PRISCILLA OF THE GOOD INTENT
PRISCILLA OF THE
GOOD INTENT
A ROMANCE OF THE GREY FELLS
BY
HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE
Author of “Mistress Barbara,” “Benedick in Arcady,” etc.
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1909
_Copyright, 1908_,
BY HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE.
_Copyright, 1909_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Printers
S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
PRISCILLA
OF
THE GOOD INTENT
CHAPTER I
The blacksmith’s forge stood just this side of the village as you
entered it from Shepston, and David Blake, the smith, was blowing
lustily at his bellows, while the sweat dripped down his face. The cool
of a spring morning came through the doorway, against which leaned a
heavy, slouching lad.
“Te-he, David the Smith! Sparks do go scrambling up chimney,” said
Billy the Fool, with a fat and empty laugh.
They called him Billy the Fool, for old affection’s sake, with no sense
of reproach; for the old ways of thought had a fast hold on Garth
village, and a natural was held in a certain awe, as being something
midway between a prophet and a child.
“Ay, sparks are scrambling up. ’Tis a way they have, Billy,” answered
the other cheerily. “What’s your news?”
Again Billy laughed, but cunningly this time. “Grand news--all about
myself. Was up at sunrise, and been _doing naught_ ever since. I’m main
fond of doing naught, David. Seems to trickle down your body, does
idleness, like good ale.”
The blacksmith loosed his hold on the bellows’ handles and turned
about, while he passed a hand across his forehead.
“Is there nought ye like better than idleness?” he asked. “Think now,
Billy--just ponder over it.”
“Well, now,” answered the other, after a silence, “there’s
playing--what ye might call playing at a right good game. Could ye
think of some likely pastime, David?”
“Ay, could I. Blowing bellows is the grandest frolic ever I came
across.”
Billy was wary, after his own fashion, and he looked at the blacksmith
hard, his child’s eyes--blue and unclouded by the storms of
life--showing big beneath their heavy brows of reddish-brown.
“I doubt ’tis work, David,” he said dispassionately.
“Nay, now! Would I ask _thee_ to work, lad? Fond o’ thee as I am, and
knowing labour’s harmful to thee?”
“I shouldn’t like to be trapped into work. ’Twould scare me when I woke
o’ nights and thought of it.”
“See ye, then, Billy”--blowing the bellows gently--“is it work to make
yon sparks go, blue and green and red, as fast as ever ye like to drive
’em? Play, I call it, and I’ve a mind, now I come to think on’t, just
to keep ye out o’ the game, and go on playing it myself.”
Billy drew nearer, with an anxious look. “Ye wouldn’t do that, or
ye’d not be blacksmith David,” he said, with unerring knowledge of
the other’s kindliness. “Te-he! ’Tis just a bit o’ sporting--I hadn’t
thought of it i’ that light.”
And soon he was blowing steadily; for the lad’s frame was a giant’s,
when he chose to use it, and no fatigue had ever greatly touched him.
From time to time, as the blacksmith paused to take a red-hot bar from
the furnace or to put a cold one in, he would nod cheerfully at Billy
the Fool and emphasize the frolicsome side of his employment.
“Ye’ve an easy time, Billy,” he would say. “See me sweating here at
beating iron into horseshoe shape--and ye playing at chasing sparks all
up the chimley!”
The sweat was pouring from Billy, too, by this time, but he did not
heed. Plump and soft his laugh came, as he forced the sparks more
swiftly from the coals.
“Was born for playtimes, I, David,” he cried in great delight. “I’ve
heard tell of silver spoons, popped unbeknownst-like into babbies’
cradles. _I_ war a babby o’ that make, I reckon, for sure ’tis I’m
always playing, when I’m not always idling in between times.”
“Ye were lucky fro’ birth,” David answered, driving the hole for the
last nail. “Some folk is, while other-some must work.”
“Why _do_ ye work, David?” asked the other, with entire simplicity.
“Oh, just a fancy, lad. Seems as I have to, somehow. There were no
silver spoons dropped into _my_ cradle. Hive o’ bees swarmed there, I
fancy, for I’ve had a few in my bonnet ever since.”
There was another silence, while Billy the Fool, working hard at the
bellows, looked long and meditatively at David Blake.
“I wouldn’t like to hurt ye, David,” he said at last, “but I reckon
ye’re just a bit daft-witted like. Why don’t ye play or idle all your
time, same as I do?”
