Chapter VI: Book FOUR (2)

“I’m to take back the cattle, my dear,” she said to Mother; “hay harvest, we use ’em a deal.”

“Bin you started?”

“Ah. Bin you?”

“I start to-morrow,” said Gideon.

Everybody looked at him, tall in the doorway, with a kind of power in him. And it seemed to me that everybody drew away a bit, as if from summat untoert.

Parson got up to go.

“It’s to-morrow now, young Sarn,” he said. “See you do well in it, and in all the to-morrows.”

“To-morrow! O to-morrow!” said Jancis. “It be a word of promise.”

She yawned, and all in a minute her mouth was a rose, and I knew I couldna abide her.

“One song!” Sexton spoke very solemn. “One holy song afore we part.”

So we stood up about the table, where the twelve candles were guttering low, and we sang—

_With a turf all at your head, dear man,_
_And another at your feet,_
_Your good deeds and your bad ones all_
_Before the Lord shall meet._

There being a sight more men than women, the song sounded deep, like bees in a lime-tree. Jancis and Tivvy sang very clear and high, and cold too, as if they didna mind at all that the poor corpse lay out yonder with only turfs for company.

Then there was a trampling and a traversing, and they all went out, Mother standing by the door the while, doling out the funeral cakes. These were made of good sponge, with plenty of eggs, coffin-shaped and lapped up in black-edged paper.

By this the birds were singing very loud and clear, with a ringing, echoing noise. Our chimneys lay in the mere, which meant that it was sunrise. There was a cuckoo in the oakwood, and the first corncrake spoke up from the hay grass very masterful.

Gideon said—

“It be too late for sleep now. To-morrow be come. Let’s go down into the orchard. I want to tell you what I’ve planned out.”

Little did I think, as I followed him down into the orchard, where was neither blossom nor fruit, what those plans were to mean for us all.

C H A P T E R F I V E: _The First Swath Falls_

WE climbed up into the old pippin tree, where we had a favourite place between the boughs. Looking at Gideon’s face among the bright leaves, I thought it was very queer to think of all those sins being on him. Ever since Father was a little baby, roaring and beating on his cot of rushes, on through the time when he was a lad, taking dog’s leave from church, and after, when he went cockfighting and courting, all the evil he did, Gideon had got to carry. All his rages were Gideon’s rages.

“Now, Prue,” says Gideon, “listen what I be going to tell ye. You and me has got to get on.”

“And Mother?”

“Oh, well, Mother too. But she’s old.”

“She’d like to get on though, sure.”

“That be neither here nor there. If we get on, she will. You and me ha’ got to work, Prue.”

“I amna afeerd of work,” I said.

“Well, there’ll be a plenty. I want to make money on the place—a mort of money. Then, when the time’s ripe, we’ll sell it. Then we’ll go to Lullingford and buy a house, and you shall hold up your head with the best, and be a rich lady.”

“I dunna mind all that about being rich and holding up my head.”

“Well, you _must_ mind. And I’ll be churchwarden and tell the Rector what to do, and say who’s to go in the stocks, and who’s to go in the almshousen, and vote for the parliament men. And when any wench has a baby that’s a love-child, you’ll go and scold her.”

“I’d liefer play with the baby.”

“Anybody can play with a baby. None but a great lady can scold. And we’ll buy a grand house. I hanna put my eye on one yet, but there be time enow. And a garden with a man to see to it, and serving-wenches, and the place full of grand furniture and silver plate and china.”

“I dearly like pretty china,” I said. “Can we get some of them new cups and saucers from Staffordshire, with little people on ’em?”

“You can get anything you like, and a gold thimble and a press full of gowns into the bargain. Only you mun help me first. It’ll take years and years.”

“But couldna we stop at Sarn, and get just a little bit of new furniture and china, and do without so many maids and men?”

“No. There’s not enow of folks at Sarn, saving at the Wake, and that’s only once a year. What’s once a year? And what use being chief if there’s nobody to be chief of? ‘Chief among ten thousand.’ That’s a good sounding text. I’d lief be chief among ten thousand.”

“I wonder if it be the lightning in you,” I said, “makes you feel like that?”

I always used to think he looked as if he’d got it in him when there was anything out of the common going on. His eyes would be all of a blaze, but cold too. And he’d make you feel as if you wanted what he wanted, though you didna. Times, when he wanted to look for badger-earths in the woods, he made me think I did too. And all the while, what I wanted in my own self was to go and gather primmyroses.

“Well, it’ll take a deal of lightning in the blood to do what I’m set to do,” he said. “The place never did more than keep us, Mother says. And Father left nought—not but just enough to pay the weaver and Sexton and buy the wax candles and gloves and that for the burying.”

“Whatever shall we do, if we’d only just enough afore,” I wondered, “and Father to work for us? We can never put by money, lad.”

