At ten of the next morning Widow Mathewson crept down the stairway at
Ghyll Farm. Gaunt had snatched what sleep he could on the settle in the
living-room.
“You’re needed, Reuben,” she said, touching him on the shoulder.
He was on his feet at once; and to the widow it was restful to find a
man who answered so quickly to the call of need.
“Well?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“She’s all but gone. I thought, like, ye might care--”
He went up the stair and she followed him. Gaunt, in days past, had
needed the whip across his back; he found it now. There was no lifting
of Peggy’s eyes to his, no word to bridge the passage. He took her
hands in his, but they were dumb. There was a stifled breath, as of one
who seeks for air in an overcrowded room and that was all. Peggy o’
Mathewson’s had gone out along the black, hot fever-road.
The widow looked at Gaunt, and pushed him gently from the room. “Poor
lad,” was all she said. “’Tis one more trouble added to the peck for
me--but ye’re not used to it.”
Gaunt went out through the porch, and across to the gate of the croft,
and stood there, leaning over the top bar, just as Peggy had when she
said good-by to him. A great stillness lay over the lands; there was no
movement of bird, or sheep, or cattle; no breeze stirred, and the sun,
stark in the everlasting blue, seemed the one unwearied thing in nature.
A stillness lay, too, over Reuben Gaunt. He was groping toward the
future. A few days since, Peggy had kissed him at the gate here, had
bidden him return as quickly as he could. After that there was silence.
Though he had seen her, watched beside her bed, no word had passed
between them. Not a sign of recognition had come to soften the blow. He
could only recall the girl’s vigour, her glowing health, and contrast
them with what lay behind him at the farm.
Gradually the numbness left him, and the first sharp sense of grief
intruded. He dwelt unduly on the ugliness and horror of Peggy’s death,
as though they mattered, now that the soul had passed. He thought, in
a vague, haphazard fashion, of many ways in which he might have dealt
better with her. He had a senseless longing to have back that day at
Linsall Fair, when he had tempted her to meet the fever. They might
have chosen twenty other roads than that to Linsall. Mrs. Mathewson,
with her creed that was old and pagan as the moor itself, would have
told him that he was not to blame in this--that the road to Linsall
Fair was planned out before ever Peggy lay in her cradle.
Gaunt had known pain of body; but this anguish that grew keener every
moment was new to him. He had no knowledge of the way to meet it, and
such ignorance makes all men cowardly.
He had lost all sense of time, until a glance at the sun showed that it
was lying over Dingle Nook. He had spent two hours here at the gate, it
seemed. Again he blamed himself, and thought of Widow Mathewson, and
went back to the farm.
She met him at the door. “’Twas kind o’ ye, Reuben, to leave me to my
work; but, then, ye’re always kind these days.”
“Thought I had left you in the lurch, mother.”
“Nay! There was summat to be done, and ye’d have been i’ the way.”
They looked at each other, the man who had suffered and the woman who
had suffered much. On their faces was that light, steady, quiet and
full of wonder, which touches those who have just stood near to death.
“Have you been--” he began, with quick intuition, and could not put his
question into words.
“Ay, getting th’ poor lass ready.” The widow’s lips trembled. She
reached out for Gaunt’s hand impulsively. “I should have been readying
her for her wedding instead, Reuben! Oh, my lad, ’tis a queer make o’
business, this o’ living and dying--but ’specially the living.”
Gaunt knew that he was needed, and answered the call. “There, mother,
you’re not left alone.”
The words were few, but the tone of them gave new strength to Mrs.
Mathewson. “You can call me mother often--never too often; it’s only
fro’ your lips I shall iver hear the name again.”
Throughout the watch which these two had shared, no moment had been
so full of unexpected tenderness. The widow was leaning on Reuben as
on a trusted son, and he was standing to her--not in promise, but in
deed--as a stay-by in her latter years. The grip of his hands helped
her to face what had to come; the steady ring of his voice relieved a
solitude whose silence might otherwise have broken down her spirit.
