 Chapter one of Gone to Earth, this is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain, for more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Gone to Earth by Mary Webb. Dedication to him whose presence is home. Chapter one. 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 spinny of silver birches and larches that topped around hill, a purple mist hinted of buds in the treetops, and a fainter purple haunted the vistas between the silver and brown bowls. 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 pattern 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 bowls 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. Where you been? You must try and lose yourself, certain shore, said a girl's voice, chidingly motherly, and if you were lost, I'm a lost, so come you home, the sun's undring and there's bones for supper. With that she took to her heels the little fox after her, racing down the callow in the cold-level light till they came to the woodus' cottage. Hazel Woodus, to whom the fox belonged, had always lived at the callow. There her mother, a Welsh gypsy, had borne her in bitter rebellion, hating marriage and a settled life, and Abel Woodus, as a wild cat hates a cage. She was a rover, born for the artist's joy and sorrow, and her spirit fang no really for its emotions, for it was dumb. To the linnet its flight, to the thrush its song, but she had neither flight nor song, yet the tongueless thrush is a thrush still, and has golden music in its heart. The caged linnet may sit moping, but her soul knows the dip and rise of flight on an everlasting May morning. All the things she felt and could not say, all the stored honey, the black hatred, the wistful homesickness for the unfenced wild, all that other women would put into their prayers, she gave to Hazel. The whole force of her wayward heart flowed into the softly beating heart of her baby. It was as if she passionately flung the life she did not value into the arms of her child. When Hazel was fourteen she died, leaving her treasure, an old, dirty, partially illegible manuscript book of spells and charms and other gypsy law, to her daughter. Her one request was that she might be buried in the callow under the yellow larch needles and not in a churchyard. Abel Woodus did, as she asked, and was regarded as scant by most of the community for not burying her in christened ground. But this did not trouble him. He had his harp still, and while he had that he needed no other friend. It had been his absorption in his music that had prevented him understanding his wife, and in the early days of their marriage she'd been wildly jealous of the tall, gilt harp with its faded felt cover that stood in the corner of the living room. Then her jealousy changed to love of it, and her one desire was to be able to draw music from its plaintive strings. She could never master even the rudiments of music, but she would sit on rainy evenings when Abel was away and run her thin hands over the strings with a despairing passion of grieving love. Yet she could not bear to hear Abel play. Just as some childless women with all their accumulated stores of love cannot bear to see a mother with her child, so Marais Woodus with her sealed genius, her incapacity for expression, could not bear to hear the easy self-expression of another. For Abel was in his way a master of his art. He had dark places in his soul, and that is the very core of art and its substance. He had the lissom hands and cheerful self-absorption that bring success. He had met Marais at an ice-steadford that had been held in days gone by on a hill five miles from the callow called God's Little Mountain and crowned by a chapel. She had listened, swaying and weeping to the surge and lament of his harp, and when he won the harpers prize and laid it in her lap, she had consented to be married in the chapel at the end of the ice-steadford week. That was nineteen years ago, and she was fled like the leaves and the birds of departed summers. But God's Little Mountain still towered as darkly to the eastward. The wind still let shear from the chapel to the young larches of the callow. Nothing had changed at all. Only one more young anxious eager creature had come into the towering subluminous scheme of things. Hazel had her mother's eyes, strange, fawn-coloured eyes like water, and in the large clear irises were tawny flecks. In their shy honesty they were akin to the little foxes. Her hair too, of a richer colour than her father's, was tawny and fox-like, and her ways were graceful and covert as a wild creature's. She stood in the lane above the cottage which nestled below with its roof on a level with the hedge-roots, and watched the sun dip. The red light from the west stained her torn-on dress, her thin face, her eyes, till she seemed to be dipped in blood. The fox, wistfulness in her expression and the consciousness of coming supper in her mind, gazed obediently where her mistress gazed, and was touched with the same fierce beauty. They stood there, fronting the crimson pools over the far hills, two small, sentient things facing destiny with pathetic courage. They had, in the chill evening on the lonely hill, a look as of those predestined to grief, almost an air of martyrdom. The small clouds that went westward took each in its turn the prevailing colour and vanished, dipped in blood. From the cottage as Hazel went down the path came the faint thrumming of the harp, changing as she reached the door to the air of the ash grove. The cottage was very low, one storied, and roofed with red corrugated iron. The three small windows had frames coloured with washing glue and frills of crimson cotton within. There seemed scarcely room for even Hazel's small figure. The house was a little larger than a good pigsty, and only the trail of smoke from its squat chimney showed that humanity dwelt there. Hazel gave Foxy her supper and put her to bed in the old wash tub where she slept. Then she went into the cottage with an armful of logs from the wood hoop. She threw them on the open fire. I'm a cold, she said. The rain's cleared and there'll be a duck's frost tonight. Abel looked up absently, humming the air he intended to play next. I've been in the callow and I've gotten a primmy rose, continued Hazel, accustomed to his ways and not discouraged, and I got a bit of blackthorn white as a lady. Abel was well on in Ap-Jenkin by now. Hazel moved about seeing to supper for she was as hungry as Foxy, talking all the time in her rather shrilly sweet voice while she dumped the cracked cups and the loaf and margarine on the bare table. The kettle was not boiling so she threw some bacon grease on the fire and a great tongue of flame sprang out and licked at Abel's beard. He raised a hand to it, continuing to play with the other. Hazel laughed. You be fair, comic struck, she said. She always spoke in this tone of easy comradeship. They got on very well. They were so entirely indifferent to each other. There was nothing filial about her or parental about him. Neither did they ever evince the least affection for each other. He struck up. It's a fine hunting day. Oh, shut thy round with that drodsome thing, said Hazel, with sudden passion. Lucky, I unabide in if you go on. Huh? Queeried Abel, dreamily. Play somewhere else, said Hazel. Not that. I don't like it. You be a queer girl, Hazel, said Abel, coming out of his abstraction. But I don't mind playing wider the people instead. It's just as heartening. Can you stop meddling with the music and come to supper, asked Hazel. The harp was always called the music, just as Abel's mouth organ was, the little music. She reached down the flitch to cut some bacon off, and her dress already torn, ripped from shoulder to waist. If you didn't take needle to that, you'll be mother nakeder for a weeks out, said Abel, indifferently. I'm in get a new one, said Hazel. It unamend, I'll go to town tomorrow. Shall you bide with your auntie the night over? Ah! I shall look for your face till I see your shadow then. You can bring a two, three wreath frames. There's old Sampson at the eath, and the last long. There weren't a wreath made. Hazel sat and considered her new dress. She never had a new one till the old one fell off her back. And then she usually got a second hand one, as a shilling or two would buy only material if new, but would stretch to a ready-made if second hand. Foxy had like me to get a green velvet, said Hazel. She always expressed her intense desires, which were few, in this formula. It was her unconscious protest against the lovelessness of her life. She put the blackthorn in water and contemplated its whiteness with delight, but it had not occurred to her that she might herself, with a little trouble, be as sweet and fresh as its blossom. The spiritualisation of sex would be needed before such things would occur to her. At present she was sexless as a leaf. They sat by the fire till it went out, then they went to bed, not troubling to say goodnight. In the middle of the night Foxy woke. The moon filled her kennel mouth like a door, and the light shone in her eyes. This frightened her. So large a lantern in an unseen hand, held so purposefully before the tiny home of one defences little creature. She barked sharply. Hazel awoke promptly as a mother at her child's cry. She ran straight out with her bare feet into the fierce moonlight. What hails you? she whispered. What hails you, little one? The wind stalked through the callow, and the callow moaned. A moan came also from the plain, and black shapes moved there as the clouds drove onwards. Maybe they're out, muttered Hazel. Maybe the black meats set for tonight, and she centred the death pack. She looked about nervously. I can see some are driving dark over the pasture's yonder. They're abroad surely. She hurried Foxy into the cottage and bolted the door. There she said, now you lie good and quiet in the corner and the death pack shall not get you. It was said that the death pack, phantom hounds of a bad squire, whose gross body had been long since put to sweeter uses than any he put it to in life, changed into the clear-eyed daisy and the ardent pimpenel, scoured the country on dark, stormy nights. Harm was for the house pass which it streamed. Death for those that heard it give tongue. This was the legend, and Hazel believed it implicitly. When she had found Foxy half-dead outside a deserted earth, she had been quite sure that it was the death pack that had made away with Foxy's mother. She connected it also with her own mother's death. Hounds symbolized everything she hated, everything that was not young, wild and happy. She identified herself with Foxy and so with all things hunted and snared and destroyed. Night, shadow, loud winds, winter, these were inimical. With these came the death pack, stealthy and untiring, following forever the trail of the defenseless. Sunlight, soft airs, bright colours, kindness, these were beneficent havens to flee into. Such was the essence of her creed, the only creed she held, and it lay darkly in her heart, never expressed even to herself. But when she ran into the night to comfort the little fox, she was living up to her faith as few do. When she