Chapter XIV: Book FOUR (10)

When the doctor’s man came after a good few days, he was forced to bide with us some time, on account of the badness of the roads. This irked Gideon, for the expense of the food and also his nag’s keep. He was the more put out because the doctor’s man gave a good account of Mother, for he seemed to think she should have been at death’s door afore I called the man to come from so far away. I mind we were sitting round the hearth, late on a wild night, with hail-storms taboring on the window, and a good clear fire that we were mighty glad of. The doctor’s man was a pleasant-spoken person, round and short and ruddy, with a bright red colour on his cheeks that looked as if it had a good glaze over it. He was always rubbing his hands, as if the last patient had pleased him very well, but you could never tell from this how the person had prospered, for he’d rub his hands as much over a corpse as over a quick person, and indeed, I sometimes thought, more. He was rubbing them while we talked about Mother, though not so much as he did when he told us of poor Missis Beguildy, who had ailed more and more ever since she got to Silverton, and was now said to be going into a decline. It wasna that he was an unkind man, or wished folk harm, only naturally it was more interesting to him if they were took for death than if they were only a little ailing.

“Missis Sarn’ll pull through now. Nicely, she will,” he said.

“Oh!” says Gideon. “Her’ll pull through, will her?”

“Ah. And last a-many years, I shouldna wonder. A wiry old lady! Tough, for all she’s thin and nesh-looking.”

“How many years?” says Gideon.

“Oh! It’s hard to say. Doctor might be able to, but of course I be only like his ’prentice. But it might be as much as ten, easy. Ah. I should say ten. With care.”

“Ten years!” Gideon said it in a very strange way.

“Ah, but you mun cosset her.”

“Ten years, and always like this?”

“Oh, ah! Her’ll be bed-ridden, winters, and maybe all the year round later on.”

“And she’ll be no more use?”

“Use? Why, what use could she be?”

“And you coming over a tuthree times every winter, I suppose?”

“Oh, ah, if you send for me,” says doctor’s man, taking a pull at his ale and helping himself to another piece of bread and cheese, which made Gideon scowl.

“Whenever be you going to clear supper, Prue?” he says. “I’ve had my bellyful this long while.”

“Oh, but you’re such a poor eater, Sarn,” Tivvy cries out. “It’s wonder you’re not clemmed. You want a wife to cook for ye and sarve up temptuous dishes. Chitterling puffs, now. They’re as different from plain chitterlings as heaven from hell. I made some Sunday was a week, and neither Feyther nor Sammy spoke a word all day after, they were that contented in their innards.”

“Oh, dear me, I do wish I wunna a married man,” says the doctor’s chap. “Ah, in good sadness I wish it!”

“If you wunna, it would be no manner use,” said Tivvy pertly. “I like a big man.”

Gideon took no notice, any more than he did of the chitterling puffs.

“A very big man,” went on that forrard little piece, “and dark. Big shoulders, big ’ands, arms with great big lumps of muscle and sinew, big feet, strong legs——”

“Why, missis, you be giving a list like the list in the Song o’ Solomon,” says doctor’s man.

“And hard,” went on Tivvy, taking no notice, but fixing her eyes on Gideon, “hard and never tired, lusty and lungeous and ill to thwart, but a good lover, ah, and fiery, and not to be gainsayed by the girl he’s a mind for. That’s the man for me! Ah. That’s the man Sexton’s Tivvyriah would be a right good missus to, with no other thought but to save and scrape and scrat to do his will and make him rich.”

“Well, you should have been a lawyer, Missis, so you should,” says the visitor, “and if you dunna get what you want, may I be bottled in spirits like a tadpole!”

But Gideon never lifted his eyes to Tivvy at all, only sat and glowered till she’d gone to bed. Then he said again—“And she’ll last for years, always ailing, but lasting on?”

“Ah. Indeed to goodness! Creaking doors, you know. But you mun see you keep her pulse strong. There’s the danger. If it wunna kept strong, she’d very likely go off quiet and sudden before you’d time to say sarsaparilla. Keep the pulse strong and she’ll be as merry as a robin.” We talked a bit more, and then Gideon said he was going to look the stock afore turning in.

“The brindled longhorn’s very middling,” he said. “Seems to be in a fever all the while. Heart’s like to burst sometimes. I suppose a dose of foxglove ud put her right, maybe?”

“Ah. Foxglove’ll lower the pulse as quick as anything. But you mun be careful. Be she a young cow?”

“Going four.”

“Dunna give her too much, then. When things get old and worn out they canna stand much of it.”

When the visitor was gone to bed, and Gideon back from the shippen, he sat down, hopeless-like, and said—

“Her means dying.”

“What, Brindle?” I says.

“Ah. Seems like that old devil’s put a curse on me all right.”

“It’s only the weather, and Tivvy being a bit careless, and me so busy at it, ploughing.”

“And there’s Mother,” he said, “as was used to help a bit, no use, and less than no use. A heavy burden! We’ll never pick up now she’s like that.”

“Dunna let her know you think it,” I said.

