CHAPTER VI
RUMOUR was not less busy in Garth than elsewhere where folk congregate, and Reuben Gaunt gave food for it these days. His rules of conduct, or the lack of them, were a constant puzzle; his wish to play the gentleman, when by rights he should have been a yeoman, and proud of the same, perplexed them; moreover, he could be brave and generous on occasion, and this fitted ill with their notions of a scamp.
Ne’er-do-wells, pure and simple, they could understand. There were two or three of the breed in Garth, but these consistently were idle at the best, and in dire mischief at the worst.
Gaunt was a puzzle to them, and therefore a whetstone for their tongues. Then, too, he was fond of horses, and master of them; fond of dogs, and knowledgeable as regards their ways; and these were qualities that Garth village liked to see in any man.
Just now, indeed, it was his love of horseflesh that was talked of most in Garth. They said that his patrimony was rich, as a farming yeoman counted riches, but not enough to let him hand over the direction of his lands to a bailiff—as he had already done—while he himself rode idly up and down the countryside, or followed race-meetings.
“Galloping to the devil, eh, as many a lad has done before him,” one would say to the other.
“Ay. Seems like as a horse is the best thing God evermade—barring a good human-chap at his best,” the other would answer; “yet a horse is the devil and all when ye get a man o’er-fond of him.”
Another whisper was abroad in Garth, one remote altogether from bankruptcy or horseflesh. They said that Priscilla of the Good Intent was not herself of late, that Reuben Gaunt was seen too often in her company.
“Too good for the likes of you—eh, Silas Faweather?” one would say.
“Aye, a mile and a half too good; but what’s to come has got to come, and lasses are mostly fools i’ the springtime of their life. Not just such fools, I take it, come later times, when the fairies’ pranks are over with, and bairns arrive, like, and a sackless husband still runs daft-wit, following what he calls his pleasure.”
Cilla of the Good Intent knew her own mind as little, this mid April time, as Gaunt himself. The man’s plausible, deft homage when he met her; his seeming forgetfulness of the day when he had wanted her to marry him, and she had answered with a laugh; his low, quiet voice as he talked of glamoured countries far away—all these were fast making Reuben the centre of her thoughts. She missed him if he failed to come, though she might draw aloof and set a barrier between them when he did approach her.
Yet David the Smith was about Garth Street each day, and his nearness, though she did not guess as much, steadied Priscilla. Beneath all else there was an assured and pleasant liking for David, a dependence on his judgment, a looking-out for him, as if her eyes needed shading against the glare of life, when troubles came too thickly on her. For this reason she seemed nowadays to play with Reuben Gaunt, though she was wondering only what her own heart had to say to her.
News seldom travelled from Ghyll Farm to Garth. The house lay so far up on the border of the moor, and Widow Mathewson had discouraged intercourse so long, that you might have travelled through the village, and asked by the way for news of those at Ghyll, and yet have learned no tidings at the end of all. Had the widow been ill, or Peggy dying, days might well have passed before they knew in Garth what had chanced at the lone and churlish farmstead. So they guessed nothing nowadays of Reuben’s new infatuation for Peggy Mathewson; had they guessed it, Cilla of the Good Intent would have had a whisper, kindly and wholesome, dropped into her ear.
She heard no rumour, would have disdained rumour had she heard it. Clean of thought and heart, Priscilla wondered if she loved Reuben Gaunt just well enough to marry him. She never questioned his good faith. It was hers to say no or yes—spoiled little queen of the little village as she was—and she asked herself, over and over again, with Puritan self-question, if this light of the glamoured lands were not a will-o’-the-wisp such as danced across the upland marshes. When she saw David, and spoke with him, it was sure that marshlights flickered about her fancied love for Gaunt. Then Reuben would come, soft of speech and pliable, and David would seem a big and country lad upon the sudden.
Spring, meanwhile, flushed into splendour round about the gardens of Garth Street, and in the woods, and along the length of mossy lane-banks. A foam of green-stuff feathered the larches and the rowans, the dog-rose bushes and the blackthorns. The low, sequestered dingle hiding Eller Beck was banked so thick with primroses on either side that it seemed a thousand golden eyes looked up, winking the dew away, when farm-folk went through the dene at blithe of the dawning-time.