“I must get word down to the coffiner at Garth,” said Reuben, knowing
how the thought of work to be done would steady Mrs. Mathewson. “I’ll
look for a farm-lad to pass up the fields, and shout to him.”
“Nay, but ye willun’t! I’ve planned it all out i’ my mind these last
two hours. Nathan, the coffiner, wouldn’t come within a mile o’ Ghyll;
I know Nathan, an’ he’s frightened o’ smaller things nor fever. See
ye, Reuben! She was always full o’ fancies, an’ often she’d say to me,
sitting beside the hearth o’ nights, ‘Mother,’ she’d say, ‘if ever I
happen to die, like, I’d like to be buried clean i’ the peat, not down
i’ a wet churchyard.’ She lived lonely, ye see, like myseln, an’ I
fancy she’d no liking for many neighbours, even i’ th’ kirkyard.”
Reuben was ill at ease. He had made no pretence of godliness in years
past, but at a time such as this old memories revived.
“Mother, you’d have the parson--you’ll laugh at me, maybe--but surely
you’d have the parson say a prayer above her?”
Widow Mathewson had always been fearless in her outlook, whether it
were true or false, and she did not yield. “I don’t laugh at ye, lad,
but such softnesses were never meant for Peggy and me. ’Tis all very
weel i’ the tamer lands, but not up here. She lived as she lived, an’
she died as she died, and naught alters that. God rest her soul, say
I--but that’s as she made her bed i’ this life. Reuben,” she went on,
abandoning all her hardness again, “I’ve done a deal o’ thinking about
religion i’ my time, an’ never come much nearer aught. Ye might tell
me that Peggy did as weel i’ this life as could be expected of a body?
Now, there, I’m growing old, or I’d not give way to whimsies. Reach
down my pipe for me, Reuben; ’baccy alwus helps me to get right sides
up wi’ the world again.”
Gaunt, the ne’er-do-weel, felt an odd thrill of comfort in ministering
to this hard-faced woman who depended on him. He filled her pipe for
her, and he lit a spill at the fire.
“That’s better,” she said, drawing long puffs of smoke. “There’s a deal
to be done, and there was never use i’ blinking work. For myseln, it
matters naught either way; but for ye, Reuben--well, ’tis best to get
fever out of a house as quick as may be. It wouldn’t help a living soul
if silly Nathan stepped up and caught th’ fever, or if parson came, and
he’s one o’ the few i’ Garth who would. Parson is staunch, for all he
thinks me heathenish. Ye’ve faced a good deal, Reuben; surely, ye’ll
help me to keep fever out o’ Garth?”
Gaunt moved uneasily about the room. He would have had another kind of
burial, but there was no gainsaying the other’s wisdom. The village, so
far, had escaped contagion; his own feelings must stand aside, surely,
when measured by the terrible price which Garth might have to pay for
them.
“We have no right to do aught else,” he said, turning to meet the
widow’s glance. “See, mother, she always had a liking for the spot
where the rowan hangs over the stream. I’ve been thinking she might
wish to be laid there.”
The widow nodded. “Get to your work, Reuben,” was all she said. “It
doesn’t do to sit idle at such-like times.”
Something near to peace came to Gaunt when he reached the little ghyll
and stood watching the stream, all but dry now, trickle down the rocky
slope under the rowan. It seemed that, after all, Peggy would sleep
more soundly in her own homeland than in another place.
The peat lay soft and deep almost down to the edge of the stream, and
there was little trouble in the digging. With a touch of that fugitive
poetry which was part of the man, he conquered his horror of the work.
He told himself that she would like to have the stream-song close
beside her, day and night. Death would not be a sleep and a forgetting,
but a sleep that remembered all the pleasant moorland haunts. And the
rowan-leaves would shelter her from heat in summer, and in winter-time
the peat would lie between Peggy and the wildest storms that blew.
Fancies crowded round Reuben, as he worked in the pitiless heat. It was
well that they came to his relief, for stauncher men than he might have
yielded, without shame, to the misery of this task.
