David the Smith caught the morning coach on the Tuesday, though he had
all but missed it through remembering a bit of smithy-work that must be
finished off before he left for Canada. That was David’s way; he would
not leave Garth owing the smallest debt to any man, and promises of
work to be finished to the hour were always counted debts of honour by
David.
There was a little crowd about the Elm Tree Inn, and up above the
folks’ heads he could see Will, the mail-driver, sitting high on the
box seat of the coach, and showing signs of good-humoured impatience to
be off.
“Hi, David!” called the driver, catching sight of the other a hundred
yards away. “Ye be i’ no hurry to leave Garth, but Will the Driver is.
I carry the Queen’s letters, and Her Majesty--God bless her--will want
to know why I’m late wi’ her post-bag.”
David was sorrowful enough, but he did not mean to let Garth know it.
He held his head high, and did not quicken his steady forward stride.
“Oh, the Queen willun’t mind, Will,” he answered. “Just tell her it was
David the Smith who kept her waiting, and she’ll understand.”
A shade of perplexity crossed his face as he neared the knot of folk
who pressed round the coach. There were apt to be idlers about the
inn-front at this hour, since the passing of the mail was the big
adventure of each day’s tranquil round; but this morning there was
clearly something unusual on foot.
“What is it?” asked David. “Is there a wedding or a fairing Shepston
way, and me not heard of it?”
And then it was brought home to him that he was the centre of the
crowd, and he flushed like a great, shy lad to find himself a hero.
Their welcome was so spontaneous, their affection so simple and so
boisterous, that David’s modesty was shocked. David had been accustomed
to do his work in Garth, to walk up and down its street with the proud
and ready courtesy of a man whose hands are strong and whose heart is
clean; and the village had accepted his presence as it accepted the sun
when it shone, or the rain when it watered their growing crops. It was
only now, at the parting of the ways, that Garth fully understood what
it was losing.
Will the Driver gave the folk little time to show their feelings. He
had kept the seat beside him on the box for David--if seat it could be
called, seeing that most of it was littered by mail-bags picked up from
half-a-dozen scattered villages--and he motioned to David to clamber up
by the fore-wheel. The crowd would not allow it, though, and lifted him
with a “Heave ho! All together, lads!” And David was thankful that the
mail-bags broke his fall a little as he was hoisted into his seat.
The hampers were passed up, and small, round butter-baskets, and
parcels wrapped clumsily in thick brown paper. Each was a tribute
from some one among the villagers who had felt no need till now to
express his regard for the smith; and each had a dozen eggs in it, or
a spice-loaf, or some other farewell gift of viands, until David broke
into a laugh.
“Nay, lads, nay!” he protested. “’Twill take another horse to help pull
all these parcels to Shepston--let alone a few odd men to help me get
through wi’ what’s inside them.”
“Oh, tuts!” roared Farmer Hirst, striving to cover his grief that David
had insisted on leaving Garth. “’Tis a long step and a far step fro’
Garth to Canada. Ye may varry weel be hungry ’twixt this and there.”
“The Queen’s waiting,” said Will the Driver, as he flicked the
mail-bags with the end of his whip.
Cilla slipped from the shelter of her father’s shoulders, and came and
reached up a hand to David. He could make nothing of the girl’s face,
for it was both gay and downcast. He felt something slipped into his
palm, he heard her bid him a quiet farewell, and she was gone. The team
of three started forward, and a shrill cry came to them from behind.
Will the Driver pulled up, as if by instinct--an instinct he
despised--and Widow Lister ran panting to the coach. She brought no
gift, but then no one would expect such from a widow-body.
“I couldn’t let ye go without saying good-by, David,” she said, out
of breath. “Besides, I want ye to take a message to your aunt Joanna
yonder i’ Canada. ’Tis fifteen years and a day since she borrowed a
saucepan fro’ me, and went off at her marriage, and forgot to return
it.”
“Widow, we’re late,” said Will, his good temper near to the breaking
point.
