Peggy’s high spirits did not forsake her as the time for her wedding
drew near. Gaunt was eager, with a dash of haste and recklessness about
the matter that appealed to her gipsy temper.
She knew that poor fools down in the valley were sick with the heat
and the fever-dread; for herself, she lived on the cooler moor, and a
glance at its clean acres, a touch of its heather-wind, were enough
to banish all thought of fever like an unclean ghost that had no
place here on the hill-tops. She did not know that a part at least
of Gaunt’s haste was due to Priscilla of the Good Intent. Since the
day when Cilla had met him on the Shepston Road, Reuben had found the
old disquiet return. Like his father before him, he had an instinct
toward a wife who was comely of speech and manner; he needed, as Mrs.
Mathewson had said bitterly in time of April snow, “a ladyish mistress
for Marshlands.” Do as he would these days, Gaunt saw constantly the
picture of Cilla in her lilac frock. She would fit the old house as the
well-ordered ivy which grew along its front. Her voice would sound cool
and low under the dark rafter-beams. There would be flowers about the
house again, and the spinet would awaken to life under Cilla’s fingers.
Reuben was tormented by that picture, and each detail of it grew
clearer as the days went by. The man was to be pitied, maybe, for
he had the gift of fancy, and at times it bred in him a strange
irresolution. The one instinct in him longed for an orderly home, a
settled purpose in life; the other took him to the open lands, where
such as Peggy Mathewson, and the pedlar-folk, and the poachers, lived
free from all convention. Each attracted him, and he had not once been
taught, during his heedless and ungoverned boyhood, that it was idle to
pursue two whims at once.
Peggy, keen-sighted as she was, had no inkling of Gaunt’s weakness. He
was eager, lover-like, full of plans for doing this and that about the
house to make it ready for her. Even Widow Mathewson, though she looked
for it, saw no hesitancy, no sign of withdrawal as the weeks drew on;
and, in her own wry fashion, she was proud of Reuben, as a mother is
proud of a weakling son when he shows stray glimpses of true manhood.
It was little satisfaction to her, or none at all, that Peggy would be
mistress of the biggest farm in Garth, would be wife to one of a yeoman
breed so old that the Gaunts were counted as a sort of gentry among
their farm-neighbours. The widow had her own pride of station, and not
for a moment would she admit that her lass “was bettering herself” by
marriage; she was simply glad that the girl, if she must needs set her
heart on Reuben, was likely to be treated well.
For Peggy there was no shadow lying over these weeks. She had prayed,
in her haphazard way, that there should be no break following the
glamoured day at Linsall Fair; and her prayer was granted. It seemed
strange to her that she had ever found hard words for Reuben. He
was strong, and tender, and considerate; he asked only for a speedy
wedding, and Peggy chided her mother because the widow was obstinate in
her resolve.
“Nay, lass,” Mrs. Mathewson would say. “Ye’ve bided long for Reuben,
and ’tis a lile biding-time enough I’ve set him, surely. There’s no
daughter o’ mine going to come pretty-come-quick to his call, just at
the minute he cares to whistle.”
And Peggy would laugh, and tell herself that she was in no great
haste for wedlock, after all. She asked for nothing beyond the
present happiness. Strong at the churn, clear of vision, quick to
see shortcomings in her neighbours, Peggy o’ Mathewson’s had yielded
altogether to her love for Gaunt. He had put cobwebs over her eyes, as
the Garth folk said; for she heard the fairies sing, when at nights she
went up to the beck that trickled under the rowans, and looked down at
the lights of Marshlands, and pictured Reuben there.
Towards the end of the waiting-time, Gaunt rode up to Ghyll and told
them that he had to be away in the Midlands for a week. His father, in
one of the buying fits that came on him at times, had bought property
down there, and he had to look to it.
“’Twill be a wedding-gift for you, Peggy,” he said at parting.