He looked up at last, and dashed the sweat from his eyes. The grave was
ready. The heat-waves, running from end to end of the open moor, danced
giddily before him; he felt the body-sickness which had caught him at
the end of the fell-race which had ended with an over-moor walk home,
and a halt under the rowan here while Peggy and he talked of their
coming marriage.
When he recovered, and could see the moor again in proper outline,
he saw Billy the Fool standing on the spur of rising ground behind.
Billy’s face showed no trace of feeling; he stood motionless as some
stone landmark reared to guide travellers across the heath.
“Digging a grave, Mr. Gaunt?” he said quietly.
Reuben was too deep in sorrow to be startled. He had not known that
there was a looker-on while he worked, and Billy was the last of all
Garth folk he would have wished to see just now; but it mattered little.
“Yes, digging a grave, Billy.” His voice was tired. “I would not come
overnear, if I were you, for there’s fever come to Ghyll.”
“Te-he!” answered Billy gravely. “Fever doesn’t take lile fools such as
me. ’Tis the sensible, wise folk, such as ye, Mr. Gaunt, that it takes
a fancy to.”
He was not afraid. So much was sure. But he turned, and went down the
moor with his easy, loping strides; and Reuben wondered for a moment,
in the midst of his weariness, what Billy was doing here.
Billy could have given him no answer. He had heard of the trouble at
Ghyll, and instinct had brought him up the moor to learn if it were
Gaunt who was likely to die. Instinct took him, now that he had seen
Reuben alive and well, down to the forge where much work awaited him.
Gaunt forgot that he had come. He went heavily across the strip of moor
to Ghyll, leaving his spade at the graveside.
They were strong of body, Widow Mathewson and he, and it was only a
little way from the farm to the rowan-tree. When all was done, and
the kindly peat lay smooth above Gaunt’s first dream of wedlock, a
curlew came flapping down the moor, and paused above the rowan-tree,
and wheeled about it in wide circles. Sometimes it drew nearer, and
sometimes it roamed wide; but it did not leave them, and its wail was
piteous.
The widow’s face was drawn and lined, as Gaunt’s was, but she held
herself bravely, and her voice was quiet.
“Happen the curlew’s her parson, Reuben. Would she be happier, think
ye, down yonder i’ Garth kirkyard?”
“’Tis strange, mother. I’ve heard few birds call since I came to Ghyll,
and now--”
“Strange? There’s naught stranger than life, Reuben--than life, and
what we’ve put to bed under th’ rowan-tree. Folk get mazed wi’ chatter,
seems to me, down i’ the valleys; they fancy life’s made up o’ gossip,
an’ borrowing tin kettles one fro’ t’ other, an’ quarrelling when one
here an’ there has burned th’ bottom through.”
The curlew drew nearer to them, wheeled above their heads. Its cry was
Ishmael’s, and the undernote of it was loneliness.
“Yond’s Peggy’s mate,” said the widow. “She was allus a wild bird,
she, and she never would have settled down at Marshlands. Reuben, lad,
cannot ye comfort yourself wi’ that thought?”
He smiled gravely. “Had I no wildness, then?” he asked. “That used to
be your trouble, surely, in the old days.”
“Ay, but ’twas a different sort o’ wildness. See yond curlew. ’Twill
go down to th’ lowlands to feed, Reuben, an’ to have a frolic, like;
but tell it that it’s got to bide there for life, and ’twould die o’
homesickness. Oh, it’s hard to say it, an’ harder to believe it, but
maybe all’s for the best.”
She turned for a last look at the grave; then, with a firmer tread than
Gaunt’s, she moved down the moor. As they reached the croft, they saw a
burly horseman unfastening the gate with his crop.
“Nay, doctor, if ye please!” cried the widow, lifting a warning hand.
“Oh, I know you’ve fever in the house,” he said impatiently. “That’s
why I came. I only heard of it an hour since, as I passed through
Garth. How’s the patient?”
“Past your caring for--but thank ye all th’ same, doctor.”
“Oh, bless me--Peggy dead? I can’t believe it. Mrs. Mathewson, I wish
to God I’d heard the news sooner. I might have saved her.”
