Chapter XIII: Book FOUR (9)

THAT very evening, so Jancis told us next day, Missis Beguildy gave the pretended message, and the day after the love-carriage Beguildy set out, full of importance, with his ash-wood kibba, to find the seventh child and bring back the bread. I said it did seem a shame to deceive the poor man so, but Jancis said, “No danger! It makes him happy, and we’ll give him the money if he finds the seventh child, so what more is to do?”

She was looking as pretty as a pink, was Jancis. She stayed a bit, to help in the washing-up, and then she sat in the kitchen while I worked, sewing a seam in her wedding clo’es. After tea when she was going, Gideon said—

“Mind you dunna forget!”

She coloured up as pink as codlins-and-cream, and ran along the wood-path. After supper Gideon said, careless like, “If I be late, Prue, and you want to go to bed, put the key over stable door.”

I said I would, and no more. But I saw him shaving hisself very particular, and putting on his Sunday stock, so I knew that whatever date parson met have got fixed for the wedding, the wedding was now, and I fetched a rose for his coat. He looked very bashful over that, but I said that when a fellow went to see his girl so soon afore the wedding he must always wear a flower. That seemed to make it all right, thinking I guessed nought, and off he went, whistling loud and clear, up the wood path where the leaves were turning rusty, and sighs were sounding here and there, and the airs breathing autumn, and the brown cobs falling with little thuds, for lads to play conquer to their own let and hindrance. Sad, and very sad I thought it in the wood path when Gideon’s tall figure was passed away, and the mere lapped, and the boat was knocking on the steps, and an owl hooting. Why was it so sad, I wondered, when the wedding was fixed so soon, and the glory roses blooming, corn safe housed, and in my own heart the Maister come! Yet there was that about the evening which you feel when summat has died. I went the rounds to see if all was well. Mother was asleep, brown and small and peaceful in the big bed. Bendigo was in stable, very comfortable, for he was old and nesh, and we fetched him in before October. All was well, and I wondered what the harm was, that I felt in the air. I was to know afore long, though for a little while things kept on as usual. Every night I put the key in the stable, but said nought. Every morning Gideon’s bed was all tossed and tumbled, but I knew very well he hadna slept in it. He whistled about the place as merry as any other man, not under breath any more. I was glad for him, and glad to be making ready for Jancis. They were to have the guest chamber, which, not having been used for many years, was in very bad repair. So I’d bought a few rolls of cheap paper out of the butter-money, and I was papering it unbeknown to Gideon. Mother was in the secret, and she’d come and clasp her hands and say, “Looks a pretty paper! Doing it right well you are, my dear. Roses and all! Roses be lucky, to my mind. Your Aunt Dorcas had roses in her bride-chamber, and not one of her children ever died, nor ailed, nor cried. I mind she made a joke over that. ‘Neither die nor cry,’ she says. I hope Sarn’s wunna cry much, for I canna bear to hear a child cry. Sarn ud roar ever so, it was awful to hear un. Beat on the cot, a would, summat cruel. Mun always get what a wanted very quick, but if it tarried, he wouldna forget, he’d cry the day long, but he’d get it.”

I’d got the paper on, and I was about putting a bit of glazed calico round the dressing-table when Missis Beguildy came rushing to our place, like a wild woman. It was such pleasant weather too, with little birds in the new ricks and the first apples falling. It was early in the morning when she came. I’d been churning. I hadna seen Gideon, for he’d taken a crust out into the field where he was ploughing. I was in the dairy when Missis Beguildy rushed in.

“Oh, my dear!” she cries out. “Oh, my dear, the worst as could happen’s come to pass.”

“Goodness me, what?”

I was frightened to see her face.

“He comed back!”

“Who? Not Mister Beguildy?”

“Ah! No less. And all going so well. Him away till a fortnit anyway I thought. And the two of ’em so sweet together. I didna think Sarn could be so fairspoken to anybody as what he was to me, and Jancis like the Queen of the May. ‘Mother,’ she says, ‘I be more gladsome than I thought any could be.’ All, and your brother too. It eased him to see that his doubts and fears about young Camperdine were nought. If I hadna let un come he’d a thought the young man was at our place. ’Twas the only way. The more anybody wants a thing, the more they do think others want it. But seeing all was fair and square, he was fair and square too. ‘Mother,’ he says, for indeed it inna long till I shall be afore Him above and all the blessed angels, ‘Mother, leave me bide the night over from now on, till we be wed. Soon, it is,’ he says, ‘or I wouldna ask it. And her’s willing.’ So I gave them our room, and slept on Jancis’s box bed in kitchen. I put the best dimity counterpane on their bed, and the best sheets, without a patch, and a tidy bit of drugget on floor, and I killed a fowl and made a nice bit of bread sauce, and left ’em to their supper, pleasant and to theirselves afore the fire, and stayed out till they’d done, though they did say as nice as nice as I mun sup with ’em. But newly wed is newly wed, ring or none. And when they were abed I’d tidy the place and wash up. And I’d just done, and I was setting afore the fire thinking of the time when I wed Beguildy, and what a proper young man he was, though you’d never think it, and deserve my thoughts he didna, the grutching, wicked old man. I was setting there very peaceful, and thinking I must draw the bolt and rake the fire out, when there was a little sound without, and in came Beguildy. I could ha’ dropped on floor.”

