Reuben Gaunt, on the morrow of his holiday at Keta’s Well, woke early.
A thrush was piping from the lilac-trees outside his window, and the
clean smell of the morning came through the casement. He remembered the
magic of that evening walk across the fields, and found resolution come
easily to him.
His resolution did not fail him when he had breakfasted and ordered
the black cob to be saddled. He would ride across to Good Intent, find
Cilla’s father, and tell his errand.
Yet, while his horse was being saddled, another thought came to him;
he was pacing up and down the trim, smooth lawn which, newly-mown,
stretched to the low wall bordering the highroad. The house behind
him showed big for a yeoman’s, prosperous and well built, and the
garden-spaces about the lawn were trimly kept. It looked a good home
for a bride to come to.
“John Hirst will be busy, likely, about the fields,” he thought,
“before I get to Good Intent. Well, then, I’ll ride round by the
moor, and take my time about it, and trust to finding him nearer the
dinner-hour.”
He was not sorry for the respite, as he mounted and turned the cob’s
head, not down the broad, white highway to Garth, but up the winding
track that led him to the moor. This meeting with Cilla’s father had
to be, but he liked it none the better on that account, and he guessed
what sort of welcome he would get.
Gaunt seldom probed into other folks’ motives, or his own; and he did
not know that there was more behind this roundabout journey to Good
Intent than was explained either by mistrust of his welcome, or by
liking for a long ride up the open lands. His project was so dimly
formed that, even when he reached the moor, he turned again to the
left, and not along the right-hand track that led him to Hirst’s farm.
He crossed the stream that, just below, ran brown and sparkling into
the walled pool used in time of sheep-washing. The track now was
only a narrow, lumpy lane, winding between sloping moor above and
sharply falling moor beneath, such as was plied in October by the
bracken-sledges. Presently it narrowed again into a foot-trail of the
sheep; but Gaunt, keeping his eyes on the pitfalls by the way, went
forward and up towards the waving line of grey-black which marked the
topmost ridge of heath. His cob moved daintily, not liking the rude
menace of the ground, until at last they gained the higher lands, went
quietly over a level stretch of peat, and halted at the edge of Water
Ghyll.
He looked down upon the steep descent--rocks, and heather-clumps, and
tufts of fern new-greening in among the rusty last year’s fronds--then
glanced across at Clifford’s Peel, where its battered remnants stood
four-square still to the winds, and prated of old days when the Scotch
came raiding sheep and cattle from off the pastured slopes of Garth. It
was here that Cilla and he had wandered as boy and girl, here that they
had sought great mysteries in among the beetling rocks, the rowans,
the deep, thick clumps of ling and cranberry. Water Ghyll had been
a forbidden, happy land to them in those days, and they had always
reached Garth again with tired feet and glowing cheeks, feeling that
they had come safely through hazardous adventures, and trusting soon
to tempt again the frowns of peril.
Gaunt thought tenderly of Cilla, as he recalled those far-off scampers.
Wisdom in action came harder to him always than tenderness of thought;
and by that token more women’s tears had been shed on his account than
he deserved.
He had won her at long last, he told himself; and this wild trough
of the moors, filled all with peat and rocks and silver music of the
stream below, seemed to hold some special greeting for him.
As he looked about him, and across the Ghyll, and down into the haunted
streamway, his horse began to fidget, then reared suddenly.
“What’s amiss, old lad?” laughed Reuben, all but unseated. “Was in a
brown study, I, and thou’st spoilt it all.”
A moment later a woman, climbing the steep face of the Ghyll, showed
her head above the ling. Gaunt had been too lost in his own dreams to
hear the rattle of loose stones that witnessed to her climb, though his
horse had not.
The woman’s face was beaten hard by toil and weather, yet she carried
it straight on her broad shoulders.
“Ay, ye, Reuben Gaunt?” she said, without surprise.
Reuben, scarce recovered from the first shock of the cob’s uprearing,
was met by a sharper one. Yet again he laughed, for the crisp of the
morning’s vigour was in him, as in all things that moved on two legs or
on four.
“Give you good day, Mrs. Mathewson! Scarce looked to see you here in
these lone parts.”
