Though spring blew warm and soft from the west and Garth village saw
its trim, quiet gardens blossom out to welcome the young summer, there
was unrest about, as if an east wind blew.
Neighbours passed the time of day together, and farmers from the hills
came down and stayed to ask if this God’s weather-time would last.
“Likely not,” was the answer always.
“Ay, likely not,” the farmers would agree, though their wholesome,
wind-blown faces suggested a more friendly outlook even on the weather.
“Ye’re looking glum-like, misters,” said Billy, stepping up one morning
to a group of them who stood chatting in Garth. It was a week after
Reuben Gaunt had walked across the fields with Peggy Mathewson.
They were not aware of any special gloom, but began to think it must be
true if Billy said so.
“And I’ll tell ye why,” went on the Fool imperturbably. “Te-he! I’ll
tell ye why, ye wise farm-folk. Simple and fain to play am I; but I
think a lot, just whiles and whiles, and Billy can answer riddles when
more sensible-like folk seem bothered.”
These farmer-folk, who could guide a plough, turned all to Billy the
Fool, who could not guide his own reason. They waited for him to tell
the cause of their ailment--an ailment of his own discovering, not of
theirs--as if he had been the village doctor or the village parson, or
something more practical than either; and Billy, finding himself the
hero of this springtime gathering in Garth village, laughed vacantly.
“Tell ye the answer to yond riddle in a brace of shakes, farmers all.
Easy as tumbling off a wall; but ye wise folk look downwards when ye
see a stone fence, and wonder how ye’ll light. Shameful poor thing to
wonder how you’re going to fall off a wall. Never did think o’ the
matter myself. Just climbs up, and drops soft-like down, does Billy,
and finds himself on t’ other side somehow.”
“Ay, ye’re plump enough to fall soft, Billy,” laughed a red-cheeked
farmer.
It was curious to see his brethren check the unruly speaker with
nods and murmurs; they were men, for the most part, who had seen the
frosts of April come to nip the April buds, and therefore they were
superstitious. It boded ill to laugh at Billy the Fool when he wore the
look he did just now, for to them all naturals were “wise.”
“Tell us, Billy,” said a grey old man coaxingly, as if he held a baby
in his arms.
“Well, now, I will, seeing ye put it that way.” The natural’s placid
smile roved from one to another of the group. “Could tell ye in a
twinkling, farmer-folk, if I were minded to.”
“Tuts, thou’rt minded to,” said the grey old man, coaxing still.
“Ye can tell us how the weather sits, and where the first nest goes
a-building--surely ye can tell us what’s the matter with Garth village?”
“Ay, I could tell ye,” said Billy the Fool, his slow smile spreading
like quiet sunshine on them all. “’Tis Reuben Gaunt ails Garth. Don’t
need the likes o’ he, misters; he’s, as ye might say, a cuckoo in the
wrong nest.”
The men looked at one another. Billy the interpreter had put into
words for them a vague unrest that had been with them during these past
weeks. It was not that they bore Gaunt of Marshlands ill will; they
were too forthright and too clean of habit to harbour malice. It was
rather that they all felt as if the grey village was itself no longer;
they had remembered Gaunt’s record before he left them, and the peace
that followed his long wanderings abroad. And now, at a word from
Billy, they understood these matters.
“Hadn’t ye thought of it afore?” asked Billy, his lazy eyes as full of
laughter as a moorland pool when April breezes sport across it. “Knew
it myself the first day I clapped een on Reuben Gaunt Te-he! Ye’re
fearful wise and terrible hard in the head-piece, misters, but ’tis
soft Billy has to guide ye time and time.”
“We’ll give you credit for it too,” muttered the grey old man.
“Never had money myself--not to speak of,” he said, with a tranquil
chuckle. “Spoils folk’s lives and bothers ’em, does money, so I’ve
heard tell. Cannot lie under a hedgerow on June nights and hear the
birds a-twittering them to sleep. Must be prisoned in a great big bed,
must folks wi’ money, and have a great big roof sitting down on them.
Not for Billy the Fool, thank ye, that sort o’ smothered life! But
there’s summat else, misters. Ye who’ve got money, like, might do a
service to Garth village.”
