CHAPTER V
GHYLL FARM was in the parish of Garth, but it lay so high on the moor-edge, and so far away from the sheltered village, that it was reckoned out of bounds. Moreover, Widow Mathewson, who lived there with her daughter Peggy, was accounted something of a heathen even in the charitable judgment of Garth folk.
These two, mother and daughter, lived alone at Ghyll, doing their own farm work—even to scything of the one small meadow when haytime came. They went never at all to church or chapel; they were distant in their greetings when they chanced at rare intervals to meet their neighbours; they were pagan, self-reliant and alone, and it was said that Peggy was wild as the widow, and never a stiver to choose between them.
Widow Mathewson was at her door this morning, watching the lambs play antics with their mothers in the fields below. Big-boned she was, and tall, and her face wore that lined, hard look of weather which women rarely show.
She ceased to watch the lambs by and by, and her eyes wandered to the track that led to Garth—the track that glistened like a living thing beneath the April sun. Far down the slope of the path a slight, dark speck appeared, growing each moment till it showed itself as a man’s figure. The man was walking fast, steep as the field-track was, and Widow Mathewson laughed quietly when he came near enough to show the eagerness of his every movement.
She left the doorway, and went and rested her arms on the rail that guarded the potato-patch from the fields. And she waited, with a look on her face such as David Blake had worn, three days ago, when he swore outright in the presence of daft-witted Billy.
The man was so full of his own thoughts that he did not see Widow Mathewson until the path had brought him to within a score of yards of her garden railing; and then, for shame’s sake, he had to come forward with a jauntiness that was obviously ill-assumed.
“I’m here to give you good day,” he said. “After five years, ’tis only neighbourly to call.”
“You’re here to see Peggy, and know it, Reuben Gaunt. We didn’t part such friends five years since that you need come trying to smooth me down with lies.”
Gaunt reddened, and flicked a hazel-switch uneasily against his riding-breeches.
“Lies go terrible smooth into a woman’s ear when she loves ye,” went on the other; “but they’re puffs o’ wind when she loathes the sight of a man.”
“I find a deal of pleasant home-coming welcomes,” said Gaunt, stung into bitterness.
“We’re not pleasant, ye see. Have to meet the weather, we, and rear the crops. You may be Mr. Reuben Gaunt of Marshlands, or you may be son to the devil that fathered ye—’tis all one to me. I like a man, or I don’t, and I never set eyes on one I liked less than ye.”
“I’ll be saying good morning, then,” said Reuben, with an uneasy laugh.
“Nay, but ye won’t—not just yet awhile. Ye came here to daften my lass Peggy again, so ye thought. Well, ye’re here, as it chances, to listen to sense from Peggy’s mother. It runs in our family, Reuben Gaunt, for the women to love undersized and weakly men. We’re overstrong,maybe, and must have some fretful babby or other to dandle, same as big men like to do. Peggy’s father was just such a one as you in his time, and I loved him. Ay, I cried when I buried him, and I cry still o’ nights sometimes when I wake and find an empty bed. Yet I looked down on him in life, Reuben Gaunt, as I look down on you. Queer oddments go to make up a woman.”
“That’s true, mother,” came Peggy’s low, rich voice. She had returned from a haphazard scramble on the moor, and had listened to half the talk with a simplicity that came of pagan habits.
“Go within doors, Peggy!” snapped her mother, turning sharply. “D’ye want to catch the plague, or what, that ye go breathing the same air as Reuben Gaunt?”
But Peggy did not move. Perhaps the closest bond between these two, strong mother and strong daughter, was the knowledge that they feared each other not at all.
“We’re made up of oddments, ye and me, mother. Ay, ’tis a good word, that. I happen to love Reuben Gaunt, as you loved father once—and ye’d better just leave us to it.”
Widow Mathewson smiled on them both—a smile that was bitter in its avowal of defeat, in its hapless faith that what would be, would be, and that the would-be must be bad.
“Sorrow along, Peggy,” she said. “If ye choose to strew your way with tears, ’tis not I that ought to blame you. Good night, Reuben Gaunt.”