“I fancy not. She niver had th’ look o’ one as war going to mend, an’
I’ve seen many a case i’ my time. Now, doctor, turn about. There’s the
rest o’ the dale to think of, an’ ye’ll not better aught by seeking
risks.”
She told him of the burial, of Reuben’s help, of their resolve to save
Garth, so far as their own endurance went, from the scourge that lay so
close about it. She spoke of these matters as of such usual tasks as
cattle-milking or taking corn to the poultry-yard; there was no sense
of heroism behind her quiet statement of the facts.
The doctor ceased fumbling with the rusty gate-catch. “I always thought
you had sense enough for three, and now I know it. Of course, I should
be a fool--a bit of a knave, too--to go in when there’s nothing to be
done.”
Widow Mathewson could not restrain the pride--grim enough, but clean
and honest--which had given her strength to meet the years of trouble.
There was no malice in her tone, no unfriendliness. “They allus said i’
Garth that we kept ourselves to ourselves up here. Well, we did while
we were i’ health, doctor; tell them we’ll do no less, now we’re i’
trouble.”
The doctor nodded, gave a quick inquiring glance at Reuben from under
his shaggy eyebrows, and rode forward along the ridge of the moor.
“I must notify the death for them,” he thought, as he jogged along.
“They’ll never think of the need for it, so I must. Well, I’ve not seen
the lass, and it will be irregular, to be sure; but Lord knows they ask
few questions when it’s a fever case. Soonest hidden away out of sight,
the better folk are pleased these days.”
Then he fell to thinking of Reuben Gaunt. Mrs. Mathewson had made it
plain that Reuben entered the farm with knowledge of the danger, and
that he chose to stay rather than leave her friendless. The doctor,
during his years of rough intercourse with many people, had found less
courage in the face of death than he cared to admit; he himself was as
hardened against fear, as he was against exposure and fatigue, and he
grew impatient when weaker men showed signs of panic.
“He knew what it meant when he stepped into Ghyll,” he muttered. “Well,
well, I’ve been mistaken in Gaunt, it seems.”
At the end of his day’s round he was riding slowly down the
village--his stout nag as wearied with the heat as himself--when he met
Cilla of the Good Intent, and reined up.
“You’re the only cool thing I’ve seen to-day,” he declared, with bluff
gallantry. “Bless me, Cilla, how d’ye contrive it? I was never one
to flatter, but you put me in mind of a spring flower peeping out of
a hedgerow. It is not spring, child, and primroses are over for this
year, and the heat, I tell you, is appalling.”
He wagged his head fiercely, but Cilla only laughed; and the laugh was
cool and dainty as her person. Then suddenly her face clouded.
“We ought not to be jesting, doctor. Indeed we ought not. I cannot keep
my thoughts away from those poor folk up at Ghyll.”
The doctor halted, irresolute for once. He knew more of the history of
the countryside than even Will the Driver did, and now he remembered
many rumours, earlier in the year, that Gaunt would carry off Priscilla
after all the rest of Garth had failed. He had been sorry to hear the
news then; but his feelings had changed since morning.
“Best tell you at once,” he said, “for you’re bound to hear it soon or
late. Peggy o’ Mathewson’s died this morning.”
He regretted his impulsiveness, when he saw Cilla move unsteadily
across the road, and rest her hand on his saddle, as if she could not
stand without support. He should have let another break the news that
Gaunt was free, so he told himself.
Cilla’s pride was of different texture from Widow Mathewson’s; but it
was as strong in its own way, and it did not fail her when need came.
She was pale, and her eyes were overbright, but she stood upright again
and looked the doctor in the face.
“Tell me,” she said, “did Mr. Gaunt go there--and did he stay in the
house--of his own free will?”
“What else should have kept him, lassie? I had all the tale from Mrs.
Mathewson, and I tell you she’s lucky to have such a man about her.
Pride may be fine enough, Cilla, but not when you’re alone in a house,
with one death to cry over and another--your own--to look forward to.”
Cilla’s face clouded again. “Is--is the risk so great as they would
have us believe?”
“Well, maybe not; there’s always hope--always hope, Cilla. And there
are two of them to help keep the boggarts away.”
