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Updated: May 21, 2025
He piled his trophies all the delicate ruffled plumage of summer's prime on the kitchen table, draggled and bloody. Hazel and Reddin crept from window to window, silent, watching his movements. Undern grew ghostlier than ever, seeming, as the shots rang out startlingly loud in the quiet, like a moribund creature electrified by blows. 'He'd liefer it was me than the birds! said Hazel.
So Reddin did the accounts and slept the sleep of the intellectual worker afterwards. Hazel looked out from the tent of the bed canopy into the dark, creaking room and the darker, roaring night. She grew more afraid of Reddin and Undern as the hours dragged on. Reddin's presence tore to pieces the things she loved delicate leafy things as if they were tissue-paper and he had walked through it.
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 snow-flakes, fulfilling their relentless destiny of negation. She saw them only, and heard only the raised voices in the house arguing about herself. 'I mun go, she said, strong in her spirit of freedom, remote and withdrawn.
With the quickness of jealousy, Reddin knew that Edward was making a garden for Hazel. It enraged him. 'I could have made her a garden, and a deal better than that! he thought. 'She could have had half an acre of the garden at Undern; I could have it made in no time. He uttered an exclamation of contempt. 'The way he fools with that spade! He's never dug in his life.
We'll be there in no time. You shall have some supper and 'What'n I want trapsing to Undern when I live at the Mountain? 'You'll be asking to come soon, he said, with the crude wisdom of his kind. 'You like me better than that soft parson even now. She shook her head. 'I'm a man, anyway. She looked him over, and owned he was.
Sometimes she was very homesick for Foxy, but she would not have her at Undern. She did not trust the place. She never went out anywhere, for people stared, and when Reddin, with some difficulty, persuaded her to amble round the fields with him on a pony he picked up cheap for her, she always wanted to keep in his own fields. It was not until nearly the end of October that Vessons got his chance.
At last Reddin went to the kitchen door. 'Where's that tea? he asked. 'Tay? 'Yes, you fool! 'I know nothing about no tay. 'I said you were to make some. 'Not to me. 'And toast. 'I've douted the fire. He had just done so. 'Look here, my man, there's a missus at Undern now. You please her or go. She tells me what she wants. I tell you. You do it.
'Wheresoever I go, folk kill things. What for do they? 'Things must be killed. 'It seems like the earth's all bloody, said Hazel. 'And it's allus the little small uns. There! He's got a jenny-wren. Oh, dearie me! it's like I've killed 'em; it's all along of me coming to Undern. 'Hush! said Reddin sharply. 'What I'm afraid of is that he'll shoot himself, he's so damned queer.
There's nought in my kitchen but a wold useless cat and an o'erdruv man of six-and-sixty, a pot of victuals not yet simmering, and a gentleman as ought to know better than to bring a girl to Undern and ruin her a poor innocent little creature. 'Me again, said Hazel. She pondered on the remark and flushed. 'Maybe I'd best go, she thought.
Hazel opened the door and stood on the threshold, so that snow-flakes flattened themselves on the yellow 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 Pool curdling and thickening in the frost.
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