Water Read Free Page B

Probity, after brooding
    for a while, went to the Elders of the People and asked for their permission to bring his
    daughter’s body up from the town cemetery and bury it beside Mercy s in the graveyard of the
    People. The Elders did not debate the question long. They were all of one grim mind. Obedience
    Hooke had cut herself off from the People by marrying the out-warder, Simon Nasmith. When
    the Lord came again in Glory, he would raise the bodies of His faithful People from their
    graveyard to eternal life, but Obedience Hooke had by her own act cast herself into damnation
    and would not be among them.
    Probity sowed his crops as usual, but then, as June hardened into its steady, dreary heat, he
    seemed to lose heart. The leafy summer crops came quick and easy, and there was always a glut
    of them, but the slow-grown roots and pulses that would be harvested later, and then dried or
    salted or earthed into clamps, were another matter. He did not hoe them enough, and watered
    irregularly, so that the plants had no root-depth and half of them wilted or wasted. He neglected,
    too, to do the rounds of his fences, so that the sheep broke out and he had to search the hills for
    them, and lost three good ewes.
    Pitiable was aware that the stores were barely half-filled, but said nothing. Probity was her
    grandfather, her only protector, and absolute master in his own house. He did what he chose, and
    the choice was right because it was his.
    September brought a great crop of apples from the two old trees. Mercy had always bottled them
    into sealed jars, but that was a skill that had to be done just right, and Pitiable did not know how.
    Probity could well have asked a neighbour to teach her, but he was too proud, so he told her to
    let them fall and he would make cider of them. Most of the People made a little cider, keeping it
    for special days, but this year Probity made a lot, using casks he would not now need for storage
    as he had less to store. He shook himself out of his dull mood and took trouble so that the cider
    brewed strong and clear. He took to drinking a tankard of it with his supper, and became more
    cheerful in the evenings.
    Winter came, with its iron frosts, and Probity started to drink cider with his dinner, to keep the
    cold out, he said. And then with his breakfast, to get the blood moving on the icy mornings. By
    the time the sunrise turned back along the horizon, he was seldom without a tankard near by,
    from the hour he rose until the hour at which he fell snorting, and still in his day clothes, onto his
    bed.
    He began to beat Pitiable, using his belt, finding some fault and punishing her for it, though both
    of them knew that that was not the cause. He was hurt to the heart, and sick with his own hurt,
    and all he could think of was to hurt someone or something else, and doing so himself to hurt
    himself worse, dulling the pain with new pain. One night Pitiable watched as he took the horse
    and cart he had made her and broke them into splinters with his strong hands and dropped them
    into the fire.
    Pitiable did not complain or ask anyone for help. She knew that anything that happened to her
    was a just punishment for her having been born. Her mother and father should never have wed .
    By doing so they had broken God’s law. And then Obedience, Probity’s lovely lost daughter, had
    died giving birth to Pitiable. So Pitiable was both the fruit of her parents’ sin and the cause of her
    mother’s death, and of Probity’s dreadful hurt. Nothing that was done to her could be
    undeserved.
    On Sunday mornings Probity did not drink. He shaved and dressed with care and took Pitiable to
    church. They made an impressive pair, the big, gaunt man and the pale and silent child.
    Neighbours remarked how much they meant to each other, now Mercy was gone. Once a woman
    asked Pitiable why she wept in church, and Pitiable replied that it was because of her
    grandmother dying. The woman clucked and said that she was a