“I shall do what he did and a deal more beside.”

“You never can.”

“I can do all as I’ve a mind to do. I’ve got such a power in me that nought but death can bind it. And with you to give a hand——”

He stopped a bit there, and pulled a leaf, and tore it.

“Being as how things are, you’ll never marry, Prue.”

My heart beat soft and sad. It seemed such a terrible thing never to marry. All girls got married. Jancis would. Tivvy would. Even Miller’s Polly, that always had a rash or a hoost or the ringworm or summat, would get married. And when girls got married, they had a cottage, and a lamp, maybe, to light when their man came home, or if it was only candles it was all one, for they could put them in the window, and he’d think “There’s my missus now, lit the candles!” And then one day Mrs. Beguildy would be making a cot of rushes for ’em, and one day there’d be a babe in it, grand and solemn, and bidding letters sent round for the christening, and the neighbours coming round the babe’s mother like bees round the queen. Often, when things went wrong, I’d say to myself, “Ne’er mind, Prue Sarn! There’ll come a day when you’ll be queen in your own skep.” So I said—

“Not wed, Gideon? Oh, ah! I’ll wed for sure.”

“I’m afeerd nobody’ll ask you, Prue.”

“Not ask me? What for not?”

“Because—oh, well, you’ll soon find out. But you can have a house and furniture and all just the same, if you give a hand in the earning of ’em.”

“But not an ’usband, nor a babe in a cot of rushes?”

“No.”

“For why?”

“Best ask Mother for why. Maybe she can tell you why the hare crossed her path. But I’m main sorry for ye, Prue, and I be going to make you a rich lady, and maybe when we’ve gotten a deal of gold, we’ll send away for some doctor’s stuff for a cure. But it’ll cost a deal, and you must work well and do all I tell you. You’re a tidy, upstanding girl enough, Prue, and but for that one thing the fellows ud come round like they will round Jancis.”

I thought about it a bit, while the water lapped on the banks at the foot of the orchard. Then I said I’d do all Gideon wanted.

“You mun swear it, Prue, a solemn oath on the Book. Maybe, if you didna, you’d tire and give over soon. And I’ll swear what I promised, too.”

He went into the house to fetch the Book. I sat still and listened to the rooks going over to the rookery at the back of the house, beyond the garden and the rickyard. They were coming back from their breakfast in the fields away towards Plash. I wanted my breakfast, too; for whoever’s dead, we poor mortals clem. And as I listened to the sleepy sound of the cawing, and the flapping of their wings when they came over low down, I thought it seemed a criss-cross sort of world, where you bury your Father at night, and straightway begin to think of breakfast and housen and gold with the first light of dawn; where you’ve got to go cursed all your life-long because a poor silly hare looked at your Mother afore you were born; where a son, eating his Mother’s batch-cake and drinking of her brewing, loads his poor soul with all his Father’s sins.

Gideon came running back with the great Book in his hands, very heavy, and fastened with a silver clasp.

“Come down, Prue, and swear,” he said. “Now hold the Book.”

I asked him if he was sure Mother would give us leave to do it.

“Give us leave? It’s not for her to give us leave. She canna hinder me. The farm be mine. Didna you hear her say so when I took the sin upon me?”

“But will you make Mother abide by that?”

“Will folk pawn their souls for nought? Is another’s sin sweet in the mouth that I should eat it save at a price? The farm be mine for ever and ever, until I choose to sell it. Now swear! Say—

“_I promise and vow to obey my brother Gideon Sarn and to hire
myself out to him as a sarvant, for no money, until all that he
wills be done. And I’ll be as biddable as a prentice, a wife,
and a dog. I swear it on the Holy Book. Amen._”

So I said it. Then Gideon said—

“_I swear to keep faith with my sister, Prue Sarn, and share all
with her when we’ve won through, and give her money up to fifty
pound, when we’ve sold Sarn, to cure her. Amen._”

After we’d done, I felt as if Sarn Mere was flowing right over us, and I shivered as if I’d got an ague.

“What ails you?” says Gideon. “Best go and light the fire if you be cold, and get the breakfast. We can talk while we eat. Mother’s asleep. There’s a deal to say yet.”

So I went in and lit the fire, and set the table as nice as I could, for it seemed a bit of comfort in a dark place. I wondered if it would be unfeeling to pull a few rosebuds to put in the middle. And seeing that it wasna unfeeling to eat and drink, I thought it wouldna hurt to pull a rose or two.

When Gideon came in from the milking, we sat down, and he told me all that was in his mind. First, I was to learn to make cheeses as well as butter. Then he was going to make some withy panniers for Bendigo, and every market day he’d ride to Lullingford with butter and eggs, cheeses and honeycomb, fruit and vegetables, and even flowers.

“Them roses, now,” he said, “you could bunch ’em up, and they’d bring in a bit.”