“Ay, but--David--tell Joanna it isn’t as I want the saucepan back--’tis
burned through t’ bottom by now, no doubt--but I’m not one to like
bearing a grudge all these years. If she’d only say she war sorry,
now--”
The driver flicked his team, and the white road slipped behind them,
and David had started on the track to Canada.
For a half-mile Will was silent. Then he spoke, looking steadily at his
horses’ ears.
“Seems to me that one o’ two things is bound to happen,” he said.
“Either Widow Lister is going to leave the road, or I am. There’s not
room for the two of us.”
He waited for David’s answer; and, getting none, went forward with his
grievance, not troubling to turn his head.
“A woman that can carry a saucepan grudge for fifteen years--gee up,
lass Polly, we’ve time to make up!--is a woman that cannot help scaring
a man. ’Tis not just that,” he broke off, still flicking the ears of
his team with a gentle, contemplative whip, as if he were casting for
trout, “’tis not just that bothers me. ’Tis her durned, queer way o’
being out o’ breath, and growing plumper on ’t every day, an’ holding
up the mail three days out o’ the seven, year in, year out. And the
widow allus chooses her three days--days when we chance to be late, I
mean.”
The dust went by them faster and faster; for Will prided himself on
reaching Shepston to the minute, though he hated this overdriving of
good cattle.
“The widow’s never grown up,” he went on, cheerful and happy-go-lucky
again, now that he had vented his grievance. “She’ll be a bairn o’ six
years old till she dies. That’s her ailment, and that’s why we humour
her, I reckon. Yet she married a fairish sensible man, and ought to
have learned summat by now. Gee-up, lass Polly. We’ve time to make up,
I say. She was left a widow too young, maybe.”
Another mile went by, broken only by a farm lass who held up the coach
like a gentle highwayman, handed a letter and a penny to the driver,
and smiled at him. The outlying farmsteads posted their letters in this
haphazard way, and neither the driver nor the maid said a word to each
other; they were too friendly to need words, as it chanced, for Will
was pledged to marry her within a month or two.
The next mile passed them, dusty and white. The sun beat down, and
there was not a friendly cloud to hide the pitiless blue of the sky.
It was no friendly blue, such as pansies wear, when times go hard and
the cool, quiet flowers look at a man with eyes of pity; it was a cold
light and a hard light, for all its warmth, this never-ending sky that
kept the Black Fever close to Garth’s borders.
“There’s no good news fro’ Shepston, David,” said Will, by and by.
“Every day there’s the same tale when I drive in--more folk down wi’
fever, and bodies waiting to be buried because the coffiners are feared
to go nigh them. I’m tough myself, but I’m getting a lile bit nervous.
They never stop talking on’t, ye see, i’stead o’ letting it be, and a
man can’t help thinking o’ what’s being dinned into his ears by every
body he meets. Bless me,” he broke off, with a quiet laugh, “I’ve got
that bad I’m finding myself looking at Shepston passengers when they
get aboard the mail--looking to see if there’s any sure mark of the
fever on their faces.”
His companion was still silent, and at last it struck Will that
something was amiss. He turned his head, and checked his flow of gossip
suddenly; he had not seen steady David in this mood before.
A half-mile out from Garth, the smith had opened his right hand, had
glanced eagerly to see what parting gift Cilla had left there when she
said good-by. He found a sprig of rosemary, and, because he had held it
so long in his hot palm, half fearing to look at it, the scent of the
herb stole up to him.
It was the scent that drove David’s wits astray, that rendered him
deaf to Will’s chatter, blind to the garish road in front of him.
It meant so much, now that Garth was left behind; it brought each
corner of the old, grey street to mind. He could scent again the
wood-reek curling sleepily from chimney-stacks of twenty shapes and
sizes, the wallflowers blooming in Widow Lister’s strip of garden,
the strong, lusty smell of the forge when his hammer rang on red-hot
iron. A sickness to return laid hold of him; the rosemary had given its
message, and David was fighting with his impulse to get down from the
coach and tramp home again to Garth.
