At evening they were all gone, and the empty sky, like a blue bubble over us, swam on its pale bright rims.

  Leslie came, and asked his betrothed to go out with him, under the darkening wonderful bubble. She bade me accompany her, and, to escape from myself, I went.

  It was warm in the shelter of the wood and in the crouching hollows of the hills. But over the slanting shoulders of the hills the wind swept, whipping the redness into our faces.

  “Get me some of those alder catkins, Leslie,” said Lettie, as we came down to the stream.

  “Yes, those, where they hang over the brook. They are ruddy like new blood freshening under the skin. Look, tassels of crimson and gold!” She pointed to the dusty hazel catkins mingled with the alder on her bosom. Then she began to quote Christina Rossetti’s “A Birthday”.

  “I’m glad you came to take me a walk,” she continued — ”Doesn’t Strelley Mill look pretty? Like a group of orange and scarlet fungi in a fairy picture. Do you know, I haven’t been, no, not for quite a long time. Shall we call now?”

  “The daylight will be gone if we do. It is half-past five — more! I saw him — the son — the other morning.”

  “Where?”

  “He was carting manure — I made haste by.”

  “Did he speak to you — did you look at him?”

  “No, he said nothing. I glanced at him — he’s just the same, brick colour — stolid. Mind that stone — it rocks. I’m glad you’ve got strong boots on.”

  “Seeing that I usually wear them.”

  She stood poised a moment on a large stone, the fresh spring brook hastening towards her, deepening sidling round her.

  “You won’t call and see them, then?” she asked.

  “No. I like to hear the brook tinkling, don’t you?” he replied.

  “Ah, yes — it’s full of music.”

  “Shall we go on?” he said, impatient but submissive. “I’ll catch up in a minute,” said I.

  I went in and found Emily putting some bread into the oven. “Come out for a walk,” said I.

  “Now? Let me tell Mother — I was longing — ”

  She ran and put on her long grey coat and her red tam-o’-shanter. As we went down the yard, George called to me. “I’ll come back,” I shouted.

  He came to the crew-yard gate to see us off. When we came out onto the path, we saw Lettie standing on the top bar of the stile, balancing with her hand on Leslie’s head. She saw us, she saw George, and she waved to us. Leslie was looking up at her anxiously. She waved again, then we could hear her laughing, and telling him excitedly to stand still, and steady her while she turned. She turned round, and leaped with a great flutter, like a big bird launching, down from the top of the stile to the ground and into his arms. Then we climbed the steep hill-side — Sunny Bank, that had once shone yellow with wheat, and now waved black tattered ranks of thistles where the rabbits ran. We passed the little cottages in the hollow scooped out of the hill, and gained the highlands that look out over Leicestershire to Charnwood on the left, and away into the mountain knob of Derbyshire straight in front and towards the right.

  The upper road is all grassy, fallen into long disuse. It used to lead from the Abbey to the Hall; but now it ends blindly on the hill-brow. Half-way along is the old White House farm, with its green mounting-steps mouldering outside. Ladies have mounted here and ridden towards the Vale of Belvoir — but now a labourer holds the farm.

  We came to the quarries, and looked in at the lime-kilns. “Let us go right into the woods out of the quarry,” said Leslie. “I have not been since I was a little lad.”

  “It is trespassing,” said Emily.

  “We don’t trespass,” he replied grandiloquently.

