David the Smith had chosen this same day of spring for his return to
Garth, though he had sent no word of his coming to Yeoman Hirst. He
remembered the boisterous good-will shown him when he left the old
haunts to cross overseas. Because he returned the same single-hearted
David who had loved Garth village from his babyhood, he was shy of such
another welcome at his home-coming. He would not take the mail from
Shepston, the mail which carried Gaunt and Cilla to their betrothal,
but walked instead.
He wanted to see the daffodils in bloom, in the crofts and the wayside
gardens that bordered the highroad. He wanted to be free of chatter,
and to feel his two legs carrying him, as a man’s legs should, between
the grey, remembered hills. He wanted, most of all, to find Cilla of
the Good Intent at home, and to tempt her--God’s pity on the man’s
brave simplicity--with tales of other lands.
At four of the afternoon he came to Garth, and shied, from old habit,
when Widow Lister pattered out to meet him.
“Glad to see ye again, David,” she said, coquetting, as she always did,
with a hale and well-to-look-at man. “Bless me, what a power o’ heat
there must be, yonder over Garth hills. Ye’re freckled and tanned,
David. ’Tis good to look at a face like yours; puts one i’ mind o’ sun
and hay harvest.”
“Oh, I’m well enough; but ’tis Garth for me, I reckon, till I’m taken
to the kirkyard, and may be afterwards.”
The widow’s face lengthened, from habit, into grave, forbidding lines.
“Afterwards is as ye’ve done i’ this life, David.”
“Yes,” said David, cheerily. “I’m content to rest on that standby,
Widow.”
She was silent for awhile, daunted by a strength that was rooted deeper
than her shallow soil would ever know.
“Your aunt Joanna has no such fear o’ the after life,” she said, with
sudden triumph. “She borrowed a tin kettle fro’ me, did Joanna, and she
forgot to return it, like, when she married into a heathen land.”
“Ay, she’s good at forgetting. But see ye, Widow, I didn’t come all
this way to talk o’ tin kettles. I came to see bonnie Garth, with her
face new-washed for spring and all the posies out i’ the garden-strips.”
With a good-humoured nod he moved on to Good Intent, and found the
yeoman leaning over the gate of the seven acre field, watching his
lambs with that peculiar air of leisure and detachment from all worry
which comes to farmers in and between the bustle of these warm,
full-blooded days of spring.
“Have your ewes done well, then?” asked David, as quietly as if he had
seen Hirst every day during the past months.
The yeoman turned with a start. “David! Now, ye startled me, I own. I
was just thinking o’ ye, and reckoning ’twould be all about time for ye
to be taking shipboard home; and then your voice came sudden-like; and
I fancied it must be your ghost, come to tell us you were drowned at
sea. There’s the daft fool I’ve grown, David, since you left Garth!”
“There’s not much ghost about me,” laughed David, as he gripped the
other’s hand with old-time strength.
“Well, no, if a grip like a pair o’ pincers be aught to go by. Stand
ye there, David, and let me take a square look at ye. I’ve never been
better pleased to see a man i’ my life.”
He walked around his friend, as if he were a specimen of farm stock
whose points he was anxious to appraise correctly. Then he gave a great
roar of approbation.
“Thought spring was treating me well when the ewes twinned so grandly,
and scarce a lamb lost; but there was better to come, ’twould seem.
David, ye’ll have to stay i’ Garth. ’Tis a different place without ye.”
David looked around him--at the pastures, full of the music of
lambing-time, at the rough-built walls that traced a grey, irregular
pattern across the green face of the land, at the spinneys and outlying
barns which were so many landmarks to remembrance. Then he leaned his
arms on the gate, and gave a quiet laugh.
“Oh, I’m here to stay,” he said. “The months have been years to me out
yonder. It will take a lot to ’tice me out o’ Strathgarth Dale again.”
“So what of all those traveller’s tales ye promised Cilla? I tell ye,
David, she looks for livelier doings than ever she saw at home.”
