Priscilla gave some fleeting answer, and was gone. Up the stone
stairway she went, and into the chamber beside the apple-tree, which,
grown sturdy, was putting out green springtime leaves. A slim, white
sickle moon lay helpless on her back--lighting in a softened fashion
Garth’s fragrant valley. Through the opened casement the tempered April
wind was fretting, as it blew the muslin blind aside. It was a night
when fairies played about the land, when human ears, not deaf to all
romance, heard music fluting through the dull world’s uproar.
Priscilla of the Good Intent leaned her two arms on the window-seat,
and looked out upon the vagueness of the landscape lit by the
young moon. She was thinking of her surrender to Reuben Gaunt, and
wondering if she were happy in her choice; and always as she asked the
question--pretending to herself that she asked it not at all--David’s
shadow stole in between herself and happiness.
Gaunt himself about the same hour was standing on the threshold of his
own house of Marshlands. He had turned the loose silver in his pocket
on seeing the new moon, as superstition bade him, and had prayed for
luck. He had tried, moreover, to think constantly of Cilla, but had
thought instead of Peggy Mathewson, and of the lad she hoped to meet
by the winding-path of Willow Beck. Peggy, when she had planted that
retreating arrow in Reuben Gaunt, had judged wisely.
“Must see her once more to-morrow,” murmured Gaunt. “Must tell Peggy
that new times have come in, and old ones gone--but who, in the deuce’s
name, is the lad she means to take to nowadays?”
“Reuben is true at heart,” murmured Cilla, as she watched Garth Valley,
grey under the sickle moon. “They wrong him, these Garth folk; he only
wants love and a helping hand, and I have promised to give both.”
David, below stairs, was talking with John Hirst, while both sent up
clouds of smoke toward the rafter-beams. They had settled the matter of
the axles, and Hirst was chuckling.
“Wish ye’d come up to-morrow’s evening, David. Yond turkeys of mine are
not penned up yet, and ’t has grown to be a jest in Garth. What with
being throng with the lambs, and cutting a new ditch in Marshy Field
bottom, and all the spring work coming faster than I can deal with,
I’ve no time to think o’ turkeys. The stakes ye made for me are lying
just where ye left ’em, and they say in Garth--ay, pretty well every
time I go down street--that the pen will be nice and ready for next
year’s breeding-season.”
“’Tis time they were penned, Farmer, I own.”
“Time? I should think it was. Look ye, David, be up at five o’ the
afternoon or so. There’ll be myself and my two men, and with you to
help we should get the durned thing up in no time.”
“Right! Yond red-wattled dandy ’ull be fair uproarious, I reckon, when
once his wings are clipped. Wakes the whole village as ’tis.”
They were silent, puffing quietly at their pipes, till David remembered
the letter lying in his pocket and began to fumble for it among
the odds and ends--nails and screws, a clasp-knife and a two-foot
rule--which bulged his pocket out.
“Want your knowledgeable sort of head to help me, Farmer,” he said,
handing the letter across Fanny’s curly hide. “Will the Driver brought
the mails this morning, but I little fancied he carried aught for me,
till the postman dropped a letter for me at the smithy. Write few
letters myself, and get few; life’s over-short for such thankless waste
o’ time.”
Hirst read the letter through. “Come all the way from Canada, ’twould
seem,” he muttered. “And I should know the writer’s name, though I’m
puzzled to guess where and when I last saw Joanna West.”
“Forgotten my mother’s sister, have ye, who wedded Joshua West of High
Lands? So had I, or nearly, seeing ’tis twenty year since they left
Garth.”
“Why, I must be getting past my memory, David! A bonnie lass she was,
and spirited. I remember looking her way as a lad, till Cilla’s mother
put all such fool’s nonsense out of my head for good and all! She was
over-good for Joshua West, all the same. Bird of a feather, he, with
Reuben Gaunt--settled to naught, liked spending money better than the
earning of it; wanted to be pretty-boy-rover over all the countryside.”
David was silent for awhile. Mention of Gaunt brought sharply to him
the remembrance of what he had seen to-night, when looking down from
the higher fields on the grey of the valley’s gloaming. He wanted to
warn Cilla’s father, as he had wanted to warn the girl herself; but,
for the like reason, he held his peace; for Gaunt was his rival, and
David was sensitive almost to absurdity when honour was in case.