gathered flowers and lay in the sun, she was dwelling in a mystical atmosphere as vivid as that of the saints. When she recoiled from cruelty, she was trampling evil underfoot, perhaps more surely than those great divines who destroyed one another in their zeal for their maker. End of chapter 1, recording by Rachel Linton, Bristol, UK Chapter 2 of Gone to Earth This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Gone to Earth by Mary Webb, Chapter 2 At 6th the next morning they had breakfast. Abel was busy making a hive for the next summer's swarm. When he made a coffin, he always used up the bits thus. A large coffin did not leave very much but sometimes there were small ones and then he made splendid hives. The white township on the south side of the lilac hedge increased as slowly and unceasingly as the green township around the distant churchyard. In summer the garden was loud with bees and the cottage was full of them at swarming time. Later it was littered with honey sections. Honey dripped from the table and pieces of broken comb lay on the floor and were contentedly eaten by foxy. Whenever an order for a coffin came, Hazel went to tell the bees who was dead. Her father thought this unnecessary. It was only for folks that died in the house he said but he had himself told the bees when his wife died. He had gone out on that vivid dune morning to his hives and had stood watching the lines of bees fetching water. There shadows going and coming on the clean white boards. Then he had stooped and said with a curious confidential indifference, Marais dead. He had put his ear to the hive and listened to the deep solemn murmur within but it was the murmur of the future and not of the past. The preoccupation with life not with death that filled the pale galleries within. Today the 18 hives lay under their winter covering and the eager creatures within slept. Only one or two strayed sometimes to the early Arabies, disultry and sad. Driven home again by the frosty air to await the purple times of honey. The happiest days of Abel's life were those when he sat like a bard before the seething hives and harped to the muffled roar of sound that came from within. All his means of livelihood were joys to him. He had the art of perpetual happiness in this that he could earn as much as he needed by doing the work he loved. He played at flower shows and country dances, revivals and weddings. He sold his honey and sometimes his bees. He delighted in wreath making, gardening and carpentering and always in the background was his music. Some new air to try on the gilded harp. Some new chord or turn to master. The garden was almost big enough and quite beautiful enough for that of a mansion. In the summer, white lilies haunted it, standing out in the dusk with their demure cajolery, looking as Hazel said, like ghosts. Golden rod foamed round the cottage, deeply empowering it and lavender made a grey mist beside the red quarries of the path. Then Hazel sat like a queen in a regalia of flowers, eating the piece of bread and honey that made her dinner and covering her face with lily pollen. Now there were no flowers in the garden, only the yew tree by the gate that hung her wax and blossom along the undersides of the branches. Hazel hated the look of the frozen garden. She had an almost unnaturally intense craving for everything rich, vivid and vital. She was all these things herself as she communed with foxy before starting. She had wanged her hair round her head in a large plait and her old black hat made the colour richer. You nigh on 30 miles to go there and back unless you get a lift, said Abel. Should I don't want no lifts, said Hazel scornfully. Yuma's good a walker as John O'Noman's parish replied Abel and he walks forever so they do say. As Hazel set forth in the sharp fresh morning the callows shone with radiant brown and silver and no presage moved within it of the snow that would hurtle upon it from the mountains of cloud all night. When Hazel had chosen her dress, a peacock blue surge and had put it on there and then in the back of the shop curtain off this purpose she went to her aunt's. Her cousin Albert regarded her with a startled look. He was in a margarine shop and spent his days explaining that margarine was as good as butter but looking at Hazel he felt there was butter something that needed no apology and created its own demand. The bright blue made her so radiant that her aunt shook her head. You take after your maraisal, she said. Her tone was irritated. I'd be glad, her aunt sniffed. You ought to be as glad to take after one parent as another if you were dutiful, she said. I don't want to take after anybody but myself. Hazel flushed indignantly. Well, we are conceited, exclaimed her aunt. Albert, don't give Hazel all the liver and bacon. I suppose your mother can eat as well as schoolgirls. Albert was gazing at Hazel so animatedly so obviously approving of all she said that her aunt was very much ruffled. No wonder you only want to be like yourself, he said. Jam, my word Hazel, you're jam. Albert cried his mother raspingly with a pathetic note of pleading. Haven't I always taught you to say preserve? She was not pleading against the inelegant word but against Hazel. When Albert went back to the shop Hazel helped her aunt to wash up. All the time she was doing this with unusual care and cleaning the knives a thing she hated, she was waiting anxiously for the expected invitation to stay the night. She longed for it as the righteous long for the damnation of their enemies. She never paid a visit except here and to her it was a wild excitement. The gas stove, the pretty china, the rose-patterned wallpaper were all strange and marvellous as a fairy tale. At home there was no paper, no lathen plaster, only the bare bricks and the ceiling was of bulging sailcloth hung under the rafters. Now to all these was added the new delight of Albert's admiring gaze. An alert, live gaze, a thing hitherto unknown to Albert. Perhaps if she stayed Albert would take her out for the evening. She would see the streets of the town in the magic of lights. She would walk out in her new dress with a real young man, a young man who possessed a gilt watch chain. The suspense as the wintry afternoon grew in almost intolerable. Still her aunt did not speak. The sitting room looked so cosy when tea was laid the firelight played over the cups, her aunt drew the curtains. On one side there was joy, warmth, all that she could desire. On the other a forlorn walk in the dark. She had left it until so late that her heart shook at the idea of the many miles she must cover alone if her aunt did not ask her. Her aunt knew what was going on in Hazel's mind and smiled grimly at Hazel's unusual meekness. She took the opportunity of administering a few home truths. You looked like an actress, she said. Do I, auntie? Yes, it's a disgrace the way you look. You quite draw men's eyes. It's nice to draw men's eyes in it, auntie. Nice. Hazel, I should like to bop your ears, you naughty girl. You'll go wrong one of these days. What for, will I, auntie? Some day you'll get spoke to. She said the last words in a hollow whisper. And after that, as you won't say and do what a good girl would, you'll get picked up. I'd like to see anyone pick me up, said Hazel indignantly. I'd kick. Oh, how unladylike. I didn't mean really picked up. I meant allegorically, like in the Bible. Oh, only like in the Bible, said Hazel disappointedly. I thought you meant some real. Oh, you'll bring down my grey hairs. Well, Mrs. Proud. An actress was bad, but an infidel. That I should live to hear it in my own villa with my own soda cake on the cake dish and my own son, she added dramatically as Albert entered, coming in to have his godfearing heart broken. This embarrassed Albert for it was true, though the cause assigned was not. What's Hazel been up to, he queried. The affection beneath his heavy pleasantry strengthened his mother in her resolve that Hazel should not stay the night. There's a magic lantern lecture on tonight, Hazel. He said, like to come. I should that. You can't walk home at that time of night, said Mrs. Proud. In fact, you ought to start now. But Hazel's staying the night mother, surely. Hazel must get back to her father. But mother, there's the spare room. The spare room's being sprinkled. Albert plunged. He was desperate and forgetful of propriety. I can sleep on this sofa, he said. She can have my room. Hazel can't have your room. It's not suitable. Well, let her share yours then. Mrs. Proud played her trump card. Little I thought, she said, when your dear father went that before three years had passed you'd be so forgetful of my comfort and his memory as to suggest such a thing. As long as I live, my room's mine. When I'm gone, she concluded, knocking down her adversary with her superior weight of years, when I'm gone, and the sooner the better for you, no doubt, you can put her in my room and yourself, too. When she'd said this, she was horrified at herself. What an improper thing to say. Even anger and jealousy did not excuse in propriety, though they excused any amount of unkindness. But at this Hazel cried out in her turn, that he never will. The fierce egoism of the consciously weak flamed up in her. I keep myself to myself, she finished. If such things come to pass, mother, Albert said, and his eyes looked suddenly vivid, so that Hazel clapped her hands and said, your lamps are lit, your lamps are lit, and broke into peels of laughter. If such a thing comes to pass, laboured Albert, they'll come decent, that is, they won't be spoken of. He voiced his own and his mother's creed. At this point the argument ended because Albert had to go back after tea to finish some work. As he stamped innumerable swans on the yielding material, he never doubted that his mother had also yielded. He forgot that life had to be shaped with an axe till the chips fly. As soon as he had gone, Mrs. Proud shut the door on Hazel hastily for fear the weather might bring relenting. She had other views for Albert. In after years, when the consequences of her action had become things of the past, she always spoke of how she had done her best with Hazel. She never dreamed that she, by her selfishness that night, had herself set Hazel's feet in the dark and winding path that she must tread from that night onward to its hidden, shadowy ending. Mrs. Proud, through her many contented years, blamed in turn Hazel, Abel, Albert, the Devil, and only tacitly and as it were in secret from herself, God. If there is any purgatorial fire of remorse for the hard and selfish natures that crucify love, it must burn elsewhere. It does not touch them in this world. They go as the three children went in their coats, their hares and their hats all complete, nor does the smell of fire pass over them. Hazel felt that heaven was closed, locked and barred. She could see the golden light streaming through its gates. She could hear the songs of joy, joy unattained and therefore immortal. She could see the bright figures of her dreams go to and fro, but heaven was shut. The wind ran up and down the narrow streets like a lost dog whimpering. Hazel hurried on for it was already twilight, and though she was not afraid of the callow and the fields at night, she was afraid of the high roads. For the callow was home, but the roads were the wide world. On the fringe of the town she saw lights and bedroom windows of prosperous houses. My, there you go to their beds early, she thought, not having heard of dressing for dinner. It made her feel more lonely that people should be going to bed. From other houses music floated, or the savoury smell of dinner. As she passed the last lamp post she began to cry, feeling like a lost and helpless little animal. Her new dress was forgotten. The wreath frames would not fit under her arm and caused a continual minor discomfort, and the callow seemed to be half across the country. She heard a trapped rabbit screaming somewhere, a thin, anguished cry that she could not ignore. This delayed her a good deal and in letting it out she got a large bloodstain on her dress. She cried again at this. The pain of a blister, unnoticed in the morning journey now made itself felt. She tried walking without her boots, but the ground was cold and hard. The icy, driving wind leapt across the plane 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, halfway to Wolfcatch. 