There’s no resisting Strathgarth Dale when her true spring arrives.
She has many ambushes, many a sportive deceit, between winter and
the breaking of the leaf-buds. It will please her mood to let
woodbine leaf in March, to throw a wealth of saffron sunlight into
sheltered corners of the fields, so that a man may sit and bask, and
tell himself--knowing it a pleasant self-deceit, if he be bred in
Strathgarth--that spring this year is coming early and is staying late.
The next day a northwest gale will bring sleet and snow with it. And so
through April--and half of May, perhaps--the weather teases folk, till
their tempers grow brittle, and they hint darkly that it is a fool’s
job to go on living in such bleak lands.
Then suddenly the real spring comes, and the warm, keen joy of it,
the eagerness of nesting birds and growing green-stuff, sweep memory
of the winter’s bitterness away. It is spring and summer in one, this
wonder-season that takes hold of Strathgarth Dale. The cattle, from
sheer lust of life and liberty, throw foolish heads abroad and chase
each other up and down the primrose pastures. Stern men unbend, and
frail people grow frolicsome. It is sure, at this season of the leafing
trees, that there’s no place else in which to live save the long dale
of Garth.
On one of these days Gaunt walked up to Ghyll Farm. All up the fields
the cowslips curtsied to him, or primroses ventured maidish glances
from their nooks. The larks rose high, and sang of courage and
well-being. The plovers moved sedately, two by two, about the fields,
and pretended, each pair of them, that the world did not know them at
sight for nesting mates. A score of unconsidered flowers were budding
eagerly.
Reuben found Widow Mathewson at the gate of the croft, as if she looked
for him.
“I somehow fancied ye’d come, Reuben,” she said, with as pleasant a
glance of trust and welcome as though she were forty years younger, and
he a lover bustling up with spring glamour in his eyes.
“Well, it was this way, mother. You told me your man was to be off
for a day’s holiday, and I thought there might be an odd job here and
there--”
“Just so,” put in the other, with a quiet laugh of content. “That’s why
I knew ye’d be stepping up the fields.”
There was a good deal to be done, as it chanced, and it was evening
before all was finished. After they had supped together, Mrs. Mathewson
led Reuben out into the croft and turned toward the moor.
“We might as well enjoy the cool o’ the day, now we’ve earned it,” she
said.
Reuben glanced at her inquiringly. Her voice was gentler than he had
known it; her shrewd grey eyes were soft and kindly as they met his
own. It seemed that spring had touched her weather-beaten life with
fingers light and tender.
She was taking the track to Peggy’s grave, for all that; and Gaunt
wondered why she chose just this one way to-night.
“Oh, I laugh often at you folk who live smothered down in the valley
yonder,” said the widow, turning for a glance at the dipping moor,
the green pastures, the hills whose jagged tops were ruddy with the
afterglow. “When ’tis cold, ye’re colder than us; when ’tis hot, ye’ve
never a breath o’ clean moor-air to cool ye. I’d have died o’ my
troubles long since, Reuben, if it hadn’t been for the moor.”
With curious tenderness, she pointed out to him the landmarks, and
named them all. Behind that spur of hill lay Dene hamlet. Just under
the pole-star, showing bright green-blue in a strip of sky, stood the
little farm where she had lived as a lass when Mathewson came courting
her. The points of the compass were so many guides to memory--to
memory, which is all the old folk have to warm them when spring calls
up the pastures and demands an answer to his insolent, young note.
She almost forgot her errand, in this love she had for the moor and
the encircling hills. There was a story to tell of Heyward’s lass,
who lived just where the pine wood showed dark below them in the
evening light; of Daft Will, who lived under Sharprise yonder, and
was the wildest and friendliest squire who ever rode the Strathgarth
bridle-ways; of Bachelor Royd, who always said that he’d never cared
to buy a wife by flattery, because pigs were easier come by and more
profitable at the cost of open bargain in the market.
