Book Two

C H A P T E R O N E: _Riding to Market_

IN telling this story I take little count of time. For when the heart is in stress, what is time? It is nought. Does the bridegroom, that has clemmed for his love a long while, hearken to the watchman’s voice telling over the hastening hours? Does he that dies in the dawn care to what hour the dial points when the sun arises, that rises not on him? And when we poor beings take up our stand against all the might of the things that be, striving to win through to our peace, or to what we think is our peace, when we are dumbfounded like a baited creature in the bull-ring, then we forget time. So four years went by, and though a deal happened out in the world, nought happened to us.

Rumours came to us of battles over sea and discontents at home. The French went to Russia and never came back, save a few.

At last, one golden summer evening, there came one riding all in a lather to tell of the great victory of Waterloo. But the news Gideon liked best, which came in the same year, was the news of the corn tax.

“Fetch me a mug of home-brewed, Prue,” he shouted, when he raught home from market and told me. “It’s the best news ever we had. We’ll be rich in a tuthree years. We must get more land under corn. I _thought_ corn would never come amiss, but I didna hope for anything like this’ll be. When Callard came up to my stall with the tidings, I was fair comic-struck. ‘Dang me!’ I says. ‘What?’ I says. ‘Make the furriners pay to lug their corn to us?’ ‘Ah, that’s the size of it,’ says Callard. ‘And that’ll make it scarce, seesta, and that’ll make it dear, seesta!’ ‘Why, mon, I’ve seen that this long while,’ I says. ‘But I never thought they’d do it.’ And what d’ye think I did then, Prue? Why, I axed un to the _Mug of Cider_ and stood un a drink! So you can tell how comic-struck I must ha’ bin. And now all we’ve got to do is to drive plough, both of us.”

So there was a prospect of living harder than we had in the four years gone, when we’d slaved from daybreak to dark, and in the dark too, by the wandering light of the horn lanthorn. It wouldna have come so hard to me, if it hadna been all for the money, if I could have been a bit house-proud, and if Gideon had taken a pride in fettling the farm. But there was none of that. It was just scrat and scrape to get the money out of the place and be off.

I grew as lanky as a clothes prop, and Mother began to show signs of wringing her hands about that too. For being little herself, and Missis Beguildy and Jancis and most of the women about being little, it seemed meet to Mother that a woman should be small. So when I grew and grew, and was very slender also (for indeed, with such a deal of work and little time to eat, anybody would be slender) she said I was like a poplar in an unthinned woodland or an o’er-tall bulrush in the mere, and I got used to being ashamed of my tallness as well as the other trouble, until—but I munna be too forrard with the tale.

Gideon wore his smock and looked right well in it. He was two-and-twenty now, a man grown, very personable, broad in the shoulder, with a firm, well-knit figure. As his body set, his mind set with it, harder than ten-days’ ice. He’d no eye for the girls at market, though there was a many looked at him. And once at market when he was wearing Father’s blue coat with the brass buttons, Squire Camperdine’s daughter (not the squire in the bottle, but his great-grandson) came riding past his booth, and smiled at him. But Gideon would only laugh when I questioned him, and stroke his chin, and look at me warily. There was no doubt he was a very comely man, and it used to seem to me unfair that it was me, and not Gideon, that was born after the hare looked at Mother. For Gideon could have grown what they call a _moustachio_ and looked very well, and none need have known he’d got a hare-shotten lip. But with me it was past hiding.

As to the farm, it was doing pretty well. We’d got a big flock of sheep, so that the shearing took us above a week. We’d got a herd of pigs that kept Mother busy all the time the acorns lasted, tending them in the oakwood. The grass-meadow by the orchard was under wheat, but we had no good of it the first year, for the wheat sprouted and ackerspired in the ear, it being a very wet season.

There was enough saved to buy two oxen for ploughing and other heavy work about the place. Being a bit out of fashion, they were not very dear. Gideon said that when he went to buy them I could go too and give a hand driving them back. And I could look in the shop windows while he haggled over the beasts, and then we could look at the house he’d set his mind on buying when it should come into the market. But Mother must know nought about the house, or she’d tell folk. “And if they thought I had such a thing in mind, they’d bant all my prices and double all their own, and where should we be then?” said Gideon.

You may guess I was glad to be going pleasuring, for I’d scarcely been away from Sarn since Father died, and Lullingford always seemed a wonderful place to me.

I was in the cornfield, leasing, when Gideon said it, he being just back from market, coming across the field in the last light of evening; and the shadows of him and Bendigo stretched away over the grass from the far gate to the orchard as I watched them come.

“But how’ll I go?” I asked. “I canna ride pillion, for there be the panniers.”

“If you’ll do a bit extra leasing, I’ll hire the mill pony when I take the next corn to be ground. Going to Plash for a lesson to-morrow?”

“Ah.”

“Then fetch back the beasts, oot, and I’ll go with corn Saturday.”

“But I’ve leased till there’s scarce an ear left in any part of this field or the other,” I said.

“Ask Beguildy to let you lease his. I saw them lugging their corn.”

“But Jancis and Missis Beguildy—”

“Now you know very well Jancis is too bone-idle to pick up as much as an ear. Though I like her right well, and as for looks—”

He stopped, and stood with his hand on Bendigo’s neck, gazing away to where Plash shone like bright honey in the long light, dreaming.

It was but seldom Gideon sat still, and very seldom he gave his mind to any thought but the thought of making money. But the name of Jancis would often quieten him, and when he fell into one of his silences he would make me think of a tranced man that was once brought to Beguildy to be awakened. And he made me think of a brooding summer tree on a windless day, minding its own thoughts above the water. He was like the lych-gate yew that dreams the year long, and keeps its dream as secret as it keeps its red fruit under the boughs. Gideon had been used to fall into a dream like this ever since he saw Jancis under the rosy light. Times, he’d mutter “No, no!” and shift his shoulders as though from a weight, and bestir himself, and be more of a driver than ever. For Gideon was a driver if ever there was one, and what he drove was his own flesh and blood. It seemed a pity to me that a young man should be so set in his ways, and have no pleasant times, for I was mighty fond of Gideon. I knew well where he went of a Sunday, when he took off his smock and put on the bottle-blue coat. He was a deal more regular at Plash than ever he was at church. The rosy light started it, but it would have likely been the same, anyway. Missis Beguildy told me how he’d come and knock, and Jancis would run to the door in her best gown and a ribbon or a flower in her hair, and go red and white by turns. And I saw for myself too, when she came to our place, how she would pant under her kerchief, and I wondered how this might be. For Gideon was just Gideon to me, but to her he was fire and tempest and the very spring, and his voice was as the voice of the mighty God.

He’d come in, Missis Beguildy said, with no word, and he’d sit down, and Beguildy would scowl, having no mind for Jancis to marry. He’d scowl from the inner-most chimney corner, for he felt the cold very bad, living in such a damp place and being a very stay-at-home man. And Gideon would scowl back.

Jancis blushed and trembled over her spinning, taking sideways looks at Gideon as a wren will. And Missis Beguildy set her face like a flint, and laid plans to get her goodman out of the kitchen. She dearly loved to see a bit of lovering going on, being short of summat to think of and talk of. She wanted to be a granny too. So she’d go to any length, but she’d get Beguildy out of the room. Once, when Gideon was glowering more than common, being very desirous to kiss Jancis because she’d put on some new ribbon or what-not to set her off, and when Missis Beguildy had called her man, and come back and argufied, and gone out and called again, but still he’d only sit there like a goblin in the dark of the fire, she even went so far as to set a light to the thatch on the barn. Ah! She did! She was a very strong-minded woman. And she kept the poor man, who couldn’t abide any work with his hands, running to-and-agen with buckets all evening. When he’d nearly douted one place, she set light to another while he was dipping water from the lake.

“I kept the flint and tinder right hot, my dear,” she said to me. And she laughed! I never saw a woman laugh more lungeously over anything than she did over that. She said she took a peep at the window, just to encourage her, and she could see through the clear bits in among the bottle-glass that they were sitting side by side on the settle.

“Very right and proper!” she says, and runs back to her work.

Another time she loosed the sow, and it made straight for our oakwood, she having taken it there afore. Beguildy liked his rasher, and the sow meant many a bacon-pig, so for fear she should come to harm, he took stick and went after her, cursing considerable. After a bit he began to be suspicious, because any ill that came, came on a Sunday, and he liked his day of rest, though he _was_ a heathen man. So he said to Gideon, “There’s no luck with you. When you come, harm brews. Keep off.”

So he had to give over going. Then he wiled Jancis into the woods, and I’d see them going up the dim ways, rainy or frosty was no matter, she with her face like a white rose, shining, and he looking down at her, loving, and angered to be loving. When they were in the woods, Missis Beguildy was so interested in the wizard’s bottles with the ghosts in them (so he said) that he’d have hard work to answer her questions. And she’d give him such a tea that it lasted nearly to supper. But he found out. He began to wonder why Jancis had taken such an affection for Tivvy, it being Tivvy she said she went to see. And as he couldn’t speak to Sexton, being at daggers drawn, he followed her one evening unbeknown. And when she got home, he leathered her so that her eyes were red for weeks, and she came running to Gideon all bedraggled with tears. He was in a rage with Beguildy, and he told Jancis he’d lief wed with her, only not till he’d won through, and was rich. For how could he get along, he said, with a helpless one like Jancis clinging to him, and a tribe of children, very likely? But he was moody and troubled in mind, for he could see Jancis but seldom, Beguildy being so watchful. I thought maybe the plan to show me the house he wanted was to comfort himself and strengthen his will, because he was afraid of giving in. He wanted to give in, mind you, for he was sore set on Jancis, only he was fixed, and when he was fixed he couldna let himself give in, not if it was ever so.

It turned out that we couldna borrow the mill pony for a good few weeks, because she’d gone lame. So the harvest was long over, winter upon us, and Christmas drawing nigh, when they sent a message to say we could have the loan of it for the Christmas market, for they’d just bought one of the old horses from the Lullingford and Silverton coach, and they would drive that to market themselves. I may say I was very pleased to think of the outing, and watched the weather very anxiously, for it boded snow.

I was up at four on market day, setting the place to rights for Mother and getting the things together for market. Eggs and dressed fowl we had in plenty, and greens and apples and a bit of butter. Polishing the apples in the attic, peace came upon me, as it ever did up there, since the time I told of. While the rushlight flickered in the cold air, and the mice scuttled, I stood at the open window that was like an oblong of black paper. No sound came in. Nought stirred outside. Even the mere was frozen round the edges, so that the ducks must go skating every morning afore they could come at the water. The world was all so piercing still that it was almost like a voice crying out. It was used to seem to me that when the world was so quiet, it was like being along of somebody as knew you very well, ah! like being with your dear acquaintance.

Down in the dark barn the cock crew, thin and sweet, and I thought it sounded like no earthly bird; but maybe that was because I was in the attic, where things were always new. You may think it strange that a woman like me should think such things, being one that worked with my hands always, at poor harsh tasks, whereas you’d expect such thoughts to come to fine ladies sitting at their tapestry work. But I was so lonesome, and had such a deal of time for thinking, and what with that and the booklearning I was getting, all sorts of thoughts grew up in my mind, like flowering rushes and forget-me-nots coming into blow in a poor marshy place, that else had nought. And I can never see that it did much harm, for the thoughts seldom came but in the attic, and they did never make me dreamy over my work.

So now, hearing the clear sound of our game-cock crying out upon the dawn, that was yet more than two hours away, I ran downstairs all of a lantun-puff to get the breakfast. When Gideon came in, it was all ready, and a great fire roaring, for we need never stint of wood at Sarn, which was much to be thankful for at a time when many poor families in England must herd together six or seven in one cottage to boil their kettles all on one fire. I was always thankful for our plenteous wood, that cost nought, and need not take up too much of Gideon’s time neither, for if I burnt more than he cut I could make shift to chop it myself.

We were as snug as could be, sitting in the merry firelight with a red glow shining on the quarries and the ware and the spinning-wheels in the corner. I was pleased to think Mother wasna to be lonesome, for I’d asked Tivvy to come and keep her company, since I never could enjoy anything if one I loved was lonesome or sad. Shaking the cloth out of the door after it got light, I could see her red cloak coming along under the dark woods; for as Tivvy never did anything nor thought anything, she had all her time to herself, as you met say, and so she had no cause to be late.

Gideon had roughed Bendigo and the mill pony overnight, so all being ready and the sun just risen, we set off.

All the lake was full of red lights, as if our farm was on fire, reflected in the water. The black pines stood with their arms out, dripping with hoar-frost, all white-over, so that the tips of their drooping branches were like your fingers when you take them from the suds. The rooks were very contented, cawing soft and pleasant, as if they knew their breakfast was ready so soon as our ploughland thawed a bit, and in the stackyard there was a great murmuration of starlings.

“Bring me a fairing!” screams Tivvy from across the water.

Gideon looked sullen, and I knew the only fairing he’d a mind to bring was one for Jancis. So I called out—“I will. What shall it be?”

“A bit of cherry-coloured sarsnet to tie up my hair,” she calls. For though she was a foolish piece in most things, she knew very well she’d got pretty curls, bright brown and thick. She’d toss them ever so when Gideon was there, and take every chance to miscall Beguildy, though she durstna say anything against Jancis, for fear Gideon might blaze out. But she was clever enough in this, as oftentimes a stupid girl is when she’s in love, and she could always make it seem a very poor, ill-liking sort of thing to be sweet on a wizard’s wench, and a grand thing to be in love with the sexton’s daughter, whose dad could mouth texts as fast as the wizard could mouth charms.

It was a grand morning, very crispy underfoot, with moor-fowl about, especially widgeon. We were riding to the hills. Across the far woods and the rough moors beyond, and the bits of ploughland here and there, and the frosty stubble where partridges ran from the noise of the trotting, we could see the hills, as blue as pansies. Promising hills, they seemed to me. There was a clatter in the spinney, and a flock of wood-pigeons got up and took their flight, with wings flashing blue in the sun, for the same hills. It was as if some wonderful thing was there, as it might be a healing well, or some other miracle, or a holy person such as there were of old time.

