Book 2 — chapter nine: The Game of Conquer

IN the morning, ploughing one of the far meadows with Gideon, I saw yellow nut catkins in the hedge, and brought them home and set them in a jug on my locker in the attic. I plucked them early, and tied a bunch to each of the ox’s horns, so all that day of sad-coloured weather the white cattle went up and down the red field, which was white-over in parts, so that they looked yellow, with nodding gold plumes on their heads, as if it was a fair. When we unspanned, Gideon said—

“What’n you been after, bedizening the cattle?”

“It’s May Day,” I says.

Gideon looked bepuzzled, but he said, well, he supposed I liked my jokes, and he didna complain so I worked well. “When’ll this weary old ploughing be done, Gideon?” I says, for of all things I hated it, not for itself, but because it spread out over our lives till there was no room for anything else. He was in a fever to plough. Dawn and dark, frost and rain, he’d be on the land, hard at it, and often when it did the land more harm than good. All the farm was to be corn. All the rickyard was to be full of corn. Only grow enow of corn, he said, and we should be rich afore we knew it. I couldna abide the new law, which made it pay so well.

“As soon as we’ve got enow, off we’ll go, Prue, and never see the place again,” he said.

“I canna understand that, Gideon,” I told un. “If you were land-proud, I could. But it do seem so queer to spend every bit of time and strength on the land, like a mother with a child, and then not love it. It’s as if the mother cared nought for the child, but only cared to sell it.”

“Ah, that’s the size of it, Prue. I dunna care a domm for the land. Nor yet I dunna care for the money. Not as money.”

“Well, what is it you do care for?”

“To get me teeth into summat hard and chaw it. To play Conquer till there inna a cob nor a conker left but mine. To be king-o’-the-wik and the only apple on the bough.”

“But for why, Gideon?”

“You be always asking me for why. Because I was made like that and I canna go agen it.”

We always came back to that.

“The thing is, to keep the right men in, so as they canna change the law afore we’ve made our money,” he said.

It was just as if the country was his mommet, to do his will and put crowns in his pocket.

“Which be the right men?”

“Them as keeps up the price of corn.”

“But the poor folk, that clem, would lief have prices down.”

“They mun grin and abide. Let ’em work. I work, dunna I?”

Indeed to goodness, he did work! He was nought but bone and muscle, and if he was a merciless man, he was merciless to his own self first. I said would he side with Squire, at elections, in spite of what Miss Dorabella said.

“Ah, I doubt I mun. He’s got a deal of corn land, he’ll never let prices down.”

“And when’ll you leave ploughing?”

“Not till we’ve bought the place, and there’s money in bank into the bargain.”

“But when we’ve ploughed up all the farm, save what grass we’re bound to keep for the beasts, then you’ll be bound to stop.”

“No. If we hanna got enough of money, I shall start on the woods.”

“Oh, deary, deary me!” I said, for I was like to cry. It was the unkindest thing that he should think of the woods. For now there’d never be any rest for any of us, since the woods were ours all round the farm, and there was work in them world without end. The tears rolled down my face, and I could feel them, cold and slow as the cold evening light.

“Why, what ails ye?” says Gideon. “Crying? Bless me, what a wench! Look ye, girl, we be working for the future.”

“I mislike the future,” I said. “It’s like the bran pie they give the Lullingford children, Christmas. You may get summat, but most likely you’ll only get a motto. And if you get summat, ten to one it inna what you want, for what you want inna in the pie.”

“Dear to goodness, what a mort of idle words! The future’s as you make it.”

“Why, no,” I says. “It be like the blue country a traveller sees at dawn, and he dunna know if it’ll be a kind country with farms sending up a trail of smoke in the sunset, and a meal for the asking, or if it’ll be a wild, savage moor where he’ll starve to death with cold afore morning.”

