IT was a Christmas Eve again a year and eight months after Kester
stopped the bull-baiting. There’d been no letters from Jancis a long
while, but Gideon never worried about such things. He said it was only
the weather, for the roads were so waidy round about Grimble’s that
nobody could come at them in bad weather. They came to market seldom in
winter, but laid in a store of such things as they needed, and Mister
Grimble would send half a score waggons of grain to be ground at the
mill, and then they’d settle down, the farm and the two labourers’
cottages, with the horses in stable and the cattle in the near pasture
and the sheep in the mangold fields close by, all snug for the winter.
They were used to keep a lot of simples and cures at such farms, because
no apothecary or doctor could get to them, the roads being past all
telling bad, not if it was ever so.
“Woodseaves canna go there, and Jancis canna send to Lullingford, but
come a bit of fair weather, we shall hear,” said Gideon.
I used to think of Jancis, mewed up with Missis Grimble, a woman I
couldna abide, nor could Jancis. I thought of the high mountains and the
sleat storms like a wall of ice between her and us, and the snow, thick
and soft, whispering, whispering.
“It goes round the house, and round the house, and leaves a white glove
in the window.”
That’s what they say of the snow at Sarn.
There were two sons, of course, to liven things up, but one of them was
going to wed with the labourer’s girl, and the other was very religious
and didna hold with any kind of May-games, nor pleasuring, nor even much
laughing and talking. So she’d only Missis Grimble, that was a driver
and a scold, and Mister Grimble, that was very awkward in bad weather,
because of the rheumatics. I used to think of her a deal. For if you
thought of anybody at Sarn, you thought of them a deal, it being so
quiet, especially in the winter, and time standing still, so it seemed.
And whenever I thought of Jancis I called to mind a thing I saw once in
June, when we had strange untoërt weather and a deal of tempest and
sleat, which one day for about an hour turned to snow. And I saw the
wild roses, so tender and nesh, and used to nothing colder than dew,
with their pale pink petals all full of snow, and seeming to be frozen
through and through, gold hearts and all. I thought of her always like
that, for I was fond of her, and she seemed a child to me, though she
was older. Even in spite of her making me remember that she was pretty
and I was ugly, I was fond of her, and the more so when she was in
trouble, for I never love folks quite so well when it’s bright weather
with them. So I wished I could have sent her summat for Christmas, if it
was only a hemmed kerchief of plain linen. I’d asked Gideon to inquire
after her at Kester’s when he went to market, but Kester was away, and
the house shut up. That was uncomfortable news, for I liked to think of
him by his own fireside, in the little house I knew by sight. It seemed
he was nigher then. But it was his custom to go off for a month at a
time in the winter to stay at one village or another and do all the
weaving there, to save going to-and-again.
It was very quiet in our kitchen. Mother was in bed, being always
bed-ridden now in hard weather, and Gideon was in the woods, getting the
Christmas brand. For whatever else we were stinted of, we always had
that, since it took only labour to get it, and Gideon never grudged
that, poor lad. I went to the door to listen if he’d finished chopping,
and I could hear the axe barking, and the echo of it coming from across
the mere. The trees were mounded up with snow, and the mere frozen till
near the middle. The woods, as white as sugar, stood round the water so
still, as if they were spelled, like folk in some old tale of
witchcraft, so deep they were in trusses and bales of snow, and not a
breath stirring. You couldna call summer to mind. You couldna think of
the mere with lilies on it, and ripples. I held my breath, it was so
quiet, till a redshank called from the far end of the mere by the
church, very sorrowful, with a sound like “Mute! Mute!” Then some
widgeon went over against the darkening sky, and I heard Mother give a
little cough, so I knew she’d be wanting her tea. The sound of the axe
had stopped, so Gideon ud be coming soon, and I set about getting the
meal.
I was baking, a thing I dearly liked. Most of the work I did was men’s
work, and baking seemed so light and pleasant after it I liked to see
the dough rising afore the big red fire, and to get the oven ready with
burning wood, raking out the ash after, and setting the loaves in rows.
It was pleasant to be in the warm, glowing kitchen, full of the good
smell of bread, and to look out at the grey-white fields and woods, cold
and lonesome, and then to draw the curtain, and kindle the rushlight,
setting the table and putting the tater pie to get hot on the gledes,
and knowing that in a little while all those I cared for would be
comfortable for the night. The fowl had been shut up since the first
dusk, the cows and sheep were folded, Bendigo littered-up, Pussy by
hearth, Mother with a bit of fire in her room and the warming-pan in the
bed, and now Gideon was on the way back to his supper. The oven being
still hot, I put in a batch of mince-pies, for Gideon liked a bit of
good fare as well as anybody, though he’d growl times, and talk about
ruination, and where’d our house be and the silver plate and all. But
though I did as he said all the year round, with a bit of bread and
cheese and a tater for a meal, at Christmas time I went by my own road,
and we had our merrymaking almost like other folks. And since, after all
that came to pass, I’ve been more glad of that bit of disobedience to
Gideon than of anything in our lives then. For I can say, “Anyway, they
had _that_, whatever else they didna have.”
I was singing to myself a bit, and talking to Pussy, who was almost too
comfortable to purr, only if I spoke she’d partly get up, and arch
herself very polite, and open her mouth to mew, and then be too
bone-idle to make any sound. But she looked at me as much as to say, “I
know you made this nice gledy fire to warm me, missus, and I know you’ve
got summat in larder for I, and thank you kindly.”
All of a sudden there came a soft tap at the door. So tiny and timid it
was, it might almost have been a poor red-breast tapping with its beak.
There was one would come in hard weather, and if I was too long feeding
it, it would tap on the window. I went to the door, and it being dark by
now, and nobody coming our way in a month of Sundays, I may say I
thought of frittening and fairies and Lob-lie-by-the-fire, and all sorts
of queer things that were used to happen in time past.