Ursel.
Come, maids, we'd best get in ere mistress seeks us—
Beside, the longer we do loiter here
The longer shall we hold the house from sleep;
There's bowl and bucket rinsing to be done,
And supper to set out if we would eat it.
Be neither meek nor eager in your toil,
Or Mother Dish-Clout in our gust will read
Some deed afoot; we'll wrangle sluggishly
Until she drives us off to bed unwashed.
Then, though we hear the lock shoot and her steps
Sink down the out-stair as she dips the key
Down the long pocket of her petticoat,
Do nought but cast your shoes—there's but one wall
Between her chamber and the granary—
Lie dim along the bed, and never whisper;
But, when we hear her bed-stocks creak and know
Her ears are well tied up beneath her night-cap,
Out slip Bet's staple and ourselves as well.
Seek the pale hollyhocks across the garden
(They glimmer a little in all Summer darkness),
And touch behind the hive-house shadow-hung....
Nan.
And in the barn make happiness till dawn.
Bet.
Dare we lie still, inside the dark, and wait
In such suppression for such unknown things?
As Bet speaks they leave the barn to the right; Nan resumes her song faintly and more faintly.
Nan.
Dusked seemed the eve as the cows trod in
Under the roof-drip each to her stalling;
Full udders crusht shagged thighs between
Were warm to my hands in the chill air's palling;
And through the wind's drifting of leaves yet green
"Hou, hou," neared the neatherd's calling....
The song ceases in the distance.
Roger turns into the barn with Mease's bundle of hay-forks, and lays them in the empty cart as he sings.
I get no sleep in lambing nights,
My woman gets no sleep;
We fold the ewes if we sniff a thaw,
And when they yean as we crouch i' their straw
She takes the lambs by our horn-fogged lights
While I do handle the sheep.
Footsteps are heard within the neat-house.
Roger, calling through the neat-house door.
Is the sick beast grown easier by now?
Mease, entering from the neat-house.
Poor Dapple-Back, milk fever's bad on her.
'Twas her first calf and though 'twas smoothly dropped
She could not gather, but heaped a shapeless flank
Like a maid swooning; when the farrier came
"She'll die, she'll die," he said. "She'll not," said I:
But nothing served at first—her slackened fell
Dried hard and never any sweat would stir,
The udder turned a dull and shivering white;
Yet now her ears twitch up to greet my voice,
The hide-hair moistens and the udder shrinks.
There'll be no need to wake with her to-night—
I'll not unwrap her till an hour ere dawn.
Come through and look at her as we wend in....
When you got up the cider for the meadows
Was there a butt still left?
Roger, as they go into the mistal together.
Surely there was;
But the girls say she'll make it wait till harvest.
I never hired to any stead before
Where last year's cider trickled into June....
All is soundless again save for the cow's moaning. The twilight deepens no farther, and presently its dead gold brownness becomes cooler in tone; the mist, which had been merged in the nightfall's dimness, imperceptibly becomes apparent again, being suffused by an oozing of silveriness through the pervading brownness; moon-rise is evident, although the moon is hidden by the permeating mist which it fills. Perhaps a crying of bats is heard, but this is not certain. An owl cries somewhere—probably from one of the gable-holes, for it sounds both inside and outside at once; after many tentative Tu-whits it launches a full Tu-whoo and swings out far and low across the valley: a chirping of frogs begins in the nearest ditches.
A closer sound stills all these, being evidently that of a woman's voice feigning dove-notes; it ceases, light cautious hurried steps are heard; it sounds again, Maudlin slips round the door corner to the left and enters the barn. She is white-capped, her gown skirt is bunched about her waist, her bodice sleeves are turned back beyond her elbows.
Maudlin.
Nan ... Ursel ... Nan ... Lib ... Appletoft Lib, hast come?
There 's no one here—I wish they might forget
And sleep, and let me feel a little lonely.
I need much loneliness wherein to suckle
The sadness that alone can bring content:
I am too burdened by long laughing days,
And as I wavered through this solemn vapour
Of the worn earth, the comfort-smelling earth,
Where unexpected trees rose wearily
And sank again like ashen-bosomed sighs,
I felt a new, delighting mournfulness
That made me know where I am sensitive
To the deep things of life; even the late Maybloom,
That stays the tiring Spring in this strange valley,
Loses its too self-conscious hope to-night—
The pink would fain be white, and the spent white
Still fog and sink to the moon and make an end.
I must be much alone in sorrowful nights.
I should have ease if Summer would but go,
Its green-lit glory fail; I am so eager
For overgrown too-mellowness loth to pass,
For dripping trees o'er soft decaying grass,
Bare orchards and shorn meadows and stripped gardens,
Brown cloudy woods that drooping mists make taller
About washed fields and muffled hills, subduing
All to a low remote romance and charm....
Yet soon with other maids I may behold
A change that comes to snirp these buds in me....