“My lad, I want no wedding-gifts. If ye must go, ye must go, an’ good
luck to ye; but, Reuben, never talk o’ gifts. The red kerchief ye
bought me at the Fair was enough for me--that, and what ye whispered on
the home-way walk.”
They were standing at the moor’s edge, and peace was stealing up from
the hollows. After the sun’s heat and the weariness, the dusk had laid
gentle fingers on the land. There was no limit to the heath, seen by
this magical, soft light. Sharprise, crimson and gold and purple where
the last of the sunset caught his crest, seemed to bound it on one
side; but Peggy, looking out with practised eyes, could see further
hills, and hills beyond, each putting on its nightcap of saffron
haze. Light scents, stifled by the sun, began to creep abroad. It was
a gloaming such as few could see without a quickened sense of the big
life behind all frets and worries of the long day’s business.
For Peggy o’ Mathewson’s it was home. These darkening hollows, the
rough, winding ridges reaching out to the spaces where, in some heathen
way of worship, she always sought her God, the cool, faint smell of
the bracken, and the ling, were all that spelled life and freedom for
Peggy. The gloaming’s quiet, Gaunt’s nearness, softened her reckless
spirits, but could not check her laughter.
“Oh, Reuben, I am daft!” she said, putting both hands into his.
“Thought I could hold my own, I, and I’m thinking only o’ ye. Will ye
come back, or will ye not--and are ye true, or are ye not--and all
such moonshine nonsense. Reuben, I’ve been happy these last days. Ye
wouldn’t spoil it all?”
“Not lightly,” said Reuben, as he kissed her good-by, and went down the
moor.
The next day Peggy was listless and out of heart. She fancied the heat
ailed her, though until now she had been careless of all extremes of
weather. Widow Mathewson noticed the change, as she smoked her pipe by
the hearth that night.
“Lile lass,” she said, “ye’re fretting for Reuben.”
Peggy shivered, and crept nearer the peat-fire. “Oh, I’m thinking all
o’ ghosts, mother. He has to be away, and the fool I am to be needing
him so, and there’s many a mile ’twixt this and his home-coming.”
The widow smiled, but her face was full of compassion. “I loved your
father i’ that way, Peggy. He was niver much to lean on, but I missed
him sorely when he went down kirkyard lane.”
“You’re sneering at Reuben again, mother.” The girl’s temper was frayed
to-day and broken at the edges.
“Nay, nay. I begin to think Reuben’s stauncher than your father iver
war. Happen ye’ve come to your own, Peggy, for a man as can win a
fell-race o’ the Linsall sort has summat behind it all. Ye’ll shape him
by and by. Oh, ay, ye’ll shape him. Men are all like a blunt bit o’
millstone grit; they need a chisel, they.”
Peggy o’ Mathewson’s crept nearer still to the peats. The light of the
one lamp shone on the pewter and the delftware that was Ghyll’s special
pride, and the fire-glow played bo-peep in corners of the living-room.
“I scarce feel like a bride, mother,” said Peggy, after a long silence.
“Tuts!” answered Widow Mathewson. “Few maidens do. Ye talk as if there
were no modesty left i’ the world.”
“I’m so cold. All day it has been like a goose walking ower my
grave--just as I said to Reuben when we walked fro’ Linsall Fair.”
The widow was easy in her mind to-night. Her hidden liking for Gaunt
need not be checked so much in future; only she knew how bitterly she
would miss Peggy in and about the house; but she knew, too, that it was
idle or worse, to keep her lass from a home of her own. A glance at the
girl’s face, white and pinched, might have startled Widow Mathewson;
but she smoked her pipe, and looked into the grate, and hugged her
self-content as a luxury seldom found at Ghyll.
“Fiddle-me-ree,” she answered, with pleasant tartness. “Th’ only geese
as are walking abroad, to my knowledge, are ye an’ Reuben--an’ he’s a
gander. Oh, lass, Peggy, I’ve it all by heart! Niver sich a one i’ the
world as your man; an’ ye know his shortcomings plain as your own face
in a pool; an’ ye throw bits o’ pebble into th’ pool, just to stir his
proper likeness into pleasanter shape; an’ ye call it loving the lad.