“Ay,” he answered at last. “He was feather-bird to Gaunt. Lost his
money and his lands, Farmer, ye remember, and went overseas to see if
he could frame better, like? Framed well, too, as it proved.”
“They sometimes do. I remember you told me, years ago, that he was
farming to some purpose at last, and was earning gear and gold.”
“Puzzles me, too, why that should be. Is’t that Joshua West’s sort o’
breed cannot rightly stand against Garth weather, with its ups and
downs, and its east wind in May, and its heartsome, daft contrariness?
Or is it that there’s fewer wayside drinks to be had in foreign parts?”
“Bit o’ both, I reckon. Well, then, he’s dead, by what the letter says.”
“Ay. Slipped under a timber-waggon, he--Joshua was always fond o’
slipping one way or another--and they picked him up with his back cut
in two. My Aunt Joanna has not favoured me overmuch with letters, but
she’s in trouble now. Life’s always playing that queer game with me,
Farmer; when folk are up and about, damned if they care a stiver for
David the Smith--but when they’re down, ’tis always I’m their best
friend, and must hurry off at once.”
“Up or down, folk look to ye, David,” said the other, with unabashed
and honest praise. “Ye’re a bit like Sharprise Hill, ye--Garth folk
_will_ turn for a look at ye, come evil times or good, before they step
indoors o’ night. So Joanna West, having no sons of her own, is lonely
over yonder, now her good man’s gone, and she wants ye to go out and
set things straight?”
“That’s about it. Yet Garth Village is good enough for me, and always
was. What make of moonshine would it be to go marlaking in overseas
parts?”
“Now, I’m thinking,” said Hirst slowly. “We’re talking no secrets,
David, when I tell ye that ye want my Cilla, and that I want ye
to have the lass, though I can ill spare her. Well, now, maids are
pranksome.”
“Maybe,” assented David, his face ruddier than its wont. “No news that,
Farmer. Perhaps, in a littlish way, ye’d let me ask what bearing the
matter has on Aunt Jane?”
Hirst took his pipe-stem in his hand and waved it to and fro, with a
chuckle intended to be low. “Like ye! Always like yourself, David. Hit
life on the head with a hammer, ye, and never stop to dither round
about the nail-top. What has Cilla to do with this letter coming
overseas? Well, ’tis this way, David. When I was courting Cilla’s
mother, there were ups and downs--more downs than ups, so far as I
remember. The bonniest lass in the world, David, but I couldn’t get
near her anyway; like a mare she was, when you try and catch her in the
paddock, and she looks at you out of the corner of her bonnie brown
een, and says, ‘Catch me if you can.’ What, short of baccy, David?”
“Nay, and thank ye; but I’m listening, Farmer, and my pipe may rest
awhile.”
“Well, there came a day when I couldn’t bide it any longer. She was
not for John Hirst, I fancied, and the devil came gripping the reins
of me. ‘Priscilla,’ said I, going up to her father’s farmstead one
summer’s gloaming and chancing to find her in the garden--‘Priscilla,’
says I, ‘I’m going forth from Garth.’ And she looked at me. I can see
the look yet, David, though the poor lass is lying under Garth kirkyard
to-night. ‘How far are you going, John, from Garth?’ said she. ‘Oh, a
world and a half away,’ says I, as jaunty as may be.”
“Go on,” said David.
“Well, I meant all I said, for I couldn’t bide to live in Garth unless
I got Priscilla for wife--mother and daughter of the one name, ye’ll
notice, David, for ’tis a name I love, and smells of double stocks and
pansies. ‘A world and a half away,’ says I. And Cilla’s mother fell to
crying, same as her heart would break; and I cuddled her to me, David,
and I mind to this day that a yellow-legged bumble-bee got up from the
arabis flowers and boomed across our faces as we kissed one the other.”
“I’m beginning to catch your drift, Farmer,” said David.
“Time you did, David! Mind ye, there’s no two women like each other in
this world. Men-folk are plain this and that, more oft than not, and
easy ’tis to reckon up their substance and their shape; but women are
teasy-like, and I’m no way for advising ye, David the Smith.”
“Ye think I’d better go overseas?” said David slowly.
“Well, ye’d better tell Cilla ye’re going, anyhow, and see how the lile
lass takes it.”