David threw the finished horseshoe on the heap at his left hand, and
was about to answer when a shadow came between the reeking smithy and
the fresh and open sunshine beyond the door.
“Oh, ’tis ye, Priscilla?” he said, looking up. “Ye’ve got the
spring-look in your face.”
As she stood half in, half out of the smithy door, Priscilla was
radiant in her young and pliant beauty. To David Blake’s fancy--rough,
kindly, not far wide of the mark at any time--she “made the day
new-washed and happier”; yet it was Billy who next found his tongue.
“Te-he! Ye look as if life was playtime for ye, too,” said he, still
blowing at his bellows, but looking at her slily over his shoulder.
“Maybe,” she laughed--and the kind, wise music of the thrush was in her
laughter. “’Tis very true, Billy. Life’s playtime for me.”
David Blake looked at her, and liked her a little the better; for he
knew that Priscilla worked hard, worked long and with a blithe face,
each day of her life. To the blacksmith it seemed, in between doing odd
jobs that brought him in a livelihood, that his prime work in life was
to love Priscilla ever and ever a little more--and each day to find
himself more tongue-tied in her presence.
Again it was Billy who took up the talk, though Blake would think
to-morrow of twenty things he might have said, and curse himself in a
quiet way for having failed to say them.
“I’m always playing, as a man might say, myself,” chuckled the Fool.
“Playing at bellows-blowing now. See the lile sparks go up, Miss
Priscilla--’tis I that send them, right enough.”
“Why, yes,” she said, nodding pleasantly at his wide and gaping face.
“We’re playing, Billy, you and I. Only the blacksmith works.”
“He’s a bit of a fool, by that token,” hazarded Billy.
The blacksmith, when he laughed at all, laughed from his lungs outward.
“Always guessed it, Priscilla,” said he, making his anvil ring.
“Billy’s a child, but old in wisdom. Bit of a fool I’ll be to the end,
I reckon.”
“I’m playing, David,” said Billy, while the blacksmith halted in his
work to steal a glance at Priscilla. “Get ye on with your work o’
making horseshoes, if I’m playing the tune to ye.”
Again David laughed. “Keeps me at it, Priscilla,” he said. “Never met a
taskmaster so hard to drive a man as Billy.”
“We want ye at Good Intent,” said Priscilla, laughing too--and her
laughter was a pleasant thing to hear, reminding David again of
throstles when the spring comes in.
“You can ease your hold of the bellows, Billy,” said David, with an
alacrity that was patent to the girl, modest and proud as she was.
“When I am called to Good Intent Farm--well, I go, most times, and
ne’er ask what’s wanted, and leave smithy-work behind.”
“Robbing me o’ my playtime,” panted Billy the Fool, as he mopped his
forehead.
He looked up at David, and his blue eyes were wistful as a dog’s asking
for commands.
“Ye’ll be idle now,” said the blacksmith. “Play first, laddie, and
idleness after.”
“Ay, you’re right,--you’re always right, saving odd times, when you’re
a Fool Billy like myself. Miss Priscilla has a trick o’ making ye
daft-witted, I’ve noticed.”
The village natural, with his huge body and his big, child’s eyes, had
a way of finding out his neighbours’ secrets, and had no shame at all
in telling folk what each wanted to hide from the other. Priscilla
turned her face away, and David reddened like a lovesick lad.
“Keep the forge-fire going quietly,” said the blacksmith. “That’s
idleness for ye--just to lie dreaming this side of it, and time and
time to put the fuel on.”
“Ay, that’s idleness,” said Billy, as he stretched himself--again like
a shaggy, trusty dog--along the smithy floor. “Get ye to work, David,
and leave me to my play-work.”
They went out into the springtime, David and Priscilla, and the breeze
was cool and sweet about them as if it blew from beds of primroses. The
lass wished that David Blake had more to say, wished that the quickness
of the spring would run off his tongue’s end; she did not know that he
felt it--more than she, maybe--but had no words in which to tell her of
it.
“You make a body thoughtless-like, Priscilla,” he said at last. “Never
asked ye what the job was I was wanted for; and here I am without a
tool to my back.”
David was able to do so many jobs, and do them handily, that it might
be one of twenty that was asked of him to-day, and he looked anxiously
at Priscilla, to ask if he should go back for his tools.
“I was watching the water-wagtails,” she answered, scarcely hearing
him. “They’re home to the old stream again, David, and that means the
spring is here, or hereabouts.”