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 hoofbeats were for her. They were the one sound in a dead world, but 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 misses, as if drove a good bargain and the girl told to get supper fire hot again they come. Maybe they'll give me a lift, maybe they'll say, bite 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 warm 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 salilloquized, seeing ghosts. Oh, please, sir! Hazel could say no more for the tears that companionship unfroze. The man peered at her. What in hell are you doing here? he asked. Walking home along, she wouldn't let me bite the night over The foot's blistered in a balloon and blood on my dress. She choked with sobs. What's your name? Hazel. What else? With an instinct of self-protection, she refused to tell her surname. Well, mine's redden, he said, crossly. And why you're so dark about yours, I don't know. But up you get anyway. The sun came out in Hazel's face. He helped her up. She was so stiff with cold. Your arm, she said in a low tremulous voice when he had put the rug round her, your arm pulling me in be like the Sunday school tale of Jesus Christ and Peter on the wild sea. Me being Peter. Redden looked at her sideways to see if she was in earnest. Seeing that she was, he changed the subject. Far to go, he asked. Ah, miles on miles. Like to stop the night over. At last, late certainly, but no matter, at last the invitation had come. Not from her aunt, but from a stranger. That made it more exciting. I much-debleached, she said. Where at? Do you know Undern? I've heard tell on it. Well, it's two miles from here. Ah, will your mother be angry? I haven't one. Father? No. Who be there then? Only Vessens and me. Whose Vessens? My servant. Be you a gentleman then. Redden hesitated slightly. She said it was such a reverence and made it seem so great a thing. Yes, he said at last. Yes, that's what I am, a gentleman. He was conscious of bravado. Will there be supper, fire hot? Yes, if Vessens is in a good temper. Where you been? She asked next. Mark it. You've had about as much as is good for you, she remarked, as if thinking aloud. He certainly smelled strongly of whiskey. You've got a cheek, said he. Let's look at you. He stared into her tired but vivid eyes for a long time and the trap careered from side to side. My word, he said, I'm in luck tonight. What for be you? Meeting a girl like you. Do I draw men's eyes? Eh? He was startled, then he gaffored. Yes, he replied. She said so, hazel murmured, and she said I'd get spoke to and she said I'd get puck up. My main glad of it too, she's a witch. She said you'd get picked up, did she? Ah. Redden put his arm round her. You're so pretty, that's why. Dunna, maul me. You might be civil, I'm doing you a kindness. They went on in that fashion, his arm about her, wondering what manner of companion the other was. When they neared Undern, there were gates to open and he admired her litheness as she jumped in and out. In his pastures where the deeply ruttered track was already white with snow, two foals stood sadly by their mothers, gazing at the cold world with their peculiarly disconsolate eyes. Eh, looks the urban one. Urban like me, cried Hazel. Redden suddenly gripped the long coils that were loose on her shoulders, twisted them in a rope around his neck, and kissed her. She was enmeshed and could not avoid his kisses. The cob took this opportunity, one long desired, to rear and Redden flogged him the rest of the way. So they arrived with a platter and were met at the door by Andrew Vesens. Knowing of I as a blackbird, straw in mouth, the poison of asps on his tongue. End of chapter 2, recording by Rachel Linton, Bristol, UK. Chapter 3 of Gone to Earth. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Gone to Earth by Mary Webb, chapter 3. Undearned Hall with its many small paint windows faced the north sullenly, it was a place of which the influence and magic were not good. Even in May when the lilacs frothed into purple, paved the lawn with shadows, steeped the air with scent, when soft leaves lipped each other consolingly, when blackbirds sang, fell in their effortless way from the green height to the green depth and sang again. Still, something that haunted the place set the heart fluttering. No place is its own and that which is most stained with old tumults has the strongest fascination. So at Undearned, whatever had happened there went on still. Someone who had been there was there still. The lawns under the trees were mournful with old pain or with vanished joys more pathetic than pain in their fleeting mimicry of immortality. It was only at mid-summer that the windows were coloured by dawn and sunset. Then they had a sanguinary aspect, staring into the delicate sky dramas like blind bloodshot eyes. Secretly under the heavy rhododendron leaves and in the furtive sunlight beneath the yew trees, gnats danced. Their faint motions made the garden stiller. Their smallness made it oppressive. Their momentary life made it infinitely old. Then Undearned pool was full of leaf shadows like multitudinous lolling tongues and the smell of the mud tainted the air half sickly, half sweet. The clipped bushes and the twisted chimneys made inky shadows like steeples on the grass and great trees of roses, beautiful in desolation, dripped with red and white and elbowed the gilder roses and the elders set with white puttons. Cherries fell in the orchard with the same rich monotony, the same fatality as drops of blood. They lay under the fungus-riven trees till the hens at them, pecking gingerly and enjoyably at their lustrous beauty as the world does at a poet's heart. In the kitchen garden also the hens took their ease, banqueting sparely beneath the straggling black boughs of a red-current grove. In the sandstone walls of this garden, hornets built undisturbed and the time and lavender borders had grown into forests and obliterated the path. The cattle drowsed in the meadows, birds in the heavy trees, the golden daylilies drooped like the daughters of pleasure. The very principle of life seemed to slumber. It was then, when the scent of elder blossom, decaying fruit, mud and hot you brooded there, that the place attained one of its most individual moods, narcotic, aphrodisiac. In winter the ewes and furs were like waving funeral plumes and mantled headless goddesses. Then the giant beaches would lash themselves to frenzy and stooping would scourge the ice on undurned pool and the cracked walls of the house like beings drunken with the passion of cruelty. This was the second mood of undurned brutality. Then those within were, it seemed, already in the grave, heavily covered with the prison of frost and snow or shouted into silence by the wind. On a January night the house seemed to lie outside time and space. Slow, ominous movement began beyond the blind windows and the inflexible softness of snow blurred on the vast background of night, buried summer ever deeper with invincible caressing threats. The front door was half glass so that a wandering candle within could be seen from outside and it looked inexpressibly forlorn like a glowworm seeking escape from a chloroform box or mankind looking for the way to heaven. Only four windows were ever lit and of these two at a time. They were Jack Redden's parlour Andrew Vesson's kitchen and their respective bedrooms. Redden of Undurn cared as little for the graciousness of life as he did for its pitiful rhapsodies, its purple mantel tragedies. He had no time for such trivialities. Fox hunting, horse breeding and kennel law were his vocation. He rode straight, lived hard, exercised such creative faculties as he had on his work and found it very good. Three times a year he stated in the Undurn pew at Wolfbatch that he intended to continue leading a godly, righteous and sober life. At these times with amber lights from the windows playing over his well-shaped head his rather heavy face looked as the Miss Clombers from Wolfbatch Hall said So chivalrous, so uplifted the Miss Clombers purred when they talked like cats with a mouse. The younger still hunted painfully compressing an overfed body into a riding habit of some forgotten cut and riding with so grim a mouth and such a bloodthirsty expression that she might have had a blood feud with all foxes. Perhaps when she rode down the anxious red-brown streak she thought she was riding down a cruel fate that had somehow left her life vacant of joy. Perhaps when the little creature was torn piecemeal she imagined herself tearing so the frail, unconquerable powers of love and beauty. Anyway, she never missed a meet and she and her sister never ceased their long, silent battle for Redden who remained as unconscious of them as if they were his aunts. He was of course beneath them very much beneath them hardly more than a farmer but still a man. Redden went on his dubious and discreditable way and the woman Sally Haggard of the cottage in the Hollow gained by reputation of a certain harsh beauty what the ladies' clombo would have given all their wealth for. The other inhabitant of Undern, Andrew revolved in his own orbit and was entirely unknown to his master. He cut the yews, the peacocks and the clipped round trees and the ones like tables twice a year. He was creating a swan. He had spent twenty years on it and hoped to complete it in a few more when the twigs that were to be the beak had grown sufficiently. It never occurred to him that the place was not his that he might have to leave it. He had his spring work and his autumn work. In the winter he ordained various small indoor jobs for himself and in the summer, in common with the rest of the place he grew somnolent. He sat by the hacked and stained kitchen table which he seldom scrubbed and on which he kept his knife, sword bones and chopped meat and slept the afternoons away in the ceaseless drone of flies. When Redden called him he rarely answered and only deigned to go