Priscilla had forgotten Peggy Mathewson soon after they had passed her
by. She was thinking of Reuben, sauntering step by step beside her, and
of the new elusive joy there was in these April gloaming-tides which
she remembered from her childhood.
As in all joy, there was a corner somewhere, unswept by the cool
evening breeze, which harboured distrust of happiness. It was not
Reuben she distrusted--for she was one of the brave, simple kind who,
once loving, are hard to move from faith; it was belief in God’s
ulterior harshness, which is the cold refuge of the weak: it was a
doubt of the reality of what she felt, a looking out toward something
steadier and more calm.
“Troubled still?” asked Gaunt, recovering quickly from the shock of
meeting Peggy, now the danger of it was over for the present.
“It seems too good, that is all,” she answered.
And then he talked to her, as they moved through the quiet after-light
and neared the stile that brought them to the croft of Good Intent. He
put his love, his hopes of a finer life, his resolutions for the future
days, into words that would have moved a harder and more clear-sighted
maid than Cilla. He talked once more of foreign lands, and again of
this sweet Garth that lay about them, and he twined his love of Cilla
throughout it all like a golden thread.
Priscilla forgot that dark corner where vague distrust span webs like
a spider in a dusky room. Out of her heart she gave her love to Gaunt;
and, because her heart was full, she needs must laugh.
“Reuben, we’ve not told father yet.”
“No, but will do soon. What’s the thought in your bonnie head, Cilla?”
“Why, that I must wash my face, for I’ve been crying. Father is never
so tired o’ nights but he looks at me at home-coming, and he seems to
know if an eyelash lies out of its own proper place.”
This side the stile, where they had halted, there was a well-spring for
the cattle--a trough of stone, all but hidden long since by the mosses
and the ferns that fed greedily upon the water. Priscilla dipped her
kerchief in, and washed her face, and dipped the kerchief in again.
“Good night,” she said demurely, when she was satisfied that all the
stains of the night’s tumult were removed.
“Ah, but not so quietly, if you please.”
So she reached up her face to him; and then he said he would wait till
she was safely home, for even the home-croft held dangers when you
loved a maid. And Priscilla tripped happily across the grey-dark grass,
and, because she was happy, she turned at the bend of the mistal-yard
and hooted like a barn-owl, to let Reuben know that she was safe.
Gaunt laughed as he turned home about. He did not follow the wandering
line of the stream this time, but took a straight course across the
fields--a course that led him, as it chanced, to the gate over which
Peggy Mathewson was leaning, still fighting despair as best she might.
Her back was turned to him, but even in the dim light Gaunt could not
mistake the figure; he bit his lip impatiently, and wondered if he
should pass on and climb the wall a little further up.
“Nay, she would know, though she won’t seem to see me now,” he
muttered. “Best have it out, and have done with it.”
He moved quietly to the gate, and laid a hand on her arm. “Peggy--” he
began.
She swept his hand away, and turned on him, and Reuben Gaunt, who had
seen mainly the softer side of women until now, was awed by the storm
that broke about him. She said little; but in her voice, in every
movement of her body, there was contempt and loathing.
“Get you home!” she cried, pointing across the grey haze of the fields.
“Get home to your kennel, Reuben Gaunt. D’ye think I want such as you
to come touching me?”
“But, lass--”
“Ay, and _but, lass_ and _but, lass_--and you want to explain,
and explain--fool Reuben, haven’t I learned your tricks and your
wheedlesome ways by this time? Little Miss Good Intent is younger to
’em. Come out of your kennel to-morn, and talk to her; _she’ll_ believe
ye, maybe.”
“We’d best not part in anger,” he stammered.
“Hadn’t we? ’Tis the only way we are like to part. I’m waiting for my
lad, as I told Miss Priscilla just now. He’ll _explain_ to ye, Reuben
Gaunt, if that’s what lies in your mind.”
The suggestion of physical cowardice--not true of him at any
time--stung Gaunt as much as anything the girl had said or left unsaid.