Then another thought came to him. Who did not know that rosemary stood
for remembrance? There was not a child in Garth but could have told him
what the herb’s meaning was. In some special way, rosemary had been,
time out of mind, the guardian herb of Garth; it grew in every garden;
it grew along the street front, wherever a strip of soil had been
rescued from the highway. Without rosemary, the village would not know
its own face; and Garth folk, when they wished to praise Cilla overmuch
behind her back, said that she was just like rosemary.
Did she wish him to return? Had she chosen this maidenly token of a
change of mind? Little wonder that David could find no answer; for
Cilla herself, in these days of trouble and indecision, could have
given him none. Will had talked of the widow, of the fever, and what
not; but David had sat with folded arms, watching the road slip by and
trying to grasp his purpose, one way or the other.
It was the turning-point of Cilla’s life and his; and once again
modesty played him an ill turn. He was a big fool, he told himself, to
go thinking Cilla would marry a dull, workaday fellow; she was made for
daintier wooing than he could give. Oh, ay, to be sure she liked him
well enough, and remembrance meant just that--no more.
“Seems to me ye’re in t’ middle of a day-dream, David,” said the
driver, after a long look at him.
David pulled himself together, and his slow, patient smile broke across
the firmness of his lips. “I was,” he answered. “And now I’m out o’ the
dream, Will. They want no wool-gatherers out in Canada yonder, so they
tell me.”
“And ye never heard a word o’ what I said about the Black Fever? ’Tis
all varry weel for ye who’re leaving it, but I tell ye I’m glad to
get out o’ Shepston every morn, and see the fells looking clean and
wholesome-like--though, bless me, I’ve nigh begun to look at their
faces, too, to see if there be any mulberry patches on ’em. Mulberry
patches, David--Shepston folk won’t let ye forget the fever-signs.
Gee-up, mare Polly! We’re late, and the Queen’s waiting for us.”
“As for me,” said David, “I look on the fever this way. Ye get it, an’
ye die, or ye don’t get it, and ye live; either way, what’s bound to
happen is going to come, and crying won’t mend it.”
“That’s true,” assented the driver cheerily, after due consideration
of the point. “Be durned, David, ye’ve a gift o’ common sense. Thought
I had the gift, too, till I took to looking for mulberry patches i’
honest people’s faces.”
When they neared Shepston, the smith turned for a last look at the
hills raking up into the white-hot limestone glare that beat upon the
dale he loved.
“’Tis good-by, I reckon, lile lass Cilla,” was his thought.
Reuben Gaunt had not joined the company that met to give David a
farewell at the inn. With all his fickleness, he was not a liar, and
he disdained to make a show of friendship, when he knew that there was
open enmity. Instead, he remembered that it was Linsall Fair-day, and
he walked up the moor to Ghyll Farm.
Gaunt found the farm-door open, and stepped in. Peggy Mathewson was
busy baking bread, and she looked hot and tired. The heat of the
kitchen, the smell of the loaves, drove Gaunt into the shelter of the
porch again.
“Phew! I thought ’twould be cooler indoors than out, Peggy.”
“Did ye? My temper’s not cool, to begin with, Reuben--or should I say
‘Mr. Gaunt’ these days?”
“Reuben, I fancy.”
“I like to know. Ye change so often, and your station varies so--now
marrying proud little Good Intent, and then again bending down to take
notice o’ Peggy Mathewson--”
“I’ve a cure for your temper, Peggy,” he said, with an easy laugh.
“We’ll go to Linsall, and your loaves can wait.”
“Why to Linsall?” she asked, with a longing glance at the moor.
“Oh, ay, ’tis Fair-day. I’ve nigh forgotten fairs, and ribbons, and
sich-like idleness, since you came home again. What wi’ work, an’ what
wi’ trying to keep up wi’ your cantrips, Reuben, I’m a busy lass.”