to him when he felt sure that his order was going to be reasonable. Everything he said was non-committal. Every movement was expostulatory. Redden never noticed. Vessens suited his needs and he always had such meals as he liked. Vessens was a bachelor. Monasticism had found in a countryside teeming with sex one silent but rabid disciple. If Vessens ever felt the irony of his own presence in a breeding stable he never said so. He went about his work with tight disapproving lips as if he thought that nature owed him a debt of gratitude for his tolerance of her ways. Ruminative and critical he went to and fro in the darkly lovely domain with pig buckets or ash buckets or barrows full of manure. The lines of his face were always etched in dirt and he always had a bit of rag tied around some cut or blister. He was a lonely soul as he once said himself when unusually mellow at the hunter's arms. He was without mother, without father, without descent. He preferred it to the ties of family. He liked living with Redden because they never spoke except of necessity. And because he was quite indifferent to Redden's welfare and Redden to his. But to undern itself he was not indifferent. Ties deep as the tangled roots of the bindweeds as strong as the great hausers of the beaches that reached below the mud of undern pool held him to it. The bond slave of a beauty he could not understand a terror he could not express. When he trudged the muddy paths, setting taters or earthing up when he scythe the lawn looking with a rose in his hat weirder and more ridiculous than ever and when he shook the apples down he were humorous if to say there that's what you trees get by having apples. At all these times he seemed less an individual than a blind force. For though his personality was strong that of the place was stronger. Half out of the soil minded like the door mouse and the beetle he was by virtue of his unspoken passion the protoplasm of a poet. End of Chapter 3 Recording by Rachel Linton, Bristol, UK Chapter 4 of Gone to Earth This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Gone to Earth by Mary Webb Chapter 4 Vessons took up the pose of one seeing a new patient This young lady's lost her way, read in remarked She has God's truth For you'll find it for I make no doubt, sir There's a way He looked ironically at the poultry basket behind the trap from which peered anxious, beaky faces The way is no foul nooth The way of a man with a maid Fetch the broodmears in from the lower pasture They should have been in this hour And late love's worse than lad's love So they do say, concluded Vessons There's nothing of love between us Read in snapped I don't know wonder at it Andrew cast an appraising look at his master's flush face And at Hazel's tousled hair and withdrew Hazel went into the elaborately carved porch She looked round the brown hall where deep shadows lurked Oak chests and carved chairs Or more or less dusty stood about Looking as if disorderly feasters had just left them In one corner was an inlaid sideboard piano Hazel did not notice the grey dust And the hearth full of matches and cigarette-enged She only saw what seemed to her a fabulous splendour A fox-hanged rose from the moth-eaten leopard skin By the hearth as they came in Hazel stiffened I cannot abear the hanged dogs, she said Nasty, snabbing things What's dogs going? No, they kills the poor foxes Vermin Hazel's face became tense She clenched her hands in advance to determine chin Keep your tongue off our foxy Or I un-a-stay, she said Who's foxy? My little small cub as I took and reared Oh, you reared it, did you? Ah, she didn't alight having no mam No mam now Redden had been looking at her as thoughtfully As his rather maudlin state allowed He had decided that she should stay at Undern And be his mistress You'll be wanting something better than foxes To be mothering one of these days He remarked to the fire with a half-embarassed Half-jack-hoes-air and a hand on the poker Eh! said Hazel Who was wondering how long it would take her To play music in the corner Redden was annoyed When one made these arch-speeches At such cost of imagination They should be received properly He got up and went across to Hazel Who had played three consecutive notes And was gleeful He put his hand on hers heavily And a discord was rung from the soft-tone notes That had perhaps known others such discords Long ago What a din! said Hazel What for did you do that, Mr. Redden? Redden found it harder than ever To repeat his remark and dropped it What's that brown on your dress? He asked instead That? Oh, that's from a rabbit As I loosed out in a trap It bled awful Little sneak to let it out Sneak's trick to catchin' And so tiny in all Replied Hazel, composedly Well, you'd better change your dress It's very wet and there's plenty here, said he Going to a chest And pulling out an armful of old-fashioned gowns If you lived it under And you could wear them every day If ifs were beans and bacon There's fewer'd go clemed, said Hazel That greenens proper Like when the leaves come new And little small roses and all Put it on while I see What Vestens is doing He's grumbling in the kitchen, seemingly, said Hazel Vestens always grumbled His mood could be judged only By the piano or forte effects Hazel heard him reply to Redden No supper binner ready Or only just put him arm He always spoke of all phases Of his day's work in the masculine gender Hazel stopped buttoning her dress To hear what Redden was saying Have you some hot water for the lady? The lady? That's me, she thought No sir Ayanna Nor yet Ayanna got no murr allows nor casher There's naught in my kitchen but a old useless cat And an overdrove man of six and sixty And a pot of vitals not yet simmering And a gentleman is ought to know better Than to bring a girl to Undern and ruin her Poor innocent little creature Me again, said Hazel She pondered on the remark and flushed Maybe I'd best go, she thought Yet only vague instinct stirred her to this And all her soul was set on staying Never shall it be said Andrew's voice rose like a creature's Never shall it be said As a young female found no friend in Andrew Vestens Never shall it be said His voice soared over various Annoyed exclamations of Reddens As a female went from this All different from what she came Shut up Vestens But Vestens was As he would have phrased it himself In full honey flow And not to be silenced Single she be And single she ought to stay This ear rubbish of kissing and clipping But Vestens If there were no children gotten The world would be empty Let them be Him above will get a bit of rest Nights from their sins I like that old chap Thought Hazel The wrangle continued It was the deathless quarrel Of the world and the monastery Natural man and the hermit Finally Vestens concluded On a top note Well, if you take this girl's Good name off on her Suddenly something happened In Hazel's brain It was the realisation of life In relation to self It marks the end of childhood She no more saw herself Thrown above life and fate As a child does She saw that she was a part Of it all She was mutable and mortal She had seen life go on Had heard of funerals, courtings Confinements and weddings In their conventional order Or reversed And she had remained as it were intact She had starved and slaved And woven superstitions Loved foxy and tolerated her father Girlfriends had hinted Of a wild revelry that went on Somewhere, everywhere Calling like a hidden merry-go-round To any who cared to hear But she had not heard They had let fall such sentences As he got the better of me I cried out And he thought someone was coming And he let me go Later she heard And I thought I'd near get through it When the baby came She felt vaguely sorry for these girls But she realised nothing of their life Nor did she associate funerals And illness with herself As the convulvular stands In apparent changelessness In a silent rose and white eternity So she seemed to herself A stationary being But the convolveness Has budded and bloomed and closed again While you thought her still And she dies The raid and rosy cup So full of hairy sweetness She dies in a day Hazel got up from her chair By the fire and went restlessly With a rustle as of innumerable Autumn leaves to the hall door She gazed through the glass And saw the sad feather flights Of snow Wandering and hesitating And finally coming to earth They held to her their individuality As flakes as long as they could It seemed But the end came to all And they were merged in earth And their own multitudes Hazel opened the door And stood on the threshold So that snowflakes flattened themselves The roses of her dress Outside there was no world Only a waste of grey and white Like leaves on a dead bird The wrappings of white Grew deeper over Undern Hazel shivered In the cold wind off the hill And saw Undern pull Curdling and thickening in the frost No sound came Across the outspread country There were no roads near Undern Except its own cart track There were no railways within miles Nothing moved Except the snowflakes Fulfilling their relentless destiny Of negation She saw them only Unheard only the raised voices In the house arguing about herself I'm and go She said Strong in her spirit of freedom Remote and withdrawn I'm and stay She amended In her undefended smallness And very tired She turned back to the fire But the instinct that it had awakened As childhood died clamoured within her And would not let her rest She softly took off the silk dress And put on her own She picked up the wreath frames With a sigh and opened the door again She would have a long, wild walk home But she could creep in Through her bedroom window Which would not latch And she could make a great fire A dry broom and brew some tea And I'll let Foxy in And eat a loaf I will For I'm cloned, she said She slipped out through the door That had seen so many human lives Come and go Even as she went The door betrayed her For Redden, coming from the kitchen Saw her through the upper panes End of chapter 4 Recording by Rachel Linton, Bristol, UK Chapter 5 Of Gone to Earth This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Gone to Earth by Mary Webb Chapter 5 I'd be going home Along, she said But he pulled her in And shut the door To go I'm a lost in this grand place Your hair's grander than Anything in the place And your eyes are like Sherry Truth on your life Yes, now You'd better change your dress again He reached down an old silver candlestick Very tarnished You can go upstairs There's a glass in the first room you come to Then we'll have supper Sitting at the supper In a grand shining gang with roses on it Said Hazel ecstatically Her voice rising to a kind of chant With a white cloth on table Like school treat And the old servant hopping to and again Like thrustles after worms Thrustle yourself Muttered Andrew Peering in at the door He retired again Remarking to the cat In a sour, legubrious voice When ruffled There's no cats in the bible He began to sing By the waters of Babylon Upstairs Hazel coiled her hair Running her fingers through its bright lengths As she had no comb And turning in her under bodice To make it suit the low dress Outside His rough hair