But the very next day, when I took her supper, there was Gideon standing in the mid of the room, talking very loud, and Mother like a frittened mouse.

“Well,” he was saying, “you be very middling, Mother!”

“Ah, I be ailing, Sarn,” she says, with her smile.

“It mun be a sorrow to you that you canna do a hand’s turn.”

“Ah. It be, Sarn. But come the warm weather, I’m in behopes to see to the broody hens and the rest of the fowl. Ah! And the ducks and the cade lambs.”

“But not the pigs?”

“Well, if Tim could mind ’em a bit longer I’d be glad. It does make me so rheumaticky, down by the water there.”

“It’s a big expense, giving that great lad his tea every day.”

“I know it be, and I’ll be as quick as I can getting better, Sarn.”

“I shouldna think life’s much of a pleasure to you, ailing so.”

“It be weary time and again, but in between I’m pretty comfortable.”

“What with the rheumatics and the cough and the sinking feeling, I should think you’d as lief be in the Better Land.”

“When it pleases the Lord to take me to the Better Land, I mun go without complaint, but I’d liefer be in life, for life I do know, and the worst of it, but the Better Land I dunna know.”

“You know there’s no coughs nor rheumatics there, nor sinking feeling.”

“Nor chimney corners nor cups of tea,” she says, “and I doubt it’ll be too grand for me, Sarn.”

But Gideon, standing in the mid of the room and talking very loud, said—

“You’d as lief be dead as quick.”

He went away then, but every evening he went in again and talked in the same way, which seemed a pity to my mind, for though he might mean to cheer her up, and though folk never seem to think it matters what you say to the sick, yet it seemed to me melancholy talk for a poor old ailing woman. But at last, one evening at the end of March, in a spell of wet, muggy weather, when the rheumatics were very bad, she said, when he came to what he always ended with—“I should think you’d as lief be dead as quick——”

“Well, maybe I would, Sarn.”

And that seemed to content him. He left off coming every evening, which eased Mother, for she was more in dread of him than ever nowadays, so that even Tivvy noticed it. I thought when April came in, things seemed to be going better, Mother being more cheerful, though still very weak. I got on better with my work, being free of worry, and Mother seemed quite happy with Tivvy. We were working harder than ever, and my clo’es hung about me, but I didna mind that. I was sowing the big field with wheat, while Gideon went on ploughing. It was grand out there in the fresh of the morning, with purple shadows on the wet earth, and the sun rolling up beyond the woods, and Sarn Mere like pale blue crackled glass with a light behind it. Times, the sky would be all pale blue too, with larks hanging in it. Times, the big white clouds, like new-washed and carded wool, stood upon the tops of the budding trees. The bright colours made me think of the coloured weaving, which I supposed Kester would have pretty near mastered by now. Though no word had come, since Christmas, of his doings or his well-being, I felt in myself that all was right with him. At Christmas the Silverton coachman had left a little packet for me at the _Mug of Cider_, and when I was raught back to the attic I found within a bit of cloth woven in two colours, and a letter.

LONDON TOWN.
_Christmas._

DEAR PRUE SARN—

This is to wish you well as it leaves me. I can do two colours
now, as you see by pattern. The women here are poor things, pale
and small, mostly fair, and not a real melting dark eye among
them. I was bid to a banquet at the house of an alderman that is
a weaver. There was a young wench sat by me that had spared her
bodice-stuff but not her blushes. I called to mind a dark stone
chamber, and young Camperdine’s face in the shadows, and a woman
that did what she did for loving-kindness and in bitterness of
spirit, but did look like an apple-blossom fairy all the same,
and did light a fire in one chap as will be very hard to dout.
And so a happy Christmas and a good New Year from

KESTER WOODSEAVES.

I may say that letter was in rags by April, as if the mice had been at it.

I had sent him a letter for Christmas also, and this was it.

SARN.
_Christmas._

DEAR WEAVER—

Please find herein a lockram shirt. If you wear it, they say
you’ll take no harm from the smallpox or other ills. I wove it
and made it of hemp, and said a good few old righteous charms
over it, but no unrighteous ones. I often call to mind the day
we watched the dragon-flies, at the time of the troubling of the
waters, when the lilies were in blow. So farewell for now, and
God send you happy.

Yours obediently,
PRUDENCE SARN.

The seventh of April being a very clear-coloured morning, I called the weaving to mind, and so, as I went up and down the field sowing the bright seed, I sang _Barley Bridge_.

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

Would Kester ever come riding to Sarn from London Town? I wondered. For the fair, he’d said he’d come, at the time of the troubling of the waters, when the lilies were in blow all along the marges of the mere, looking at their angels, and when blue kingfisher-flies and the bright, lustre-coloured damsels were coming out of their shrouds.

I was thinking thus, when I looked up, and there was Tivvy, coming running in a great courant, all distraught. “Come quick, Prue!” she said. “Her’s took very bad. The tea didna agree. He says, give it her strong, he says, for it’ll do more good the like of that’n. So I did. And she said it was a bitter brew. But she drank it. And in a while she went ever so quiet, and I couldna hear her breathe. And then she gave a guggle and whispers—

“‘Go for Prue.’”