Yet Cilla knew that the old doctor took a grave view of the matter;
his praise of Gaunt, praise such as he rarely gave, was proof that he
thought Reuben guilty of foolhardiness. All Garth would learn now that
its judgment of Gaunt had been wrong; but there would be little use in
that, if he died in proving it.
Then suddenly she thought of Peggy, and pity drove away her
selfishness. She recalled the fine, careless swing of the gipsy figure,
as “Mathewson’s lass” had passed her on the moors or going to market.
There seemed something harsh, uncalled-for, in the passing of so brave
a soul. And it was she who had persuaded Reuben to be true to a
promise earlier than she could claim, in those near yet far-off days of
spring.
Priscilla returned, tired out, to Good Intent. The world of Garth
might be small, but the girl’s heart was big as the limits of human
compassion and human searching after happiness. The two instincts were
so mingled, since hearing the doctor’s news, that Cilla could not
disentangle them.
“Come ye in, now,” said her father, who was smoking the after-work pipe
of evening, which was the sweetest of the day to him.
“Ye’re looking bothered, like. It all comes o’ gadding about i’ this
heat overmuch. Grown men can bear it, but not lile hazel saplings such
as ye.”
Cilla only smiled, and went up to her own room. She could not bear to
talk just now even with Yeoman Hirst, the best of all her friends.
“Let a maid alone when she wears that look,” Hirst muttered sagely.
“I was never much of a hand at tackling whimsies. I’d liefer have a
thorn-hedge any day.”
The doctor, meanwhile, had passed down Garth street. He was thinking
mainly of the good meal and the ease that he had earned, and he frowned
as he saw Widow Lister watering her strip of garden-front. He knew the
little woman by heart, and indeed reined up before she had darted into
the roadway.
“Oh, doctor, I’ve been trying to catch ye these two days back,” she
said.
“Well? D’ye want to consult me? Shouldn’t say much ailed you, by the
plump look o’ your cheeks.”
The widow simpered a little, and cast down her eyes. “’Tisn’t what ails
me, doctor; ’tis what might ail me.”
“Now, now!” The other was impatient but like all men he was weak in
face of the little body’s helplessness. “I’ll be getting home, Mrs.
Lister. What might ail you, only heaven in its wisdom knows. Let me get
supper and an hour’s smoke until the ailment reaches you; then call me
in. I’ve had nothing since a bite of bread and cheese at noon.”
“Ay, but ’tis th’ fever; ye munnot jest about it. Bide a wee while,
doctor. A few minutes more will mak’ lile difference to ye.”
“Won’t they?” growled the doctor to himself. “It’s just those odd
wasted minutes at the day’s end, little fool, that break a man up, come
to reckon the total at a year’s end.”
But he waited with some show of patience, and listened to this woman
who had scarcely had an ache, or done a day’s hard work in all her life.
“’Tis this way, ye see, doctor. I’m not like folk who have cheerful
company about me all my time. When I sit by my lone self o’ nights,
I’ve allus the dread o’ fever for company, and I take it to my lone bed
wi’ me. What I want to know is this--suppose I passed a tramping-man
i’ the road, as I did awhile since, an’ suppose he looked as if he was
sickening, like, an’ suppose--”
The doctor cut her short “Now I catch your drift. You want to know how
long ’twill be before the mulberry spots come out,” he said, with a
cheerfulness that shocked Widow Lister. “Something between a week and a
fortnight; but I shouldn’t be troubled, Widow. Fever doesn’t take the
plump little women; it has overmuch respect for ’em.”
“Is that truth, doctor?”
“Ay, as true as that I’m due home for supper. Good night to you. She’ll
have another worrit before to-morrow’s ended,” he added, as he jogged
down the street. “There’s a use for the widow of course--there’s a use
for everything created--but it puzzles a man at times to find out what
’tis.”
