“Do you get tidings of Weaver, Prue?”
“No,” I said. “We’ve not heard this long while.”
“He’s one in many,” she said. “Ah! He does seem to me to be of other
stuff than we are. As if he came from afar. Do you mind how we played
_Costly_ for Weaver’s soul, you and me? But I doubt some fine madam in
the city ’s catched his soul by this.”
All the while, as we talked, and as I sat lonesome on the churchyard
wall, I was ware of black looks cast at me, side-glances, a pushing out
of the lips, and lifting of shoulders, and some would draw away a bit as
I passed. I wondered what this might be, for though the old tales about
me had gone on growing in the lonely farms, as I knew, and though a
misfortune is enough, times, to turn people against you, as if they
thought it was the hand of the Lord meting punishment for sin, yet it
didna seem to me enough to explain the looks I got, which did cut me to
the heart, for in them I saw hatred. I ever loved my kind, and as I once
said, I was like one standing at the lane ends with a nosegay to offer
to the world as it rode by. But instead, it rode me down. Ah! On this
day of mid August, in the time of the troubling of the waters, it rode
me down.
I was considering, and wondering what to do, for I was waiting for some
people who were driving to Bramton, and would take me, and so I should
be part way to Silverton. If I went now, I’d get no lift, and besides,
the money couldna be counted till it was all in, so the crockman could
take his pay of so much in the shilling. On both counts I was bound to
wait.
Missis Miller came up, quiet, and said she’d been there since the first
and she’d heard a deal said about me, and the whispers were started by
Grimble and Huglet, here one and there one, saying this and that, with a
nod or a wink, maybe, or a snaking of the head, and, “Pity. A tidy young
woman, too!” Or, “Summat should be done about it. Parson ought to see
about it.” So the talk got fixed on me, she said, and no sooner did they
tire of speaking of the manner of Gideon’s death than they’d start of
me. The younger ones had been brought up on tales of how I roamed the
country at night in the body of a hare, and had a muse under this very
churchyard wall. Miss Dorabella’s words at the _Mug o’ Cider_ had stayed
in people’s minds, and then the fire had fixed on us the idea of a
curse, for though Beguildy did it, yet ’twas thought the Lord wouldna
have suffered him to do it at a righteous farm. Then the drowning of
Jancis made things ten times blacker, and Gideon’s death put the last
touch to it. There was something here that the folks couldna understand.
The only cause for all the misfortune that they could see was the curse
of God. There must have been a Jonah in our ship, they thought. And as
Mother had always been liked, and Gideon thought pretty well of, as a
man bound to get on, it seemed to them that I must be the one that
called down the curse. They’d reasoned it out slow, as we do in the
country, but once they came to the end of the reasoning they were fixed,
and it would take a deal to turn them. This was the reason for the
hating looks, the turnings aside, the whispers. I was the witch of Sarn.
I was the woman cursed of God with a hare-shotten lip. I was the woman
who had friended Beguildy, that wicked old man, the devil’s oddman, and
like holds to like. And now, almost the worst crime of all, I stood
alone. I may say that in our part of the country, whatever happened in
other parts, it was thought suspicious to stand alone. This might be
because in those lost and forgotten farms in the mountains and the
flooded lands about the meres, where in the long winters the winds would
howl around the corners of the house like wolves, and there was talk of
old terrible things—men done to death in sight of home; the fretting of
unhappy ghosts at the bottle-glass windows, that once they owned, but
now were the wrong side of; the dreadful music of the death pack; the
howl of witches such as I was said to be, riding with blown leaves upon
the gale; the threat of gentlemen of the road who had long lain at the
crossways—nobody could choose to be alone, and nobody without good
reason would condemn another to be alone. Therefore, if you were alone
you were as good as damned.
I canna tell you what a sinking of the heart all this gave me. For to
one that can feel the love and hate of others flowing about her without
word spoken, and who can only do well in warmship of the soul, even a
little misliking is enough to nip the blossom.
“Now,” says Missis Miller, “I know what it’s like, a bit, for mine’s
said to be under a curse, and cause he gives, indeed, but you dunna, and
I say, ‘Beware of Grimble!’ He’s fause, is Grimble. Huglet’s all of a
roar, but you know what he’s after. With Grimble you dunna. He’ll drop a
word here and a word there like thistledown, and you see nought and
think nought, but dear to goodness, what a crop of thistles! And I doubt
the thistles be all up and just about in blow.”
While she was yet speaking, Tivvy darted up to me, all in black, for
she’d given out that she was promised to Gideon, and she says—
“You boxed my ears, Prue Sarn! Now see!”
