“She said she’d liefer be dead than quick, and she was a great burden.”
“Well, I’m going, and so I warn you,” I said, in a passion.
“I’m in behopes you’ll stay over hay and corn harvest,” he answers, as
cool as cool could be, just as if he’d done no wrong at all, which I
believe in his own sight he hadna.
“No,” I said. “Fix up with Tivvy.”
“She’s no use in the harvest. She’s so bone-idle.”
“I’ll stay till she comes, and no longer,” I said. “And I wouldna
promise that, only I know she’s in a pretty taking to get wed quick. I
be right down disappointed with you, Gideon, on every count.”
“You’ve no right to be. What have I done? Put an old woman to sleep as
wanted to sleep. And as for Tivvy, she as good as asked me to.”
Calm? Oh, he was as calm as the mere when it was frozen deep.
“And what about Jancis?” I burst out. “What about that poor mommet of
hers that you’ve brought into the world? They’re neither old nor
forrard.”
For answer, he pointed across to the blackened floor of the rickyard,
and said—
“You know whose child she is.”
Then, under breath, he said, as if he’d forgotten me—“But I did love
her once.”
So I left him to his thoughts, and ran back to the house, calling out as
I opened the back door—
“Here, Jancis, my dear, I’ve brought the slatey hen’s egg to beat up in
milk for you.”
But no one answered, and when I came into the kitchen the settle was
empty.
I ran across the fold and out through the gate by the mixen into the
road, into that good road the Romans did make, so many a year ago. And
yet, to the mere, that long while was but a little, for though it had
been troubled two thousand times since then, so Parson said, yet it had
been troubled uncounted thousands of times afore, and would be again,
till the world and all shrivelled like the cast-off body of a
dragon-fly. I ran along the road in the strong heat, and the sandy earth
shone in the light, and the shadows were short and very dark. I ran
round the first corner, that came soon, and the next, and even the next,
in case she’d walked faster than I thought. But there was nobody on the
road, no white and gold mother with a white and gold mommet. Only the
camomile, in clumps on the banks, was their colour, gold and white, and
as I ran the strong scent of it caught my heart. I thought maybe she’d
gone up to my room to wash baby. I ran back, calling and searching high
and low. But there was nobody in the house save Pussy, who looked at me,
sad, and ran into every room a bit in front of me. I looked in the barn
and the loft and the shippen. Why I should think she was there I canna
say, only I was getting despert eager to find her by this. I ran up the
wood path, in case she’d had a fancy to walk there, where Gideon so
often went to send her on her way home. I ran on and on, calling till
the wood-pigeons flew up with a clattering noise, but nobody answered.
Only the forest stood about me. Only the varnished kingcups were yellow
round the edges of the mere, each clump of blossoms multiplied by two in
the clear water, and the walls of thorn-bloom lay there, white and
green. A lost and lonesome feeling crept over me. I went to Gideon in
the garden at the back of the house.
“I canna find Jancis,” I said.
“I told her to go back where she came from,” he answered, with the same
manner of speaking as he had afore, brazening it out.
“She couldna do that,” I said, “for she’s gotten no money and her
mother’s dead, and what’s come to her father only the assize court
knows, seemingly, for she dunna. She walked all the way from Silverton,
Gideon. She hadna any money for the coach. All those weary miles she
walked to come to you. And how did you make her welcome?”
He said nought to that, but went on with his work.
“You mun come and look for the poor girl,” I said. “Now. This instant
minute, you must come. You must think of somewhere else to look. Oh,
think of somewhere else quick, Gideon! For I canna. And if we canna
think of anywhere else, there’s only——”
With a great shudder I pointed to the mere.
“What?” he said, very angered. “What, you’d fritten me, would ye?”
He smote the spade into the earth as if there was an enemy hid there,
and came with me round the house and the buildings. Then he set off up
the road, saying she might have got a lift, which made me afraid for his
wits, seeing that there was nobody to give lifts on that road but us and
the ghostly chariots that people said you could hear, nights, rolling
and grinding along the old road. But in a while Gideon came back,
finding no sign of Jancis.