Times there’d be dressed poultry and ducks, rabbits, fish, and mushrooms.

“You’ll see, Prue, we’ll make a deal,” he said.

“But what a journey! Thirty mile in the day.”

“I’ll plough a bit of land to grow corn for Bendigo. As for me, I’m never tired.”

When we’d saved a bit, we were to buy another cow. She’d calve in the spring, and then there’d be two cows milking when one was dry. That ud mean more market butter. After that, we were to buy two oxen to plough and turn the flail and lug manure, and save hiring Beguildy’s beasts. When our sow farrowed, we were to keep all the piglets and turn them loose in the oakwoods, and Mother was to take her knitting and mind them. Then there’d be a deal of bacon for market, over and above what we could eat. We’d only got five sheep, but Gideon said we’d mend that by keeping all the lambs, and so have wool to sell and a big flock of sheep next year. Mother and me were to spin yarn all winter, and he’d sell it at the draper’s or change it for things we were bound to have at the grocer’s, such as salt for curing, yeast and sugar. Soap we made ourselves out of lye. Rushlights we made too, out of fat and large dry rushes. Rye we had, and one small field of wheat. Father used to take a few sacks at a time to be ground at the mill where Tivvy’s uncle lived.

“I shall grow more corn, acres of corn,” he said, “and take it to the mill in the ox-wain. Whatsoever the French do, corn wunna come amiss. And though it’s cheap now, it wunna be if they tax it, which I hear tell is more than likely. It’ll be better, a power, to have one acre under wheat then than to be coddling about with twenty acres under ought else. We’ll grow hops as well, and never be short of a drop of good ale, for though I mean to work you, Prue, I wunna clem you. Good plain food, as much as you can eat, but no fallals. The rough honey after we’ve put by the best for market, fruit when it’s cheap, bacon and taters and bread, and eggs and butter when the roads are too bad for market.”

“I shall put up a prayer for bad roads,” I said.

Gideon looked at me very sharp, but seeing it was only my fun, he laughed.

“A’ right, but it’ll take the Devil’s own weather to stop me.”

He’d got a plan that I should learn to do sums and keep accounts and write. I was glad, for I dearly loved the thought of being able to read books, and especially the Bible. It always werrited me in church when Sexton read out of the Bible, for no matter what he read, it all sounded like a bee in a bottle. It didna matter when he was reading—“And he took unto him a wife and begat Aminadab . . .” for it was nought to me if he did. But when there were things to be read with a sound in ’em like wind in the aspen tree, it seemed a pitiful thing that he should mouth it over so, being very big-sorted at being able to read at all. I wanted to be able to read

“Or ever the silver cord be loosed”

for myself, and savour it. It would be grand to be able to write, too, and put down all such things as I wanted to keep in mind. So when Gideon said I was to learn, I was joyfully willing.

“But if Mister Beguildy learns me, how can I pay?” I said. “You can dig taters for ’em, and give a hand in the hay, and drive plough for ’em now and again. Beguildy’s so mortal lazy, and so big-sorted with being a wise man, there’s not a hand’s turn of work in the man. Mooning, mooning! A salve for every sore, he’s got, saving for idleness. You be strong. You can pretty near dig spade for spade with me. Pay that way. And if you’ve a mind, you can put on your black and go and ask him this evening.”

He went off to the hay meadow with his scythe, and I set about my work with a will, and should have sung a bit, but called poor Father to mind. It made me gladsome to be getting some education, it being like a big window opening. And out of that window who knows what you metna see?

When I took Gideon’s nooning, going through the rookery, I called to mind that we’d never told the rooks about a death in the place. It’s an old ancient custom to tell them. Folk say if you dunna, a discontent comes over them, and they fall into a melancholy and forget to come home. So in a little while there are your ellums with the nests still like dark fruit on the sky, but all silent and deserted. And though rooks do a deal of mischief, it’s very unlucky to lose them, and the house they leave never has any prosperation after. So I remembered Gideon of this, and we went to the rookery.

They were the biggest ellum trees I’ve ever seen, both common and wych ellums. Under them it was all dimmery with summer leaves. The ground was green with celandine, that had just left blowing, and enchanter’s nightshade, not quite in blow. The leaves were white with droppings. It was a very still, hot day, with only a little breeze rocking the very tops of the trees, and a sleepy caw coming down to us time and again. I used to like to come to the rookery on days like this, after tea, when I’d cleaned myself. And on Ascension Day in special I liked to come and watch if they worked. For they say no rook’ll work on Ascension Day. And sure enough I never saw them bring even a stick on that day, but they seemed very thoughtful and holy in their minds, sitting each in his tree like Parson in pulpit.

“Ho, rooks!” shouted Gideon. “Father’s dead, and I be maister, and I’ve come to say as you shall keep your housen in peace, and I’ll keep ye safe from all but my own gun, and you’re kindly welcome to bide.”