“Well, missus,” he says, “where be Jancis?”

“She be asleep,” I says.

“And since when did ye give the wench our room and sleep in box bed?”

With that he rushes in, and there they were. ’Twas hell let loose, and no mistake. He put such a curse on Sarn as I never heard nor shall hear.

“And for all you’ve crept in the like of this, you shanna have the wench in wedlock,” he says.

“You canna stop it,” says Sarn. “No power in the ’orld can stop it now.”

“Yet stop it I will,” says the mester. “Hanna I cursed ye by fire and by water? Hanna I told ye you were born under the threepenny planet and canna keep money? Hanna I said you’ll be poor in life and die in the water? Eh?”

“Well, it’s a pity for ye, seeing you be a wise man and all, to be put in the wrong,” says Sarn, “but harvest be in and I be a rich man.”

“You binna a tenth nor a hundredth part as rich as young squire. His pockets be crammed ooth French money,” shouts Beguildy. “You shanna have my girl, Sarn.”

“I’ve got her, seemingly,” says Sarn, as calm as calm could be, and that drave Beguildy right out of mind. “He puck up the blunderbus as he keeps by the window ready for the fox, and he went for your brother with the butt end.”

“Dear to goodness!”

“You may as well say that, Prue Sarn. I screeched and Jancis screeched, and I ran in from the kitchen, for I’d kept out, thinking Sarn met not like it, him being in his night-shirt, and as fine a man as you could wish, but not wanting to cause any awkwardness more than already. But afore I could get in, Sarn knocked mine flat on floor, and a lay like a log and none deserved it better. For a very curst man is Beguildy, and obstinate, and bearing ill will year after year. I do believe the root of the matter is your dad asking him for that crown when he’d made mind up it was to be a present. Ah! Though mine he is, I canna but say he’s a terrible man to bear a grutch. Well, Sarn knocked un flat, and he says, ‘Take his feet, oot, Mother, and we’ll put un in kitchen. For whether he’s dead or quick, I’ll not be disturbed any more this night.’ Ah. He said that. And he says, ‘Swing for it I may, but I wunna be disturbed this night.’ Cold and quiet as a frozen mere, but a terrible man to rouse, is your brother. So I doused mine with water, and I gid him some spirits, and in a while he come round, but I took the precaution to tie him to the bed afore that. He struggled cruel, but it was a good rope, and I fed spirits to un regular, and in a while he calmed a bit and quietened, and then slept. So in the morning your brother went, and I untied the mester, and when he woke up I says, what fetched him back? So he says, ill news travels fast, and he supposed he’d got ears, and he hadna but just got as far towards the mountains as Mallard’s Keep when a man told un Sarn slept at our place now. Interfering meddlers, folks be! So I got him a bit of breakfast and he went out. Quiet as quiet he be, so I’ve come to warn ye, for when he’s quiet-angry he’s deadly.”

I said, what harm could an old man the like of that do, and especially as we knew all his spells and what-nots were but foolish games? But it made no difference, and she only kept on saying there was harm brewing, and God send the wedding day quick, and she went off home as wild-seeming as she came, wringing her hands, with wisps of hair blowing in the stormy wind. For there was a real tempest blowing, that had been rising for two or three days, and it blew up the loose straws and the chaff in the rickyard till the air was full of them, dusty and choking. Out in the field I had to go close up to Gideon and shout afore I could make him hear. There was a roar in the tree-tops like the sound of weirs after the snow melts, and a howling in the chimneys that made you glad of four walls and a roof. I said to Gideon when we were at our tea, did he think it would blow the tops off the stacks? But he said no, they were well weighted. It was only two days now till the dealer came to price the grain, and only three days after that till the wedding. Knowing this, and being easy in mind about Beguildy, since he’d taken no harm from the blow, I listened to the wind very contented, and made some rounds of toast, and thought about Kester. For I do think there’s nothing makes you feel so contented as a roaring wind in the chimney when all’s well. I said should we go to bed early, and Gideon said we might as well, seeing we’d worked hard and the harvest was in. So we went at eight, and I fell asleep in a minute with the sound of the loud, dry tempest in my ears.