The quiet dignity of her farewell troubled Gaunt more than all her previous outspokenness had done. He felt like a country clown in the presence of a lady, and he hated Widow Mathewson.
“Ah, well, now, mother’s hard on ye, and always was,”said Peggy, touching the man’s arm with a certain fierce tenderness.
He answered nothing, and Peggy went through the wicket, and moved slowly across the field, knowing that he would follow.
“You seem to think the same, from what you said just now,” he muttered, falling into step with her. He was minded to return in dudgeon by the path which had brought him up to Ghyll, but the girl’s pliable, trim look disarmed him.
“I said that I loved you, Reuben Gaunt. Whether I trust ye or not and am a fool for all my pains to love where I can’t place trust, is not for me to ask. Oh, pity of me!” Her shoulders opened to the wind, and she laughed at herself and him. “To have a mind to think with, Reuben, and to live near to the fresh air and the wind, and yet to let your heart go loving, spite of all. I’ve trained a few dogs in my time, Reuben. Wish I could give myself some wholesome thrashings, and be quit of you for good and all!”
Gaunt was no fool, just as he was no wise man. It seemed the wind had blown from the four quarters at one time when he was born into a usually steady world. He was no fool; and, though he smarted still from Widow Mathewson’s contempt, he was quick enough to see that Peggy had some special grievance of her own.
“What’s amiss, lass?” he asked.
“This much is amiss—that now and then I find myself in Garth, and now and then I hear gossip of Miss Good Intent. She’s bonnie and slim to look at, I own, and worth perhaps a score or two of you, Reuben; but I’m not concerned with what she is or what she’s not—I’ve no mind to share you with another.”
“What are they saying, then, in Garth?” He stoopedto pluck an early daisy, and Peggy’s mouth twitched with a sort of scornful humour. Reuben Gaunt was not wont to take a tender interest in wild flowers.
“They are saying,” she went on, “that you’re seen over-often with Priscilla Hirst; they say that you’ve a look on your face, when with her, that they remember from old days.Iremember it, for that matter.”
They had come to the little wood where water ran between the budding hazels, where catkins yielded to the fluttering wind. Reuben stopped, and put an arm about her waist, and the remembered look was in his eyes.
“Look ye, lass, and see if I am true or not,” he said.
Peggy laughed openly—it was her protest against this renewed, yet long discarded, half-belief in him. “Miss Good Intent has said no to you, eh?” she murmured, with that bewildering frankness which attached to her mother and herself. “Shame to come begging crumbs, when you wanted something better.”
She knew by his eyes that her guess was a true one, that he had come, inconstant as the wind, to find one playground when another was denied him. He was the same Reuben Gaunt who five years since had all but broken her courage and her heart. And, because he was the same, she felt the old love return, and let her reason go.
“Mother is vastly right at times, Reuben,” she said. “’Tis in our family to love a man o’er keenly, and to listen to his lies, and to go on caring all the more. There’s one thing puzzles me, all the same.”
He waited, perplexed as he often was by women’s moods, though by this time he ought to have known their every turn.
“Nay, only this, Reuben”—there was pathos in the quietness of the deep, strong voice—“I was young and unused to heartache when I found it first. I’m five yearsolder, lad, and I’ve suffered and come through it. Seems it has taught me little. Seems I might as well be weaker than ye, instead of stronger. ’Tis a bit of a muddle, Reuben, this life o’ wind and sun and turmoil.”
David the Smith, meanwhile, was walking up the lane to Good Intent. He did not need to watch Yeoman Hirst well out of Garth before he stole into the fold, for he was welcome there at all times.
A desperate business David had on hand. He had thought much of Priscilla of the Good Intent during these last days; and this meant only that he had halted more often in his work of smithying or what not to wonder how the lass would best be made happy.
It was while he was sharpening a bill-hook on the grindstone in his smithy-yard that David had got his adventure well in hand.
“Never thought of that before,” he said, running his thumb along the blade. “I’m a rum chap enough, God knows; but, if it comes to a tussle ’twixt me and Reuben Gaunt—well, I’m stronger in the thews than he, and maybe I’m what ye call steadier-like.”