Lord o’ mercy, there’s been many a woman at yond pool-edge afore your
time, and will be after. I war there myseln once. ’Tis only nature.”
Peggy got up and went out through the porch, and stood looking out and
away across the moor.
“I war there myseln once,” repeated Widow Mathewson, with a tolerant
smile. “I munnot forget what ’twas like--just the wee, lile fairies
dancing, an’ witchcraft ower the moor.”
She knocked her pipe out on the grate, and youth touched her brown,
scarred face for a moment.
“Good sakes,” she murmured, “I’d like to be young again like
that--cobwebs about my eyes or no. Better be a blithesome fool at
two-and-twenty than a wiser one at sixty.”
Five days later Gaunt returned to Garth. He came by the morning
mail-coach, and sat by Will the Driver’s side, and asked as many
questions regarding the health of Garth folk as if he had been absent
for a year.
“Oh, they’ve ’scaped fever right enough,” said Will, trying to answer
all his questions at once. “They’re a bit scared still, but forgetting
all such rubbish. Widow Lister’s hale and hearty--ay, just a shade too
hale and hearty. Billy is laking at the forge, an’ doing as much real
work as David did, an’ willun’t take a penny for ’t. Has made a box,
he, an’ tells all folk to put their silly money in through the slit
and let it bide there till David comes again. He has no use for money,
he--lile, wise lad as he is.”
“And Widow Mathewson?” asked Gaunt.
Driver Will knew well enough what news the other was seeking; it was
common knowledge now that Peggy o’ Mathewson’s and Gaunt had been
“asked” three times at church. For that reason Will concealed his
knowledge, as if it were a crime, and affected a fine ignorance as he
flicked his team with the whip.
“Oh, she’s well enough, or was a few days since. Have not seen Peggy
or th’ widow since Monday last. Terrible home-bird folk, both on ’em.
I liken ’em always i’ my mind to a brace o’ nesting grouse, so shy an’
fierce an’ prideful as they are.”
Gaunt asked for no more news until the coach rounded the curve that
brought him within two miles of Garth.
“And Miss Priscilla?”
The driver gave him a shrewd, hasty glance. “Oh, well enough. She never
alters--a breath o’ rosemary along the dusty road. Wish I’d been born a
lile thought higher in station, and could cast my eyes that way. There
never were two made like Miss Good Intent. And there she is, by that
token, walking just ahead.”
“You can put me down,” said Gaunt.
Driver Will wasted little time in stopping and in starting off again.
He greeted Priscilla with a friendly, courteous salute when a moment
later he passed her on the road; and then he touched his horses’ ears
with a gentle whip that spoke of deep reflection on his part. Will had
leisure for reflection during those long drives between Shepston and
the remote hamlet that ended his twenty-mile journey, and it was second
nature to him now to piece together the life stories of those who dwelt
along the road.
“It must feel odd to be one o’ Mr. Gaunt’s sort,” he was thinking.
“I mind yond day i’ spring when they drove out wi’ me, sweet as
kiss-me-quicks, to Keta’s Well. I mind the way they came home
again--she with the clover-pink in her cheeks, and Gaunt with a queer
look in his eyes I’d not seen there before. Get along, Captain, or
they’ll take ye for a tramp. Gee-up! And now he’s come home to wed
Peggy o’ Mathewson’s; and I fancied, when he was seeking news just now,
’twar Peggy he war asking for, until--well, until he named Miss Good
Intent. Eh, well--get along, Captain! The Queen doesn’t wait for her
mails while such as ye catch a sleep along the road.”
Gaunt had overtaken Cilla long ago, and she had turned to meet his
greeting with the clover-pink in her cheeks that Will the Driver had
thought of.
“Will you come to my wedding?” he asked, ill at ease after his journey
south, and all the brave thoughts that had kept him company on the
northward road.