He only laughed and switched his leggings with the riding-crop, which
from sheer habit he was carrying. The girl’s tongue might be bitter,
but her eyes told another tale. “Let’s away, Peggy. A scamper always
does you good. As for the baking--”
“It’s finished,” she broke in, setting down the last batch of loaves
from the oven; “and if it weren’t--why, I fancy I shouldn’t heed.”
The old recklessness was in her voice, the old longing for
light-heartedness, though under it all she knew that there was grief
and heaviness. She went up-stairs and was down again before Gaunt had
time to grow impatient.
“Shall I shame ye at the Fair?” she demanded, standing frankly for his
inspection, her colour heightened, her hands resting on her hips.
Reuben noted the red scarf, the touches of colour which she had
added deftly here and there to a dress which had seen many fairs and
many weathers. No other lass could have worn such colours. They were
gypsyish, bold, reckless, like Peggy herself, and they seemed to add to
her beauty and her self-assurance.
“Shame me?” laughed Reuben. “There’ll be eyes for none but ye at
Linsall!”
She closed the porch-door behind her and stepped out into the sunlight.
“’Twill be enough for me if I keep _your_ eyes fro’ roaming for a whole
day at a stretch. Eh, well, I’m a fool to go wi’ ye, and mother ’ull
wonder what’s getten me when she comes back fro’ selling eggs i’ Garth.
But then she’s used to wondering, is mother,” the girl added, with a
sudden, hard wistfulness in her voice; “it seems to come natural to us
Mathewsons.”
As they breasted the moor, however, Peggy’s spirits rose. She had a
day’s freedom before her--and Reuben’s company--and there was no need
to vex herself with the question why he, and he alone, had power to
take her natural good sense away.
They followed one of those winding moor-roads, set between low banks of
bilberry and ling and wild thyme, which seem ever to hide some swift
adventure at the next turning. Peggy, bred in the midst of these wide,
sweeping uplands, had found all her childish fairy-tales, all her
make-believe of battle and romance, among the moors. The gypsy wildness
in her needed colour, warmth, the speed of strange adventures; as a
child, and later as a woman, she had peopled the heath with voices
other than the curlew’s and the plover’s. The countless hollows,
bottomed by rank mosses and deep bracken, hid ambushed men; behind each
hillock that concealed the track from her, she would look for some
figure to come riding down to meet her, and no toil about the farm, no
harshness of the workaday life which hemmed her in at Ghyll, had killed
this glamour of the heath. It was this need of glamour, maybe, which
had bidden her long ago to set her heart on Gaunt; the man’s queer
eyes, with the look in them of devilry and yet of boyish surprise at
life, his irresolution, the very uncertainty from one day to the next
whether he would come tame to her hand, or would be wooing elsewhere,
all enticed Peggy, as the winding hill-tracks did, that promised some
gallant meeting at the next corner--always at the next corner.
To-day she looked neither forward nor behind. She crossed the moor with
feet as light as Gaunt’s, and he laughed when they reached the top and
halted to take breath.
“You’re just a wild moor-bird, Peggy.”
“And why not, Reuben; I was hatched in a moor-nest.”
The day’s heat had brought its own recompense in a measure, for a haze
was creeping up from the heath, softening the glare. The breeze was
quick up here, and almost cool. Far down below them they could see
Linsall village and its bridge, resting like a small, grey Paradise in
the cup of the tall hills.
“You were hatched in the pastures,” went on Widow Mathewson’s lass,
after a silence. “There’s a difference always ’twixt moor nestlings and
pasture birds.”
“Oh, I don’t know! I’m fond o’ the moor, myself--”
“Ay, fond--fondish, as ye are o’ women--but--eh, lad, ye’ve no love o’
the heather, and the smell of a marsh when it yields to your foot and
all but gets ye under. ’Tisn’t the same to ye, Reuben. Ye’ve always a
back-thought for the pastures, green i’ winter an’ green i’ spring, and
never a change. They’re snugger, Reuben, and snugness was always to
your liking.”
Gaunt only laughed, and they ran down the track, hand in hand, till
they reached the wall that guarded the intaken fields. Linsall village
was bigger to them now, and they could see that it was thick with folk.
