Book 2 — chapter five: The Love-Spinning

IT took a long while to get ready for the Do, it being a caking as well. A good few of the religious sort held that cakings were wickedness, being in the nature of gambling. But for us women, leading such lost-and-forgotten lives, they were a bit of enjoyment, and even Sexton’s wife said she’d come and bring Tivvy. She got Missis Beguildy to fix it on a day when Sexton was going with Parson to a place a long way off to look into the case of a woman taken in adultery. She knew Sexton ud stay till the bitter end, and wouldna be raught back till the small hours. And even if he found out, he’d be so contented at the punishing of a sinner that maybe he’d not be more than grumbling-angry.

The name caking was given because we played cards for cakes. To tell the sober truth, it was real gambling. The woman who gave the Do made a big batch of cakes, saffron or rich sponge, and sold them to the guests at a penny each. Cakes were what we played for, and the losers were bound to buy more, whereas a good player could go away with a big basketful, or she could sell them to the losers at two-pence each.

Mother was not to hold or to bind, but she must come. Gideon promised to look after our jobs for the day, so we set out early. We were to make a day of it, spinning all the forenoon and then, after the noon-spell, settling down to cards.

It was a fine fresh morning with a damp wind full of the scent of our ricks. There’s no scent like it for bringing summer in winter. When I smell it now I see the long gleamy waves of grass like green silk, and the big red clover bobs, and corncrakes running low in the thick grass, dark with dew.

But at that time the first thing it put me in mind of was how hard-got it was, how we’d sweated and laboured by moonlight, and got up agen afore we’d had time for a dream, to sweat and labour once more. Still, it smelled pleasant, and so did Gideon’s bonfire of old hedge-brushings, and the deep floor of leaves in the wood, and the pine-trees where there were always canbottlins cheeping and playing.

Mother looked well in her big poke bonnet and frilled tippet, like a bright bird with her quick brown eyes and red cheeks. We only took the little spinning-wheels, seeing we were to spin flax and hemp and not wool, so I could carry them easy. The mere was a bit cruddled with ice at the north side still, but you could tell that spring was afoot though it was but February, by the mating-games of the water-ousels and the nesting caw of our rooks. There were green tongues on the woodwind sprays too, so bright, they minded me of the tongues of flame that came down from heaven. In that dead time, coming so quick and fresh, they always seemed more to me than all the honeysuckle blossoms of the summer.

When we came through the oakwood Mother smoothed her mittens very complaisant and said—

“I binna tending swine this day. I be a lady.”

“Indeed to goodness you be,” I said. For I did dearly like her to enjoy herself. I said I made no doubt she’d win enough of cakes to keep us all for a week of nine days.

“Will Jancis be a good daughter to me, think you, my dear?”

“I make no doubt of it, Mother,” I said.

“Will she leave me my own place by the fire and speak kind?”

“Ah, she ool, I know. But you needna fret, for it’ll be many a long day afore those two are shouted in church.”

“I’d lief not. I’d lief be a granny, Prue. Will the babe favour Gideon or her, dun you think?”

I said, not having the second sight I couldna tell, but I thought it ud be the very spit-and-image of its dad.

“Maybe, maybe. It ud be better, a power, that it should favour us than the Beguildys. It’s bad for a babe to have a preached-against grandad.”

“Oh, there’s not much harm in Beguildy, nor yet good,” I said. “He be just a pleasant painted show like a blown egg.”

“I be glad he’ll be away to-day.”

Missis Beguildy had sent a message by Gideon to her cousin at Lullingford to tell her to send for Beguildy on that day to come and cure her man’s toothache. For seemingly he’d had one taken out by the beast-leech, and he parted so hard with it that the beast-leech, being a terrible man when his blood’s up, loosened all the others lugging it out. So he got the toothache shouting-bad, and it was a good amusement for Beguildy to go and cure it. He was always very proud of that charm beginning—

“Peter sat a-weeping on a marble stone,”

and he’ll go on saying it over and over till the person cries for mercy. Then he claps on a bagful of salt, fire-hot, and whether it’s the salt or the charm, the person most always says he’s cured.

“They’ll keep him late, not to spoil our sport,” says Mother, clapping her hands softly like a child.