I said as much to Gideon, but he was looking away over shoulder to Plash and the long spire of blue smoke going up from the Stone House. He began to whistle below his breath, for he’d never whistle outright, even at the merriest, but always very quiet and to his mommets. So I said no more, and in a while our old road ended, and we came into the main road where it was bad going, for whatever the weather was, the road the Romans made was good going, and even better than the turnpike. In a little we passed the milk folk going soberly along, and then a tuthree more, and soon we were riding up the hill into the town, with the plovers crying about us in their winter voices.

So we rode to Lullingford to look upon a dream. For the house we were about seeing was woven into the dream of Gideon’s life. The house, that is, along with what it meant, the maids and the men, the balls and the dinners with the gentry at the _Mug of Cider_ at election time.

When we were going through the ford as you come into the lower part of the place, Gideon said—

“I wish Jancis was riding pillion with me.”

“Why, so she shall,” I said, “the very next time we come. Why shouldna she come every time?”

“There be Beguildy.”

“Oh, Beguildy! I’ll wile un with his own spells and charm un with his own charms,” I said, and I laughed as we went up the narrow street, so that heads came out of windows here and there to see what it might be.

“Husht now, girl!” says Gideon. “Laugh quiet. Not like a wild curlew.”

“But a curlew’s very good company, and a pleasanter voice I seldom heard, and I’m pleased with the compliment, lad.”

And indeed I was pleased with the world and all. For there was summat about Lullingford, as if a different air blew there, and as if there was a brighter sun and a safer daylight. I knew not why it was. It was a quiet place, though not near so quiet as now. Folk go off to the cities these days, but when I was young they gathered together from many miles around into the little market towns. Still, it was quiet, and very peaceful, though not with the stillness of Sarn, that was almost deathly, times. There was one broad street of black and white houses, jutting out above, and gabled, and made into rounded shop windows below. They stood back in little gardens. At the top of the street was the church, long and low, with a tremendous high steeple, well carved and pleasant to see. Under the shadow of the church was the big, comfortable inn, with its red sign painted with a tall blue mug of cider. It had red curtains in the windows, and a glow of firelight in the winter, and it seemed to say, in being so nigh the church, that its landlord’s conscience was clear and his ale honest, and that none would get more than was good for him there. But of the last I a little doubt.

Of a Sunday the shops had each a bit of white canvas stuff hung afore the window like an apron, which made it seem very pious and respectable. There were few shops, and only one of each kind, so you could never run from one to another, cheapening goods.

There was the Green Canister, where they kept groceries and spools and pots and pans, and there was the maltster’s and the butcher’s and the baker’s, for Lullingford was well up with the times, since it wasna all towns could boast a baker in days when nearly everybody baked at home. Then there was the leather shop, for boots and harness, and the tailor’s, which was only open in winter, for in summer he travelled round the country doing piecework. There was the smithy too, where the little boys crowded after Dame-School every winter dusk, begging to warm their hands and roast chestnuts and taters. It was a pleasant thing to see the sparks go up, roaring, and to feel the hearty glow about you, warming you to the heart’s core, with nothing to pay or to do, like love. Near by the smithy was the row of little cottages where was the weaver’s. Like the tailor, he went abroad over the countryside in summer, and sometimes to a village in winter, if it was open weather. But in hard weather he stayed in his snug slip of a house and heard the wind roaring over from the mountains north to the mountains south. I never could tell why this cottage drew me, even from a child. It had a narrow garden and a walk of red brick, an oaken paling, and bushes of lavender on either side the walk. Three well-whitened steps led up to the door, and there was a window of many little panes, not bottle-glass. Above was another window. At the back, a patch of garden ran down to the meadows, and there was a second window in the living-room that looked over this garden and the meadows, to the mountains. This I knew, because I went there once with a message in the old weaver’s time. Upon the front of the house was a vine, very old and twisted. This was a rare thing in a place of such hard winters, but the town was sheltered by the mountains, and the weaver’s house faced south, so the vine throve, and though in cold seasons the grapes didna always ripen, in some years they ripened very well. What with the vine and the lavender and the pleasant shadows on the strip of green lawn, and the lilac tree that stood beside the door, and what with the great weaving frame in the living-room, which was comfortable with firelight shining on brasses and copper vessels, and very well kept, what with it all, I could never pass it without a look of longing. I was used to envy the fat thrushes hopping on the lawn. It drew me as heaven draws the poor sinner, weary of his miry wanderings.

So to-day, as we rode by, I said—

“Gideon, what is it makes that house different to the other housen?”

“It inna different.”

“Oh, but it’s as different as if it was builded of stone fetched from another world!” I cried out. “It’s as different as if the timbers were falled in the forests of the Better Land.”

“Dear to goodness, girl, you bin raving,” says he. “Husht, or the beadle’ll put you in pound.”

So I hushed, and we came to the _Mug of Cider_, and after turning our beasts in among the rest, we set out our goods in the market.

C H A P T E R T W O: _The Mug of Cider_

THE market was in the open, in a paven square by the church. Each had his own booth, and the cheeses stood in mounds between. There were a sight of old women in decent shawls and cotton bonnets selling the same as we had, butter and eggs and poultry. There was a stall for gingerbread and one for mince-pies. There was a sunbonnet stall and a toy stall, and one for gewgaws such as strings of coral and china cats, shoe buckles and amulets and beaded reticules. It was a merry scene, with the bright holly and mistletoe, the cheeses yellow in the sun, and the gingerbread as brown and sticky as chestnut buds.

The butcher stood at his door, which gave on to the market-place, shouting his meat, and holding up a long, shining knife, enough to make you think the French were coming. There was a woman selling hot potatoes and pig’s fry, and a crockman who put up his wares to auction, and every time the clock chimed he broke summat, keeping some “_seconds_” in readiness, which served to amuse the people. Then the mummers came along and gave us a treat, and in one corner the beast-leech was pulling teeth out for a penny each, and had a crowd watching. What with them all shouting, and the mummers mouthing their parts, and the crash of broken china, and beasts lowing and bleating from the fair ground close by, and the chimes ringing out very sweet at the half-hours, you may think there was a cheerful noise.

When we’d got rid of our goods, we went into the _Mug of Cider_ for a snack. Ten or a dozen old men sat without, though the air was so nipping that they must have bin starved. Each one was holding a great pewter tankard, and they were roaring out at the top of their voices—

“_The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not fear._”

Each one went his own way and made his own tune, and I thought how angered Mister Beguildy would be if he could hear ’em making such an untuneful sound, for he was very particular over his row of flints, and when he struck them he was troubled if they didna strike the note true.

But when we were come by these old ancients, every one held his mug where it was, and stopped in his singing, and so sat with his mouth open and his eyes fast on me. They were like those new-fangled mommet-shows with the little dolls that stop all together when the showman unhands them. There they sat, with the inn behind them and the frosty sunshine on their old, red, veiny faces, and a kind of frittened look. As we passed the bench, every head of them came round slow, and the score or so of eyes stared slantwise over the rims of their cups, as young owls will stare and turn their heads, watching you over their feathers.

As we went through the dark doorway, with its door studded with nails like a prison, and came into the inn parlour, where sat the more genteel, I saw their looks fasten on me too, but more shyly. The farmers and their ladies and two or three folk that had come by the early coach and were baiting here, and the Squire’s son, who was a parson in Silverton and was on the way home for Christmas and was taking some refreshment because his nag had cast a shoe, all of them looked up, quiet and careful but very curious, at me. All on a sudden I knew that all these folk, the grand ones within and the old fellows without, were staring at my hare-shotten lip. They were thinking, according to their station and their learning—

“Here’s a queer outlandish creature!”

“This is a woman out of a show, sure to goodness!”

“Here be a wench turns into a hare by night.”

“Her’s a witch, an ugly, hare-shotten witch.”

Maybe in the tuthree times I’d come to Lullingford in the past they’d stared so, but then I was but a child and didna see.

I could hear the old men without croaking like a lot of rooks, and one said—

“Dunna drink while she’s by. It’ll p’ison yer innards.”

Another said—

“Dunna look upon the baigle. Her’ll put the evil eye on you. You’ll dwine and dwine away.”

The folk inside looked each at other, and I wished I could die. For all the bitter cold and my thin gown and us being far from the fire, I was all in a swelter. For indeed I loved my kind and would lief they had loved me, and I felt a friendliness for the drovers and for the gentry, and the host and his missus. For they were part of my outing and part of Lullingford and of the world, that ever seized my heart in its hands, as a child will hold a small bird, which is both affrighted and comforted to be so held. I would lief have ridden forth and seen new folk, new roads, new hamlets, children playing on strange village greens, unknown to me as if they were fairies, come there I knew not whence nor how, singing their song and running away into the dusk; old folk wending their way along paths in meadows of which I knew not so much as the name of the owner, to churches deep in trees, with all the bells a-ringing, pulled by men I never saw afore. Ah, I should dearly ha’ liked that. Only the gist of it must ever be that the old folk looked kind as they saw me go by, and the children smiled or threw me a blossom, and that when I came to inn or tavern they’d say, “Draw in to the fire now, dear ’eart, for night thickens.” Ah, I’d dearly ha’ liked that!

This made it all the more of a shocking thing to me that the real world was thus toward me, for living so apart I had not truly felt my grief afore. But now I knew that I was fast bound in misery and iron, as the Book saith. Ah, prisoned beyond a door to which the great nailed door of the inn was but paper!

As I was bending over my plate so that my bonnet met hide the tears, a lady came in. She was a handsome piece if ever there was one! She was lissom as a wand, dressed in a long scarlet riding coat and a highwayman hat to match, with a great swath of chestnut hair tied in a bow. She’d got black eyes with no human soul in them, but sparkles instead, like a cat’s eyes on a frosty night. Gauntlets on her little hands, spurs on her boots, she came in laughing from a talk with the old men on the bench.

“A besom, host!” she says. “We want a besom here.”

Everybody smiled and sniggered a bit. I knew well what she meant, for once when Mother was talking to me she said that if folk began to speak of besoms I’d best go, since it was their way of saying I was a witch.

But Gideon never noticed, for not being afflicted like me he never thought of such things, and being used to me he didna have it in mind that other folk met not be. And he was very deep in considering over whether Jancis or the big house and the maids and men were best, so it all went by him.

The lady ran to the Squire’s son and clapped him on shoulder, which made him frown because of his dignity, and she says—

“So you’ve come Christmassing like a good lad! Who’s the woman with the hare-shotten lip?”

He made a sign to warn her to talk soft, and nodded towards Gideon ever so little.

“Why, if yonder isn’t young Sarn of Sarn!” she says, flushing a bit and coming running across to where Gideon sat, very handsome in the blue coat with the brass buttons and the black band for Father on the arm, and his eyes darkling over the thought of Jancis. I nudged him, and he stood up, and looked all the better for it, being such a fine figure.

She held out her hand, for the gentry were always friendly to the farmers, in especial to voters about election time, and she sparkled at him out of her black eyes and said—

“There’s to be an election soon, and Father’s got some work for you, Sarn. So you’d best come and see us one day, and take bite and sup, if your sweetheart can spare you.”

She looked very spitefully at me. Seemingly she thought Gideon was an only child, and so she chose to take me for his acquaintance, or else she chose to mock him, lashing him into her slavery by making him look a fool.

Now Gideon was altogether with the Squire as to politics, because of the corn tax, but he hadna made up his mind in good sadness whether he meant giving all those things up and settling down contented with Jancis and a crowd of little uns till death them parted. So he hummed and hawed a bit, and not being used to hiver-hover from a common man, she lost her temper.

“So! So! You’ve no time, Sarn. You’ve no time, I see,” she says. “You’ll be dancing on Diafoll Mountain next Thomastide no doubt. Oh, fine you’ll look, Sarn, with your missus here, and broomsticks all round and the moon shining!”

She laughed like a tinkle of jangled bells, and Gideon came to the knowledge of what she meant. He was ever slow, but sure. Eh, terrible sure.

That was one of the times I spoke of when I saw Gideon angered. His face had gone dark and his eyes had the look as if the mere was running behind them, cold, and bitter cold. He looked down at her so that she blenched, and he said very slow—

“Ma’am, this be my sister. If I’ve a mind to dance on the Diafoll Mountain along of witches, I ool. And if I’ve a mind to dance upstairs at the ’unt Ball along of the gentry, I ool. But I wunna ask _you_ for a partner. And I doubt I wunna be able to vote for Squire neither, for can a man govern the land as canna govern his own womankind, but lets his girl go about like a ripstitch-rantipole? He should ha’ give you more stick, ma’am.”

“Dorabella!” calls her brother, very much put about at her being in such a brawl.

They went out, and Gideon sat down and went on with his victuals. Nor did he eat a bit less hearty for it all, though I could scarce touch a morsel. So soon as he went off to buy the oxen, I made haste to go from the place. There were plenty of errands to do, what with malt and sugar and tea to buy, and boots for us all, and Tivvy’s present, and a bit of baccy for Gideon, for he never bought any himself, since, if he was near with others, he was near with himself also. When I’d finished, and bought a tuthree extras for Christmas, and packed all into the panniers, Gideon was ready to go and see the house. He was pleased with the cattle. Brindled longhorns they were, and very strong. With so few people using oxen for farm work they were cheaper, a power, than they used to be. So he was cheerful, since neither then nor at any other time did he seem cast down by my sorrow. How could he know, indeed, that my heart was bleeding because of Miss Dorabella and the old men on the bench? He was angered because he thought it disgrace to himself that a hare-shotten lip should be cast up against one of his family, and a scent of witchcraft into the bargain. But for me he took no thought, any more than if I was one of the new-bought oxen that somebody prodded in passing by. He whistled under breath as we went along the by-road that led to the house he’d set his mind on. I’d never been along that way, for it lay outside the town on the other road from ours, and when we did come in we hadna much time for gadding about. We soon left the coach road and were in a lane with deep frozen ruts in it, and high hedges white-over with rime.

