“You write a pretty tidy letter, Jancis,” I says. “Would ye like me to
read it?”
“Laws, no! What for should ye? You know what’s to be said.”
“Ah. I know right well what’s to be said. Only I munna say it,” I
thought. “That’s the trouble.”
I fastened the letter up and put it on the chimney-piece ready for
Gideon to take next market day.
There was a strangeness about the place all that Christmas. It was the
best Christmas ever we had, and there was more singing and laughing than
there’d bin for many a year. And yet it was in a manner of speaking sad.
It seemed to me as if the singing came from a great way off, under the
water. And when Jancis sat by the window, with the light falling on her
pale gold hair and pale face through the greenish bottle-glass, it made
her look as if the water flowed over her.
“_Green gravel, green gravel, the grass is so green!_
_The fairest young lady that ever was seen._
_I’ll wash you in milk, and clothe you in silk,_
_And write down your name with a gold pen and ink._”
Ah! I can hear Jancis singing that song now, with her sweet shrilly
voice, a great way off, ah, me! a great way off.
Mother let me get her up, Christmas morning, and came into the kitchen,
sitting snug in the chimney corner watching the lovers with a pleased,
understanding, merry look, such as I’ve often seen on the faces of old
women that have lived their lives and known summat of love. It’s as if
they said, as they looked at the young lovers—
“Pleased, be ye, my lad? You’ll be better pleased yet! . . . All of a
twitter, be ye, my girl? Well, I can tell ye, you’ll be in more of a
twitter later on, a power.”
I could see very well that when we three sang “As Joseph was a-walking,”
and “Good Christian men, rejoice!” Mother was hearing other voices too,
little voices like the Callard children’s, lifted up all together,
shrilly and sweet. She was seeing other faces, well scrubbed and rosy,
lifted up to her as she sat in the dusk of the settle, ready to smile
when the solemn carols were done, and shout “Granma!”
She kept on patting Jancis on shoulder, and saying, “Pretty thing!
Pretty!” and once I heard her cautioning Jancis against hares.
“When your time comes, my dear, dunna you go in the ’oods much, nor yet
in the meadows. Keep near whome and you wunna come across one. ’Twould
be a sad mischance, so it would.”
“Oh, Missis Sarn!” says Jancis, laughing and colouring up above a bit,
“you do run on so fast! We inna so much as courting yet.”
“And so do time run on, my dear. You munna let the moss grow on the path
of love. Dunna give too many nay-words. He’s a good lad when you dunna
vex him.”
“But it’s Sarn more than me as wants to wait,” said Jancis.
“Foolish, foolish lad! What matter for the silver plate? What matter for
so many maids and men? I’m sure I’d be content without, so as I needna
tend swine again, and can have my feet to the fire and a cup of tay.”
“Sarn wants to take me to the ’unt Ball,” said Jancis. “And I be to go
in afore Miss Dorabella.”
“That’s a mischievous thought. For what dun it matter who’s first so
long as all be in? And what is it to go to one ball more than another?”
“But I’d like it right well, to go in afore Miss Dorabella!”
“And so thee shall!” called out Gideon from the door, where he was
knocking the snow and mud off his boots. “And so thee shall, my girl,
and dressed as shameless as a lady!”
He came across the kitchen with the bit of mistletoe he’d clomb the big
apple tree to get, and gave her a loud, smacking kiss under it.
Mother clapped hands, as pleased as a child when kitty wakes up and
plays. But even when she clapped for joy, her hands still looked like
the little praying paws of a trapped mole.
“Not later than Harvest, Sarn?” she pleaded. “You wunna put it off later
than that? I’ll last till then, sure. But after—the winter comes, and
who knows? I’d lief see you wed afore winter.”
“Oh, we shanna put off, Mother. No danger! What need? For I shall be a
rich mon when I’ve sold the corn, and it’ll cost nought to get it, for
we can have a love-carriage, and I can pay back with task-work in the
winter. And in another tuthree years we can shift, for the old mon at
Lullingford wunna last long, and the money’ll be ready when the place
comes on the market.”
