When the sun began to warm the land again, and the sheep were crying up
and down the pastures, their lambs beside them, full summer came with
a swiftness rarely known in these grey highlands. The lilacs bloomed
two weeks before their time. The birds let loose their litanies as if
the blue sky and thrust of the green-stuff forward had not been known
till now. Folk moved abroad with keen sunlight in their eyes, and in
their voices a cheery welcome for their fellows. Even Widow Lister
forgot to fidget, forgot her love of gossip with a spice in it, and
turned instead to tranquil tending of the garden-strip that fronted her
cottage. From the hedgerows and the fields, from the moors that raked
up into the blue arch of sky, there rose a quiet, insistent song of
peace.
Cilla of the Good Intent met Gaunt by chance these days on the highway,
or in half-forgotten bridle-paths that were young when grey old Garth
was in the building--and they passed a greeting one to the other, and
went their ways. She was puzzled--and so was he, had she guessed the
truth--to note the change in him. He was less assured than of old;
there was shame and appeal in his eyes when he met her; he seemed to
Priscilla like some big, helpless dog that had lost its way and went
seeking for its home.
Cilla was true daughter to Yeoman Hirst. She might suffer, but malice
went by her like a peevish wind-gust that is over and done with as
soon as it is past. She wished no ill to Gaunt, though he had spoiled
her first dream o’ love. She wondered, simply and without overmuch
repining, that her life had grown so empty, that she no longer cared
for the flower-scents and the wood-reek that guarded Garth village like
a benediction.
The year wore on to July, and there had been no rain since a light
April shower that had followed the snowstorm. The pastures, striding
stony limestone hills, grew parched and brown. With August, and no rain
from the pitiless blue sky, even the brown of the grass was burnt,
and the lightest of warm breezes carried the dust of the brown way.
Far up the crests of the hills there was no green to soften the white
glare of the limestone. All was pitiless and bare, and lacking any
gift of charity. The sun, at usual times a rare and welcome guest, had
overstepped his welcome now.
A rumour came to Garth these days, and the farmers, as they rode down
the street to market, grew less cheery in their greetings one to
another. They knew, each one of them, the danger that lay near to their
wives and bairns; and, knowing it, they kept silence, as the way of the
hills is when a tempest shakes them.
Their wives heard the rumour, by and by, and there was clatter of
tongues along the dust of Garth’s grey street. Widow Lister, by gift of
nature, talked more shrilly than her sisters, just as she had been the
first to bring the news which no folk cared to hear.
“I telled ye so,” she whispered, running out to meet Hirst one day as
he passed down the street. “The Black Fever has come nigh to Garth, and
ye wouldn’t take no heed. I’m a lone widow myself, with no one to care
for--”
“Oh, ay, but you have!” Hirst’s voice was cheery still, though it was
less boisterous than usual, and behind it there was a hint of sharp
reproof. “You’ve yourself to care for, Widow. That means a lot to ye.”
“Now, what do ye mean?”
“I mean this. That folk who have only theirselves to think on, they
forget to think for others. See you here, Widow, the fever’s not
reached Garth yet. ’Twill reach it sooner, I warrant ye, if you go
scaring timid women as you’re scaring ’em each minute o’ the day.”
“Eh, now, I’m to be scolded, am I?” The widow brushed a few tears away,
and looked up into Hirst’s face with the timidity which had always
served her well. “To be sure, I’ve no man-body to speak up for me. I
mun bear my crosses meekly, for nobody heeds you much once you’re lone
and widowed.”
Hirst’s face, with all its jollity and kindliness, was lined deep by
hardship, by fight in life’s open with such plain foes as weather,
peevish soil, and foot-rot that attacked his sheep. The widow’s was
rosy, plump, unmarked save by such little wrinkles as a baby carries;
she had sat by the hearth all her days, sheltered by four walls, and
death, when it had come to force her from the fireside warmth to the
churchyard and her husband’s grave, had been no more than a worry which
spoilt her own comfort for awhile. Yet the round, shining face, looking
up into his, made Yeoman Hirst uneasy this morning; it put him in the
wrong; it made him feel as if he had rebuked a kitten for playing with
a ball of wool.