“Why there now,” says Gideon, “you’re starved with cold, that’s what’s the matter. You want a cup o’ strong tea and a good plate of taters and bacon. And hark ye! If that inna Mother banging the tray I’ll be dommed.”

Poor Mother set store by the evening time, being one that liked company. She said the days dragged so in the silent place, and she was timid, startled at the fall of a leaf or the creaking of a door. She was used to plead with me, time and agen, to leave ploughing and bide with her a bit. But I was bound to do Gideon’s will, so I made up comfortable tales for her of the day when we’d be well-to-do, with men and maids and a kitchen girl and no pigs. She’d brighten up a bit, but soon she’d sigh and shake her head.

“A far cry, a far cry, Prue. Maybe I wunna last. I’d lief things were a bit easier now, my dear. I canna abide tending pigs in the ’oods. My poor legs do ache, and if I set down I get the rheumatics. And the pigs do go daggling about down by the water, so my feet be always wet. I’d liefer less maids and men in the years to come, and less pigs now. I’d liefer less company then and a bit more now. All that’s a long way off, and no more satisfying than the many mansions of Paradise. Tell un that, Prue. Tell Sarn, my son, I’d liefer have a few things now, and not so many in the years to come.”

“Ah, I’ll tell un, Mother. And you must think of the time when we’ll leave ploughing.”

“Sarn’ll never leave ploughing. Or if he does he’ll do summat else. It’s this-a-way with un, he canna rest. He’s like a man I heard tell of, riding post across the land with dreadful news, foundering nags and buying fresh uns, with no thought but to get there. So when he got there and told the news he was so fixed in mind he couldna stop, but rode and rode, with no rest, crouching down and cutting the horse by day and by dark, going with no news to nowhere. They seyn he rides still. I tell you, Prue, it ud have been better, a power, for us and for him too, if my son Sarn had bin born an idiot boy, to play with coloured stones and put daisies on a string.”

She looked so strange, standing there in the fold, with her long staff and red cross-over shawl, with her mouth a-tremble and her eyes shining like a prophet’s, and the great lean pigs grunting and snouting around her, and Sarn Mere standing up beyond her like the blue glass round a figure in a church window. I wondered if ever they put pigs in church windows, in pictures of the Prodigal Son, and I couldna help but laugh a bit in a kind of pitiful way, thinking that this here was the prodigal mother, and how glad we’d be if Gideon was a bit prodigal too.

“What ails you, laughing?” she says.

“Only to think as you be the prodigal mother.”

“I dunna understand. I canna understand ever-a-one of my two chillun. Oh, deary me! But I take it unkind in you, Prue, to laugh when I be crying.”

Poor Mother! She said true things, times. She’d put words to my own complaint about the world, that laughed though I cried.

“There, there, I’ll tell Gideon,” I said.

It was one of the queer things in our lives that I was the go-between, taking messages from Mother to son. She could never get courage to begin, nor to face his cold, steely look.

Next morning I spoke to Gideon. He was in the field afore me, as always. It was frosty and misty, so the ploughed land looked like tarnished mirrors, or like the mere in overcast weather, sheeny and not solid. Where the frost held and the sun shone, the fields were polished, like water with a gleam on it.

Gideon and the oxen came on slow, making a little solid dark picture in the lonesome fields. It put me in mind of the black oak figures carved on the peak of the gables on some of the Lullingford houses, and always looking very dark on the sky. The breath of the oxen and the steam from their bodies stood up about them and hemmed them in, so as they went up and down they seemed like a picture, round and all to itself, that somebody was moving about in the waste of fields.

“Gideon,” I says, “Mother be very middling. She wants rest. Get a lad to mind pigs in the woods.”

“A lad! Dear to goodness, what lad?”

“There’s Miller’s Tim. He’s not but seven, but he could mind pigs and I’d give un his tea.”

“What! Feed a great lad of seven every day of the week save Sunday? Be you mad, Prue?”

