Hazel was too wrathful for consideration.
'You look right tidy in that gownd,' Abel said. 'I 'spose you'll be wearing it to the meeting up at the Mountain?'
'What meeting?'
'Didna I tell you I'd promised you for it—to sing? They'm after me to take the music and play.'
Hazel forgot everything in delight.
'Be we going for certain sure?' she asked.
'Ah! Next Monday three weeks.'
'We mun practise.'
'They say that minister's a great one for the music. One of them sort as is that musical he canna play. There'll be a tea.'
'Eh!' said Hazel, 'it'll be grand to be in a gentleman's house agen!'
'When've you bin in a gentleman's house?'
Hazel was taken aback.
'Yesterday!' she flashed. 'If Albert inna a gent I dunno who is, for he's got a watch-chain brass-mockin'-gold all across his wescoat.'
Abel roared. Then he fell to in earnest on the coffin, whistling like a blackbird. Hazel sat down and watched him, resting her cheek on her hand. The cold snowlight struck on her face wanly.
'Dunna you ever think, making coffins for poor souls to rest in as inna tired, as there's a tree growing somewhere for yours?' she asked.
'Laws! What's took you? Measles? What for should I think of me coffin? That's about the only thing as I'll ne'er be bound to pay for.' He laughed. 'What ails you?'
'Nought. Only last night it came o'er me as I'll die as well as others.'
'Well, have you only just found that out? Laws! 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 practise till we're as hoarse as a 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 Vessons, and of Reddin's eyes as he pulled her back from the door. She thought of Undern as a refuge for Foxy.
'Maybe sometime I'll go and see 'em,' she thought.
She went to the door and looked out. Frost tingled in the air; icicles had formed round the water-butt; the strange humming stillness of intense cold was about her. It froze her desire for adventure.
'I'll stay as I be,' she thought. 'I wunna be his'n.'
To her, Reddin 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'll it do 'im?' she asked; 'he canna see it.'
'Who wants him to see it?' Abel was amused. 'When his father died he 'ad his enjoyment—proud as proud was Samson, for there were seven wreaths, no less.'
Hazel's thoughts returned 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 with no 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, unassuaged.
* * * * *
Hazel hated a 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. The steep road 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 Undern and its great fire of logs, and the green rich dress, and Reddin 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.
'Us'll get a drop at the public,' he said.
So they turned in there. Hazel thought the red-curtained, firelit room, with its crudely coloured jugs and mugs, a 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, 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 met 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. 'Hawburn? No, there's no lady of that colour hereabouts. And what ladies there be are weathered and case-hardened.'
'The one I'm looking for's young—young as a kitten, and as troublesome.'
Hazel clapped her hands to her mouth.
'There's no fiddler chap hereabouts, then?'
Abel 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 was when the fellow snabbed at the strings with his ten fingers—despert-like.'
'Oh, damn you!' said Reddin. 'I didn't come to hear about harps.'
'If it's funerals or a forester's supper, a concert or a wedding,' Abel went on, quite undaunted, 'I'm your man.'
Reddin laughed.
'It might be the last,' he said.
'Wedding or bedding, either or both, I suppose,' said the publican, who was counted a wit.
Reddin gave a great roar of laughter.
'Both!' he said.
'Neither!' whispered Hazel, who had 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, nodding his large head wisely, 'have her he will, for certain sure!'
All through the night, murmurous 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