browbeat him over them.

'No. I expect she went out with you.'

Hazel fled to the back of the house, but Foxy was not there. She whistled, but no smooth, white-bibbed personality came trotting round the corner. Hazel ran back to the hill. The sound of the horn came up intermittently with tuneful devilry.

She whistled again.

Reddin, coming up the wood at some distance from the pack, caught the whistle, and seeing her dress flutter far up the hill, realized what had happened.

'Bother it!' he said. He did not care about Foxy, and he thought Hazel's affection for her very foolish; but he understood very well that if anything happened to Foxy, he would be to blame in Hazel's eyes. Between him and Hazel was a series of precipitous places. He would have to go round to reach her. He spurred his horse, risking a fall from the rabbit-holes and the great ropes of honeysuckle that swung from tree to tree.

Hazel ran to and fro, frantically calling to Foxy.

Suddenly the sound, that had been querulous, interrogative and various, changed like an organ when a new stop is pulled out.

The pack had found.

But the scent, it seemed, was not very hot. Hope revived in Hazel.

'It'll be the old scent from yesterday,' she thought. 'Maybe Foxy'll come yet!'

Seeing Reddin going in so devil-may-care a manner, a little clergyman (a 'guinea-pig' on Sundays and the last hard-riding parson in the neighbourhood on weekdays) thought that Reddin must have seen the fox, and gave a great view-hallo. He rode a tall raw-boned animal, and looked like a monkey.

Hazel did not see either him or Reddin. With fainting heart she had become aware that the hounds were no longer on an old scent. They were not only intent on one life now, but they were close to it. And whoever it was that owned the life was playing with it, coming straight on in the teeth of the wind instead of doubling with it.

With an awful constriction of the heart, Hazel knew who it was. She knew also that it was her momentary forgetfulness that had brought about this horror. Terror seized her at the dogs' approach, but she would not desert Foxy.

Then, with the fearful inconsequence of a dream, Foxy trotted out of the wood and came to her. Trouble was in her eyes. She was disturbed. She looked to Hazel to remove the unpleasantness, much as Mrs. Marston used to look at Edward.

And as Hazel, dry-throated, whispered 'Foxy!' and caught her up, the hounds came over the ridge like water. Riding after them, breaking from the wood on every side, came the Hunt. Scarlet gashed the impenetrable shadows. Coming, as they did, from the deep gloom, fiery-faced and fiery-coated, with eyes frenzied by excitement, and open, cavernous mouths, they were like devils emerging from hell on a foraging expedition. Miss Clomber, her hair loose and several of her pin-curls torn off by the branches, was one of the first, determined to be in at the death.

The uproar was so terrific that Edward and the six righteous men came out to see what the matter was. Religion and society were marshalled with due solemnity on God's Little Mountain.

Hazel saw nothing, heard nothing. She was running with every nerve at full stretch, her whole soul in her feet. But she had lost her old fleetness, for Reddin's child had even now robbed her of some of her vitality. Foxy, in gathering panic, struggled and impeded her. She was only half-way to the quarry, and the house was twice as far.

'I canna!' she gasped on a long terrible breath. She felt as if her heart was bursting.

One picture burnt itself on her brain in blood and agony. One sound was in her ears—the shrieking of the damned. What she saw was Foxy, her smooth little friend, so dignified, so secure of kindness, held in the hand of the purple-faced huntsman above the pack that raved for her convulsive body. She knew how Foxy's eyes would look, and she nearly fainted at the knowledge. She saw the knife descend—saw Foxy, who had been lovely and pleasant to her in life, cut in two and flung (a living creature, fine of nerve) to the pack, and torn to fragments. She heard her scream.

Yes; Foxy would cry to her, as she had cried to the Mighty One dwelling in darkness. And she? What would she do? She knew that she could not go on living with that cry in her ears. She clutched the warm body closer.

Though her thoughts had taken only an instant, the hounds were coming near.

Outside the chapel James said:

'Dear me! A splendid sight! We'll wait to verify the 'apenny columns till they've killed.'

They all elbowed in front of Edward. But he had seen. He snatched up his spade from the porch, and knocked James out of the way with the flat of it.

'I'm coming, dear!' he shouted.

But she did not hear. Neither did she hear Reddin, who was still at a distance, and was spurring till the blood ran, as in the tale of the death-pack, yelling: 'I'm coming! Give her to me!' Nor the little cleric, in his high-pitched nasal voice, calling: 'Drop it! They'll pull you down!' while the large gold cross bumped up and down on his stomach. The death that Foxy must die, unless she could save her, drowned all other sights and sounds.

She gave one backward glance. The awful resistless flood of liver and white and black was very near. Behind it rose shouting devils.

It was the death-pack.

There was no hope. She could never reach Edward's house. The green turf rose before her like the ascent to Calvary.

The members of the hunt, the Master and the huntsmen, were slow to understand. Also, they were at a disadvantage, the run being such an abnormal one—against the wind and up a steep hill. They could not beat off the hounds in time. Edward was the only one near enough to help. If she had seen him and made for him, he might have done something.

But she only saw the death-pack; and as Reddin shouted again near at hand, intending to drag her on to the horse, she turned sharply. She knew it was the Black Huntsman. With a scream so awful that Reddin's hands grew nerveless on the rein, she doubled for the quarry.

A few woodlarks played there, but they fled at the oncoming tumult.

For one instant the hunt and the righteous men, Reddin the destroyer, and Edward the saviour, saw her sway, small and dark, before the staring sky. Then, as the pack, with a ferocity of triumph, was flinging itself upon her, she was gone.

She was gone with Foxy into everlasting silence. She would suck no more honey from the rosy flowers, nor dance like a leaf in the wind. Abel would sit, these next nights, making a small coffin that would leave him plenty of beehive wood.

* * * * *

There was silence on God's Little Mountain for a space.

Afterwards a voice, awful and piercing, deep with unutterable horror—the voice of a soul driven mad by torture—clutched the heart of every man and woman. Even the hounds, raging on the quarry edge, cowered and bristled.

It echoed in the freezing arches of the sky, and rolled back unanswered to the freezing earth. The little cleric, who had pulled a Prayer-Book from his pocket, dropped it.

Once again it rang out, and at its awful reiteration the righteous men and the hunt ceased to be people of any class or time or creed, and became creatures swayed by one primeval passion—fear. They crouched and shuddered like beaten dogs as the terrible cry once more roused the shivering echoes:

'Gone to earth! Gone to earth!'

THE END