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1、 The Salamanca Corpus: Gone to Earth (1917)Author: Mary Webb (Ne Mary Gladys Meredith) (1881-1927)Text type: ProseDate of composition: 1917Editions: 1917, 1918, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1931, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1942, 1944, 1946, 1948, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1958, 1959, 1965, 1967, 1
2、973, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1994, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2012.Source text: Webb, Mary. 1917. Gone to Earth. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.e-textAccess and transcription: November 2012Number of words: 82,353Dialect represented: ShropshireProduced by Adela Martn SezRevised by Mara F.
3、 Garca-Bermejo GinerCopyright 2013 DING, The Salamanca Corpus, Universidad de SalamancaGONE TO EARTHBYMARY WEBBAUTHOR OF “THE GOLDEN ARROW”“Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines.”SONG OF SOLOMON.NEW YORKE. P. DUTTON & CO.681 FIFTH AVENUENPCOPYRIGHT, 1917,BY E.P. DUTTON & CO.First
4、printing.June, 1917Second ” .June,1918Printed in the United States of AmericaNPGONE TO EARTH1GONE TO EARTHCHAPTER ISMALL feckless clouds were hurried across the vast untroubled skyshepherdless, futile, imponderableand were torn to fragments on the fangs of the mountains, so ending their ephemeral ad
5、ventures with nothing of their fugitive existence left but a few tears. It was cold in the Callowa spinney of silver birches and larches that topped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the tree-tops, and a fainter purple haunted the vistas between the silver and brown boles. Only the crude
6、ness of youth was here as yet, and not its triumphonly the sharp calyx-point, the pricking tip of the bud, like spears, and not the paten of the leaf, the chalice of the flower. For as yet spring had no flight, no song, but went like a half-fledged bird, hopping tentatively through the undergrowth.
7、The bright springing mercury that carpeted the open spaces had only just hung out its pale flowers, and honeysuckle leaves were still tongues of green fire. Between the larch boles and under the thickets of honeysuckle and blackberry came a tawny silent form, wearing with the calm dignity of woodlan
8、d creatures a beauty of eye and limb, a brilliance of tint,2that few women could have worn without self-consciousness. Clear-eyed, lithe, it stood for a moment in the full sunlighta year-old fox, round-headed and velvet-footed. Then it slid into the shadows. A shrill whistle came from the interior o
9、f the wood, and the fox bounded towards it. “Where you bin? Youm stray and lose yourself, certain sure!” said a girls voice, chidingly motherly. “And if youm alost, Im alost; so come you whome. The suns undering, and theres bones for supper!” With that she took to her heels, the little fox after her
10、, racing down the Callow in the cold level light till they came to the Wooduss cottage. 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 hates a
11、cage. She was a rover, born for the artists joy and sorrow, and her spirit found no relief for its emotions; for it was dumb. To the linnet its flight, to the thrush its song; but she had neither flight nor song. Yet the tongueless thrush is a thrush still, and has golden music in its heart. The cag
12、ed linnet may sit moping, but her soul knows the dip and rise of flight on an everlasting May morning. All the things she felt and could not say, all the stored honey, the black hatred, the wistful homesickness for the unfenced wildall that other women would have put into their prayers, she gave to
13、Hazel. The whole force of her wayward heart flowed into the softly beating heart of her baby. It was as if she passionately flung the life she did not value into the arms of her child. When Hazel was fourteen she died, leaving her 3treasurean old, dirty, partially illegible manuscript book of spells
14、 and charms and other gipsy loreto her daughter. Her one request was that she might be buried in the Callow under the yellow larch needles, and not in a churchyard. Abel Woodus did as she asked, and was regarded askance by most of the community for not burying her in Chrissen-ground. But this did no
15、t trouble him. He had his harp still, and while he had that he needed no other friend. It had been his absorption in his music that had prevented him understanding his wife, and in the early days of their marriage she had been wildly jealous of the tall gilt harp with its faded felt cover that stood in the corner of the living-room. Then her jealousy changed to love of it, and her one desire was to be able to draw music from its plaintive strings. She could never master even the rudiments of music, but she would sit on rainy evenings when Abel was away and run her