* * * * *

I was only just in time to kiss Mother, who was all shrunken down in her pillows. She whispered—

“A bitter brew!” and smiled, and caught her breath, and was gone.

After a while I says to Tivvy—

“Where’s that tea?”

But she’d thrown it away.

“Gideon,” I said, “was there bane in that tea you did tell Tivvy to give Mother?”

“Now what do I know what Tivvy did give to Mother?” says he.

“Oh, Sarn, you did know!” cries Tivvy. “You said, ‘Give it her strong,’ you did.”

“Hold your tongue, you little liar,” shouts Gideon, “or I’ll thank you to tell Prue what you and me were doing in the loft, Sunday’s a week.”

With that, Tivvy went as red as fire, and hushed.

I could make nothing of them. I sent for the doctor, to see what Mother died of. And he said, were we in the habit of giving her _digitalis_, a strange word that I didna know, but he spelled it out for me, and I wrote it down. So I said no, I’d never heard tell of it. So he says, “Foxglove! Foxglove!”

“Foxglove?” I says. “No. Whatever should I give her that for?”

“What indeed?” he says, looking at me very sharp.

“What do puzzle me, sir,” I says, “is what Mother died of. She was beginning to pick up so nice.”

“That’s what I want to know, too,” he says.

“Maybe we’d ought to have a Crowner’s ’Quest, sir?” I says.

“Oh, you’d be willing to have an inquest on the body?”

“Why, yes, indeed, if it was right and proper.”

“Well, if you’re willing to have it, there’s no need to have it.”

He was a very peculiar man. I couldna make him out at all.

“I was doubtful,” he says. “But if you’re willing . . . It’s nothing but old age, I expect. They go like that in the spring sometimes. And it’s a great trouble and expense, an inquest . . . all just for the flicker of a doubt . . . and can’t do the poor woman any manner of good . . . so, if you’re willing, we won’t bother with an inquest.”

I could make neither head nor tail of that. But remembering that Doctor was an educated man, I left off trying to understand him. For there’s as much of a mystery about an educated man, that’s been schooled and colleged proper, as there is about the Trinity. So, being busy over the funeral and all, I thought no more about him, but I grieved sorely for Mother, because as she lay in coffin she did look like a frozen bird, foredone with winter.

C H A P T E R F O U R: _All on a May Morning_

IT was quieter than ever at Sarn without Mother’s quiet ways. I missed her a deal more than if I’d depended on her, for it’s the folk that depend on us for this and for the other that we most do miss. So the mother is more let and hindered lacking the little creatures clinging to her skirt than she is when they be there, for she has no heart for her work. So in the lengthening April days I’d often sit and cry, calling to mind her poor little hands uplifted, and her way of giving me a right good welcome when I came in tired of an evening. There was only Gideon and me, and Tivvy now and again. The work went on the same as ever, though there was a sadness about it all. Gideon never went into the stackyard but he cursed Beguildy, who was still in prison, with no sentence fixed. We’d heard nought of Jancis nor her mother for a good while, nor had there been another letter from Kester. The market began again. I mean, we began to go again, having plenty to fill the stall. One of us would go, and the other would mind the farm, and I heard that every time Gideon went, Miss Dorabella would come and buy summat. Indeed it was already being said that she was sweet on Gideon, and I could only hope it wouldna come to the Squire’s ears. I didna wonder at her being partial to Gideon, for indeed he was a fine, strong man, with a deal of character and power, and very good to look at, and there were few young gentlemen about Lullingford at that time, what with some of them going to bide in London, and some never coming back from the wars. Gideon never said anything to me, but I could see he was flattered at her liking, and I thought once when she came to our door for a drink of milk, that his hand shook a bit when he gave her the cup. But if he was thinking of her, I’m sure it was only the lust of the eye, and youth, and the wish to get on, and not love, such as he felt for Jancis. I didna believe he’d ever love anybody again, since that early love had been poisoned—for indeed the bane seemed to have got into it as it had into everything. But there was no doubt he was very taken up with her, and when it wasna Miss Dorabella it was Tivvy. He didna care a farden for Tivvy, but he was ready to take all she’d give, as many another young man would, especially after such an upsetting of his life, and the losing of his dear acquaintance. He seemed to want to be out along with Tivvy when he wasna working, as if he was restless, and he couldna bear to speak of Mother. This seemed curious to me, for he never appeared to care much about her in life. I mind when May Day came, and we were starting for the market, for the things must be sold, mourning or not, I said I called to mind just where, Mother stood to send us last time. And Gideon gave a bit of a start, and looked, nervous like, at the place I pointed to, almost as if he thought she’d come again. And sometimes I noticed that he’d look across at her chair, anxious and brooding. This troubled me, for it was so different from his usual ways. In all else he was the same, and the farm was the same, and the mere, and the spring. May came in warm and splendid, and the buds and blades, the opening petals and the blown petals, the wafts of sweet air and the storms of warm rain drove on over the country as in every other year. The blackbirds kept up their charm the day long, and the cuckoos were at it from four or five in the morning. Out went the coots and their young across the mere, the dippers made their well-roofed house, the wag-tails played beside the water, and the heron stood watching his long shadow in the glassy lake, as if he wondered how soon it would be as long as the steeple. The lily leaves lay green and bright, like empty boats, for the time of lilies was not yet. The young leaves on the forest trees lengthened and broadened, the grass grew long and began to ripple, the corn sprang quick and bright. The Lent lilies in the meadow wilted, and the bluebells came, like smoke bellying up the slopes of the woods. All was made anew, and the brighter the colours were, the more I thought of Kester and his weaving, and the more unkind I felt it to be on my part, to be glad of the spring, with poor Mother in her new-made grave. There came a day in the very mid of all this fine May weather, when the thorn trees along by the mere were so thick-set with blossom that they laid a solid wall of white in the water at their feet. Though it was noon, the charm of bird-song was nearly as loud as it was at dawn, for in May they never seem to weary. We were in the kitchen, having our dinner afore going out to finish earthing up the taters. Tivvy was helping, as she often did now, though she got but little thanks from Gideon, who would brood all the while, and frown, and start up sometimes as if he heard a voice.