wet with snow Stood red in Watching her from the vantage ground Darkness He saw her stand with head erect And bare white shoulders Smiling at herself in the glass He saw her slip Into the rich gown and pose Delightedly, mincing To and fro like a wag-tail He noted her listen Figure and shining coils Of hair She'll do, he said And did not wonder whether he Would do himself When he gave a smothered exclamation She had opened the window Pushing the snowy ivy aside And she leaned out, her breast Under its folds of silk Resting on the snow She looked over his head Into the immensity of night Don't let him take my good name For the old fellow says I ought to keep it, she said And let me get back to Foxy Quick in the morning light And no harm come to us forever and ever The night Received her prayer in silence Whether or not any heard But read in, none could say Read in tiptoed into the house Rather downcast This was a strange creature That he had caught Vesons was still at the waters Of Babylon when Hazel came down Why can he get beyond them Five words asked Hazel He always stops and goes back Like a dog on a chain She sang it through in her High clear voice There was silence in the kitchen Read in stared at Hazel Who taught you to sing he asked Father He's wonderful with the music His father Hazel found that in the presence Of strangers her feeling For her father was almost warm Playing the harps nights He makes a flesh creep Ah, and he makes the place All on a charm like the spinnies In May month and he says Sing, says he And I ups and sings And whilst I don't never know What I've been singing That I can well believe Said Vesons Read in swung round What the devil are you doing here? He asked I've come to say Vesons tone was dry As suppers burnt Ah, to a cinder How did you do that you fool? Harkening at the lady teaching Me to sing Read in was furious He knew why supper was burnt Get out he said Get out into the stable and stay there I'll get supper myself Vesons withdrew Composedly Since Hazel had offended him He had decided that she Must take care of herself Could me bide in the house? Asked Hazel uneasily No They fetched in bread And beer and cold meat Her host was jubilant And during supper quite deferential He had been awed By Hazel's request to the night And by her beauty But when his hunger was satisfied His voice grew louder in his eyes Sultry Restraint fell between them Looking at his face Hazel again Had an impulse for flight When he said I want to stroke that silk dress And came to water Knocking the candle over as if by accident She edged away saying sharply Done them all me He paid no attention I'll do right by you he said I swear I will I'll yes I can marry you tomorrow But tonight's mine It was not a question Of marrying or not marrying In Hazel's eyes It was a matter of primitive instinct She would be her own He had pulled The low dress off one shoulder She twitched it out of his hand And slipped from his grasp Like a fish from a net He was too surprised to follow at once Old fella Running into the yard Quick, quick A rough grey head appeared What? After the old one? I want to stay along of him Bessons looked at her Interestingly Apparently she also Was a devotee of his religion Celebusy One who dared to go against The explicit decrees of nature I think the better of you he said So he's had his trouble For nothing he chuckled You can have my room You shan't say Andrew Vessons In a man of charitable nature Never shall you There's a key to it He led the way to his room Through the back door and up the kitchen stairs Most people would have suffered Anything rather than sleep in the room He revealed when he proudly flung The door open He had the recluse's love Of the little possessions and daily comforts On an upturned box by the bed Were his clay pipe, matches A treacle tin containing whiskey And some chicken bones He usually kept a few bones To pick at his ease A goldfinch with a harassed air Occupied a wooden cage in the window And the mantelpiece was fitted up With white mice in homemade cages It seemed quite a pleasant room To Hazel Mindish a careful of all my things Said Vessons wistfully I Hannah slept away from this room For my twenty year That bird's now slept without me He'll miss me He and a sing for anybody else He always asserted this And the bird always belied it By singing to Redden and any chance visitor But Vessons continued to believe it There are some things That it is necessary to believe Doubt of them means despair Vessons was conscious That he was being a man Vessons was conscious That he was being generous You can drink a supper whiskey If you like, he said Now I'm going, or that bird notices Or I shall never get away The bird sat in preoccupied silence He was probably Thinking of the woods And seeded dandelions He was of the fellowship To which comfort means little And freedom much So was Hazel The door, Vessons said In a sepulchral whisper from the stairs Hazel did so And curled up to sleep In the creaking house Thoughtless as the white mice Defenseless as they As little grateful to Vessons For his protection And in his deep in ignorance Of what the world could do to her If it chose End of Chapter 5 Recording by Rachel Linton Bristol, UK Chapter 6 of Gone to Earth This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Gone to Earth by Mary Webb Chapter 6 Early next morning While the Finch still dreamed Its heavy dream and the mice Were still motionless balls Hazel was awakened by a knock At the massive oak door She ran across and opened it a crack Peering out from amid her hair Like a squirrel from autumn leaves Vessons stood there With a pint mug of beer which he proffered But Hazel had a woman's craving for tea If so be the kettles boiling She said apologetically Tey said Vessons laws How furiously the women do rage after tea I suppose it's me as as to make it If kettles boiling Kettle Kettles boiling this hour past Or how would the calves get their meal Well you needn't a shout You'll wake in Fright was in her eyes strong And inexplicable to herself I'm and go she whispered Ah you go said Vessons Glad that for once duty An inclination went hand in hand I'll send you he added Where'd you live She hesitated You needn't be fricked to tell me I've heard Vessons I'm six and sixty And you're no more to me He surveyed her flushing face Contemplatively Then the old useless cat He concluded Hazel frowned But she wanted a promise from Vessons So she made no retort You wanna tell him She pleaded I'm never will I Wild horses shan I drag it from me Nor say the Nor Suffolk punches Vessons waxed eloquent For again righteousness And desire coincided He did not want a woman At Undern Well said Hazel Whispering through the crack I lives at the callow What? That lost and forgotten place To other side the mountain Ah but it's inner lost and forgotten Is better than this I've got bees So have I got bees And a music Music? What's a music? You can't eat it And my dad makes coffins Does he now? Said Vessons Interested at last Then he'd be thought him of the credit of Undern But Uanna got a mulberry tree He said triumphantly Now then He creeped downstairs In a few moments Hazel also went down and drank a tea By the red fire in the kitchen Watching the frost flowers being softly Faced from the window as if Someone rubbed them away with a sponge Snow like sifted sugar Was heaped on the sill And the yard and outbuildings and fields The pools and the ricks All had the dim radiance of antimony Where be the road? Asked Hazel Standing on the doorstep and feeling rather lost How will I find it? You wanna find it? Oh, but I meant Do you think Andrew Vessons Will let a woman of traipse in the snow When he's got good horses in stable? Queeried Vessons grandly I'll drive you I much obliged I'm sure Said Hazel But when he know He'll sleep till noon if I let him Said Andrew They drove off in silence The snow muffling the plunging hooves Hazel looked back As the sky crimsoned for dawn A house fronted her with a look of power And patience She felt that it had not yet Done with her She wondered how she would feel If Redin suddenly appeared at his window And a tiny traitorous wish Slipped up from somewhere in her heart She watched the windows till a turn Hid the house and then She sighed Almost she wished That Redin had awakened But she soon forgot everything in delight For the snow shone The long slots of the rabbits and hares The birds tracks in orderly rows The deep footprints of sheep All made her laugh by their vagaries For they ran in loops And in circles and appeared Like the crazy steps of a sleepwalker To those who had not the key Of their activity Hazel's own doings were like that Everyone's doings are like it If one sees the doings without the motive Plovers wealed and cried decilently Seeing the soft relentless snow Between themselves and their green meadows Sad as those that see fate Drawing thick veils between themselves And the meadows of their hope and joy At the foot of the callow Hazel got out Never tell him She said looking up Never in life Hazel hesitated Never tell him She added Unless he asks the deal And can arrest He may ask till doomsday said pheasants And he may be restless as the ten thousand Ghosts that traipse round Undern When the moon's low But I'll never tell him Hazel sighed And turned to climb the hill Mrs. Undern said Andrew To the cobsies as they trotted home No Never will I A magpie rose from a wood near the road Jibing at him He looked around almost as if it had been Someone laughing at his resolve And repeated Never will I Where's Hazel Asked Redden Neither wild horses nor blood horses Nor race horses nor cart horses Nor suffoc punches Began vessens Who style was cumulative and who When he had made a good phrase Was apt to work it to death like any other artist Oh your drunk vessens Said his master Shall drag it from me Finished vessens Redden knew this was true And felt rather hopeless Still he determined Not to give up the search until He had found Hazel He inquired at the hunters arms But vessens had been there before him And he was met by pleasant stupidity Vessens was of the people Redden of the aristocracy So the frequenters of the hunters arms Sided as one man against redden You'll not get another bite of that Apple said vessens With satisfaction when his master Returned with downcast face I can't stand your manners Much longer vessens Said he irritably Deem me notice then Said vessens Falling back on the well-worn formula And scoring his usual triumph Redden had the faults of his class But turning an old servant adrift Was not one of them Vessens traded on this And invariably said and did Exactly what he liked End of chapter 6 Recording by Rachel Linton Bristol UK Chapter 7 of Gone to Earth This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Gone to Earth by Mary Webb Chapter 7 When Hazel got in Her father had finished his breakfast And was busy at work Brought the wreath frames He asked without looking up Ah, he's dead at last At the turn of the night They came after the coffin but now I'll be able to get them their new section crates I wanted He's doing more for me Wanting a coffin in him stiff and cold Than what he did in the heat