“Well, we’re made as we’re made, Widow!” he cried, preparing to move
on. “I only ask you to listen when I tell ye what a power o’ harm ye
can do by scaring folk when the fever’s close at our doors.”
“Yet you’re going to Shepston market, same as if Shepston hadn’t got
fever in every other house.”
“True,” said Hirst, his jaw set firm. “There’s need to go to Shepston,
fever or no, if I’m to do right by the farm. There’s no need for
stay-at-homes to chatter and wake a sleeping dog.”
Widow Lister watched him go through the white, breathless sunlight, and
for once she did not call him back.
“They’re strange, is men,” she thought. “My own man was like
Hirst--would run into any sort of danger if he’d a whim for it--yet
he’d grow outrageous as a turkey-cock if I set my tongue round a lile,
soft bit o’ gossip. Men, they never seem to understand life, poor
bodies. Ah, there’s David coming up street. He’s a soft heart, he.
I’ll just get him to see what ails yond canary bird o’ mine while he’s
passing.”
David, however, was impatient. He listened to the story of the bird’s
ailments, but his air was brisk and downright, just as Yeoman Hirst’s
had been. A man is apt to carry that air when he knows how close a
danger lies to his womenfolk.
“Starve him a bit, Widow. Cosset him less by the hearth, and he’ll come
round, same as other men birds. I’ve a bigger job than canaries to see
to.”
Again the widow did not pursue him as he strode fiercely up toward Good
Intent.
“The fever’s come to Garth a’ready, I’m thinking,” she murmured
dolefully. “If David’s lost half o’ the little wits he had, we’ve come
to a fine pass.”
David halted when he came to the gate of Good Intent. His face was
full of suffering, and for that reason it showed a greater dignity.
He unfastened the latch with sudden decision, as if ashamed of his
cowardice, and stepped into the cool, grey porch, and stood at the door
of the house-place.
Cilla was standing at the table in the full light of the sun that
streamed through the narrow windows, and she was ironing a lilac frock.
She had not heard his step.
“Cilla!” he said, in a low voice.
She started, and let the iron fall, and did not heed that it was
burning the lilac frock--the gown which, so short a while since as
this year’s spring, had pleased Reuben Gaunt. They stood there--David
on the threshold, Cilla at the table--and they looked at each other in
silence, asking some big question.
“You may come in, David,” she said at last.
He came and stood beside her, took up the iron and set it on its stand,
with the instinct of a good workman.
“The lilac gown is burned, Priscilla.”
“It has served its time, David. Did you come to Good Intent just to
tell me I was careless with my ironing?”
“No, I didn’t, Cilla.” The smith had grown resolute again. “I came to
tell you that I’m sailing Tuesday o’ next week for Canada.”
She was stunned for the moment. David had seen her bonnie since he knew
her first, but never bonnie as she was just now, with the sunlight on
her drooping head, her fingers plucking at the scissors in her girdle.
“I’ve ta’en time to make up my mind, I own,” he went on stubbornly,
“but ’tis made up now. My aunt Joanna, overseas yonder, is a lile bit
like Widow Lister--she’s helpless without the good man she nagged into
his grave, and she willun’t take no fro’ me. She’s fonder o’ nephew
David these days than ever she was when she had him close under her
hand. She wants somewhat done for her, ye see.”
Cilla glanced up at him, then down again. “What--what has made you in
such haste to leave, David?”
“Haste, ye call it? I’ve been for going ever since April came in, and
putting off makes no job easier.”
“You’ll be glad to leave Garth, and see bigger countries?”
