Book 2 — chapter seven: “The Maister Be Come”

“WELL, Sarn,” says Mother when we raught back, “we’ve spun a deal and had a good randy, and now your wedding sheets be on the loom.”

Gideon looked bashful and said it ud be many a long day afore enough of money was gotten together for that.

“Our Prue won at her table!”

“Eh, did she now? Well done!”

He could understand that and respect it, for it was what he liked to do.

“Cakes enough to keep us a week of nine days!” says Mother.

“She was thinking of the savation, I make no doubt.”

“No, I wunna, Mother,” I said.

“Why, what was it then?”

“I dunno. I just wanted—Costly Colours, Mother,” I says, in a foolish way.

“But what use be they if you get no cakes with them?”

I said I supposed they were no use, but all the same I wanted them—the Costly Colours.

“She’s sleepy,” says Gideon, “that’s what she is, else she’d talk sense. Best go to bed both.”

“Shanna I bide for the lambs?”

For at lambing-time I was used to sit up part of the nights, to let Gideon get a wink of sleep. But he said no, I’d had a day of it, and I might as well finish in style with a good night.

“I’ve bin as lazy as a lord all day,” he says, “being obliged to be about the place to do the little jobs.”

He was a good-hearted lad, in spite of all, and if he missed to do a kindness it was only because he didna think of it, or because his mind was so set on one thing. And times if he’d been callous and it was brought home to him, he’d take it very hard, though often it was a long while after.

“Well, bed then, Prue!”

Mother hopped about with her stick like a robin with the rheumatics.

“It’s been a grand day. A day to think on and talk over. Not wrong neither, for if we be still in our blacks, it was a kindness we were doing. None can blame for a kindness. Did I demean myself well, Prue?”

“Why, yes, Mother, no danger!”

“Did I spin well?”

“You spun grand.”

She ever had this way of asking, like a child, and she wound herself round your heart like a child, too.

“And such a nice young man, the weaver be, Sarn! A man any woman ud like for a son.”

“Be that Woodseaves?”

“Ah.”

“A fine wrestler, they say. A deal of booklarning for one of our class too. Squire offered un a clerking job at the Hall, but he wouldna take it. Said he’d liefer work with his hands and that he couldna abide politics, for they were all lies and he’d sooner keep clear. ‘I’ll weave white linen rather than black lies’ he says, and the owd Squire was very huffy. He’d like to have given Woodseaves warning to leave the place, only the house is hisn, willed by his uncle.”

Mother wanted to know if I liked the weaver.

“I thought you didna, my dear, for you never spoke, but went beyond the settle.”

“Like him?” I said. “Oh . . . like him?”

“Why, look ye, Prue, you be asleep on your feet,” said Gideon. “Off to bed now, or you’ll do no work to-day’s morrow.”

But indeed I was not asleep, but moithered. For it is a strange thing, and very strange, when the maister is come, and you would lief fetch him in and bring out the best, fresh butter and cheese in large dishes, and new milk, even to the top of the big stean, and when you’d put on your Sabbath gown and a posy, and smile at him with a yes for all his askings, and behold! all is nothing, for you have a hare-shotten lip, being under the ban of witchcraft.

“The Maister be come, and calleth for thee. The Maister be come . . .”

All night, in the attic, I could hear those words, very triumphing and yet sad. And when the dark thinned and shapes began to steal out from the blackness, and the smell of dawn came in, and our game-cock crowed loud and sweet because it was the beginning of spring, I still heard those words, with kindness in them and a shiver of dread—“The Maister be come.”

The words made such a murmuration, and were so piercing-sweet that I wrote them in my book. Of all I had thought to write of the Love-spinning and the game of Costly Colours, and of his coming, I wrote little. Yet when I open the book and see those four words in the very best tall script I could do, it all comes back to me so clear, as if it was to-day.

I looked at the loom, and saw him there, weaving. I looked at my copy book and wondered if he could do the tall script and the short, red and black, plain and flourished. And I was very sure that he could do them all, and more.

Next morning Jancis came running down the path, and I wanted to say, “Is he well?” For it seemed to me that anything might have come to him in the dark hours. But I could only say, “When does the weaver go?”

“Oh, to-morrow,” she said, as if it was no matter.

Then she cried and begged me to help her, for Beguildy was determined to raise Venus to confound the young squire, come what might.

“And it be me as is to be Venus! Oh dear! Oh dear! And it’s the day after to-morrow. And I’m feared, Prue. For if Sarn knew that I’d stood up in a room all naked with a pink light a-shining on me, and a strange man there, never would he speak to me agen.”

“No,” I said, for I knew Gideon pretty well.

“And he’d be bound to find out.”

“Ah, he met.”

“But Feyther’s mad about it. Raise Venus he ool. He says young Mister Camperdine laughed so, and clapped him on shoulder and said he’d give un five pound to do it, whatever he raised. Five pound, Prue! And when I said no, he beat me. And he says if I wunna do it, he’ll put me to the field work, and beat me every Saturday for a year. Oh, Prue, whatever is to be done?”

“How’s he going to set about it?”

“Oh, I’m to be in the cellar under his room, and the trap door’s to be open, and I’m to have a rope under armpits on a pulley to the roof, and Mother’s to be in cellar to light the smoky stuff and put the rope round me proper. Then Feyther’ll pull the rope in the kitchen, under the door, and I shall come up slow under the red light He says it ull be too dimmery to see my face, but that’s poor comfort. It wouldna be any excuse to Sarn’s mind.”

“No. Be you very fond of Gideon, Jancis?”

“Ah, I be.”

“Do ye mind that text, ‘The Maister be come’?”

“In the Bible? Ah, I mind it.”

“Do you feel that way about Gideon?”

The pretty colour came in her face.

“Oh, yes, indeed, Sarn be maister.”

“And the other . . . goes to-morrow, you say?”

“What other?”

“Why, Mister Woodseaves.”

“Oh, he goes to-morrow.”

“Well, look ye, Jancis, I’ll do it for you.”

“You?”

Her mouth was so round and so red in her astonishment that I could have hit the girl.

“Yes, me! I know it’s a funny thing for me to be Venus,” I said bitterly.

“But Feyther ud know.”

“You say he’s to be in the kitchen.”

“And the young man!”

“You say he inna to see your face. It’ll be dark and I’ll turn aside. And I’ll put the muslin off the currant bushes over my head, so as he wunna see my dark hair. He’ll see what he’s come to see, the gallus young wretch, a naked woman. Then he’ll pay the money and you’ll go free.”

“Oh, Prue, you be good! I love you, Prue! I’ll make it up to you some way. The best of it is that it wunna matter for you, seeing you’ll never have a lover.”

So cruel can folk be, and mean nothing. This was the reward for my kind act. But those that say good doings are rewarded are wrong.

I’d like to have strangled her for that saying. The angry blood was roaring in my ears.

“Go away now,” I said. “We’ll talk of it to-morrow. But go quick now out of my sight!”

And with a puzzled and frightened look she went.