Priscilla laughed. It was the Garth way, when trouble must be met. “You
have asked me, Reuben--and father, too; of course we shall be at the
kirk.”
They walked side by side in silence until the grey gable of Good Intent
showed near at hand. Reuben could not take his eyes from the girl’s
face, and presently she looked up, embarrassed by a feeling of shame
and unrest for which she could find no reason.
“I wish you both well,” she said, halting at the gate.
The voice was not Cilla’s; it was hesitating, cold. A random impulse
took Gaunt unawares.
“Cilla,” he began eagerly.
She withdrew, and her coldness disappeared. She was self-reliant again,
full of a dainty, half-mocking rebuke that would not stoop to anger.
“Good-by,” she said. “They call you running-water, Reuben, but I’ve
better hopes of you.”
Reuben stayed a moment, watching her, until the house-porch hid her.
For once he was troubled by the knowledge of his own weakness. An
hour ago he had been full of his wedding plans, full of his early
scamper out to Garth by the mail. Peggy did not expect him until
late afternoon, and he had looked forward, with a boy’s zest, to the
surprise of a morning visit to Ghyll. It was Thursday, and Peggy would
be busy at the churn; he would help her at the work; Widow Mathewson
would have her gibe, half tart, half friendly, when she put her head
round the door of the dairy and found him “doing real work for once in
a long journey.” That was the picture he had seen--until he overtook
Priscilla on the road.
Gaunt set his face toward the moor and made his way up to Ghyll;
but the brightness of the picture had gone. He blamed himself for
that moment’s treason with Cilla; it seemed an ill beginning for his
wedding. The day was hot and garish, too, and the fierce summer had set
its mark on the pastures and the hedgerows. Such leaves as were left
unshrivelled showed lifeless and drab, and never a bird sang. Thirst
was walking like a spectre through the land, side by side with the
heat. The fields were gaping wide, entreating rain. Even the yarrow
flowers liking a lean and scanty soil, carried drooping heads. The
sheep stood staring up into the sky, for they were tired of cropping
grass that was tough and lifeless as ill-won hay.
When he reached the moor, Gaunt looked for Ghyll Farm. Its roof was set
in the middle of waving lines of heat-haze, and no life stirred about
the house. Fancy had played Reuben many a surly trick, but it helped
him now to brace himself for coming trouble. Dalliance in sheltered
Garth was forgotten; he knew that ill news awaited him, and went
forward, preparing himself to meet it. With all his faults, Gaunt was
apt to meet an open danger in the face.
Mrs. Mathewson, from the window of Peggy’s bedroom, had seen him come
up the moor, and ran down and out into the croft. She found him opening
the gate.
“Don’t come nigh, Reuben,” she cried. “I tell you, don’t come nigh.”
Her strong, lean arms were stretched towards him, motioning him away;
there was trouble in her face, and her eyes had the look which tired
folk wear when they have been awake throughout the night.
He thought at first that her old distrust of him had returned and
laughed. “I’m not to be kept away from Ghyll these days, mother. Peggy
is pledged to marry me next week, and ’tis overlate for you to say no
to that.”
As he came nearer Widow Mathewson withdrew. Gaunt could make nothing of
the look she gave him--tragical, and full of pity, and weary beyond all
belief.
“Ye’ll not come in,” she said sharply.
“And why shouldn’t I?”
“Oh, Reuben, Reuben, the fever’s come to Ghyll. Peggy ligs yonder i’
her bed, and her face is ill to look at. Ye’ll catch it, too, if ye
come nigh the house--for me ’tis no matter--I’m ower-old to care.”
Gaunt paused for a moment, shocked by the news. Then he crossed the
garden-strip, and stood beside her in the porch.
“Mother,” he said quietly, “it seems we’ve to know one another better.
D’ye think I’m feared o’ the fever, if Peggy has caught it?”
She stood away from him. In the hour of fear she could not rid herself
of this habit of denying all courage in a man.