With that she jumped up on the wall and shouted out—“People all, I’ll
speak this once and no more. A wronged woman I am. Sarn was promised to
wed with me to-day’s five months, and it’s five months gone that I
should have been Missis Sarn. For Sarn did love me right well. But _she_
stopped it. Prue Sarn stopped it. For she put me in such mortal fear, I
couldna come near the place. Clouted me, she did. And she being a witch,
I was afraid of her. She wanted to be missus there, seesta! Couldna
abide anybody else to have a say in things. And see what’s come to pass!
She’s missus there altogether now, and the very next day after my poor
Sarn’s death she sells all. Oh, she’s a heartless piece! There’s no
wickedness she wouldna do. Five months I’d ought to have been Missis
Sarn, but for her. She’s so strong, because she’s a witch!”
I was astounded at the furious way she said it, till I remembered that
she was expecting a love-child, which was ten times worse as she was
Sexton’s daughter, and what Sexton would do when he knew was awful to
think of, and so Tivvy must have somebody to put the blame on. But no
sooner was she finished than up gets Grimble. There he stood, with his
long nose pointing down as if he was considering, among all he could
say, what he’d fix on.
“People,” he began, “this is a solemn day. In this here water lies a
fine farmer. Ah! A man as would have made a mark on Sarn. Look at the
ploughing he’d done! Bound to be rich, he was. Promised to a tidy young
woman, too, and a righteous, for we know that her brother can come as
pat with a text as any man even in the memory of Granfeyther Callard.”
“Ah. That’s righteous!” calls out the old man from the cart where he sat
“But old Camperdine could run him pretty close, the one as Beguildy had
in bottle, I mean. Ah! He was a good un with a text when he was in
liquor! I’ve heard him roll ’em out till you wanted a yard-stick to
measure ’em. But when he was sober, not a text would he say. Very bawdy
he was then. But in liquor, oh, indeed to goodness it was a miracle!”
“As I say,” Mister Grimble went on in his reasonable voice, “her brother
can mouth a text, her father’s Sexton, her mother’s Sexton’s married
wife, so it stands to reason she’s a good young woman. And you’ve heard
what she said. I tell you, what she says is true, and more than true.
Now listen. Since birth Prudence Sarn’s been a woman smitten by the
Lord. What she does she canna altogether help, being in the power of
Satan. That’s why she roams the land, as we know. That’s why she was
friend to Beguildy, and learned all his wickedness off him, for like
finds like. That’s why she puts her eye on this one or that one, a child
or a beast, or a field of corn, it’s no matter. It dwines, whatever it
is, dwines and withers away. Or she’ll as soon kill outright. What did
she do to my dog, as was worth a deal to me? Ah! And darker things yet.
Blacker and blacker. What did her mother die of? People, she died of
foxglove tea. Poisoned. Sexton’s missus is my witness. Who nurses a sick
mother? Her daughter. Well, people, what do you say to that?”
There was a muttering in the crowd, a pushing and stirring to look at
me, where I sat, struck dumb with astonishment. But nobody said anything
as yet. Country folk dunna condemn in a hurry. They were ready tinder,
but the flint wunna put to it yet.
“And darker,” says Grimble. “But first let Missis Sexton and Tivvyriah
Sexton stand up and say in one word if it be true. Now then. Aye or no?”
“Aye!” said both together.
“Now, why did that feckless young creature, Jancis Beguildy, and her
poor child, meet their deaths in the water? Who was alone in the house
with them when it took place? Prudence Sarn! Why was Jancis irksome to
the witch? Because she knew things. She knew the devil’s tricks that
were played betwixt her father and the witch. And as she’d no money, she
came to threaten to speak unless she was well paid, and that Prudence
Sarn wouldna do. So, when nobody was there but the weak, nesh little
thing, trammelled with her baby, and Prue Sarn, who’s as strong as a
man, Jancis Beguildy met her death in the water.”
There were murmurs again, but it would need more than the death of the
wizard’s daughter, who was in ill odour, to rouse them.
“But there’s worse,” said Grimble. “When Sarn took up with Tivvyriah,
his sister didna like it. She wanted to keep on being missus. She wanted
no other woman about the place. She’d got rid of her mother on that
count. Ah! Liefer would she have no brother, friends, than have a
married brother.”
A sigh went through the crowd, which must have numbered three hundred
souls, all told, for it was a big fair.
“What did she do?” Grimble went on, and the hate in his eyes when he
looked at me was awful to see. “Why, when dusk drew on and the mist
rose, and Sarn was dipping water for the beasts, she did push him in,
and then took the boat out to deceive Sexton, having put such dread upon
the miller’s children that they durstna say the truth.”