He watched the pair of mating birds sit, first on the low stone wall
that guarded the stream, then flicker to the road, their white tails
moving like a lady’s fan.
“Mating-time, Priscilla,” said he.
Something in his voice, something in the true, quiet ring of it moved
Priscilla strangely.
“They’re bonnie birds, David,” she said. “Winter’s out, and
springtime’s coming in, when they wag their trim, white tails.”
“Ay, true. But what tools ought I to have brought, like?”
Priscilla sighed, for dull-wittedness did not commend itself to-day.
“No tools at all, David. The roan cow I’m so fond of has lodged a slice
of turnip in her throat, and father cannot move it.”
“Easy as falling out of a tree, Priscilla. Lord, I thought you
farmer-folk knew somewhat--but when it comes to a cow, ye’ve got to
whistle for David the Smith!”
Priscilla glanced at him with a roguery as dainty and secure as that
of the spring itself. “They say ye can talk to the four-footed things,
David, and make them understand ye. Pity ye can’t spare more words for
us poor two-footed folk.”
“Ay, but the beasts are sensible, somehow, lass. They don’t maze ye
up with words and what ye might call the frills and furbelows o’
life--they just look at ye, and feel your hands going smooth and quiet
down their flanks, _and they know_.”
“Billy has that sort of instinct, I have noticed,” said Priscilla
demurely. “There’s not a dog in the countryside that won’t come and
fawn on him--though some of our dogs are not just gentle.”
David gave another of his great, hearty laughs. “My father always said,
when he was alive, that I’d been intended for a natural, and missed it
only by good luck. I’m fond of Billy the Fool myself; simple and slow
is Billy, and what he lacks in wit he makes up for in heart-room.”
“That’s true, David,” said the girl, a little daunted, as she often
was, by David’s settled outlook upon things.
For herself, there were times when she longed to cross the limits of
this life at Garth, longed for the romance of the beyond; but when
David talked as he was talking now she felt shamefacedly that he was
in the right to be content within the boundaries of the fields and the
blithe, raking hills, the village smithy and the village farmsteads.
David Blake did not belie his reputation when, after following the
wood-path through the Ghyll, they came to Good Intent--a grey and
well-found homestead--and sought the mistals. What with surgeon’s skill
and the skill that comes from utter friendship with all cattle, he did
what neither Priscilla nor her father could have done.
“Give you thanks, David,” said Farmer Hirst, a broad, well-timbered
man, with a voice like thunder on the distant hills. “She’s the pick of
the lot, this roan ye’ve saved, and saving’s saving, whether it is your
child or your cow that’s ailing.”
“Ah, now!” murmured the blacksmith, “there’s joy in saving beasties,
and no thanks needed.”
“Well, thanks are waiting for ye when ye care to pick ’em up--which ye
seldom do, David--and meanwhile I’ve to see if my men are cutting the
thorn-hedge to my liking. Priscilla, there’s cake and ale within doors;
there’s one in Garth can look better to David’s needs than ever I could
do.”
Now David’s laugh was hearty; but it was a child’s whisper when
compared with Farmer Hirst’s, especially when the older man fancied
that he was using rare diplomacy. A true yeoman of the north was this
master of Good Intent--owned his own house and land, his own quiet,
wholesome pride, his line of goodly forbears. And so, because he had
learned to know a man when he saw him, he had long ago chosen David as
the favoured suitor.
“Lasses must wed, leaving their fathers lonely,” the farmer would say
to himself as he sat o’ nights--Priscilla gone to bed--and drank his
nightcap of hot rum. “I’d have felt less lonesome-like if Priscilla’s
mother wasn’t lying green under sod, and me alone save for Cilla. But
lasses must wed, and I’ve seen o’ late the mating look in Priscilla’s
face. Well, her mother wore that look, once on a day, and I’ve seen no
better in my long life, and never shall. It must be David--oh, ay, it
must be David!”
So he left them together this morning, and his big voice seemed to echo
up and down the grey, stone hills long after he had left.
Farmer Hirst had given the blacksmith many chances of this kind; and
always it had been, as now, the signal for David to grow tongue-tied,
for Priscilla to show the wild-rose flag of maidenly rebellion in her
cheeks.
“’Tis kindly, this smell of a mistal,” ventured David by and by. “Sweet
o’ the kine, I call it--’tis so lusty and so big to smell.”
Priscilla answered nothing. There’s something in the fragrance at a
cattle-byre that makes for wooing, no man can tell you why; and the
lass was young and was feeling two spring seasons meet in her--spring
of her untried youth, and spring of the tried old world that knows its
faith.