The rooks peered down at him over their nests, and when he’d done there was a sudden clatter of wings, and they all swept up into the blue sky with a great clary, as if they were considering what was said. In a while they came back, and settled down very serious and quiet. So we knew they meant to bide.

When we were back in the field, Gideon laughed a bit, while he was whetting his scythe on the hone, and he said—“I’m glad they mean stopping. I be despert fond of rooky-pie.”

With that, he swept the scythe through the grass, thinnish and full of ox-eye daisies, and sighing with a dry sound. And because the grass was so thin, you could watch the scythe, like a flash of steely light, through the standing crop before the swath fell. And it seems to me now that it was like the deathly will of God, which is ever waiting behind us till the hour comes to mow us down; yet not in unkindness, but because it is best for us that we leave growing in the meadow, and be brought into His safe rickyard, and thatched over warm with His everlasting loving-kindness.

C H A P T E R S I X: “_Saddle your Dreams before you Ride ’em_”

SO soon as I’d milked, Gideon being still hard at it in the meadow, I went upstairs and put on my black, and my mob-cap. I never wore it to work in, to save washing, and folk thought I was a heathen, pretty near, what with no mob-cap and no shoes or stockings most of the time, but bare feet or clogs. Gideon could whittle a clog right well, and they be grand for doing mucky work like I did. I’d made me a sacking gown, too, short to the knee, for cleaning the beast-housen in. I know everybody called me the barn-door savage of Sarn. But when I remembered the beautiful house at Lullingford that was to be, and the flowered gowns and dimity curtains and china, I didna take it to heart much.

I was very choice of my homespun gown with the cross-over, and the new mob-cap trimmed with little sausages made of sarsnet, very new-fangled. So I did my hair in ringlets—one on each side and two at the back, down to my waist.

I was comfortable in my mind, thinking how we were going to send away for simples to make me as beautiful as a fairy. While I milked, I thought about it, and while I cleaned the sties, and while I scrubbed the kitchen quarries.

Mother winnocked a bit, to hear I was off to Plash, for she was low and melancholy from abiding under the shadow of death. She’d been so used to humouring a tempersome man that she felt as restless as you do when you’ve just cast off the second stocking-toe of a pair. She’d sit quiet a bit in the chimney corner, and you’d hear the wheel whirring softly, like a little lych-fowl. Then suddenly she’d give over spinning, and wring her hands, that always made me think of a mole’s little hands, lifted up to God when it be trapped. And she’d say, “Sunday was a week, he had no bacon to his tea! Sunday was a fortnit, he didna like the dumplings, and no wonder, for they were terrible sad, Prue. Twice I o’er-boiled his eggs in that last week, and the new smock, Prue—”

At that, she’d cry a long while.

“I hivered and hovered over it, Prue, so he died afore it was done. Oh, my dear, to think on it! It wanted but the shoulder-pieces and the cuffs, and it would ha’ been the best smock ever I made. But I hivered and hovered, and he couldna bide any longer. He heard the mighty voice, child, calling among the ellums out yonder, and he couldna tarry for his smock, poor soul. All my stitches for nought.”

“Now, Mother, you mun finish it for Gideon,” I said. “It’ll fit Gideon right well, for he’s a fine big man, though not so broad as Father. But he’ll fill out. Come his eighteenth birthday, I shouldna wonder but he’ll look right well in it. So you’d best hurry up.”

“Well,” she said, “well, there’s sense in that, child. He took the sin, to wear all his life long. He shall have the smock.”

She fetched Gideon’s Sunday coat, and took the smock out of the dresser drawer, to measure it.

I sent up a wish that they might be enough of a size to content her. And so they were, and she quieted down again, and set off once more, whirring like a little lychfowl.

But it wunna for long. She gave me a look, time and again, while I was putting on my mittens, and said—

“The ringlets be right nice, Prue.” And then: “You’ve got a very tidy figure, child.”

And all in a minute she bent two-double over the wheel and began the old weariful cry—

“Could I help it if the hare crossed my path; could I help it?”

“Oh, Mother, Mother!” I beseeched her, “give over crying for what we canna mend. I canna bear to hear you cry, my dear. Mother! Look ye! I dunna mind at all. There, there now, my lamb!” (I was used to call her that, because she seemed so little and so lost). “There, dunna take it to heart. Listen what I’ll tell you! _I’d as lief have a hare-shotten lip as not!_” With that, I ran out of the house and through the wicket and up the wood path, roaring-crying.