The kitchen was pleasant after the heat outside, for it was an early year. The sun lay in quiet patches along the quarries, and the lilac outside, just past its prime, and the sweeter for it, sent a strong freshness through the open window.

Something went past the window, and there was a little soft tap on the door. It reminded me of the time when Jancis ran away and came to our door in the snow. I went to open, and there she stood, Jancis, white as a ghost, leaning against the doorpost, with a shawl wrapped about her, and in the shawl, as I could just see, a baby no bigger than a doll.

“Why, Jancis!” I says. “However in the name of goodness did you come?”

But she only looked past me, as wild and as white as any mermaid in the old tales, peering after her mortal lover.

She gave me neither word nor look. She gave Tivvy no glance even. We wunna there for Jancis in that hour. She just slipped in, like a wreath of mist from off the winter mountain or a drift of blossom from off the summer trees, or a white woman from under the mere. She’d got on the gown she was used to wear for randies, torn and crumpled but still white, and though it didna set her off as well as the blue one, it did, with the white shawl, make her look like a floating spirit out of the air, as she went across the kitchen. There she was, all of a heap at Gideon’s feet, and she had set the baby on the floor in front of him, as he sate in the big arm-chair at the table. And the table being set out with food, and he at its head, and Jancis there upon the floor, it did make me think of that story in the Bible when Jesus was at a feast, and some poor person came and asked summat, and was chid, and did up and say that not even the dogs need lack their crumbs. It was as if all the good of life was outspread there on our oaken table, till it creaked under the weight. There were the fruits of love, there was the homely bread of daily kindness, and the cup to quench all thirst, and salt to make life tasty, and all the lesser pleasures that do make life a good, sweet thing in the living. And Gideon had the helping of them. Sarn of Sarn Mere was the maister of that feast, and he might say, if he would, “Here, let me heap thy plate, and fill up thy mug!” Or he might begrutch it all.

Jancis was kneeling in the patch of bright sunshine, and she seemed as the snowflake when the day turns to a thaw. In the ticking of one moment she might be melted clean away. I called to mind that day in the dairy, when she came in behopes that Gideon might ask her to wed there and then. I called to mind the night I wished her well when Beguildy was gone to look for the seventh child, and the time I saw her coming toërts me between her white oxen, like a lady of old time that has been a long while dead. I remembered how she’d sung _Green Gravel_ that Christmas when she ran away, and how the light from the window was green upon her face, and how she was used to say—

“O I wanted to play _Green Gravel_!”

All the things she’d ever said or done seemed to be lapped around her as she knelt there with her golden hair all loose about her shoulders. That she was so pale, all white and gold, and that Gideon was so dark, and darkly clad, made it seem yet more as if she came from some other world, and the baby also, for it was white too, and its tiny head, where the wrapper fell aside, was covered with a light yellow down. There was no look of Gideon in it at all. It wunna like a real baby, but like a changeling that came into being in the mid of a summer night on the petal of a lily flower. Oh, it was a strange baby as ever I saw! I leaned against the doorpost with the tears rolling down my face, and so that I shouldna sob out loud I promised myself to give Jancis the best meal ever she had, so soon as this should be over, and she should have a new-laid egg from the slatey game hen, whose eggs were worth a mint of money for setting, she being a prize bird. Though why it should please me so to think of her eating it, when a common egg would have been quite as nice, and bigger, I dunna know. And I promised myself that the baby should have the best wash ever, for indeed it looked as if it had rolled in the ashes. And oh, dear me! how I’d stuff it with milk, and how I’d dress up the old rush cot, and make a little counterpane, and then put the well-stuffed baby to lie in the sun and sleep! And in time it would lose that wisht, awful look, so ancient, as if it knew all there was to know, and didna like it. I wanted to see it with a great big tossy-ball of golden cowslips. And all the while Tivvy sat by Gideon with her mouth fallen open with surprise, and looking almost as frittened as if she’d seen a ghost.