The weather held, with playful showers that were like a child’s tears, gusty and soon over. Seldom in the memory of Garth had the pomp and circumstance of the young summer proceeded with so few mischances. There had been no sudden snow to hinder the lambs new-dropped about the pastures; there had been no frost o’ nights; and the throstles sang their clarion note as if no winter’s wind had ever piped a harsher tune about the grey fell-village.
At eight of one of these spring mornings—the wind light from the south, and the sun playing bo-peep with fleecy clouds—Priscilla of the Good Intent stood waiting under the elm tree which long ago had given its name to the village inn. She had been fitful lately in her temper, and Yeoman Hirst, thinking a day’s holiday would be “good for the lile lass,” had asked her to carry out some farming business for him at Keta’s Well, high up the valley.
So Cilla waited, a trim and slender figure, near the old elm tree. The public vehicle by which the Dales folk went from Shepston to Keta’s Well—a vehicle half coach, half omnibus—halted here to take up passengers. The coach was overdue, as it happened, and while she waited, Priscilla saw Reuben Gaunt ride down the street.
Reuben saw her, too, but pretended that his mare was fidgeting upon the rein. He pulled her sharply back at the entry to the stable-yard, plucked her forward again, and disappeared.
“He does not see me,” murmured Priscilla of the Good Intent. “Light to come and light to go, is Reuben Gaunt, they say—but surely—”
Gaunt had found the ostler in the inn-yard. “Dick,” he said, “has the coach gone by?”
“Not yet, sir. She’s late this morning, like, and that’s rare for Will the Driver.”
“Put the nag in the stable, Dick, and look well afterher. I had forgotten that the coach went up this hour to Keta’s Well. Better drive than ride, eh, when there’s a long way to travel?”
“Well, that’s true. Better be carried than suit your knee-grip to a horse’s whimsies,” laughed the other, turning his straw from the left to the right side of his mouth.
Reuben strolled out into the highway. Not slow at any time, he had guessed, seeing Priscilla standing under the old elm with a basket in her hands, that she was waiting for the coach; and, though awhile since he had been sure that he meant to ride to a pigeon-match three miles away, he was certain now that he must go to Keta’s Well.
“Good day, Priscilla,” he said, with quiet surprise.
“Good day,” she answered, the wild-rose coming to her cheeks. “You did not see me, Mr. Gaunt, when you rode into the inn-yard.”
The ready lie came to Reuben’s tongue. Like water slipping down between the ferny streamways of the hills, he sought only the quiet pools—sought them at any hazard of the rocks that met his course.
“I feared I had lost the coach, Priscilla, and was riding hard to catch it.”
The wild-rose crimsoned into June in Cilla’s face. “Are you going, too, to Keta’s Well?” she asked.
“I’ve business there. And you?”
“I’ve business, too. Father is busy in the fields, and has asked me to do some bargaining for him up yonder.”
“You’re too bonnie and slim-to-see for bargaining, Cilla,” said Reuben.
“Am I?” she laughed, with frank disdain of flattery. “I can bargain well, Mr. Gaunt, when needs must. Ask father.”
The irony of life rose up and laughed at her, in themidst of this hearty springtime weather. If ever she had needed a hard heart and a clear knowledge of what barter meant, she needed them now. She had a great gift to bestow, or to withhold—the gift which lies in the hand of every woman once in a lifetime—and yet the spring, and Gaunt’s whimsical, gay air, bewildered all her judgment.
“You always flout me nowadays, Cilla,” he said.
Gaunt was strangely like the dogs he loved so well. Careless of the past, careless of the future, he longed always for the instant pleasure, and, if he were thwarted, assumed a helpless face of innocence. It seemed that the sense of guilt was left out of him at birth; thwartings by the way surprised him, when another man would have admitted that he got no more than his deserts.
Priscilla of the Good Intent, also, was strangely like herself this morning. She remembered that her father, and all the men-folk of Garth, were hard on Reuben. She looked at his devil-may-care and pleading face, and decided impulsively that they were wrong.
“I do not flout you willingly,” she answered, her candid eyes looking straight into Reuben’s own. “They are not fair to you in Garth here, and I am sorry.”