So they were all merry, and when I said, “The tea’s scalded!” Gideon
gave me a very affectionate pat on the shoulder and said I was a good
wench.
“A right good wench if ever there was one. Now draw up! Draw up to table
all! I want me tea cruel.”
But I couldna be as merry as they were. I felt outside it all. Only I
took a bit of comfort, now and again, between cutting bread and
frizzling rashers and pouring tea, in looking up at my letter on the
mantel, with the address on it in very tall script—
Mister Woodseaves,
The Weaver’s House,
Lullingford.
Then Jancis told us about Kester, and of the things that had come about
through Grimble’s spite, which couldna be told in letters. For it seemed
that Grimble and Huglet had misliked Kester ever since he stopped the
baiting, and the mislike had soon grown into black hatred. They tried to
set all the other farmers agen him, saying this and that. They found
fault with his weaving, which was the best in all the country round. And
they said he was slow, and dear. Not content with that, they must
enquire into his religion and his ways of thinking in the matter of the
corn laws and the Parliament men. They hob-nobbed with Squire over that,
and set him agen Kester too, worse than he was, for they said nought
about the baiting, but kept to the corn. Every way they could, they
worked against Kester, and very worried they must ha’ been that he didna
drink or go after women, or do anything that they could have told of to
the Parish Constable. But they did their best to make his life a burden,
for it irked them so sore to think of no bull-baiting for ten years. So
one day when he was weaving at Grimble’s and it came to evening, Mister
Grimble looked at the cloth Kester had done in the day, and couldna find
fault with it, neither with the quality nor the quantity. For he’d
worked right well, and Jancis said it was as smooth as silk, and never a
lump nor a knot in it. He said nought to Kester, and after supper Jancis
fetched the paper and they began to write the letter to Gideon. And it
seemed Mister Grimble couldn’t abide to see that, for he couldna read
nor write, and he thought Kester was above hisself. So when he couldna
keep any longer, but mun speak or burst, he says—
“If young Sarn do like damaged goods, he’ll get what he wants, and I
doubt he’ll have you to thank, Weaver. Very comfortable and pleasant you
be together, I must say, you and Sarn’s girl. It’s baby linen you’d best
be weaving, young Woodseaves.”
And with that, Kester snatched up his hat and all his things in a fury,
but saying nought. And when he got to the door, he turns round and
says—
“You may get Huglet’s brother-law to weave for ye from now on, Grimble.
You’ll go without weaving for all me. You bin a foul-mouthed toad and a
disgrace to your parish, which is situate in hell.”
He flung out, and he never came near the place again.
I was forced to go up to the attic to think about it a bit. I did love
Kester so sore for his rage. I thought I’d like to see un in a rage,
though not with me, for if he was in a proper rage with me, I’d die.
On Boxing Day I went across to the Stone House, and a windy walk it was,
for the snow was drifted deep along the wood path. But it was fair
overhead, and a mistletoe thrush was singing, and the cuckoo’s beads
were very bright on all the may-trees. Beguildy was out, for a wonder.
Missis Beguildy and me had a good talk.
“Well, well, poor lamb,” she said, “to think she couldna come to her own
Mother because the mester be such a pig-headed fool! Drat the man! Now
what’s to do? For go back to Grimble’s she never shall. But ours’ll be
roaring-mad to think of all that money gone. Keep her a bit longer till
the worst’s worn off, my dear!”
“Oh, she can bide, and welcome, as long as she’s a mind.”
“May them above reward ye!” she says. For she was a very religious
person, in the manner of the church. And though I’ve no wish to speak
ill of her, yet I partly think she was religious, in a measure at least,
to spite Beguildy. But maybe this is a wicked thought of mine.
