I.
The scent of hay came through the open window of her room. Clearer and finer than the hay smell of the Essex fields.
She shut her eyes to live purely in that one sweet sense; and opened them to look at the hill, the great hill heaved up against the east.
You had to lean far out of the window to see it all. It came on from the hidden north, its top straight as a wall against the sky. Then the long shoulder, falling and falling. Then the thick trees. A further hill cut the trees off from the sky.
Roddy was saying something. Sprawling out from the corner of the window-seat, he stared with sulky, unseeing eyes into the little room.
"Roddy, what did you say that hill was?"
"Greffington Edge. You aren't listening."
His voice made a jagged tear in the soft, quiet evening.
"And the one beyond it?"
"Sarrack. Why can't you listen?"
Greffington Edge. Sarrack. Sarrack.
Green fields coming on from the north, going up and up, netted in with the strong net of the low grey walls that held them together, that kept them safe. Above them thin grass, a green bloom on the grey face of the hill. Above the thin grass a rampart of grey cliffs.
Roddy wouldn't look at the hill.
"I tell you," he said, "you'll loathe the place when you've lived a week in it."
The thick, rich trees were trying to climb the Edge, but they couldn't get higher than the netted fields.
The lean, ragged firs had succeeded. No. Not quite. They stood out against the sky, adventurous mountaineers, roped together, leaning forward with the effort.
"It's Mamma's fault," Roddy was saying. "Papa would have gone anywhere, but she would come to this damned Morfe."
"Don't. Don't—" Her mind beat him off, defending her happiness. He would kill it if she let him. Coming up from Reyburn on the front seat of the Morfe bus, he had sulked. He smiled disagreeable smiles while the driver pointed with his whip and told her the names of the places. Renton Moor. Renton Church. Morfe, the grey village, stuck up on its green platform under the high, purple mound of Karva Hill.
Garthdale in front of it, Rathdale at its side, meeting in the fields below its bridge.
Morfe was beautiful. She loved it with love at first sight, faithless to
Ilford.
Straight, naked houses. Grey walls of houses, enclosing the wide oblong Green. Dark grey stone roofs, close-clipped lest the wind should lift them. On the Green two grey stone pillar fountains; a few wooden benches; telegraph poles. Under her window a white road curling up to the platform. Straight, naked houses, zigzagging up beside it. Down below, where the white road came from, the long grey raking bridge, guarded by a tall ash-tree.
Roddy's jabbing voice went on and on:
"I used to think Mamma was holy and unselfish. I don't think so any more. She says she wants to do what Papa wants and what we want; but she always ends by doing what she wants herself. It's all very well for her. As long as she's got a garden to poke about in she doesn't care how awful it is for us."
She hated Roddy when he said things like that about Mamma.
"I don't suppose the little lamb thought about it at all. Or if she did she thought we'd like it."
She didn't want to listen to Roddy's grumbling. She wanted to look and look, to sniff up the clear, sweet, exciting smell of the fields.
The roofs went criss-crossing up the road—straight—slant—straight. They threw delicate violet-green shadows on to the sage-green field below. That long violet-green pillar was the shadow of the ash-tree by the bridge.
The light came from somewhere behind the village, from a sunset you couldn't see. It made the smooth hill fields shine like thin velvet, stretched out, clinging to the hills.
"Oh, Roddy, the light's different. Different from Ilford. Look—"
"I've been looking for five weeks," Roddy said. "You haven't, that's all. I was excited at first."
He got up. He stared out of the window, not seeing anything.
"I didn't mean what I said about Mamma. Morfe makes you say things.
Soon it'll make you mean them. You wait."
She was glad when he had left her.
The cliffs of Greffington Edge were violet now.