I cried so loud that there was a whirr of wings on this side and on that, and far up the glade a coney heard me, and sat up in the middle of the path like a Christian, with one paw held up, just as Parson does, giving the blessing. Only it was a curse that his cousin, the hare, gave me. I wondered why it cursed me so. Was it of its own free will and wish, or did the devil drive it? Did God begrutch me an ’usband and a cot of rushes, that He’d let it be so? In the years after, it did often seem a queer thing that I should be obliged to work weekdays and Sundays so as to earn enough money to put straight what a silly hare had put crooked. And I knew it would take a deal of money to cure a hare-shotten lip. There was a kind of sour laughter in the thought of it. It called to mind the blackish autumn evenings, when grouse rise from the bitter marsh and fly betwixt the withered heather and the freezing sky, and laugh. Old harsh men laugh that way at the falling down of an enemy. And the good ladies of a town, big with stiff flowered silks and babes righteously begotten, laughed so behind their fans when they went to the prison to see a lovely harlot whipped. With that kind of bitterness a man might laugh when he was dying of a wound gotten in the king’s cause, and one came busily in while the Parson was reading the prayer for the dying, and cried out, “The king doth give you an earldom, and sends you a bidding-letter to his palace.”

Ah! Those be the ways grouse laugh, and that was how I laughed in those days. But now I sit here between the hearth and the window, with the tea brewing for one that will be home afore sundown, and the clouds standing upon the mountains, and when I laugh, I laugh easy, like the woodpecker in spring. He was ever a laugher, was the woodpecker, and a right merry laugher too. He’ll fly into an ellum tree, and laugh to see it so green. And he’ll fly into an ash, and laugh to see it so bare, with only the black buds and no leaves. And then he’ll fly into an oak, and laugh fit to burst to see the young brown leaves. Ah, the woodpecker’s a good laugher, and the laughter’s sweet as a sound nut. If we can laugh so at the end of long living, we’ve not lived in vain.

But that evening I laughed like the grouse, and my heart was rebellious within me.

Yet I could not but be pleased to think of the writing. I was glad also because it would give me a hold over Gideon, since if he was too harsh with Mother and me, I could be a bit awkward about the writing. I ran along by the water, feeling light and easy in my best sandal-shoes, thinking how I’d work to get the stuff that was to make me as beautiful as a fairy, and how in a while there’d come a lover, and the axings would be put up in church, and in another while I’d sit in my own houseplace with my foot on a rocker and with a babe, grand and solemn, on my knee, better than all the French wax dolls they told of, that I’d never seen, but wanted very bad.

I was contented to see the coots swimming about with a trail of coot chickens after them, for all the world as if they were on a string. And I laughed to see the heron that lived on the far side of the water, and had got a missus and a nest there, standing knee-deep among the lilies, fair comic-struck. In after days I saw Gideon look like that, time and again, when he’d lief talk to Jancis and couldna call to mind a single word, or when he’d put his best cravat on and couldna get it to his liking, looking in the glass that he bought out of his second wool money, after he’d seen Jancis under the rosy light.

I met Jancis afore I got to the Stone House. She was bringing the oxen in, because they were ordered for a fair and the people were coming for ’em early in the morning. Betwixt the two white beasts, with a hand on each, with all that gold hair shining, and a face like a white rose, she looked like the ghost of a beautiful lady that died a long while ago and came again every midsummer and fled at cockcrow.

“Oh!” she said, “you’ve gotten ringlets, Prue. Shall I have ringlets for Sarn Wake?”

“As you please,” I answered, very snappy. For she was pretty enough without ringlets, and her mouth more a rose than ever. I thought how rich the ringlets would look, hanging down like ripe yellow bunches of white currants when they be traced very thick on the boughs, and she saying “O!” and the fellows wanting to kiss her.

When she’d fastened the beasts in the trevis, we went indoors. “Mister Beguildy!” I called out, “I want you to learn me to read and write and sum, and all you know. I’m to pay in work. Gideon and me’s going to get rich, and buy a place in Lullingford, and have maids and men, and flowered gowns for me, and china—”

Beguildy looked at me over the rim of a great measure of mead. “Saddle your dreams afore you ride ’em, my wench,” he said.

“How mean you, Mister Beguildy?”

“The answer’s under your mob-cap,” says he. “If I be to learn ye, there’s to be no argling, no questions and no answers. I say the saying, but you mun find the meaning. Now you come back to me a week-to-day and tell me what I meant, and then for a bit of a treat I’ll show you the bottle with the old Squire in it, old Camperdine, great-grandad to this un, him as came again so bad every Harvest Home, and sang a roaring bawdy song somewhere up in the chancel, only none could see un, so none could catch un.”

“Saving you.”

Beguildy smiled. He’d got a very slow stealing smile, that came like a ripple on the water, and stayed a long while.

“Ah. Saving me. I caught un proper.”

“What way did you?”

“If I told you, Prue Sarn, you’d know as much as me.”

“But do tell how you got him into the bottle!”