When I woke, sudden, I thought, “It be the Judgment!” There was a great light and a roaring, very dreadful to hear, and knockings and cries out of the night. I lay there, mazed, saying “_Our Father_” as fast as I could, and wishing I’d been more regular at church. Then I heard Gideon’s voice calling from window, and other voices below, and one was the voice of Sexton’s Sammy. This comforted me in my foolish fear, for I felt as if Sammy would be able to think of a text, and mouth it too, even on Judgment night. For night it still was, and early too, since we found out after that we’d not been abed much more than two hours. Gideon came rushing past my door, shouting for me, so I got up and put on my clo’es, for I supposed that whether it was the Judgment or not I’d better wear them, though in the pictures the redeemed go in their night rails. But I did feel that I must wait to get to heaven afore I could be at my ease to stand afore Sexton’s Sammy in my night-gown.

I ran downstairs and out, and then I saw. I thought even the end of the world would have been better than that, for then we’d have been provided for, with no more harvests to get in nor money to gather with pain and labour. It would be the same for all in that hour, but this was for us only, and crushed us as a waggon wheel crushes an ear of wheat.

For it was the corn burning that made the roaring noise. It was the harvest, all of it, the whole garnering of all those years of work, the very stuff of Gideon’s soul, and our future. It was no great comet nor flaming star raging across the sky to herald in the end of all, no trumpet of an archangel pealing and whining along the black night betwixt the trembling worlds. It was only the corn. Only all we had! Only that which was to make a kindly man, a loving man, of our Gideon, since having it he would leave slaving by day and dark, and making us all slave, and would work only like any other man. Only the corn, that meant a bit of comfort for Mother, a bit of hope for me. Only the corn, that would give Jancis dear children, and the place of wife by fireside, and a bit of love, maybe. Oh, my soul, it was the corn! I clung to the rickyard gate, and my hair was lifted in the fierce-hot wind. There were black figures running in the red light, most like a picture of hell, but they were nought, and less than nought. The vasty roaring wind went on, taking the fire with it. I could see that the thing must have started with the barley, that was on the west of the rickyard, whence the wind was coming. There was no barley now. Where it had been were two great round housen made of white fire, very fearful to see, being of the size and shape of the stacks, but made of molten flame. There was no substance in them, and it was marvel how they stood so. Now and again a piece of this molten stuff would fall inward with no sound, and there could be seen within caves of grey ash and red, sullen, smouldering fire. So it will surely be when the world is burned with fervent heat in the end of all. It will go rolling on, maybe, as it ever has, only it will be no more a kindly thing with mists about it, a pleasant painted ball with patterns of blue seas and green mountains upon its roundness. It will be a thing rotten with fire as an apple is rotten when the wasps have been within, light and empty and of no account. So was our barley, falling inwards with no sound, as though one went here and there within, unseen. It was a worse thing to see than if it had fallen down in a heap, for being yet a stack, it seemed like a jest of some demon, saying—“Well, what is to do? There be your stacks of barley! Make barley bread and eat.” I looked at those two abodes of demons, of the roundness and height of our good barley stacks, and I remembered the barley, oh, the sweet barley, rustling in the wind of dawn! I called to mind the ploughing for it, in such good behopes, and the sowing of it, between the sowing of the winter wheat and the sowing of the summer wheat, Gideon and me walking up and down the fields with the bags of seed slung over shoulder, or with a deep round lid to hold enough of seed for one crossing of the field there and back, and swinging out our arms with a great giving movement, as if we were feeding all the world, a thing I dearly loved to see. For reaping, though it is good to watch as be all the year’s doings on a farm, is a grutching and a grabbing thing compared with sowing. You must lean out to it and sweep it in to you, and hold it to your bosom, jealous, and grasp it and take it. There is ever a greediness in reaping with the sickle, in my sight. There is not in scything, which is a large destroying movement without either love or anger in it, like the judgments of God. Nor is there in flailing, which is a thing full of anger, but without any will or wish to have or keep. But reaping is all greed, just as sowing is all giving. For there you go, up and down the wide fields, bearing that which you have saved with so much care, winnowing it from the chaff, and treasuring it for this hour. And though it is all you have, you care not, but take it in great handfuls and cast it abroad, with no thought of holding back any. On you go, straight forrard, and the bigger your hand the better pleased you are, and you cast it away on this side and on that, till one not learned in country ways would say, here is a mad person. For it would seem as if you were feeding all the birds of the country, since there was always a following of rooks in the furrows, and starlings, and many small birds, which would be very unprofitable chickens.