Priscilla could not understand herself. It seemed to her that she
wished to hurt David in some way; she was surprised, ashamed, that news
of his going should have such power to move her.
“Glad to leave Garth?” echoed David, his blue eyes wide with question.
“Never that, lile Cilla. As ’tis, I should never have dreamed o’ going,
if there’d been you to keep me here.”
“Could I keep you, David?”
“Oh, lass, don’t play wi’ me. I cannot bear it. I’ll go easier, all the
same, for knowing all is finished between you and Gaunt o’ Marshlands.”
The iron was cold by this time, but Cilla passed it idly to and fro
across the lilac gown. “Yes, all is finished--and--and I’m, oh, so
glad, David! So very glad.”
In token of it she burst into tears, and David put an arm about her.
“Lile lass, lile lass, let me bide i’ Garth. See the love I’ll give
ye--asking so little, Cilla, and giving so much--giving so much, my
lass.”
Priscilla looked up slowly, and regarded him with a long, steady
glance. Life was so great a matter, and she was so weak to cope with
it. If David would only give little to her, and ask her to give much in
return--if he would be less patient, and more masterful--if he would
find some way of taking her perplexities into his hands and riving them
to pieces--if he would be devil-may-care for once, as Gaunt had been in
the spring--the girl felt, in a helpless way, that then she might bid
him stay in Garth.
It was their moment, and they let it pass. David was too diffident,
seeing the girl here in the sunlight, to brush aside the cobwebs that
hindered her true vision. It needed a rude hand to do it, and David’s
hand was gentle, as the hands of good men are when they are free of
smithy-work. Cilla was too unsure of everything to yield to a touch
less sure than downright mastery. She waited for him to speak, and
found that he was only looking at her--a more honest dog than Gaunt,
maybe, but with the same waiting look in his eyes that Gaunt had
carried since the jaunty days of spring.
“You are so--so dumb, David,” she said impatiently.
“Ay, I was never one to talk much, Cilla. I’m one to feel, for all
that. Time and time I fancy I’m a bit like Billy the Fool--loving the
dust o’ Garth Street when you walk along it, because ’tis you that
passes by, yet never finding a word to put to ’t.”
Cilla’s strength was nearly spent. The heat of the pitiless summer, her
loneliness since Gaunt had chosen otherwise, the constant peril of the
Black Fever brooding round about Garth Village, had sapped her courage.
For a moment she was tempted to yield to David’s entreaties. He was so
sure of himself, so clean of his heart and his hands. She liked and
needed him.
She remembered Gaunt, recalled each trivial detail of the day when she
had gone by coach to Keta’s Well, wearing a maiden heart. She thought
of the homeward walk, of the throstle-calls and the keen, young vigour
of the spring, while Gaunt stepped beside her, and talked and took her
unawares. She shrank in fancy from the kiss that he had given her at
the gate.
“No, David, no!” she said. Her eyes were wet, but she did not fear to
look him in the face. “I’m not proud of Reuben Gaunt--not proud of him
at all--but I’m glad o’ the love I gave him--though--though it died,
David.”
David the Smith took a long glance at the room--at the plants in the
window-sill, at the settle which had found him on many a bygone night
passing slow talk and quiet pipe-reek with Yeoman Hirst across the
hearth. Then he looked at Cilla, and stood there--strong and good to
see, and diffident--and his air was that of a man who steps into a
church. It had always been his way when Cilla was in sight.
“Why, then, good-by, lile Cilla,” he said abruptly. “There’s much to be
done, if I’m setting off by Tuesday.”
“David! David, you must not go like this--thinking me unfriendly.
David, I could never bear to be unfriendly to you.”
She had moved to his side, and in perplexity had laid both hands upon
his arm.
“You’ll not understand,” she went on hurriedly. “I shall miss you from
Garth. I shall look for you three times a day. The homeland will be
emptier, David.”
“Then, lass, why willun’t ye wed me?”