The evening was closing in a bit, but Gideon said never mind, we’d manage the beasts all right, for it ud be light as day when the moon rose. He was very wrought-up about the house, I could see, so I agreed to all he said, for I never liked to dampen down anybody’s pleasure. Lord knows there’s little enow in the world, and Gideon was ever one that took life hard. So when it turned out that he’d planned to treat me to a dish of tea after, at the _Mug of Cider_, and have a chat about all we meant to do, seeing we couldna when Mother was by, I said nought agen it, though I thought I’d liefer have gone into Hell’s mouth than face it. But Gideon wanted to talk while the holiday feeling was on him, afore the dumbness of Sarn got the better of him agen. For it was a most peculiar thing how you couldna speak your heart out at Sarn, and I never knew whether it was the big trees brooding, or the heavy rheumaticky feeling of being so close to the water, or the old ancient house full of the remembrances of old ancient people, or that there was summat foreboded. So Gideon kept his thoughts and turned them over and over in his mind like a snowball, till at last the snowball was too much for six strong men to shift, and nigh big enough to bury anybody.

We went through a gate into an avenue like a carriage drive. At the end there was another gate, with balls on posts, very grand. Within was a carriage sweep and flower knots, trimly kept.

We stood there, looking through the wrought-iron gates at the place that Gideon said was to be ours. It was new, built since Queen Anne died, and it was a despert big house, very solid, with four windows each side the door, and over the door a porch of stone. Above the eight windows were eight more, and over them dormer windows that Gideon said would be the windows of the men-servants and the maid-servants. There were steps up to the door, and a stone mounting-block with steps also, and a walled garden at one side, and a round pigeon cote.

No light showed, and the place had a melancholy look, so still it was, so dark, in its dark still trees.

“I’d lief there was a light,” I said.

“Dear to goodness, a light? It wunna be dark this hour, to call dark. What do they want with a light? The housekeeper can spin by firelight, I hope, and an old chap can sit in the chimney corner and set his mind on a better world without wasting tallow, let alone wax!”

Gideon had taken over the management already, seemingly, and I was bound to laugh.

“You seem pretty anxious the poor gentleman should set his mind on a better world,” I says.

“Why, so I am, but not too soon. It ud never do for the old chap to go out all of a lantun-puff afore we’ve got the money together. Say in about ten year.”

“So he’s to order his coffin in ten years’ time, poor gentleman.”

“You be very sharp to-day, Prue,” says he. “But he’s bound to go some day, no danger. We mun bide our time.”

“He’s Miss Dorabella’s great-uncle, inna he?”

“Ah.”

“Wunna they want it for young Mister Camperdine?”

“Laws, no! He’s after a bishop’s palace.”

“Nor yet his cousin?”

“Dear no! He’ll never bide long in a place, that lad wunna. A rolling stone, he be, and a caution. No, it’ll be put up to auction when the old man goes, and you and me must mind to get the money ready.”

“Why, look ye, a light!” I says.

“Where?”

“Why there, in that lower window on the garden side.”

I saw it as well as could be, a large pale light wandering from window to window downstairs and then sliding up, in a long window that seemed to go down the stairs, and beginning over again in the upper story. One window would shine for a minute and then go black, and another shine. It had a very strange, uncontented look, wandering like that. There’s nothing so contented as a steadfast light, but a flickering light going to and agen in a void is a sad thing to see. It went on like that a long time, and the cold strengthened. There was no sound at all. We stood there like beggars outside the gate, and the unquiet light wandered in the dark. All of a sudden it went out.

“Oh, it’s gone out!” I says. “Oh, deary, deary me!”

“What of that?” says Gideon.

“I wanted it to steady and come to rest in a window, and shine out with a heartening glow,” I said. “But now it’s gone out.”

It distressed me mightily that it should go out, so that I wrung my cold hands together, though why it should hurt me thus I couldna say.

“It was but the housekeeper looking for her knitting-needles or old Camperdine seeking his snuff-box. And now they’ve found it, they’ve douted the light. Very sensible too.”

“No!” I said. “No! It was love, lad, wanting to steady and shine. But the house was too much for it. The dark’s closed in now. The light’s douted.”

And I began to cry, which was a foolish thing to do. But Gideon wasna so angered as he met have been, for he was in a good temper about the oxen and the house. “You’re sickening for summat,” he said, “for you be no cry-baby, Prue. Come on to your tea, now, while I tell you all that’s in my mind. I’ve a deal to say, for that little vixen of Camperdine’s has changed my mind for me, so I must tell you the new plans as well as the old.”

We turned away from the shut gate, as dumb as stones, and we left all the twenty-four windows with no light in them, and the dark trees with no breath of air in them, lying there in the vast of night.

C H A P T E R T H R E E: “_Or Die in ’tempting It_”

IT wasna near so bad as I’d feared at the inn, for the old men were gone with their droves, and the Camperdines were by this at their dinner. It is often so, if you are in heavy dread of summat and yet brave it, and behold! it is nought. The landlord and his missus, thinking little of us, sent the maid-servant to wait on us—a frightened, simple creature, like Miller’s Polly, and nothing to be feared of. We had the parlour to ourselves, for folk go home early from Lullingford market in the winter, seeing what the roads are, even to this day. I was glad of the red fire and the steaming tea, after the sadness of that house with its dead light.

Gideon began to talk after a while, very slow, and as if the words cost gold.

“Now, Prue, I’ve gotten a deal to say, and if we dunna want to be benighted, I’d best start. You know as me and Jancis have taken up together in good sadness?”

“Ah.”

“I didna think to care about any wench like I do about that girl, Prue. Catches at a chap’s vitals, she do. I never meant to go furder than a bit of fun. I didna reckon to marry, nor yet I didna mean lawless love. I meant fair by Jancis, and so long as we had our Sunday evenings it was all right. When there’s no gainsaying there’s no burning in the blood. Gainsay, and the blood’s on fire. Afore old Beguildy found us out we were contented enow and as innicent as two pinks on a stem.”

“And still be that last,” I says.

“Ah.”

He looked strangely on me for a while, and said—

“You’ve got the second sight, seemingly, our Prue.”

“No. Only a bit of sense.”

“Well, now as the old man’s given me the go-by, I do hunger and thirst after Jancis pretty near as much as I do after the place yonder, and the money and all as goes with it.”

“Not more?”

“Laws, no!”

“Then you dunna love Jancis in good sadness, Gideon. You do but lust after the girl in carnality.”

“Dear to goodness! It met be Parson preaching. That’s what the book-learning does to a woman.”

He laughed a bit, awkward like, and began stuffing baccy into his pipe. But I knew that if I’d got any wisdom it was never book-learning as gave it to me, but just the quietness of the attic.

“Well, big words or not, it’s no matter,” he said. “I want the wench. I want her so bad that I’d very near set my heart to give up all and bring her to Sarn and order one of them rush cradles off Missis Beguildy. So then, to conquer the longing, I planned to bring you to see the place, and talk about it, and maybe begin to buy some bits of things agen we furnish.”

“To harden your heart the more.”

“Ah. And I planned to get some education off you after a while, and gather power to me at election times, and be so well thought of that I could even put my heart on a squire’s girl.”

“Miss Dorabella!”

“No less. What be she, after all, but a woman? She hanna got more to give than any other woman, and what would any man, even the Lord of the Manor, do more for a girl than get her with child?”

“Husht! They’ll hear in the kitchen and be angered at such wild talk.”

“True talk.”

“Maybe true. But nobody’d like it the better for that.”

“Ever since she threw me that first saucy look I’ve had it in mind. She angered me and pleased me both. So I thought if so be I could bring myself to give up Jancis—for either I mun give up Jancis or I mun give up all thought of the other—then Jancis met have taken up with Sexton’s Sammy.”

“It would nigh kill the girl, Gideon, and Sammy’s no woman’s man, and he’s pretty well crazed with learning texts, into the bargain.”

“Oh, he’d take her if I’d let un. She stirs him to anger with her flighty ways and being a wizard’s wench and all. I see a look in Sammy’s face time and agen. Wed with her and tame her, that’s what Sammy ud do.”

“But that would be a cruel thing, Gideon.”

“Well, I’d a mind for it when we set out for market. I thought to throw Jancis at the fellow’s yeard like I throw a crust to Towser, for it mun be one thing or other. And she’d have been contented enough when the children came. Though, Lord help ’em, they’d ha’ had Sammy’s scowl and bin born with their mouths full of texes. But she’d have seen nought wrong with ’em. Anyway, that’s what I’d settled in my own mind.”

“Dear to goodness, what a God Almighty!” I says, mocking a bit, though I knew he could ha’ done it if he’d a mind. He was ever a strong man, which is almost the same, times, as to say, a man with little time for kindness. For if you stop to be kind, you must swerve often from your path. So when folk tell me of this great man and that great man, I think to myself, Who was stinted of joy for his glory? How many old folk and children did his coach wheels go over? What bridal lacked his song, and what mourner his tears, that he found time to climb so high?

“But now,” said Gideon, “my mind’s set, and I shanna change agen. I wunna give up either Jancis or the place at Lullingford here; I’ll have both. And I’ll lead Jancis out in a gown as would stand of itself, with her bosom bare as a lady’s, at the ’unt Ball, in front of Miss Dorabella. Not only that neither. But when you and Jancis be at the grand place, and the gentry calling in their carriages——”

“And Mother! You’ve missed out Mother.”

“And me a man of standing, more looked up to than Squire, and not yet old, nor near it, then——”

He was quiet a long while, thinking.

“Well, Gideon,” I says, “what then?”

“Why then, if Dorabella Camperdine comes across my path with them black eyes and that red smile, let her look to herself. I’ll take her. Out of wedlock, I ool, for what she said to you and me to-day. And when the poor wizard’s wench is my lawful missus, I’ll make Squire’s girl a w’ore.”

With that word he banged down his fist on the table so that the tankard of ale rolled on the floor.

“If you be so set in your ways,” I says, “there’ll be more than a flagon of ale spilled, my dear.”

“You talk like an old ancient woman, Prue. I be as I was made. None can go widdershins to that.”

I can hear Gideon say that now, gruff and short and with a kind of broken-hearted sound. It was as if he’d give all to be as he could never be; as if his soul in that hour, away from Sarn and all its ancient power, wrestled mightily to be free of itself. Maybe you’ve seen a dragon-fly coming out of its case? It does so wrostle, it does so wrench, you’d think its life ud go from it. I’ve seen ’em turn somersets like a mountebank in their agony. For get free they mun, and it cosses ’em a pain like the birth pain, very pitiful to see. But in our Gideon it was worse to watch. There he sat, by the comfortable fire, with the spilled beer gleaming on the quarries like dark blood, and he said no word for above an hour. I know it was that, for when he went into his trance I heard the missus of the inn call to the maid-servant to turn the spit and hasten on the meat, for supper must be served in an hour. Then all was still, and I sat with folded hands, seeing Gideon’s dark face there opposite when the fire blazed up. I sat as mum as a winter blackbird. It seemed to me that the mighty hand was upon him, striving with him to make him go widdershins to what he was, to what Father had made him, and Grandad, and all of them, back to Timothy, that had the lightning in his blood. I could see in mind Lullingford New House, and the light wandering, as if it wanted to steady and shine. I wished it might be well with Gideon, and that he met take Jancis, not for vengeance but for love, and because she was the candle of his eye, and his dear acquaintance, and not for lust. And I wished he might take thought for Mother, and even for me, that I be not like his dog or his bought slave.

After a long lapse of time I heard a voice outside say, “Is all finished?” And another voice answered, “Ah, all’s done.” It had a solemn sound, though I knew it was only the dinner they meant.

Gideon stirred and muttered to himself.

“Or die in ’tempting it,” he said.

So I knew we were all set out on a dark road, Gideon and Mother and me, and now Jancis.

We went out and saddled the nags, and set forth for home through a world as stiff as a rock, driving the oxen afore us. The dumbness had come back upon Gideon. The outing was over. The road puddles were gone beyond crackling-stiff, and were iron. And the hedges were even as the wrought-iron gates of Lullingford New House. It was the middle of the night when we came past Sarn Mere, and saw the ice a deal further out, and the lily leaves frozen under.

“Well, it’s bin a very costly day,” says Gideon, “and I’m in behopes you’ve enjoyed yourself.”

I knew it hurt the lad sore to spend. It was a crust in pocket and a sup of water mostly on market days. So I put the old men and Miss Dorabella out of mind, and only said—

“Ah, it was grand, and thank you kindly, lad.”

“And you’ll agree to all?”

“Ah, didna I vow it?”

“But that was afore Jancis.”

“I agree to Jancis. But it ud be all one if I didna.”

“Not if you wouldna work.”

“Oh, I’ll work. I never was afeard of work.”

All of a sudden a sweet scattered whistling came falling from the dim moony sky.

“Hark!” he says. “The Seven Whistlers!”

But I said I thought it was only some magpie-widgeon we’d disturbed at the end of the mere, being mortally afeard to think of those other ghostly birds.

“No,” he says. “No. It be the Seven Whistlers, sure enough. It bodes no good.”

This was a strange thing for Gideon to say, for he mostly laughed at signs and bodings, and I could not but think of it, up in the attic after.

Mother and Tivvy were sitting up for us, and seemingly Mother had seen us in the tea leaves, drownded in Sarn. She’d scarce believe in us for a long while, but cried and wrung her hands and said, “They binna real. It’s only the _know_ of them.” So I was bound to give her one of my Christmas presents to comfort her. She was ever a child in heart, was poor Mother. She was so simple and trustful that I always thought it would be as wicked to hurt her as to hurt a babe in swaddling clothes, or a poor moth flittering in the dusk. Ah, an evil thing, a devil’s trick, to betray such a trusting heart, such trembling, praying little hands!

