John Powys - Wood and Stone

When they were seated once more beneath the bank, — the old lady, like some strange Peruvian idol, resting cross-legged at their feet, — she began, without further delay, to explain the cause of her visit.

“I know’d how ’twould be with ’ee,” she said, addressing Luke, but turning a not unfriendly eye upon his companion. “I did know well how ’twould be. I hear’d tell of brother’s being laid out, from Bert Leerd, as I traipsed through Wild Pine this morning.

“Ninsy Lintot was a-cryin’ enough to break her poor heart. I hear’d ’un as I doddered down yon lane. She were all lonesome-like, under them girt trees, shakin’ and sobbin’ terrible. She took on so, when I arst what ailed ’un, that I dursn’t lay finger on the lass.

“She did right down scare I, Master Luke, and that’s God’s holy truth!’ Let me bide, Bessie,’ says she, ‘let me bide.’ I telled her ’twas a sin to He she loved best, to carry on so hopeless; and with that she up and says, — ‘I be the cause of it all, Bessie,’ says she, ‘I be the cause he throw’d ’isself away.’ And with that she set herself cryin’ again, like as ’twas pitiful to hear. ‘My darlin’, my darlin’,’ she kept callin’ out. ‘I love no soul ‘cept thee — no soul ‘cept thee!’

“’Twas then I recollected wot my old Mother used to say,’ bout maids who be cryin’ like pantin’ hares. ‘Listen to me, Ninsy Lintot,’ I says, solemn and slow, like as us were in church. ‘One above’s been talking wi’ I, this blessed morn, and He do say as Master James be in Abram’s Bosom, with them shining ones, and it be shame and sin for mortals like we to wish ’un back.’

“That quieted the lass a bit, and I did tell she then, wot be God’s truth, that ’tweren’t her at all turned brother’s head, but the pleasure of the Almighty.” Tis for folks like us,’ I says to her, ‘to take wot His will do send, and bide quiet and still, same as cows, drove to barton.’

“’Twere a blessing of providence I’d met crazy Bert afore I seed the lass, else I’d a been struck dazed-like by wot she did tell. But as ’twas, thanks be to recollectin’ mother’s trick wi’ such wendy maids, I dried her poor eyes and got her back home along. And she gave I summat to put in brother’s coffin afore they do nail ’un down.”

Before either Luke or Mr. Quincunx had time to utter any comment upon this narration, Witch-Bessie unfastened the packet she was carrying, and produced from a cardboard box a large roughly-moulded bracelet, or bangle, of heavy silver, such as may be bought in the bazaars of Tunis or Algiers.

“There,” cried the old woman, holding the thing up, and flashing it in the sun, “that’s wot she gave I, to bury long wi’ brother! Be pretty enough, baint ’un? Though, may-be, not fittin’ for a quiet home-keeping lass like she. She had ’un off some Gipoo, she said; and to my thinkin’ it be a kind of heathen ornimint, same as folks do buy at Rogertown Fair. But such as ’tis, that be wot ’tis bestowed for, to put i’ the earth long wi’ brother. Seems somethin ‘of a pity, maybe, but maid’s whimsies be maids’ whimsies, and God Almighty’ll plague the hard-hearted folk as won’t perform wot they do cry out for.”

Luke took the bangle from the old woman’s hand.

“Of course I’ll do what she wants, Bessie,” he said. “Poor little Ninsy, I never knew how much she cared.”

He permitted Mr. Quincunx to handle the silver object, and then carefully placed it in his pocket.

“Hullo!” he cried, “what else have you got, Bessie?” This exclamation was caused by the fact that Witch-Bessie, after fumbling in her shawl had produced a second mysterious packet, smaller than the first and tightly tied round with the stalks of some sort of hedge-weed.

“Cards, by Heaven!” exclaimed Luke. “Oh Bessie, Bessie,” he added, “why didn’t you bring these round here twenty-four hours ago? You might have made me take him with me to Weymouth!”

Untying the packet, which contained as the stone-carver had anticipated, a pack of incredibly dirty cards, the old woman without a word to either of them, shuffled and sifted them, according to some secret rule, and laid aside all but nine. These, almost, but not entirely, consisting of court cards, she spread out in a carefully concerted manner on the grass at her feet.

Muttering over them some extraordinary gibberish, out of which the two men could only catch the following words,

“Higgory, diggory, digg’d

My sow has pigg’d.

There’s a good card for thee.

There’s a still better than he!

There is the best of all three,

And there is Niddy-noddee!”—

Witch-Bessie picked up these nine cards, and shuffled them long and fast.

She then handed them to Luke, face-downward, and bade him draw seven out of the nine. These she once more arranged, according to some occult plan, upon the grass, and pondered over them with wrinkled brow.

“’Tis as ’twould be! “she muttered at last.” Cards be wonderful crafty, though toads and efties, to my thinkin’, be better, and a viper’s ’innards be God’s very truth.”

Making, to Luke’s great disappointment, no further allusion to the result of her investigations, the old woman picked up the cards and went through the whole process again, in honour of Mr. Quincunx.

This time, after bending for several minutes over the solitary’s choice, she became more voluble.

“Thy heart’s wish be thine, dearie,” she said. “But there be thwartings and blastings. Three tears — three kisses — and a terrible journey. Us shan’t have ’ee long wi’ we, in these ’ere parts. Thee be marked and signed, master, by fallin’ stars and flyin’ birds. There’s good sound wood gone to ship’s keel wot’ll carry thee fast and far. Blastings and thwartings! But thy heart’s wish be thine, dearie.”

The humourous nostrils of Mr. Quincunx and the expressive curves of his bearded chin had twitched and quivered as this sorcery began, but the old woman’s reference to a “terrible journey” clouded his countenance with blank dismay.

Luke pressed the sybil to be equally communicative with regard to his own fate, but the old woman gathered up her cards, twisted the same faded stalks round the packet, and returned it to the folds of her shawl. Then she struggled up upon her feet.

“Don’t leave us yet, Bessie,” said Luke. “I’ll bring you out something to eat presently.”

Witch-Bessie’s only reply to this hospitable invitation was confounding in its irrelevance. She picked up her draggled skirt with her two hands, displaying her unlaced boots and rumpled stockings, and then, throwing back her wizened head, with its rusty weather-bleached bonnet, and emitting a pallid laugh from her toothless gums, she proceeded to tread a sort of jerky measure, moving her old feet to the tune of a shrill ditty.

“Now we dance looby, looby, looby,

Now we dance looby, looby, light;

Shake your right hand a little,

Shake your left hand a little,

And turn you round about.”

“Ye’ll both see I again, present,” she panted, when this performance was over, “but bide where ’ee be, bide where ’ee be now. Old Bessie’s said her say, and she be due long of Hullaway Cross, come noon.”

As she hobbled off to the neighbouring stile, Luke saw her kiss the tips of her fingers in the direction of the station-master’s house.

“She’s bidding Daddy James good-bye,” he thought. “What a world! ‘Looby, looby, looby!’ A proper Dance of Death for a son of my mother!”

LUKE persuaded Mr. Quincunx to stay with him for the station-master’s Sunday dinner, and to stroll with him down to the churchyard in the afternoon to decide, in consultation with the sexton, upon the most suitable spot for his brother’s interment. The stone-carver was resolved that this spot should be removed as far as possible from the grave of their parents, and the impiety of this resolution was justified by the fact that Gideon’s tomb was crowded on both sides by less aggressive sleepers.