“I cannot tell. Only--women have no second love to give. Why it should
be so, God knows. But so it is, David. I could never feel for you--what
I felt for another when we walked by the field-ways home to Garth.”
It seemed strange to Cilla that she felt no shame in the confession.
She would have shrunk from it at another time; but now it was only of
David she thought--of David, who asked for more than she could give
him--of David, who asked for honesty, though she longed to keep him
here in Garth.
“That’s true,” he answered quietly. “Neither man nor woman has second
love to give. But there’s this to say, Cilla. Time and time, when
you’re alone on the moor-top, a will-o’-the-wisp comes ’ticing ye into
the marshes. True love is true love, lass, and ’tis steady-like; it
doesn’t dance like a light-heeled clown at the fair.”
Priscilla of the Good Intent was tired, and saw life hidden, as the
street of Garth was hidden by the sick, grey dust that cried to the
skies for wholesome rain.
“You’re thinking of Reuben Gaunt?” she asked wearily.
“Ay, just of Reuben Gaunt--no more, no less.” David was watching her
eagerly, not as a lover now, but with a dog’s look when he sees his
mistress running into danger.
Cilla thought again of that spring journey out to Keta’s Well and home
again. It called to her still, like the song of a laverock up above
the pastures when spring is wild about the land. Gaunt’s words were
in her ear. The kiss she had given him at the gate--the sweet of the
growing grass--the surrender, and the glamour of it, and the big lands
stretching out before her--Priscilla remembered every moment of that
day. She knew that David the Smith was right when he named the glamour
a will-o’-the-wisp; but she did not wish to know it; she resisted the
knowledge with a curious, headstrong passion that she rarely showed.
“We are to part friends?” she said, in a low, unsteady voice. “You
choose a queer way of saying good-by. There was no need to speak of Mr.
Gaunt at all, still less to speak ill of him.”
“That is not like you, Cilla,” David answered quietly.
She was repentant at once, as her way was always. “No, ’tis not like
me. You meant it well--but, David, you are clumsy.”
Again the longing came to her to keep him here in Garth. The shadow of
a great helplessness lay over her, and from one moment to the next she
did not know her mind.
“David,” she said, by and by, “do you guess what they will say if you
leave Garth now, with the fever all about us?”
“I never try to guess what they’ll say, lass. What I do is enough for
me.”
Cilla, still hating this random mood of hers, could not hold back the
words. “They’ll say you choose your time for leaving carefully, after
thinking about it all these months. They’ll say you are as frightened
of the fever as other folk. They’ll say--that you’re a coward, David.”
“They’ll be liars, then, Cilla. I’m a man o’ my hands, lile lass, and
I’ve learned a little here and there fro’ my tools. Iron’s stubborn,
and needs patience, but there’s luck, somehow, when ye’ve hammered
the horseshoe into shape. As for the fever--well, it finds ye, or it
doesn’t, and that’s i’ God’s hands. I’m a bit daft, like Billy the
Fool. The day’s work is enough for me--Billy calls it play.”
Priscilla looked at him for a moment, as a child looks for a guiding
hand. “I--I was wrong to say that, David. No one dare say that you were
frightened. David, what ails me that I want to quarrel with my oldest
friend?”
“’Tis the heat, Cilla. We’re all wearied out, I reckon. Quarrel wi’ me?
You could as well quarrel wi’ yond grandfather’s clock i’ the corner,
while ’tis saying _tick-tack_ to ye all day long and never changes
tune.”
Cilla laughed uneasily. “That is the reason, maybe. I love the old
clock, but sometimes--oh, David, I’m weary of its notes sometimes--and
yet I should cry my heart out if--if the clock was not ticking in the
corner.”
He should have seen her need of guidance, should have taken her random
hint that he might try a change of note--even if his voice were
unaccustomed to it and sounded out of tune. But David had made up his
mind that morning, after long indecision, and his face was set toward
the lonely lands.