It is a pretty thing to see the golden seed tossed in the air with sunshine on it and the light spring wind scattering it here and there; or if it is winter wheat, then it will be, very like, a still brown day with the mellowness of old beer in the colours and the scent of the air. I was always ready for the sowing, though Gideon did not care about it, and indeed would often seem to begrutch casting the grain from him, and would sow too thin and so waste land and labour. I thought of all this, and of the fair evenings when we had walked forth, Mother and me, to look at the young barley pushing up, bright and sparse, then thickening, till the brown earth was all greened over, and springing taller and brighter, stiff and pointed, and then softening and lengthening yet more, with the wind running in it like a boat furrowing the water, and finding a voice at last, and a song, and sending up its green, plaited ears to swell and ripen, till at the end they stood perfect as if the Lord had but that moment lifted His hand from them, all made of purest, clearest gold. Gold leaves, gold stalks, gold knops for heads, and these knops bearded thick with gold as well. Yet it was an innicent gold, and not that gold which is called the bane. Oh, how I could mind it, on those still Sunday mornings when I went to the well, and would set down the buckets for a little while and go out into the corn fields that lay beneath the vasty pale blue peace of the sky like creatures satisfied and at rest! There would be small birds about, making low contented cries and soft songs. There would be a ruffling breeze, and rooks far up the sky, and a second bloom of pale gold flowers on the honeysuckle wrathes against the blue. There would be warmship that lapped you round, and the queenly gift of the scent of corn. What other scent is like it? There is so much in it, beyond other sweets. There is summer in it, and frost. There is water in it, and the heart of the flint which the corn has taken up into its hollow stalks. There is bread in it, and life for man and beast.

All these thoughts, moithered and bewildered, came to me as I clung to the gate with the parching wind upon my face, too stunned to move. There are misfortunes that make you spring up and rush to save yourself, but, there are others that are too bad for this, for they leave nought to do. Then a stillness falls on the soul, like the stillness of a rabbit when the stoat looks hotly upon it and it knows that there is no more to be done.

The fire was in the two biggest stacks of wheat now. It had gone upon them and they were not. Soon they would be as the barley was. They were good stacks, those, of a solid squarish oblong, and as high as might be with safety, for we had such a harvest that we could only make room by having the stacks high. It was good wheat too, long in the straw, and no touch of mildew. It had taken the most time of all both to sow and to reap, and in the lugging it had the biggest waggons all day. And now it was gone! It was a great mound of fire with the black shapes of two stacks in it, and soon the fire would be passed on and there would be no more sound, but just two grey-white housen for demons, with baleful red gleams in the crumbling passages within. There were more stacks of wheat by the hedge, but the next to the blazing stacks was the oats. The lovely oats, so pale and fine, like ferns for a lady’s table!

They were so sweet, the oats, so very fine and fair, like midsummer grasses come golden. I did ever love the oats best of all. And suddenly I was all mother to the oats. The fire met have the wheat and the barley, but it should not take my oats. I clomb over the gate and ran where the little figures moved. I caught Gideon by the sleeve.

“You mun save the oats!” I screamed. “Oh, save the oats, as is so fair and fine!”

But he said nought. He was working like a madman, and I saw that it was the oats he was trying to save, the oats and the stacks by the hedge. He and Sammy were digging trenches between the blazing stacks and these, to fill with water.

“Where’s Tivvy?” I said, for now I was come to myself I wanted all the help there was.

“Gone for Feyther,” said Sammy, sweating and groaning over his spade, for the fire was gaining on them.

“Shall I take Bendigo and go for help?” I said. “Or shall I get the buckets and begin fetching water?”

“Ah, that!” says Sammy. “Do that, for help ud be too late, a power.”

Not a word did Gideon say. He was stricken with a dumb madness, but he worked like ten men. What with the horror of mind and the stress of labour and the great heat of the fire, the sweat ran down his face in a river and his clo’es were as if he had been in the water. And being so wet, and so near the fire, he went in a cloud of steam, which had a very strange look, as if he had been put under some curse or was already in hell.

I loosed Bendigo and the oxen and cows, such as were lying in, and they went pounding away into the woods, half crazy with fear. I woke Mother and told her she must dress and come to the mere and dip while we made a chain for the buckets, to send them from hand to hand. I got together all the pails and buckets, and thought it seemed a pitiful thing that with all that great mere full of water we could only slake our fire with as much as we could get into our little buckets. And I’ve thought since that when folk grumble about this and that and be not happy, it is not the fault of creation, that is like a vast mere full of good, but it is the fault of their bucket’s smallness.

Mother came with me like a child, very mazed and quiet.

“Must I dip now, Prue?” she said.

“You can begin now, and have all the buckets ready,” I answered. “But the time when you must dip your best will be in a tuthree minutes when we come.”

“Now, Sarn,” says Sammy, “you mun leave digging and come for water.”

For though it may seem a thing not to be believed, all that awful night, though it was Gideon that did the most of the work, it was Sammy or me that gave the orders. Gideon would go at what he was set at in a frenzy, and go on after it stopped being any use, working like an ox at the threshing floor. He threw down the spade when Sammy spoke, and came with us to the mere. Mother was toiling over the dipping. She looked smaller and smaller as the trouble thickened about her, like a person that had eaten some fairy stuff to make her not able to be seen. She seemed no more than one of those little brown birds that will light down by the water for a while in their journeying and then be gone, nobody knows where.