“Fever means little to me,” she said drily. “I’m over and done with,
Reuben, and care niver at all whether I lig me down or no. But ye’re
young, lad--”
“And a coward,” broke in Reuben.
She glanced again at his face. “Well, no,” she said. “I was wrong
there, and I own it. But, Reuben--there’s one i’ five lives on to tell
on’t if they catch the fever.”
“Then Peggy must be the one, that’s all, mother. We’ll save her yet
between us.”
He had no thought of himself. His face, after he had heard her news,
was softened, yet full of quiet strength. The widow felt a grudging
admiration for this man, with whom she had fought so bitterly in days
gone by; she looked again at his trim, healthy body, at the young
health in his face, and she was filled with pity.
“Reuben, lad, go back ower th’ moor,” she said, peremptorily. “If one’s
to die, there’s lile use killing two. I tell ye,” she broke off, with
a touch of her old bitterness, “the fever takes no more count o’ Mr.
Gaunt o’ Marshlands than it does o’ plain Peggy Mathewson. ’Tis not
just a risk ye’re taking; ’tis as near to certain as aught i’ this
life can be that ye’ll catch it, an’ die on’t, an’ no more o’ Gaunt o’
Marshlands.”
“Well, there’s not much to boast of as it is. If you put it that way,
I’m risking little.”
Widow Mathewson, though she and Peggy had lived high up above the
peopled villages, had a sure instinct for truth or meanness in her
fellows. She could detect no sign of cowardice under Gaunt’s quiet
acceptance of his destiny. There was no bluster, covering a weak
purpose. He meant to share Peggy’s trouble.
“Reuben, there’s few i’ Garth would be so daft,” she said, still
guarding the porch. “Think while! I’ve known what the fever means
longer than ye could know it. Thirty year back it came to Garth,
an’ good men o’ their hands--good men o’ their lives, too, an’
honest--dared not come nigh a house that had the white cross on it.”
“My father used to tell of it.” Reuben was indifferent, as if it were
no time to listen to bygone tales. He was thinking of Peggy, lying
helpless in the up-stairs room.
“Did he tell you that the coffiners were found missing, when they were
needed to see bodies buried decently fro’ end to end o’ Garth? Did he
tell ye that men who’d faced storm on th’ moor, an’ danger o’ most
sorts, sat shivering by their fires, an’ dursn’t stir a finger to help
stricken folk? Oh, Reuben, lad, ’tis no game o’ kiss me by the stream,
this, and naught to bother ye after.”
“Never said it was, mother,” said Gaunt drily. “I’m here to see we do
our best for Peggy.”
The widow understood, somehow, that Reuben the despised was her master
in this time of stress. Weak as running water he might be afterwards,
when better days arrived; but now he had the strength of many a
likelier man. Her good man had been weak in all days, fair or foul, and
memory of him had hindered her outlook upon Gaunt.
She stood in silence for awhile, her spare height framed against the
entry to this house of sickness. Far down the reaches of the moor, a
tired haze lay, and prayed for rain; from the blue of the weary sky the
sun shone fiercely. Again the mother-pity came to Widow Mathewson. For
herself, it did not matter; she could tend Peggy, and could die if her
time had come, and no tears wasted; but Gaunt had no need to die just
yet. She guarded the grey old porch as men, in the lawless times, had
fought for their wives and bairns at this same door.
“’Tis the waiting-time will trouble ye, Reuben,” she said, in a matter
of fact, quiet voice. “Th’ men are cowards when th’ fever comes, for
that reason. If they could know i’ a day or so whether they’d caught it
or no, they’d niver heed the danger, like. Women are used to waiting,
and they’re bolder at these times.”
“I’m coming in, mother.”
“Nay, think ower it, lad! Think ower it! There’ll be six weeks o’
waiting afore iver ye know whether ye’ve caught th’ fever. Six weeks,
Reuben! Plenty o’ men wouldn’t wait as long for a maid that was bonnie
and well.”