And then she turned to him, still with the smile that smoothed out
so many furrows from her tired old face. “All this is old wives’
talk!” she said. “I was allus a lile bit daft, like poor Peggy, but it
heartens me to talk now and again o’ days gone by. Maybe they’d their
own share o’ crosses an’ whimsies, yond old times, but they have a
trick o’ smelling sweeter than the new days, Reuben.”
She grew silent when they reached the glen, but the peace did not
leave her face. It was a pleasant bed, she felt, they had made for
Peggy here, now that the snow and the east wind had gone, and the
stream was free to sing its litanies. The rowan was in its first leaf,
rippling under the least touch of the breeze; from the moor came the
strong, eager scent of ling and greening bilberry; above them the
stars showed one by one, while all along the western rises a wisp of
afterglow lay like a saffron mantle over the sleepy hill-tops.
“Reuben,” she said by and by, “I want to talk to ye, and I fancied
we could best find words up here. Ye’ll need a mistress soon for
Marshlands.”
Well as Gaunt knew her liking for abrupt, plain speech, he was
startled. His thoughts had been all of the past year’s heedlessness and
tragedy; he could not rid himself of the figure that seemed to stand
beside the grave--a radiant ghost, with gipsy eyes and straight, lithe
figure, and a crimson kerchief knotted at the breast. There was no
looking forward, here where the wind and the sky were quiet, and the
still moor watched its dead.
“Nay, not that look, Reuben!” said Mrs. Mathewson, laying a gentle hand
on his arm. “I never was one for back reckonings. It’s all well enough,
while the grief’s on ye, to look behind; but there comes a time to look
forward.”
“It was only last autumn she died, mother.”
“Just so, but there’s been fire and torment for ye in between--oh, I
know, Reuben!--and the clock ticks very slow at such times. Would ye
listen once in a way while I talk to ye? There’s decency i’ grief; and,
after that, there’s a man’s need to look at the track ahead. We’re here
for this world’s business, Reuben, till we die.”
He was looking at her with a puzzled question in his eyes, as if she
had roused him from some nightmare and was telling him that the light
of day was sweeping through the windows of his prison.
“After that,” went on the other, “well, Peggy’s wiser than me by now,
for I’ve no notion o’ what happens afterward. We live on, I reckon;
though Mathewson, being fond o’ sleep at all times, would have it that
we never wake up again. I used to tell him that I came of a wiry stock,
and knew we were meant, like, to live on--in some sort o’ heaven,
maybe, seeing what a lot o’ t’ other place we get i’ this life.”
There was something clean and vigorous, like a wind from the heath,
in this woman’s outlook on the life that had harassed her, on the
life that was to come. If her faith lay deep and hard to find, her
fearlessness and honesty had in them the same massive power that
underlay Billy’s oddities.
Unconsciously Gaunt yielded to her mood. He had spent himself
generously to serve this late-found mother, and it was her turn now to
stretch a helping hand to him.
Out of the quiet night, the fragrant moor, there came a quickened sense
of motherhood to the woman. Spring leads the younger folk down paths
where the valleys shelter primroses and nesting throstles; it leads
the old to the higher tracks where the sky and the moor-winds talk of
abnegation.
“Reuben, my lad,” she said, her harsh voice softened to the lilt of
the heather-breeze, “Reuben, ye’re too full o’ life to live lonely for
Peggy’s sake. There’s Marshlands, too. Have ye never thought that ye
needed a son to follow you? Of course you have!”
“Yes,” Reuben answered gravely. “Yes, I had thought of that.”
“Why, Mathewson was a weakly man enough, but he never did forgive me
for bringing a lile lass into the world, instead of a lad; and I
always sort o’ respected him for it, somehow. Stands to sense, Reuben;
it’s the man’s way to want a boy or two, to carry the old name and
the old house on. It’s i’ the blood, and it goes deeper than any
kiss-i’-the-coppice love o’ women. Oh, I’m old, and I know, and I’m
telling ye!” she finished, relapsing into her favourite phrase.