“We must drag the mere,” I said. “We needna go far, I doubt. She’d soon
be out of her depth, being so little and small. And she’d no time to
walk far. She must have gone in by the caus’y here.”
For, as I said afore, this broad stone caus’y that the Romans made ran
from just in front of our house down into the village at the bottom of
the mere, where the bells did play, they said, of an evening.
And it turned out that I was right, for there, just where the caus’y
went into the water, was one of baby’s boots. I’d noticed that the
ribbon was out of it, and that it was nearly off, and would have been
right off if this un had been like other babes, kicking and laughing to
feel its own might. But it was only a poor stilly waxen creature, and
so, doubtless, the boot stayed on till it felt the cold water, and
struggled to find itself dying as it never did to find itself living.
They lay there in a bed of lily leaves, and we took them up without a
word and carried them within. I washed them and dressed them in white,
and we laid them on Mother’s bed, and I mounded it up with flowers,
white lilac, and thorn, golden day-lilies and golden cowslips, that the
child should have made into tossy-balls in the time to come.
All the while, Gideon said nothing, nor did he look much at them, but
went on with his work about the place.
But the neighbours came, all the three days afore the funeral, from near
and far. For the coming back of Jancis, and the child, and the drowning,
made such a tale as hadna been in our part of the country, where things
go on middling quiet, even in the memory of Grandfeyther Callard.
They came and looked at her, and the women cried, though in her life
they’d been hard as flint to Jancis. The younger men stood a while,
saying nought, looking down upon her as if they were fain of her.
“The sins of the fathers,” said Sexton, making an oration over those
two, “and not only the sins of the fathers, for it’s no use to be
mealymouthed, people, and though it be sad to say it, the poor wench was
no better than she should be, for the child wunna born in wedlock. No,
people, it wunna even a barley child, for there was no ring in the case
at all. We dunna know who the man was,” he went on, looking at Gideon in
a way that showed he knew right well, and meant to say unless Gideon wed
with Tivvy, “we dunna know that, but what we do know is, _where she came
from_. We know who was her feyther, neighbours. We know she was sired by
the devil’s oddman. We know that the burning of the ricks was as nought,
yea, and less than nought, compared with the things he did secret and
unbeknown. What’s come to pass was only what we had to expect, for
what’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh, dear souls.”
“By their fruits ye shall know them, Matthew seven,” added Sammy.
Then, looking down upon the two golden heads a good while, as you might
look at some rare bird you’d never see again, he said, to himself and so
low that I only heard because I was nighest to him—
“They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they
were not divided.”
And he catched his breath a bit, forgetting chapter and verse.
Callard’s children came two by two, to view the bodies. And as they
stood at the foot of the bed after, looking on the babe in the crook of
its mother’s arm, suddenly they cried out all together, as they were
taught to do about the baiting—
“Oh, look’s pretty! The little mommet!”
And Miller nodded his head three times, as if to say, here were two
kit-cats, where they should be.
Then Grandfeyther Callard stood out, and he said—“Two funerals in a
month! It do make me think of the days when the great sickness was on
the land, and we as were quick were weary of the buryings. And strange
it is, friends all, that these two should be dead, when their ages added
together dunna amount to near thirty years, while I number
one-and-ninety years and yet I’ve so far missed to catch the plague that
ravens through this bitter old world—the ancient plague of dying.”
Still Gideon said nothing. But the night afore we took them to the
churchyard I heard him stirring, and being afraid that in a sudden
horror of the spirit he might do himself a mischief, for though a slow,
quiet man in daily life, he could be, now and again, hasty of a sudden,
I went to see what the matter was.
He was standing beside the bed. As I went in he had just stretched forth
his hand and lifted in his great brown fingers the plait of golden hair,
so thick and fine, that was ever the pride of poor Jancis. When he
turned at my coming, he was like a lad taken in a fault, hanging his
head and muttering, as if it should explain his act, which indeed it
did—
“I did love her once.”