“If that’s so, I’ll wait for him here with you, Peggy,” he said,
holding his ground.
For a moment she relented. Gaunt was always showing her glimpses of a
certain hardihood of courage which she liked to see in man or woman.
Then she remembered Cilla, and saw again the look those two had worn as
they came down the fields to meet her--came whispering, hand in hand,
as if they robbed no woman of her birthright.
“Will you go?” she cried. “I’ve done with you, Reuben Gaunt, and you
with me, and ’twill be a far day and an ill day that brings me within
speaking length of you again.”
“As you like,” he said doggedly. “I only wanted to--”
“Ay, to explain! Reuben, I’m too old to your tricks.”
The tiredness and the scorn of those last words left Gaunt no choice.
Without a word, he set a hand on the top bar of the gate, vaulted it,
and passed out into the greyness of the night.
“He should end that way,” said Peggy, looking after him. “Sometimes
he’ll take a three-barred gate too many, all in his easy style, and
light on his head the further side.”
Tired out with passion, wearied of scorn, she turned to wander up the
stream. And she met her lad, and walked with him; and he was known
by the name of heart-break to the few who believe in such old-world
superstitions.
Cilla of the Good Intent, meanwhile, after crossing the croft in safely
and giving her owl’s call to Reuben, had gone indoors. Yeoman Hirst was
sitting by the fire--it was rarely so warm in Garth, but what a fire o’
nights was pleasant--and he was nursing a long clay pipe in his hand.
He had been counting his gains in live stock during this wonderful
propitious lambing-time; but he looked up quickly as Priscilla entered,
and in his glance there was that close-seated affection which proved
Cilla right when she had said that “father would know if an eyelash
lay out of its own proper place.”
“Look’st brave and well, Cilla!” was his greeting. “Got the wind to
your cheeks, eh? Now, I do begin to think, spite o’ being your father,
that you’ve some claim to winsomeness.”
Priscilla was not so happy as she had been a moment since. This steady
warmth of greeting seemed out of keeping with the quick, random
happiness she had seized by stealth to-night. It had in it something of
the security she had missed in Reuben’s wooing.
“Ah, shame to go spoiling your own lass, father!” she answered. “And
see, you have no horn of ale beside you.”
“Not like to have till you come to fill it. I must be getting old and
daft, Cilla, for I cannot rightly taste the wholesome bitter in my
evening draught, unless you come and fill it.”
She busied herself to fill the horn from the cask of October ale which
stood in the outer kitchen. In outward seeming she was the same Cilla
as of old--capable and gentle, wholesome to look at, and careful of a
good man’s wants; yet until now she had never known what it meant to
hold any but a trifling secret from her father.
“Now, sit ye down, Cilla,” said Hirst, after a quiet pull at his ale.
“Sit ye down, and tell me all about your day at Keta’s Well. I’m in
good humour, lass. Been thinking, lass, while you tarried shamefully,
that never was such a lambing-time in Garth. These Scotch ewes are
bonnie to see--like ’em best of all, for my part--but they seldom
drop two lambs. Seems there’s a fairy-wand about, Cilla. I go to bed
o’ night, and hear the lark whistle me up next morning, and go up the
pastures, like--and there’s another ewe twinned lambs. The lan’s fair
white wi’ the wee beasties.”
It was Priscilla’s unrest that answered, and the words slipped from her
unawares. “You’re boasting in April, father, and I’ve heard that wise
folk never boast till May is out--and seldom then.”
The farmer ran his hand along the arm of his high-backed chair, in
token of his faith that touching wood was a sure antidote to pride.
“There, you’re a lile, trim farmer’s wife already, Cilla!” he cried.
“Wouldn’t you trust even such a weather-time as this?”
Cilla thought of to-night’s wooing weather, of how little, after all,
she trusted it. “I’ve seen a foot of snow in May, father,” she answered.
