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.”