“I be to lie in your chamber, Prue,” says Tivvy. “I be glad, for it’s cold lying alone in black frost weather.”

She looked slanting at Gideon, and I could see she was nearly wild with jealousy of Jancis. And indeed Gideon did look a proper fine man, with his face all frosty red and his eyes lit up with the day’s doings. He’d but to nod, and Tivvy ud follow. But he was never one to chop and change, and his mind was made up, so I knew it was Jancis or none. I didna want Tivvy in my bed, she did so snore and snoffle in her slumber. So I waited till she was fast, and then I took the lanthorn and Father’s old sheepskin coat that lapped me up feet and all, and I went to the attic and wrote in my book. It was always my custom, if things grieved me or gladdened me, to write them down in full. Also I had much need of the peace that was in the attic, after such a bitter dose of the world beyond Sarn. Because I had no lover, I would lief have been the world’s lover—such world, that is, as I could reach. I was like a maid standing at the meeting of the lane-ends on May Day with a posy-knot as a favour for a rider that should come by. And behold! The horseman rode straight over me, and left me, posy and all, in the mire.

C H A P T E R F O U R: _The Wizard of Plash_

CHRISTMAS went by us and nought stirred the quiet, unless you count killing the pig. Nobody came Christmassing, for there was nowhere for them to come from, and nothing for them to come for. Mother was very middling with a cough, and took to her bed, so I didna go for a lesson till the New Year. But on New Year’s Day I went, and, as I ever liked to pay first, I took the oxen straight away to the field I was ploughing for Beguildy. He couldna abide ploughing, so for every lesson I did so many furrows. I could plough nearly as well as most men, though not so well as Gideon. He drove the straightest furrow I ever saw. It was impossible to him to do anything ill. What he did, whether it was to be seen or not, whether it was done once in a way or every day, must be done as if his life was on it. He’d have no makeshifts. He’d thatch the ricks, even though they were to be cut into straight away, as well as if he was working for the thatchers’ medal. Working by his lonesome in the fields, hedging or binding sheaves, with only the tall clouds for watchers, and the woods, floating on the summer mist, he’d still labour like a man showing his mettle at a hiring fair. Times, I thought it was pitiful, the way he’d give himself no rest. And times I could almost see the crowd of folk, the farmers watching, the judge sitting in his waggon or trotting to and agen on his cob. I could almost hear the muttering of the folks, the jeering when Gideon bungled, the roar of cheering when he did well, and the judge saying in his loud voice, “I give the prize to Gideon Sarn, best man in the hedging, the binding, and the ploughing.”

Then I’d come to myself and see only the tall clouds, that hadna stirred, the tall hedges with meadowsweet below, the woods and the hills and the sweet blue air with larks hanging in it as if them above had let them down on threads, and shaking so with their joyful song that they threatened to break their threads. Not a bit did they care who won the prize, nor which of them sang best or loudest, so long as all sang, so long as none lacked nest or cropful, drink of dew and space to sing in.

These things I thought while I was ploughing the five-acre field at Plash with the white oxen, that looked yellow in the deathly white of the hoar-frost which lay over the earth like a shroud, though not too hard for ploughing.

As the share went onwards, the reddish, turned earth shone richly, and the rooks followed, for they were sore clemmed, poor things, walking stately in the furrows.

In a while Jancis came running across from the house with her mother, all agog to tell me of the handfasting of her and Gideon and of how angered Beguildy was. Jancis did truly look as lovely as a fairy, with her rosy face and yellow curls. Missis Beguildy came panting after, apron flying, and loaded with news, like one of the French frigates folk tell of.

“But we wunna starve here like crows,” she said.

“Come you in and have a sup of tea. Sarn brought me a pound canister, no less!”

I knew he must be very deep in love to bring more than a quarter, but I said nought, only finished my furrow and unspanned the cattle.

“We can have a nice chat, for Dad’s busy in his room, curing Miller’s Polly,” says Jancis.

“What’s to do with Polly?”

“It’s what _inna_ to do with the child,” says Missis Beguildy.

“First she got the chin-cough and now she’s got the ringworm. She’s always got summat. He’s put her in a chair with a string of roasted onions round her neck, and I’m sure I cried quarts getting ’em ready. Dunna you ever be wife to a wizard, Prue. It’s like what it says in the good book, and I wish I could go to church Christian and hear it, it be like it says, ‘I die daily.’ Ah, it’s like that, being wife to a wizard. If it inna onions it’s summat else. I’m sure I near broke my neck fetching bletch from the church bells for this very child, to cure the chick-pox, the maister being a deal too bone-idle to fetch it himself.”

“Never you mind, Mother, when I’m married I’ll look after you,” says Jancis.

I couldna but sigh to think what a many plans they were all making, and each plan cutting the throats of the others. I put the oxen in the shippen and came in. There was a good fire and a pleasant scent of tea, and I was bound to feel a bit glad that Polly was such a measly child, though it _was_ unkind, for I knew Beguildy ud be a long while curing her. Mother always said the mill children were measly because the water-fairy in the pool under the mill-race put her eye on their mother afore they were born, but Gideon said it was because they were fed on the flour the rats got into, and Missis Beguildy said it was because they sent ’em to Beguildy to be cured.

“A dose of brimstone and treacle, that be what she wants, and some good food. But the mill’s no place for good bread, no more than the farm’s a place for good butter, seeing it means cash, and the home folk get the leavings.”

Just then Beguildy popped his head in, and looking dreamily at his missus said—

“I want some May butter.”

“May butter! You met as well ask for gold. How dun you think I’ve got any May butter, nor June nor July butter neither, when we sell every morsel of butter we make almost afore it be out of the churn, and never taste nought but lard?”

“I’m bound to have May butter or the charm wunna work,” says Beguildy in his husky voice.

“What be it for?”

“To fry the mid bark of the elder and cure the chin-cough.”

“Well, for all the butter, May or December, as she’ll get in our place, she may die of the chin-cough!” shouts Missis Beguildy. And with that, a loud roaring came from the inner chamber, because poor Polly thought she was at death’s door.

“Go and read in your old books, and find summat easier,” says Missis Beguildy. “I’ve summat better to think of than charms.”

“You be above yerself, woman. You think to see our Jancis wedded and bedded and rounding to a grandchild all in a lantun-puff. But I tell ye not every troth ends in church, not every ring holds wedlock, not every bridegroom takes his vargin, and I dunna like the match! Owd Sarn still begrutches me that crown, though he be where crowns buy nought. And I tell you young Sarn was born under the threepenny planet and’ll never keep money. Sleeps on his face, too. And them as does that drowns. My gel’s not for Sarn. You may ride rough-shod over my wish and will. You may send out bidding letters for a love-spinning, which is all to the good. But still I’ll bide for a higher bidder. Why, she be as white as a lady and as sound as a well-grown tater! No squire nor lord even but ud take it kind to be asked to lie beside her.”

“But not to wed with her.”

“What of it? He’d pay, wouldna he?”

By this, Jancis was roaring-crying as well as Polly. Beguildy popped into his room again, and we set to work to comfort her. We drew close in to the fire with our tea and planned for me to write the bidding letters for the love-spinning.

“And a caking into the bargain,” says Missis Beguildy. “You make money by a caking. And weaver shall come and stop a tuthree days and make up all we’ve spun.”

Jancis clapped her hands.

“Oh! I dearly love a Do!” she said.

“Ah, so do I.”

“But a caking be the best of all. Oh, I love Gideon dearly for asking me to wed!”

All the while as we talked we could hear poor Polly coughing and whooping sore, and Beguildy shouting—“Quiet now, hush yer noise, I say! Curse ye! Ye’re cured!”

Then Missis Beguildy asked me to write down the biddings for them to see. So I did, and they were mighty pleased, for all they couldna read what I’d written any more than two butterflies in the hedge can read the mile stone.

“Put down,” says Missis Beguildy, “as Jancis, only daughter of Mister Felix Beguildy and Hepzibah his wife, is promised and trothed to Mister Gideon Sarn, farmer, living on his own land at Sarn. And put down as they’ll be wed as soon as may be, and that Jancis invites ’em to a love-spinning.”

“And put down,” says Beguildy, popping his head in again, “that you’re a parcel of fools, and that this marriage shall not be till Sarn Mere goeth into the earth whence it came. For I’ve seen in a glass darkly a young squire that rides this way with his pockets full of gold.”

When Polly was gone, coughing as bad as ever, and I went into the other room for my lesson, I gave Jancis a little pat on shoulder, for I was sorry for the child. She looked more than ever like a petal of the may on a day of cold rain.

“Well, well now,” says Beguildy, “I make no doubt you’ve ploughed a tidy bit?”

“Ah.”

“Well, what’ll I learn ye?”

“Learn me to write ‘_Marriages be made in heaven_,’ Mister, and ‘_Whom God hath joined together let not man put asunder_.’”

He chuckled a bit.

“Clever wench! Clever wench! But you’ll not get the better of me. Rather shall you write, ‘_Intermeddle not with high matters_.’ Dunna a wizard, as knows the fortunes of a parish, know what be best for his own?”

“Leave be, Mister! There’s enough agen the poor child, what with Fate and such a pig-headed man as Gideon. If you meddle, maybe you’ll do harm as you canna mend.”

“Namore, namore! I’ve said me say. Dunna weary me.”

He beat lightly on his little music, which was a sign that his patience was over. As the notes tinkled out, I knew it was useless to argle any more. For as there was no power or sweetness in his flinty music, such as there is from harp and fiddle, so there was none in his soul. It gave a small and flinty music because it was a small and flinty thing. He’d got no pity because he’d got no strength. For it inna weaklings and women that pity best, but the strong, mastering men. They may put it from them as my brother Sarn did. But even so it will come upon them some day, and the longer they deny it the stronger it will be when it comes. Ah! It met even be such an agony as will make a man hate his life.

C H A P T E R F I V E: _The Love-Spinning_

IT took a long while to get ready for the Do, it being a caking as well. A good few of the religious sort held that cakings were wickedness, being in the nature of gambling. But for us women, leading such lost-and-forgotten lives, they were a bit of enjoyment, and even Sexton’s wife said she’d come and bring Tivvy. She got Missis Beguildy to fix it on a day when Sexton was going with Parson to a place a long way off to look into the case of a woman taken in adultery. She knew Sexton ud stay till the bitter end, and wouldna be raught back till the small hours. And even if he found out, he’d be so contented at the punishing of a sinner that maybe he’d not be more than grumbling-angry.

The name _caking_ was given because we played cards for cakes. To tell the sober truth, it was real gambling. The woman who gave the Do made a big batch of cakes, saffron or rich sponge, and sold them to the guests at a penny each. Cakes were what we played for, and the losers were bound to buy more, whereas a good player could go away with a big basketful, or she could sell them to the losers at two-pence each.

Mother was not to hold or to bind, but she must come. Gideon promised to look after our jobs for the day, so we set out early. We were to make a day of it, spinning all the forenoon and then, after the noon-spell, settling down to cards.

It was a fine fresh morning with a damp wind full of the scent of our ricks. There’s no scent like it for bringing summer in winter. When I smell it now I see the long gleamy waves of grass like green silk, and the big red clover bobs, and corncrakes running low in the thick grass, dark with dew.

But at that time the first thing it put me in mind of was how hard-got it was, how we’d sweated and laboured by moonlight, and got up agen afore we’d had time for a dream, to sweat and labour once more. Still, it smelled pleasant, and so did Gideon’s bonfire of old hedge-brushings, and the deep floor of leaves in the wood, and the pine-trees where there were always canbottlins cheeping and playing.

Mother looked well in her big poke bonnet and frilled tippet, like a bright bird with her quick brown eyes and red cheeks. We only took the little spinning-wheels, seeing we were to spin flax and hemp and not wool, so I could carry them easy. The mere was a bit cruddled with ice at the north side still, but you could tell that spring was afoot though it was but February, by the mating-games of the water-ousels and the nesting caw of our rooks. There were green tongues on the woodwind sprays too, so bright, they minded me of the tongues of flame that came down from heaven. In that dead time, coming so quick and fresh, they always seemed more to me than all the honeysuckle blossoms of the summer.

When we came through the oakwood Mother smoothed her mittens very complaisant and said—

“I binna tending swine this day. I be a lady.”

“Indeed to goodness you be,” I said. For I did dearly like her to enjoy herself. I said I made no doubt she’d win enough of cakes to keep us all for a week of nine days.

“Will Jancis be a good daughter to me, think you, my dear?”

“I make no doubt of it, Mother,” I said.

“Will she leave me my own place by the fire and speak kind?”

“Ah, she ool, I know. But you needna fret, for it’ll be many a long day afore those two are shouted in church.”

“I’d lief not. I’d lief be a granny, Prue. Will the babe favour Gideon or her, dun you think?”

I said, not having the second sight I couldna tell, but I thought it ud be the very spit-and-image of its dad.

“Maybe, maybe. It ud be better, a power, that it should favour us than the Beguildys. It’s bad for a babe to have a preached-against grandad.”

“Oh, there’s not much harm in Beguildy, nor yet good,” I said. “He be just a pleasant painted show like a blown egg.”

“I be glad he’ll be away to-day.”

Missis Beguildy had sent a message by Gideon to her cousin at Lullingford to tell her to send for Beguildy on that day to come and cure her man’s toothache. For seemingly he’d had one taken out by the beast-leech, and he parted so hard with it that the beast-leech, being a terrible man when his blood’s up, loosened all the others lugging it out. So he got the toothache shouting-bad, and it was a good amusement for Beguildy to go and cure it. He was always very proud of that charm beginning—

“_Peter sat a-weeping on a marble stone,_”

and he’ll go on saying it over and over till the person cries for mercy. Then he claps on a bagful of salt, fire-hot, and whether it’s the salt or the charm, the person most always says he’s cured.