“Dear to goodness! You’ve forgotten the bargain. No questions.” He picked up the hammer and beat upon the row of flints, making out a little tune. And with that, in came Missis Beguildy, like the dancing woman at the fair comes in when they sound the drum. She’d got a basket of trout and a couple of fowl she was going to dress for the Wake the oxen were going to. She’d got on an old bottle-green hat of Beguildy’s, tall in the crown, such as gentlemen of the road were partial to then, and it looked very outlandish atop of her frizzy grey hair.

“Did you hear tell?” she said to me.

She’d got a deep, solemn voice, and as she was too busy to speak often, everything she said seemed very weighty, as if the Town Crier said it, standing on the steps of the market in his braided coat.

“I heard as the Devil was dead,” said Beguildy, “but it inna true, for I met un yestreen, and very pleasant spoken he was indeed, and right pleased to have your Feyther’s company, Prue.”

“Now hush your gabble,” said Missis Beguildy, pulling the feathers out of the fowl in handfuls, so that the room was like a snowstorm. “Did you hear tell, Prue, as poor John Weaver strayed off the road going through the woods in the dark of the moon last night, and was drownded in Blackmere? Death’s very catching, poor soul.”

“Why, it wanted but an hour to dawn when he left,” I said.

“Time enow, time enow. It’s dark as Egypt in the woods down yonder.”

“Who’ll take his place?”

“They seyn there’s a nephew learning the trade. But he’s bound ’prentice for a year or two. They’ll make shift with a hired mon, I reckon.”

“And it ud be better, a power,” burst out Missis Beguildy, “if _you_ took that sort of job.”

She took the poker from the fire and singed the fowl very shrewdly, as if it met have been Beguildy.

“Woman, I’ve better things to think on than weaving weeds to cover the poor dying body. Dunna I snare souls like conies, and keep ’em from troubling the lives of men? Canna I bless, and they are blessed, curse, and they are cursed? Canna I cure warts and the chin-cough and barrenness and the rheumatics, and tell the future and find water, though it be in the depth of the earth? Dunna the fowls I bless beat all other fowls in the cock-fighting? Ah, and if I chose, I could make a waxen man for every man in the parish, and consume them away, wax, men, and all. Canna I do all that, woman?”

“So you say, my dear.”

Missis Beguildy set the fowl’s legs to rights and ran a skewer through, to make all safe.

Seeing that the Wizard was becoming very angry, I told his missus how I was going to be his scholar, and he was to learn me to spell and write.

“Will your headpiece stand it, child?” she asked. For she always thought, in common with many people, that if there was anything wrong with a person’s outward seeming, there must be summat wrong with their mind as well. By that measure, Jancis, who was so silly that oftentimes she appeared to be well-nigh simple, would be a very clever woman.

“Ah. Prue’s headpiece be right enow,” said Beguildy. “Only I do think there be too many questions in it. But her’ll fettle into a good scholar, will Prue. We’ll start to-day’s a week, Prue. Jancis, you can get the besom and sweep out my room a bit. Put the tuthree books together, gather me some quills, and be very careful of all my bottles, for you never know who’s in ’em. We dunna want any frittening about the place. Oh, and you met as well turn them toads out from behind the locker; they be all dead.”

“Prue,” says Jancis, when I went out, “if you’ll tell me the way to make ringlets like that, I’ll tell you what Feyther’s old riddle-me-ree means. I know, because he’s said it over and over, and I’ve heard un tell the answer.”

“I made ’em round and round the poker, my dear,” I said. “Not too hot, and give it a good clean first. But you needna tell me the answer to the riddle-me-ree, for I’d liefer find it out.”

* * * * *

The dew came showering on to my gown as I went past the bushes of wild roses at the wood gate, spilling out of the hearts of the blossoms. It was so quiet that I could hear the sheep cropping across the corner of the mere in the glebe, and the fish rising out in the middle, and the water lapping against the big, stiff leaves of the bulrushes.

I felt like a lady, walking out in my best on a weekday. It wasna often that I could be spared, and it was to be a deal less often now. So I was glad Gideon wanted me to be a scholar, for once every week I should get the afternoon and evening off.

When a breeze came, the leaves lapped up the silence like the tongues of little creatures drinking. Up in heaven there were clouds like the bit of lace on Mother’s wedding-gown, and a setting moon as green as a young beech leaf. And down under the polished water was another moon, not quite so bright, and other clouds, not quite so lacy, and the shadow of the spire, very faint and ghostly, pointing across the water at us.

C H A P T E R S E V E N: _Pippins and Jargonelles_

MOTHER looked up when I went in. She was stitching the smock.

“What a big girl you look, coming in, Prue,” she said. “And you not near sixteen yet!”

I asked where Gideon was.

“Cutting by moonlight. Such a lad I never saw! Labours and sweats as if summat was after un.”

“Well, the moon’s setting down behind the church croft now, mother,” I said, “so he’ll be bound to give over.”