There was pluck in this quiet persuasiveness of the widow’s. She had
been bitterly jealous on Peggy’s behalf, though her girl was long past
all feeling of the kind. It had hurt her when now and then she had seen
Gaunt and Cilla together in Garth Street, or in the fields, and had
read their secret more plainly than they did themselves. Only by hard
endeavour, by grasping her love for Reuben, and bringing her sturdy
common sense to bear upon his welfare, had she found courage for this
talk at Peggy’s graveside.
“Besides,” she added, after a silence, “it was always Miss Good
Intent.” For the first time a touch of the old bitterness was in her
voice. “What did I tell ye long ago, Reuben? Ye need a ladyish mistress
for Marshlands, ’specially now ye’re bringing the place into its old
shape again. I’ll not complain, lad; and, as for Peggy, she lies very
quiet and willun’t speak a word.”
“We must wait, mother, wait and see what happens afterwards,” said
Reuben gravely. “We’ll not talk of it to-night.”
The bitterness left her, and she came nearer and laid a hand on his
arm. “Life doesn’t wait. ’Tis only death can spare time for that. Just
tell yourself old scores are settled handsomely, Reuben, and find
yourself a mate.”
The starshine and the silence of the moor wrapped the two of them
about. The fever-heat of August, the misery and fear, were softened,
till they seemed, to Gaunt, if not to the widow, part of a tragedy
much further off in point of time.
A peewit came straying down the moor, and wheeled and cried about the
rowan-tree.
“Hark ye,” said Mrs. Mathewson, “there’s Peggy’s parson come to say a
prayer or two above her. He’s constant, like, yond bird; she had him
so tame, ye’ll mind, that he’d eat from her hand, and he never went
south this winter, like most of his mates. He just comes drifting down
each night, like a lost bairn seeking home, and says his prayers,
and then goes lap-winging up the moor again. There, we’ll be getting
home, Reuben. ’Tis a grand night for two together, if they happen to
be springtime-young; but ye’re tired of an old woman’s chatter by this
time.”
When they reached the porch, Gaunt stooped and kissed her awkwardly.
Such tokens were rare between them, and his feeling was always one of
shyness, as if he feared reproof.
“You’ve been kind to me to-night, mother,” he said.
“Well, I’ve a right to be. Take a breath o’ common sense down fro’ the
moor to the valley lands, and quit thinking o’ last year’s nests. Good
night, Reuben. I’m fancying lile Miss Cilla will not choose so far wide
o’ the mark, after all.”
She stood at the porch-door long after he had gone. She was jealous no
longer on Peggy’s behalf. A great weariness had come to her--tiredness
of all things under this warm, soft sky, with its stars and its silent
peace. She had paid her debt to Gaunt. Her knowledge of all he had done
for her, when none but he came up to help her through the fever-time,
had stood to Widow Mathewson as a debt, and she had always had a liking
for meeting creditors.
Peggy lay under the rowan, with the quiet of the lapwing’s evensong
above her. Reuben was striding down the fields, lusty and long to live.
But this woman, standing at the porch, was empty of all courage.
“Spring blows warm to the young,” was her thought. “’Tis only right it
should--but what of the old, sapless folk?”
She sighed, and laughed at herself the next moment, and answered her
own question.
“Not so sapless, after all,” she said, in her brisk, tart voice as she
turned indoors. “There’s a farm to look after, and a lazy farm-lad to
get up betimes to-morrow’s morn.”
Gaunt, meanwhile, had got down the fields as far as the foot-bridge
that decides a man whether he shall cross to Garth, or turn to the
right and seek the road which leads Marshlands way. Gaunt chose the
left-hand track, over the slender arch of stone.
“I’ll go by way o’ Garth,” he said to himself. “The longest way round
is pleasant on a night like this.”
The longest way round led him past Good Intent, and a big voice sounded
from the porch as he neared it.