“Now here comes Feyther, thanks be to the Lord,” said Sammy. He was a good lad that night, was Sammy, and while the fire lasted he never said but one text, and that a very tempestuous one, “Burning and fuel of fire,” though he must have thought of no end of them.

Sure enough there was Sexton bursting through the wood, and Tivvy not far behind, and an angry voice crying on the wind a long way back, that was Missis Sexton, who misliked being by her lonesome.

“Now,” says Sammy, “Feyther can go in the rickyard and chuck on the water to dout the fire, Tivvy can gather the empty buckets as fast as he throws ’em down, and run back to Missis Sarn with ’em, and you and me and Prue’ll run with full ones. I did think we might make a chain and pass from hand to hand, but we be too few, Sarn.”

Gideon spoke for the first time.

“I never,” he said with a wild, pale face, “never had much strength about me, only me and these two.”

And with that he put his arm across his face as he was used to do when he was a lad and things went badly wrong, and cried.

Ah, I tell you it was a thing few would have cared to see, a great, strong masterful man like that, crying like a little lad.

“Now, now, Sarn!” says Sexton, shocked as we all were, “Now, yo munna take on. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.”

At that Gideon came to himself.

“The Lord?” he says. “No. It wunna the Lord! It was Beguildy. When we’ve douted the stacks I shall fetch un and roast un.”

No words of mine can tell you the awful way Gideon said that. I wanted to ask how he knew, if he did know, but there was no time for words. We were running to and again with two full buckets each, which, after an hour or so, is enough to try a strong man, leave alone a woman. Water carrying is an easy job if there’s no hurry and you can use a yoke. But to run stumbling through a roasting heat, which we did for most of the journey, and to know that if you tarried the oats would go, and maybe if you didna tarry, was enough to take the spirit out of anybody. The oats did go. The fire leapt the ditch and all, and there was a new, tremendous blaze. I lost heart after that, and though I ran, it was with no hope.

“Oh, I be so tired,” said poor Mother. But I couldna let her rest.

“If we canna save it,” I said, “you’ll never get free of tending swine, Mother.”

So she bent her poor old back again, standing half in the water, in spite of the rheumatics. The cry went up to save the barn, for if the barn was lost, the house was lost. At that, Mother left dipping for water, so I was forced to get Tivvy to do it, and we had to bring back our own empty pails. I looked up once, and there was Mother fetching things out of the house. I looked at them after, and there was her sewing and the copper fruit pan, and a sampler she did when he was little, and Father’s picture cut out in black paper, done by parson’s brother-law, who was part foreign. People thought he must be simple to play with scissors and paper like a child, though they owned that he did it very well, and said that being part foreign he knew no better. Though Mother had been so mortal feared of Father in life, she treasured this picture in the queerest way. So there it was with the other things and six pots of damson cheese, and Pussy in a basket.

It was only at dawn, when the wind dropped and a fine, quiet rain began to fall, that we got the fire under. At least, it had burnt itself out, and we managed to save barn and house. The red light was gone from the sky and the burning from the mere. For all night it had seemed that the water in the mere was turned to fiery spirit, and was burning too. Everything was there, confused and topsy-turvy, the red and yellow flames, the smoke, bellying in the wind, the white-hot stacks, hollow and canting, the farm and the barn and our little black figures like mommets in the tumult.

Not long after it was over came Missis Sexton, who had suffered frittening of Bendigo, that came snorting and trampling through the wood so that she thought it had been the Black Huntsman. There were many hollow trees about the Sarn woods, they being old forest land, so she crept into one, and stayed till the light began to come. And then, once in, she could not get out, for she was more than ornary stout and also had so many clo’es, and though in the stress of fear she squoze herself in, it was not easy to get out again in cold blood. But when she did come, she soon got us all some breakfast, and indeed we were in need of it, not only for what was past, but to face the day.

“Why, look’s Tivvy and Prue white as ghosses!” she said. “And you, Missis Sarn, should be abed, and to bed you shall go when you’ve had bite and sup. And as for you, Sarn! Why, man, man, you fritten me worse than Bendigo, indeed to goodness! Now then, where’s ours? Draw up now, draw up, take bite and sup, people!”

She said it just as she said, “Take your places for the game of Costly Colours.”

“But what I’d lief know,” says Mother, “is how Sexton and Sammy knew our ricks were afire?”

