Chapter IX: Book FOUR (5)

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

“How’s he going to set about it?”

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

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

“Ah, I be.”

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

“In the Bible? Ah, I mind it.”

“Do you feel that way about Gideon?”

The pretty colour came in her face.

“Oh, yes, indeed, Sarn be maister.”

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

“What other?”

“Why, Mister Woodseaves.”

“Oh, he goes to-morrow.”

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

“_You?_”

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

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

“But Feyther ud know.”

“You say he’s to be in the kitchen.”

“And the young man!”

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

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

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

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

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

And with a puzzled and frightened look she went.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s May Day,” I says.

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

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

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

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

“Well, what is it you _do_ care for?”

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

“But for why, Gideon?”

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

We always came back to that.

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

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

“Which be the right men?”

“Them as keeps up the price of corn.”

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

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

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

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

“And when’ll you leave ploughing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What ails you, laughing?” she says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A lad! Dear to goodness, what lad?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gideon gave me that withering look.

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

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

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

“We’ll have the weaver.”

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

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

“I like the best weaving.”

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

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

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

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

She gave a giggle in the midst of her crying.

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

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

“But I shouldna stop it.”

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

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

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

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

“Well, you talk to Gideon.”

“And will you put in a word wiselike?”

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

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

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

“You be early,” says Gideon.

“And welcome?”

“Oh, ah! You be surely welcome.”

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

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

“Me?”

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

She looked at me, helpless like.

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

Jancis hid her face in her hands.

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

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

“He’s not sold her yet, Gideon.”

“The better for un.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I canna abear to go away.”

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

“There’s one other way, Gideon.”

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

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

“O, be my sweetheart, Sarn!”

Gideon gave a kind of groan.

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

“I’d work double, lad,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ah.”

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

“Dear Lord forbid,” I says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, no, dunna anger him!”

“What do I care for his anger?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Three

C H A P T E R O N E: _The Hiring Fair_

ON May Day, there being a deal of stuff for market, I borrowed the Mill pony again and set out with Gideon very early, while yet the purple blossom and the green leaves of the lilac trees were all of a grey blur. I’d pulled some lilac overnight for market, so we rode with the sighing of it and the good smell of it all about us. It was a very still morning. Not a breath stirred the young red oak leaves, and even the silver birches, that will shift and shiver in any breeze, like water-weeds at the lake-side, were all becalmed like weeds far down where not a ripple comes. Save for our horse-hoofs on the wet flinty road there was no sound, neither from the grey fields on either side, nor from the water, the woods or the sky. So still! It seemed to me some miracle might come to pass on such a day. The dawn could not hold its breath more if Judgment was to break that eve, and the dead rise. When the colour came in the hedges, the bird’s eye, that was in great plenty, looked upon us, very simple and innocent, as if thousands of blue-eyed children watched us go by. The ollern-trees that fringed the road dripped with yellow catkins. Beyond stood the hills, mounded out of sapphire stones like the new Jerusalem, and all becalmed under a sky without so much as a cloud. Not a bird nor a trail of mist or smoke stirred in all the plain. It seemed to me, as I rode alongside of Gideon without a word, while he frowned and darkened, thinking of Beguildy, that it was like a great open book with fair pages in which all might read. Only it was written in a secret script like some of Beguildy’s books that he never locked away, knowing they were safe. For indeed every tree and bush and little flower and sprig of moss, every least herb, sweet or bitter, bird that furrows the air and worm that furrows the soil, every beast going heavily about its task of living be to us a riddle with no answer. We know not what they do. And all this great universe that seems so still is but like a sleeping top, that looks still from very swiftness. But why it turns, and what we and all creatures do in the giddy steadfastness of it, we know not.

I said to Gideon that it was like a book.

“Book?” he says. “Why, no, I see no book. But I see a plenty of good land running to waste, as might be under corn.”

So we see in the script of God what we’ve a mind to see, and nought else.

We came beneath a wild pear tree in early blow, and it put me in mind of Jancis.

“Now I wonder,” I said, “where Jancis’ll sleep this night?”

“At Grimbles’.”

“How can you tell?”

“I can tell because I say it is to be. Missis Grimble is for ever changing dairymaids, and I hear tell she’s after one this year.”