“Oh, I’ve tales enough, maybe. ’Tis a different life, but--”
“But naught so much to brag of?” put in Hirst “There! That’s just what
I always said.”
“The life’s well enough for those it suits, but it’s over-young for
me.” David picked up a straw and chewed it with a pleasant sense of
leisure. “’Tis this way, if I can get my tongue round a plain meaning.
I’m ready to do a day’s work with any man; but, when it’s done, I like
old things about me, th’ old grindstone at the corner, Widow Lister’s
bit of a garden-front, with its daisies, and London pride, and lile
clumps o’ primroses. I want to be near all that my father loved, and
his father afore him and back to Flodden Field, or near thereby. Out
yonder ’tis naught but looking forrard and hurrying. They’ll come to
our way o’ thinking by and by, when their roots have taken deeper hold;
and they’ll do more work i’ the year, though they tell ye otherwise.”
This was the David who had left the homeland. Unwavering in his love
for Strathgarth, quick to realize a new phase of life, yet slow to
accept it, he returned unspoiled, a little surer of his faith, if that
could be, in the righteousness of older lands and older way.
“Your aunt Joanna didn’t treat ye very well,” said Hirst, after one
of the pleasant silences that long ago had helped to make the two men
friends. “It puzzles me that ye bear no malice, like.”
“She’s as God made her, like all of us. There’s lile use in going
against handiwork o’ that sort. She asked me to go, and I went; and,
when she hadn’t a use for me, I came back.” He stooped to pick a fresh
straw, and again laughed gently. “’Tis as simple as falling out of a
tree, and no back reckonings either way, now I’m free to live i’ Garth
again.”
Hirst was not given to intuition. He thanked his Maker every Sabbath
for the past week’s mercies, and tended his flocks with cheery zeal
throughout the next six days; but insight into the hidden workings of a
man’s character was rare with him.
He looked at David now--David, whose eyes were blue and honest as the
sky that roved over the sloping fields, the rounded hills--and was
compelled to understand his comrade. He knew now why Cilla had liked
David well, but could not marry him. The “far” look in David’s eyes was
that which nature’s priests wear--the look that Billy the Fool carried
when he watched a pair of nesting throstles--the look of the folk who
are content to watch life’s business, and to help it forward whenever a
chance for kindliness meets them at the road corner.
Again the friendly silence fell between them. David returned to mother
earth again, and his voice had a wholesome snap in it. “What is Gaunt
o’ Marshlands doing these days? Running still to waste like water?”
“Well, no. He’s found running water has its uses in a thin-soil
country, and is tilling his lands with it instead.”
“Gaunt tilling his lands? Cuckoo’s eggs will be hatching throstles
next.”
“I thought you said folk were as God made ’em,” said Hirst, with a
touch of sharpness.
“Aye, but Gaunt’s as he made himself. I can’t abide the man, and never
could.”
So Hirst, to his own surprise, found himself defending Reuben. He spoke
warmly of his fearlessness at Ghyll, of his plucky fight to win back
a good name for his house. Not until met by this dogged opposition of
David’s, had the yeoman guessed how well he had grown to like Gaunt.
“Let bygones be bygones,” he finished. “’Tis not like ye, David, to
keep up a grudge like this.”
“No, ’tis not like me, and I never felt it for another man; and I won’t
say I’m proud o’ the feeling. But there it is, and there it will have
to bide a while longer, seeing I can’t get rid on’t.”
Hirst, like a wise man, guessed that Cilla was the cause of the
ill-feeling, and talked no more of Reuben. He chatted of Garth’s doings
through the winter, led David on to talk of his adventures; but all
the while he noted a growing restlessness in his companion. David kept
glancing down toward the farm, then up at the pastures, as if in great
fear or hope of some intrusion.
“No, she’s not at home,” said Hirst, with a sly roar of laughter. “The
lile lass is faring out at Keta’s Well.”