“Mother’s very moped and middling. She wants rest and she wants company in the going down of the years, and a bit of comfort.”

“Amna I working for that? Inna she going to have maids and men, the best of good things, a pew in church, and real chaney to eat off?”

“Ah! In the years to come, if she lasts. But she met not. It be now that matters.”

“There’s nought ails Mother. She can go on very well. She gets good air minding pigs, and she can croodle over the fire after dark, to ease the rheumatics.”

“And she’s moped, lad. She wants me at home more.”

“Well, you will be when we leave ploughing.”

“That’s a long day. Any road, you mun get a boy to mind pigs.”

“Mun, mun? Who be you to say that to me? I be maister of Sarn.”

“You’ve no right to drive Mother to death when she’s old and ailing.”

Gideon gave me that withering look.

“Maybe,” he says, very slow and bitter, “maybe you’d like to get wed and bring a lad to Sarn that-a-way, to tend pigs. That is, if anybody’ll have ye.”

He picked up the plough handles and went on down the furrow. It needed a long while in the attic to wash out those words, but the power that was there washed them away in a while. I made allowance for Gideon since he lost so many nights of rest, it being still lambing time. For lambing time is the shepherd’s trial. In the black of night, in the dead of the year, at goblin time, he must be up and about by his lonesome. With mist like a shroud on him, and frosty winds like the chill of death, and snow whispering, and a shriek on this side of the forest and a howl on that side, the shepherd must be waking, though the pleasant things of day are folded up and put by, and the comforting gabble and busyness of the house and the fold are still, and the ghosts are strong, thronging in on the east wind and on the north, with none to gainsay them. So when Gideon was short with me I only took a bit more time in the attic. It was pleasant there when spring drew on, with a dish of primmyroses on the table and a warm wind blowing in. When April came we were still ploughing, and I was so used to it that I’d given over being tired, and enjoyed it, and sang to myself the while. It was grand to go down the red furrow with the share cutting strong into the stiff earth and shining like silver. It was fine to look away to the blue hills by Lullingford, and see the woods of oak and larch and willow all in bud between, as if a warm wind blew from there and called the leaves. It was pleasant, too, seeing the rooks follow in a string at my heels, looking as if they’d been polished with the andiron brush, and to see the birds again that had been away, and to hear the water-ousel sing wild and sweet, and the lapwings change their winter cry for summat warmer. There were violets now to pull for market, and daffodillies in the corner under the ivy hedge, and tight pink buds like babies’ little fists in the apple trees.

Mother cheered up a bit, and one day when we were having our tea by the window, with a bunch of gillyflowers on table, she said—

“We’ll have the weaver.”

I gave a gasp and a choke, and Mother wanted to know what ailed me.

“Nought, nought, but why not the weaver’s man? It ud be cheaper.”

“I like the best weaving.”

I fell into a dream, for if Kester was going to weave for us he’d have to come into the attic, walking to and agen round the weaving frame, looking out of my little window, making the place his place, so I should have him there for ever after. Yet still I couldna abide the thought of him seeing me, and I argufied for having the weaver’s man till Gideon thought I was in love with the fellow, though he was said to be simple and had got fourteen children into the bargain. But Mother put on her spectacles and looked at me, and pushed them up and looked again, and settled them in place to look a third time.

“We’ll have the weaver,” she said, and that was all.

It was the day after this that Jancis came rushing in, all wild, to say that Beguildy was going to take her to the hiring fair on May Day, unless Gideon could stop it. She came into the dairy where I was churning, and she said—

“Oh, Prue, the young gentleman’s been again, and have me he will, leastways you!”

She gave a giggle in the midst of her crying.

“And Father says it’s that or the hiring fair. It’ll be three years, Prue. I’ll be bound for a dairymaid or a kitchen wench for three years, that is, unless Gideon offers to wed with me now.”

“Gideon wunna, my dear, he’s fixed in mind about the ploughing. Nought’ll turn him from that.”