“Cilla, the throstles are singing out-of-doors,” said he, bending an
ear toward the open fields.
His meaning should have been clear; for, when a throstle sings across
the reek of an open mistal-door, the human oddities of speech should be
altogether lost, and the world’s tongue interpret all. Yet Priscilla
missed it, and disdained the thrush’s clarion note.
“Ay, David, and the world is turning round about the sun, and the stars
come out o’ nights, and I’ve to do my churning by and by. David, is
there naught beyond your throstles and your stars and the sun that
guides the world?”
“Naught,” answered David stolidly. “They’re life, Priscilla, and maybe
when we’re hid beneath the sward we’ll know of bonnier things--but not
just yet, I’m thinking.”
It was David’s moment, had he known it. It needed a touch, a glance, a
right word spoken that should ring in tune with the spring; and while
he halted there came a sound of whistling all across the mistal-yard.
It was not like Farmer Hirst to turn back when once he had set off,
and Priscilla wondered whose the footstep could be--the step that was
quicker and lighter than her father’s.
“One of the farm-men, maybe,” muttered David, remembering, now that the
opportunity was like to be lost, the one right speech he should have
whispered into Priscilla’s ear.
“No--nor yet father’s. ’Tis a town-bred step, David. Cannot you hear
the mincing tread, as if he thought the sweet yard-litter could hurt a
body’s feet?”
“Ay, now you name it, so I can. Treads nipperty-like, as a cat does.
Mistrust that sort of going, I. Who can he be, Priscilla?”
“Some stranger likely. Some one that’s never smelled the warmth of a
cattle-byre, so I should say.”
The footsteps sounded near and hurried now, but still there was that
delicate, lady-like treading across what Priscilla had named the sweet
yard-litter. David and the girl, looking from the shadows of the mistal
into the open sunlight, saw a well-dressed figure of a man--a man
neither short nor tall, neither dark nor fair--a man no way remarkable,
unless the sun was full upon him, and, seeing him from a shadowed
place, you noted the uncertain eyes which long ago had been a puzzle to
his mother when he stood beside her knee.
“There was no one at Good Intent, except old Martha,” said the
newcomer, lifting his hat with an air which David Blake could not have
copied had Priscilla’s love depended on it. “She told me you were
here--‘likely,’ she added, in the queer speech I used to know, ‘seeing
the roan cow was sick, and you were tending her.’ Priscilla, surely
you’ve not forgotten me?”
David Blake was the best-tempered man in all the long vale of
Strathgarth, so folk said; but there were times when he was as ill to
meet, as ill to look at, as if he had been a north-born dog, guarding a
north-built threshold from a stranger he distrusted. And David listened
to this prit-a-prat man who tried to mimick old Martha’s wholesome
speech; and Priscilla, glancing sideways at the man who should have
wooed her in the mistal--as women will glance toward a known lover from
a rival known by instinct--Priscilla saw David Blake in a new guise,
and one not pleasant to her on this peaceful day of spring.
She smiled at the newcomer, inclining her head a little in the pretty,
willowy fashion that Garth village loved. “You’ve the better of me,”
she said. “I do not remember you at all. Stay, though,” she added,
seeing the sunlight on his face, with its inscrutable, wild eyes, “I
seem now to have known you long ago.”
“Five years ago, Priscilla,” he answered, with a laugh which David
swore was false to the note of throstles and all wholesome things.
“You ask me to remember some one I knew at fourteen,” said Priscilla
quietly. “It seems long ago to me.”
David went to smooth the flanks of the roan cow, who turned her head
and licked his waistcoat tranquilly from the topmost to the lowest
button.
“I know him now,” growled the smith. “Garth has been well rid of him
these five years, to my thinking. Pity’s he’s come back.”
He glanced again at the other man, and was overtaken by an impulse to
throw his adversary bodily out of the mistal-yard; so he pulled himself
together, as one who was accustomed to follow kindly instincts only.
“Well, I’ll be jogging, Priscilla,” he said, making for the door. “The
cow is ailing naught so much, and ’tis time I got to smithy-work again.”
“So you’ve forgotten me too, David?” said the stranger airily, as Blake
was pushing past him.
“Nay,” answered David, not seeing the proffered hand. “I remember you
well, Gaunt of Marshlands--and I’ll bid you good day, as I was ever
glad to do.”