Gideon was like a stone man. There was no feeling in his face at all, neither pity nor anger. All that was overpast, it seemed. It was like an old tale that he’d forgotten, and Jancis was chief lady in that tale, but why she was, and who she was, and what she did was all out of mind, because the tale was lost to his remembrance. Once, at Christmas, maybe, if she’d come, he’d have knocked her down, very likely, in his anger. But then he might have kissed her after. Now he neither struck nor kissed.

All he’d felt for her had died in the fire that night of September, and the sin of the father was visited upon the poor girl. For when Gideon’s eye fell on her, he saw his burning ricks, and in her blue glance there were the red reflections of fire, as you will see on some clear morning the last wild smoulderings of the thunderstorm. That was all she meant to him now. And though his hatred of Beguildy was as savage as ever, he had no feeling at all for her, neither hatred nor desire, nor even lust, much less any love. Miss Dorabella had seized upon his mind, and Tivvy had satisfied his body. There was no place for Jancis. There he sat, in our old kitchen, so quiet, yet so full of whispers, so full of the remembrance of all the Sarns that had been here, from Tim, with the lightning in his blood, to Father, passing out from life in a dark snoring after a fit of anger. I thought of Mother spinning here day after day, whirring like a little lych-fowl. I thought of all the other Sarn women, and of myself, striving and slaving for the bane. And it seemed that the bane was like some plant, such as the catch-fly, that does wile living creatures into its banqueting hall, spreading a great feast, and see! when they are in, she catches them and grips them, and binds them, and trammels their feet, so that they cannot go. There was a heavy sweetness from the day-lilies in the border that made me think of death chambers. I wished Jancis would say summat and get it over, whether for good or ill, so that I might the sooner set about the babe. But she didna, and time went on and on. Outside, there was Sarn Mere standing up afore me like a mirror framed in some precious green gem work. There was no sound but the saddish charm of the birds near and far, and the wandering hum of a bee that came in to our kitchen, and, misliking it, blundered out again.

Then Jancis lifted up her head and looked at Gideon.

“Sarn!” she said. And again, “Sarn!”

As she said it, I got the feeling that there were many listeners, leaning down out of the air, crowded together as close as the petals of a white peony, waiting to hear what should come of this meeting.

She clasped her hands and set her blue eyes upon Gideon, seeming to leave the baby aside for a while, as if he should speak up for himself later.

“Do you mind, Sarn,” she said, “how we used to play _Conquer_ with the big pink and white snail-housen down by the water, and you nearly always won, and I lost? Do you mind how I wanted to play _Green Gravel_?”

Her faint voice stopped a while, and a strange thing happened, for as I watched her it seemed to me as if many voices, a long way off, took up the words of that old song and sang it right through, in parts, as is the manner of singers in our countryside. For if anybody sings at all, he or she can sing parts, the people being all very fond of music and having it grained into their souls. So I heard it, with the grace-notes of the trebles and the rolling of the bass voices, and the altos and the tenors taking up the words and playing with them, and all as it were, making much of the song, and speaking for Jancis through it. Very low and far it seemed, yet rich with many voices.

“_Green gravel, green gravel, the grass is so green!_
_The fairest young lady that ever was seen._
_I’ll wash you in milk, and I’ll clothe you in silk,_
_And write down your name with a gold pen and ink._”

What it was I heard, I never knew. Parson said it was my busy imagination playing about the past. I canna say. Only, in my imagination or in reality, I did hear it, in very truth, a part song, well sung and tuneful, with every note clear and each part intertwining as it should, but all a very long way off.

“Do you call to mind the even when you saw me under the rosy light, Sarn, when you were coming back from Lullingford ooth the sheep? And the day we found the canbottlins’ nest in the spinney, and fourteen young uns in it, and you kissed me once for every canbottlin?”

Still Gideon made no sound, nor stirred.

“And when I ran away, and Prue took me in, you did say to me, standing in the mid of this very kitchen, ‘Give us a kiss, wench!’ And in the dairy once you said I looked as if I was made of may and milk. And at Callard’s, that evening, I held the baby while Mister Callard made ’em all say, ‘Bull-baiting’s bad!’ do you mind how Grandfeyther Callard said all of a sudden, ‘I see two babbies in her arms, ours, and hers as is to come!’ And the harvest dance, when they whistled so well, and we danced?”

A quiver went across Gideon’s face at the mention of that harvest, and I wondered at Jancis speaking of it, till I saw that she’d forgotten the cause of Gideon’s quarrel with her. All she knew now was that he didna love her, and the reason was neither here nor there.

“And when Feyther went to look for the seventh child, and you came, and we were so sweet together? Ah! Even that morning after Feyther came back we were so, and you said, ‘Come five days, my little dear!’ And I said, ‘God send you happy!’ And since that, Sarn, I hanna set eyes on you till this hour.”

Still Gideon made no sign, so she laid her hand on his arm.

“Do you mind it, Sarn?” she says.

“Ah!” he said, indifferent, “I mind it, but it was long ago. Time out of mind.”

“But the babe wasna. Here be the babe, Sarn! Yours and mine.”

