Chapter 3

The rickyard lay on the north side of the foldyard; on the south was the
house; to the east it was bounded by the shippen, the cowhouses and
stables. To the west lay the orchard, and beyond it the cottage, which
in these lonely places is always built when the farm is built. The whole
thing formed a companionable little township of some five hundred
souls—allowing the turkeys to have souls, and including the ewes when
they lay near the house at lambing time. As to whether the redpolls, the
linnets and the starlings should be included, Gillian of Dysgwlfas was
often doubtful. They sang; they flew; and nobody could sing or fly
without a soul: but they were so quick and light and inconsequent, their
songs were so thin and eerie, that Gillian thought their souls were not
quite real-faery souls, weightless as an eggshell when the egg has been
sucked out. On the roof of the farm the black fantail pigeons, which
belonged to Robert Rideout of the cottage, sidled up and down uneasily.
All day, troubled by the clangour within the house, they had stepped at
intervals, very gingerly, to the edge of the thatch, and set each a ruby
eye peering downwards. They had observed that the leaded windows stood
open, every one, all day; that the two carved arm-chairs with the red
cushions, and the big sheepskin hearthrug of the parlour, had been
brought out on to the square lawn where the dovecote was, and beaten.
They had seen Simon, their hated enemy, slinking round the borders where
the brown stems of the perennials had been crisped by early frosts,
miserable as he always was on cleaning days, finally sulking in the
window of the cornloft and refusing to enter the house at all. All this,
they knew, meant some intrusion of the outer world, the world that lay
beyond their furthest gaze, into this quiet place, drenched in old
silence. It must be that Farmer Lovekin’s sister was coming—that Mrs.
Fanteague who caused cleanings of the dovecote, whom they hated. They
marked their disapproval by flashing up all together with a steely
clatter of wings, and surveying the lessening landscape from the heights
of the air.

Most of the windows were shut now, and a warm, delicious scent of
cooking afflicted Simon’s appetite so that he rose, stretched, yawned,
washed cursorily, shelved his dignity and descended to the kitchen,
where he twined himself about the quick feet of Mrs. Makepeace, urgent
between the larder and the great open fire, with its oven on one side
and gurgling boiler on the other.

By the kitchen table stood Gillian Lovekin. Her full name was Juliana,
but the old-fashioned way of treating the name had continued in the
Lovekin family. She was stoning raisins. Every sixth raisin she put into
her mouth, rapturously and defiantly, remembering that she and not Mrs.
Makepeace was mistress of the farm. When her mother died Gillian had
been only sixteen. Her first thought, she remembered with compunction,
had been that now she would be mistress. She was eighteen on this
evening of preparation, and just ‘out of her black.’ She was neither
tall nor short, neither stout nor very slender; she was not dark nor
fair, not pretty nor ugly. She had ugly things about her, such as the
scar which seamed one side of her forehead, and gave that profile an
intent, relentless look. Her nose was much too high in the bridge—the
kind of nose that comes of Welsh ancestry and is common in the west. It
gave her, in her softest moods, a domineering air. But her mouth was
sensitive and sweet, and could be yielding sometimes, and her eyes had
so much delight in all they looked upon, and saw so much incipient
splendour in common things, that they charmed you and led you in a
spell, and would not let you think her plain or dull.

She liked to do her daily tasks with an air; so she used the old
Staffordshire bowl (which had been sent from that county as a wedding
present for her grandmother) to dip her fingers in when they were
sticky. The brown raisins were heaped up on a yellow plate, and she made
a gracious picture with her two plaits of brown hair, her dark eyebrows
bent above eyes of lavender-grey, and her richly tinted face with its
country tan and its flush of brownish rose. The firelight caressed her,
and Simon, when he could spare time from the bits of fat that fell off
Mrs. Makepeace’s mincing board, blinked at her greenly and lovingly.

Mrs. Makepeace was making chitterling puffs and apple cobs.

‘Well!’ she said, mincing so swiftly that she seemed to mince her own
fingers every time, ‘we’ve claned this day, if ever!’

Gillian sighed. She disliked these bouts of fierce manual industry
almost as much as Simon did.

‘I’m sure my A’nt Fanteague did ought to be pleased,’ she said, making
her aunt’s name into three syllables.

‘Mrs. Fanteague,’ observed Mrs. Makepeace, ‘is a lady as is never
pl’ased. Take your dear ’eart out, serve on toast with gravy of your
bone and sinew. Would she say “Thank you”? She’d sniff and she’d peer,
and she’d say with that loud lungeous voice of ’ers: “What you want, my
good ’oman, is a _larger_ ’eart.”’

Gillian’s laugh rang out, and Simon, who loved her voice, came purring
across the kitchen and leapt into her lap.

‘Saving your presence, Miss Gillian, child,’ added Mrs. Makepeace, ‘and
excuse me making game of your A’ntie.’

‘Time and agen,’ said Gillian, pushing away the plate of raisins, ‘I
think I’d lief get in the cyart by A’nt Fanteague when she goes back to
Sil’erton, and go along of her, beyond the Gwlfas and the mountains,
beyond the sea—’

‘Wheer then?’ queried Mrs. Makepeace practically.

‘To the moon-O! maybe.’

‘By Leddy! What’d your feyther do?’

‘Feyther’s forgetful. He wouldna miss me sore.’

‘And Robert? My Bob?’

She looked swiftly at Gillian, her brown eyes keen and motherly.

‘Oh, Robert?’ mused Gillian, her hands going up and down amid Simon’s
dark fur.

She brooded.

‘Robert Rideout?’ she murmured. Then she swung her plaits backwards with
a defiant toss, and cried: ‘He wouldna miss me neither!’

She flung Simon down and got up.

‘It’s closing in,’ she said. ‘I mun see to my coney wires.’

‘It’s to be hoped, my dear, as you’ll spare me a coney out of your catch
to make a patty. Your A’nt Fanteague pearly loves a coney patty.’

‘Not without feyther pays for it,’ said Gillian. ‘If I give away my
conies as fast as I catch ’em, where’s my lessons in the music?’

She opened the old nail-studded door that gave on the foldyard, and was
gone.

‘Gallus!’ observed Mrs. Makepeace. ‘Ah, she’s gallus, and for ever
’ankering after the world’s deceit, but she’s got an ’eart, if you can
only get your fingers round it, Robert, my lad. But I doubt you binna
for’ard enow.’