“They’ll keep him late, not to spoil our sport,” says Mother, clapping her hands softly like a child.

We came out into the open fields, and I thought no day had ever looked so fair, yet knew not why. The hills Lullingford way were blue as a summer sky, a deep promising blue, and there was a richness on the world, so it looked what our Parson used to call sumptuous. There were the red ploughlands and the old yellow stubble in the sun, and Plash Pool, glassy blue, and the mill roof in the valley, red. All the grassland was clear green like the green in church windows, or like the green hill far away where no herb grows but the Calvary clover. Even a summer day can seldom match such a day as that, when the snow is but just gone and the waters freed, and when there is a clear shining above and below. You could tell there was summat out of the common at the Stone House, by the great blaze of firelight in the window. Jancis came running to the door and made her obedience to Mother very prettily. We were the first, saving for Miller’s Polly and her mother. They were always first everywhere, for they said an hour from home was an hour in heaven. They wouldna explain more, only if you drove them hard and asked them for why, was it the Mill—’us or the water or what? Then they’d say, “The Miller.” And if you said why, what ailed the man? they’d say, “Was he ever known to smile, leave alone laugh?” And indeed he never was. He’d got a lattance in the speech as well, and what with the two things he was very disheartening to live with. There was a foolish tale that he’d had a bogy out of the water for sweetheart, and that when he got married she put silence on him for a curse.

Missis Miller was a poor creature, like a mealworm, but very pleasant-spoken. Sexton’s missus was just the opposite. She always made me think of a new-painted coach, big and wide, with an open road, and the horn blowing loud and cheerful, and full speed ahead. She was as gay in her dress as a seven-coloured linnet, and if she _could_ wear another shawl or flounce or brooch, she would. She wore so many petticoats it was a wonder she could walk, and once Tivvy said to me that to watch her mother undress was like peeling a big onion down to the core. Tivvy wasna one ever to make a joke, so it shows what a great thing it must ha’ been to watch. I was used to think myself, seeing her and Sexton together, that she was like a big hank of dyed wool, and he was the thin black distaff it was to be wound off on to. When she and Tivvy were come, we were eight, and our wheels made a pleasant humming in the warm room the while we talked. The ox-driver’s wife from Plash Farm came next, with two tall girls, very quiet and meek for all their size. Folk said their father tied them to the ox-trevis every Saturday night and beat them to keep them in mind of their manners. They’d always stand up if their mother spoke to them, and bend their long necks like meek swans. The twelfth was the shepherd’s wife from the moors beyond Plash. She was a strange creature, but fair to look upon, enough to make a man’s mouth water. She’d got sloping shoulders and long hips, and her hair was like a blackbird’s wings. Her eyes were clear green and her face was flushed like a ripe peach, and she’d smile in secret to herself like a fairy. It was said, but whether with any truth I know not, that the shepherd paid no money for the moors, that belonged to a tavern-keeper in Silverton, but that every midsummer Felena, which was his wife, went up to the rocks at the hilltop and spent the night with the tavern-keeper. There were wilder tales too, about her being seen dancing by moonlight in a ring of cattle and sheep, mother-naked, and how a shaggy creature with ram’s horns, that could only have been Satan, came and danced along with her, mopping and mowing, while the ring of beasts made a low moaning. But to me she seemed a pleasant, harmless creature, and very handy in all she did.

I could see that the ox-herd’s wife didna care for her girls to be spinning with Felena. She was so respectable and highminded that she never spoke of anything between banns-up and baptism if she could help it, and took no notice of young couples during that time. She said nought to Felena, and it was Mother, ever kindly, who said—

“You spin like a fairy, Missis Felena.”

“There’s nought else to do in the mountain,” said Felena in a low, singing voice, “but spin and spin, and spin, morning, noon and night.”

“Save on Midsummer night, my girl,” raps out Missis Sexton, “and then I’m told you’ve enough to do and plenty!”

Felena turned scarlet and hung her head, and suddenly Moll and Sukey burst out, as if they’d wanted to say it for years and years—

“Oh, Missis Felena, is it true as you lie with the tavern-keeper and dance on the heath mother-naked?”

Never did I see any woman so angered as their mother was. “Sukey and Moll!” she says.

“Honoured ma’am?” says they, all of a twitter.

“Out with yer hands!” says she.

And stooping down she took off her sandal shoe, which she wore because it was a party, and slippered ’em both on the hands right soundly, till they roared agen.

I heard after that one married a farmer and the other a retired coachman, and both did well: it wasna for lack of correction if they did ill.

They went on with their spinning, meek as mice, snoffling over their wheels. Missis Beguildy was very put-about, for it seemed like being a melancholy party. So I asked Jancis to sing _Green Gravel_ to liven us up. We all joined in, even Polly, whooping the while. Felena sang in a cool-sounding voice, and Sexton’s missus sang very loud, and Mother quavering, and Missis Miller like a bird new-come from the cage.

So what with the singing and the whirring, the kitchen was like a tree full of starlings. It was getting on for time to stop spinning when Mother said should we sing—

“_The Lord’s my Shepherd,_”

and afterwards I spoke for having—

“_He brought me to His Lordly House,_ _His Banner it was Love._”

And just as we were singing that, and the wheels going like churn-owls, there was a quick footfall without, and a rush of fresh air, and a long ray of sunshine from the door to me, and he stood there in the light looking upon us.

“He,” I say, as if you’d know him out of the world as I did.

He stood in the doorway, and I rose up from my seat in the shadows at the back of the room, as if he was my own bidden guest.

C H A P T E R S I X: _The Game of Costly Colours_

HOW did he look? What like was he? Was he well-favoured? It be hard to say. There are no looks in love, no outward seeming, no telling over of features. When you are but a moth in the candle of his eye, can you tell his stature, or if he be dark or fair? Did Magdalene, that was like Felena, know, when she lay at the feet of the only man she ever loved yet never loved, whether the carpenter’s Son featured His mother or not, whether He was big or little in stature? Shall we know, when we be come into His presence that made us, what outward seeming His majesty has? No. Only our hearts will tremble in the light. I could never tell you how he looked as he stood there; but I can tell you how the women looked that glassed him.

Tivvy and Polly gaped in wonder, finger on lip. Moll and Sukey leaned forrard as you lean to a fire in winter, and their mother gathered them to herself jealously. Missis Sexton spread her flounces, and Jancis coloured up and said “O!” and set one of her ringlets straight, and said “O!” again. Mother smiled at him, and Felena—well, Felena’s eyes settled on him as a brown owl drops to its prey.

I sat down farther back in my corner, and a faintness came over me. For here was my lover and my lord, and behold! I was hare-shotten.

The room was all so still, you could hear the drip of water off the roof.

All of a sudden he laughed out, and indeed it must have been a comical thing to see us all like mice when Pussy goes by, and to hear us one minute making such a to-do, and the next making no to-do at all.

He off with his hat and made us a little bow and said—

“Sarvant, ladies! The weaver, if you please.”

If we pleased! As if we wouldna be pleased with anything he met say! So he was the weaver! Well, it made no manner difference to me. If he’d said he was the king of Fairyland or a murderer with the bloodhounds after un, it would ha’ been all one to me.

“Kester Woodseaves, if _you_ please, missus,” he says in a kind of merry mockery, looking towards Missis Sexton, she being the biggest, both in tallness and roundness.

Then Missis Beguildy brought him to the fire and made him take bite and sup. But I kept out of sight.

“Be you from far, sir?” asks Felena in her lingering way. Her lips were red and pleasant, though not kind.

“Lullingford, missus,” he made answer, with a measuring look. “Neither very near nor very far.”

“As the crow flies, near,” she said, as if she pleaded.

“Only we bain’t crows, missus.”

“I live on the mountain over yonder,” she says; “and I’m nigher to Lullingford, a power, than these.”

“A longish ride.”

“Not far! It be on your road to—a’most everywhere.”

I thought, “She says all I’d like to say.”

“By gum, missus, I doubt it’s on the way to hell,” he made answer.

They were like folk wrestling, but we did not know their quarrel.

“Oh, I be glad it’s you that’s to weave my wedding linen, and not the ugly hired man,” said Jancis.

“So you’re to be wed, child?”

“Ah. To Gideon Sarn, sir. Dun you know Gideon?”

“I’ve heard tell of him.”

I wondered what he’d heard of Gideon. All in a minute it was more to me that he should like Gideon and Mother and me than that I should master the reading of Revelations, which beat me still, because of the strange words and the roundabout way of the telling. I’d laboured over it a long while, and labour brings a thing near the heart’s core. Above and beyond that, I wanted to know the mind of John, he being lonesome on his bylet in the sea as we were at Sarn, and having many thoughts in his mind, both deep and bright. Now one like Tivvy had no thoughts at all, and you soon tire of looking in an empty porringer. And Mother had two thoughts or three, and Gideon two. So the mind of John had drawn me as none other did afore; but now the book of Revelations was but a windle-straw to this man’s whim.

“Oh, Mister Woodseaves, will you come to my wedding if Prue writes you a bidding-letter?” asked Jancis.

“Maybe I ool,” he made answer, looking at her mother as much as to say that she could give him the go-by if she would. “And who’s Prue, that can write bidding-letters?”

I was in a swelter, but just as Jancis was going to rush on me and drag me out of hiding, Sukey and Moll, who could never be quiet for long, burst out—

“Please, mister, ool you come to our weddings too?”

Then they giggled mightily, and put their heads together, shaking their curls and bending their long necks. Then they put their hands afore their mouths and ran across the kitchen to him, and one whispered in this ear and one whispered in that, and then they ran back, to their bench, two-double with laughter. Jancis, being near, heard Sukey whisper, “I’d lief you were bridegroom!” I hoped their mother wouldna get to know, and slipper them again, for they’d saved me from being seen. I couldna bear that he should see me, for fear of a cold look, or scorn. I’d liefer stay down-under, like the daffadily, lest the weather be winterly. For if she too eagerly comes up, desirous of the sun, she can but stand and shudder in the bitter frost, torn by the fangs of the winds. So she has lost her warmship, and yet hanna won through to summer.

“Sir! Be you wed?” asked Felena, and her voice was pretty and slippery like a grass snake.

“Why, no to that, missus.”

“Nor handfasted?”

“I’m thinking you were an attorney once,” he says, “and stuck questions into poor men like skewers before you put ’em out of their misery.”

She took no notice, but only said—

“You be not of this country. You come from afar.”

“Oh, indeed to goodness, he is of this country, Missis Felena,” Mother chirped up like a little bird. “He came back from being ’prentice after his uncle was drownded. It was his uncle wove the mourning when my poor maister died, falling down in a fit and dying in his boots on the sabbath the bees did play.”

“And, now he’s dead and your A’ntie’s dead, you live by your lonesome, I suppose,” says Jancis.

“Well, I do and I don’t.”

“Dear to goodness, Mister, have you got a kept ’oman?”

This was Felena.

“Your thoughts be all beaded on one string,” says Kester.

Then Sukey and Moll burst out—

“Who cooks for ye?”

“Who sweeps for ye?”

“Who sews yer buttons on?”

“Who knits yer stockings?”

“I do for myself, my dears, and my thoughts be my company.”

He looked round very contented, and I could see he was thankful that none of all these women had a right to come over his door-sill.

“Well, thank you for me, Missus,” he said, putting down his mug and plate. “And now for work. The loom’s in the attic, I suppose?”

“Ah, I’ll show you. There’s a bed there too. You wunna finish for two days or three. There’s a plenty for you to do. But come down and get your supper along with us, for it inna every day we have a randy.”

By the time she came back every tongue was at it. Sukey and Moll were quarrelling as to which of them, if they could do as they willed and go and work for him, should pour his supper ale and fill his pipe. It was enough to make an owl laugh.

“A nice young fellow,” says Missis Sexton, “and a God-fearing, I’ll lay, if the women let un alone.”

She looked very meaningly at Felena.

But Felena was fallen into a muse.

“I like him better than Gideon, a power, though Gideon _be_ your brother, Prue,” says Tivvy.

Missis Miller spoke for the first time.

“He’s as different,” she said, “as different as mortal man could be, from the Miller!”

It was the greatest praise she could give.

Polly gave a loud whoop, as if to say that she agreed.

“Well, time goes by, and even a toothache must be cured some day,” said Missis Beguildy. “So we’d best set to at the caking afore my maister comes back. Thank you kindly for the spinning. We’ve done enough to keep that young man busy for above a bit.”

She brought out a big willow-pattern dish stacked with cakes, saffron and sponge-fingers and gingerbread babies. These last are little men of gingerbread, with currants for eyes.

Sukey and Moll screamed with joy to see them.

“I dunna care about the others, if so be I can win a gingerbread man!” says Sukey.

“I’ll win six,” says Moll. “Six curranty babies for me!”

“You’ll need more gumption than you’ve got then,” says Missis Sexton, “For there’s no game so hard as the game of Costly Colours. I’ve played it at every randy since I was a maid, and I’ll lay that your Ma has too, and Missis Sarn and Missis Miller. Yet it’s a difficult game to us still. And for you that have played it seldom or never, it’ll go hard, but you’ll lose every cake.”

“Tell ’em the way of it,” says Missis Beguildy, “you’ve got such a head.”

Though she meant it in good sadness, it made me laugh. For indeed Missis Sexton’s head was marvellous to see, with oiled hair in rolls and bobs and bands, and a high comb, and ribbons, and a vasty cap on top of all.

She went across the kitchen like a coach and six, and stood by the fire, telling us about the game of Costly Colours—how you counted, and of the trumps, and how three of a suit was a _prial_, and four of a suit was _Costly_, and how you could _mog_, or change, your cards, and of the deuces and Jacks, and “Two for his heels,” and how if you made nought of your hand it was called a cock’s nest, and you were bound to give a cake all round.