“Gideon was telling us that Callard’s girl ran away afore winter,” I
said. “She’s by lonesome there all day with the five little uns and the
baby. Maybe if we went at it the right way, and made a favour of it,
they’d pay the same rate as Grimbles. They’ll get nobody else till the
spring, for they’re all hired now till May, and besides, Callard’s
Dingle inna a place the girls like. You go and see Missis Callard, and
I’ll make shift to have a lesson to keep your maister busy.”
“But you’ve left learning this long while, my dear, for you know as much
as Beguildy does.”
“Ah, well, there’s summat new I want to learn, but I dunno if it’s in
the books.”
“What met that be?”
“It’s an old ancient charm, Missis Beguildy, and it’s called content.”
“Oh, that! It’s in no book of hisn.”
“Nor in any book,” I said. But I thought, there’s one knows it. Please
God he met learn me. But that he never will.
“Eh, but it be no manner use for me to go, Prue,” she says. “They’d set
the dogs on me, very like. Callard’s very religious, you mind. And he
canna abide ours. And all _he_ thinks, his missus thinks; all _he_ says,
_she_ says, pat like the Sarn echo. Come to that, it’ll go hard but
they’ll take Jancis in at all, whatever, being who her dada is. But
maybe if _you_ went, and told them on the quiet that Jancis is promised
to Sarn, they met think of it, for your brother’s beginning to be well
spoken of as a man that’s bound to be rich.”
So I said I’d go. I couldna abide going, being looked at a bit sideways
myself, and spoken ill of time and again. But when I saw Gideon and
Jancis so pleasant and merry together in the even, playing
beggar-me-neighbor by firelight, I knew I was bound to go.
“Why, Gideon,” I says, “you’re busy at it, I see. Though you canna play
conquer with cob-nuts and snail-housen now, being too old, you’re
beggaring somebody still.”
“Conquer!” says Mother from her corner. “Ah, what a game that is! He was
always very set on it, you mind. He liked to play ooth them big
pink-and-white conquers, the Roman snail, they callen it, dunna they,
Prue? It was those you went after the night poor Sarn was took in his
boots. Poor soul!”
She cried a bit, and went to look very small, which she always did when
she was vexed.
“There, there, Mother, dunna fret, he’s in peace now.”
“Ah, poor soul! And Sarn’s took the sin. My son Sarn. Chumbled it up
proper, a did. And I can see as there’ll be lads to play conquer in our
kitchen yet, with the big pink-and-white uns, of an evening.”
She looked across at the settle. Gideon had just beggared Jancis, and
was in very good fettle.
“Ah, boys _and_ girls,” says Mother. “For I see well as he’ll beggar her
of more than cards.”
She began to laugh at the thought of the grandchildren, and at her joke,
and she laughed so much that she gave herself a hoost, and I had to put
her to bed.
Next day I set off for Callard’s Dingle. It was a way nobody would
choose to go with snow deep on the ground, for it lay over bleak, high
pastures, with northerly slopes, bitter cold and drifted up. But seeing
I was on a good errand, I began to sing out on the bare pastures with
none to hear.
“Open the gates as wide as the sky . . .”
And there by the farm, in a little fenced field, what should I see
grazing under a dark pine wood but the white bull that Kester saved from
the baiting? I stopped and looked at it a bit. There it was, not dead
nor maimed, its nice white coat in good case, and looking as contented
as if it was just come to heaven, and all because of Kester.
He’d kept his promise and paid the money, and then given the bull back
to Callard for his children.
“If you ever come to think bull-baiting’s bad, I’d lief you told ’em
so,” he said, “but not agen your conscience.”
Now Callard was a very honest man, and he felt bound to make some
return, whether or no, so he took the matter up in good sadness. Jancis
said afterwards that it was very amusing to see him gather all the
children together round the hearth, sitting on their little stools, of
an evening, the baby also being there on its mother’s knee. And Callard
ud say very loud—
“Bull-baiting’s bad!”