“I knew,” said Sammy, “because Tivvy and me were coming back latish from the mill, and we saw Beguildy coming along very quiet and sneaking this way. So I says to Tivvy as we’d follow, for I’ve been keeping an eye on Beguildy a goodish while, he being a wicked old man and the power of the Lord far from him. By their fruits you shall know them. And it seemed a funny time for him to be coming to Sarn, he being one for early bed always. So we followed on slow, keeping a long way back. And just as we came to the end of the wood there was a tremendous blaze from the far corner of the rickyard, and in a minute Beguildy came running up wood path, so we only had just time to hide. As soon as he was past, we did run to the rickyard, and it was the little stack in the corner, and just by it was this.”

Sammy held up the lid of Beguildy’s tinder box, which everybody knew well, for he’d put his name on the inside of the lid in red paint, being proud of his writing.

“What a fool, to drop un!” says Missis Sexton.

“Nay, Mother,” says Sexton, “Beguildy’s no fool. ’Twas the hand of the Lord took the tinder box lid off’n un and chucked it there for Sam to see. Ah, so it was.”

“In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, Psalms seventy-five, eight,” said Sammy.

“Only it wunna a cup,” giggled Tivvy, who was always sillier when she was excited, “’twas the one-half of an old iron tinder box.”

“’Tis the curse!” moaned Mother. “He did curse my son Sarn by fire and by water, and this be the first. Dear Lord knows what the second’ll be. ’Tis the sin you did eat, Sarn. There’s bin harm on the place ever since you did it. Ah, ever since my poor maister died in his boots the place has been ill to live in, very ill it’s been, what with the pigs and the rheumatics and the everlasting ploughing, and now all gone, as if it hadna been.”

“Ah, fire’s a greedy feeder,” said Missis Sexton.

“I will consoom them in a moment, Numbers sixteen. This great fire will consoom us, Deuteronomy five. Fire consoomed the palaces of Benhadad, Jeremiah forty-nine,” said Sammy.

“Three texes at a birth! Good lad, good lad!” cried Sexton.

“Only it’s Beguildy did ought to be consoomed,” remarked Missis Sexton.

“And the awful thing about such wickedness,” says Tivvy, “is that it’s in the blood. It goes on from father to child. You’d never know when it ud break out. I wonder at you, Mister Sarn, I do, to be thinking of taking the child of a viper in wedlock. I never did like the Beguildys, Jancis in especial.”

“Indeed to goodness, the girl’s right!” cried out her Mother, and Sexton added—

“What’s bred in the bone’ll come out in the flesh.”

Gideon looked around, with a grey lined face, like an old man’s. He was never the same again after that night. You canna knock an ox on the head with the mallet and then expect it to be just as it was. He made to speak, but the words were slow in coming. Just then there was a trampling and traversing without, and Bendigo trotted past the window.

“Ha!” says Gideon, and makes for the door.

I knew what he was going for, and I rushed after him. By good fortune the cows were coming back from the wood, making soft mooing plaints that it was long past milking time. So instead of pleading for Beguildy I said—“Look’s cows coming, they’ll be stanked if they inna milked.”

“Ah, you mun mind not to let ’em get like that’n,” Missis Sexton cautioned from the room. “A brother-law’s cousin of mine had the best herd ever you saw. Cheshire, he come from. Grand cows they were, and never ailed, and plenty of everything there was in that house, good milk and butter and cheese, and buckets and buckets of skim for the pigs, and fine fat pigs they were, and a fine fat man my brother-law’s cousin was, and a fine fat woman he’d got for wife, and twelve fine fat children.”

I may say that Missis Sexton, being so fat herself, always judged folk by it, and if they were thin they might as well never have been born, in her sight.

“Ah,” she went on, “they were all as fat as butter, filled the pew at church to bursting, until the day he let the cows get stanked. Ah! That was a bad day for ’em. There was no prosperation after. The cows dwined and the pigs dwined, and in a bit the family dwined too, and in a little while, of all that fine fat family there was nought left but fourteen miserable rails.”

Tivvy was in a fit of giggling, for her Mother’s stories ’most always made her laugh, though many’s the beating she had for it.

“Milk first, lad,” I says to Gideon, “and go to the Stone House after.”

God forgive me to deceive him so, but I wanted to save him from the sin of murder. No sooner was he in the shippen, milking, than I took Bendigo to the door and cried out to Sexton to mount and ride, and take Sammy too, for Bendigo could carry both as far as Plash, and to take Beguildy and march him off to the parish constable at Lullingford all in a courant, and save him from Gideon. For if he was locked up Gideon couldna get at him, and he’d only suffer what was right according to the law.

“I see,” says Sammy. “Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, and not into the hand of man. Two Samuel twenty-four. Ah, we’d best go, Feyther.”

“Will Jancis and Missis Beguildy go to prison too?” enquired Tivvy.

“Surely to goodness no! They’ve done nought. In fact Jancis be a very tidy wench, and if she’d had the right spirit in her, and meekened her soul and gone softly in good sadness, I dunno but I’d have taken her in wedlock myself,” said Sammy.

