“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.”
“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.