We came out into the open fields, and I thought no day had ever looked so fair, yet knew not why. The hills Lullingford way were blue as a summer sky, a deep promising blue, and there was a richness on the world, so it looked what our Parson used to call sumptuous. There were the red ploughlands and the old yellow stubble in the sun, and Plash Pool, glassy blue, and the mill roof in the valley, red. All the grassland was clear green like the green in church windows, or like the green hill far away where no herb grows but the Calvary clover. Even a summer day can seldom match such a day as that, when the snow is but just gone and the waters freed, and when there is a clear shining above and below. You could tell there was summat out of the common at the Stone House, by the great blaze of firelight in the window. Jancis came running to the door and made her obedience to Mother very prettily. We were the first, saving for Miller’s Polly and her mother. They were always first everywhere, for they said an hour from home was an hour in heaven. They wouldna explain more, only if you drove them hard and asked them for why, was it the Mill—’us or the water or what? Then they’d say, “The Miller.” And if you said why, what ailed the man? they’d say, “Was he ever known to smile, leave alone laugh?” And indeed he never was. He’d got a lattance in the speech as well, and what with the two things he was very disheartening to live with. There was a foolish tale that he’d had a bogy out of the water for sweetheart, and that when he got married she put silence on him for a curse.

Missis Miller was a poor creature, like a mealworm, but very pleasant-spoken. Sexton’s missus was just the opposite. She always made me think of a new-painted coach, big and wide, with an open road, and the horn blowing loud and cheerful, and full speed ahead. She was as gay in her dress as a seven-coloured linnet, and if she could wear another shawl or flounce or brooch, she would. She wore so many petticoats it was a wonder she could walk, and once Tivvy said to me that to watch her mother undress was like peeling a big onion down to the core. Tivvy wasna one ever to make a joke, so it shows what a great thing it must ha’ been to watch. I was used to think myself, seeing her and Sexton together, that she was like a big hank of dyed wool, and he was the thin black distaff it was to be wound off on to. When she and Tivvy were come, we were eight, and our wheels made a pleasant humming in the warm room the while we talked. The ox-driver’s wife from Plash Farm came next, with two tall girls, very quiet and meek for all their size. Folk said their father tied them to the ox-trevis every Saturday night and beat them to keep them in mind of their manners. They’d always stand up if their mother spoke to them, and bend their long necks like meek swans. The twelfth was the shepherd’s wife from the moors beyond Plash. She was a strange creature, but fair to look upon, enough to make a man’s mouth water. She’d got sloping shoulders and long hips, and her hair was like a blackbird’s wings. Her eyes were clear green and her face was flushed like a ripe peach, and she’d smile in secret to herself like a fairy. It was said, but whether with any truth I know not, that the shepherd paid no money for the moors, that belonged to a tavern-keeper in Silverton, but that every midsummer Felena, which was his wife, went up to the rocks at the hilltop and spent the night with the tavern-keeper. There were wilder tales too, about her being seen dancing by moonlight in a ring of cattle and sheep, mother-naked, and how a shaggy creature with ram’s horns, that could only have been Satan, came and danced along with her, mopping and mowing, while the ring of beasts made a low moaning. But to me she seemed a pleasant, harmless creature, and very handy in all she did.

I could see that the ox-herd’s wife didna care for her girls to be spinning with Felena. She was so respectable and highminded that she never spoke of anything between banns-up and baptism if she could help it, and took no notice of young couples during that time. She said nought to Felena, and it was Mother, ever kindly, who said—

“You spin like a fairy, Missis Felena.”

“There’s nought else to do in the mountain,” said Felena in a low, singing voice, “but spin and spin, and spin, morning, noon and night.”

“Save on Midsummer night, my girl,” raps out Missis Sexton, “and then I’m told you’ve enough to do and plenty!”

Felena turned scarlet and hung her head, and suddenly Moll and Sukey burst out, as if they’d wanted to say it for years and years—

“Oh, Missis Felena, is it true as you lie with the tavern-keeper and dance on the heath mother-naked?”

Never did I see any woman so angered as their mother was. “Sukey and Moll!” she says.

“Honoured ma’am?” says they, all of a twitter.

“Out with yer hands!” says she.

And stooping down she took off her sandal shoe, which she wore because it was a party, and slippered ’em both on the hands right soundly, till they roared agen.

I heard after that one married a farmer and the other a retired coachman, and both did well: it wasna for lack of correction if they did ill.

They went on with their spinning, meek as mice, snoffling over their wheels. Missis Beguildy was very put-about, for it seemed like being a melancholy party. So I asked Jancis to sing Green Gravel to liven us up. We all joined in, even Polly, whooping the while. Felena sang in a cool-sounding voice, and Sexton’s missus sang very loud, and Mother quavering, and Missis Miller like a bird new-come from the cage.

So what with the singing and the whirring, the kitchen was like a tree full of starlings. It was getting on for time to stop spinning when Mother said should we sing—

“The Lord’s my Shepherd,”

and afterwards I spoke for having—

“He brought me to His Lordly House,

His Banner it was Love.”

And just as we were singing that, and the wheels going like churn-owls, there was a quick footfall without, and a rush of fresh air, and a long ray of sunshine from the door to me, and he stood there in the light looking upon us.

“He,” I say, as if you’d know him out of the world as I did.

He stood in the doorway, and I rose up from my seat in the shadows at the back of the room, as if he was my own bidden guest.