of life Many folks be like that Said Hazel out of her new wisdom Neither of them reflected That Abel had always been like that Towards Hazel That she was becoming more like it To him every year Abel made no remark at all About Hazel's adventures And she preserved in discreet silence That little Vixens took a chicken Said Abel after a time That's the second She only does it when I'm away Being claimed Said Hazel pleadingly Well, if she does it again Abel announced it's the water And a stone round her neck So now you know You dursant We'll see if I dursed Hazel fled in tears To the unrepentant and dignified foxy Some of us find it hard enough To be dignified when we've done right But foxy could be dignified When she had done wrong And the more wrong, the more dignity She was very bland And there was a look of deep content Digestive content A state bordering on the mystic's trance In her affectionate topaz eyes It had been a tender and nourishing chicken The hours she'd spent In gnawing through her rope Had been well repaid Oh, you darling wicked little thing Wailed Hazel You munna do it foxy Or he'll drown you dead What for did you do it foxy, my dear? Foxy's eyes became more eloquent And more liquid You gallous little blessed Said Hazel again Ah, I wish you and me Could live all alone By our lonesome where there was no men and women Foxy shuddered and yawned Evidently feeling doubtful Of such a house and place existed in the world Hazel sat on her heels And thought, it was flight Or foxy She knew that if she did not take foxy away Her renewed naughtiness Was as certain as sun set You was made bad She said sadly but sympathetically Least way she wasn't made Like watchdogs and house cats And cows You was made like a fox And you'd be a fox And it's queer like to me foxy As folk cannot see that They expect you to be What you wanna made to be You're made to be a fox And when you're busy being a fox They say you're a sinner Having wrestled with philosophy Until foxy yawned again Hazel went in to try her proposition On Abel But Abel met it as the world in general Usually meets a new truth She took the chick Would a terrier do that A well-trained terrier I says he would not But it in a fair to make the same law For foxes and terriers I make what law suit me Said Abel And what goes again me Get grounded But it in it all for you Price Hazel The world wanna made In seven days only For Abel would us Said Hazel daringly You've come back very pert From Silverton Said Abel reflectively Very pert you have How many young fellas told you Your heir was Arburn this time That fool Albert said so last time And you were neither to hold nor to bind Arburn Carrots But it was not as he thought This climax that silenced Hazel It was the lucky hit About the young fellas And the reminiscence called up By the word Arburn He continued his advantage Molified by victory Tell you what it is Hazel It's time you was married You're too upish I shall never get married Words, words You'll take the first as comes If there's ever such a fool Hazel wish she could tell him That one had asked her And that no laboring man That discretion triumphed Maybe She said tossing her head I will marry to get away From the callow Well, well, things couldn't be dirtier Maybe they'll be cleaner when you're gone Looks the floor Hazel fell into a rage He was always saying things about the floor She hated the floor I swear all wed The first as comes She cried the very first And last put an able While you swear by By God's little mountain Well said Abel contentedly Now you've sworn that oath You're bound to keep it And so now I know That if ever an husband does come forward You can play the fool Hazel was too wrothful For consideration You look right tidy In that gown, Abel said I suppose you'll be wearing it To the meeting up at the mountain What meeting? Didn't I tell you I promised you for it To sing Them after me to take the music and play Hazel forgot everything In delight Be we going for certain shore She asked Ah, next Monday three weeks Women practice They say that minister's a great one For the music Them so as is that musical He can play There'll be a tea He said Hazel It'll be grand to be in a gentleman's house again When have you been In a gentleman's house Hazel was taken aback Yesterday She flashed If Albert in a gent I don't know who is For he's got a watch chain brass Mocking gold all across his basket Abel roared Then he fell to an earnest on the coffin Whistling like a blackbird Hazel sat down and watched him resting Her cheek on her hand The cold snow light struck on her face One name Didn't it ever think Making coffins for poor souls to rest In as in a tired As there's a tree growing somewhere For yours She asked What for should I think In the coffin It's about the only thing as I'll there be bound to pay for He laughed Not only Last night it came over me as I'll die As well as others Well have you only just found that out Lars What a queen of fools you be Hazel looked at the narrow box And thought of the active Angular old man For whom it was now considered an ample house It seems like The world's a big spring trap And us in it she said slowly Then she sprang up feverishly Let's practice till Whereas horses are young rook She cried So amid the hammering their voices Sprang up like two keen flames Then Abel threw away the hammer And began to harp madly Till the little shanty throbbed With the sound of the wires and the lament Of the voices that rose and fell With artless cunning The cottage was like a tree full of thrushes After Their twelve o'clock dinner Abel cut holly for the wreaths And Hazel began to make them For the first time home seemed dull She thought wistfully Of the green silk dress And the supper in the old stately room She thought of vessens And of redden's eyes As he pulled her back from the door She thought of undone As a refuge for foxy Maybe some time I'll go and see him She thought She went to the door and looked out Frost tingled in the air Icicles had formed round the waterbed The strange humming stillness Of intense cold was about her It froze her desire For adventure As stay as I be She thought I want to be hisn To her redden was a terror And a fascination She returned to the prickly wreath Sewing on the variegated holly leaves One by one With clusters of berries at intervals What good let do him She asked, he can I see it Who wants him to see it Abel was amused When his father died He had his enjoyment Proud as proud was Samson For there were seven wreaths No less She thought to return to the coming festivity Her hair And her peacock blue dress would be admired To be admired Was a wonderful new sensation She fetched a cloth And rubbed at the brown mark It would not come out As long as she wore the dress It would be there Like the stigma of pain that all creatures bear As long as they wear the garment of the flesh At last she burst into tears I want another dress Oh, blood on it! she wailed And so wailing She voiced the deep lament Old as the moan of forests and falling water That goes up through the centuries To the aloof and silent sky And remains as ever Unasswaged Hazel hated of burying For then she had to go with Abel To help in carrying the coffin To the house of mourning They set out on the second day After her return Down to the plain, called the monkey's ladder Was a river for a thaw Had set in But Hazel did not mind that Though her boots let in the water As she minded the atmosphere of gloom At old Samson's blind house She would never, as Abel always did View the corpse And this was always taken as an insult So she waited in the road Half snow and half water And thought with regret of undurn And its great fire of logs And the green rich dress And reddened with his force And virility, loud voice And strong teeth He was so very much alive In a world where old men would keep dying Abel came out at last Very gay for he had been given Over and above the usual payment Glove money and a glass of beer I'll still get a drop at the public He said So they turned in there And all thought the red curtained Filed it room with its crudely coloured Jugs and mugs and most wonderful place She sat in a corner of the settle And watched her boots steam Growing very sleepy But suddenly there was a great Clatter outside and the sound Of a horse pulled up sharply Slipping on the cobbles and a shout For the landlord Oh my mortal life said Hazel It might be the black huntsman Himself No, I won't come in Said the rider, a glass out here Hazel knew who it was Can you tell me He went on If there's any young lady about here with Auburn hair father plays the fiddle He's got it wrong Thought Hazel Young lady Repeated the landlord Auburn No, there's no lady of that colour here abouts And what ladies there be Are weathered and case hardened The one I'm looking for is young Young as a kitten Hand as troublesome Hazel clapped Her hands to her mouth There's no fiddle or chap here abouts Then Able rose and went to the door If it's music you want I know better music than fiddles And that's harps he said Saw, saw The only time as ever I liked a fiddle Then the fellow snapped at the strings With his ten fingers desperate like Oh, damn You said redden, I didn't come to hear about harps If it's funerals Or a forester's supper A concert or a wedding Able went on quite undaunted I'm your man Redden laughed It might be the last he said Wedding or bedding Either or both I suppose Said the publican who was counted a wit Redden gave a great roar of laughter Both, he said Neither whispered Hazel Who'd been poised indecisively As if half prepared to go to the door She sat further into the shadow In another moment he was gone Whoever she be Said the publican Notting his larch head wisely Have her he will For certain shore All through the night Mermerous with little rivulets of snow water The gurgling of full troughing And the patter of rain on the iron roof of the house And the miniature roofs of the beehives Hazel, waking from uneasy slumber Heard those words and muttered them In her frightened dreams She reached out to something that she felt Must be beyond the pleasant sound of falling water So small and transitory Beyond the drip and patter of human destinies Something vast, solitary and silent How should she find that which none Has ever named or known? Men only stammer of it In such words as eternity, fate, God All the outcries of all creatures Living and dying, sink in its depth As in an unsounded ocean Whether this listening silence Incurious yet hearing all Is benignant or malevolent Who can say? The wistful dreams of men Haunt this theme forever The creeds of men are so many keys That do not fit the lock We ponder it in our hearts And some find peace and some find terror The silence presses upon us Ever more heavily until death comes With his cajoling voice And promises us the key Then we run after him into the stillness And are heard no more Hazel and her father Practice hard through the dark wet evenings She was to sing Harps in Heaven A song her mother had taught her She was to accompany the choir or glee party That met together at different places Coming from the villages and hillsides Of a wide stretch of country Well