  So we went along by the hurrying brook, which fell over little cascades in its haste, never looking once at the primroses that were glimmering all along its banks. We turned aside, and climbed the hill through the woods. Velvety green sprigs of dog-mercury were scattered on the red soil. We came to the top of a slope, where the wood thinned. As I talked to Emily I became dimly aware of a whiteness over the ground. She exclaimed with surprise, and I found that I was walking, in the first shades of twilight, over clumps of snowdrops. The hazels were thin, and only here and there an oak tree uprose. All the ground was white with snowdrops, like drops of manna scattered over the red earth, on the grey-green clusters of leaves. There was a deep little dell, sharp sloping like a cup, and white sprinkling of flowers all the way down, with white flowers showing pale among the first inpouring of shadow at the bottom. The earth was red and warm, pricked with the dark, succulent green of bluebell sheaths, and embroidered with grey-green clusters of spears, and many white flowerets. High above, above the light tracery of hazel, the weird oaks tangled in the sunset. Below, in the first shadows, drooped hosts of little white flowers, so silent and sad; it seemed like a holy communion of pure wild things, numberless, frail, and folded meekly in the evening light. Other flower companies are glad; stately barbaric hordes of bluebells, merry-headed cowslip groups, even light, tossing wood-anemones; but snowdrops are sad and mysterious. We have lost their meaning. They do not belong to us, who ravish them. The girls bent among them, touching them with their fingers, and symbolising the yearning which I felt. Folded in the twilight, these conquered flowerets are sad like forlorn little friends of dryads.

  “What do they mean, do you think?” said Lettie in a low voice, as her white fingers touched the flowers, and her black furs fell on them.

  “There are not so many this year,” said Leslie.

  “They remind me of mistletoe, which is never ours, though we wear it.” said Emily to me.

  “What do you think they say — what do they make you think, Cyril?” Lettie repeated.

  “I don’t know. Emily says they belong to some old wild lost religion. They were the symbol of tears, perhaps, to some strange-hearted Druid folk before us.”

  “More than tears,” said Lettie. “More than tears, they are so still. Something out of an old religion, that we have lost. They make me feel afraid.”

  “What should you have to fear?” asked Leslie.

  “If I knew I shouldn’t fear,” she answered. “Look at all the snowdrops” — they hung in dim, strange flecks among the dusky leaves — ”look at them — closed up, retreating, powerless. They belong to some knowledge we have lost, that I have lost and that I need. I feel afraid. They seem like something in fate. Do you think, Cyril, we can lose things off the earth — like mastodons, and those old monstrosities — but things that matter — wisdom?”

  “It is against my creed,” said I.

  “I believe I have lost something,” said she.

  “Come,” said Leslie, “don’t trouble with fancies. Come with me to the bottom of this cup, and see how strange it will be, with the sky marked with branches like a filigree lid.”

  She rose and followed him down the steep side of the pit, crying, “Ah, you are treading on the flowers.”

  “No,” said he, “I am being very careful.”

  They sat down together on a fallen tree at the bottom. She leaned forward, her fingers wandering white among the shadowed grey spaces of leaves, plucking, as if it were a rite, flowers here and there. He could not see her face.

  “Don’t you care for me?” he asked softly.

  “You?” — she sat up and looked at him, and laughed strangely. “You do not seem real to me,” she replied, in a strange voice.

  For some time they sat thus, both bowed and silent. Birds “skirred” off from the bushes, and Emily looked up with a great start as a quiet, sardonic voice said above us:

  “A dove-cot, my eyes if it ain’t! It struck me I ‘eered a cooin’, an’ ‘ere’s th’ birds. Come on, sweethearts, it’s th’ wrong place for billin’ an’ cooin’, in th’ middle o’ these ‘ere snowdrops. Let’s ‘ave yer names, come on.”

  “Clear off, you fool!” answered Leslie from below, jumping up in anger.

  We all four turned and looked at the keeper. He stood in the rim of light, darkly; fine, powerful form, menacing us. He did not move, but like some malicious Pan looked down on us and said:

  “Very pretty — pretty! Two — and two makes four. ‘Tis true, two and two makes four. Come on, come on out o’ this ‘ere bridal bed, an’ let’s ‘ave a look at yer.”

  “Can’t you use your eyes, you fool,” replied Leslie, standing up and helping Lettie with her furs. “At any rate you can see there are ladies here.”

  “Very sorry, Sir! You can’t tell a lady from a woman at this distance at dusk. Who may you be, Sir?”

  “Clear out! Come along, Lettie, you can’t stay here now.” They climbed into the light.

  “Oh, very sorry, Mr Tempest — when yer look down on a man he never looks the same. I thought it was some young fools come here dallyin’ — ”

  “Damn you — shut up!” exclaimed Leslie — ”I beg your pardon, Lettie. Will you have my arm?”