She held the child up as if she’d put it on his knees, but he waved it away.

“A boy!” says Jancis. “Not a girl, to cumber you with women. A boy to mind pigs for ye ever so soon, and in a few years he’ll be driving plough. Ah. I reckon he’ll be a good lad to you, and work well, and gather in twice as much as his grandad scattered abroad.”

The poor babe stirred, as if it felt the heavy burden.

Gideon looked at it, as if when it touched his life’s aim it could be seen, though invisible at other times. Then he gave a short, cruel laugh.

“That?” he says. “You offer me that to help me? Thank ye! Why, if it lives, which I doubt, it’ll never be no good but to coddle about in the house and feed on soft food.”

And as if it knew that it hadna passed the test, the poor mite set up a wail. At this Gideon pushed the table aside and got up. He went to the back kitchen door, that being the nearest way to the kitchen garden. At the door he stopped a minute.

“Best go back where you came from,” he said. “You binna wanted here, neither the one nor the other.”

With that, he shut the door and went out.

Jancis stayed where she was, seeming mazed and dumbfoundered. A pale feather borne along the air, a lily petal wandering on the water, couldna be as lost as she was then. I ran to her, and lifted her and the babe to the settle, for indeed she was so light, it was pity to feel her lightness.

“Now, lookye,” I said, “never a word shall you speak till you’ve had bite and sup! Put the kettle on, Tivvy, there’s a good girl, the while I warm some milk for baby.”

Jancis said nought, but in a little the tears began to steal down her cheeks. She took a sup of tea, and then I asked her how she got here.

“I walked,” she said, “and poor baby was so heavy. You’d never think, to look at him, what a weight he was to lug.” I knew he scarce weighed more than a good fowl, and so I knew also how weary poor Jancis must have been, to feel so small a burden so heavy.

“Whatever was your mother thinking of, to let you walk?”

“Mother’s dead.”

“Dear to goodness! I be sorry for that,” I said. “She was a right nice woman.”

“There’s kind!” says Jancis, but without any heart in it.

She was like one who, in the game of _Costly Colours_, has risked all, playing the card called _Costly_, and lost it. She was out of the game now, with nothing more to gain or lose. I didna like to mention her dad, and she said nothing about him.

“Well, your home’s here,” I said. “You know that, Jancis, my dear.”

“My home canna be here if Sarn dunna love me, Prue.”

“Ah, but it is!” I cried out. “Though I did swear on the Book to obey Gideon like a ’prentice, a wife, and a dog, yet this day I shall gainsay him. You’ll lie in my bed to-night, child. You and the little un will sleep at home from this time on.”

She gave a little sad smile, as if to say, “I wonder!” and lay holding the babe. But now Tivvy, who’d been looking more and more sulky, burst out—

“And will she sleep here indeed, Prue Sarn? I do think not! Maybe you dunna know as I’m going to wed with Sarn myself. Ah! He’s got to wed me for my sake and for his own as well.”

Jancis had opened her eyes and was watching her with a look like a Wise Woman’s I knew once, who could tell you your own thoughts.

“I know it ud be as well for you, Tivvy, if he did wed with you,” I said, pretty dry and sneering, for I never could abide Tivvy, and that’s the truth, “and I reckon he’d best not be too long about it, neither, and you Sexton’s girl and all! But the thing is, will he? And I’m pretty sure he never will. I’m sorry for you, Tivvy, and I’d never have said a word afore Jancis, only you began it.”

Tivvy’s face was scarlet, but she didna flinch.

“I said, good for him as well as for me,” she answered.

“I canna see,” I says, and God forgive me for being so sharp with the girl, “how it ud be good for Gideon, _in any way_, to marry you.”

“Oh! Well, I’ll soon show you,” she says.

“He did love Jancis once, Tivvy,” I told her. “And she was his dear acquaintance and his wife, all but the ring.”

She took no notice of that.

“I’ll tell you why it ud be good for Sarn to marry me,” she said. “Foxglove tea! That’s why.”

“Foxglove tea? Are you crazy, Tivvy?”

“Everybody knows as I know nought of yarbs. Everybody knows Sara gave the cow foxglove leaves. You and I know that the doctor said your mother seemed as if she’d had foxglove.”

She spoke slower and slower, leaning forrard with her hands on the table.

“Everybody knows, Prue Sarn, that your brother thought Missis Sarn a burden. Everybody knows he does want to get on. And _I_ know, and if he dunna marry me pretty quick everybody else’ll know too, what was in the tea he made for his mother and told me to give her strong.”

“What was it?” I said, with a sickness at the heart.

“Foxglove!”

She snapped out the word like a bite. I knew it was true.

“I can prove it,” she said, “because as it chanced Mother had come to bring Missis Sarn that night-rail she’d been sewing for ’er. And when I came down from giving Missis Sarn her tea, I poured a cup for Mother, there being some left, and Mother said in a minute, ‘This is foxglove tea.’ Ah, Mother knows right well what Missis Sarn died of, but she’ll never mouth it to a mouse if Sarn weds with me.”