So David, with plain faith in plain strength of stronger thews and steadier morals, laid down the bill-hook, and bade his faithful comrade, Billy, to sleep on guard; and he strode along the quiet street of Garth, and turned into the lane that led to Good Intent.
He found Priscilla in the kitchen, her arms bared above her elbows. She was making a pigeon pie for Farmer Hirst, and David thought, as he saw her in the sunlight, that no man need ask for a bonnier sight than Garth could give him.
“I’ve something to say to ye, Priscilla,” was his greeting.
David could never do any business save in his own way.If he were driving a stake into the ground, he took up his mallet and hit it plumb; if he were asked to shoe a horse, he did not stay for talk, but brought the nag to reason soon as he could and clapped the shoe on it. So now he proposed, in great simplicity, to deal with this more desperate business.
“Something to say?” laughed Cilla of the Good Intent. “’Tis not often you have that, David.”
He did not heed. If he had spoken out like this at that gloaming tide when Priscilla had first waited for him to speak, when Gaunt had shadowed the mistal-door, it might have been better, or worse, for David; but now it was too late. “The time of day was behind him,” as they say in Garth, but he did not heed.
“Yes, I’ve something to say,” he went on doggedly. “When you were a lile slip of a lass, and when you were maiden-grown and proud, Priscilla, I loved you just the same. I’m busy to-day, Cilla, but I broke off to ask if you would wed me. Could aught be plainer, now?”
The girl rested her hands on the table, and looked at David Blake. She was silent, for surprise had given way to deeper feelings. It had been easy to disdain Reuben Gaunt, when he came wooing at a few weeks’ end; but David’s love was a thing to be reckoned with, a big, protecting force which had been about her for so long that it seemed fixed and righteous as Sharprise Hill—a part of this gracious world of Garth, a part of the comeliness and peace which brooded over its grey old fells, its grey and fragrant street.
Priscilla of the Good Intent had little in common with Peggy Mathewson; but they were alike in this, that each looked out at life with candour and with little coquetry.
Cilla glanced with troubled eyes at David—glanced wistfully and anxiously.
“It cannot be, David; yet, if you asked me why, I could not tell you. I know you love me. I know that Garth would seem lone and empty if you were not in it. What ails me, David? Tell me, and I’ll right it if I can.”
But David the Smith knew nothing of such matters. He had made his last effort—a hard one—and looked for a plain answer, yes or no. Even yet, had he known how to come nearer to the girl, instead of standing, very big and very bashful as he swung from one foot to the other—even yet he might have scattered those fantastic mists which Reuben Gaunt had woven about Priscilla’s life.
“There’s no two ways, Priscilla,” he said slowly. “Either ye’ll have me and make life a different matter; or ye won’t, and I’ll trust ye to find a likelier mate.”
“I’m not for mating—father has need of me—oh, David, David, I’m so fond of you, so loth to hurt you. Cannot you understand? I’m fond of you, but ’tis not just love—’tis not just love, David!”
Her voice was trembling, and she fingered restlessly the loose scraps of dough that littered the baking-board.
David stood motionless. The boy’s look, that is in every lover’s face, was gone. Not till now—now, when he had greatly dared and greatly lost—did he fully know what stake he had in Cilla’s love; and his face was hard and stern.
“You were kind to hear me out, little lass,” he said at last. “Ay, ye were always kind and comely. And I’ve lost ye. Perhaps I may go on keeping watch and ward about ye, as I always did? ’Tis little I can do in that way, but I’ve always liked to think I was watch-dog, like, ever since as a child yewouldloiter round about the pool in Eller Beck, and I feared ye’d tumble in.”
“Ah, hush, David! You’ve been too good, and I am not strong enough for Garth. I dream too many dreams”—witha pitiful attempt to smile—“and I’ve lost the way of the love I might have had for you.”
“So you’re at Good Intent, David—and welcome!” shouted Yeoman Hirst, tramping in from the fields across the threshold of the sunlit doorway.
It was a jest in Garth that John Hirst, though no way deaf himself, fancied all other folk were so.