Hirst gave out that thunder laugh of his that rattled the pewter on
the shelves. “Oh, and have you, maid? How many, then, has your father
seen? Never get older that way myself, Cilla--sure as heartsome weather
comes, I believe in ’t like a brother. There may come a storm in May
enough to ding the house-walls in, but, come the next soft May, ye’ll
find me like a lad again, thinking the sweetstuffs will never end.”
He filled his pipe afresh, then kindled it with one of the paper spills
which Cilla took from the mantel-shelf and lit for him at the wide
hearth.
“David is late,” he said. “Promised to be here by now, to talk over a
matter of some wheel-axles I want from him, and to join me in a pipe.”
“David? Is David coming to-night?”
The girl was surprised by her own terror of David’s coming. To hold
a secret from her father was ill enough, but to meet David, just
to-night--she could not bear it.
“Well, no, it seems he’s not,” the other answered drily, “or he’d have
been here by now, surely. So you’ve had your frolic, lass, at Keta’s
Well. And your packages all came up before you, with a message from
Will the Driver that you were following on. Likely pranks, these--you
finished the day with a gossip, eh? Your mother was the best soul that
ever lived, but she aye relished a gossip, I remember.”
Cilla had taken up some knitting, and bent her head under the pretence
that she had dropped a stitch. Her father’s trust in her, his kindly
banter, the old home look of everything, were each a separate reproach.
“I walked from Willow Beck Bar, father. The evening was so still, and
the look of the quiet fields tempted me.”
“Would have tempted me, too. So long as you picked up no gallant on the
road--but there, that’s not your way, lile lass.”
David, meanwhile, had not forgotten his promise to Hirst; but on his
way to keep it he found himself a half-hour before his time, and,
meeting Billy in the fields, had good-humouredly joined him in a
saunter.
David, as he went up and down the fields with his boon comrade, had a
feigned interest at first in the nests which Billy showed him; for he
was thinking of Priscilla. But by and by his interest awoke; he saw the
blackbird’s dappled clutch of five, and the wise throstle looking at
him as she sat brooding, and the hedge-sparrow’s ragged nest, built in
the kink of a grey limestone wall and bottomed with blue eggs; and he
felt his boyhood return to him.
“Now, there’s a wren a-sitting over across yond field,” said Billy.
“Wouldn’t ye come with a body, David, and see yon same?”
“Another day, Billy, another day. I’m due with Farmer Hirst, and must
be getting back.”
“Well, then, a body must turn when he must turn. There’s no denying
that, David. I’m going to see the little shy bird a-sitting myself, so
I’ll bid ye good e’en.”
Billy the Fool was moving away, after the loose easy way he had of
carrying his great body, when he felt a lack of something, and stopped
and turned about.
“Haven’t a fill o’ baccy on ye, David?”
“Ay, lad--three, if ye’ll take them.”
“Nay, I’m only wanting one,” said the other, briskly filling his pipe.
“And a match, as a body’s body might say.”
He lit his pipe, nodded tranquilly at David, then went up the fields.
David watched his unhurried stride, the unhurried trail of smoke that
drifted in his wake.
“A born smoker, is the lad. Puffs none too fast and none too slow, but
fair as if he had ’twixt this and Judgment to finish a pipeful in. No
wonder Billy needs only a match at a time; yond pipeful will burn its
way till there isn’t a strand o’ baccy left in ’t.”
In some dim way, David Blake was awakening nowadays from that bluntness
and reserve which, even toward himself, it had been his habit to
maintain. In part he was vastly diffident, and in part his days were
filled with earnest labour, so that all his life he had feared to
indulge in what he named “fancy feelings.” Yet to-night, as he saw the
utter content of Billy the Fool, he was moved to a speculation which,
before the spring came in, he would have counted dreaminess.
“Will die a lad, yond Fool Billy,” he muttered, as the summing up of
all his thoughts. “He’s the only man of his age in Garth that’s what ye
might call rightly happy. Has no worries, he, and can make a wise fool
like myself see ladhood pictured all afresh in a clutch of blackbird
eggs. Would swop places with Billy, I rather fancy, if the chance were
gi’en me.”