Across their talk came the patter of horse-hoofs, and the coach swung merrily round the corner and stopped with a flourish at the inn-door.
“Good morning, Miss Priscilla!” said Will the Driver, lifting his whip with a brave salute. Cilla of the Good Intent was his favourite passenger, and he had seen her, with the quick eye of friendship, as soon as he had turned the corner.
He got down to help the ostler with the buckets; for his team of three were mettled horses, and Garth was the baiting-stage on their journey up to Keta’s Well, and Willwould never admit that the business could be rightly done unless he bore a hand in it himself.
There were seats for eight at the top of the coach, but Reuben Gaunt, though all were empty this morning, did not choose to sit beside the driver. He handed Priscilla, by way of the yellow-painted wheel, into the rearmost seat and clambered up beside her.
“Not on horseback this morning, Mr. Gaunt?” said the driver, who had a word for every one and knew each dalesman’s habits.
“No, there’s good in changing, Will,” laughed the other, “if ’tis only out of one coat into another. A fine spring morning, this, for sitting on a seat instead of on the top of a horse’s temper.”
“Ay, my cattle, too, are feeling young Spring come back into their bones. Terrible wild to handle this morning, Mr. Gaunt. You’ll soon be up at Keta’s Well, I fancy.” He gathered the reins into his hands, looked round with a cheery nod to the knot of idlers gathered about the inn, and was starting forward when Widow Lister ran crying down the highroad.
“Here, Will! Nay, lad, you surely wouldn’t have gone and left my bit of a basket behind?”
“How was I to know you were coming?” said Will, pulling up and surveying the woman’s apple-red face—a face brimming over just now with jollity.
“Should’st have guessed,” she went on briskly. “And me a lone widow, too—and to have run myself all out o’ breath at my age, just to catch a young man who does naught for his living save sit on a seat and let himself be carried.”
A placid titter went up from the onlookers.
“Right!” cried Will the Driver. “Hand up your basket, Widow! Where must I set it down?”
“There! Not to guess a simple matter like that! Ye’ve to leave it at the first stile on your right after you’ve passed through Rakesgill. Mrs. Fletcher it’s for, and she’s wiser than you were a minute since, Will, for she knows it’s coming. Oh, and Will,” she added, her red cheeks dimpling with roguery, “it goes from one poor body to another, does this bit of a basket, and happen ye wouldn’t charge for it at either end.”
“Wouldn’t I?” said Will. “Want me to take it as my own private baggage, eh?”
“There’s only some roots of double-daisy in it, and a few plants of auricula, and a little, round Garth cheese. Mrs. Fletcher’s fond, as you might say, of flowers and cheese; ’tis all by way of a present to another lone widow woman—and she my own sister.”
“Some folk thrive on loneliness, ’twould seem,” laughed Will, putting the basket under the seat. “All right, Widow! I’ll leave it on the stile, and we’ll trust to Robin Goodfellow to pay.”
He started forward, got his team into the straight, then turned round to Cilla. “By your leave, Miss Priscilla, there’s some of your sex have longish tongues. I’m proud of being to time, and here we’ve wasted five whole minutes. No man likes bringing cattle home in a lather, but these beauties will have to go.”
“They’ll stand it, Will,” said Gaunt. “Never met a man myself who could better get a horse into shape and keep it so.”
Will the Driver showed what his team could do. Like a true dalesman, he was proud of his own trade, and Gaunt had found a sure way to his ear. Between the white and sunlit limestone walls they swung, and between hedgerows where the bird-cherry showed its glossy leaves. Little, tinkling streams flew by them; and, up above the roadwayhedges or the roadway walls, the clean, sweet fells raked forward to the blue and fleecy sky.
To Priscilla it was a journey into the outskirts of that Beyond which tempted and enthralled her. The sunshine, the quick going of the coach, the deft, quiet interest which her companion aroused—all helped to round off this adventure into the heart of spring. They stopped at Rakesgill, to set down the scanty mail and a few odd packages, and to take up a passenger on the box seat. As at Garth, the villagers had met to see the mail-coach in, and Cilla watched the group, and listened to their banter, with a sense that the freshness of the growing year was blowing round their old-time jests.