“Ye’ll have a rare fine day for your journey, Cilla,” Hirst was saying,
taking all the parish into his confidence, though he thought his tone
subdued. “I never saw a likelier sundown.”
Gaunt stopped. A senseless lover’s dread had seized him. Cilla going
a journey? Had his hopes been all so much idleness? A journey meant
travelling overseas, surely--and David was in Canada--and there had
always been a friendship between them.
“Yes, father,” he heard Cilla answer. “You always did say I had luck o’
the weather when I took a journey.”
Gaunt moved forward. The girl’s tone was so quietly happy that he
was sure now of his hasty guess. David was on his way home, so he had
understood; but perhaps he had changed his mind at the last moment, had
found a profitable farm out yonder, and Cilla was going out to him. He
remembered her longing, a year ago, to see what lay beyond Garth hills;
it was bitter to recall how eagerly he had prompted her restlessness,
had talked of other countries until at last he caught her fancy. And
now she was going out to marry David, and it would be the slow-going
smith who showed her the strange lands.
The dim, white roads seemed to be slipping away from under Gaunt’s
feet. He no longer wished to stay for a chat at Good Intent; his one
desire was to get away with his misery, and conquer it as best he might.
The yeoman checked him. He and Cilla were sitting on the stone bench
just inside the porch, as they had sat for the last hour. It was dusk
along the highway, but the porch was darker still, and Hirst, looking
out from its shelter, could not mistake the figure striding by so
quickly.
“What have we done, then, Mr. Gaunt that you’re i’ such a hurry to get
past the door?” roared Hirst.
Gaunt laughed, with a constraint that puzzled Cilla. “Well, I’ve called
so often lately that I fancied my welcome might be overstayed.”
“Hear him, Cilla! As though every man in the dales didn’t know our
ways. There’s two sort o’ folk, Mr. Gaunt. One sort would never set
foot on my doorstep, if I could help it. T’ other sort can come dawn,
or dusk, or middle day, and as often as they please. Now, step forrard,
Cilla; we’ve been idling i’ the dark here long enough. Light up
indoors, lass, and stir the peats, and set a couple o’ glasses out.”
When they followed Cilla in, and stood in the lamp-glow, Reuben looked
across at her. “You are going a journey to-morrow?” he asked abruptly.
She did not meet his glance, but stooped to play with the kitten on the
hearth. He saw the delicate colour come and go across her cheeks, as
it did always when her feelings were touched in any way; and again he
guessed that David was the cause.
“Yes. I am going--to Keta’s Well,” she finished unexpectedly.
One little, upward look she gave him, then went on playing with the
kitten. The glance was so full of question, so quiet and yet so near
to roguishness, that it bewildered Gaunt. Gradually he felt the ground
grow firm under his feet again, as he realized that it was not David,
after all, who had tempted her to make a journey. And suddenly he
laughed.
“Well, now, durned if I know why you’re laughing,” said Hirst.
“Cilla tells ye she’s going up to Keta’s Well, as she goes every
spring, to do a few lile oddments o’ business for me; and ye seem to
fancy it a jest.”
“So it is,” said Reuben, “the best I’ve heard for many a day. It
was the notion of Miss Cilla doing business for ye that tickled me,
somehow,” he added hurriedly, seeing the yeoman’s half puzzled, half
quizzical glance at him.
“’Tis spring has gone to your head, my lad. That’s what ’tis. I was
like that myself when I was your age. I could laugh at th’ first idle
thought, or at none at all, soon as ever I heard the cock-throstle
whistling to the hen-bird, or saw the first o’ the green dappling every
hedgerow. Eh, lad,” he broke off, reaching for his pipe, “I’d swop my
time o’ life for yours, if you’d let me. But, then, ye wouldn’t. Ye’re
no fool, eh?”