“Same to ye! Least looked for, surest found, is Mr. Gaunt of
Marshlands.” Her eyes--hazel and big and clear, the one youthful relic
that Widow Mathewson possessed--rested quietly on Gaunt’s own until he
flinched. She was so sure of his frailty; so acquiescent, in a bitter,
stifled way, under the trouble he had caused her aforetime, and now was
causing her; so sure of her own honesty, and of his lack of it. “As
usual, ’twould seem, I am busy, and ye are idle.”
“’Tis a day to be idle on, if ever there was one.”
“Maybe, for those born to addle no bite and sup. For my part, I’ve been
seeking strayed sheep all across the moor, and not found them yet.”
“Then ye’ve done no more work than I since sunrise,” said Gaunt.
Widow Mathewson rested both hands on her hips, and drew herself yet
straighter. Standing there in the sunlight, framed by the swart moor
and the dappled sky, she seemed to Gaunt like a carven likeness of
her daughter Peggy--of Peggy, grown older, harder, disillusioned
altogether. The straight glance that rested on him was Peggy’s, too,
and the mouth curved into a disdain that despised itself; only the
daughter’s comely youth was lacking, and the flood of passion in her
cheeks.
“Looking for sheep would seem to be my trade in life from cradle-time,”
she said. Her voice was grimly playful, lest the tragic note should
sound too clearly and beat down the reserve she cherished. “Ay, I’ve
been all my life looking for sheep and not finding ’em, Reuben Gaunt.
A man’s love, and bairns, and profit from farming lean, intaken
land--I’ve sought ’em all in my time, and found ’em go bo-peeping like
the ewes I’m following now. Life’s like that, till ye’ve done with
it--and maybe then we’ll find no softer bed to lie on.”
“You’re cheery, Mrs. Mathewson,” put in Reuben drily. “Nice
neighbour-body to fall in with, when a man’s spirits are running high.”
“Oh, I’ve done with cheeriness--done with overmuch grief, too, by that
token. Sometimes, when I look at ye, Reuben Gaunt, a touch of the old
fire comes to me, and I long to throttle ye, stark where ye stand.
Then I laugh to myself, knowing I’d fail at the job, somehow, though I
brought all the will in the world to it. Peggy will have to thole her
misery, as I did mine at her age; and, by that token, I’m keeping ye
from riding out to see her.”
Gaunt knew at last the hidden motive for his journey. He had not
confessed it to himself; but this woman, with the hard, clear eyes and
clear, hard insight into life, had found the truth for him.
“I’m riding in the contrary direction, as it chances,” he said.
“Ah, that proves the matter. There’s other birds like ye, prettyish and
small of build, that fly zig-zag to their nests.”
Gaunt was nettled in earnest now. “As you want a plain tale, you shall
have it,” he said quietly. “I’m going to marry John Hirst’s daughter.”
Widow Mathewson knew no surprises nowadays; she had outlived them.
“Guessed as much yesternight,” she said, speaking only half the
truth for once, like Reuben himself. Yet it was only the name of her
daughter’s rival that she had lacked. “Peggy went to bed with tears in
her een, and in the middle of the night she wakened me with her sobbing
in the next-door room. Queer that such as ye can keep such as Peggy
wetting blankets with her tears; but I did the same in my time for as
poor a dandy-tuft of a man as ye.”
“We are good friends, seemingly,” said Gaunt impatiently.
“Ay, close as bee and flower, Reuben Gaunt. Ride down to Peggy--she’s
throng with churning--and tell her the same lies that I hearkened to
when I was ripe and young. God plants the like garden for all women,
I take it, with the like apples in it; and, whether the man be half a
man or a tenth part, ’tis all one. Reuben Gaunt,” she broke off, with
the passion she had denied not long ago, “why did ye keep your saddle
just now when I frightened that horse of yours? There’s a sharp rock on
either hand of ye, and two or three in front; whichever way your horse
had thrown ye, ye’d not have lighted soft--and it might have been on
your head.”
“I learned young to keep the saddle, though I’m loth to disappoint you,
Mrs. Mathewson,” said Gaunt, recovering his air of unconcern.
“Should have been glad, I, to see ye with your head smashed in,” went
on the other dispassionately; “glad, too, to think ’twas I that started
your horse. But it was not like to be; for ye always had the luck. Luck
doesn’t run in my family, and never did.”