“Ay, and how, if a body might ask?” said a kindly farmer.
“Well now, ye might take your shovels and a big sack, each of ye, and
ye might spade your money into ’t sack.”
A friendly smile passed from one to another of the farmers. Billy the
Dreamer had stepped in front of Billy the Wise Fool, and they waited
for a jest. There was a fine, free suggestion of untold wealth about
the lad’s talk of a shovel and a sack that appealed to their humour.
For they had tended, all of them, the niggard fields.
“Then ye’d bring your sacks o’ gold,” went on the natural--his face was
so solemn and so sly that none could guess whether or not he knew that
he was jesting--“and ye’d pour your gold out right along the roadway
here, and Reuben Gaunt would never see that the daffy-down-dillies were
fuller of sunshine than the gold that strewed Garth Street.”
“To be sure he wouldn’t,” said the grey old man. His tone suggested the
quietness of a man who sees a moorland trout spreading dark fins in a
pool, and moves warily to tickle him out on to the bank.
“Ye see,” went on Billy, with his inscrutable, large air, “ye see, ye
might put it to him this way. ‘Reuben Gaunt,’ ye’d say--or ‘Mister
Reuben Gaunt,’ seeing he owns land--‘silly boy Gaunt,’ ye’d say, ‘just
look ye at all this shovelled gold that lines Garth Street.’ And he’d
answer, ‘What o’ that?’ And ye’d answer back, ‘Silly boy Gaunt,’ ye’d
say, ‘there’s a line of gold from here to Elm Tree Inn. ’Tis yours for
asking,’ ye’d say, ‘granted ye do one thing. Oh, ay, ’tis yours for
sure, granted ye do one thing.’”
“And what’s that one thing, Billy?” rapped out the grey-haired farmer.
“Why, that he’d quit Garth and take the gold along with him. Never
would miss gold and Reuben Gaunt myself. What say ye, misters? Billy
the Fool’s a child, but somehow, as a chap might say, his head is
screwed on right foremost way. Give him your gold, say I, and shift him
out o’ Garth.”
A great laugh went up. These farmers, not greedy of money by nature,
but fond of it, as most north-born people are, saw the slow humour of
that trail of gold which ended at the Elm Tree Inn.
“And what when Reuben Gaunt had quitted, Billy?” asked one.
Billy the Fool took out a black and antique pipe before replying.
There were half-a-dozen pouches waiting for him on the instant, and he
filled from the first offered--Priscilla’s father’s, as it chanced--and
borrowed a match. Billy was always borrowing from his neighbours, and
thrived on it.
“Well, look ye here, neighbour-folk,” he said, puffing long trails of
smoke into the sunlit quiet of Garth. “I reckon there’d be ease of
heart, and spring a-coming in, when Reuben Gaunt had left us. Don’t
know myself, misters, but that’s what Billy the Fool has to say to ye
wise folk.”
They left him by and by, one or two of them patting him affectionately
on the shoulder, and went down the street in twos and threes. It
chanced to be market-day in Shepston, as any dweller on the fells could
have told, seeing so many farmers in Garth Street at this hour of a
busy springtime morning.
“Slow and wise is Billy,” said one to the other as they walked between
the limestone wall on one hand, the budding hedgerow on the other.
“Ay, knows a lot. Only lacks the trick o’ letting out all he knows, or
we’d be wiser, Daniel, us folk in Garth.”
Billy meanwhile leaned placidly against the grindstone which stood at
the road-edge just this side of Widow Lister’s cottage. The grindstone
had been out of work these many years, and the lichens gave it a mellow
dignity such as sits on old men after their labour is done, and well
done, and the resting-time has come. Perhaps, if you had asked the
lovers of Garth village to name their friendliest landmark, they
would have said at once, “Why, th’ old grindstone. Have leaned against
it many a time, and talked right good sense the while on summer’s
evenings.”
Billy was not talking now. One could not have said whether he were
thinking even, so imperturbably he watched the smoke from his pipe
curl up into the blue and tranquil air. Yet, just as he had been the
interpreter of Garth’s unrest not long ago, he was the interpreter of
spring just now. Like some primeval dweller in the green forests of a
younger world, Billy the Fool looked out at nature, and watched the
seasons pass him, and knew that weather and fresh air were relatives
of his. They pitied him in Garth, as having no kin; but Billy, had
he found words at any time in which to speak of it, could have told
them, with that sudden, easy laugh of his, that he had a mother and
sister-folk and brothers.
