“Cutting by moonlight. Such a lad I never saw! Labours and sweats as if
summat was after un.”
“Well, the moon’s setting down behind the church croft now, mother,” I
said, “so he’ll be bound to give over.”
I went to the meadow. He’d got as much cut as a full-grown man could ha’
done. He was rubbing the scythe down with a handful of grass, and honing
it for putting away, as I came over the field. I thought it sounded
nice, coming over the wet, dimmery swaths, and sad as well. When I
called to mind all the things he’d taken on shoulder, I was sorry for
un.
“Come thy ways in to supper, Gideon,” I said.
“By gum! You look like a ghost, stealing out from under the dark hedge,
all in your blacks, with that white face.” Then he seemed to remember
him of all we’d got in hand. He began to cross-waund me about the work.
“Shut the fowl up?”
“No.”
“Be quick about it, then; it should ha’ bin done this hour. Looked the
traps?”
“No. I thought you would.”
“When I’m mowing, I canna do ought else, saving the jobs that are too
heavy for you.”
“There binna many of them.”
“When you’ve done the fowl and the traps, you can set a tu-three
night-lines in the mere. I’ve got some sawing to do yet.”
“It’ll take a terrible long while, and I’m no good at setting the
night-lines,” I said, nearly crying, being tired already, and it late,
and another day’s work beginning, seemingly.
“Did you make a bargain, or didna you?”
“Ah, I did, Gideon.”
“Then abide by it.”
Wandering about the place when Mother was abed and Gideon in the fields,
I felt lonesome. I wished there was some shorter way to be as beautiful
as a fairy. Then a thought came to me all of a sudden. I wonder it didna
come afore, but then I’d never much minded having a hare-lip afore. It
seems to me that often it’s only when you begin to see other folks
minding a thing like that for you, that you begin to mind it for
yourself. I make no doubt, if Eve had been so unlucky as to have such a
thing as a hare-lip, she’d not have minded it till Adam came by, looking
doubtfully upon her, and the Lord, frowning on His marred handiwork.
Now my thought was this: why shouldna I, that was in sore need of
healing, do as the poor folk did here at Sarn in time past, and even now
and again in our own day. Namely, at the troubling of the waters which
comes every year in the month of August, to step down into the mere in
sight of all the folk at the Wake, dressed in a white smock. It was said
that this troubling of the water was the same as that which was at
Bethesda, and though it had not the power of that water, which healed
every year, and for which no disease was too bad, it being in that
marvellous Holy Land where miracles be daily bread, yet every seventh
year it was supposed to cure one, if the disease was not too deadly. You
must go down into the water fasting, and with many curious ancient
prayers. These I could learn, when I could read, for they were in an old
book that Parson kept in the vestry. Not that he believed it, nor quite
disbelieved it, but only that it was very rare and strange.
The thing I misdoubted most was it being such a public thing. I had need
be a very brazen piece to make a show of myself thus, as if I were a
harlot in a sheet, or a witch brought to the ducking-stool. And sure
enough, when I spoke of it timidly to Mother and Gideon, they liked it
not at all.
“What,” says Gideon, “make yourself a nay-word and a show to three
hundred folk? You met as well go for a fat woman at the fair and ha’
done with it.”
“Only I amna fat,” I said.
“That’s neither here nor there. You’d be making yourself a talked-about
wench from Sarn to Lullingford and from Plash to Bramton. Going down
into the water the like of any poor plagued ’oman without a farden! Folk
ud say, ‘There’s Sarn’s sister douked into the water like poor folk was
used to do, because Sarn’s too _near_ to get the Doctor’s mon, let alone
the Doctor.’ And when I went to market, they’d laugh, turning their
faces aside. Never shall you do such a brassy thing! It ud be better, a
power, if you took and made some mint cakes and spiced ale for the fair
when the time comes, like Mother was used to do. You’d make a bit that
way.”
“Yes, my dear,” said Mother, “you do as Sarn says. It’ll bring in a bit,
and you’ll see all as is to be seen, which you couldna, saving in the
way of business, for it’ll be scarce two months from Father’s death. And
come to think of it, what an unkind thing it would be for a poor widow
to have it flung in her face afore such a mort of people that her girl
had got a hare-shotten lip.”
She began to wring her little hands, and I knew she’d go back to the old
cry in a minute, so I gave in.
“You’ve got to promise me you’ll never do such a thing, Prue,” ordered
Gideon.
“I promise for this year, but no more.”
“You’ve got a powerful curst will of your own, Prue, but promise or no,
you shanna do such a thing, never in life shall you!”
“And in death I shanna mind,” I said. “For if I do well and go to heaven
I shall be made all new, and I shall be as lovely as a lily on the mere.
And if I do ill and go to hell, I’ll sell my soul a thousand times, but
I’ll buy a beautiful face, and I shall be gladsome for that though I be
damned.”
And I ran away into the attic and cried a long while.