There was a silence between them, as they faced each other, the only
human-folk in this lonely stretch of heath. In a place more busy, with
others near at hand to temper the reality of what he saw in the woman’s
face, of what he heard in her voice, Reuben Gaunt might have carried
the matter off with more success; but they were alone with the rugged
moor. He saw, during this time of silence, his past life stretching
behind him like a miry, ill-found road. He knew himself dishonest,
though he tried to find again his old, easy outlook upon life. A naked
man, facing the naked truth, was Reuben Gaunt this once; and there was
no Cilla here, sitting beside him as they travelled down the road to
Garth and bringing to him thoughts of tranquil betterment.
“I’ll be going up the moor,” he said at last, fumbling with the reins.
“Ay, I would. Then turn to the right, and down to the right again--ye
know your way to Peggy.”
There was something in the woman’s bitter jest that struck deeper than
any curse would have done. Gaunt looked over his shoulder once, as he
rode up the slope, and saw her standing, at once the victim of destiny
and its symbol; and the breeze felt chilly to him on the sudden, as if
there were snow behind it.
“’Twas she that put the notion into my head,” he thought. “Well, then,
I’ll ride to Ghyll, as she bids me, and I’ll see Peggy for the last
time. We should part friends, and last night’s parting was no friendly
one.”
He came to the marshy flats on the moor-top where the stream had birth
that ran through Water Ghyll. Wide to the north and south, wide to the
east and west, swept the hills and moors and fields; here a broken
ridge, and there a soft-descending, rolling spur of hills, showed like
a rude girdle to the comely Vale of Garth. Beneath his horse’s feet the
grouse got up and whirred, crying, crying over the desolate land; and
the sky seemed near, as if a man, by reaching up, could touch it almost.
In amongst the marshes Gaunt saw the sheep which Widow Mathewson was
seeking. They were feeding on the rich butter-grass that grew in
treacherous places, and he knew them by the branded _M_, red-painted on
their fleeces. Good-naturedly he turned shepherd for awhile, drew round
them--the cob showing frankly his distaste for the wet ground--and, by
dint of whistling, as if he had a farm-dog with him, and by skill of
horsemanship, he gathered the ewes into a flock before him. And so he
rode down the moor again, forgetting his mistrust of Widow Mathewson in
the sly pleasure of succouring her at need.
She was standing where he left her, looking up the moor. Indeed, the
big heath held only one figure and one thought for her; strong and weak
herself, she loved the weakness and the strength of her daughter, the
one link in her life that no storm had been powerful enough to break.
She was past the stress of youth; but she remembered, and in her heart
she was praying--she, who never went to kirk or chapel--that Reuben
Gaunt might die.
Gaunt whistled low and clear again, and sent down the sheep--a huddled,
scampering flock--toward the woman. He was no fool in matters of the
farm, but at usual times he was too indolent to use his gifts in that
direction.
“Coals of fire!” he shouted, putting a hand to his mouth to carry the
sound up-wind. “Here are your sheep--gather them in and drive ’em home,
Widow.”
“Like him,” said Mrs. Mathewson, with patient wonder. “Kills the heart
in a woman one minute, and the next goes out of his home-bee road to do
her a good turn. Would God I knew what sort o’ clay this Reuben Gaunt
is made of!”
She gathered her flock together, and started to drive them home; but
Gaunt was riding straight across the moor, and riding fast, for Ghyll.
It was easy, seeing the farm to-day, with the mellow spring light
dwarfed and sundered by its blackened walls--it was easy to understand
the gospel in which Widow Mathewson and her daughter had been reared.
It was chary of spring, this farm; it had received more kicks than
halfpence from the weather; it looked askance at gifts o’ grace, and
would not listen to the larks on this blithe morning.
Peggy had just finished churning, when she heard the sound of
horse-hoofs. She stood and listened, and there was expectation in
every line of her strong figure--and in her face a wild self-pity and
derision.
“So you’ve come?” was her greeting, as Gaunt stepped inside the dairy,
after slipping the cob’s bridle about the top bar of the outer gate.
“Knew you would, soon or late--but ’tis full soon, Reuben, seeing that
only last night--”
“I want us to part friends. That’s why I’m here,” broke in the other,
tapping his riding-breeches restlessly with his crop.
The girl laughed. Gaunt had never heard disaster so assured in any
voice. It was as if the farmstead, and the weather it had seen, and the
tumults that had scarred its walls, took human shape and utterance.