“They’ll be dancing on the green to-night?” said Peggy, after they had
climbed the wall and were walking soberly down the long, raking field
that led them to the Linsall road. “Well, I feel like dancing, Reuben.
My feet were never so light under me--”
“Oh, now, be quiet!” muttered Reuben, with a touch of superstition and
a passing sense of disquiet. “We’re not near a rowan-tree, Peggy, to
touch it for luck when we boast.”
“We’ll risk it, Reuben! I seem to have no wish at all, save just to
dance and dance wi’ ye on Linsall Green. ’Tis my head, maybe, that’s
light and not my heels.”
They were on the road now, and Peggy’s mood grew lighter still as she
saw the booths, the tents, the knots of chattering country folk that
covered Linsall Green. She relished the open admiration shown her as
she passed; she welcomed the sly gibes of a few ill-natured and plainer
women; for she knew that Reuben would like her better if she were the
admitted beauty of the day. This strapping lass with the clear judgment
and the capable hands whenever life’s work had to be done, was in
playtime as simple as a child. Gaunt was her good fairy to-day; she
loved him with a passionate devotion that surprised her in quieter
moments; in all things to-day she wished to please him.
They went into the tavern whose front stretched orderly, and long,
and grey, the whole width of the green. Gaunt made her drink red wine
with their meal; the taste of it was thin and reedy to Peggy, but she
understood vaguely that Reuben thought it a fine thing he was doing.
The glass from which she drank it, was shapelier, too, than any she had
seen, and she praised the wine, and the meal, and the sunlight that lay
white on the white street outside the window.
Peggy laughed quietly as they went out into the glare again. “If I
never enjoy a day again,” she said, “I mean to take my fill o’ this
one.”
Again Gaunt felt a touch of uneasiness but shrugged his shoulders, as
his way was, and thought no more of it. If he had been bred nearer to
the Border, he would have said that Peggy o’ Mathewson’s was fey; as
it was, he wondered that he had played yes-and-no with this girl. Her
beauty, her high spirits, the disregard she showed for all admiration
but his own, were pleasant to the man. For months he had been playing
with his promise to Cilla of the Good Intent that he would marry Peggy.
Well, who knew what might happen on this fine day in Linsall?
“Peggy,” he said, as they threaded their way across the green, “you
need a string of corals round your neck, to set off all the bonnie rest
o’ you. I saw a necklace as we came past the far booth yonder.”
And a wonderful booth it was, this wooden counter set on trestles,
with a span of canvas overhead to keep sun or rain away. There were
toys on it, and flat-irons, and housewives’ “find-alls;” there were
wooden pipes and clay pipes, and snuff boxes. Betrothal rings, and
wedding rings, and teething rings, lay neighbours to packets of simples
warranted to remedy many ailments. The whole sum of life--its hopes,
its absurdities, its random search after pleasure or after ease from
pain--seemed to lie within the narrow confines of the booth.
Gaunt took down one of the coral necklaces, and the woman standing
behind the counter gave the pair of them a keen glance.
“How much?” asked Gaunt.
The woman’s thoughts were rapid. Were they brother and sister? No! It
would have been sixpence in that case. Had he just met with the girl,
and was he playing with a fancy? She thought not. That would have meant
a shilling. Were they newly-pledged to each other?
“Half a crown,” said the woman quietly. “They’re the best coral money
can buy, and I can only sell ’em so cheap as that because--”
“Oh, yes,” put in Gaunt drily. “Here’s the money. Now, Peggy, let me
fasten it on for you--there! I told you ’twas all that was needed to
set off the rest o’ you.”
Peggy felt a touch on her arm, and turned to find a plump rascal,
with a pedlar’s tray in front of him. His face, a dusky red at all
times--what between weather outside inn-walls and warmer cheer within
them--was a deeper colour than its wont this morning, though his eyes
were quick and roguish, and his spirits gay as ever.
“Ah, now, Peggy o’ Mathewson’s, come away from the booth,” he said.
