“What she didna like was me speaking unkind of the babe. Very touchy,
mothers be, about their babes.”
We sat quiet a bit, and then he said, all of a sudden—“Hark ye! She’s
singing _Green Gravel_.”
He listened a long while, though I could hear nothing.
Then he leaned forrard and said she was coming up off the caus’y toërts
the house. His face broke out in a sweat, as if he was feared out of his
life. But indeed the weather was enough to make anybody sweat without
that, it was so hot and dank at once, the worst weather of all at Sarn,
which never had much air, being down in a hollow, and which was always
damp from the water. On an evening such as this, the walls ran down with
water, so that the whitewash shone as if with the tracks of many snails.
Over the mere a mist was rising, in trails and wisps, white as wool,
thickening and gathering into clotted heaps towards the mid of the mere.
Sometimes a wreath of mist would be drawn out like a scarf, and other
times it would stand up in the shape of a woman, but wavering upon the
air. It seemed to me it might well be one of these ghosts of mist that
Gideon had seen. For they rose and sank about the caus’y all the while,
as the light airs on the water took them. At Sarn in August there were
always heavy mists night and morning, and this was out of the common
bad, because we’d had thunder-rain the night before, and a day of
brooding heat after it. Bad, I say, because I never could abide mist,
and we had such a deal of it, so that sometimes it blotted the farm and
the woods and the church right out, as if the mere had turned to milk,
and risen up and drowned all.
“Hark!” says Gideon. “Can you hear _Green Gravel_?”
So strong was his mind, and so much it had the mastery over mine, that I
almost thought I did hear a wailing song. And then, without any warning,
sitting in the big arm-chair with a set, yearning face, like a man
enchanted, as I do think he was, Gideon began to sing the song himself.
He held up his right hand, solemn, like parson giving the blessing, and
he looked out through the doorway toërts the mere and the caus’y and the
slow, white, curdling mist. He sang as if some power was on him that
made him. You could see he was bound to sing. He had a rolling voice, a
fine bass it was; and though he began very softly, it strengthened as he
went on, till the music seemed to master the place. And the way he made
that childish song mean such a deal!—all the love he’d had for Jancis,
and how he’d wanted her to have everything so grand, and go to the Ball
like a lady, and all the fear and pity of her ending. It seemed as if he
was easier in mind after, having, as it were, given in and so made
peace. Still watching the door, he says—
“Here’s Jancis. Soused with water she is, out of the mere.”
So I said I saw nothing.
“Why, look’s the water dripping off her gown!” he said. “See there, and
there, where she goes! Sogging wet she is, by gum!”
He pointed to the floor, and indeed there was water in all the little
hollows in the quarries, as if the mere had found a way to soak up
through the floor. So I said, yes, I saw the water in the hollows of the
quarries.
“Hark at the mud in her boots sooking! Muddy, the mere is. See now, how
slow she comes—slow, like she used to walk when she spun with the big
wheel. She walks slow because her clo’es are so heavy about her. It’s
uphill and agen the heart for Jancis, with the mommet to carry all
alone.”