I went to the meadow. He’d got as much cut as a full-grown man could ha’ done. He was rubbing the scythe down with a handful of grass, and honing it for putting away, as I came over the field. I thought it sounded nice, coming over the wet, dimmery swaths, and sad as well. When I called to mind all the things he’d taken on shoulder, I was sorry for un.

“Come thy ways in to supper, Gideon,” I said.

“By gum! You look like a ghost, stealing out from under the dark hedge, all in your blacks, with that white face.” Then he seemed to remember him of all we’d got in hand. He began to cross-waund me about the work.

“Shut the fowl up?”

“No.”

“Be quick about it, then; it should ha’ bin done this hour. Looked the traps?”

“No. I thought you would.”

“When I’m mowing, I canna do ought else, saving the jobs that are too heavy for you.”

“There binna many of them.”

“When you’ve done the fowl and the traps, you can set a tu-three night-lines in the mere. I’ve got some sawing to do yet.”

“It’ll take a terrible long while, and I’m no good at setting the night-lines,” I said, nearly crying, being tired already, and it late, and another day’s work beginning, seemingly.

“Did you make a bargain, or didna you?”

“Ah, I did, Gideon.”

“Then abide by it.”

Wandering about the place when Mother was abed and Gideon in the fields, I felt lonesome. I wished there was some shorter way to be as beautiful as a fairy. Then a thought came to me all of a sudden. I wonder it didna come afore, but then I’d never much minded having a hare-lip afore. It seems to me that often it’s only when you begin to see other folks minding a thing like that for you, that you begin to mind it for yourself. I make no doubt, if Eve had been so unlucky as to have such a thing as a hare-lip, she’d not have minded it till Adam came by, looking doubtfully upon her, and the Lord, frowning on His marred handiwork.

Now my thought was this: why shouldna I, that was in sore need of healing, do as the poor folk did here at Sarn in time past, and even now and again in our own day. Namely, at the troubling of the waters which comes every year in the month of August, to step down into the mere in sight of all the folk at the Wake, dressed in a white smock. It was said that this troubling of the water was the same as that which was at Bethesda, and though it had not the power of that water, which healed every year, and for which no disease was too bad, it being in that marvellous Holy Land where miracles be daily bread, yet every seventh year it was supposed to cure one, if the disease was not too deadly. You must go down into the water fasting, and with many curious ancient prayers. These I could learn, when I could read, for they were in an old book that Parson kept in the vestry. Not that he believed it, nor quite disbelieved it, but only that it was very rare and strange.

The thing I misdoubted most was it being such a public thing. I had need be a very brazen piece to make a show of myself thus, as if I were a harlot in a sheet, or a witch brought to the ducking-stool. And sure enough, when I spoke of it timidly to Mother and Gideon, they liked it not at all.

“What,” says Gideon, “make yourself a nay-word and a show to three hundred folk? You met as well go for a fat woman at the fair and ha’ done with it.”

“Only I amna fat,” I said.

“That’s neither here nor there. You’d be making yourself a talked-about wench from Sarn to Lullingford and from Plash to Bramton. Going down into the water the like of any poor plagued ’oman without a farden! Folk ud say, ‘There’s Sarn’s sister douked into the water like poor folk was used to do, because Sarn’s too _near_ to get the Doctor’s mon, let alone the Doctor.’ And when I went to market, they’d laugh, turning their faces aside. Never shall you do such a brassy thing! It ud be better, a power, if you took and made some mint cakes and spiced ale for the fair when the time comes, like Mother was used to do. You’d make a bit that way.”

“Yes, my dear,” said Mother, “you do as Sarn says. It’ll bring in a bit, and you’ll see all as is to be seen, which you couldna, saving in the way of business, for it’ll be scarce two months from Father’s death. And come to think of it, what an unkind thing it would be for a poor widow to have it flung in her face afore such a mort of people that her girl had got a hare-shotten lip.”

She began to wring her little hands, and I knew she’d go back to the old cry in a minute, so I gave in.

“You’ve got to promise me you’ll never do such a thing, Prue,” ordered Gideon.

“I promise for this year, but no more.”

“You’ve got a powerful curst will of your own, Prue, but promise or no, you shanna do such a thing, never in life shall you!”

“And in death I shanna mind,” I said. “For if I do well and go to heaven I shall be made all new, and I shall be as lovely as a lily on the mere. And if I do ill and go to hell, I’ll sell my soul a thousand times, but I’ll buy a beautiful face, and I shall be gladsome for that though I be damned.”

And I ran away into the attic and cried a long while.