Had David not halted to-night to look down from the hills into the grey
valley, he might have welcomed Yeoman Hirst’s advice; but, so far as
his leaving Garth affected his chances with Priscilla, he harboured
no false hopes. Cilla was not one to walk lightly in the fields with
any man, and it was sure that her choice had fallen, once for all, on
Reuben Gaunt.
“She’s not for me,” said the smith, looking straight and bravely into
Hirst’s face.
“Tuts! Where’s your pluck, David? Put a bit of the devil into that
honesty of thine, lad, for all women like a touch of keen sauce to
their victuals.”
“There’s devil enough in me nowadays, and thank ye--rather too much for
my liking. Truth is, my temper’s breaking, Farmer, and breaking badly.
Like an ill-forged bit of metal it is--breaks if ye hit it gently.”
“Ay, I know--I know, David, lad!” put in the other, with the wise,
tolerant smile of age. “Bless me, ’tis a few odd years since the first
man went daft-wit over the first woman, and there’s been other-some in
your place, David, in the in-between years.”
“I’ll go, anyway,” said David by and by. “Can’t bide still in Garth as
things are. Yet how I’m going to live without Garth street, and the
forge, and the fields running up to the moor--I cannot guess. ’Twill be
a wrench when it comes, for sure.”
“Well, now, ’tis not for a lifetime, supposing Cilla lets ye go--which,
mind ye, I don’t believe.”
The door at the stairway foot was opened suddenly. Priscilla had left
her watching of the moonlight and her thoughts of Reuben Gaunt to come
down and spread the supper-board. Her tread was light at all times, and
the two men were so intent on their talk that they heard nothing until
the rattle of the door-sneck warned them.
Yeoman Hirst prided himself on taking any situation by the horns at a
moment’s notice. So now he laughed, setting the roof quivering again,
and, “David,” said he, “you’re full of droll tales to-night. Pity that
Cilla did not come before to hear yond last.”
Cilla knew her father’s diplomacy, and guessed at once that they
had been talking of her. Her self-command had in it some of David’s
quality; perplexed as she was by her constant wish to ask David’s help,
bewildered by the glamour-web that Gaunt had spun about her, she gave
no sign of trouble.
“David is merry to-night, father,” she answered quietly, and went into
the outer kitchen to fetch the supper things.
“Ay, my word, he’s merry!” muttered David ruefully.
“Mustn’t let her guess that ye and me are as thick as thieves,” said
Hirst, subduing his voice with hardship. “Love’s as good as lost,
David, when a lass knows her father wants the lad as much as she.
Must run contrary, these maids, or else there’s no frolic in’t. I’d
have their fathers choose their lasses’ mates, for my part; but they’d
rather seek counsel from the first beggar coming to the door to ask for
scraps.”
After supper--a quiet, unrestful meal to-night--David got up to say
farewell.
“Thou’lt open to him, Cilla?” cried the farmer, feigning to be stiffer
in the joints than the day’s work warranted. “Old bones are old bones,
choose how you try to prove them young.”
Priscilla rose gravely, and opened the inner door; then went out into
the porch, and stood looking at the crisp, clean night.
“I wouldn’t have troubled you,” said David awkwardly.
“’Tis no trouble, David; and yet, in other ways, you make great trouble
for me.”
“Now, how’s that?” he asked, surprised into putting his hand on hers
and drawing her into the roadway. “David make trouble for the lile
lass? ’Twas not wont to be, Priscilla, before new times came in.”
“It is this way, David. You ask too much, and I cannot make a friend of
you.”
“Seems a pity, lass, for a better friend you never had.”
“Well, then, but wilt be just a friend, David? One I could come to, and
ask for help?”
David looked at her. The moon and the stars were tender with her face,
and with her slim and upright body. Cilla had always been the one maid
for him, but to-night there was magic in her eyes and in her touch.
He remembered, suddenly and with hardship, how he had looked from the
hilly fields not long ago, and had seen her in Gaunt’s arms. It was
true that his temper was brittle nowadays--the temper of David the
Smith, which Garth folk spoke of reverently as they spoke of steadfast
summer weather--and he had been over-brave to-night.
“Friendship be damned!” he said. “I’ll take more or less, Priscilla,
and good night to you.”