They only got off just in time, for Gideon came running from the shippen, crying upon them to stop.

“They’ll take Beguildy to prison,” I said. “You munna have murder on your soul, lad, things be bad enough without that.”

“It would have eased me,” he answered with a strange look. “It’s all dammed up within. Choking, choking me. ’Twould have eased me to kill un. I’ll never mend of it now.”

“But you couldna kill the father of your wife-to-be,” I said.

“Wife? What wife?”

“Why, Jancis! You’ll be wed to Jancis come a week now.”

“What?” he says, with a wild, fierce look, “Do ye think I’ll wed with the devil’s daughter? I tell ye, if it was to save my life and all, I’d never wed with her. Nay, I’ll never see the wench again, not of choice, not unless she do force herself into my company.”

“Gideon, Gideon! Dunna say it! Oh, Gideon, there be things in life as is better than money and that’n. Leave be, lad! It inna meant for us to be rich. Let you settle down and be content, and marry the poor child as loves you so well, and if so be money comes, all the better. And if so be it dunna, none the worse. But deny the poor girl marriage after what’s took place, you canna. Your heart canna be as hard as that.”

“It is. The granite mountain, quartzite, brytes, inna as hard. If you leave that girl come nigh me, I’ll tromple out her life like I would a clothes-moth’s. And so I warn ye. Rotten. That’s what they be. Like father like child. A fause smiling face, but any minute, any minute she met burn the place to the ground. I shouldna wonder but she fetched the flint and tinder for un last night Camperdine may take her and welcome. I make him a present of her.”

“But, Gideon, you’ve bin as good as wed to her this last week. And suppose there was to be a baby, what then?”

“A baby? What? My child and hers? I tell ye, if any such thing came to pass, I’d strangle it. Hark ye, their blood’s black. Foul, foxy, vermin. That’s what they be. They’re not fit to live. Thanks be to God, folks can swing for arson. I’ll see he swings for it. And you tell the girl to keep away from me. It’ll be the better for her.”

I durst say no more. What could I say, when the human kindness in my poor brother had been scorched up in the fire and was not? Only a fool will dip and dip in a dry well. He looked a deal taller as he stood there, with his back to the dark driving woods, where the rain was lashing now, that would have saved all last night, where the autumn storm was moaning, and the dry leaves churning and boiling in the air as the weeds will in the mere at the troubling of the waters. His clo’es yet clung to him, all scorched and darkened with the fire. His face was grimed, so that the lines that had not showed were very clear to see, and there were more lines, I was sure, since last night. His eyes, that were so cold, like water, blazed with hatred when he thought upon Beguildy or any of hisn, but at other times his face was blank and dim, like the face of one without hope, spent and foredone, a lost face. I said should we dig taters, for I thought maybe it would be a bit of comfort, to think he’d got summat. He came without a word, and worked hard and well, but every now and again he’d stop, and look about him strangely at the chill, silent mere, the overcast heavens and the stormy woods. It seemed to me that the spirit of the man was like a bird with a broken wing. And at noon, when I went to get our meal, he missed to come when I banged the tray, and I found him in the rickyard, where the heaps of ash yet smouldered, lying upon his face, as still and hard of hearing as a dead man, and indeed I do think his heart was dead from that time.

C H A P T E R T H R E E: _The Deathly Bane_

’TIS hard, and very hard, to write of the wintry time we went through after that night of grief and bitter woe. For when the quill has traced out good words of a kind meaning, it irks it to make them sad and evil. But sad and evil that time was, and there is no use in gainsaying it. For many days after the fire, the work on the farm stood still, as it often will after a death. Gideon’s one thought was to get at Beguildy, or if not that, to make him suffer the utmost of the law. Missis Beguildy was forced to give up the Stone House, for the landlord didna want a man there who burnt ricks, nor his folk so he made the excuse of the rent being late to turn them out. Everything was sold, and Missis Beguildy and Jancis went off to Silverton, where Beguildy lay in prison waiting for the assizes, with only what they stood in. At least, poor Jancis didna stand, for when she heard the dreadful news of what Gideon had said, which I told her Mother to break to her as best she could, she fell down on the floor and stirred neither hand nor foot, nor spoke a single word. They carried her to the waggon from Plash Farm, which was to take her and her mother away, and they say she lay there like a broken flower. Maybe it was as well, for if her strength hadna gone from her she’d have tried to see Gideon, and I do think he’d have struck her down in his bitter smouldering rage. It seemed to ease him to hear of their misfortune, and when the day came for them to go, he went off to a place in the woods where he could see the waggon pass by, and stood there looking down upon it, with the sullen farm labourer driving, misliking having anything to do with folk in such evil case in men’s sight, and poor Missis Beguildy sitting in the waggon all aged and wild, and Jancis lying on some straw at the bottom, like a white waxen image. I know, because Miller’s Tim was in the wood at the time, and he came running to me, frit out of his life, pretty near, to tell me all about it.

