FullReads

They shook their heads again over this. It would be a brave blow for the man, but (said one to another) he that marries a fool must look for thorns in his bed.

“What’s done can’t be undone,” they told her. “You’d best let a two-three of us stay the night and coax ‘ee from frettin’. It’s bad for the system, and you so soon over child-birth.”

Lovey opened her eyes wide on them.

“Lord’s sake!” she said, “you don’t reckon I’m goin’ to sit down under this? What?–and him the beautifullest, straightest cheeld that ever was in Gwithian Parish! Go’st thy ways home, every wan. Piskies steal my cheeld an’ Dan’l’s, would they? I’ll pisky ’em!”

She showed them forth–“put them to doors” as we say in the Duchy– every one, the Priest included. She would have none of their consolation.

“You mean it kindly, naybors, I don’t say; but tiddn’ what I happen to want. I wants my cheeld back; an’ I’ll have’n back, what’s more!”

They went their ways, agreeing that the woman was doited. Lovey closed the door upon them, bolted it, and sat for hours staring at the empty cradle. Through the unglazed window she could see the stars; and when these told her that midnight was near, she put on her shawl again, drew the bolt, and fared forth over the towans. At first the stars guided her, and the slant of the night-wind on her face; but by and by, in a dip between the hills, she spied her mark and steered for it. This was the spark within St. Gwithian’s Chapel, where day and night a tiny oil lamp, with a floating wick, burned before the image of Our Lady.

Meriden the Priest kept the lamp filled, the wick trimmed, year in and year out. But he, good man, after remembering Lovey in his prayers, was laid asleep and snoring within his hut, a bowshot away. The chapel-door opened softly to Lovey’s hand, and she crept up to Mary’s image, and abased herself before it.

“Dear Aun’ Mary,” she whispered, “the Piskies have taken my cheeld! You d’knaw what that means to a poor female–you there, cuddlin’ your liddle Jesus in the crook o’ your arm. An’ you d’knaw likewise what these Piskies be like; spiteful li’l toads, same as you or I might be if happen we’d died unchristened an’ hadn’ no share in heaven nor hell nor middle-earth. But that’s no excuse. Aun’ Mary, my dear, I want my cheeld back!” said she. That was all Lovey prayed. Without more ado she bobbed a curtsy, crept from the chapel, closed the door, and way-to-go back to her cottage.

When she reached it and struck a light in the kitchen she more than half expected to hear the child cry to her from his cradle. But, for all that Meriden the Priest had told her concerning the Virgin and her power, there the cradle stood empty.

“Well-a-well!” breathed Lovey. “The gentry are not to be hurried, I reckon. I’ll fit and lie down for forty winks,” she said; “though I do think, with her experience Mary might have remembered the poor mite would be famished afore this, not to mention that the milk in me is beginnin’ to hurt cruel.”

She did off some of her clothes and lay down, and even slept a little in spite of the pain in her breasts; but awoke a good two hours before dawn, to find no baby restored to her arms, nor even (when she looked) was it back in its cradle.

“This’ll never do,” said Lovey. On went her shawl again, and once again she faced the night and hurried across the towans to St. Gwithian’s Chapel. There in her niche stood Our Lady, quite as though nothing had happened, with the infant Christ in her arms and the tiny lamp burning at her feet.