“I wish I hadna mocked at the babe.”
A long while went by. The sounds in the room were less than on the
evening Father died. It was as if Sarn, all the live part of it, us and
our beasts, the trees full of birds, and the wood ways with wild
creatures in them, had sunk to the bottom of the mere where the village
was. I was beginning to believe all Gideon said, which was not so very
different, after all, from many a tale of frittening we’d heard.
“Look ye now!” he muttered. “She’s going toërts the dairy door. There,
she’s gone! ’Twas in the dairy I gave her the nay-word that time afore
she went to Grimble’s. There now, she’s coming back. Her yellow head
does shine so, she makes me call to mind that wandering light at
Lullingford New House.”
He was leaning forrard, staring down the dimmery passage that led to the
dairy.
“There, look’s the wet floor!” he said. “It’s like as if she’d brought
the mere in along of her. I never thought she’d come in the house. A
castle’s easy kept when none comes against it. But now—”
He looked down at the wet quarries a good while.
“Why, she’s gone!” he said then. “Like a golden bee sailing away on the
air, and singing as she goes. Look’s pretty!”
He stayed brooding a long time. Then he got up and told me he was going
to see to the stock, for the evening was well on to night. He said that
in his usual way, and I thought the frittening had lifted from his mind.
But as he went out, he turned, and looked at me just as he did the night
Beguildy went to seek a seventh child, and said—
“If I’m late, put the key over the stable door.”
I thought, no, if he was out so much as a half-hour, I should go after
him. Indeed I almost did then. Summat told me to go. But it seemed so
queer, when he was only going to see to the stock, to run after him. So
I stayed where I was and began looking in Beguildy’s book, that I bought
at the sale, and in the Bible, to see if I could find any cure for such
bewitchments. I hadna been reading more than half an hour, if so much,
and I suppose it was about nine o’clock, though it seemed later because
of the muffling mist and the silence, when all of a sudden there was a
taboring at the door, and in rushed Miller’s Tim and Polly too.
“Oh, Prue, Prue! we’d just brought the pigs along, being late because
the black un wouldna come out of the rushes, and we’d put ’em in yard,
quiet, for fear Mister Sarn ud be angry with us for being late, and we
were looking for glow-worms under the orchard hedge, when out comes
Mister Sarn. So we hid. And looking from under the hedge we saw him,
standing by the water, with his head stooped forrard a bit, like a horse
with the staggers. And I told Polly what I heard Granfeyther Callard
say. ‘Sarn?’ he says, ‘Oh, Sarn’s known frittening of the beautiful
bogey out of the mere, and he’ll never be his own man again.’ And while
I was whispering that to Polly, Mister Sarn lifted up his head and
seemed to look all around at everything, only there was not much but
mist. Then he turned toërts the caus’y, going like a chap in his sleep,
and went down the caus’y to the boat, and untied the boat, and got in
and took up the oars, and rowed with big strokes away from the farm,
straight out where the caus’y went, to the mid of the lake. So we ran
round to see if we could get a blink of him, but he was in the mist. The
noise of the oars went on for a while, and I wished I was in the boat.
But in a bit I was glad I was on dry land. The sound of the rowing
stopped.”
“Ah. Dead as dead it stopped,” said Polly.
“We held our breath to see if we could hear aught, but no! It was like
the text parson learned us last Sunday, ‘There was silence over all the
land till the ninth hour.’ Oh, it was solemn.”
“You should have come to me then,” I said. “But quick now! What else?”
“Why nothing else at all,” says Tim, “saving a great splash. I never
heard such a splash, not even when the brindled calf fell into the
water.”
“Ah. Dear to goodness, it _was_ a splash!” says Polly.
“Then it went quieter and quieter, and we held breath and listened, but
there was nought. And I did call on Mister Sarn’s name, but none
answered. And I was feared and so was Polly, and we ran to you.”
The boat! I must get to the boat. I ran down the caus’y, tearing off my
skirt, but there was no need to swim, for the boat was coming back,
since the air drew from the other end of the mere, sending the currents
toërts us, and these currents were stronger at the time of the troubling
of the waters. A dreadful thing it was to see that empty boat come
stealing in, slow, slow. I catched it and got in, taking up the oars
which Gideon had unshipped, for even in this hour he couldna do anything
slipshod or careless. I pulled out, calling to the children to run for
Sexton, he being the nighest. They were soon gone, and glad to go. And I
rowed out to the mid of the lake, feeling in the water with the oars,
looking here and there, and calling his name, though I knew all the
while it was too late. I was still rowing and calling when I heard
Sexton shout from the shore.
“Me and Sam will go while you rest a bit,” he said. “But we’ll never
find Sarn. You canna drag the mere out there. It’s too deep. None were
ever found that went in there.”
They rowed away, and as they came toward the middle of the mere. I heard
them singing, as we’d sung over Father long ago—
“_Your good deeds and your bad, dear man,_
_Afore the Lord shall meet._”
Only they left out about the turf at head and foot, for the water was
his grave. Ah! The whole of that great stretch of water wasna too much
to make the grave of a man as strong as that one. The mile-long mist
that lay upon the place wasna too grand a shroud. For though he was
wrong, and did evil, and hurtid folks with his strength, yet he never
did meanly, nor turned out bad work, nor lied. “The granite mountain,
quartzite, b’rytes,” he said once to me, speaking of his own hardness.
And he was like them all. He could no more give in than the granite can
crumble like sandstone. And now he’d played his last game of _Conquer_,
and what he played with wasna one of the big pink-and-white ones, but
his own life.
And since the other player was one that none can ever hope to conquer,
it shivered into brittle fragments in a moment, and so Gideon Sarn lost
his last game.