David looked shyly at the yeoman, surprised that his secret had
been guessed so easily. Then a great loneliness took hold of him,
an instinct of trouble and foreboding. He had come straight to Good
Intent, not pausing even for a visit to his forge; and there had been
one picture in his mind. He would find Cilla, wearing the lilac gown,
at the farm. He would see a new light in her eyes after the long
absence and the unexpected return. He would find readier speech than of
old.
“I’ve travelled so far,” he said, more to himself than to Hirst; “and
she’s a stay-at-home most days o’ the year, and I fancied she’d be
about the place just this one day.”
“Oh, tuts! She’ll be back i’ a few hours’ time, David. No need to go
thinking the end o’ the world is coming because a lass is doing some
bits o’ business for her father.”
Hirst, with all his cheeriness, was ill at ease. He knew that this
man’s dream would not come true; he felt that a hint in time would be
kindly, and yet he shrank from giving pain. In his indecision he turned
slowly down the croft, and David followed him.
“Why, that’s Cilla’s voice!” cried the yeoman, halting suddenly. “She’s
home before her time; and how she’s managed it beats me, for the mail
isn’t due for an hour yet.”
And David watched the white highway below, where it came out of the
shelter of the trees and curved past Good Intent. He felt sick and
helpless.
Then he saw her, for the first time in the months that had seemed years
in passing. Gaunt and she stepped into the road, as if they owned it
and the whole, round world besides. She was wearing the lilac gown, but
it had not been donned for David the Smith. They passed out of sight
toward the porch of Good Intent; and, because they were looking at each
other, they did not see the two men in the croft above.
“Well, you’ve got your wish,” said Hirst, bewildered by the misery in
David’s face, and trying still to believe in his old creed that all
would yet go well with everybody. “We’ll step down, David, lad, and
Cilla shall give you tea of her own brewing, and--”
“Thank ye,” said David heavily, “but I’ll be getting down to the forge.
That’s where my heart will have to bide from now on, and I might as
well make a beginning.”
The yeoman watched him go. “Oh, bless me,” he muttered ruefully, “I do
like to see things go right for all. Pity I hadn’t two lile Cillas,
i’stead o’ one, if David’s bent on breaking his heart like any raw
young lad.”
A busy hum sounded from the forge as David neared it. Not many weeks
ago the fire-glow had lain across the road, a crimson splash on the
white April snow; now it fought for mastery with the clear, hot
sunlight. David lifted his head when he heard the rhythmical song of
the bellows, as an old fox-hound rouses himself when music of the pack
sounds down the wind. The blow had fallen on him mercilessly; but
already he felt heartened a little, a very little, by the sturdy light
of the forge. He stepped to the doorway, and looked in. Dan Foster’s
lad was working the bellows, and Billy was playing at smithy work.
David watched the man’s muscles tighten and relax, relax and tighten,
as he plied his hammer; and an off thought came to him that the world’s
work would be better done if more folk played as Billy did.
Billy paused at last to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and turned,
and saw David standing in the doorway. There was no surprise in his
face. He was content to play through the long winter, until the
swallows came to build their nests again in Garth. He knew they would
return, and waited patiently; for Billy, as all Garth knew, “was not
wise.”
“First o’ the swallows came yesterday, David,” he said, “and blessed if
ye haven’t followed, quick as ye could scramble. ’Tis good to see ye
both.”
David was sore at heart. If he had been a woman, he would have leaned
against the smithy wall and sobbed himself into a makeshift peace. As
it was, he sought about for some trivial help in need. He found the
help in that quiet, persistent thought of others which, perhaps, had
lost him Cilla; the wise were apt to think him dull.
He took a pouch from his pocket, and handed it to Billy. When the black
clay pipe was charged, he passed a match across. It pleased him to see
Billy light it tranquilly upon the anvil, pleased him to watch the slow
wreaths of smoke curl among the rafters.