  They looked very elegant, the pair of them. Lettie was wearing a long coat which fitted close; she had a small hat whose feathers flushed straight back with her hair.

  The keeper looked at them. Then, smiling, he went down the dell with great strides, and returned, saying, “Well, the lady might as well take her gloves.”

  She took them from him, shrinking to Leslie. Then she started, and said:

  “Let me fetch my flowers.”

  She ran for the handful of snowdrops that lay among the roots of the trees. We all watched her.

  “Sorry I made such a mistake — a lady!” said Annable. “But I’ve nearly forgot the sight o’ one — save the squire’s daughters, who are never out o’ nights.”

  “I should think you never have seen many — unless — Have you ever been a groom?”

  “No groom but a bridegroom, Sir, and then I think I’d rather groom a horse than a lady, for I got well bit — if you will excuse me, Sir.”

  “And you deserved it — no doubt.”

  “I got it — an’ I wish you better luck, Sir. One’s more a man here in th’ wood, though, than in my lady’s parlour, it strikes me.”

  “A lady’s parlour!” laughed Leslie, indulgent in his amusement at the facetious keeper.

  “Oh, yes! ‘Will you walk into my parlour — ’“

  “You’re very smart for a keeper.”

  “Oh yes, Sir — I was once a lady’s man. But I’d rather watch th’ rabbits an’ th’ birds; an’ it’s easier breeding brats in th’ Kennels than in th’ town.”

  “They are yours, are they?” said I.

  “You know’ em, do you, Sir? Aren’t they a lovely little litter? — aren’t they a pretty bag o’ ferrets? — natural as weasels — that’s what I said they should be — bred up like a bunch o’ young foxes, to run as they would.”

  Emily had joined Lettie, and they kept aloof from the man they instinctively hated.

  “They’ll get nicely trapped, one of these days,” said I. “They’re natural — they can fend for themselves like wild beasts do,” he replied, grinning.

  “You are not doing your duty, it strikes me,” put in Leslie sententiously.

  “Duties of parents! — tell me, I’ve need of it. I’ve nine — that is eight, and one not far off. She breeds well, the ow’d lass — one every two years — nine in fourteen years — done well, hasn’t she?”

  “You’ve done pretty badly, I think.”

  “I — why? it’s natural! When a man’s more than nature he’s a devil. Be a good animal, says I, whether it’s man or woman. You, Sir, a good natural male animal; the lady there — a female un — that’s proper as long as yer enjoy it.”

  “And what then?”

  “Do as th’ animals do. I watch my brats — I let ‘em grow. They’re beauties, they are — sound as a young ash pole, every one. They shan’t learn to dirty themselves wi’ smirking deviltry — not if I can help it. They can be like birds, or weasels, or vipers, or squirrels, so long as they ain’t human rot, that’s what I say.”

  “It’s one way of looking at things,” said Leslie.

  “Ay. Look at the women looking at us. I’m something between a bull and a couple of worms stuck together, I am. See that spink!” he raised his voice for the girls to hear, “Pretty, isn’t he? What for? — And what for do you wear a fancy vest and twist your moustache, Sir! What for, at the bottom! Ha — tell a woman not to come in a wood till she can look at natural things — she might see something. — Good night, Sir.”

  He marched off into the darkness.

  “Coarse fellow, that,” said Leslie when he had rejoined Lettie, “but he’s a character.”

  “He makes you shudder,” she replied. “But yet you are interested in him. I believe he has a history.”

  “He seems to lack something,” said Emily.

  “I thought him rather a fine fellow,” said I.

  “Splendidly built fellow, but callous — no soul,” remarked Leslie, dismissing the question.

  “No,” assented Emily. “No soul — and among the snowdrops.”

  Lettie was thoughtful, and I smiled.

  It was a beautiful evening, still, with red, shaken clouds in the west. The moon in heaven was turning wistfully back to the east. Dark purple woods lay around us, painting out the distance. The near, wild, ruined land looked sad and strange under the pale afterglow. The turf path was fine and springy.

