"Mrs. Gedye, the fact is I am curious about an old charm that was
practised in these parts, as I know, till recently. The charm is
this--When a woman guesses her lover to be faithless to her, she
buries a suit of his old clothes to fetch him back to her. Mrs.
Bolverson, up at Sheba yonder--"
The old woman had opened her mouth (as I know now) to curse me. But
as Mrs. Bolverson's name escaped me, she turned her back, and walked
straight to her door and into the kitchen. Her manner told me that I
was expected to follow.
But I was not prepared for the face she turned on me in the shadow of
the kitchen. It was grey as wood-ash, and the black eyes shrank into
it like hot specks of fire.
"She--_she_ set you on to ask me that?" She caught me by the coat and
hissed out: "Come back from the door--don't let her see." Then she
lifted up her fist, with the mint tightly clutched in it, and shook it
at the warm patch of Sheba buildings across the valley.
"May God burn her bones, as He has smitten her body barren!"
"What do you know of this?" she cried, turning upon me again.
"I know nothing. That I have offered you some insult is clear: but--"
"Nay, you don't know--you don't know. No man would be such a hound.
You don't know; but, by the Lord, you shall hear, here where you'm
standin', an' shall jedge betwix' me an' that pale 'ooman up yonder.
Stand there an' list to me.
"He was my lover more'n five-an'-thirty years agone. Who? That
'ooman's wedded man, Seth Bolverson. We warn't married"--this with
a short laugh. "Wife or less than wife, he found me to his mind.
She--she that egged you on to come an' flout me--was a pale-haired
girl o' seventeen or so i' those times--a church-goin' mincin' strip
of a girl--the sort you men-folk bow the knee to for saints. Her
father owned Sheba Farm, an' she look'd across on my man, an' had envy
on 'en, an' set her eyes to draw 'en. Oh, a saint she was! An' he, the
poor shammick, went. 'Twas a good girl, you understand, that wished
for to marry an' reform 'en. She had money, too. _I_? I'd ha' poured
out my blood for 'en: that's all I cud do. So he went.
"As the place shines this day, it shone then. Like a moth it drew 'en.
Late o' summer evenin's its windeys shone when down below here 'twas
chill i' the hill's shadow. An' late at night the candles burned up
there as he courted her. Purity and cosiness, you understand, an' down
here--he forgot about down here. Before he'd missed to speak to me for
a month, I'd hear 'en whistlin' up the hill, so merry as a grig. Well,
he married her.
"They was married three months, an' 'twas harvest time come round, an'
I in his vield a-gleanin'. For I was suffered near to that extent,
seem' that the cottage here had been my fathers', an' was mine, an'
out o't they culdn' turn me. One o' the hands, as they was pitchin',
passes me an empty keg, an' says, 'Run you to the farm-place an' get
it filled.' So with it I went to th' kitchen, and while I waited
outside I sees his coat an' wesket 'pon a peg i' the passage. Well I
knew the coat; an' a madness takin' me for all my loss, I unhitched it
an' flung it behind the door, an', the keg bein' filled, picked it up
agen and ran down home-along.
"No thought had I but to win Seth back. 'Twas the charm you spoke
about: an' that same midnight I delved a hole by the dreshold an'
buried the coat, whisperin', '_Man, come back, come back to me_!' as
Aun' Lesnewth had a-taught me, times afore.
"But she, the pale woman, had a-seen me, dro' a chink o' the
parlour-door, as I tuk the coat down. An' she knowed what I tuk it
for. I've a-read it, times and again, in her wifely eyes; an' to-day
you yoursel' are witness that she knowed. If Seth knowed--"
She clenched and unclenched her fist, and went on rapidly.
"Early next mornin', and a'most afore I was dressed, two constables
came in by the gate, an' she behind 'em treadin' delicately, an' _he_
at her back, wi' his chin dropped. They charged me wi' stealin' that
coat--wi' stealin' it--that coat that I'd a-darned an' patched years
afore ever _she_ cuddled against its sleeve!"
"What happened?" I asked, as her voice sank and halted.
"What happened? She looked me i' the eyes scornfully; an' her own were
full o' knowledge. An' wi' her eyes she coaxed and dared me to abase
mysel' an' speak the truth an' win off jail. An' I, that had stole
nowt, looked back at her an' said, 'It's true. I stole the coat. Now
cart me off to jail; but handle me gently for the sake o' my child
unborn.' When I spoke these last two words an' saw her face draw up
wi' the bitterness o' their taste, I held out my wrists and clapped
the handcuffs together like cymbals and laughed wi' a glad heart."
She caught my hand suddenly, and drawing me to the porch, pointed high
above Sheba, to the yellow upland where the harvesters moved.
"Do 'ee see 'en there?--that tall young man by the hedge--there where
the slope dips? That's my son, Seth's son, the straightest man among
all. Neither spot has he, nor wart, nor blemish 'pon his body; and
when she pays 'en his wages, Saturday evenin's, he says 'Thank 'ee,
ma'am,' wi' a voice that's the very daps o' his father's. An' she's
childless. Ah, childless woman! Childless woman! Go back an' carry
word to her o' the prayer I've spoken upon her childlessness."
And "Childless woman!" "Childless woman!" she called twice again,
shaking her fist at the windows of Sheba Farm-house, that blazed back
angrily against the westering sun.