When Reuben said good night, no whisper passed between Cilla and
himself; but she set out the old, mended lilac frock before she got to
bed, and smoothed the folds as if it were a living thing, dear to her
from old acquaintance. In her heart she knew that Gaunt would see it on
the morrow.
The dawn, when it came cool and fragrant through her open window, found
Cilla half awake already. She had dreamed of Ghyll Farm, of fever and
penance and disaster; it was good to wake to this clean, real life that
called to her from out-of-doors.
She did her work about the house, gave Yeoman Hirst his breakfast, then
went up to don the lilac gown.
“Too bonnie to be good,” said Widow Lister, as she watched Cilla pass
her door a half-hour later. “When we’re made for sorrow, and should be
humble-like i’ face o’ death to come, ’tis tempting Providence to wear
such a becoming shade o’ lilac.”
Cilla went down the street, radiant, like the spring, with some
happiness that came from within. She was eager, buoyant, and she moved
along the grey, old highroad like some tall fairy who had forgotten
that the world was tired and humdrum.
Will the Driver came rattling up to the Elm Tree Inn with his team of
three, and greeted Cilla with the pleasant air of welcome that she
commanded at all times.
“Bless me, but ye’ve a trick o’ tempting spring out from frosty
corners,” he laughed. “Ye’ll be for Keta’s Well? I always did say
there’s one day o’ spring that’s better than the rest, and that’s when
I carry Miss Good Intent for a passenger.”
In the midst of the bustle attending Garth’s busiest moment of the
day, while mail-bags were being exchanged, with the gravity befitting
an affair of Her Majesty’s, while parcels were being handed up and
down between Will and the chattering knot of folk, Reuben Gaunt came
swinging down the street.
Last year he had ridden in; but to-day he was on foot, and he clambered
up to the empty seat at Cilla’s side as if it were reserved for him.
She turned shyly to him as soon as Garth was left behind and the white,
sunlit riband of the highway stretched in front of them. “You--you did
not say last night that you had business, too, at Keta’s Well.”
“The same business that brought me here a year ago,” he answered
soberly. “There’s some property I want to own--”
Cilla was looking ahead and his tone misled her. “Surely you have
property enough? Marshlands, father always says, is just the right
size--big enough to keep a man busy all day and every day, and small
enough to walk around it when he finds an idle morning.”
“Well, yes. ’Tis a case of Naboth’s vineyard, maybe. At any rate, I
shall never care much for Marshlands, unless I get this other property
to round it off.”
Something in his tone made her glance quickly at him, and it was
hard to believe that a year of upward struggle lay between the old
Reuben and the new. His face was full of boyish mischief. He looked
as if he had known never a care in the world, but had lived always in
this warmth of the spendthrift, teeming spring. She understood him
better in that moment, understood how easy it had been to name him
“running-water,” because they had given him never a chance, until last
year, of proving his mettle. He had proved himself, once for all, and
now was a boy again until the next summons came.
Cilla let her own mood run with his. She knew his meaning now, and
would not look at him, and could not trust herself to speak, but
the white road, and the green, homely pastures, and the birds that
fluttered up the hedge-sides in front of the rattling coach, led out,
she knew, to the enchanted lands “beyond Garth hills.” They lay nearer
home, these lands, than Cilla of the Good Intent had guessed.
They were passing Widow Fletcher’s now, and Will the Driver turned in
his seat as they went by.
“Am having a holiday, I, Mr. Gaunt,” he laughed. “I won’t say I’m glad,
for it wouldn’t be seemly; and I can’t say I’m grieved, for it wouldn’t
be true; but the widow, she broke an ankle in trying to catch me up a
week ago, just when I’d dodged her for once. Widows are trials, I own,
and maybe t’ other lile woman at Garth--her sister--may be laid by for
awhile with a sprain, or a touch o’ rheumatiz, or what not. There’s
always hope, as the fox said, when he was leaving his tail in the
keeper’s trap.”
