Then he said, slow, with a laugh at the back of his voice, but with a
cosseting sound as well—
“There, there, my dear! None shall touch you now!”
All the strong life of the man was gathered in his eyes, and blazing
full on me. So he’d heard! Folk do sometimes when they seem nigh dead.
He’d heard and remembered the words I’d said when his head was on my
bosom and my heart was all rent with love. What could I say? Nought.
Where could I hide my burning face, that his eyes did so dwell on?
Nowhere at all.
“Hi, Weaver!” they called. “Waggon be come and we be hindered for ye!”
“I never knew a mother’s love, nor yet a sister’s, nor yet a
sweetheart’s.” He said it ever so softly, but despert earnest, so that
the words burnt in. “But if I had, I should have forgot ’em all three
when you said those words to me, Prue Sarn!”
With that, he turned sharp and went back to the waggon.
What a day that was! Gold? I should think it _was_ gold! I leased and
leased, and it was just as if every armful was some precious, heavenly
treasure. Nearly all the fields were clean and bare when we had our tea
under the hedge shade, for it grew no cooler as the shadows lengthened,
being one of those mid-September days when all the gathered warmship of
the summer seems to be spent and squandered in love of the golden grain.
The sun was low in heaven and the harvest-beer low in cask when Mother
banged the tray for me to come and help with the urns for supper. They
were loading the last waggon, and I told Tim, who’d been a good,
faithful watcher, that he could go to the field and ride home atop along
with the other children, in the triumph. Then we brought out the urns,
and the cask of home-brewed, very strong and good, and set about cutting
up the meat and bread.
We heard ’em shouting from the fields, and in a while there it came, the
biggest waggon, with Jancis’s white oxen and the oxen from Plash lugging
it, Granfeyther Callard driving, all the children on top, and Jancis
with them, waving green boughs and bunches of poppies, and Gideon,
looking taller than customary in his smock, walking glad and solemn
beside the load.
Deary me, how the tears do spring! Tears like Mother and I shed then,
for the joy of it all, and other tears, for what came to pass after. For
if in the mid of that great golden day you’d sent a sough of wind, and a
mutter, and black clouds running up the sky, and darkness and thunder
and forkit lightning, it couldna have been worse nor less expected than
the storm that broke on us so soon.
The waggon came on, and all the people followed, singing and shouting,
till they came to the gate of the rickyard.
There stood Parson, with Mother and me close by, to bless the corn.
“People!” he said, “let us give thanks for daily bread!”