“Might as well be wending down-street way,” he said at last, shaking
himself as he stood upright and knocking out the ashes from his pipe.
“Terrible lad to smoke is Billy, and I feel the need of another
pipeful, as a chap might say. Will go and sit on the seat, under the
old elm tree, and happen a body’s body might come along and offer me a
fill.”
The big tree in the roadway, fronting the inn to which it gave its
name, was browning fast, in token of green leaves to come. The wide
circle of the street here, where three roads met, was shimmering in the
sunshine as if new-washed and wholesome.
“Terrible fond of a seat is this plump lad,” murmured Billy, sinking
carefully into the oaken bench that circled the great elm.
He sat there, empty pipe in mouth, and he watched young April glow upon
the inn-front and the further hills behind. Great faith had Billy, and
therefore great tranquillity; and, though he hungered for another pipe,
he sat beneath the elm tree, as if tobacco fell, as dew falls, from the
skies of eventide.
As he waited, noting lazily for the twentieth time that the wagtails
had returned to Garth and were dusting themselves in the roadway,
Reuben Gaunt came down the street. The natural saw him--scented him
rather, so it seemed--a hundred yards away; and he shifted the empty
pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other, and gripped it with his
teeth.
“Hallo, Billy, give you good day!” said Gaunt, as he came nearer. It
was Reuben’s way at all times to conciliate a fool, if he were strong
and liable to play Fool’s-Day jests with a man by dropping him into a
nettle-bed. “Give you good day, Billy. An empty pipe, eh? Well, I’ve a
full pouch at your service.”
Billy yearned for another fill and another borrowed match wherewith to
light it; and they thought him weak of will in Garth, but now he looked
over and beyond the tempter.
“Thank ye, no. I’ve smoked enough for a daft boy’s head-piece to
withstand that same,” he said, with the courtesy which seldom failed
him. “I be looking at the springtime gathering over Garth, Mr. Gaunt,
and I do seem, as a witless chap might say, to have scant thought for
baccy.”
“But a right good brew of ale?” suggested Gaunt, nodding at the grey
and newly pointed front of the Elm Tree Inn. Like a child, Reuben was
always most eager to have his way when he was thwarted. “A right good
brew of ale, Billy? You like it, so they say, and have a head to stand
it, too.”
A second and an equal temptation came to Billy the Fool. He was silent
for awhile, and turned the matter round about in that queer mind of his.
“Thank ye, no, Mr. Gaunt,” he said at last, with desperate sobriety.
“I’m busy as can be with thinking o’ Miss Good Intent. She wouldn’t
like to see either of us drinking ale at this hour of a spring morning.”
“Give you good day again, Billy,” said Gaunt, his little sense of
humour leaving him.
“Ay, glad to give ye good day,” answered Billy, and watched Gaunt
follow the line of the grey street.
Billy sat on beneath the elm tree and hoped for better things than
Reuben Gaunt could ever bring him. Yet he looked wistfully from time to
time, first at the inn-front, then at his pipe.
“They’re heartsome matters, now, are a half-pint of beer and a pipe o’
baccy. Ye’d own to yourself, Billy--now, wouldn’t ye?--that they were
heartsome matters,” he murmured.
Reuben Gaunt, meanwhile, had turned up the lane that led to Good
Intent. He knew that John Hirst would be at Shepston market, and was
sure therefore of his welcome at the farm. He did not get as far as
the house, however, for Priscilla was standing in the home-croft as he
came through the stile. From sheer frolic she had donned a sun-bonnet,
pretending that this April sunshine was overwarm to bear uncovered. The
bonnet was pink, and her simple gown was lavender-blue, and she looked,
to Gaunt’s eyes, the trimmest and the bonniest maid that he had seen in
all his travels.
She was feeding a noisy multitude of hens and turkeys, and it was
pleasant to see how carefully the bigger birds refrained from stealing
from the fowls--nay, left the tit-bits to them often, and showed
altogether the behaviour of a big, good-tempered dog towards a small
and fussy one.