“Best listen to the old clock, for all that, Cilla. It doesn’t go fast,
but it goes for a long while. Well, there’s a deal to be done, if I’m
to get off by Tuesday o’ next week.”
He took a last glance at Cilla, at the house-place, at the lilac frock
that lay on the ironing-board; and without a word he stepped out into
the dusty street. And, after he had gone, Priscilla of the Good Intent
sat down at the table, and laid her head on it, and sobbed bitterly;
but whether the tears were for David, or for herself, she did not know.
David went down the street. He carried a big air; and his face, if
sad at all, wore only the dignity of grief, none of its meanness or
self-pity.
He found Billy leaning against the door of the forge. Billy, thinking
the more because he said so little, had watched the smith go up the
street, had divined his errand by the same instinct which befriended
him in his comradeship with birds and beasts; and now he knew from one
glance at David’s face what was in the doing.
“You’ll be leaving this right pleasant spot, David the Smith?”
David was too accustomed to the other’s intuition to feel surprise.
“Ay, I’m leaving Garth. And, lad, I’ve something to say to ye.”
“Well, then, have ye a fill o’ baccy, an’ may be a lile match or so to
light yond same? Smoke’s a fearful help to a daft body’s head-piece.”
The smith waited till Billy was drawing tranquil puffs--and indeed no
man in Garth knew better how to smoke a pipe with true respect--then
put a hand against the smithy wall, and leaned there, a figure of
strength and of self-reliance.
“I shouldn’t like the forge to pass into other hands, Billy. There’s
been one o’ my name here since the Year One, or nigh about, and
’twouldn’t be seemly-like, to see another name above the door. Now,
see ye, lad, suppose we called it play, ye and me, to set ye here as
master-smith? ’Tis ever so much more play-work than blowing bellows,
come to think on’t.”
“Te-he!” laughed Billy. “Am I to play wi’ all your big, fine tools,
David?”
“Ay, just that I’ve taught ye the way o’ them, and Dan Foster’s lad
from Brow Farm shall come and blow the bellows for you.”
“Will that be work for Dan Foster’s lad, or play?”
David caught the other’s meaning, with a quickness that he might well
have shown when saying good-by to Cilla. “Hard work, Billy--grievous
hard work, while you’re just playing at making horseshoes,
fence-railings, and what not.”
“And I’m to play at making horseshoes?” went on Fool Billy, smoking
quietly into the face of the stark, blue sky and the heat of the midday
sun. “I’m to play at smithy-work, while Dan Foster’s lad’s sweating
hard at bellows-blowing?”
David nodded as he filled his own pipe and lit it, leaning against the
smithy wall. “It will be rare fun for ye, Billy--the lad working hard
as ever he can sweat at the blowing, and ye just pleasuring wi’ making
good horseshoes.”
“It will that!” said Billy. “Fancied bellows-blowing was pastime, I,
but now I see it quite contrary-like. Dan Foster’s lad will be Fool
Billy, sweating at the bellows, and I shall be master-man. Te-he,
David!”
“Ay, te-he!” growled David. “Get the bellows a-blowing, Billy, for
there’s work needs doing if I’m to get off by Tuesday o’ next week.”
Billy obeyed. He had little gift of speech, but had the rarer quality
of sympathy; and he knew, in his own odd way, how matters stood with
the master of the forge.
The smith did not move from his place against the wall until his pipe
was smoked out. Then he gave a glance along the dust of Garth in the
direction of Good Intent, and went into the forge.
“I’ve met odd folk and queer happenings i’ my time,” he said to Billy,
who was making the bellows roar; “but the queerest o’ the lot is life
itself--just life as we’re living it, Billy.”
Billy answered nothing, but played gently with the bellows. And David
worked fiercely at the anvil. And the sick, dusty afternoon wore on,
bidding all who had time for idle thoughts to remember how near the
Black Fever lay to Garth.