Chapter VIII: Book FOUR (4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s to do with Polly?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I want some May butter.”

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

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

“What be it for?”

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

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

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

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

“But not to wed with her.”

“What of it? He’d pay, wouldna he?”

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

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

Jancis clapped her hands.

“Oh! I dearly love a Do!” she said.

“Ah, so do I.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ah.”

“Well, what’ll I learn ye?”

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

He chuckled a bit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I be glad he’ll be away to-day.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You spin like a fairy, Missis Felena.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Out with yer hands!” says she.

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

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

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

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

“_The Lord’s my Shepherd,_”

and afterwards I spoke for having—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Only we bain’t crows, missus.”

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

“A longish ride.”

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

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

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

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

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

“So you’re to be wed, child?”

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

“I’ve heard tell of him.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why, no to that, missus.”

“Nor handfasted?”

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

She took no notice, but only said—

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

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

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

“Well, I do and I don’t.”

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

This was Felena.

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

Then Sukey and Moll burst out—

“Who cooks for ye?”

“Who sweeps for ye?”

“Who sews yer buttons on?”

“Who knits yer stockings?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

She looked very meaningly at Felena.

But Felena was fallen into a muse.

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

Missis Miller spoke for the first time.

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

It was the greatest praise she could give.

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

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

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

Sukey and Moll screamed with joy to see them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nor me,” says Polly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Felena drew me farther from the rest.

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

“No.”

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

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

“A man to gamble for,” she said.

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

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

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

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

I could hear them singing _Barley Bridge_ out there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He stooped to her, saying—

“Ah, my dear acquaintance!”

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

“We’ve bin in the attic.”

“We sat on the bed!”

“He can whistle like a throstle.”

“He weaves as quick as ninepence!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“_He_ said dommed, _we_ didna.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Call un down, Jancis!” they pleaded.

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

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

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

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

“I gid him my gingerbread baby!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he’d only sing—

“_Peter sat a-weeping,_”

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

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

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

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

“Our Prue won at her table!”

“Eh, did she now? Well done!”

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

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

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

“No, I wunna, Mother,” I said.

“Why, what was it then?”

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

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

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

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

“Shanna I bide for the lambs?”

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

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

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

“Well, bed then, Prue!”

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

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

“Why, yes, Mother, no danger!”

“Did I spin well?”

“You spun grand.”

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

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

“Be that Woodseaves?”

“Ah.”

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

Mother wanted to know if I liked the weaver.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And he’d be bound to find out.”

“Ah, he met.”