He was gone, and Priscilla of the Good Intent was left in the starlit
road. And first she laughed, because she could not help it, hearing
David break away from his quiet, Puritan mother tongue. And then she
sighed, and wished him back again. And afterwards she glanced at
Charley’s Wain, overlooking the trim farmstead, and wondered if she
had a heart at all, or whether it had only gone astray. Certain it was
that she had never liked David as she did to-night, had never seen the
real man peep out so clearly. Still wanting help from him--help against
herself, or against Gaunt, she knew not which--she had called to him
before she could check the words.
“David, come back!” she cried.
But David was striding down Garth Street, and was blaming himself for
the odd language he had used toward Priscilla.
“Quiet of tongue, am I?” he muttered. “Why break out when the lile lass
comes to bid good night to me? Nay, David, nay! Thou’rt a clumsy lad,
when all’s said, and deserved to lose her.”
Quiet and still was Garth village, as David walked down its moonlit
length. The gentle noises of the day were gone; no voice passed gossip
up and down the road, no footfall, save David’s, lifted the light April
dust; the grey fronts of the houses seemed full of ripe and mellow
thought, and from their gardens came a warm faint smell of flowers and
green-stuff.
Now that he was to leave it, the sense of home rushed in on David with
new-found force. He had felt the more in times past, maybe, because
he rarely found an outlet for his affections in words or ordered
thoughts; and to-night he knew, keenly and with pain, how much he cared
for Cilla, how much he cared for this grey street and the grey circling
hills.
“I’ve got to leave ye, Garth,” he muttered huskily. “Ay, that’s about
the size of it.”
As he neared the grindstone--standing by the wall-side like some old
pensioner who knows his working past secure and thrives upon the after
ease--he saw a light go shining out across the road from Widow Lister’s
cottage. He saw, too, a plump, small figure of a woman standing at
the door. Nanny Lister, it was said in Garth, would never go to bed
till the last chance of a gossip had gone down the night, and she was
holding to her reputation, so it seemed.
“Ah, ’tis ye, David!” she said, after peering out to learn who this
late comer might be. “Well, ye’re just in time, for I’ve a grievance,
and you’re the best-tempered man i’ Garth--”
“Am I?” laughed David, not sorry for this interruption to his thoughts.
“Well they say so, though I trust no man’s temper myself. Men have a
trick of crazying about some lile slip of a lass or other, and I should
know their tempers by this time, having lived with a husband and buried
him.”
“Lister lies snug, Widow,” said David, with a touch of that lightness
which Cilla had noticed in him throughout the evening. “Turfed over,
he, and resting from the _clack-clack_ of a tongue, eh?”
It was odd that the widow, old and ripish in experience, felt just as
Cilla had done--that David showed comelier when he got a bright edge
to his tongue. She bridled a little, to be sure; but that was only a
return of youth, an instinct to stand off from and thwart a man when
most she liked him.
“Unwedded folk should never talk to wedded ones, David. Maids
and bachelors, I always did say, are like children playing wi’
dandelion-fluff, blowing to ask if ’tis this day, or next day,
sometime, never, that the right lad’s going to come a-wooing. Well, he
comes, and he isn’t so bright, after all, when ye’ve lived with him a
year or two--but ye’re sort of fond of him and his foolishness--and
ye put up with him, and bake his bread for him, and hearken to
his whimsies when he comes home tired o’ nights and hugs the
chimney-corner. That’s all a side o’ life ye’re deaf to, David, and I
go pitying all ye stark, unwedded folk.”
David would have winced at another time; but to-night he had fought his
battle, had decided once for all to give up Cilla and the grey village
which she queened, and he was perilously gay.
“Give pity where ’tis asked, Widow,” he answered blithely. “I have the
forge, for my part, and a quiet cottage to go home to, and a power o’
freedom ye wedded folk seem always to be missing. Did ye ever hear of
the fox that got caught in a gin in Sharprise Wood and lost his tail,
and went prating afterwards that he looked bonnier for the loss?”
“Ye’re very full of heart to-night, David. Pranksome, I should call ye.”
“Have need to be. Just once a year the springtime comes, Widow, and it
behoves folk to be pranksome then.”
“Well, now, listen to me, for I said you were sound of temper, and I’m
in one of my angry fits just now.”