Widow Fletcher was waiting at the stile—the first on their right hand as they trotted out of Rakesgill—and it was plain, from her red, plump cheeks and her cheery air, that she was own sister to Widow Lister of Garth.
“Nothing to pay?” she asked, as she took the basket into her hands.
“No. Widows thrive well in these parts, and wear the luck of the rowan-berry in their cheeks,” said Will, flicking his whip.
“Comes of losing men-folk’s company, Will—though thank ye for the basket.”
“Men-folk are always wrong, ’twould seem, Widow Fletcher. Came of listening to a woman in those far-off Bible-times.”
“Ay, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve’s been blaming Adam ever since. So we’re quits, Driver Will.”
“Tongues are longer than time,” said Will, with a happy laugh. “I’ve naught to do with Eve and Adam, Widow, but I have to be at Keta’s Well come twelve o’clock.”
“Like a man,” said the widow to herself, as she watched the coach go swiftly in the van of the light, smooth Aprildust. “Like a man, to be worsted by a lone widow’s tongue, and then to flick his horses up and drive away.”
The driver checked his team again, a mile further up the road, to take another parcel from underneath the roomy driving-seat. This he laid on the top of a gate that opened on a farm-track.
“Only a ham for farmer Joyce, Miss Priscilla,” he said, with the trick he had of laughing over his shoulder at passengers behind. “Seems he’s not just hungry, yet, or he’d be here for it.”
“Mr. Gaunt,” said Cilla, as they rattled forward, “it is odd that you should be going to Keta’s Well to-day. I go so seldom, and you would be riding, surely, if you were not lazy?”
“You want to know my business there?”
“No. Why should I need to know it? Perhaps you are going to buy another horse.”
“I’ll tell you my business on the way home, Cilla, because then I’ll know whether it is speeding well or not.”
Cilla’s eyes rested lightly on his, then danced away to the grey, far hills. The girl was a madcap this morning, and deserved to be; for she had many working days, but enjoyed few spendthrift days of holiday, with a green world and warm spring winds about her.
“As you will,” she answered. “For my part, I have father’s work to do.”
With a flourish, as if he carried great personages—Will was never so happy as when driving Cilla of the Good Intent—the coach drew up at Keta’s Well. There was an inn on the left hand of the grey, wide roadway, another on the right, and the two were so friendly, as it chanced, that Will baited and took his dinner at either hostelry upon alternate days.
Priscilla took Gaunt’s hand daintily, and clambered down into the roadway.
“We say good-by here?” she murmured, with a shy flush.
“Yes,” he answered, “until Will is ready to drive us home again.”
“Yet ’tis only a good walk to Garth for one as strong as you.”
“I am lazy to-day, Cilla, as you told me. You go on your business, I on mine. Remember that the mail goes back at five o’clock.”
The men all said it was a devil’s trick of Gaunt’s to know just when to stay and when to leave; the women, most of them, found the trick praiseworthy; and Reuben, had you asked him, would have laughed, like the man-child he was, and have said that he deserved neither praise nor blame, since he was as the good God had made him. At any rate, he had judged wisely now in guessing that Priscilla would shrink from sharing a meal with him.
Priscilla of the Good Intent dined sparingly at the inn on the left hand of the road, where the landlady mothered her always after a brisk, impersonal fashion. Reuben dined at leisure in the right-hand inn, and sauntered out a half-hour after Cilla—punctilious always, even in the midst of a holiday, when business was to be done—had crossed the street and walked up into the grey bridle-way that sought the fell-top farms.
When Gaunt came out at last, he wandered up the fields. He had found business here at Keta’s Well, and his business was to think of Priscilla and to long for her. He saw the rathe-ripe primroses shine out at him from sheltered dingles, and he gathered a likely bunch. They were cool and fragrant, and he thought again of Cilla. The larks sang overhead, and the sad, wild curlews shrilledwide about the fields their song of destiny. And now from a watered hollow, as he passed it, a heron clattered noisily from among the trees; and again, as he looked up some dancing streamway, a kingfisher would dart, with a flash of blue that startled him, across the sunlight; and everywhere upon the hills the sheep were bleating happily, calling the lambs to the udders.