“But I shouldna stop it.”

“You’d be another mouth to feed. And if you ailed—”

“I shouldna. I be stronger than I look.”

“You canna tell, Jancis. When you wed, you begin a game of Blind Man’s Buff that ends you canna tell where. And if little uns came, what about all that money Gideon’s set on making?”

“Oh, deary me! Oh, I canna bear it, Prue. I do love Gideon right well, and once parted may be as bad as never met.”

“Well, you talk to Gideon.”

“And will you put in a word wiselike?”

“Ah, I’ll put in a word. But what he wunna do for you, that be his dear acquaintance, he wunna do for me, that be nought but his hard-drove sister.”

Just then Gideon came across the fold to fetch the buttermilk for the pigs.

He stood in the dairy door, and I thought it small wonder she was sweet on him, for in his smock and leather breeches, with his black head bare and his eyes blazing on Jancis, he was as well-favoured a man as you could meet in ten parishes. And I thought, as I looked round the dairy, that it was as good a place as anybody could wish for asking to wed. The sun shone slanting in, though it was off the dairy most of the day. The damp red quarries and the big brown steans made a deal of colour in the place, and the yellow cream and butter and the piles of cheeses were as bright as buttercups and primmyroses. Jancis matched well with them, with her pretty yellow hair and her face all flushed at the sight of Gideon. She was like a rose in her pink gown. Outside the window, in the pink budded may tree, a thrush was singing. I mind it all so clear, and should, even if it wasna written in my book.

“You be early,” says Gideon.

“And welcome?”

“Oh, ah! You be surely welcome.”

She looked at me mischievously as if she was asking me if I did mind, and stood tiptoe for Gideon to kiss her.

“I’ve got news,” she says. “Good news or bad, as you do make it.”

“Me?”

“Ah, it’s this-a-way, Sarn, Feyther says I mun—”

She looked at me, helpless like.

“Beguildy wants to sell the child, Gideon. What’s the use of mincing words? He wants to sell her to young Camperdine for his pleasure.”

Jancis hid her face in her hands.

“And if so be she says no, she’s to go as a kitchen wench to the May Fair and be prenticed for three years.”

“What! Sell my girl? Beguildy’ll sell my girl? Dang me, I could drown him dead for that!”

“He’s not sold her yet, Gideon.”

“The better for un.”

“But she’ll be bound prentice for three years, away somewhere beyond Lullingford.”

Gideon stooped and pulled away her hands, looking fiercely on her face.

“Be you a true wench to me?” he says. “Dang me, if you’ve lost your maiden’ead to young Camperdine, I’ll lay un out with the pole-axe. Ah! And you I’ll strangle.”

“No, no, Sarn, I hanna, I hanna,” she cried out. “I be a good maid to you, Sarn, indeed I be.”

“But what’s she to do, Gideon? For unless she’ll be the young man’s light-o’-love she’s bound to go away.”

“I canna abear to go away.”

She burst out crying again. I waited for Gideon to speak, but he said nought.

“There’s one other way, Gideon.”

I said it coaxing, for I knew it was his hour of choice for the two of them. The good road for both was in their power to take this day. It was one of the times in Gideon’s life when he might choose his blessing, the path of love and merry days where the pretty paigle grew, the keys of heaven, or the path of strange twists and turns, where was the thing of dread, the bane, the precious bane, that feeds on life blood.

Jancis seemed to know also that their lives in some fashion hung upon this hour. She stooped down and kissed his hand, and she said in a soft hoarse voice—

“O, be my sweetheart, Sarn!”

Gideon gave a kind of groan.

“I know where you be dragging me, Prue,” he said, “with your eyes so strongly upon me. You be pulling me down to poverty and the loss of all I’ve dreamt of.”

“I’d work double, lad,” I said.