“Oh, Prue Sarn, I was in the ’ood after a tuthree nuts,” he says, “and I saw Mister Sarn a-walking by lonesome, very glooming and drodsome, and I was feared, so I did hide in a tree. And Mister Sarn went under the boughs of the big beech, where the road through the wood comes by. And in a while there was a rumbling, and I saw the waggon from Plash, and Missis Beguildy crying and taking on awful, but I couldna see Jancis. So I clomb the tree to see if she was in the bottom of the waggon, and there she was. She did look like a dead maid. Oh, she did look like the picture in the church of the little maid as was dead in the house when they fetched the Lord in, and He says ‘Rise you up!’ He says. Only He hadna said it to Jancis. And I was feared, and I came down quiet from the tree, and I saw Mister Sarn staring down upon the waggon, for you do know there’s a bit of a bank just there. And his face did frit me so that I made to run off, only then he stirred, so I kept quiet for fear he might come my way. He gloomed upon the waggon a long while, till the rumbling went ever so quiet, and wunna no more than the noise of a startle-de-buz when it be gone past, and then there was no sound at all, save the noise of a throstle banging a conker on a stone. And Mister Sarn did lift up both his fisses and did shake ’em after the waggon, and oh, Prue! his face was like the face of the Lord Jehovah in Feyther’s book, when His anger was not turned away. Then he went away, slow, looking upon the ground, and the throstle went on banging the conker on the stone, and I runned to you.”

And that was how the properest man in our countryside did see the girl of his choice go, a girl like a water-lily bud, as loved him right well.

I said to myself, “It be the bane. Oh, it be the dreadful bane.”

But after that Gideon seemed more at ease in himself. And I think it was that he had mistrusted his own heart, being afraid that if Jancis came to him he’d give in. And his purpose was not to give in, but to begin all over again, and go straight forrard to his fixed end and aim.

The morning after they’d gone, he fetched out the ploughs, and came to the kitchen door and called to me as I was making gruel for Mother, who was abed again, and had been ever since the fire, taking nought but gruel or a posset, and he said—

“Come and start of the big field, oot, Prue?”

I thought it was best not to give him a nay-word at all, so I said, Ah, I’d come. I took the gruel to Mother and said should I get Tivvy to come and sit with her a bit now and again, seeing we were starting on the ploughing. And she says—

“Oh, that bitter old ploughing! And maybe all the corn’ll be burnt like the last. No wedding, nor house nor china nor nothing, only the pigs to tend again come the spring! But maybe I wunna see the spring. I’m very middling, Prue. You mun get the doctor’s mon to me, I doubt.”

And indeed her poor hands were very thin and shrunken, and her small face browner and thinner, and she seemed more like a lost bird or a trapped creature than ever, and more in fear of Gideon.

“Dunna let him come in till I be better,” she’d say. “Dunna let my son Sarn come and make me feel as I’m a burden. He dunna love me. He’d lief I was dead and sodded.”

And she’d lift up her hands, beseeching.

So I got Tivvy to come and mind her, and all that winter of dark weather, dark within as well as without, we ploughed, turning over the stubble of that good harvest we’d lost. We were poorer than ever, and things didna prosper so well as they had, there being no heart in us. There were Tivvy’s meals to find as well, for though she came for love, being sweet on Gideon, yet we had her victuals to find, and she was a very hearty feeder. The doctor’s man cost a lot, also, and the worse the weather was, the more he charged. About the New Year there was a bitter cold spell, and ice on the roads, so his horse came down and broke its leg, and we had to pay summat towards that. Things seemed to go from bad to worse, for Gideon kept me so hard at it, driving plough, that I was forced to leave the dairy work and the fowls and pigs to Tivvy, and she was ever a bit flighty, and careless, so folks began to complain about the butter, and the fowls laid badly, and the pigs began to look thin and unkind, and Tivvy thought of nothing but to make herself look pretty and temptuous for Gideon. As January went on the weather got worse, and we had a heavy fall of snow, and Mother was so bad one night that I was forced to send for the doctor’s man again. At least, send I didna, for nobody would go, the snow being deep. There was nothing for market, the cows being dry all but one, and eggs scarce. So Gideon didna go to Lullingford, and I made up my mind to go on Sunday, when even Gideon didna plough, and once at Lullingford I could send word to the doctor by the Silverton coach. This I did, and a weary day I had of it, and a sad day also, passing the empty house of Kester Woodseaves, and thinking maybe some ill might come to him in the great city, or he might meet a lover there, and so come no more to Lullingford. But I was glad of this weary day after, for there be times when the only comfort a body has is the remembrance of hardship borne for somebody dear.