Priscilla dropped her eyes and took up the rolling-pin again.
“Thank ye,” said David, with a quietness that contrasted oddly with the other’s roar. “Ay, I’m here passing the time of day with Priscilla. I must be off by that token, for there’s work crying out for me at the forge yonder.”
“Always was, so long as I remember. Outrageous man to be doing somewhat, is David—fair outrageous. Tuts! Ye’ll stay for a bite and sup with us? Cilla has a pigeon pie in the making, I see. Always said, I, that a pigeon pie served two good usages—keeps a lile lass out of mischief while she’s making it, and keeps her men-folk strong to work for her after they have eaten it.”
David shook his head. “I’ve too much on hand, and thank ye, farmer. Will come another day, if ye’re so good as to think of naming it again. Good day, Priscilla.”
With a nod to them both he was off, and John Hirst chuckled weightily. “Fair gluttonous for labour, eh, Cilla?” he said. “David would do better if he took more while-times o’ rest, say I.”
Priscilla was busier with her task than the time of day demanded; and her father, getting no answer, came round to her side of the table, and pinched her cheek, and watched the dough of the pie-crust as she rolled it into shape—watched with the eye of faith, and trusted itwould be brown and wholesome by half-past twelve o’clock, or thereby.
“The lile lass is busy, too,” he laughed, in what was meant to be a gentle tone of raillery. “Busy with your hands, Cilla—and busy awhile since with your eyes, I reckon, when David came a-courting.”
She glanced up sharply, and again the farmer laughed, as if a half-gale had got into his throat. “Nay, I overheard nothing, Cilla,” he said. “I only looked at David’s face, and I gathered ye’d said no. Second thoughts are best, lile lass, second thoughts are best. Never saw a properer man than David myself, and I’m reckoned a judge of cattle.”
“Can you measure human-folk by the ways of the kine, father?” she said, fitting the dough to the edge of the pie-bowl.
“Mostly—ay, mostly, Cilla. Chips of the old gnarled tree o’ life, are all us living folk, two legged or four. Choose a likely lad, Cilla—and, for the Lord’s sake, get that pie into the oven. Have been up the fields since seven of the clock, and hunger’s timepiece says ’tis dinner-hour, or ought to be.”
John Hirst went out again, for he had a virile wisdom and a knowledge of the time to leave a woman when he had spoken truth to her.
David the Smith, meanwhile, had gone down the lane. He could never wed Priscilla now—for Yea and Nay seemed always absolute to him—but at least he had concealed his heart-sickness from Yeoman Hirst. So do the younger men think always, not understanding that with age there comes a clearer understanding of the passions which greybeards view as onlookers.
David was of the men who snatch their courage from the thick of despair, ride out with it, and count it the moreprecious because it is riddled through and through, like a banner well baptized by fire. So he held his head high, and swung staunchly down the lane.
Three usual folk he met as he came into Garth Street and crossed to his smithy. They noted nothing out of the common in his cheery greeting; but Billy, rousing himself from sleep beside the smithy fire, knew by instinct what his comrade’s humour was.
“You’re terrible gloomy, David the Smith,” he said, as he stretched his idle shoulders. “What’s amiss with us all, now spring’s come into Garth?”
“Life,” snapped David, and picked up his tools, abandoned for Priscilla’s sake. “Just life, Fool Billy, and I’d no real quarrel with life, that I know of, before to-day.”
“Comes of being wise,” said the other tranquilly. “Try being a Fool Billy—just try it, David, and lie in a hedge-bottom when ’tis seasonable, and hear the chirrup o’ the throstle. Begins to try his whistle, does throstle-boy, before the dawn comes rightly in.”
David fingered his tools. They steadied him at all times, and his patient love for them was returned in full, at this moment of his direst sorrow. He felt his heart grow lighter—less heavy, rather—as he handled them.
“Humming a tune, are you?” said Billy presently, with an approving nod. “Terrible fool’s trick, that, and comforting. Shows ye’re getting upsides wi’ yourself, as a body might say.”
“Getting upsides with myself?” growled David the Smith. “Have got to do, or what’s the use o’ life?”