But after that Gideon seemed more at ease in himself. And I think it was
that he had mistrusted his own heart, being afraid that if Jancis came
to him he’d give in. And his purpose was not to give in, but to begin
all over again, and go straight forrard to his fixed end and aim.
The morning after they’d gone, he fetched out the ploughs, and came to
the kitchen door and called to me as I was making gruel for Mother, who
was abed again, and had been ever since the fire, taking nought but
gruel or a posset, and he said—
“Come and start of the big field, oot, Prue?”
I thought it was best not to give him a nay-word at all, so I said, Ah,
I’d come. I took the gruel to Mother and said should I get Tivvy to come
and sit with her a bit now and again, seeing we were starting on the
ploughing. And she says—
“Oh, that bitter old ploughing! And maybe all the corn’ll be burnt like
the last. No wedding, nor house nor china nor nothing, only the pigs to
tend again come the spring! But maybe I wunna see the spring. I’m very
middling, Prue. You mun get the doctor’s mon to me, I doubt.”
And indeed her poor hands were very thin and shrunken, and her small
face browner and thinner, and she seemed more like a lost bird or a
trapped creature than ever, and more in fear of Gideon.
“Dunna let him come in till I be better,” she’d say. “Dunna let my son
Sarn come and make me feel as I’m a burden. He dunna love me. He’d lief
I was dead and sodded.”
And she’d lift up her hands, beseeching.
So I got Tivvy to come and mind her, and all that winter of dark
weather, dark within as well as without, we ploughed, turning over the
stubble of that good harvest we’d lost. We were poorer than ever, and
things didna prosper so well as they had, there being no heart in us.
There were Tivvy’s meals to find as well, for though she came for love,
being sweet on Gideon, yet we had her victuals to find, and she was a
very hearty feeder. The doctor’s man cost a lot, also, and the worse the
weather was, the more he charged. About the New Year there was a bitter
cold spell, and ice on the roads, so his horse came down and broke its
leg, and we had to pay summat towards that. Things seemed to go from bad
to worse, for Gideon kept me so hard at it, driving plough, that I was
forced to leave the dairy work and the fowls and pigs to Tivvy, and she
was ever a bit flighty, and careless, so folks began to complain about
the butter, and the fowls laid badly, and the pigs began to look thin
and unkind, and Tivvy thought of nothing but to make herself look pretty
and temptuous for Gideon. As January went on the weather got worse, and
we had a heavy fall of snow, and Mother was so bad one night that I was
forced to send for the doctor’s man again. At least, send I didna, for
nobody would go, the snow being deep. There was nothing for market, the
cows being dry all but one, and eggs scarce. So Gideon didna go to
Lullingford, and I made up my mind to go on Sunday, when even Gideon
didna plough, and once at Lullingford I could send word to the doctor by
the Silverton coach. This I did, and a weary day I had of it, and a sad
day also, passing the empty house of Kester Woodseaves, and thinking
maybe some ill might come to him in the great city, or he might meet a
lover there, and so come no more to Lullingford. But I was glad of this
weary day after, for there be times when the only comfort a body has is
the remembrance of hardship borne for somebody dear.
When the doctor’s man came after a good few days, he was forced to bide
with us some time, on account of the badness of the roads. This irked
Gideon, for the expense of the food and also his nag’s keep. He was the
more put out because the doctor’s man gave a good account of Mother, for
he seemed to think she should have been at death’s door afore I called
the man to come from so far away. I mind we were sitting round the
hearth, late on a wild night, with hail-storms taboring on the window,
and a good clear fire that we were mighty glad of. The doctor’s man was
a pleasant-spoken person, round and short and ruddy, with a bright red
colour on his cheeks that looked as if it had a good glaze over it. He
was always rubbing his hands, as if the last patient had pleased him
very well, but you could never tell from this how the person had
prospered, for he’d rub his hands as much over a corpse as over a quick
person, and indeed, I sometimes thought, more. He was rubbing them while
we talked about Mother, though not so much as he did when he told us of
poor Missis Beguildy, who had ailed more and more ever since she got to
Silverton, and was now said to be going into a decline. It wasna that he
was an unkind man, or wished folk harm, only naturally it was more
interesting to him if they were took for death than if they were only a
little ailing.
“Missis Sarn’ll pull through now. Nicely, she will,” he said.
“Oh!” says Gideon. “Her’ll pull through, will her?”
“Ah. And last a-many years, I shouldna wonder. A wiry old lady! Tough,
for all she’s thin and nesh-looking.”
“How many years?” says Gideon.
“Oh! It’s hard to say. Doctor might be able to, but of course I be only
like his ’prentice. But it might be as much as ten, easy. Ah. I should
say ten. With care.”
“Ten years!” Gideon said it in a very strange way.
“Ah, but you mun cosset her.”
“Ten years, and always like this?”
“Oh, ah! Her’ll be bed-ridden, winters, and maybe all the year round
later on.”
“And she’ll be no more use?”
“Use? Why, what use could she be?”
“And you coming over a tuthree times every winter, I suppose?”
“Oh, ah, if you send for me,” says doctor’s man, taking a pull at his
ale and helping himself to another piece of bread and cheese, which made
Gideon scowl.
“Whenever be you going to clear supper, Prue?” he says. “I’ve had my
bellyful this long while.”
“Oh, but you’re such a poor eater, Sarn,” Tivvy cries out. “It’s wonder
you’re not clemmed. You want a wife to cook for ye and sarve up
temptuous dishes. Chitterling puffs, now. They’re as different from
plain chitterlings as heaven from hell. I made some Sunday was a week,
and neither Feyther nor Sammy spoke a word all day after, they were that
contented in their innards.”