“I canna mind a word!” says poor Tivvy.

“Nor me,” says Polly.

So they stood out and left us ten, and it was only eight we wanted for two tables. So I offered to stand out.

“Why, you be the best player of all,” says Jancis. And the mother of Sukey and Moll settled it, saying—

“Stand out, girls. You can play turn-the-trencher with Polly and Tivvy. But no noise!”

They burst out crying, wanting to win the cakes. But their mother said did they want more slipper, so they hushed. Then she bought them each a gingerbread man, and promised them some more at the end.

Felena drew at the same table with me. That is to say, it was the pig-killing bench with a board and a white cloth on it, for they had but one table.

“There’s not one of us women but ud like a gingerbread man, is there, Prue Sarn?” she says. “So, us being too old for cakes, shall us make-believe to be playing for the soul of the weaver?”

“As you please,” I says. “But it seems to me to be none of our business.”

“Why, Prue Sarn, you’re as white as a shroud one minute, and as red as a peony the next, and such burning eyes! What ails you?”

I was angry, yet there was a warmship in this one thing, that she seemed to be counting me as one like herself, and not as one that was set aside from the game of love. I suppose, being under suspicion of dancing with the devil, she had a fellow-feeling with me for being mixed up with tales of witchcraft. For they’d even begun to say of me that I took shape as a hare on dark moonless nights, and went loping across the hills, and had a muse running under the churchyard. Such things were first said in idleness or mischief or to scare children, and then, in the loneliness of old farms, full of creakings and meanings on windy nights, they grew. And none can tell what such things will grow into at long last, nor what harm they may do. I didna like it much when Felena took his name on her lips, for all on a sudden it was a precious name to me. And it seemed to me then, as it ever has, that he was not a man to speak of lightly. Watching him out of my darkness beyond the settle, I had thought his wrath would be like a cloud-burst, though his smile was a spring day full of warm gillyflowers.

Felena drew me farther from the rest.

“A man,” she said, “whose like I’ve not seen afore, neither on the roads nor at market. The others are gaubies to him. Did you see the colour of his eyes?”

“No.”

“Nor could I see. His eyelids cut across them so straight, and the candle of his eye is so big and black, you canna see the colour. I’d lief be nigh him, to see.”

Her glass-green eyes misted, and a rich, swooning look came over her.

“A man to gamble for,” she said.

“Take your places! Take your places! Cut for first deal in the game of Costly Colours!” cries Missis Sexton.

As I sat down I twisted the words of Felena in my mind, and said in the deeps of myself—

“Not a man to gamble for. A man to die for.”

We gave our minds to the game, and the four girls having been sent into the yard, the room was as silent as a dream.

I could hear them singing _Barley Bridge_ out there.

_Shift your feet, in nimble flight,_ _You’ll be home by candlelight._ _Open the gates as wide as the sky,_ _And let the king come riding by._

After a while the singing died away, and I wondered what mischief was brewing. But I’d enough to do, for I was determined to beat Felena, and as Missis Sexton was her partner and Missis Miller was mine, I knew I should have my work cut out.

The fire, mended with pine wood, gave a good, sweet smell and a warm light, enough to play by. It lit up the walls, and the sticky gingerbread men on the blue dish, and Jancis, as fair to see as if she’d been made out of solid gold in old time, for an altar. In the quietness, with _Barley Bridge_ in my mind, a sort of waking dream came to me.

I saw a great crowd of people beside the troubled water of Sarn. They were dressed in holiday colours, but their faces were evil. Then one came riding through them on a tall horse, and his face was the face of the weaver. A woman stood forth from the crowd. She had a necklace of green glass beads and green blazing eyes. She cried out—

“My body, my body, for a ride on your saddle!”

But he turned aside from her to one who stood hidden, in a torn, sad-coloured dress, with a hare-shotten lip.

He stooped to her, saying—

“Ah, my dear acquaintance!”

And she gave him a sprig of rosemary. She said no word, and she supposed he would go by her. But he set his arms about her and gathered her up before him on the saddle, and his right arm was strong around her. So they rode away, and the sound of the people died till it was less than the hum of a midge, and there was nothing but a scent of rosemary, and warm sun, and the horse lengthening its stride towards the mountains, whence came the air of morning.

* * * * *

“Two for his nob!” called Missis Sexton. “Your deal, Prue.”

So I tucked my legs under the bench as well as I could for her furbelows, and went at it with a will. And I may say that Missis Miller and I won, out and out, to her everlasting astonishment. For she seemed to think it an impertinence on her part to beat Missis Sexton.

“You played like a demon, Prue Sarn,” said Felena.

It was late, so Jancis opened the door and called, “Supper!” and in rushed the four hoydens, who seemed children to me, though I was nearly of an age with them. They burst out with their doings, though they had better have kept them to themselves.

“We’ve bin in the attic.”

“We sat on the bed!”

“He can whistle like a throstle.”

“He weaves as quick as ninepence!”

“He’s got a green coat for Sundays and a Bible with pictures in it, and he can read the Bible.”

“He’s got a watch, and a pipe with a silver band, and he won the wrestlers’ medal at Silverton.”

“He canna abide bull-baiting nor cock-fighting nor shameless women.”

“He likes a good song and home-brewed in reason, and a dance in the meadow, and the sound of bells.”

“He’s got a great lump of muscle on his arm, like a frozen snowball.”

“We measured un on the attic door, and found the inches with the weaver’s measure.”

“He be thirty-eight inches round the middle and five foot ten inches high!”

“He’s got a pair of Wellington boots, but he dunna wear ’em much, being above his station and a dommed lot of trouble to clean.”

“_He_ said dommed, _we_ didna.”

“He likes children and dogs and a quiet life.”

“He wouldna mind a missus of his own if she was biddable. Only he’s never seen the woman he’d lief have yet.”

“His eyes be watchet blue, what you can see of ’em for the black middles and the lids and the lashes.”

“And if so be he’d got any sisters he’d like ’em to favour Sukey and me!”

“God bless me!” says the mother of Sukey and Moll, and I could see the slipper threatening, “God bless me, not a thousand starlings in the reeds make such a din.”

It was lucky for the girls that their mother happened to have won.

“Get your tippets on now, this instant minute!” she said.

“Call un down, Jancis!” they pleaded.

So she called him to supper. The sound of the treadles and the thud of the batten stopped, and he came down.

Sukey ran to him and put summat into his hand. Then they made their curtsies and said—

“Thank you for me,” and followed their mother.

But Sukey put her head in at the door again, and gave a bit of a giggle and whispered—

“I gid him my gingerbread baby!”

“Out, girls!” ordered their mother, and off they went, with a lanthorn to light them, and the ox-goad in case of gentlemen of the road.

I went out to the barn, that Kester Woodseaves might not see me, and when I came back he was gone to the attic again. Felena had gone early, with a luring smile and a word for him.

“If you come our way, Mister, I’ll learn you the story of Adam and Eve.”

The two from the mill were very unwilling to part, but at last they went, and we made ready to go also.

“A right good caking!” says Missis Beguildy. “I’ve made enough on the cakes to pay weaver, and we’ve spun a deal. A Love Spinning’s a great salvation. So now you can tell your son, Missis Sarn, as we shall be ready with the bride and the linen as well, when he gives the word to make the bed.”

Beguildy raught back as we set out. He was a bit peart, but not drunk. He said he’d met Miss Dorabella’s cousin, and that he wouldna believe Beguildy could raise Venus. So he’d told him to come and see for himself.

“Venus? Where _is_ the baggage?” says his wife. “How can you raise her if she inna here?”

But he’d only sing—

“_Peter sat a-weeping,_”

and play, very dot-and-go-one, on his little flints.

C H A P T E R S E V E N: “_The Maister Be Come_”

“WELL, Sarn,” says Mother when we raught back, “we’ve spun a deal and had a good randy, and now your wedding sheets be on the loom.”

Gideon looked bashful and said it ud be many a long day afore enough of money was gotten together for that.

“Our Prue won at her table!”

“Eh, did she now? Well done!”

He could understand that and respect it, for it was what he liked to do.

“Cakes enough to keep us a week of nine days!” says Mother.

“She was thinking of the savation, I make no doubt.”

“No, I wunna, Mother,” I said.

“Why, what was it then?”

“I dunno. I just wanted—Costly Colours, Mother,” I says, in a foolish way.

“But what use be they if you get no cakes with them?”

I said I supposed they were no use, but all the same I wanted them—the Costly Colours.

“She’s sleepy,” says Gideon, “that’s what she is, else she’d talk sense. Best go to bed both.”

“Shanna I bide for the lambs?”

For at lambing-time I was used to sit up part of the nights, to let Gideon get a wink of sleep. But he said no, I’d had a day of it, and I might as well finish in style with a good night.

“I’ve bin as lazy as a lord all day,” he says, “being obliged to be about the place to do the little jobs.”

He was a good-hearted lad, in spite of all, and if he missed to do a kindness it was only because he didna think of it, or because his mind was so set on one thing. And times if he’d been callous and it was brought home to him, he’d take it very hard, though often it was a long while after.

“Well, bed then, Prue!”

Mother hopped about with her stick like a robin with the rheumatics.

“It’s been a grand day. A day to think on and talk over. Not wrong neither, for if we be still in our blacks, it was a kindness we were doing. None can blame for a kindness. Did I demean myself well, Prue?”

“Why, yes, Mother, no danger!”

“Did I spin well?”

“You spun grand.”

She ever had this way of asking, like a child, and she wound herself round your heart like a child, too.

“And such a nice young man, the weaver be, Sarn! A man any woman ud like for a son.”

“Be that Woodseaves?”

“Ah.”

“A fine wrestler, they say. A deal of booklarning for one of our class too. Squire offered un a clerking job at the Hall, but he wouldna take it. Said he’d liefer work with his hands and that he couldna abide politics, for they were all lies and he’d sooner keep clear. ‘I’ll weave white linen rather than black lies’ he says, and the owd Squire was very huffy. He’d like to have given Woodseaves warning to leave the place, only the house is hisn, willed by his uncle.”

Mother wanted to know if I liked the weaver.

“I thought you didna, my dear, for you never spoke, but went beyond the settle.”

“Like him?” I said. “Oh . . . like him?”

“Why, look ye, Prue, you be asleep on your feet,” said Gideon. “Off to bed now, or you’ll do no work to-day’s morrow.”

But indeed I was not asleep, but moithered. For it is a strange thing, and very strange, when the maister is come, and you would lief fetch him in and bring out the best, fresh butter and cheese in large dishes, and new milk, even to the top of the big stean, and when you’d put on your Sabbath gown and a posy, and smile at him with a yes for all his askings, and behold! all is nothing, for you have a hare-shotten lip, being under the ban of witchcraft.

“_The Maister be come, and calleth for thee. The Maister be come . . ._”

All night, in the attic, I could hear those words, very triumphing and yet sad. And when the dark thinned and shapes began to steal out from the blackness, and the smell of dawn came in, and our game-cock crowed loud and sweet because it was the beginning of spring, I still heard those words, with kindness in them and a shiver of dread—“_The Maister be come_.”

The words made such a murmuration, and were so piercing-sweet that I wrote them in my book. Of all I had thought to write of the Love-spinning and the game of Costly Colours, and of his coming, I wrote little. Yet when I open the book and see those four words in the very best tall script I could do, it all comes back to me so clear, as if it was to-day.

I looked at the loom, and saw him there, weaving. I looked at my copy book and wondered if he could do the tall script and the short, red and black, plain and flourished. And I was very sure that he could do them all, and more.

Next morning Jancis came running down the path, and I wanted to say, “Is he well?” For it seemed to me that anything might have come to him in the dark hours. But I could only say, “When does the weaver go?”

“Oh, to-morrow,” she said, as if it was no matter.

Then she cried and begged me to help her, for Beguildy was determined to raise Venus to confound the young squire, come what might.

“And it be me as is to be Venus! Oh dear! Oh dear! And it’s the day after to-morrow. And I’m feared, Prue. For if Sarn knew that I’d stood up in a room all naked with a pink light a-shining on me, and a strange man there, never would he speak to me agen.”

“No,” I said, for I knew Gideon pretty well.

“And he’d be bound to find out.”

“Ah, he met.”

“But Feyther’s mad about it. Raise Venus he ool. He says young Mister Camperdine laughed so, and clapped him on shoulder and said he’d give un five pound to do it, _whatever_ he raised. Five pound, Prue! And when I said no, he beat me. And he says if I wunna do it, he’ll put me to the field work, and beat me every Saturday for a year. Oh, Prue, whatever is to be done?”

“How’s he going to set about it?”

“Oh, I’m to be in the cellar under his room, and the trap door’s to be open, and I’m to have a rope under armpits on a pulley to the roof, and Mother’s to be in cellar to light the smoky stuff and put the rope round me proper. Then Feyther’ll pull the rope in the kitchen, under the door, and I shall come up slow under the red light He says it ull be too dimmery to see my face, but that’s poor comfort. It wouldna be any excuse to Sarn’s mind.”

“No. Be you very fond of Gideon, Jancis?”

“Ah, I be.”

“Do ye mind that text, ‘The Maister be come’?”

“In the Bible? Ah, I mind it.”

“Do you feel that way about Gideon?”

The pretty colour came in her face.

“Oh, yes, indeed, Sarn be maister.”

“And the other . . . goes to-morrow, you say?”

“What other?”

“Why, Mister Woodseaves.”

“Oh, he goes to-morrow.”

“Well, look ye, Jancis, I’ll do it for you.”

“_You?_”

Her mouth was so round and so red in her astonishment that I could have hit the girl.

“Yes, me! I know it’s a funny thing for me to be Venus,” I said bitterly.

“But Feyther ud know.”

“You say he’s to be in the kitchen.”

“And the young man!”

“You say he inna to see your face. It’ll be dark and I’ll turn aside. And I’ll put the muslin off the currant bushes over my head, so as he wunna see my dark hair. He’ll see what he’s come to see, the gallus young wretch, a naked woman. Then he’ll pay the money and you’ll go free.”