“I’ll never believe it!” I cried out. But Tivvy says—

“You will. You believe it now.”

And I did. Jancis did, too. She gave a little moan and whispered—

“It was foreboded, Prue! It was to be. I’ve no home now, Prue, no home on all this earth. Neither baby nor me’s got anywhere to go. What shall us do, baby?”

The baby, being spoken to and being well content with the meal it had just finished, gave a milky smile. Jancis shut her eyes and seemed to care no more what anybody said.

But Tivvy came to the settle, and she says—

“If you stop the night over, we’ll publish it all abroad, Jancis Beguildy!”

And then I be sorry to say my temper was out, and I rushed at her and boxed her ears right well.

“Go!” I says. “Go, you cruel wench, afore I maul you. I never hated afore. But you I hate. How dare you be so curst to that poor child? You may settle with Gideon what you both do. But when you come over the door-sill, out go I. And for this day, out go you!”

And I may say she went pretty quick, very startled to see meek Prue Sarn in such a temper.

“Now lie you still, and rest, my dear,” I said. “While I go to Gideon.”

“No. Dunna werrit Sarn, Prue,” she says. “But I’ll rest. Ah. Baby and me’s both in need of rest. We’ll take a good long rest, Prue. And thank you kindly for all.”

Out I went. There was Gideon, working like seven. I do believe those unkind words he said to Jancis were but his way of brazening it out to his own heart. I do believe there was a seed of love there even then, and if it hadna been for Tivvy it might have pushed up and flowered. I was never one to hiver-hover over things, so I walked up to Gideon and said—

“Tivvy says you gave Mother poison. Be it true?”

“By gum, that wench wants a good hiding!” says Gideon. “And if she forces me to wed with her, that’s the bride-gift she’ll get.”

“You _did_ give her foxglove tea to give Mother, then?”

“Mother told me she’d liefer be dead than quick, and she was a burden.”

He never tried to soften it nor deny it, for that wasna his way.

“Well, you be a murderer, and I’ve done with you,” I said.

“You swore to do as I said.”

“Murder cancels all vows,” I answered.

“I dunna want Tivvy here. She’s no manner use.”

“Seemingly you canna choose,” I said. “It’s Tivvy or hang, as far as I can see. I’d save you if I could, for you be my brother, when all’s said, and I like you right well, too. When you’ve worked along of a person, furrow for furrow and spade for spade, as long as I’ve worked with you, lad, you do like the person right well, unless you hate him. And you I canna hate, though I’ve been trying to the last few minutes. Gideon! What for did you do such a wicked thing? Indeed to goodness you mun repent in dust and ashes, and think of nothing else at all, or the devil’ll certainly put his mark on you, so you’ll come to no good in this life, and go to the lowest hell in the other. Your own Mother, Gideon!”

But all he’d say was—

“She said she’d liefer be dead than quick, and she was a great burden.”

“Well, I’m going, and so I warn you,” I said, in a passion.

“I’m in behopes you’ll stay over hay and corn harvest,” he answers, as cool as cool could be, just as if he’d done no wrong at all, which I believe in his own sight he hadna.

“No,” I said. “Fix up with Tivvy.”

“She’s no use in the harvest. She’s so bone-idle.”

“I’ll stay till she comes, and no longer,” I said. “And I wouldna promise that, only I know she’s in a pretty taking to get wed quick. I be right down disappointed with you, Gideon, on every count.”

“You’ve no right to be. What have I done? Put an old woman to sleep as wanted to sleep. And as for Tivvy, she as good as asked me to.”

Calm? Oh, he was as calm as the mere when it was frozen deep.

“And what about Jancis?” I burst out. “What about that poor mommet of hers that you’ve brought into the world? They’re neither old nor forrard.”

For answer, he pointed across to the blackened floor of the rickyard, and said—

“You know whose child she is.”

Then, under breath, he said, as if he’d forgotten me—“But I did love her once.”

So I left him to his thoughts, and ran back to the house, calling out as I opened the back door—

“Here, Jancis, my dear, I’ve brought the slatey hen’s egg to beat up in milk for you.”

But no one answered, and when I came into the kitchen the settle was empty.

I ran across the fold and out through the gate by the mixen into the road, into that good road the Romans did make, so many a year ago. And yet, to the mere, that long while was but a little, for though it had been troubled two thousand times since then, so Parson said, yet it had been troubled uncounted thousands of times afore, and would be again, till the world and all shrivelled like the cast-off body of a dragon-fly. I ran along the road in the strong heat, and the sandy earth shone in the light, and the shadows were short and very dark. I ran round the first corner, that came soon, and the next, and even the next, in case she’d walked faster than I thought. But there was nobody on the road, no white and gold mother with a white and gold mommet. Only the camomile, in clumps on the banks, was their colour, gold and white, and as I ran the strong scent of it caught my heart. I thought maybe she’d gone up to my room to wash baby. I ran back, calling and searching high and low. But there was nobody in the house save Pussy, who looked at me, sad, and ran into every room a bit in front of me. I looked in the barn and the loft and the shippen. Why I should think she was there I canna say, only I was getting despert eager to find her by this. I ran up the wood path, in case she’d had a fancy to walk there, where Gideon so often went to send her on her way home. I ran on and on, calling till the wood-pigeons flew up with a clattering noise, but nobody answered. Only the forest stood about me. Only the varnished kingcups were yellow round the edges of the mere, each clump of blossoms multiplied by two in the clear water, and the walls of thorn-bloom lay there, white and green. A lost and lonesome feeling crept over me. I went to Gideon in the garden at the back of the house.

