Gone to Earth

Small feckless clouds were hurried across the vast untroubled sky—shepherdless, futile, imponderable—and were torn to fragments on the fangs of the mountains, so ending their ephemeral adventures with nothing of their fugitive existence left but a few tears.

It was cold in the Callow—a spinney of silver birches and larches that topped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the tree-tops, and a fainter purple haunted the vistas between the silver and brown boles.

Only the crudeness of youth was here as yet, and not its triumph—only the sharp calyx-point, the pricking tip of the bud, like spears, and not the paten of the leaf, the chalice of the flower.

For as yet spring had no flight, no song, but went like a half-fledged bird, hopping tentatively through the undergrowth. The bright springing mercury that carpeted the open spaces had only just hung out its pale flowers, and honeysuckle leaves were still tongues of green fire. Between the larch boles and under the thickets of honeysuckle and blackberry came a tawny silent form, wearing with the calm dignity of woodland creatures a beauty of eye and limb, a brilliance of tint, that few-women could have worn without self-consciousness. Clear-eyed, lithe, it stood for a moment in the full sunlight—a year-old fox, round-headed and velvet-footed. Then it slid into the shadows. A shrill whistle came from the interior of the wood, and the fox bounded towards it.

The icy, driving wind leapt across the plain like a horseman with a long sword, and stealthily in its track came the melancholy whisper of snow.

When this began, Hazel was in the open, half-way to Wolfbatch. She sat down on the step of a stile, and sighed with relief at the ease it gave her foot. Then, far off she heard the sharp miniature sound, very neat and staccato, of a horse galloping. She held her breath to hear if it would turn down a by-road, but it came on. It came on, and grew in volume and in meaning, became almost ominous in the frozen silence. Hazel rose and stood in the fitful moonlight. She felt that the approaching hoof-beats were for her. They were the one sound in a dead world, and she nearly cried out at the thought of their dying in the distance. They must not; they should not.

'Maybe it's a farmer and his missus as have drove a good bargain, and the girl told to get supper fire-hot agen they come. Maybe they'll give me a lift! Maybe they'll say "Bide the night over?"'

She knew it was only a foolish dream; nevertheless, she stood well in the light, a slim, brow-beaten figure, the colour of her dress wan in the grey world.

A trap came swaying round the corner. Hazel cried out beseechingly, and the driver pulled the horse up short.

'I must be blind drunk,' he soliloquized, 'seeing ghosts!'

'Oh, please sir!' Hazel could say no more, for the tears that companionship unfroze.

He quite realized that her occupation was not suited to a minister's future wife. 'But she may never be that,' he thought despairingly.

'Have you ever thought, Hazel,' he said later, sitting down on a log—'have you ever thought of the question of marriage?'

'I ne'er did till Foxy took the chicks.' Edward looked dazed. 'It's like this,' Hazel went on. 'Father (he's a rum 'un, is father!), he says he'll drown Foxy if she takes another.'

'Who is Foxy?'

'Oh! Fancy you not knowing Foxy! Her's my little cub. Pretty! you ne'er saw anything so pretty.'

Edward thought he had.

'But she canna get used to folks' ways.' (This was a new point of view to Edward.) 'She'm a fox, and she can't be no other. And I'd liefer she'd be a fox.'

'Foxes are very mischievous,' Edward said mildly.

'Mischievous!' Hazel flamed on him like a little thunderstorm. 'Mischievous! And who made 'em mischievous, I'd like to know? They didna make theirselves.'

'God made them,' Edward said simply.

'What for did He, if He didna like 'em when they were done?'

'We can't know all His reasons; He walks in darkness.'

'Well, that's no manner of use to me and Foxy,' said Hazel practically. 'So all as I can see to do is to get married and take Foxy where there's no chicks.'

'So you think of marrying?'

'Ah! And I told father I'd marry the first as come. I swore it by the Mountain.'

'And who came?' Edward had a kind of faintness in his heart.

Hazel found a place some distance down the course where she could look along the straight to the winning-post; she loved to hear them thunder past. She leaned over the rail and watched them come, still fatalistic, but gallant, bent on a dramatic finish, stooping and 'cutting' their horses. The first man was on her side of the course. She stared at him in amazed consternation as he came towards her. His strong blue eyes, caught by the fixity of her glance or by her bright hair, saw her, and became triumphant. He pulled the horse in sharply, and within a few yards of the winning-post wheeled and went back, amid the jeers and howls of the crowd, who thought he must be drunk.

'You've given me a long enough chase,' he said, leaning towards her. 'Where the devil do you live?'

'Oh, dunna stop! He's coming.'

'Who?'

'Mr. Marston, the minister.'

'What do I care if he's a dozen ministers?'

'But he'll be angered.'

'I'll make his nose bleed if he's got such cheek.'

'Oh, he's coming, Mr. Reddin! I mun go.' She turned away. Reddin followed.

'Why should he be angry?'

'Because we're going to be wed to-morrow'

Reddin whistled.

'And Foxy's coming, and all of 'em. And there's a clock as tick-tacks ever so sleepy, and a sleepy old lady, and Ed'ard's bought me a box full of clothes.'

'I gave you a box full too,' he said with a note of pleading. 'You little runaway!'

Suddenly a shout rang across the hill and silenced her and the woodlarks. She saw against the full-blown flower of the west—black on scarlet—Reddin on his tall black horse, galloping towards her. Clouds were coming up for night. They raced with him. From one great round rift the light poured on Hazel as it does from a burning-glass held over a leaf. It burned steadily on her, and then was moved, as if by an invisible hand. Reddin came on, and the thunder of his horse's hoofs was in her ears. Hurtling thus over the pastures, breaking the year-long hush, he was the embodiment of the destructive principle, of cruelty, of the greater part of human society—voracious and carnivorous—with its curious callousness towards the nerves of the rest of the world.

'I a'most thought it was the death-pack,' said Hazel, speaking first, as the more nervous always does.

She stood uncomfortably looking up at him as a rabbit looks, surprised half-way out of its burrow.

'Where be going?' she asked at last.

'Looking for you.'

Hazel could not enjoy the flattery of this; she was so perturbed by his nearness.

'Where's your lord and master?'

'Ed'ard inna my master. None is.' A hot indignant flush surged over her.

'Yes,' said he; 'I am.'

'That you're not, and never will be.'