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?'
'Ah! I should that.'
'You can't walk home at that time of night,' said Mrs. Prowde. '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 spring-cleaned.'
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. Prowde 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 had said this she was horrified at herself. What an improper thing to say! Even anger and jealousy did not excuse impropriety, 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, 'Yer lamps are lit! Yer lamps are lit!' and broke into peals 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. Prowde 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. Prowde, 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 hosen, 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 stream 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 in the bedroom windows of prosperous houses.
'My! they 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 plain like a horseman with a long sword, and stealthily in its track came the melancholy whisper of snow.
When this began, Hazel was in the open, half-way to Wolfbatch. She sat down on the step of a stile, and sighed with relief at the ease it gave her foot. Then, far off she heard the sharp miniature sound, very neat and staccato, of a horse galloping. She held her breath to hear if it would turn down a by-road, but it came on. It came on, and grew in volume and in meaning, became almost ominous in the frozen silence. Hazel rose and stood in the fitful moonlight. She felt that the approaching hoof-beats were for her. They were the one sound in a dead world, and she nearly cried out at the thought of their dying in the distance. They must not; they should not.
'Maybe it's a farmer and his missus as have drove a good bargain, and the girl told to get supper fire-hot agen they come. Maybe they'll give me a lift! Maybe they'll say "Bide the night over?"'
She knew it was only a foolish dream; nevertheless, she stood well in the light, a slim, brow-beaten figure, the colour of her dress wan in the grey world.
A trap came swaying round the corner. Hazel cried out beseechingly, and the driver pulled the horse up short.
'I must be blind drunk,' he soliloquized, 'seeing ghosts!'
'Oh, please sir!' Hazel could say no more, for the tears that companionship unfroze.
The man peered at her.
'What in hell are you doing here?' he asked.
'Walking home-along. She wouldna let me bide the night over. And my 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 Reddin,' 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.'
Reddin 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'm much obleeged,' he said. 'Where at?'
'D'you know Undern?'
'I've heard tell on it.'
'Well, it's two miles from here. Like