He opened Hazel's door.
'Look here,' he said; 'the house is mine, and so are you. I'm coming to bed.' He was met by that most intimidating reply to all bluster—silence.
She was asleep; and all night long, while he snored, she tossed in her sleep and moaned.
Chapter 27
Early next morning Vessons was calling the cows in for milking. He leant over the lichen-green gate contemplatively.
All the colours were so bright that they were grotesque and startling. Above the violently green fields the sky shone like blue glass, and across the east were two long vermilion clouds. Behind the black hill the sun had shouldered up, molten, and the shadow of Vessons, standing monkey-like on the lowest bar of the gate, lay on the stretch of wet clover behind him—a purple, elfin creature, gifted with a prehensile dignity. The cows did not appear after his first call. He lifted his head and called again in a high plaintive tone, as one reasons with a fretful child. 'Come o-on, come o-on!' Then he sank into the landscape again. After an interval, a polished red and white cow appeared at a distance of five fields, coming serenely on at her own pace. A white one and a roan followed her at long distances. They advanced through the shadows, each going through the exact middle of the many gateways, always kept open like doors in a suite of rooms at a reception. Vessons waited patiently—more as a slave than a ruler—only uttering his plaintive 'Come o-on!' once, when the last cow dallied overlong with a tuft of lush grass in the hedge. This was the daily ritual. Every morning he appeared, neutral-tinted, from the house, and cried upon an apparently empty landscape; every morning they meandered through the seven gates from the secret leafy purlieus where they spent the night.
Mysterious of eye, leisured, vividly red and white, they followed the old man as queens might follow an usher.
Hazel was coming down the path from the house. With morning, her abundant vitality had returned. The outer world was new and bright, and she wanted, shyly, to be up and dressed before Reddin awoke.
She was full of merriment at the subservience of Vessons to the cows.
'D'you say "mum" to 'em?' she inquired.