  “Let us run!” said Lettie, and joining hands we raced wildly along, with a flutter and a breathless laughter, till we were happy and forgetful. When we stopped we exclaimed at once, “Hark!”

  “A child!” said Lettie.

  “At the Kennels,” said I.

  We hurried forward. From the house came the mad yelling and yelping of children, and the wild hysterical shouting of a woman.

  “Tha’ little devil — tha’ little devil — tha’ shanna — that tha’ shanna!” and this was accompanied by the hollow sound of blows, and a pandemonium of howling. We rushed in, and found the woman in a tousled frenzy belabouring a youngster with an enamelled pan. The lad was rolled up like a young hedgehog — the woman held him by the foot, and like a flail came the hollow utensil thudding on his shoulders and back. He lay in the firelight and howled, while scattered in various groups, with the leaping firelight twinkling over their tears and their open mouths, were the other children, crying too. The mother was in a state of hysteria; her hair streamed over her face, and her eyes were fixed in a stare of overwrought irritation. Up and down went her long arm like a windmill sail. I ran and held it. When she could hit no more, the woman dropped the pan from her nerveless hand, and staggered, trembling, to the squab. She looked desperately weary and foredone — she clasped and unclasped her hands continually. Emily hushed the children, while Lettie hushed the mother, holding her hard, cracked hands as she swayed to and fro. Gradually the mother became still, and sat staring in front of her; then aimlessly she began to finger the jewels on Lettie’s finger.

  Emily was bathing the cheek of a little girl, who lifted up her voice and wept loudly when she saw the speck of blood on the cloth. But presently she became quiet too, and Emily could empty the water from the late instrument of castigation, and at last light the lamp.

  I found Sam under the table in a little heap. I put out my hand for him, and he wriggled away, like a lizard, into the passage. After a while I saw him in a corner, lying whimpering with little savage cries of pain. I cut off his retreat and captured him, bearing him struggling into the kitchen. Then, weary with pain, he became passive.

  We undressed him, and found his beautiful white body all discoloured with bruises. The mother began to sob again, with a chorus of babies. The girls tried to soothe the weeping, while I rubbed butter into the silent, wincing boy. Then his mother caught him in her arms, and kissed him passionately, and cried with abandon. The boy let himself be kissed — then he too began to sob, till his little body was all shaken. They folded themselves together, the poor dishevelled mother and the half-naked boy, and wept themselves still. Then she took him to bed, and the girls helped the other little ones into their nightgowns, and soon the house was still.

  “I canna manage ‘em, I canna,” said the mother mournfully. “They growin’ beyont me — I dunna know what to do wi’ ‘em. An’ niver a ‘and does ‘e lift ter ‘elp me — no — ’e cares not a thing for me — not a thing — nowt but makes a mock an’ a sludge o’ me.”

  “Ah, baby!” said Lettie, setting the bonny boy on his feet, and holding up his trailing nightgown behind him, “do you want to walk to your mother — go then — Ah!”

  The child, a handsome little fellow of some sixteen months, toddled across to his mother, waving his hands as he went, and laughing, while his large hazel eyes glowed with pleasure. His mother caught him, pushed the silken brown hair back from his forehead, and laid his cheek against hers.

  “Ah!” she said, “tha’s got a funny Dad, tha’ has, not like another man, no, my duckie. ‘E’s got no ‘art ter care for nobody, ‘e ‘asna, ma pigeon — no — lives like a stranger to his own flesh an’ blood.”

  The girl with the wounded cheek had found comfort in Leslie. She was seated on his knee, looking at him with solemn blue eyes, her solemnity increased by the quaint round head, whose black hair was cut short.

  “‘S my chalk, yes it is, ‘n our Sam says as it’s ‘issen, an’ ‘e ta’es it and marks it all gone, so I wouldna gie ‘t’ ‘im,” — she clutched in her fat little hand a piece of red chalk. “My Dad gen it me, ter mark my dolly’s face red, what’s on’y wood — I’ll show yer.”