“Oh, Prue, you be good! I love you, Prue! I’ll make it up to you some way. The best of it is that it wunna matter for you, seeing you’ll never have a lover.”

So cruel can folk be, and mean nothing. This was the reward for my kind act. But those that say good doings are rewarded are wrong.

I’d like to have strangled her for that saying. The angry blood was roaring in my ears.

“Go away now,” I said. “We’ll talk of it to-morrow. But go quick now out of my sight!”

And with a puzzled and frightened look she went.

C H A P T E R E I G H T: _Raising Venus_

SERIOUS-MINDED folk will need to pass over this raising of Venus, but I will shorten it as well as I can. It seemed a dreadful thing to me, as I set forth when the evening came, that I should be going to show myself stark naked. For though I knew that Miss Dorabella and other grand ladies did take off the tops of their gowns, evenings, and come forth half bare, and think it no shame, yet women of our sort have more chariness of themselves.

As I went in by the garden way, through the door on the low level, not to be seen, I was all of a tremble, and it was only the pitifulness of poor Jancis that made me go through with it. We could hear Beguildy moving about up above opening the trap-door and putting all ready. I thought what a silly old man he was, to think anybody believed in his May-games. Then we heard young Mister Camperdine’s horse, and there was a shuffling of feet above, and Beguildy pulled on the rope to show all was ready.

Oftentimes it is easier to die for love’s sake than to be made a fool of for love’s sake. So I thought as I was lugged up into the dark room in a cloud of smoke that made me gasp, holding out my hands to keep me from knocking against the sides of the trap, and not knowing whether to laugh at the foolishness of it all, or to cry at the sorrowfulness of this play-acting, which so mocked me. For here I was pretending to be the most beautiful woman that ever was, and a goddess into the bargain, and yet I was cursed as you know.

All was dimmery in the room. I could but just make out a figure at the far side. Beguildy was singing some queer kind of spell in the kitchen, and the young man’s horse was stamping and shaking its bridle outside.

As I came up clear of the trap, and hung there in the rosy light, the young squire started forrard in his chair, and held out his hands like a child at a pastry shop. But I knew he was under solemn oath not to stir from his chair. I thought it must be a strange thing to go through life with men holding out their hands on this side and on that, to be always the pastry cake in the window with hungry eyes upon it. Then all of a sudden I heard a movement on the other side of the room, and turning that way I could have cried aloud, for there sat Kester Woodseaves.

Did ever Fate play such a trick? Here was the one man out of all the world that I must hide from, since already I loved him so dear, and so must never hurt him with my grief. And there he was, so close in the small place that two strides would have fetched him to me. He was leaning forrard like the young squire, and he made to hold his arms out and then drew back and gave a sigh, and I know now that the desire of woman was stirring within him. It came on me then with a great joy that it was my own self and no other that had made him hold out his arms. For in that place he could not see my curse, he could only see me gleaming pale as any woman would. Often since, I have wondered if he’d have been so stirred if it had been Jancis hanging there, crucified in nakedness, instead of me. Was it all of the flesh as it was with the young squire, or did my soul, that was twin to his, draw him and wile him, succour his heart and summon his love, even then? For I do think that the spirit makes herself busy about the body, and breathes through it, and throws a veil over it to make it more fair than it is of itself. For what is flesh alone? You may see flesh alone and feel nought but loathing. You may see it in the butcher’s shop cut up, or in the gutter, drunken, or in the coffin, dead. For the world is full of flesh as the chandler’s shelf is full of lanthorns at the beginning of winter. But it inna till you take the lanthorn home and light it that you have any comfort of it. And I have ever seen that the women with fair mounded cheeks, and breasts like the round pyatt where Felena danced, yet lacking any soul to laugh or weep in them, be not the ones that draw men. The ones that lure men to them by the tuthree, the score, and the hundred, as folk draw towards a lighted church when the Easter Supper is ready, be often those that care not much for their bodies.

This is a strange thing, as true things are often, but not so strange as this wiling and summoning of a man by a woman flawed and cursed, a woman to whom it was said, “You’ll never have a lover.” Two men would have been my lovers that night if I’d willed it so. And as I saw the squire’s shoulders stooped forrard with the weight of his longing I knew for the first time that, whatever my face might be, my body was fair enough. From foot to shoulder I was as passable as any woman could be. Under the red light my flesh was like rose petals, and the shape of me was such as the water-fairies were said to have, lissom and lovesome.

I hadna cared so much, nor been so dismayed, at playing this foolish game afore a stranger. But now I was all one blush from head to foot, and cold as ice as well. Every second was an hour, and I was shamed as if I had gone whoring. Yet I couldna but rejoice to have given my body in this wise to the eyes of him who was maister in the house of me for ever and ever.

I pulled the muslin over my face and looked slanting through it towards this wonder. For indeed he was a wonder to me then and always, not for his looks nor for anything that he did, but for the silent power of what he was, the power gathered up in him, as tremendous as a great mountain on the sky, that you couldna measure nor name, but only feel.

In the thinning smoke I could see him, with his face set beneath the shock of bodily love, for whether or not he loved me after, he did in that hour, and with the wounded look that is ever on the faces of men between the coming of the lust of the eye and its satisfying.

It takes a long while to write down, but I was only in the room as long as Missis Beguildy could count sixty. Beguildy was afraid they’d find him out if he allowed them too long, never dreaming, poor simple fool, that neither of them believed a word of his tales. While I was still fainty from the shock of seeing Kester Woodseaves, Beguildy called from the kitchen—

“Well, well, gentlemen, have I yearned my five pound?”

“Aye, aye!” says Mister Camperdine, with his look heavy on me, “and more, and more!”

Beguildy began to sing another foolish rhyme, which was the sign for me to be ready to go down. Never was any woman so glad of a cellar as I was when I raught back there. I got into my clothes as quick as might be, for we could hear the squire argufying with Beguildy in the kitchen.

“What now? What now? Speak with a bogy?” Beguildy was saying. “Now how can ye speak with Missis Venus, and she dead and gone this thousand year? I fetched her back for ye, through the grave and gate of death, for five pound in cash, but I canna keep her. She comes a-walking on the air, in a cloud, for the time you can count sixty, and then she’s gone. For she is but a beautiful bogy, seesta! and she mun be raught home by candlelight.”

There was a great burst of laughter at that, and as Mister Camperdine went out to his horse, he called back—

“I’ll have another look at Venus one day, Beguildy. She’s got a very tidy figure, by Gad, _wherever_ she’s from!”

As I crept home under the close net of winter boughs, my heart was all dumbfounded, even as the heart of a bride when first her lover looks upon her beauty. Only there was shame in this, and a great distress, being that I was no bride, and that I had been stared-upon and longed-after by a strange man as well as by him that was the world and all to me, though I had seen him but once afore.

It was strange to think that while I went about my house-work and out-door work to-morrow, slaving like a man, at men’s jobs, I should be in my own soul the bride of the weaver. While I ploughed with Gideon, turning up the frosty earth, while I cleaned the shippen in my sacking and clogs, while I stood in the mucky fold giving the ducks and fowls their meat, looking more like a man than a woman, and more like a mawkin than a man, all this time I should be woman to him, dwelling beneath the light of his eyes, warmed by his smile, his banner over me being love. While I strode but half a furrow or so behind Gideon, I should be lying trembling in my lover’s arms, fainty as I was at Beguildy’s. Though my hands were hard and chapped and my face red and coarsened with weather, I should be, while I thought upon him I loved, a flower and the petal of a flower. For love is a May-dew that can turn the swartest woman to a Jancis. And though I had but the shadow of it, yes! the shadow of a shadow, as when you see the reflection of a water-lily in the mere, not still, but in ripples, so that even the reflection is all distraught and is not wholly yours, yet it had made the world all anew.

I wondered if aught would have happened to me in my outward life by the time the water-lilies came again, lying along the edges of the mere like great gouts of pale wax. There was but a mockery of them now, for amid the frozen leaves lay lilies of ice. Yet as I thought of Kester Woodseaves and what he had come to mean, I seemed to hear and see on this side and on that, in the dark woods, a sound and a gleam of the gathering of spring. There was a piping call in the oakwood, a bursting of purple in the tree-tops, a soft yellowing of celandine in the rookery. When I was come into the attic, spring was there afore me, though it was so cold that my hands could scarce write. None the less, I put down in my book the words, “The first day of spring.” And I wrote it in the best tall script, flourished. So I should ever call to mind the second time of seeing him I loved, and the first time of his seeing me. Not only had he looked at me, but he had looked with favour and longing, and though I knew it was only because the truth was hidden from him, yet I was glad of what I had, as a winter bird is, that will come to your hand for a little crumb, though in plenteous times she would but mock you from the topmost bough.

I took my crumb, and behold! it was the Lord’s Supper.

C H A P T E R N I N E: _The Game of Conquer_

IN the morning, ploughing one of the far meadows with Gideon, I saw yellow nut catkins in the hedge, and brought them home and set them in a jug on my locker in the attic. I plucked them early, and tied a bunch to each of the ox’s horns, so all that day of sad-coloured weather the white cattle went up and down the red field, which was white-over in parts, so that they looked yellow, with nodding gold plumes on their heads, as if it was a fair. When we unspanned, Gideon said—

“What’n you been after, bedizening the cattle?”

“It’s May Day,” I says.

Gideon looked bepuzzled, but he said, well, he supposed I liked my jokes, and he didna complain so I worked well. “When’ll this weary old ploughing be done, Gideon?” I says, for of all things I hated it, not for itself, but because it spread out over our lives till there was no room for anything else. He was in a fever to plough. Dawn and dark, frost and rain, he’d be on the land, hard at it, and often when it did the land more harm than good. All the farm was to be corn. All the rickyard was to be full of corn. Only grow enow of corn, he said, and we should be rich afore we knew it. I couldna abide the new law, which made it pay so well.

“As soon as we’ve got enow, off we’ll go, Prue, and never see the place again,” he said.

“I canna understand that, Gideon,” I told un. “If you were land-proud, I could. But it do seem so queer to spend every bit of time and strength on the land, like a mother with a child, and then not love it. It’s as if the mother cared nought for the child, but only cared to sell it.”

“Ah, that’s the size of it, Prue. I dunna care a domm for the land. Nor yet I dunna care for the money. Not _as_ money.”

“Well, what is it you _do_ care for?”

“To get me teeth into summat hard and chaw it. To play Conquer till there inna a cob nor a conker left but mine. To be king-o’-the-wik and the only apple on the bough.”

“But for why, Gideon?”

“You be always asking me for why. Because I was made like that and I canna go agen it.”

We always came back to that.

“The thing is, to keep the right men in, so as they canna change the law afore we’ve made our money,” he said.

It was just as if the country was his mommet, to do his will and put crowns in his pocket.

“Which be the right men?”

“Them as keeps up the price of corn.”

“But the poor folk, that clem, would lief have prices down.”

“They mun grin and abide. Let ’em work. I work, dunna I?”

Indeed to goodness, he did work! He was nought but bone and muscle, and if he was a merciless man, he was merciless to his own self first. I said would he side with Squire, at elections, in spite of what Miss Dorabella said.

“Ah, I doubt I mun. He’s got a deal of corn land, he’ll never let prices down.”

“And when’ll you leave ploughing?”

“Not till we’ve bought the place, and there’s money in bank into the bargain.”

“But when we’ve ploughed up all the farm, save what grass we’re bound to keep for the beasts, then you’ll be bound to stop.”

“No. If we hanna got enough of money, I shall start on the woods.”

“Oh, deary, deary me!” I said, for I was like to cry. It was the unkindest thing that he should think of the woods. For now there’d never be any rest for any of us, since the woods were ours all round the farm, and there was work in them world without end. The tears rolled down my face, and I could feel them, cold and slow as the cold evening light.

“Why, what ails ye?” says Gideon. “Crying? Bless me, what a wench! Look ye, girl, we be working for the future.”

“I mislike the future,” I said. “It’s like the bran pie they give the Lullingford children, Christmas. You may get summat, but most likely you’ll only get a motto. And if you get summat, ten to one it inna what you want, for what you want inna in the pie.”

“Dear to goodness, what a mort of idle words! The future’s as you make it.”

“Why, no,” I says. “It be like the blue country a traveller sees at dawn, and he dunna know if it’ll be a kind country with farms sending up a trail of smoke in the sunset, and a meal for the asking, or if it’ll be a wild, savage moor where he’ll starve to death with cold afore morning.”

“Why there now,” says Gideon, “you’re starved with cold, that’s what’s the matter. You want a cup o’ strong tea and a good plate of taters and bacon. And hark ye! If that inna Mother banging the tray I’ll be dommed.”

Poor Mother set store by the evening time, being one that liked company. She said the days dragged so in the silent place, and she was timid, startled at the fall of a leaf or the creaking of a door. She was used to plead with me, time and agen, to leave ploughing and bide with her a bit. But I was bound to do Gideon’s will, so I made up comfortable tales for her of the day when we’d be well-to-do, with men and maids and a kitchen girl and no pigs. She’d brighten up a bit, but soon she’d sigh and shake her head.

“A far cry, a far cry, Prue. Maybe I wunna last. I’d lief things were a bit easier now, my dear. I canna abide tending pigs in the ’oods. My poor legs do ache, and if I set down I get the rheumatics. And the pigs do go daggling about down by the water, so my feet be always wet. I’d liefer less maids and men in the years to come, and less pigs now. I’d liefer less company then and a bit more now. All that’s a long way off, and no more satisfying than the many mansions of Paradise. Tell un that, Prue. Tell Sarn, my son, I’d liefer have a few things now, and not so many in the years to come.”

“Ah, I’ll tell un, Mother. And you must think of the time when we’ll leave ploughing.”