“It’s a long ways off, Gideon.”

“None the worse for that, she’ll be out of young Camperdine’s way.”

“She’ll be terrible lonesome.”

“You can write me a letter to her now and again.”

“And welcome. But how’ll she answer?”

“I thought of that.”

Gideon spoke triumphing-like.

“It’s such a great big place that they have the weaver every month or two. Weaver can write for Jancis.”

“What?” I says, with my breath very short, knowing I was going to say that name, “what, Mister Woodseaves?”

“No other.”

Why, dear to goodness, here was a queer trick of fortune for me! I was to write love-letters for him I loved to read, and he was to write letters back for me to read, once in every few weeks. I let the pony go her own pace, and we fell behind, for Mill pony was like Mill folk, and took everything sad and quiet, as if she’d been discouraged above a bit.

There’d be letters coming in the summer days, written in his own script, with his own wording and turns of speech. His hand would ha’ moved slow along every page, over and over, while he looked down at the lettering with those long-shapen blue eyes that pierced to the heart’s core. Of course they’d be letters to somebody else from somebody else, and it ud be all the wrong way round, for his would be in the name of Jancis, to Gideon, and mine would be in the name of Gideon, to Jancis. It would all be moithered and twisted and topsy-turvy like the water-lily shadows in the mere, when I’d lief it met be clear and real. Still, I could speak my heart out. I could say the things I’d thought never to say. I could lay my soul as naked afore him as I myself had been, for no eyes but hisn would read my letters. Not that my soul was anything to show, but yet I greatly desired to show it. This is a very strange thing, and ever to be found in lovers. I couldna help but laugh to think what a figure of fun Gideon would look dizened out in my soul, and how dumbfounded Jancis would be, hearing things read out of Gideon’s letters that no power of angel nor devil would ever make Gideon say, and how she’d pucker up her face and wonder if weaver was making game of her, and then think, “Oh, well, folks inna themselves when they’re writing.” I was laughing over it all when I heard Gideon shouting—

“Hi! Hi! Where bin ’e going? Pony’ll put fut in the ditch in a minute and break her leg and all the eggs in your basket into the bargain. What ails you, dreaming?”

It was but just in time. Pony and I got out of the ditch as best we might and went on, a bit crestfallen and very mim and careful. Then it came over me on a sudden that I should see the mind of Kester Woodseaves in those letters as open as the sky. I should know him as if I lived along of him. For it inna by the deal that’s said, but by what’s in the things said, that you can know a person. Just as it inna the extra length or breadth of a gown that keeps you warm, but the quality of the stuff. In all he wrote, I’d find him. For you canna write a word, even, but you show yourself—in the word you choose, and the shape of the letters, and whether you write tall or short, plain or flourished. It’s a game of _I spy_ and there’s nowhere to hide. I thought how Mister Woodseaves would go tramping home, pleased to ha’ done a kindness, and very pleased to be unlocking his own door, lighting his own fire, and keeping himself to himself. And all the while he’d have showed himself to me, let me into the house of his mind, bid me to sit down by the fire of his great kindness.

“_He brought me to his noble house._
_His banner it was love._”

“Prue!” shouted Gideon. “Dang the girl! Oh, dang the girl! Pony’s got her foot in the reins and her teeth in the grass, and here I’ve been obleeged to come back half a mile. Market day and all! Whatever ails you? Be you sickening for summat? Dear to goodness! Anybody ud think you were in love!”

After that, pony and I were very careful. We kept our thoughts on the road and the market, and as you always come, at long last, where your thoughts are, so we came to Lullingford and found the Hiring Fair just beginning.

The long row of young folks, and some not so young, who were there to be hired, began near our stall. Each one carried the sign of his trade or hers. A cook had a big wooden spoon, and if the young fellows were too gallus she’d smack them over the head with the flat of it. Men that went with the teams had whips, hedgers a brummock, gardeners a spade. Cowmen carried a bright tin milk pail, thatchers a bundle of straw. A blacksmith wore a horseshoe in his hat, and there were a tuthree of them, for a few big farms would club together and hire a blacksmith by the year. Shepherds had a crook and bailiffs a lanthorn, to show how late they’d be out and about after robbers. Though, as Gideon said, having a lanthorn is no more promise that a man’ll so much as put his nose out of the bedclothes after dark than it’s promise when a chap agrees to the text, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house,” of a Sunday that he wunna spend all the week trying to compass it. Which was just what Gideon did himself.