But the quiet of the place, and the loneliness of it comforted me at long last, and I opened the shutter that gave on the orchard and had a great pear tree trained around it, and I took my knitting out of my reticule. For it was on Saturday after tea that I had spoken of the troubling of the water, and the week’s work being nearly done, I had my tidy gown on, and the reticule to match. Sitting there looking into the green trees, with the smell of our hay coming freshly on the breeze, mixed with the scent of the wild roses and meadows sweet in the orchard ditch, I hearkened to the blackbirds singing near and far. When they were a long way off you could scarcely disentangle them from all the other birds, for there was a regular charm of them, thrushes and willow-wrens, seven-coloured linnets, canbottlins, finches, and _writing-maisters_. It was a weaving of many threads, with one maister-thread of clear gold, a very comfortable thing to hear.

I thought maybe love was like that—a lot of coloured threads, and one maister-thread of pure gold.

The attic was close under the thatch, and there were many nests beneath the eaves, and a continual twittering of swallows. The attic window was in a big gable, and the roof on one side went right down to the ground, with a tall chimney standing up above the roof-tree. Somewhere among the beams of the attic was a wild bees’ nest, and you could hear them making a sleepy soft murmuring, and morning and evening you could watch them going in a line to the mere for water. So, it being very still there, with the fair shadows of the apple trees peopling the orchard outside, that was void, as were the near meadows, Gideon being in the far field making hay-cocks, which I also should have been doing, there came to me, I cannot tell whence, a most powerful sweetness that had never come to me afore. It was not religious, like the goodness of a text heard at a preaching. It was beyond that. It was as if some creature made all of light had come on a sudden from a great way off, and nestled in my bosom. On all things there came a fair, lovely look, as if a different air stood over them. It is a look that seems ready to come sometimes on those gleamy mornings after rain, when they say, “So fair the day, the cuckoo is going to heaven.”

Only this was not of the day, but of summat beyond it. I cared not to ask what it was. For when the nut-hatch comes into her own tree, she dunna ask who planted it, nor what name it bears to men. For the tree is all to the nut-hatch, and this was all to me. Afterwards, when I had mastered the reading of the book, I read—

_His banner over me was love._

And it called to mind that evening. But if you should have said, “Whose banner?” I couldna have answered. And even now, when Parson says, “It was the power of the Lord working in you,” I’m not sure in my own mind. For there was nought in it of churches nor of folks, praying nor praising, sinning nor repenting. It had to do with such things as bird-song and daffadown-dillies rustling, knocking their heads together in the wind. And it was as wilful in its coming and going as a breeze over the standing corn. It was a queer thing, too, that a woman who spent her days in sacking, cleaning sties and beast-housen, living hard, considering over fardens, should come of a sudden into such a marvel as this. For though it was so quiet, it was a great miracle, and it changed my life; for when I was lost for something to turn to, I’d run to the attic, and it was a core of sweetness in much bitter.

Though the visitation came but seldom, the taste of it was in the attic all the while. I had but to creep in there, and hear the bees making their murmur, and smell the woody, o’er-sweet scent of kept apples, and hear the leaves rasping softly on the window-frame, and watch the twisted grey twigs on the sky, and I’d remember it and forget all else. There was a great wooden bolt on the door, and I was used to fasten it, though there was no need, for the attic was such a lost-and-forgotten place nobody ever came there but the travelling weaver, and Gideon in apple harvest, and me. Nobody would ever think of looking for me there, and it was parlour and church both to me.

The roof came down to the floor all round, and all the beams and rafters were oak, and the floor went up and down like stormy water. The apples and pears had their places according to kind all round the room. There were codlins and golden pippins, brown russets and scarlet crabs, biffins, nonpareils and queanings, big green bakers, pearmains and red-streaks. We had a mort of pears too, for in such an old garden, always in the family, every generation’ll put in a few trees. We had Worcester pears and butter pears, jargonelle, bergamot and Good Christian. Just after the last gathering, the attic used to be as bright as a church window, all reds and golds. And the colours of the fruit could always bring my visitation back to me, though there was not an apple or pear in the place at the time, because the colour was wed to the scent, which had been there time out of mind. Every one of those round red cheeks used to smile at poor Prue Sarn, sitting betwixt the weaving-frame and the window, all by her lonesome. I found an old locker, given up to the mice, and scrubbed it, and put a fastening on it, and kept my ink and quills there, and my book, and the Bible, which Mother said I could have, since neither she nor Gideon could read in it.

One evening in October I was sitting there, with a rushlight, practising my writing. The moon blocked the little window, as if you took a salver and held it there. All round the walls the apples crowded, like people at a fair waiting to see a marvel. I thought to myself that they ought to be saying one to another, “Be still now! Hush your noise! Give over jostling!”

I fell to thinking how all this blessedness of the attic came through me being curst. For if I hadna had a hare-lip to frighten me away into my own lonesome soul, this would never have come to me. The apples would have crowded all in vain to see a marvel, for I should never have known the glory that came from the other side of silence.

Even while I was thinking this, out of nowhere suddenly came that lovely thing, and nestled in my heart, like a seed from the core of love.

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.