“Mother Lambert there has to pay for her stall, and the keep of a horse
to drag it about fro’ place to place. Stands to reason her wares are
dear to buy. Now, Pedlar Joe is his own pony--carries his booth in
front of him, i’ a manner o’ speaking--and can afford to sell things
cheap.”
“Ay,” put in Mother Lambert tartly from behind her booth, “cheap to
buy, and dear when ye’ve got ’em. We all know _your_ wares, Pedlar Joe.”
The pedlar sighed, and mutely called the high fells to witness that he
needed no defence. “Women are that jealous,” he observed. Then, with
a whimsical glance at Reuben, “Mr. Gaunt, ’tis ye that’s brought the
Pride o’ the Fair to Linsall. Ye’ll have to buy her one of these lile
scarfs. Peggy’s fond o’ bright colours, as she’s a right to be.”
Gaunt laughed as he put his hand in his pocket, for the pedlar was as
well-known for twenty miles around as Kilnhope Crag, and he came and
went like the wind, a chartered libertine. “Fond of bright colours, is
she? Like your face, Joe, I take it. And, by that token, you’ve been
polishing your face a little more than the ordinary.”
“Ay, I’ve been out i’ the sun more nor usual,” said the other
shamelessly. “Wonderful chap, the sun is, for giving good colour to a
body’s face. Now, Peggy, see this crimson scarf here; for old times’
sake, Mr. Gaunt, ye shall have it cheap for three-and-six.”
“Say one-and-six,” suggested Gaunt lazily.
“Nay,” said Joe with dignity. “I may be poor, sir, but I don’t go
bargaining when there’s a lady nigh. Three-and-six I said, and
_two_-and-six I stick to.”
Peggy and Gaunt moved away, as soon as the bargain was completed, and
Pedlar Joe strolled up to the booth. Mother Lambert and he were good
friends enough, despite professional rivalry.
“Looks as if Gaunt and wild-bird Peggy might make a match of it, after
all?” he hazarded.
“So that’s Peggy o’ Mathewson’s?” answered the booth-woman. “I’ve not
been nigh Linsall for four or five years, as ye know, and the lass was
a little ’un then. I’d forgotten her. But Gaunt--there’s no forgetting
him. Maybe he’s caught at last. I had the same fancy when I saw ’em
step over the green.”
“Maybe,” chuckled the pedlar. “There’s allus a ‘maybe’ when folk
mention Reuben Gaunt. Reuben--it means summat like water, if I call to
mind--water that’s aye running under the brigg i’stead o’ crossing it
to find a bit o’ safe-sure ground?”
Widow Lambert began to arrange her wares afresh. “Ay, like yourself,
Joe--just like yourself. A caravan and a horse are steady matters, but
a man wi’ a naked pack on his back should go by the name o’ Reuben.”
So then these two, vagrants both, fell into argument. Mother Lambert
held the landed view of life, as befitted one who had a caravan and
the right to fix her booth on the green for this one day. Pedlar Joe
argued nimbly for the honour of his calling, and his views were those
of the unlanded folk, coloured through and through by talk of freedom,
of leisure in which to snare game--as being no man’s property in
special--and of the joys attending one who, day in day out, had only
his pack and himself to think of.
The dispute was ended only when Joe caught sight of a country lass,
with a pretty face and an air of foolish vanity about her.
“I’ve to sell a scarf to Nancy Wood,” he said, with a confidential wink
at the booth-woman. “She’s prattlesome now, and will buy; but she’ll
have no heart for ’t once she’s seen Peggy o’ Mathewson’s.”
The pedlar sold his scarf; and the sun got down, half between noon
and setting; and still the folk came pouring into Linsall. There was
little news of the fever on this side of the moor-ridge; and, if there
had been news, it would have been disregarded on this day when all the
countryside was pledged to merriment.
“You’re blithe, Peggy!” said Gaunt, as they moved about the green
together.
“I should be,” she answered, with a heedless laugh. “I’m free for a
day--and I’m holding both hands out to catch whatever frolic comes.”