“I canna find Jancis,” I said.

“I told her to go back where she came from,” he answered, with the same manner of speaking as he had afore, brazening it out.

“She couldna do that,” I said, “for she’s gotten no money and her mother’s dead, and what’s come to her father only the assize court knows, seemingly, for she dunna. She walked all the way from Silverton, Gideon. She hadna any money for the coach. All those weary miles she walked to come to you. And how did you make her welcome?”

He said nought to that, but went on with his work.

“You mun come and look for the poor girl,” I said. “Now. This instant minute, you must come. You must think of somewhere else to look. Oh, think of somewhere else quick, Gideon! For I canna. And if we canna think of anywhere else, there’s only——”

With a great shudder I pointed to the mere.

“What?” he said, very angered. “What, you’d fritten me, would ye?”

He smote the spade into the earth as if there was an enemy hid there, and came with me round the house and the buildings. Then he set off up the road, saying she might have got a lift, which made me afraid for his wits, seeing that there was nobody to give lifts on that road but us and the ghostly chariots that people said you could hear, nights, rolling and grinding along the old road. But in a while Gideon came back, finding no sign of Jancis.

“We must drag the mere,” I said. “We needna go far, I doubt. She’d soon be out of her depth, being so little and small. And she’d no time to walk far. She must have gone in by the caus’y here.”

For, as I said afore, this broad stone caus’y that the Romans made ran from just in front of our house down into the village at the bottom of the mere, where the bells did play, they said, of an evening.

And it turned out that I was right, for there, just where the caus’y went into the water, was one of baby’s boots. I’d noticed that the ribbon was out of it, and that it was nearly off, and would have been right off if this un had been like other babes, kicking and laughing to feel its own might. But it was only a poor stilly waxen creature, and so, doubtless, the boot stayed on till it felt the cold water, and struggled to find itself dying as it never did to find itself living.

They lay there in a bed of lily leaves, and we took them up without a word and carried them within. I washed them and dressed them in white, and we laid them on Mother’s bed, and I mounded it up with flowers, white lilac, and thorn, golden day-lilies and golden cowslips, that the child should have made into tossy-balls in the time to come.

All the while, Gideon said nothing, nor did he look much at them, but went on with his work about the place.

But the neighbours came, all the three days afore the funeral, from near and far. For the coming back of Jancis, and the child, and the drowning, made such a tale as hadna been in our part of the country, where things go on middling quiet, even in the memory of Grandfeyther Callard.

They came and looked at her, and the women cried, though in her life they’d been hard as flint to Jancis. The younger men stood a while, saying nought, looking down upon her as if they were fain of her.

“The sins of the fathers,” said Sexton, making an oration over those two, “and not only the sins of the fathers, for it’s no use to be mealymouthed, people, and though it be sad to say it, the poor wench was no better than she should be, for the child wunna born in wedlock. No, people, it wunna even a barley child, for there was no ring in the case at all. We dunna know who the man was,” he went on, looking at Gideon in a way that showed he knew right well, and meant to say unless Gideon wed with Tivvy, “we dunna know that, but what we do know is, _where she came from_. We know who was her feyther, neighbours. We know she was sired by the devil’s oddman. We know that the burning of the ricks was as nought, yea, and less than nought, compared with the things he did secret and unbeknown. What’s come to pass was only what we had to expect, for what’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh, dear souls.”

“By their fruits ye shall know them, Matthew seven,” added Sammy.

Then, looking down upon the two golden heads a good while, as you might look at some rare bird you’d never see again, he said, to himself and so low that I only heard because I was nighest to him—

“They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.”

And he catched his breath a bit, forgetting chapter and verse.

Callard’s children came two by two, to view the bodies. And as they stood at the foot of the bed after, looking on the babe in the crook of its mother’s arm, suddenly they cried out all together, as they were taught to do about the baiting—

“Oh, look’s pretty! The little mommet!”

And Miller nodded his head three times, as if to say, here were two kit-cats, where they should be.

Then Grandfeyther Callard stood out, and he said—“Two funerals in a month! It do make me think of the days when the great sickness was on the land, and we as were quick were weary of the buryings. And strange it is, friends all, that these two should be dead, when their ages added together dunna amount to near thirty years, while I number one-and-ninety years and yet I’ve so far missed to catch the plague that ravens through this bitter old world—the ancient plague of dying.”

Still Gideon said nothing. But the night afore we took them to the churchyard I heard him stirring, and being afraid that in a sudden horror of the spirit he might do himself a mischief, for though a slow, quiet man in daily life, he could be, now and again, hasty of a sudden, I went to see what the matter was.