There were tailors and weavers, wool carders and cobblers too, for the farmers clubbed together for them also. The carders had a hank of coloured wool, and the tailors made great game running up and down the line of young women and threatening to cut their petticoats short.

Jancis laughed with the rest, but I could see she’d been crying. She looked a real picture in her print gown and bonnet, with the dairymaid’s milking stool. They were a tidy set of young women, the housemaids with broom on shoulder, the laundrymaids with dollies. It was no wonder that many a young farmer, who wanted neither cook nor dairymaid, should linger a bit, and that it should come into his mind that he wanted a wife.

“There’s Grimble,” said Gideon “I made sure he’d come, because of the bull-baiting. He’s just got a new dog, I hear tell, as fierce as fire.”

There was most always a bull-baiting after the May Fair, and it was a thing I couldna abide. I looked where Gideon pointed and saw Mister Grimble, a man with a long nose that looked as if he poked it into everybody’s business and stirred up trouble.

“Be that his missus?” I said.

Gideon looked at the woman, like a gingerbread doll, flat and baked pale, with curranty eyes, and said it was.

“Very near, and a driver,” I said.

“Well, Jancis’ll take a deal of driving. The pretty ones be always the idle ones. And she’s used to being clemmed at home. She’ll see she dunna clem too much.”

He seemed quite unconsarned.

“She’d be better, a power, at a small place with nice folk that ud treat her kind,” I said. “What for do you want her to go to Grimble’s?”

“More money. They give a better wage than smaller folk. We mun think of that first.”

“The bane!” I whispered. “The precious bane!”

For indeed this talk of money was beginning to wear on me like a song sung over and over, and a song misliked to start with. Gideon had spoken to Farmer Grimble about Jancis, so, as she never dared to go against his word, she beckoned to Beguildy and said—

“Mister Grimble’s missus’ll hire me, Feyther, if you please.”

“Oh, ’er will, will ’er? And what’ll you give me for the wench, for dree year?”

“Eighteen pound.”

“Make it twenty and you shall take her.”

“Nay, nay, it’s too much.”

“She can work if she’s a mind. She’s strong. I give you leave if you make it twenty, to drive if she wunna be led.”

“If you lay finger on my girl it’ll be the worse for ye,” said Gideon. “And _she’s_ to have the money, not you, Beguildy.”

“Hearken, hearken! Did ever you hear the like! A fellow that was born under the threepenny planet and sleeps on face and’ll come to be drowned!”

Gideon fell into a sudden rage and gave him a great clout with the flat of his hand, and Beguildy screamed out—

“I’ll pay ye! I’ll pay ye for this! Curse ye! The very spit of your dad you be. You owe me a crown,” he says, going by me on a blast of air. “And you canna leave me and mine alone. Curse ye! In sowing and harvesting. In meadows and housen. By fire and by water. A waxen man! I’ll make a waxen man this night, and call it Sarn. Slow, slow, it’ll consume away—Sarn, the sin-eater!”

Gideon looked at him, making no sign. The people drew back a bit, fearing they knew not what. Just then, elbowing through the crowd, came the young squire, Mister Camperdine’s nephew.

“I heard,” he says to Beguildy, “that Venus was come to the Hiring Fair. My aunt wants a still-room maid, and I came to see if Venus—”

“If you mean Jancis Beguildy, sir,” says Gideon, speaking quick, “she’s prenticed already.”

“What, so soon?”

“Ah, to a farmer a great way off.”

He looked hard at Mister Camperdine, and Mister Camperdine looked hard back.

“It’s a great disappointment,” says Mister Camperdine, “for my good aunt.”

“Your lady-aunt, sir,” says Gideon very dry-like, “will soon find another maid. Never faithful to one long, if I may make so bold, your lady-aunt inna, sir!”

The young squire frowned, but looking around and seeing nobody but Jancis, short and plump, he supposed the one he was after had gone already, and so thought further argling but waste of time. He sighed and said to himself—

“So Venus vanishes!” and went away. And very glad I was to see the last of him.