He gave a last look at the evening hills, the evening fields, behind
him; and for the first time he wondered if Priscilla’s refusal of his
suit were final. Greatly brave in speculation was David to-night, and
the mere hope that Cilla might find second thoughts--a hope slender
as a reed, but real for all that--set a new light in his eyes and a
brisker movement in his feet as he stepped out toward Good Intent.
He went on the high ground overlooking Willow Beck, and as he walked
he kept looking constantly into the valley. So gently the gloaming
filtered down the valley’s length like a wide stream of silver-grey--so
prayerful and so still the evening was--that a man of harder heart than
David might well have found his eyes go seeking peace and finding it.
“She’s bonnie, when all’s said, is Garth Valley,” was his thought; “and
here am I, all late for Farmer Hirst.”
Suddenly he halted, though wishing to get forward. Through the
silver-grey of Garth Valley two figures came; as yet they were no more
than outlined against the grey, but David was held by some unhappy
intuition, and he needs must stay and watch them at a nearer distance.
Slow, but pitiably sure for David, their progress was; and soon, though
it was too far to know their faces, he knew them by their carriage and
their walk. Spring was over in a moment for David, but boyhood was not
altogether past, it seemed, for he felt his throat grow big, and his
eyes were smarting.
Once, as he watched them, they stopped, came closer still together, and
went on again; and over David--whom folk thought slow and cheery, not
given to feeling overmuch--there passed the bitterness of death.
It was no selfish love he had for Cilla. To see any man so close to the
lile lass, whom he had watched over so long, would have been a grief,
because he frankly sought her for himself these days; but had the man
been honest, clean of his hands, David would have felt no bitterness,
only a self-sorrow that he would not have nursed for long, because
such sickliness was foreign to him.
“If’t had been any one but Gaunt,” he said, “any one in all Garth
village save Reuben Gaunt! Lord knows I hate the willowy slim way of
the man, and he’ll send Priscilla’s happiness abroad--ay, will he, like
any ladkin blowing bubbles for a frolic on his mother’s doorstep.”
He turned away, and he thought that he could not bear to go to Good
Intent to-night. Yet he had promised, and David’s word, till now, had
been good as Queen’s coin in Garth village.
Up and down the fields he wandered. If Cilla were not sure to meet
him at Good Intent, he could have gone at once, and covered up his
bitterness from Farmer Hirst as best he might; but it was nearing dark,
and he knew that she would return before the last of nightfall came.
“I cannot bear to see the lile good lass, and never speak a warning
word!” he cried.
Out of the silence presently there came a cry--Priscilla’s call to
Gaunt, in token that she had crossed the home-croft in safety--and
David bent an ear and listened.
“Only a daft old barn-owl,” he muttered. “Birds and their ways, and
maids and their ways--I’m weary of ’em.”
David was unlike himself, and knew it. It was well for growing lads to
be peevish at these times, but he was old enough, he had fancied, to
have learned some common sense. So he squared his shoulders; and his
face, in the gathering dusk, wore the look he had when he was driving a
stake into the ground or was hammering a horseshoe on the anvil.
“I’ll go,” he said. “Promises run down the wind, they say, and catch in
any hedgerow--but not David’s promises to Farmer Hirst. Bless me, and
there’s a letter in my pocket all the while, and I’d forgotten it!”
He set out in earnest this time for Good Intent, not heeding the beauty
of the grey night; and he came to the wicket-gate that opened on the
garden at the rear of the farmstead, and went down the five steps
leading to the door, and knocked.
“Step in, David!” sounded Hirst’s big voice. “I knew you’d come, lad,
though I said you wouldn’t.”
David the Smith opened and went in; and he felt himself forlorn, seeing
the look of things within doors. On one side the hearth, with its
back to him, was the hooded chair in which the farmer took his ease
at nights; and a rough-coated elbow showing round the corner of the
oak, a haze of blue smoke curling up toward the rafters, witnessed
to Hirst’s presence. On the other side, facing David, as he entered,
sat Priscilla, her work on her lap, her eyes on the fire that threw
quiet, homely patches of ruddy light and sombre shadow round about the
room. The farm-dog, Fanny, stretched at full length beside the fender,
was too full of dreams to do aught save wag her tail in a feeble way,
though she knew that one of her oldest friends had come.