It was the turkey-cock that first warned Priscilla of Gaunt’s approach.
The “prideful devil,” as Billy the Fool had called him, was proving
his right to the title in good earnest. His tail was spread, his
wattle grew and grew until the head of him was crimson as a wild-rose
berry when autumn’s sunshine lights the hedgerows. He made towards
Gaunt, moreover, with little steps that in their fretfulness and
self-importance suggested comedy.
Priscilla turned to learn the reason of this outbreak, and her eyes
met Reuben’s. A delicate flush and a look of pleasure in the girl’s
candid face was Gaunt’s welcome--a greeting which John Hirst would have
understood had he been there.
“Good day,” she said sedately, and turned to feed her birds again.
Gaunt laughed bitterly.
“Do you see the turkey-cock’s welcome, Cilla? All the male folk of
Garth seem out of humour with me somehow.”
It was another sign of the new days which Reuben had ushered into
Garth--one of those signs which are no bigger than a cloud the size
of a man’s hand--that Priscilla of the Good Intent did not resent the
shortened name which few but her father had been privileged to use till
now.
“You are out of heart with life,” she said, scattering the last of the
food abroad and turning to meet his glance again.
“Nay, life’s out of heart with me, Cilla. They seem to think I’m lying,
these Garth folk, when I tell them I’d be glad to be here again among
the old home-fields, if only they would let me.”
The man was sincere. It was a dangerous gift of his, this habit of
speaking what was truth for the moment, though it had no quality of
strength and purpose behind it.
It was a dangerous gift of his, too, that women were compelled, when
near him, to feel an odd, protective instinct. Peggy Mathewson had felt
the motherhood of life rise up and cloud her judgment as she walked
with Reuben a week ago through the sunlit fields; and now Priscilla of
the Good Intent felt pity’s strength awake.
“’Tis a bad habit,” she said, moving a little closer to him, “this
being out of heart with life, Reuben”--forgetting that she had vowed
to call him Mr. Gaunt perpetually. “There’s enough and to spare of
gladness, and we must just search for it when times fare ill. Shame
on you, to go whimpering like a child when spring is flooding all the
countryside!”
She was not thinking for the moment of those fairy seas and lands which
Gaunt had painted for her. In this quiet field, with the turkeys and
the fowls about her, she was answering the prime instinct of all human
life--to better a sad man’s outlook on the world by spoken word, and,
if need were, by that touch of hand on hand which she had disdained.
“Cilla,” said Gaunt, his face a man’s at last, because for his little
moment he had gripped hold of love. “Cilla, you’re the sunlight and the
joy of life to me. Have you never thought of wedlock?”
The girl withdrew and put a hand to her skirt of lavender-blue as if by
instinct, and looked at the distant hills.
“I seldom think of it,” she answered crisply. “The spring and the needs
of the feathered flock are enough for me.”
“Are they, Cilla? What of the beyond lands--or was I dreaming when you
said you’d like to see them?”
Priscilla only smiled with the dainty aloofness which angered Reuben
and enticed him.
“’Tis April,” she said, “and I’m entitled to my whimsies, like the
weather. Besides, I met Billy the Fool in the lane yestreen, and he was
showing other pictures to me. Nay, do not frown, Reuben,” she broke
off, not guessing that Billy’s name was unwelcome to the other on
more counts than one. “He knows the hedgerows and the fields so well,
and he showed me things as old as the hills--things new and wonderful
each spring--things that come to you again each year, Reuben, with a
surprise that seems each year to grow fresher and more eager.”
“And what did he show you, Cilla?” asked the other jealously, turning
to cry “_Gobble-di-gobble-di-gobble_” to the turkey-cock, and provoking
a hot answer.
“The first wild-strawberry bloom, the first throstle’s nest, the
first April look of Sharprise Hill when the sun slants on it through
the clouds that mean no harm. Your foreign lands grow misty, Reuben,
somehow, and I love Garth village once again. Billy had ever that
trick--to make you wise in spite of yourself.”