“Sarn’ll never leave ploughing. Or if he does he’ll do summat else. It’s this-a-way with un, he canna rest. He’s like a man I heard tell of, riding post across the land with dreadful news, foundering nags and buying fresh uns, with no thought but to get there. So when he got there and told the news he was so fixed in mind he couldna stop, but rode and rode, with no rest, crouching down and cutting the horse by day and by dark, going with no news to nowhere. They seyn he rides still. I tell you, Prue, it ud have been better, a power, for us and for him too, if my son Sarn had bin born an idiot boy, to play with coloured stones and put daisies on a string.”

She looked so strange, standing there in the fold, with her long staff and red cross-over shawl, with her mouth a-tremble and her eyes shining like a prophet’s, and the great lean pigs grunting and snouting around her, and Sarn Mere standing up beyond her like the blue glass round a figure in a church window. I wondered if ever they put pigs in church windows, in pictures of the Prodigal Son, and I couldna help but laugh a bit in a kind of pitiful way, thinking that this here was the prodigal mother, and how glad we’d be if Gideon was a bit prodigal too.

“What ails you, laughing?” she says.

“Only to think as you be the prodigal mother.”

“I dunna understand. I canna understand ever-a-one of my two chillun. Oh, deary me! But I take it unkind in you, Prue, to laugh when I be crying.”

Poor Mother! She said true things, times. She’d put words to my own complaint about the world, that laughed though I cried.

“There, there, I’ll tell Gideon,” I said.

It was one of the queer things in our lives that I was the go-between, taking messages from Mother to son. She could never get courage to begin, nor to face his cold, steely look.

Next morning I spoke to Gideon. He was in the field afore me, as always. It was frosty and misty, so the ploughed land looked like tarnished mirrors, or like the mere in overcast weather, sheeny and not solid. Where the frost held and the sun shone, the fields were polished, like water with a gleam on it.

Gideon and the oxen came on slow, making a little solid dark picture in the lonesome fields. It put me in mind of the black oak figures carved on the peak of the gables on some of the Lullingford houses, and always looking very dark on the sky. The breath of the oxen and the steam from their bodies stood up about them and hemmed them in, so as they went up and down they seemed like a picture, round and all to itself, that somebody was moving about in the waste of fields.

“Gideon,” I says, “Mother be very middling. She wants rest. Get a lad to mind pigs in the woods.”

“A lad! Dear to goodness, what lad?”

“There’s Miller’s Tim. He’s not but seven, but he could mind pigs and I’d give un his tea.”

“What! Feed a great lad of seven every day of the week save Sunday? Be you mad, Prue?”

“Mother’s very moped and middling. She wants rest and she wants company in the going down of the years, and a bit of comfort.”

“Amna I working for that? Inna she going to have maids and men, the best of good things, a pew in church, and real chaney to eat off?”

“Ah! In the years to come, if she lasts. But she met not. It be now that matters.”

“There’s nought ails Mother. She can go on very well. She gets good air minding pigs, and she can croodle over the fire after dark, to ease the rheumatics.”

“And she’s moped, lad. She wants me at home more.”

“Well, you will be when we leave ploughing.”

“That’s a long day. Any road, you mun get a boy to mind pigs.”

“Mun, mun? Who be you to say that to me? I be maister of Sarn.”

“You’ve no right to drive Mother to death when she’s old and ailing.”

Gideon gave me that withering look.

“Maybe,” he says, very slow and bitter, “maybe you’d like to get wed and bring a lad to Sarn that-a-way, to tend pigs. That is, if anybody’ll have ye.”

He picked up the plough handles and went on down the furrow. It needed a long while in the attic to wash out those words, but the power that was there washed them away in a while. I made allowance for Gideon since he lost so many nights of rest, it being still lambing time. For lambing time is the shepherd’s trial. In the black of night, in the dead of the year, at goblin time, he must be up and about by his lonesome. With mist like a shroud on him, and frosty winds like the chill of death, and snow whispering, and a shriek on this side of the forest and a howl on that side, the shepherd must be waking, though the pleasant things of day are folded up and put by, and the comforting gabble and busyness of the house and the fold are still, and the ghosts are strong, thronging in on the east wind and on the north, with none to gainsay them. So when Gideon was short with me I only took a bit more time in the attic. It was pleasant there when spring drew on, with a dish of primmyroses on the table and a warm wind blowing in. When April came we were still ploughing, and I was so used to it that I’d given over being tired, and enjoyed it, and sang to myself the while. It was grand to go down the red furrow with the share cutting strong into the stiff earth and shining like silver. It was fine to look away to the blue hills by Lullingford, and see the woods of oak and larch and willow all in bud between, as if a warm wind blew from there and called the leaves. It was pleasant, too, seeing the rooks follow in a string at my heels, looking as if they’d been polished with the andiron brush, and to see the birds again that had been away, and to hear the water-ousel sing wild and sweet, and the lapwings change their winter cry for summat warmer. There were violets now to pull for market, and daffodillies in the corner under the ivy hedge, and tight pink buds like babies’ little fists in the apple trees.

Mother cheered up a bit, and one day when we were having our tea by the window, with a bunch of gillyflowers on table, she said—

“We’ll have the weaver.”

I gave a gasp and a choke, and Mother wanted to know what ailed me.

“Nought, nought, but why not the weaver’s man? It ud be cheaper.”

“I like the best weaving.”

I fell into a dream, for if Kester was going to weave for us he’d have to come into the attic, walking to and agen round the weaving frame, looking out of my little window, making the place his place, so I should have him there for ever after. Yet still I couldna abide the thought of him seeing me, and I argufied for having the weaver’s man till Gideon thought I was in love with the fellow, though he was said to be simple and had got fourteen children into the bargain. But Mother put on her spectacles and looked at me, and pushed them up and looked again, and settled them in place to look a third time.

“We’ll have the weaver,” she said, and that was all.

It was the day after this that Jancis came rushing in, all wild, to say that Beguildy was going to take her to the hiring fair on May Day, unless Gideon could stop it. She came into the dairy where I was churning, and she said—

“Oh, Prue, the young gentleman’s been again, and have me he will, leastways you!”

She gave a giggle in the midst of her crying.

“And Father says it’s that or the hiring fair. It’ll be three years, Prue. I’ll be bound for a dairymaid or a kitchen wench for three years, that is, unless Gideon offers to wed with me now.”

“Gideon wunna, my dear, he’s fixed in mind about the ploughing. Nought’ll turn him from that.”

“But I shouldna stop it.”

“You’d be another mouth to feed. And if you ailed—”

“I shouldna. I be stronger than I look.”

“You canna tell, Jancis. When you wed, you begin a game of Blind Man’s Buff that ends you canna tell where. And if little uns came, what about all that money Gideon’s set on making?”

“Oh, deary me! Oh, I canna bear it, Prue. I do love Gideon right well, and once parted may be as bad as never met.”

“Well, you talk to Gideon.”

“And will you put in a word wiselike?”

“Ah, I’ll put in a word. But what he wunna do for you, that be his dear acquaintance, he wunna do for me, that be nought but his hard-drove sister.”

Just then Gideon came across the fold to fetch the buttermilk for the pigs.

He stood in the dairy door, and I thought it small wonder she was sweet on him, for in his smock and leather breeches, with his black head bare and his eyes blazing on Jancis, he was as well-favoured a man as you could meet in ten parishes. And I thought, as I looked round the dairy, that it was as good a place as anybody could wish for asking to wed. The sun shone slanting in, though it was off the dairy most of the day. The damp red quarries and the big brown steans made a deal of colour in the place, and the yellow cream and butter and the piles of cheeses were as bright as buttercups and primmyroses. Jancis matched well with them, with her pretty yellow hair and her face all flushed at the sight of Gideon. She was like a rose in her pink gown. Outside the window, in the pink budded may tree, a thrush was singing. I mind it all so clear, and should, even if it wasna written in my book.

“You be early,” says Gideon.

“And welcome?”

“Oh, ah! You be surely welcome.”

She looked at me mischievously as if she was asking me if I did mind, and stood tiptoe for Gideon to kiss her.

“I’ve got news,” she says. “Good news or bad, as you do make it.”

“Me?”

“Ah, it’s this-a-way, Sarn, Feyther says I mun—”

She looked at me, helpless like.

“Beguildy wants to sell the child, Gideon. What’s the use of mincing words? He wants to sell her to young Camperdine for his pleasure.”

Jancis hid her face in her hands.

“And if so be she says no, she’s to go as a kitchen wench to the May Fair and be prenticed for three years.”

“What! Sell my girl? Beguildy’ll sell my girl? Dang me, I could drown him dead for that!”

“He’s not sold her yet, Gideon.”

“The better for un.”

“But she’ll be bound prentice for three years, away somewhere beyond Lullingford.”

Gideon stooped and pulled away her hands, looking fiercely on her face.

“Be you a true wench to me?” he says. “Dang me, if you’ve lost your maiden’ead to young Camperdine, I’ll lay un out with the pole-axe. Ah! And you I’ll strangle.”

“No, no, Sarn, I hanna, I hanna,” she cried out. “I be a good maid to you, Sarn, indeed I be.”

“But what’s she to do, Gideon? For unless she’ll be the young man’s light-o’-love she’s bound to go away.”

“I canna abear to go away.”

She burst out crying again. I waited for Gideon to speak, but he said nought.

“There’s one other way, Gideon.”

I said it coaxing, for I knew it was his hour of choice for the two of them. The good road for both was in their power to take this day. It was one of the times in Gideon’s life when he might choose his blessing, the path of love and merry days where the pretty paigle grew, the keys of heaven, or the path of strange twists and turns, where was the thing of dread, the bane, the precious bane, that feeds on life blood.

Jancis seemed to know also that their lives in some fashion hung upon this hour. She stooped down and kissed his hand, and she said in a soft hoarse voice—

“O, be my sweetheart, Sarn!”

Gideon gave a kind of groan.

“I know where you be dragging me, Prue,” he said, “with your eyes so strongly upon me. You be pulling me down to poverty and the loss of all I’ve dreamt of.”

“I’d work double, lad,” I said.

“What use? You know right well what would happen. Could any man do other with a pretty piece like that for missus? Mouths to feed, mouths to feed. Never no grand house nor maids and men, nor pew in church. No money for you. No ’unt Ball for Jancis. No hail-fellow-well-met with the gentry for me. If ever we make any money it wunna be for years and years. We shall lose the house and go pottering on, eating up all we make. A man with a wife and family never gets on. He mun make his money first.”

“But wouldna you work better if you were happy, lad, with Jancis happy too?”

“Why, no. Happiness and idleness be twins. If you want to work, you munna be happy nor miserable. You mun just think of work and nought else. Another thing, if I take Jancis now, in the teeth of young Camperdine’s longing after her, he’ll be agen me himself and he’ll set all the gentry agen me. Whatever’s made the man so mad in love, it’s done now, and we mun take care.”

He looked at Jancis suspiciously, and she prayed me with her eyes to explain all. But that I couldna do. I’d done a deal for Jancis, but that was too much. For I was afraid that if I spoke at all it would get round to Kester Woodseaves. Jancis was under promise that none should know, saving only, in the utmost need, Gideon. So I kept silence, and I canna see that it made any difference, for speaking would only have put it off, and Beguildy had made his mind up about Jancis, and if it wasna the young squire then it ud be somebody else. It was best for Gideon to decide once for all, then if he chose right he and Jancis could be wed, and it would be out of Beguildy’s power to make any more plans.

“It’ll only put off the riches for a bit, Gideon,” I said.

“No. It ud put ’em off for ever and ever. The best thing to put off is getting wed. We’ll wait three year. That’ll give us time to turn round. Not as I want to put it off.”

He fell silent, looking at Jancis. I could see the longing in his face, and he was all of a tremble. It was strange to see such a great strong fellow shaking like a woman that’s seen frittening.

He took a step towards Jancis, and I made to go out, for I thought he’d take her in arms and all be well. But all of a sudden he muttered—

“No, no!” and drew back. Then he said—

“There’d be no satin gown for ye to dance Sir Roger in at the ’unt Ball then, Jancis. You’d be sorry for that.”

“Ah.”

“Well, if you go for a dairymaid or summat you’ll be yearning for it as well as me. Three year inna long. By the end of three year all the ploughland should be bearing well, and us’ll be reaping what we’ve sown.”

“Dear Lord forbid,” I says.

Gideon fell into a rage, though why I never could think, and burst out—

“Why that, now? Why that? I’m well content to reap what I sow.”

“But not if it’s the bane, Gideon? Not if it’s the precious bane as I read about in the book of the Vicar lent me? You dunna want _that_ amid the corn, lad, what grows in hell?”

“_Whatever_ it is,” he says, “if I sow it and it brings me the things I’d lief have, I’ll welcome it.”

There came a little sobbing sound from Jancis, and when I looked at her I saw beyond her golden head the spring day all o’ercast and the thorn-tree lashing in a sudden wind.

“You’d best be going home-along, my dear,” I says. “There’s tempest brewing.”

“I shall come on Sunday, and tell your dad what I think on him,” said Gideon.

“No, no, dunna anger him!”

“What do I care for his anger?”

“Oh!” she cried out, “everything’s all as I wouldna have it. Why canna folk live quiet and peaceful? Why must you be so fixed in your mind, Sarn? Hark at the wind rising! There’s summat foreboded.”

She began to cry again, hiding her face in her apron.

“O, I wanted to send out the biddings and be shouted in church,” she said, just as she used to say, “O, I wanted to play _Green Gravel_.”

Gideon snatched her to himself and kissed her, but he didna change his mind. Once he’d made it up, nothing ever would turn him.

“I mun go,” she said. “Come and send me, Sarn.”

As they went, I saw her wring her hands and heard her say—

“O, I see a dark road going down into the water. And the sun’s gone out. O, Sarn, dunna make me walk that road!”

All in a minute she’d faded away like a ghost in the wild, dark, stormy woods.