WE climbed up into the old pippin tree, where we had a favourite place
between the boughs. Looking at Gideon’s face among the bright leaves, I
thought it was very queer to think of all those sins being on him. Ever
since Father was a little baby, roaring and beating on his cot of
rushes, on through the time when he was a lad, taking dog’s leave from
church, and after, when he went cockfighting and courting, all the evil
he did, Gideon had got to carry. All his rages were Gideon’s rages.
“Now, Prue,” says Gideon, “listen what I be going to tell ye. You and me
has got to get on.”
“And Mother?”
“Oh, well, Mother too. But she’s old.”
“She’d like to get on though, sure.”
“That be neither here nor there. If we get on, she will. You and me ha’
got to work, Prue.”
“I amna afeerd of work,” I said.
“Well, there’ll be a plenty. I want to make money on the place—a mort
of money. Then, when the time’s ripe, we’ll sell it. Then we’ll go to
Lullingford and buy a house, and you shall hold up your head with the
best, and be a rich lady.”
“I dunna mind all that about being rich and holding up my head.”
“Well, you _must_ mind. And I’ll be churchwarden and tell the Rector
what to do, and say who’s to go in the stocks, and who’s to go in the
almshousen, and vote for the parliament men. And when any wench has a
baby that’s a love-child, you’ll go and scold her.”
“I’d liefer play with the baby.”
“Anybody can play with a baby. None but a great lady can scold. And
we’ll buy a grand house. I hanna put my eye on one yet, but there be
time enow. And a garden with a man to see to it, and serving-wenches,
and the place full of grand furniture and silver plate and china.”
“I dearly like pretty china,” I said. “Can we get some of them new cups
and saucers from Staffordshire, with little people on ’em?”
“You can get anything you like, and a gold thimble and a press full of
gowns into the bargain. Only you mun help me first. It’ll take years and
years.”
“But couldna we stop at Sarn, and get just a little bit of new furniture
and china, and do without so many maids and men?”
“No. There’s not enow of folks at Sarn, saving at the Wake, and that’s
only once a year. What’s once a year? And what use being chief if
there’s nobody to be chief of? ‘Chief among ten thousand.’ That’s a good
sounding text. I’d lief be chief among ten thousand.”
“I wonder if it be the lightning in you,” I said, “makes you feel like
that?”
I always used to think he looked as if he’d got it in him when there was
anything out of the common going on. His eyes would be all of a blaze,
but cold too. And he’d make you feel as if you wanted what he wanted,
though you didna. Times, when he wanted to look for badger-earths in the
woods, he made me think I did too. And all the while, what I wanted in
my own self was to go and gather primmyroses.
“Well, it’ll take a deal of lightning in the blood to do what I’m set to
do,” he said. “The place never did more than keep us, Mother says. And
Father left nought—not but just enough to pay the weaver and Sexton and
buy the wax candles and gloves and that for the burying.”
“Whatever shall we do, if we’d only just enough afore,” I wondered, “and
Father to work for us? We can never put by money, lad.”
“I shall do what he did and a deal more beside.”
“You never can.”
“I can do all as I’ve a mind to do. I’ve got such a power in me that
nought but death can bind it. And with you to give a hand——”
He stopped a bit there, and pulled a leaf, and tore it.
“Being as how things are, you’ll never marry, Prue.”
My heart beat soft and sad. It seemed such a terrible thing never to
marry. All girls got married. Jancis would. Tivvy would. Even Miller’s
Polly, that always had a rash or a hoost or the ringworm or summat,
would get married. And when girls got married, they had a cottage, and a
lamp, maybe, to light when their man came home, or if it was only
candles it was all one, for they could put them in the window, and he’d
think “There’s my missus now, lit the candles!” And then one day Mrs.
Beguildy would be making a cot of rushes for ’em, and one day there’d be
a babe in it, grand and solemn, and bidding letters sent round for the
christening, and the neighbours coming round the babe’s mother like bees
round the queen. Often, when things went wrong, I’d say to myself,
“Ne’er mind, Prue Sarn! There’ll come a day when you’ll be queen in your
own skep.” So I said—
“Not wed, Gideon? Oh, ah! I’ll wed for sure.”
“I’m afeerd nobody’ll ask you, Prue.”
“Not ask me? What for not?”
“Because—oh, well, you’ll soon find out. But you can have a house and
furniture and all just the same, if you give a hand in the earning of
’em.”
“But not an ’usband, nor a babe in a cot of rushes?”
“No.”
“For why?”
“Best ask Mother for why. Maybe she can tell you why the hare crossed
her path. But I’m main sorry for ye, Prue, and I be going to make you a
rich lady, and maybe when we’ve gotten a deal of gold, we’ll send away
for some doctor’s stuff for a cure. But it’ll cost a deal, and you must
work well and do all I tell you. You’re a tidy, upstanding girl enough,
Prue, and but for that one thing the fellows ud come round like they
will round Jancis.”
I thought about it a bit, while the water lapped on the banks at the
foot of the orchard. Then I said I’d do all Gideon wanted.
“You mun swear it, Prue, a solemn oath on the Book. Maybe, if you didna,
you’d tire and give over soon. And I’ll swear what I promised, too.”
He went into the house to fetch the Book. I sat still and listened to
the rooks going over to the rookery at the back of the house, beyond the
garden and the rickyard. They were coming back from their breakfast in
the fields away towards Plash. I wanted my breakfast, too; for whoever’s
dead, we poor mortals clem. And as I listened to the sleepy sound of the
cawing, and the flapping of their wings when they came over low down, I
thought it seemed a criss-cross sort of world, where you bury your
Father at night, and straightway begin to think of breakfast and housen
and gold with the first light of dawn; where you’ve got to go cursed all
your life-long because a poor silly hare looked at your Mother afore you
were born; where a son, eating his Mother’s batch-cake and drinking of
her brewing, loads his poor soul with all his Father’s sins.
Gideon came running back with the great Book in his hands, very heavy,
and fastened with a silver clasp.
“Come down, Prue, and swear,” he said. “Now hold the Book.”