It was home, thought David; no subtle detail was wanting to complete
this picture of fair prosperity and honest ease and fellowship--no
detail lacking to save David an added pang. He had been content,
till lately, with his work, his freedom, his trim little house with
its garden sloping down to the stream; to-night he saw only the warm
look of Good Intent, and by contrast his life seemed barren and
unprofitable. He longed for a lass of his own, and a dog stretched half
the length of the ingle-nook, and maybe the cry of a bairn as it waked
in its mother’s arms and fell asleep again.
“Come forrard, lad!” cried the farmer, getting himself out of his chair
with a cheerful groan--for he was stiff after the long day’s work.
“None so welcome at Good Intent, come late or early. Fanny,” he broke
off, stirring the dog with his foot, “wilt get thy great body under
settle, thou jade, and let a better than thee draw up a chair?”
The dog stretched herself, gave a low “yeow-ow” of protest, looked up
at Yeoman Hirst to learn if he were in earnest. Seeing he was, she
turned to David, and put her fore paws on his chest and licked his face.
“Nay, nay!” said he. “What sort of guest would David be, lass, if he
let thee wheedle him after the master had said _under_?”
Fanny had liquid eyes, of a shade and lustre that any woman might have
owned to the shaming of her sisters; she lifted them now to David’s, in
between the patient licking of his face, with surprise that he should
turn the cold shoulder to a friend in this way. So it ended--seeing the
man’s heart was soft and foolish toward all dumb things--in David’s
bringing a chair up to the hearth, in his taking the dog’s brown-black,
wistful head into his hands and stroking her muzzle softly.
“Shame on thee, David!” laughed Hirst. “She’ll be all spoiled by
to-morn, when I want her to drive up the sheep into the moor.”
“We’ll chance it, Farmer! Ay, we’ll chance it. Like to feel a dog’s
head in my hands, I--seems to hearten a man.”
Now that he had met his trouble, had seen Priscilla face to face and
conquered the outward signs of heartache, David was almost merry. It
had been a desperate venture, this of meeting Cilla so soon; and, now
that he was in the thick of it, he felt something of the glow and
mad-wit gaiety which attends on great adventures.
Never had Cilla guessed till now that David Blake could be so light
of talk. The sobriety, nearing dulness, which she associated with him
was gone. Keen, quick lights of humour played about his face. He had
stories at command--droll tales which Will the Driver had told him of
the road, sly anecdotes concerning the foibles of his neighbour-folk.
He was guarding a heartache bravely, was David.
Once, in the pause of talk, he looked at Cilla, and found her eyes
resting on him with strange intentness. She was thinking that the
helping hand-grip she had sought not long ago, when she resisted and
yet longed for Gaunt’s caresses, was David’s own. And, when she saw
that he had caught the glance, and was trying to read it, she took up
her sewing, and hoped the colour in her cheeks would be counted to the
firelight’s credit.
“Why, Cilla, I’ve a horn of ale beside me, and David here has none!”
said the farmer abruptly. “Where are your manners, lass?”
“Nay, now, take no trouble,” protested David. “I’ve a pipe betwixt my
teeth, Farmer, and what more should a man want?”
“Trouble is as it’s taken, David. If ye go forth from Good Intent
without a something good and mellow in your inwards--why, bless me,
there’s no cheer left in Garth.”
Priscilla was glad of the excuse to put her sewing down and busy
herself with David’s comfort.
“I’ll leave you to your talk, father,” she said, after making sure that
the farm’s hospitality--cherished for three centuries or more--was no
way shamed to-night.
“Ay, but come back to lay a trifle of cheese, and cake, and oat-bread
on the table. Have supped once already, I, and so has David, likely;
but strong work comes strong to victuals, Cilla, at the second asking.”