“Oh, dear me, I do wish I wunna a married man,” says the doctor’s chap.
“Ah, in good sadness I wish it!”
“If you wunna, it would be no manner use,” said Tivvy pertly. “I like a
big man.”
Gideon took no notice, any more than he did of the chitterling puffs.
“A very big man,” went on that forrard little piece, “and dark. Big
shoulders, big ’ands, arms with great big lumps of muscle and sinew, big
feet, strong legs——”
“Why, missis, you be giving a list like the list in the Song o’
Solomon,” says doctor’s man.
“And hard,” went on Tivvy, taking no notice, but fixing her eyes on
Gideon, “hard and never tired, lusty and lungeous and ill to thwart, but
a good lover, ah, and fiery, and not to be gainsayed by the girl he’s a
mind for. That’s the man for me! Ah. That’s the man Sexton’s Tivvyriah
would be a right good missus to, with no other thought but to save and
scrape and scrat to do his will and make him rich.”
“Well, you should have been a lawyer, Missis, so you should,” says the
visitor, “and if you dunna get what you want, may I be bottled in
spirits like a tadpole!”
But Gideon never lifted his eyes to Tivvy at all, only sat and glowered
till she’d gone to bed. Then he said again—“And she’ll last for years,
always ailing, but lasting on?”
“Ah. Indeed to goodness! Creaking doors, you know. But you mun see you
keep her pulse strong. There’s the danger. If it wunna kept strong,
she’d very likely go off quiet and sudden before you’d time to say
sarsaparilla. Keep the pulse strong and she’ll be as merry as a robin.”
We talked a bit more, and then Gideon said he was going to look the
stock afore turning in.
“The brindled longhorn’s very middling,” he said. “Seems to be in a
fever all the while. Heart’s like to burst sometimes. I suppose a dose
of foxglove ud put her right, maybe?”
“Ah. Foxglove’ll lower the pulse as quick as anything. But you mun be
careful. Be she a young cow?”
“Going four.”
“Dunna give her too much, then. When things get old and worn out they
canna stand much of it.”
When the visitor was gone to bed, and Gideon back from the shippen, he
sat down, hopeless-like, and said—
“Her means dying.”
“What, Brindle?” I says.
“Ah. Seems like that old devil’s put a curse on me all right.”
“It’s only the weather, and Tivvy being a bit careless, and me so busy
at it, ploughing.”
“And there’s Mother,” he said, “as was used to help a bit, no use, and
less than no use. A heavy burden! We’ll never pick up now she’s like
that.”
“Dunna let her know you think it,” I said.
But the very next day, when I took her supper, there was Gideon standing
in the mid of the room, talking very loud, and Mother like a frittened
mouse.
“Well,” he was saying, “you be very middling, Mother!”
“Ah, I be ailing, Sarn,” she says, with her smile.
“It mun be a sorrow to you that you canna do a hand’s turn.”
“Ah. It be, Sarn. But come the warm weather, I’m in behopes to see to
the broody hens and the rest of the fowl. Ah! And the ducks and the cade
lambs.”
“But not the pigs?”
“Well, if Tim could mind ’em a bit longer I’d be glad. It does make me
so rheumaticky, down by the water there.”
“It’s a big expense, giving that great lad his tea every day.”
“I know it be, and I’ll be as quick as I can getting better, Sarn.”
“I shouldna think life’s much of a pleasure to you, ailing so.”
“It be weary time and again, but in between I’m pretty comfortable.”
“What with the rheumatics and the cough and the sinking feeling, I
should think you’d as lief be in the Better Land.”
“When it pleases the Lord to take me to the Better Land, I mun go
without complaint, but I’d liefer be in life, for life I do know, and
the worst of it, but the Better Land I dunna know.”
“You know there’s no coughs nor rheumatics there, nor sinking feeling.”
“Nor chimney corners nor cups of tea,” she says, “and I doubt it’ll be
too grand for me, Sarn.”
But Gideon, standing in the mid of the room and talking very loud,
said—
“You’d as lief be dead as quick.”
He went away then, but every evening he went in again and talked in the
same way, which seemed a pity to my mind, for though he might mean to
cheer her up, and though folk never seem to think it matters what you
say to the sick, yet it seemed to me melancholy talk for a poor old
ailing woman. But at last, one evening at the end of March, in a spell
of wet, muggy weather, when the rheumatics were very bad, she said, when
he came to what he always ended with—“I should think you’d as lief be
dead as quick——”
“Well, maybe I would, Sarn.”
And that seemed to content him. He left off coming every evening, which
eased Mother, for she was more in dread of him than ever nowadays, so
that even Tivvy noticed it. I thought when April came in, things seemed
to be going better, Mother being more cheerful, though still very weak.
I got on better with my work, being free of worry, and Mother seemed
quite happy with Tivvy. We were working harder than ever, and my clo’es
hung about me, but I didna mind that. I was sowing the big field with
wheat, while Gideon went on ploughing. It was grand out there in the
fresh of the morning, with purple shadows on the wet earth, and the sun
rolling up beyond the woods, and Sarn Mere like pale blue crackled glass
with a light behind it. Times, the sky would be all pale blue too, with
larks hanging in it. Times, the big white clouds, like new-washed and
carded wool, stood upon the tops of the budding trees. The bright
colours made me think of the coloured weaving, which I supposed Kester
would have pretty near mastered by now. Though no word had come, since
Christmas, of his doings or his well-being, I felt in myself that all
was right with him. At Christmas the Silverton coachman had left a
little packet for me at the _Mug of Cider_, and when I was raught back
to the attic I found within a bit of cloth woven in two colours, and a
letter.
LONDON TOWN.
_Christmas._