Gaunt laughed in answer, and passed the banter which was true coinage
here on the open highway; but Cilla, stealing a glance at him, saw that
the grave look had returned. He was thinking of a widow up at Ghyll
yonder, who had met life from another, and a braver standpoint.
She, too, felt that a chill had touched the warmth and glamour of this
drive to Keta’s Well, as if the breeze had shifted suddenly from west
to east. She remembered the pool where Mrs. Mathewson and she had met
while rescuing sheep from April snow, recalled the struggle between
Reuben and Billy, and the widow’s tale of what had happened long ago at
Marshlands. The tale had recurred to her many times during these past
weeks, and with it a distrust of Reuben against which she struggled
loyally.
“What are ye thinking of?” he asked, breaking a long silence.
Cilla knew that this distrust would lie between them always, if she did
not answer frankly. She was glad he had given her so plain an opening.
Hard as it was to speak, it would be harder afterwards, if she let the
chance go by; and Cilla was never one to let the bigger evil come, for
lack of courage to meet the lesser.
“I was thinking of Billy, and a story I did not want to hear. Reuben,
why do you always pass poor Billy as if he were nothing to you?”
“He gives me little chance to do anything else,” said Gaunt, reddening
as he met the quiet, questioning glance that would not be denied. “He
hates me for some reason.”
“Perhaps he knows--it is hard to tell what the poor lad understands,
behind all that foolishness of his--perhaps he knows he’s your
half-brother, and that you’ve denied it time and time again. ’Tis your
denial troubles me.”
Cilla could be merciless when there was need to reach the truth. She
would not let his glance waver; she compelled him to be honest.
“Cilla,” he said at last. “I _had_ to deny it. I’ll own to my own shame
at any time, but not to my father’s. He may have been this or that, my
father; but I’ll lie any day to keep what good name I can for him.”
Will the Driver turned again, and pointed up the fells with his whip.
“You always liked to see the deer, Miss Cilla,” he broke in. The wind
of his own fast driving had carried their talk behind him, and he did
not know how welcome was the interruption. “They’re browsing yonder
near the fell-tops, just to the right o’ the spinney; d’ye see them?”
Cilla sought for the brown specks, far up the pastures that stepped
boldly to the sky. These specks of brown stood for the pride of bygone
overlords of Strathgarth, in the days when their deer forest stretched
out from Shepston to Keta’s Well, and a league or two beyond. And Will,
whose forefolk, like himself, had lived within the limits of Garth’s
hills, was proud of their diminished forest’s splendour.
“The old stag’s fair riotous, so the keeper tells me,” went on Will.
“He’s tame as a cushat the rest o’ the year, and will feed fro’ your
hand; but soon as ever spring comes in, bless me, and saving your
presence, Miss Cilla, he’s the devil and all with his nasty temper.
Gee-up, Captain! We’re late,” he added, laying a gentle lash across the
leader. “We’re always late, what with this constant plague o’ widows on
the road.”
Cilla leaned forward, her face between her hands, and watched the road
slip past the hedgerows. This man beside her, of all men in the world,
had humbled her. He had gone willingly into a house of fever; he, the
acknowledged wastrel of the parish, had put his back into the work
of making Marshlands what it should be, and had changed the stubborn
outlook of his neighbours from dislike to growing friendliness. That
was much; but the confession she had wrung from him meant more to this
girl whose sense of honour was clean and dainty as an April day. The
father had done ill with his own life, and with his son’s; yet Reuben
had striven to keep what starveling flowers he could in bloom about the
old man’s grave.
Gaunt waited till she chose to break the silence. He had learned
patience last August, as he had learned strength, while he waited on
the sun-scorched uplands to know if Peggy o’ Mathewson’s would live
or die. He had learned further patience while nursing a half-ruined
property into new health.
Suddenly Cilla turned to him, and his heart beat faster than ever it
had done while winning the great race at Linsall Fair. All that the
spring day held of tenderness, of trust and hope and love of life for
living’s sake, seemed gathered into Cilla’s glance. He had won his
biggest race of all.