Few dalesmen could have withstood a day which seemed to hold, in the hollow of the quiet sky’s arch, all that was lusty, and good to hear and see, and sweet to smell. This was the land’s answer to those who said that her winter-time was bleak and bitter; and out from some forgotten Eden the west wind seemed to blow.
Reuben Gaunt withstood few pleasures at any time, and now he swung completely into friendship with this land which no remembrance of other countries could ever belittle to him. He felt again the throb of boyhood, of boyhood’s keen, unspoiled delights. Good impulses rose and carried healing with them. For this one day he was a good man in his own eyes, and that boded ill for Priscilla, who was going sedately about her business, moving from farm to farm with a lightness and a happy zest in holidaying which suggested something of the kingfisher.
Gaunt roved the fells, the primitive, strong motherhood of nature crying constantly to him from the pastured slopes, where big and little dots of white against the green showed fine sheep-harvests for the farmer-folk. His heart was big and clean—for this one day—and he thought of Cilla, and she seemed the brave, sweet symbol of this vale of Garth.
He thought, too, of Peggy Mathewson, living wide yonder of Garth village and likely wanting him beside her at this moment. He shook the thought away, and pridedhimself, God help him, on finding the better man in himself to-day.
Another thought he had—repentance for his sins—and this boded ill again for Cilla of the Good Intent. Repentance heretofore, with Reuben, had been a bird that laid her eggs in another’s nest, and left her young to turn out the foster-mother’s offspring.
The larks were shrilling about him. A peewit circled, dropped, and fell, not five yards from him as he stood motionless in dreamland; the bird looked shyly once at him, then dropped her plumed head and went on feeding placidly. So still the man was that a lamb, new-born and guileless, came bleating to inquire what manner of thing he was; and the old ewe-mother ran, forgetting that by nature she was timid, and butted Reuben with a quiet, yet warlike pressure.
He woke from his dream, and gave the ewe a playful kick. “Look to your own married life,” he laughed, “as I am hoping to look to mine before the year is out.”
He glanced at the sun, and guessed that it was after four. Repentance and memory of Peggy Mathewson slipped from him. He strode down the fields; and, short-statured as he was, and slight of build, he carried a look of bigness with him. It was Reuben’s holiday, as it was Priscilla’s. The sun shone on him, just or unjust, and he stood apart from himself and his past, and felt that the good love and the strong love were his to ask and take.
Priscilla, waiting for the coach, and just five minutes before her time, as her wont was, was surprised by Gaunt’s straight, forthright air as he crossed the street of Keta’s Well. She had never seen him in the light with which this witching day of April glamoured all the land. Every man was better than he guessed to-day, and every womancomelier; and down the breeze played Puck the Sprite, laughing at all wayfarers as he laid the cobwebs on their eyes.
“How has your business sped, Cilla?” asked Reuben, lucky as he always was in being five minutes before his time, instead of five minutes after.
“Well,” she answered, lifting the eyes of truth to his. “And yours?”
“Well, also, Cilla. I have found what I came to Keta’s Well to seek.”
They plighted their troth—neither altogether understanding the long glance—there in the grey road of Keta’s Well. Reuben’s eyes caught honesty from Cilla’s, and she thought the mirror truthful; and, by and by, Will the Driver came thundering down the road.
“Up to time, in spite of women’s tongues,” he laughed, pulling up his team. “Lord help us drivers, Miss Priscilla, for we suffer much from women’s tongues. Widow Fletcher will be waiting for me, too, on the homeward road, if I know her, for ’tis her twice-a-day time to crack talk with Will the Driver.”
Gaunt spoke little on the homeward journey, and Priscilla was strangely silent, too. Passengers climbed up into the coach, or scrambled down, but these two heeded little of what went on about them. There were stoppages, at this hamlet and at that, to take up the mails which Will stuffed into the sack that grew bulkier and bulkier as they went along. From hill-top farmsteads lasses ran down, bareheaded and cleanly outlined against the background of the fells, to give Will another letter for his sack, or another parcel to be hidden underneath the box seat. All was life and movement on the Garth highroad, but two who travelled on it were thinking altogether of each other.