said Abel On the morning of their final rehearsal It is a miserable bit of a silly song But you and me make the best of it Give it voice girl Sing it like a mouse in milk His musical taste was offended By Hazel's way of being more dramatic Than musical She would sink her voice in the sad parts Almost to a whisper And then rise to a kind of keen You might not But Owen's old sheepdog He said But wow in the moon But Hazel's idea of music Continued to be that of a bird She was a wild thing According to instinct and not by rule Though her good ear kept her notes true They set out early For they had a good walk in front of them And the April sun was hot Hazel under the pale green Large trees in her bright dress With her crown of tawny hair Seemed to be an incarnation Of the secret woods Abel strode ahead in his Black cutaway coat Snuff coloured trousers And high crowned felt hat Little band This receded to the back of his head As he grew hotter The harp was slung from his shoulder The gilding looking tawdry in the open day Twice during the walk Once in a round clearing Fringed with birches And once in a pine glade He stopped, put the harp down And played sitting on a felled tree Hazel quite intoxicated With excitement Danced between the slender bowls Till her hair fell down And the long plat swung against her shoulder If folks come by Maybe they'd think I was a fairy She cried Dana kicked about so Said Abel, emerging from his abstraction In a decent Now you're an unengrode I'm not an unengrode Cried Hazel shrilly I didn't want to be, and I won't ever be The pine tops bent In the wind like a tent of heads God sitting stately above Might nod thoughtfully over human destiny Someone, it almost seemed, Had heard and registered Hazel cry I'll never be a woman Ascenting Sardonic They came to the quarry At the mountain The deserted mounds and chasms Looked even more desolate than ever In the spring world Here and there the leaves of a young tree Lipped to the grey-white steeps As if wistfully trying to love them A child tries to caress a forbidding parent They climbed round the larger heaps And skirted a precipitous place I can't bear this place Said Hazel, it's so drodsome A while since Before you were born A cow fell down that fireplace Hundreds of feet Did they save her? Lord, no She was all of a jelly Hazel broke out with Sudden, passionate crying Oh, doneer, doneer! She sobbed So she did always at the mention Of helpless suffering, flinging herself Down in wild rebellion abandonment So that epilepsy had been suspected But it was not epilepsy, it was pity She, in her in expressive Childish way, shared With the love-matter of Galilee The heart-rending capacity For imaginative sympathy In common with him and others of her kind She was not only acquainted with grief But reviled and rejected In her school days Boys brought maimed frogs And threw them in her lap To watch from a safe distance Her almost crazy grief and rage Whatever's come over you Said her father now You're too nesh, that's what you be Nesh, spirited He could not understand For the art in him Was not that warm suffering thing Creation, but hard Brightly polished talent Hazel stood at the edge Of the steep grey cliff Her hands folded, a curious fatalism In her eyes There'll be some at bad Or come to me hereabouts She said, some at bad And awful The dark shadows lying so still On the dirty white mounds Had a stealthy crouching look And the large soft leaves of a plain tree Wrapped helplessly against the shale With the air of important people Who whisper alas Able was on ahead Suddenly turned round excited As a boy, they've started He cried, huck at the music They always begin with the organ Hazel followed him eager for joy Running obedient and hopeful At the heels of life As a young lamb runs with its mother She forgot her dark intuitions She only remembered that She wanted to enjoy herself And that if she was a good girl Surely, surely God would let her End of Chapter 7 Recording by Rachel Linton Bristol, UK Chapter 8 of Gone to Earth This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Gone to Earth by Mary Webb Chapter 8 The Chaplain Minister's House At God's Little Mountain were all in one A long, low building Of grey stones surrounded by the graveyard Where stones, flat, erect And a skew took the place Of a flower garden Away to the left, just over a rise The hill was gashed by the grey Steeps of the quarries In front rose another curve Covered with thick woods To the right was the batch Down which a road in winter Went into the valley Behind the house, God's Little Mountain Sloped softly up and away Apparently to its possessor Not the least of the mysteries of the place And it was tense with mystery Was the Sunday congregation Which appeared to spring up Miraculously from the rocks, woods And graves When the present minister, Edward Marston Came there with his mother, he detested It, but after a time It insinuated itself into his heart And gave a stronger character to his religion He had always been naturally religious Taking on trust what he was taught And he had an instinctive pleasure In clean and healthy things But on winter nights at the mountain When the tingling stars Sprang in and out of their black ambush And frost cracked the tombstones In summer, when lightning crackled In the woods and ripped along the hillside Like a thousand devils The need of a God grew ever More urgent He spoke of this to his mother No, dear, I can't say I have more need of our Lord Here than in Crichton, she said In Crichton there was the bust To be afraid of and bicycles Here I just cover my ears for wind Put on an extra flannel Petticoat for frost And sit in the coalhouse for thunder Not the time for getting God God with us, of course Coalhouse or elsewhere But don't you feel something ominous About the place, mother? I feel as if something awful Would happen here, don't you? No, dear, nor will you When you've had some magnesia Martha Martha was the general Who came in by the day From the first cottage in the batch Martha, put on an extra chop For the master You aren't in love, are you, my dear? No, who should I be in love with, mother? Quite right, dear There is no one about here With more looks than a Brussels sprout Not that I say anything against sprouts Martha, just go and see If there are any sprouts left We'll have them for dinner Edward looked at the woods Across the batch, and wondered Why the young fresh green of the larchers And the elm samaras were so sad And why the cry Of a sheep from an upper slope So forlorn I hope, Edward, said Mrs. Marston That it won't be serious music I think serious music Interfers with the digestion Your poor father and I Went to the creation on our honeymoon And thought little of it Then we went to the crucifixion And though it was very pleasant I couldn't digest the oysters afterwards And then again These clever musicians Allow themselves to become So passionate One almost thinks they are inebriated Not flutes and cornets They have to think of their breath But fiddlers can Weak their feelings on the instrument Without suffering for it Edward laughed I hope the gentleman That's coming today is a nice quiet one She went on as if able Were a pony And I hope the lady singer Is not a contralto Contralto to my mind She went on placidly Stirring her porter in preparation For a draft Is only another name for roaring Which is unseemly She drank her porter Gratefully keeping the spoon In place with one finger If she could have seen Father and daughter As they set forth hilarious To superimposed tumult On the peace of God's little mountain Would have been a good deal less placid It was restful To sit and look at her kind old face Soft and round beneath her lace cap Steeped in a peace deeper than lethargy She was one of nature's opiates And she administered herself Unconsciously to everyone Who saw much of her Edward's father having had An overdose had not survived Mrs. Marston always spoke Of him as my poor husband Who fell asleep As if he dosed in a sermon Sleep was her fetish Panacea and art Her strongest condemnation Was to call a person A stirring body She sat today while Preparations raged in the kitchen Placidly knitting She always knitted Socks for Edward and shawls for herself She had made so many shawls And she so felt the cold That she wore them in layers Gray, white, heather mixture And a purple crossover When Martha and the friend Who had come to help quarrelled shrilly She murmured poor things Putting themselves in such a pother When, after a crash Martha was heard to say There's the cream jug now Well, break one, break three She only shook her head and murmured That servants were not what they used to be When Martha's friend's little boy Dropped the urn Presented to the late Mr. Marston By a grateful congregation And as large as a watering can And Martha's friend shouted I'll warm your buttons! And proceeded to do so Mrs. Marston Remained self-poised As a son At last supper was set out To the cloths going down in terraces According to the various heights of the tables The tea sets Willow and Colport The feather pattern and the seaweed Looking like a china shop The urn now rakishly dinted Presiding People paid for their supper on these occasions To expect her to have as much as they could eat Mrs. Marston had rashly told Martha that she could have what was left As a perquisite Which resulted later in stormy happenings From the nook on the hillside Where the chapel stood As Abel ran hastily down the slope The harp jogging on his shoulders The demon that clung round his neck and possessed him Came a roar of sound The brass band from Black Mountain Was in possession of the platform The golden window shone Comfortably in the cold spring evening And Hazel ran towards them As she would have run towards the white flung Onyx doors of fairy They arrived breathless and panting In the graveyard where the tombstones Seemed to elbow each other Outside the shining windows Looking into this cave of saffron light And rosy joy As sardonically as if they knew That those within its shelter would soon be without Shelterless in the storm of death That those who came in so gaily By twos and threes would go out One by one without a word Hazel peered in Fine raps they're having She whispered All the bands there purple with pleasure And sweating with the music like chaps Haying Abel looked in Oh dear, he said They're settled there for the neat Will they get a squeaking There's no for Black Mountain band Will stop at when they're elbow to elbow They eggs each other on cruel so they do Your ears may be dimmed And deafened for life and you lost To the beekeeping But here you must or you're done with these But the band done a care There, now they've got a hunk or That's to say do it again And every time they get One of them it goes to their yids And they play yowder Ah, but you play better Said Hazel Comfortingly, for Abel's voice had trembled And Hazel must comfort Grief wherever she found it For grief implied weakness I know I do he assented But what can I do Against ten strong men At the mountain As in the world of art and letters It seemed that the artist must elbow And push and that if he did not Often stop his