“We’ll get down here, Will,” he said by and by, as they neared the old
green lane that led back to Garth.
“Thought ye were bound for Keta’s Well,” said the driver, with the
dalesman’s frank curiosity.
“So we were; but we’ve changed our minds.” Gaunt’s laugh was a boy’s
again. He seemed not to care how soon all Strathgarth knew the meaning
of the glance that Cilla had given him. “You’ve forgotten the old
saying, Will; folk are free to change their minds i’ the spring, like
the weather.”
Cilla did not question, but took his hand and slipped lightly to the
highway. At another time her father’s business up at Keta’s Well would
have been all-important; but to-day she had forgotten it.
“Humph!” muttered Will, as he drove forward between the lusty
hedgerows. “Just a year since last I carried the lile fools as far as
Keta’s Well. ’Tis a long while, seeing a babby could have told the two
o’ them what ailed them. Well, I’m not complaining. If Miss Good Intent
is half as bonnie wedded as she is single, there’s none of us need
grumble. Gee-up, Captain! Her Majesty will put up with a lot, but she
gets terrible cross if we’re late with her mails. Gee-up, lad, or shall
I make ye?”
Gaunt had opened the gate, and Cilla and he were loitering down the
lane which once had been the highway, but which now was grazed by sheep
and cattle. There was a curious privacy about this abandoned road,
a charm which haunts neglected thoroughfares. The raking fells lay
white against the sky on one hand; on the other lambs bleated to their
mothers in the sheltered hollows. The birds could not be quiet, and a
happy din went up into the sunshine and the warmth. The lark sang “like
as if he’d burst his lile throat all to pieces,” as Billy put it, and
the throstle piped, high and clear, as if he meant to be obeyed, and
the curlews were dipping and wailing, wailing and dipping, with their
note of everlasting sorrow.
A hare got up from under their feet. A squirrel peeped at them from the
bough of a leafing sycamore. Men had been busy once along this green,
neglected lane; and the fret of their tired feet had passed, and the
mother of us all had chosen this for her quiet house, where birds might
nest, and flowers could bloom, and men’s insolence was hidden out of
sight.
If ever two folk were given the one right day and the one right place
for wooing, Gaunt and Cilla were favoured now. The peace of the lane,
the eagerness of all the teeming life about them, the very fell-tops,
pointing with white fingers to the blue and happy sky, seemed made for
them; and Cilla was proving once again the truth of the Garth saying
that “Miss Good Intent could always have the Queen’s weather for the
asking.”
A year ago they had trodden the same lane as boy and girl, had kissed,
and fancied life held nothing better. They had seen life face to face
since then, had lived through long, ugly days that seemed too sordid
for romance; yet here was the glamour, walking step by step with them,
a glamour that was built, not on the sands of fancy, but on foundations
sure as those of the sturdy hills about them. Gaunt turned to look at
Cilla. She was dainty in her lilac frock. Any man, passing her, would
have halted for a second glance at this lass whom Strathgarth summers
had treated kindly, whom Strathgarth winters had given a reliance
unknown to folk bred amid softer climates. He scarcely knew the face
of which he had dreamed of nights; its peace, and its tender, eager
beauty, were borrowed from all that lay beyond Garth hills, and from
all that lay within them.
They came to the bend of the lane where last year they had met Peggy o’
Mathewson’s, and Cilla halted for a moment.
“Poor Peggy,” she murmured, generous and warm of sympathy as this day
of spring that set the world to rights.
“It was never meant to be,” said Reuben, with no assurance in his tone,
but rather like a child who gropes helplessly for the answer to a
riddle.
And Cilla smiled through her tears. “My dear, it was never meant to be.
Reuben, there’s a lile bird singing at my heart. I can’t mistake the
song.”
“No wonder they called it Fairy’s Lane,” said Reuben. “I used to laugh
at the notion once.”