“What use? You know right well what would happen. Could any man do other with a pretty piece like that for missus? Mouths to feed, mouths to feed. Never no grand house nor maids and men, nor pew in church. No money for you. No ’unt Ball for Jancis. No hail-fellow-well-met with the gentry for me. If ever we make any money it wunna be for years and years. We shall lose the house and go pottering on, eating up all we make. A man with a wife and family never gets on. He mun make his money first.”

“But wouldna you work better if you were happy, lad, with Jancis happy too?”

“Why, no. Happiness and idleness be twins. If you want to work, you munna be happy nor miserable. You mun just think of work and nought else. Another thing, if I take Jancis now, in the teeth of young Camperdine’s longing after her, he’ll be agen me himself and he’ll set all the gentry agen me. Whatever’s made the man so mad in love, it’s done now, and we mun take care.”

He looked at Jancis suspiciously, and she prayed me with her eyes to explain all. But that I couldna do. I’d done a deal for Jancis, but that was too much. For I was afraid that if I spoke at all it would get round to Kester Woodseaves. Jancis was under promise that none should know, saving only, in the utmost need, Gideon. So I kept silence, and I canna see that it made any difference, for speaking would only have put it off, and Beguildy had made his mind up about Jancis, and if it wasna the young squire then it ud be somebody else. It was best for Gideon to decide once for all, then if he chose right he and Jancis could be wed, and it would be out of Beguildy’s power to make any more plans.

“It’ll only put off the riches for a bit, Gideon,” I said.

“No. It ud put ’em off for ever and ever. The best thing to put off is getting wed. We’ll wait three year. That’ll give us time to turn round. Not as I want to put it off.”

He fell silent, looking at Jancis. I could see the longing in his face, and he was all of a tremble. It was strange to see such a great strong fellow shaking like a woman that’s seen frittening.

He took a step towards Jancis, and I made to go out, for I thought he’d take her in arms and all be well. But all of a sudden he muttered—

“No, no!” and drew back. Then he said—

“There’d be no satin gown for ye to dance Sir Roger in at the ’unt Ball then, Jancis. You’d be sorry for that.”

“Ah.”

“Well, if you go for a dairymaid or summat you’ll be yearning for it as well as me. Three year inna long. By the end of three year all the ploughland should be bearing well, and us’ll be reaping what we’ve sown.”

“Dear Lord forbid,” I says.

Gideon fell into a rage, though why I never could think, and burst out—

“Why that, now? Why that? I’m well content to reap what I sow.”

“But not if it’s the bane, Gideon? Not if it’s the precious bane as I read about in the book of the Vicar lent me? You dunna want that amid the corn, lad, what grows in hell?”

“Whatever it is,” he says, “if I sow it and it brings me the things I’d lief have, I’ll welcome it.”

There came a little sobbing sound from Jancis, and when I looked at her I saw beyond her golden head the spring day all o’ercast and the thorn-tree lashing in a sudden wind.

“You’d best be going home-along, my dear,” I says. “There’s tempest brewing.”

“I shall come on Sunday, and tell your dad what I think on him,” said Gideon.

“No, no, dunna anger him!”

“What do I care for his anger?”

“Oh!” she cried out, “everything’s all as I wouldna have it. Why canna folk live quiet and peaceful? Why must you be so fixed in your mind, Sarn? Hark at the wind rising! There’s summat foreboded.”

She began to cry again, hiding her face in her apron.

“O, I wanted to send out the biddings and be shouted in church,” she said, just as she used to say, “O, I wanted to play Green Gravel.”

Gideon snatched her to himself and kissed her, but he didna change his mind. Once he’d made it up, nothing ever would turn him.

“I mun go,” she said. “Come and send me, Sarn.”

As they went, I saw her wring her hands and heard her say—

“O, I see a dark road going down into the water. And the sun’s gone out. O, Sarn, dunna make me walk that road!”

All in a minute she’d faded away like a ghost in the wild, dark, stormy woods.