“That’s how ye want us to part?” she said. “Will ye be a fool to the
end, Reuben Gaunt, or are ye thinking life’s a game for bairns to sport
with? Ride back through the ling to lile Miss Good Intent, and tell her
I’ve returned ye with all the will in the world. Tell her that lasses
catch ye, like the plague, and lose what little looks they’ve got
through fretting for your tom-fool ways. Tell her--”
She broke down suddenly, for the strain of the past night, of the
day’s labour at the churn, had told on her. She had no tears left; but
her eyes were full of a soft mist, such as a warm gloaming draws from
Garth Valley in the spring. Peggy was beautiful to-day; her tragedy was
that of the ages, but her pathos was her own, single and direct in its
appeal.
The cool, whitewashed dairy framed her; the warm, rich smell of milk
and butter was about her.
“Peggy,” said Reuben Gaunt, “God knows ’tis hard to part from ye.”
“Ay, and God knows that Peggy Mathewson knows your lies--knows them
within and without--as she knows her own face--her face, Reuben,
that was bonnie enough to catch ye, but not bonnie enough to hold ye
afterwards. See ye, lad, ye’re bent on killing me one way or another.
Why not take some handy stave and do it now? Better soon than late,
Reuben, if a body’s got to die.”
“I’m marrying Priscilla of the Good Intent,” said Gaunt doggedly.
“Oh, I know so much since yestere’en. D’ye think to give her happiness,
Reuben? I could never tell, myself, what was in your mind, or out of
it, at any moment.”
“Come for a walk in the fields, Peggy,” he said, after a restless
silence.
“Can as well talk here, and thank ye. As I was saying, ye puzzle me.
A bit like thunder-weather, ye--the wind blows one way and the clouds
drive forrard t’ other way. Reuben, _do_ ye think to make a happy wife
of Miss Good Intent?”
It was characteristic of this upland lass that she bore no malice
toward Cilla. Her quarrel was with Reuben here, with her own weakness,
with life itself; Priscilla was a harmless and unmeaning bit of flesh
to her, counting for little either way, save that she chanced to be the
one to come between herself and Gaunt.
“I’m going to make her happy--yes. May a man never begin the good life,
Peggy?”
“Ay,” answered the other quietly. “A _man_ may always--but I cannot see
ye doing it, Reuben, somehow.”
“I had so much to tell you,” he said, after another silence. “I
wanted--”
“Oh, I dare say, Reuben. Wanted to patch up the road ye’ve fouled
behind ye, afore taking to the smooth road ready-made in front? Eh,
but you must be a fool to the marrow, after all! Dress all in your
good clothes, if it pleases ye, and put on a Sabbath face for other
folk--but, for mercy’s sake, don’t come to Peggy Mathewson after that
fashion. Going to lead the good life, are ye? Well, what of me?”
There was no soft wind blowing here at Ghyll Farm, as it had blown last
night all down Garth Valley. For the second time this morning Gaunt saw
the simple, candid picture of himself.
“You were crying last night, Peggy. I looked for a softer welcome,” he
said, blurting out his thoughts as a child might have done.
“Oh, and was I? Who told ye that?”
“I fell in with Mrs. Mathewson as I rode up here. Besides, I can see it
in your eyes.”
“Has she found the sheep?” said Peggy, with desperate pretence to ward
off the graver issue.
“I found them for her. Say, Peggy, what were you crying for?”
Peggy thought of the heart-break that had been her mate last night
“Crying for a lad ye’ll never know, Reuben,” she answered.
He was quiet for awhile. Then suddenly his eyes caught fire at hers.
“Oh, come away to the fields,” he said. “We could aye talk better out
o’ doors, Peggy.”
An hour later Mrs. Mathewson returned, driving her sheep, and found
Gaunt’s horse tethered to the gateway. The house was empty.
“I’ll thole a lot,” she muttered, “but I’m no way going to let Reuben
Gaunt stable his horse in my paddock while he goes knocking nails in
Peggy’s coffin.”
She unfastened the cob’s bridle, opened the gate, and sent him up in
the moor. But first she took the bit from his mouth, and laid it with
the reins upon the ground; for she had no wish to let the beast break
his knees through getting the reins across his legs. The horse, glad
of his freedom, turned his head once or twice in search of Reuben, then
galloped off. And Widow Mathewson, who seldom smiled, laughed grimly as
she saw him breast the moor-top, then disappear.
“Gaunt has galloped as free in his time,” she thought. “Let him find
his horse if he can, and catch it.”