Reuben paced up and down in a restless way he had; then he stopped and
looked at Priscilla of the Good Intent, and in his eyes there was the
mischief of a partial truth.
“Those beyond-places will haunt you, Cilla, all the same, and I could
take you to them.”
The girl was silent for awhile, and then she drew her lavender-blue
skirt more closely round her.
“Ay, so you could; but, Reuben, I prefer to stay at Garth with father.
I’ve enough to do in a day, and am happy in it. Hark, ye! The throstle
yonder is singing his throat dry. Did ye ever hear sweeter music,
Reuben?”
On the bench that fronted Elm Tree Inn sat Billy the Fool meanwhile.
He had waited, with his inimitable faith and patience, for a fill of
tobacco and a half-pint of ale to drop from the skies; and his faith
had been fulfilled, for down the road from his forge came David the
Smith.
“Looking sulky-like,” said David, laying his bag of tools beside his
crony and sitting near to him.
“Nay, not I. I never look sulky, David. ’Tis not good for this right
wholesome world to look sulky,” said Billy. “I was thinking, David, and
thinking makes a daft-witted chap have fearsome aches and pains in his
inward parts, as a daft-witted chap might say.”
David gave out his big, rolling laugh as he clapped Billy on the back.
“Guess what’s a-going wrong with thee, laddikins. Empty pipe, I see.”
“Ay. And I’m empty o’ matches too,” said Billy, his face like Sharprise
Hill with the April look on it.
“Empty in the low-ward parts, moreover,” he added, after he had filled
his rakish pipe and lit it. “I’m terrible in need of a sup o’ summat,
David. Reuben Gaunt came by this way awhile since and offered me what
ye might call body-warmth, and I couldn’t seem to stomach it--nay, I
couldn’t, David, not how he’d tried to pour it down my windpipe.”
“Gaunt been down to the village to-day?” snapped David. “Pretends to
be a farmer, yet doesn’t go on farmward shanks to Shepston market come
Thursday every week.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” said the other slowly, as he pulled eagerly at his
pipe. “Mister Reuben Gaunt is not by way of farming, as I look on and
see ye busy folk a-farming, like. Does it for play, like Billy.”
David rarely lost his temper, and still more rarely did he seek
expression for his feelings in strong language; but now he was silent
for a moment, thinking of his love for Priscilla, fearing Gaunt’s love
of her; and a sudden cry escaped him.
“Damn Reuben Gaunt, and the first day he set eyes on Garth again!” he
said.
“Shouldn’t swear, David,” put in the other slyly. “Parson do say,
whenever he stoops to talk to the likes o’ me, that folk who swear
go to a fearful dry and overwarm spot. He’s wiser than ye or me, is
parson, David, and we should listen to him, we.”
“Then he should tell us,” responded David grimly, “why deep-set
troubles come to a man, Billy, without his earning them, and why a man
must swear at times, or else do something worse.”
“Ay, ’tis a terrible makeshift sort of a world--terrible makeshift,
David; but yet, in a manner of speaking and as a body might say, ye
understand, it suits Billy right well. There’s always fields and
hedgerows, eh?”
It was not till late, as Billy and he moved up the street toward his
forge, that a strange fancy came to David Blake. He remembered, as a
lad, the stir and gossip there had been in Garth nigh twenty years ago.
A company of strolling players had come to Garth, had played there to
wondering rustics in the barn at the end of the village, and had gone
their way--all save one, who stayed behind and found her way, late on
a mirk and windy night, as far as Marshlands. She was found dead at
the gate of the homestead on the morrow, and a four-year-old child was
crying at her side. None ever knew the rights of the tale; but old
Gaunt of Marshlands was known as the wildest roysterer in the dale,
and, though some disbelieved the story that the woman had come to him
for help and that he had deliberately turned her back, to die in the
rain and cold, yet all believed that Gaunt was father to the child.
The child was Billy the Fool, adopted and well cared for by all
Garth--a village bairn, the plaything and the property of all kindly
folk. And Reuben Gaunt was the acknowledged son and heir to Marshlands.
“’Tis odd,” muttered David often and often, as he worked at the anvil
and glanced at Billy. For he remembered the consistent hatred shown by
the natural toward Reuben Gaunt.