Page 57 - sons-and-lovers

the meadow to the cricket-ground. The meadows seemed
one space of ripe, evening light, whispering with the distant
mill-race. She sat on a seat under the alders in the cricket-
ground, and fronted the evening. Before her, level and solid,
spread the big green cricket-field, like the bed of a sea of
light. Children played in the bluish shadow of the pavilion.
Many rooks, high up, came cawing home across the soft-
ly-woven sky. They stooped in a long curve down into the
golden glow, concentrating, cawing, wheeling, like black
flakes on a slow vortex, over a tree clump that made a dark
boss among the pasture.
A few gentlemen were practising, and Mrs. Morel could
hear the chock of the ball, and the voices of men suddenly
roused; could see the white forms of men shifting silently
over the green, upon which already the under shadows were
smouldering. Away at the grange, one side of the haystacks
was lit up, the other sides blue-grey. A waggon of sheaves
rocked small across the melting yellow light.
The sun was going down. Every open evening, the hills
of Derbyshire were blazed over with red sunset. Mrs. Mo-
rel watched the sun sink from the glistening sky, leaving
a soft flower-blue overhead, while the western space went
red, as if all the fire had swum down there, leaving the bell
cast flawless blue. The mountain-ash berries across the field
stood fierily out from the dark leaves, for a moment. A few
shocks of corn in a corner of the fallow stood up as if alive;
she imagined them bowing; perhaps her son would be a Jo-
seph. In the east, a mirrored sunset floated pink opposite
the west’s scarlet. The big haystacks on the hillside, that

Sons and Lovers