This eBook was produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
by Mary Webb
1917
[Dedication]To him whose presence is home.
Small feckless clouds were hurried across the vast untroubledsky—shepherdless, futile, imponderable—and were torn to fragmentson the fangs of the mountains, so ending their ephemeral adventureswith nothing of their fugitive existence left but a few tears.
It was cold in the Callow—a spinney of silver birches and larches thattopped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the tree-tops, anda fainter purple haunted the vistas between the silver and brown boles.
Only the crudeness of youth was here as yet, and not its triumph—onlythe sharp calyx-point, the pricking tip of the bud, like spears, andnot the paten of the leaf, the chalice of the flower.
For as yet spring had no flight, no song, but went like a half-fledgedbird, hopping tentatively through the undergrowth. The bright springingmercury that carpeted the open spaces had only just hung out its paleflowers, and honeysuckle leaves were still tongues of green fire.Between the larch boles and under the thickets of honeysuckle andblackberry came a tawny silent form, wearing with the calm dignity ofwoodland creatures a beauty of eye and limb, a brilliance of tint, thatfew-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 shrillwhistle came from the interior of the wood, and the fox bounded towardsit.
'Where you bin? You'm stray and lose yourself, certain sure!' said agirl's voice, chidingly motherly. 'And if you'm alost, I'm alost; socome you whome. The sun's undering, and there's bones for supper!'
With that she took to her heels, the little fox after her, racing downthe Callow in the cold level light till they came to the Woodus'scottage.
Hazel Woodus, to whom the fox belonged, had always lived at the Callow.There her mother, a Welsh gipsy, had born her in bitter rebellion,hating marriage and a settled life and Abel Woodus as a wild cat hatesa cage. She was a rover, born for the artist's joy and sorrow, and herspirit found no relief for its emotions; for it was dumb. To the linnetits flight, to the thrush its song; but she had neither flight norsong. Yet the tongueless thrush is a thrush still, and has golden musicin its heart. The caged linnet may sit moping, but her soul knows thedip and rise of flight on an everlasting May morning.
All the things she felt and could not say, all the stored honey, theblack hatred, the wistful homesickness for the unfenced wild—all thatother women would have put into their prayers, she gave to Hazel. Thewhole force of her wayward heart flowed into the softly beating heartof her baby. It was as if she passionately flung the life she did notvalue 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 othergipsy lore—to her daughter.
Her one request was that she might be buried in the Callow under theyellow larch needles, and not in a churchyard. Abel Woodus did as sheasked, and was regarded askance by most of the community for notburying her in Chrissen-ground. But this did not trouble him. He hadhis ha