Chapter 10

The garden at the Callow was full of old, sad-coloured flowers that had lost all names but the country ones. Chief among them, by reason of its hardihood, was a small plant called virgin's pride. Its ephemeral petals, pale and bee-haunted, fluttered like banners of some lost, forgotten cause. The garden was hazy with their demure, faintly scented flowers, and the voices of the bees came up in a soft roar triumphantly, as the voices of victors returning with hardwon spoil.

Abel had been putting some new sections on the hives, and, as usual, after a long spell of listening to their low, changeless music, he rushed in for his harp. He sat down under the hawthorn by the gate, and looked like a patriarch beneath a pale green tint. As day declined the music waxed; he played with a tenderness, a rage of delight, that did not often come to him except on spring evenings. He almost touched genius. Hazel came out, leaving the floor half scrubbed, and began to dance on the potato flat.

'Dunna stomp the taters to jeath, 'Azel!' said he.

'They binna up!' she replied, continuing to dance.

He never wasted words. He continued the air with one hand and threw a stone at her with the other. He hit her on the cheek.

'You wold beast!' she screamed.

'Gerroff taters!' He continued to play.

She went, hand to cheek, and frowning, off the potato patch. But she did not stop dancing. Neither of them ever let such things as anger, business, or cleanliness interfere with their pleasures. So Hazel danced on, though on a smaller area among the virgin's pride.

The music, wild, crude and melancholy, floated on the soft air to Edward as he approached. The sun slipped lower; leaf shadows began to tremble on Hazel's pinafore, which, with its faded blue and its many stains, was transmuted in the vivid light, and looked like the flowers of virgin's pride.

'"The Ash Tree"!' said Abel, who always announced his tunes in this way, as singers do at a choir supper.

The forlorn music met Edward at the gate. He stopped, startled at the sight of Hazel dancing in the shadowy garden with her hair loose and her abandon tempered by weariness. He stood behind the hedge until Abel brought the tune to an early end with the laconic remark, 'Supper,' and went indoors with his harp.

Edward opened the gate and went in.

'Eh, mister! what a start you give me!' said Hazel breathlessly.

'So this is your home?'

'Ah!'

Edward found her more disturbing to-night than at the concert; the gulf between them was more obvious; she had been comparatively tidy before.

Now her disreputableness contrasted strongly with his correct black coat and general air of civilized well-being.

Hazel came nearer.

'He inna bad to live along of,' she confided, with a nod towards the cottage. 'O' course, he's crossways time and again, and a devil's temper.'

'You mustn't speak of your father like that, Hazel.'

'What for not? He _be_ like that.'

'Are all these apple-trees yours?' he asked to change the subject.

'No, they'm father's. But I get the windfa'ls and the bruised 'uns. I allus see'--she smiled winningly--'as there's plenty of them. Foxy likes 'em. He found me at it once bruising of 'em. God a'mighty! what a hiding he give me!'

Edward felt depressed. He could not harmonize Hazel's personality with his mother's; he was shocked at her expressions; he was sufficiently fastidious to recoil from dirt; the thought of Abel as a father-in-law was little short of appalling. Yet, in spite of all these things, he had felt such elation, such spring rapture when Hazel danced; the world took on such strange new colours when she looked at him that he knew he must love her for ever. He felt that as his emotions grew stronger--and they were becoming more and more like a herd of young calves out at grass--his ways of expression must increase in correctness.

'Hazel--' he began.

'I like the way you say it,' she interrupted. 'Ah! I like it right well! Breathin' strong, like folk coming up the Monkey's Ladder.'

'Whatever's that?'

'Dunna you know Monkey's Ladder? It's that road there. Somebody's coming up it now on a horse.'

They both looked down at Reddin climbing slowly and still some way off.

They did not know who it was, nor what destiny was pacing silently towards them with his advancing figure, nor why he rode up and down this road and other roads every day; but an inexplicable sense of urgency came upon Edward. To his own surprise, he said suddenly:

'I came to ask if you'd marry me, Hazel Woodus?'

'Eh?' said she, dazed with surprise.

'Will you marry me, Hazel? I can give you a good home, and I will try to be a good husband, and--and I love you, Hazel, dear.'

Hazel put her head on one side like a willow-wren singing. She liked to be called dear.

'D'you like me as much as I like Foxy?'

'Far more.'

'You've bin very quick about it.'

'I'm afraid I have.'

'Will you buy me a green gown with yellow roses on?'

'If you like.' He spoke doubtfully, wondering what his mother would think of it.

'And shall we sit down to our dinners at a table with a cloth on like at--' She stopped. She could not tell him about Undern. 'Like the gentry?' she finished.

'Yes, dear.'

'And will you tell that sleepy old lady as lives along, of you--'

('Oh, poor mother!' thought Edward.)

'--Not to stare and stare at me over the top of her spectacles like a cow at a cornfield over the fence?'

'Yes--yes,' said Edward hastily, feeling that his mother must wait to be reinstated until he had made sure of Hazel.

'All right, then; I'll come.'

Edward took her hand; then he kissed her cheek gently. She accepted the kiss placidly. There was nothing in it to remind her of Reddin's.