Reuben took her by the arms, and made a way for himself. “There,
mother, ’tis done now, I take it. Lucky I told them down at Marshlands
that I might or might not be home to-day. They’ll not sit up for me
to-night, and to-morrow I must get a message down somehow.”
Mrs. Mathewson and Gaunt stood facing each other in the living-room. If
there had been enmity between them, they did not remember it; a grave
silence held between them, for each knew that death lay very near, not
to Peggy only, but to themselves.
“There’s still a chance to go back, Reuben,” she said at last. “Ye may
or may not have caught it by stepping into t’ house, and ye need say
naught to nobody; but, if ye once go up into th’ chamber--an’ I see
your eyes on th’ stair-door--there’ll be no return for ye.”
A troubled moaning sounded from the room above, and Gaunt laid a hand
on the sneck of the staircase door. “Maybe ’twould ease the lass if she
knew I was near,” he said gently.
“She willun’t know, she’s ower far gone, I tell ye! Reuben, my lad,
have just a thought for yourseln.”
He glanced at her, with his curious, new look of gravity and
self-effacement, and went up the stair. The widow heard his step on the
boards overhead, then a startled cry. She knew what the cry meant. The
Peggy who had watched him win the fell-race, who had danced on Linsall
Green, was not the lass who lay on the bed up there; for the fever laid
ugly hands on the faces of its victims, and on their minds its hold was
still more cruel. There were no wild outbursts of delirium, followed
by intervals of sanity and hope; there was only the low, helpless
muttering, the sluggish apathy, the denial of all power or will to find
healing from any human ministry.
Widow Mathewson paced up and down the living-room with her manlike
strides; and by and by she heard Gaunt pacing up and down the floor
above. It was Gaunt’s hour of bitterness, the first hour of his
heedless life that had found him ready to hearken to his lesson. If he
had dealt ill with Peggy o’ Mathewson’s in times past, he was paying
something of the penalty now. It was not so much the bodily change
in her that shocked and terrified him; it was the knowledge, brought
suddenly home to him, that she did not care whether he stood at her
bedside or not, that likely she would never care again in this world.
The incessant moaning maddened him; it seemed to tell of an anguish
that was beyond reach of his help. He could not believe that Peggy
herself felt nothing, knew nothing--that it was he, in full vigour of
mind and body, who suffered for her, just by looking on.
He came down the stone stairway at last, and the widow ceased her
restless walk. She looked at his face. It was white and stern, but
there was no trace of personal fear on it.
“It was as well I came,” he said.
“As well you came,” she echoed. “You say that after--after going in
yond up-stairs room?”
“Yes, mother. You may be tough, but ’twould drive ye mad to live alone
with what’s in the house here. Mother, is there naught at all we can do
to ease her?” he broke off.
“Ay, but not mich. I’m skilled enough i’ nursing-work, so far as that
goes. But t’ fever shoves a body aside, an’ willun’t let nursing have
its say.”
For the first time she let weakness overcome her. Her tears were few,
but full of passionate relief; and they were a tribute to the sense
that, for once in her stormy life, she had a man about her in time of
need.
Gaunt patted her gently on the shoulder. All the hidden liking between
the oddly-assorted pair was patent to them both.
“That’s better!” he said. “Wish Peggy up yonder could cry like that.
’Twould do her a power o’ good.”
Toward gloaming of that day, as Reuben stood at the window after one
of his fruitless visits to the room above, he saw a lad come up the
slope of the moor. He ran out across the croft, and shouted to the
lad. Already he had learned the instinct of all who had seen the fever
close--the instinct to cry, like a leper of old, that none must come
too near.
The lad ceased whistling, and halted in surprise; for Reuben, though
he did not know it, was waving his arms like one far gone in drink or
madness.
“I war nobbut stepping up for a sitting of eggs fro’ th’ widow. Miss
Cilla o’ Good Intent telled me to come,” he said, half blubbering.
“’Twas promised, yond clutch of eggs, an’ Miss Good Intent wants t’
chickens reared i’ good time for the winter.”