honey-dutterances To shout his wares He would not be heard at all Dana they look funny Said Hazel with a giggle Or sleeping quiet like smoked bees Is that in the minister Him by the old sleepy lady She's had more smoke than most Where? There He's got a black coat on And a kind face, sad like Maybe if you took an axe To him, he'd marry you When the moon falls down the chapel chimney And rabbits chase the bobtail-cheap dogs Find not for marrying anybody Let's go in, said Hazel She took off her hat and coat To enter more splendidly On her head, resting softly Among the coils of ruddy hair She put a wreath of violets Which grew everywhere at the callow A big bunch of them was at her throat Like a cameo brooch When she entered, the band Sheltered, and the cornet A fiery young man whom none could tire Wavered into silence Edward, turning to find out What had caused this most desirable event Saw her coming up the room With the radiant fatefulness of a fairy In a dream His heart went out to her Not only for her morning air Her vivid eyes Her coronet of youth's rare violets But for the wistfulness that was Not only in her face But in every movement He felt as he would To a small bright bird that had come Greatly daring in at his window On a stormy night She had entered the empty room of his heart And from this night onwards His only thought was how to keep her there When she went up to sing His eyes dwelt on her She was the most vital thing He had ever seen The tendrils of burnished hair Curled and shone with life Her eyes danced with life Her body was taught As a slim arrow ready to fly From life's bow Abel sat down in the middle Of the platform and began to play Quite regardless of Hazel Who had to start when she could Harps in heaven played for you Played for Christ with his eyes so blue Played for Peter And for Paul He played for me at all Harps in heaven made all of glass Greener than the rainy grass Near one but is bespoken And mine is broken Mine is broken Harps in heaven play high Play low in the cold Rainy wind I go To find my harp as green as spring My splintered harp Without a string She sang with passion The wail of the lost was in her voice She had not the slightest idea What the words meant Probably they meant nothing But the sad cadence suited her Emotional tone and the ideas Of loss and exile expressed her Vague mistrust of the world Edward imagined her in her blue Green dress and violet crime Playing on a large glass harp In a company of angels Poor child he thought Is it mystical longing Or a sense of sin That cries out in her voice It was neither of these things It was nothing that Edward Could have understood at that time Though later he did It was the grief of rainy forests And the moan of stormy water The muffled complaint of driven leaves Bekeaning, wild and universal Of life for the perishing Matter that it inhabits Hazel expressed things That she knew nothing of As a blackbird does For though she was young and fresh She had her origin in the old dark heart of earth Full of innumerable agonies And in that heart she dwelt And at Everwood singing from its gloom As a bird sings in a utery Her being was more full of echoes Than the hearts of those that live Further from the soil And we are all as full of echoes As a rocky wood, echoes of the past Reflex echoes of the future And echoes of the soil And last reverberating through our filmy Estreams, like the sound Of thunder in a blossoming orchard The echoes are in us Of great voices long gone Hence the unknown cries Of huge beasts on the mountains The sullen aims Of creatures in the slime The love call of the bittern We know two echoes Of things outside our can The thought that shapes itself In the bee's brain and becomes The tyranny of youth stirring In the womb The crazy terror of small slaughtered beasts The upward push of folded grass And how the leaf feels In all its veins The cold rain The ceremonial that passes Yearly in the emerald temples Of bud and calyx We have walked those temples We are the sacrifice on those altars And the future floats On the current of our blood And the secret Argosy We hear the ideals of our descendants Like songs in the night Long before our firstborn is begotten We in whom the pollen and the dust Sprouting grain and falling berry The dark past And the dark future Cry and call We ask Who is this singer that sends his voice Through the dark forest And inhabits us with ageless And immortal music The long echoes rolling forevermore The audience however Did not notice that there were echoes In Hazel and would have gait If you had proclaimed God in her voice They looked at her with critical eyes That were perfectly blind to her real self Mrs. Marston thought What a pity it was That she looked so wild Martha thought it was a pity That she did not wear a chenille net Over her head to keep it neat And able, peering at her The wings of the harp and looking With his face framed in wild red hair Like a peculiarly intelligent animal In a cage did not think of her at all But Edward made up for them Because he thought of her all the time Before the end of the concert He had got as far as to be sure She was the only girl He would ever want to marry His ministerial self Put in a faint proviso If she is a good girl But it was instantly shouted down By his other self Who asserted that as she was so beautiful She must be good During the last items on the programme Two vociferous glies Rendered by a stage full of people Packed so tightly that it was marvellous How they expanded their diaphragms Edward was in anguish of mind Lest the cornet should monopolise Hazel at supper The said cornet had become Several shades more purple Each time Hazel sang Edward was prepared for the worst He was determined to make a struggle For it and felt that though his position Denied in the privilege of scuffling He might at least use finesse That has never been denied To any church My dear Whispered Mrs. Marston Have you an unwelcome guest This was her polite way Of indicating a flea No mother Well dear there must be something In your mind you have kept up Such a feeling of uneasiness That I have hardly had any nap at all What do you think of her mother Who dear The beautiful girl A pretty tune the first she sang Said Mrs. Marston Not having heard the others But such wild manners And such hair Like pussy stroked the wrong way And there is something a little peculiar About her for when she sings about heaven Somehow improper And that, she added drowsily Heaven hardly should do Edward understood what she meant He had been conscious himself Of something desperately exciting In the bearing of Hazel Woodus Something that penetrated The underworld which lay Like a covered well within him And like a ray of light Set all kinds of unsuspected life Moving and developing there As supper went on Edward kept more and more Of Hazel's attention And the quiet grey eyes met The restless amber ones more often If I came some day Soon to your home Would you sing to me he asked I could not I promised for the bark stripping What's that Hazel looked at him pittingly Do you know what that is I'm afraid not It's fetching the bark Offing the felled trees ready for lugging Where are the felled trees Hunter's spinny That's close here Ah Edward was deep in thought The cornet whispered to Hazel Making up next Sunday's sermon But Edward turned around Disconcertingly As it's on your way Why not come to tea with mother I might be out But you wouldn't mind that But I should I don't want to talk to an old lady I'll stop at home then He replied Very much amused And with a look of quiet triumph At the cornet Which day Wednesday week's the first Come Wednesday then What'll the old sleepy lady say My mother He said with dignity Will approve of anything I think right But his heart misgave So far he had only thought right What her conventions approved He had seldom acted on his own initiative She therefore had a phrase Dear Edward is always right It was possible that when he left off His unquestioning concordance with her She would leave off saying Dear Edward is always right So far he had not wanted anything Particularly, and as he left off His unquestioning concordance with her She would leave off saying She had not wanted anything particularly And as it was as difficult to quarrel With Mrs. Masterness to strike a match On a damp box There had never been any friction She liked things as she said Nice and pleasant To do providence justice Everything always had been Even when her husband died it had been In a crepe-clad way Nice and pleasant For he died after the testimonial In the urn and not before That man would have done He died on a Sunday Which was so suitable And at dawn which was so beautiful Also in the phrase Used for criminals and the dying He went quietly Not that Mrs. Masterness did not feel it She did as deeply as her nature could But she felt it As a well-padded boy feels a-whacking Through layers of convention Now at her age To find out that life was not so pleasant As she thought Would be little short of tragedy Ah, I'll come And I'm much obliged Said Hazel I'll meet you at Hunter's Spinney And see you home, Edward decided To this also Hazel assented so delightedly That the cornet pushed back his chair And went to another table With a sardonic laugh But his remarks were drowned By a voice which proclaimed All the years I've been coming to suppers I've had tartlets Tonight they want to go round I've paid the same as others Tartlets I'll have But the plates empty Said Martha flushed and determined I've had no finger in the emptying of it More must be fetched Other voices joined in And Mrs. Mastern was heard to murmur Unpleasant Edward was oblivious to it all Shall you? He asked earnestly To come to the spinny Ah, shall that? Said Hazel, who already felt An aura of protection about him It'll be so safe Like when I was little and was used to pick daisies Reigned Grandad Edward knew more definitely Than before the relation in which He wished to stand toward Hazel It was not that of Grandad Any reply he might have made Was drowned by the uproar Wrote forth at the cry She's hidden them Look in the kitchen Martha's cousin in his Spare-time policeman of a distant village Felt that if Martha was detected in fraud It would not look well And therefore put his sinewy person In the kitchen doorway Edward seized the moment When there was a hush of surprise To say grace During which the invincible voice murmured I've not received tartlets I not thankful Mother, Edward said When the last unruly guest had disappeared In the wild April night And Hazel's vivid presence and violet Fragrance and young laughter Had been taken by the darkness I've asked Hazel Would us to tea on Wednesday She is not of your class, Edward What does class matter? Martha's brother calls you Sir And Martha looks down On this young person Don't call her young person, mother Whether it is mistaken kindness, dear Or a silly flirtation It will only do you harm With the congregation Young men and women Silila-quiesed Mrs. Marston As she hoisted herself upstairs With the candlestick Very much a slant In a torpid hand Are not what they used to be End of chapter 8 Recording by Rachel Linton Bristol, UK