At Ghyll the sleepy dusk had settled into slumber. The day had been
tired with its own heat, and the night was wearier still. Gaunt had
stretched himself on the long settle, after seeing the widow go up
to bed. He slept with that death-in-life which comes from sheer
exhaustion, and did not hear Mrs. Mathewson creep, like a thief, down
her own stair, did not know that the sneck of the door was lifted
quietly.
The widow passed up through the croft and into the moor. The new moon,
a sickle of silver-grey, lay over the rowan-tree. Mrs. Mathewson, from
old habit, curtseyed to it seven times, not knowing that she did so.
Then she sought the ghyll, and the stream that was too little and too
dry to be heard at all if the faintest breeze had stirred about the
heath.
Gaunt had wondered at the widow’s strength throughout the day. It was
well that he did not see her in her weakness now. All restraint was
gone, as she knelt by the grave that was not a day old as yet.
“Peggy, my lass! Peggy, ye’re all I have i’ this world. Reuben’s
staunch, I know, an’ I’m fond o’ the lad, but ’tis ye I want--’tis ye.”
The weakness of the strong, when at last they are compelled to yield to
it takes its own revenge. Mrs. Mathewson was bewildered, helpless. Then
a blind fury seized her, and she cried out on God because He had robbed
her, who had so little, of the one thing she prized. And then there
came a darkness, a reaching-out for help, such as Gaunt had known not
long ago at the gate of the croft.
After that a counterfeit of peace stole over her. She was on the
borderland between this world and another, and she seemed to reach
across and take the girl’s hands in her own.
“Ye’ve strayed, lile lass. Come away back wi’ me to Ghyll,” she said,
grasping the new hope. “Ah, now, ye’d come--surely ye’d come if your
old mother asked ye.”
Throughout the night she lay beside the grave, sleeping fitfully at
times, but oftener lying awake, listening to the trickle of the stream
and watching the Milky Way that streaked the sky with jewelled dust.
For these few hours she had let weakness have its way with her; but,
when the pink fingers of the dawn began to touch the hills, she rose.
Old habit taught her that the day was meant for work. She was dizzy;
her limbs trembled under her; grief had left her stricken in soul and
body. She must conquer the trouble, that was all, as she had done at
many a long-past dawn.
There had been no freshness, no movement of the breeze, through the
night hours; but now the moor seemed to breathe at last, as a little
wind got up and rustled lightly among the heather. Not the fingers
only, but the broad hands of the dawn were on the hills. The pink
lights had deepened into crimson, and stretched like beacon fires
across the eastern moor. The grey darkness receded from the dingles.
Out to the west, a sky of tenderest sapphire brushed the rough edges of
the heath.
Widow Mathewson, again from habit, halted to look at the glory of her
homeland. She scarcely knew that the well-known pageant was spread out
before her; but she gathered heart again, and went bravely down to
Ghyll. She walked with a man’s stride, a man’s straight back, and none
would have guessed that she was a broken woman, asking no more than to
keep her pride until the end.
Gaunt, too, was astir soon after dawn. He stepped out on tiptoe, glad
that the widow slept so long, and fearing to awaken her. They met in
the mistal-yard.
“Why, mother, I fancied you were sleeping,” said Reuben.
“Fancies are well enough for night-time, Reuben, but they don’t last
long after dawn. I stretched i’ my sleep, I did, an’ I saw th’ light
twinkling on the panes, an’ I bethought me like, that th’ farm work
needed looking to. So I stepped down an’ out.”
“You might have waked me.”
“Nay, ye were sleeping oversound. Mathewson was niver much of a man,
but even he was snappish when I wakened him from his sleep.”
It was in this way that she chose to meet the future. There would be no
more stolen vigils under the rowan-tree, no undermining of her courage.
With a sudden gust of feeling, she understood that Gaunt was the only
living hope she had to rest upon--and there was danger to him.
“Reuben,” she said gravely, “th’ long watch has begun. The days will
seem long i’ passing afore we know we’re safe.”
“We’ll weather them, never fear. Best not think of to-morrow at all,
but get on with our work.”
The widow glanced at him with keen scrutiny. “There’s a deal o’ sense
hidden somewhere about ye, Reuben. Seems ye’ve been feared to let it
peep out till now.”