Gaunt saw now that it was Dan Foster’s lad, whose delight, like that
of bigger men-folk, was to run errands for Priscilla when he was not
blowing the bellows for Fool Billy at the forge.
“Bide where ye are!” he called sharply. “I want you to go back to
Marshlands, and tell them I shall not be home for weeks. Have you got
that message into your head, Dan?”
“Ay,” said the lad, recovering from his bewilderment.
“And then go to Good Intent, and tell Miss Cilla that for God’s sake
she is not to come nor send to Ghyll here.” Gaunt, with a backward
thought of Peggy lying in the up-stairs room, was ashamed of his
eagerness that Cilla should be saved. “You’ll not forget, Dan?”
“No,” said the boy, his native curiosity conquering the last trace of
fear. “No, I’ll not forget, Mr. Gaunt; but what mun I say is t’ reason,
like, that Miss Good Intent can’t get her eggs? She’s main set on
getting that clutch, she is, an’ she’ll fancy it war me as disappointed
her.”
Gaunt laughed harshly. “The reason? Tell her that the fever’s come to
Ghyll.”
Like a wounded rabbit the lad sought cover. To him the fever meant all
that was terrible, mysterious; he had heard his elders talk of it these
months past beside the hearth; he feared that, even at this distance
and with the clean breath of the heath between himself and Ghyll, he
might be overtaken by the pestilence. Gaunt watched him run far down
the moor, and turn the shoulder of a hillock, and then he went indoors
again. Mrs. Mathewson was sitting by the hearth.
“I’ve sent word to Marshlands,” he said, taking a seat in the
settle-corner, as if the widow and he were friends of long standing.
“They’ll not look for me till I come home again; and meanwhile the farm
and all that will be cared for.”
The widow lifted her head and looked at Gaunt with the keen glance
which, until to-day, he had found disconcerting. No anxiety, no
brooding instinct of disaster, could check the tongue of this woman who
had seen life’s soft illusions leave her one by one.
“You’re not likely to reach home again, Reuben.”
“Likely not,” he answered, feeling for his pipe and filling it with
careful fingers. “There’s few would miss me, come to think of it, save
you and Peggy.”
“I’d miss ye, Reuben Gaunt?” she snapped, with a tired effort to resist
her new outlook on the man.
“Yes, you, mother. D’ye hear Peggy moaning up above us? ’Twas time that
I, or another, came to help ye to bear it.”
Widow Mathewson reached out for her black clay pipe, and took a bit of
live peat from the fire, and lit the half-filled bowl. “We mun as weel
smoke in company, Reuben,” she said.
They smoked in friendship for awhile.
“Gaunt,” said the widow suddenly, “d’ye know what fear means or what
death means, or are ye a likelier lad than I thought ye?”
“I know what death means, mother,” said Reuben, as he moved from the
settle-corner to stir the peat-fire into life. “I’ve learned to-day.”
Again a silence fell between them. Then the widow lit her pipe afresh,
and her voice was gentler than Gaunt had known it hitherto.
“You’ve fooled a good few women i’ your time, Reuben; but I fancy ye’re
not by way o’ fooling now.”
“No,” said Gaunt, “I’m not by way of fooling now.”
Outside there was no breath of ease to hint that rain might come
to-morrow, or the next day after that. In the red of a stagnant sunset
the day had ceased, and night brought only a sultry heat that taxed
man’s endurance to the breaking point.
“Reuben,” said Widow Mathewson, “I wish th’ wind would ding the
house-door down, if only to stifle yond moaning up above us. She’s all
I’ve got, an’ I can do naught at all.”
“Bide and see, mother. All’s not over yet. There, let me fill your pipe
again for you, mother. ’Twill never do to let you go handling an empty
bowl.”
Their vigil had begun. Widow Mathewson stole quiet glances now and then
at the other’s face. She was wondering if the fever had been sent,
after all, to make a man of Gaunt of Marshlands.