But the quiet of the place, and the loneliness of it comforted me at
long last, and I opened the shutter that gave on the orchard and had a
great pear tree trained around it, and I took my knitting out of my
reticule. For it was on Saturday after tea that I had spoken of the
troubling of the water, and the week’s work being nearly done, I had my
tidy gown on, and the reticule to match. Sitting there looking into the
green trees, with the smell of our hay coming freshly on the breeze,
mixed with the scent of the wild roses and meadows sweet in the orchard
ditch, I hearkened to the blackbirds singing near and far. When they
were a long way off you could scarcely disentangle them from all the
other birds, for there was a regular charm of them, thrushes and
willow-wrens, seven-coloured linnets, canbottlins, finches, and
_writing-maisters_. It was a weaving of many threads, with one
maister-thread of clear gold, a very comfortable thing to hear.
I thought maybe love was like that—a lot of coloured threads, and one
maister-thread of pure gold.
The attic was close under the thatch, and there were many nests beneath
the eaves, and a continual twittering of swallows. The attic window was
in a big gable, and the roof on one side went right down to the ground,
with a tall chimney standing up above the roof-tree. Somewhere among the
beams of the attic was a wild bees’ nest, and you could hear them making
a sleepy soft murmuring, and morning and evening you could watch them
going in a line to the mere for water. So, it being very still there,
with the fair shadows of the apple trees peopling the orchard outside,
that was void, as were the near meadows, Gideon being in the far field
making hay-cocks, which I also should have been doing, there came to me,
I cannot tell whence, a most powerful sweetness that had never come to
me afore. It was not religious, like the goodness of a text heard at a
preaching. It was beyond that. It was as if some creature made all of
light had come on a sudden from a great way off, and nestled in my
bosom. On all things there came a fair, lovely look, as if a different
air stood over them. It is a look that seems ready to come sometimes on
those gleamy mornings after rain, when they say, “So fair the day, the
cuckoo is going to heaven.”
Only this was not of the day, but of summat beyond it. I cared not to
ask what it was. For when the nut-hatch comes into her own tree, she
dunna ask who planted it, nor what name it bears to men. For the tree is
all to the nut-hatch, and this was all to me. Afterwards, when I had
mastered the reading of the book, I read—
_His banner over me was love._
And it called to mind that evening. But if you should have said, “Whose
banner?” I couldna have answered. And even now, when Parson says, “It
was the power of the Lord working in you,” I’m not sure in my own mind.
For there was nought in it of churches nor of folks, praying nor
praising, sinning nor repenting. It had to do with such things as
bird-song and daffadown-dillies rustling, knocking their heads together
in the wind. And it was as wilful in its coming and going as a breeze
over the standing corn. It was a queer thing, too, that a woman who
spent her days in sacking, cleaning sties and beast-housen, living hard,
considering over fardens, should come of a sudden into such a marvel as
this. For though it was so quiet, it was a great miracle, and it changed
my life; for when I was lost for something to turn to, I’d run to the
attic, and it was a core of sweetness in much bitter.
Though the visitation came but seldom, the taste of it was in the attic
all the while. I had but to creep in there, and hear the bees making
their murmur, and smell the woody, o’er-sweet scent of kept apples, and
hear the leaves rasping softly on the window-frame, and watch the
twisted grey twigs on the sky, and I’d remember it and forget all else.
There was a great wooden bolt on the door, and I was used to fasten it,
though there was no need, for the attic was such a lost-and-forgotten
place nobody ever came there but the travelling weaver, and Gideon in
apple harvest, and me. Nobody would ever think of looking for me there,
and it was parlour and church both to me.
The roof came down to the floor all round, and all the beams and rafters
were oak, and the floor went up and down like stormy water. The apples
and pears had their places according to kind all round the room. There
were codlins and golden pippins, brown russets and scarlet crabs,
biffins, nonpareils and queanings, big green bakers, pearmains and
red-streaks. We had a mort of pears too, for in such an old garden,
always in the family, every generation’ll put in a few trees. We had
Worcester pears and butter pears, jargonelle, bergamot and Good
Christian. Just after the last gathering, the attic used to be as bright
as a church window, all reds and golds. And the colours of the fruit
could always bring my visitation back to me, though there was not an
apple or pear in the place at the time, because the colour was wed to
the scent, which had been there time out of mind. Every one of those
round red cheeks used to smile at poor Prue Sarn, sitting betwixt the
weaving-frame and the window, all by her lonesome. I found an old
locker, given up to the mice, and scrubbed it, and put a fastening on
it, and kept my ink and quills there, and my book, and the Bible, which
Mother said I could have, since neither she nor Gideon could read in it.
One evening in October I was sitting there, with a rushlight, practising
my writing. The moon blocked the little window, as if you took a salver
and held it there. All round the walls the apples crowded, like people
at a fair waiting to see a marvel. I thought to myself that they ought
to be saying one to another, “Be still now! Hush your noise! Give over
jostling!”
I fell to thinking how all this blessedness of the attic came through me
being curst. For if I hadna had a hare-lip to frighten me away into my
own lonesome soul, this would never have come to me. The apples would
have crowded all in vain to see a marvel, for I should never have known
the glory that came from the other side of silence.
Even while I was thinking this, out of nowhere suddenly came that lovely
thing, and nestled in my heart, like a seed from the core of love.