“Your ’baccy always smoked a lile thought sweeter than other folk’s,”
said Billy.
In some muddled way, David understood that the welcome he had looked
for, here in Garth, came from this massive, tranquil man whose power
of speech was hindered. The warm air of the forge, the smell of it,
soothed the fierce pain of David’s loss.
Billy the Fool laughed unexpectedly; it was his privilege. He had
caught sight of Dan Foster’s lad, standing idle by the bellows with a
look of wonderment about his cherry-red face.
“A queer lad, he,” said Billy. “He’s been working ever since you left,
he has, while this same fool has had all the fun. ’Tis a terrible
pranksome matter, this hammering horseshoes into shape. Ye take a bit
o’ hard iron, and it says it will no way budge, however hard ye hit it;
and ye say it shall budge; and then it gets into a fearful rage, and
spits at ye with its lile, red sparks; and ye go on hammering, just for
frolic, like, till bless me, if there hasn’t a horseshoe grown out o’
yond same bit of iron, like a sycamore-leaf fro’ the bud.”
The smith had lit his own pipe, and was listening with something of
the old content to Billy’s familiar line of thought. All the fool’s
interest in life, trace it deep enough, centred round growth of some
kind. It might be growth of the plants under sheltered banks, that
caught the first footsteps of the spring, which claimed attention from
him; it might be the mother-work of birds when they hatched their eggs
in the many nests he over-watched, or the whitening of the pastures
when ewes began to drop their lambs; it might be the forging of an iron
rail, or the building of a wall; but the instinct at the root of all
his pleasures was growth. Untrammelled, as no other man in Garth was,
by the frets and small indignities of daily life, Billy had learned
insight into the deeper truths. He could write no verses, nor wished
to; but he moved through the quiet village life, for all that, a great
poet, not of his own dales only, but of the world.
David’s nature was akin to his in many ways, and at times such as
this, when Billy let his heart peep out and showed why toil was play
to him, the smith was apt to feel a touch of awe, as if he listened to
a greater than himself who was talking of eternal verities. The next
moment Billy would lose his high, abstracted look, and would return to
some foolish detail of the world about him. He did so now.
“I’ve your money all ready for ye, David,” he said, going to the far
corner of the smithy and reaching down a small, square box from the
shelf. “Made the box myself, soon as ever ye left Garth, and made a
slit, I did, big enough for money to go through, but not for fingers.
Te-he, David! Not for fingers, I reckon.”
David was puzzled as the other jingled the coins as he crossed the
floor, and placed his money-box in the smith’s hands. “What is all
this, Billy?” he asked.
“Play money,” said the fool impassively. “Ye see, David, I’ve no more
use for coins than for pebbles i’ a stream, so I saved ’em up against
your home-coming. Charged terrible high prices, I, for shoeing a horse;
and folk laughed, and they paid it, they did, because ’twas only Fool
Billy; and there’ll be a right proper nest-egg ready for ye, David.”
The tears were in David’s eyes at last. He had gone on a wasted errand
to another land, and had returned empty of thanks and pocket; he had
come cheerily home, ready to start afresh with strong hands and a clean
conscience as his only capital, and had encountered Widow Lister and
her anxiety touching a tin kettle borrowed years ago. He had looked
down from Hirst’s croft at a strip of sunlit highroad, and had seen a
pair of lovers, full of spring’s tender insolence and right-of-way.
All had slipped from under his feet, all save Billy the Fool, whose
pleasure, like his own, was to give--always to give, asking no return,
claiming only a pipeful of tobacco at the day’s end, and a tranquil
smoke over the morrow’s gifts to other folk.
David passed a hand across his eyes, and moved to the anvil, and took
up the hammer. “Ye can run home, lile lad,” he said, turning to Dan
Foster’s lad. “Stay, here’s a sixpence for ye to spend on yourself.
Billy, ’tis work and play again, as i’ the old days. Just bend your
back to the bellows.”
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.