“I gathered these primrose blooms for you, Cilla,” said Reuben, breaking one of their long silences.
“Was that your business, then, in Keta’s Well?” The girl’s laugh was low and happy.
“Yes.”
She glanced at him with that wild-bird look which her father had noted and distrusted weeks ago. Then she looked out again at the fell-tops and the pastures, which swung past on either hand in wide half-circles. The magical, blue sunset-time was spreading light fingers already about the hills and dimpled fields.
Gaunt did not know himself. Good thoughts came to him like a mystery as deep as this veil of evening that was clothing all the land. For this one day he loved Priscilla as a better man might do; he lacked only the courage to be true to another, at any hazard of his present happiness. For Reuben Gaunt had never learned, or had never cared to learn, that honesty is ever and ever like the tight, grey walls of Garth valley—foundationed well, well built, and proof against the winds of winter-tide. He loved Priscilla; that was all; and good love, for the moment, was his pleasure.
“Ah, I guessed I should see you here, Widow Fletcher,” the driver’s voice broke in. “What can I do for you this time, in a littlish way?”
The plump-cheeked woman was standing at the gate as if she had never left it since the morning. She was laughing, too, as if her face had kept its dimples all the day—a guess that came near to truth.
“Nay, I only want you to take the basket back. Lone widows are lone widows, aren’t they, Will?”
“Aye, and there’s a plague of them about, ’twould seem. They swarm like bees in June about this road to Garth. Terrible pranksome cattle, widows andhorses, and terrible hard to deal with,” retorted the driver.
“We’re lonely, Will, though. Widows are always sorrowful and lonely. You’re thinking of charging for the carry of this basket home to Garth? Men-folk were always selfish.”
Will laughed, as Priscilla’s father might have laughed, giving innocent villagers the notion that thunder was springing from a clear and fleecy sky.
“I’m selfish this way, Widow Fletcher—that I’ve only a minute more to waste in talk. Hand up your basket. ’Tis just another trifle to the load.”
Mrs. Fletcher let the team start forward, after giving the basket into safe keeping; then ran down the road with an agility surprising for her years.
“Will! Will the Driver!” she called.
He pulled up with a sort of weary haste. “Ay?” he asked over his shoulder.
“You’ll be passing here to-morrow? Well, you might just call at Mason’s little shop in Garth and bring me a half-pound of tea. There’s number three painted on the canister, Will—but Mason will know the number, if you say ’tis for me. Poor widows need their comforts in this life, and tea soothes a body, like.”
Will started forward in earnest this time, and addressed the empty road in front of him, where the leafing hedge on the right hand was casting plumper shadows than it had thrown since last its twigs were bare.
“Runs in the family,” he said, flicking an early fly from the leader’s back. “Widow Fletcher here, and Widow Lister yonder at Garth—they always want you to do something for them, and always ask you to do it after you’ve fairly started. There’s a trade in widowdom up hereabouts, I fancy. Gee-up, Captain, will ye?” he brokeoff, touching the leader more sharply with his whip. “You were born of the male kind, Captain, and so was I, and we’ve got to make up for lost time ’twixt here and Garth.”
“Cilla, shall we get down this side of the village?” said Gaunt suddenly. “We’re nearing Willow Beck Bar, and ’tis summerlike for a saunter home by the fields.”
Priscilla looked again at the fells, and smelt the sweet of the breeze as it passed her. It was three miles from the grey little toll-house to Good Intent, and there was a suggestion of mystery and adventure in this finish to a holiday.
“Why, yes,” she answered simply, “I’ve seven packages with me, but Will will see that they get safe to Good Intent.”
They got down at the squat, quiet toll-bar, with its windows fronting, like a bee’s eyes, on all sides of its face. They went through the gate together, and Will the Driver watched them for a moment as they turned into the path that followed the slight stream’s course.
“See her parcels safely ’livered at Good Intent?” he said to himself. “Would do more for the lile lass, I. Pity she seems so friendly-like with Mr. Gaunt. Should keep to dogs and horses, Mr. Gaunt—he understands ’em. Now, Captain,willyou know I’m late on the road, and trust to you to make the whole team work?”