David looked at her plump, wholesome cheeks, and laughed. “Ye carry it
well, I must say, Widow.”
“Ay, women--’specially lone widows--were born just to try and hold up
their heads and pretend, like, naught matters anyway. What I want ye to
look at, David--the moon, young as she is, is better than a candle to
see by--what I want ye to look at is my bit of a garden here. ’Tis no
way big, David, and a plumpish cow could lie along it, and ye’d never
know there was a garden there; but ’tis all I’ve got, and it rears a
good few blooms from March time on to winter.”
“Bonniest slip o’ garden in all Garth. Well, then, Widow?”
“’Tisn’t well at all. Stoop down, David, and see where the auriculas
were when I slipped, yesternight, to bed. See where the tulips were,
and where the daffy-down-dillies were blowing all their trumpets.”
“Ay, they’re gone, for sure,” said David, with real concern.
“Gone? Should think they were. I came out this morning--feeling as
cheerful as a lone widow ever does--and thought to water my bit of a
garden. Found every single bloom picked off, David, and laid along the
ground.”
“Now, then, I’m sorry! Pride ourselves, we in Garth, that our gardens
neighbour the road, and yet no hand comes picking flowers by stealth.”
“’Twasn’t a hand. ’Twas greedy bird-beaks, David. Ye’re friends with
John Hirst, up yonder at Good Intent? Well, ye can tell him from Widow
Lister that ’tis time he penned his turkeys up.”
“We’ve settled to do that to-morrow, as it chances.”
“Should have done it a two-week ago,” went on the other briskly.
“Fussy, ill-conditioned fowls, I call ’em. Every morn they come
gobble-di-gobble down street, waking honest folk before ’tis time to
wake. Heard ’em this morn, louder than ever, right under my up-stairs
window, but I didn’t guess they were picking off my flower-heads for a
bit o’ frolic. Wish I had. Would have been after them wi’ the thick end
of a besom.”
“What’s done can’t be mended, Widow. There’s a lot of comfort in that.
Good night to ye; and, if you’re civil-like to David the Smith to-morn,
he’ll likely bring a fresh lot o’ flowering stuff to fashion up your
garden with.”
The widow bade him good night in return, and let him go some twenty
yards along the street. Then, with the trick that ran in her family,
she followed him and called him back.
“’Tis not only John Hirst’s turkeys,” she panted, coming close to
David. “His daughter went roving, too, to-day. Got up on the coach for
Keta’s Well, and Reuben Gaunt beside her. They didn’t return to Garth
by coach, I noticed, and if I had John Hirst’s ear--”
“Ye’d talk a lot of nonsense into it,” broke in David, sharply. “Miss
Priscilla came home along the fields with Mr. Gaunt, for I met them.
And why shouldn’t she, say I, if she’s a mind to?”
It was not just truth that David spoke; but it was true to the hilt
in this--that the good name of Cilla was to be kept sacred in Garth
village at any hazard.
As he neared the forge, a shadow got out from the wall-side and
approached him.
“Going to work, like?” said Fool Billy, stretching himself with easy
unconcern. “Knew you would, though ye’re longer in coming than I looked
for.”
“Knew I would?” echoed David. “How’s that, lad?”
“Ay. Ye said ye were going to Good Intent, and Fool Billy knew ye’d
come home by soon, or sooner, and work it off. Ye always do, David,
after Good Intent. I’m ready for my playtime, too. Have slept awhile,
I, since watching the lile trim wren-bird sitting on her eggs as snug
as clover to the ground. Ready to play, David, is this same Billy.”
They went into the forge, and got the fire alight and glowing, and
David worked till the sweat ran down him, because only in the friendly
feel of iron and tools could he find ease.
“Billy,” he said, looking up suddenly, “I’m leaving Garth--leaving grey
Garth, Billy, and going overseas.”
“Why, then, I’m coming with ye,” said the other instantly. “Me to play
and ye to work--how would this Fool Billy of a world do without us two?”
David took up his hammer again, and made the anvil ring. “Stay and see
to Miss Good Intent--stay and watch over her, Billy,” he said.
Billy looked steadfastly at his comrade; and, though the fire-glow
shone on his face, showing each smooth, unwrinkled curve, David could
not understand what was in the natural’s thoughts. It was a half-hour
before Billy explained himself.
“Best take her with us, David,” he said.