CHAPTER VII
THEY followed the winding stream-track, Gaunt and Cilla of the Good Intent. And now it was that the day, receding in the west, grew beautiful as it had never been at height of noon. Strange purples shadowed all the distant fells, while near at hand the pasture-fields moved in green, tranquil softness to the heath above.
“You are quiet, Cilla,” said the other by and by.
“Quiet? I was listening to the curlews.”
Not the words, but the girl’s low, passionate voice told what the curlews meant to her. Now, when the silences crept, dumb of feet, all down the furrows of the land, it was the curlews only that were loud. Wide about Sharprise Hill they called, and along the raking backs of Hilda Fell, and across and over the ordered lines of grey walls, green fields, and scanty woods that were Garth Valley. They would not let folks rest, but went crying, crying, fretting, fretting, while Sharprise wore his ruddy sunset-mantle, and Garth Crag, away to the east, was donning her grey night-cap.
Garth folk, when they are compelled to be far away from home, remember always how the curlews fret and cry about the fells. The sob in the bird’s call—the sadness that begins so quietly, and afterwards goes shuddering out across the gloaming’s stillness—they are the interpreters of music, sad enough, but understood and loved. In the daytime, complaining of the sheep; near dusk, the curlew’s melancholy; folk who have known and heardthese things will lie o’ nights amid the welter of the tropics, and call the clear sounds back to mind. Reuben Gaunt, random as he was, had done the same, and Cilla’s earnestness came home to him to-night.
“They’re sad birds, though, when all is said,” he answered.
“Sad? Ay, and so is life, or was meant to be, if we could only see it so.”
Priscilla—whether the curlews had caused her this dismay, or not—felt restless, ill at ease, as if the light of some great truth were coming to her, and her eyes were unprepared for it.
“Now, listen, lile lass!” said Gaunt. He was helping her to cross a strip of marshy field, and his grasp tightened on her arm. “Suppose life was meant just otherwise? Suppose there was love of a man for a maid, and the lark singing up to the sun?”
The candour in her eyes bewildered Reuben for a moment, as she freed herself and sprang lightly to the drier ground, and stood facing him, her hands clasped in front of her.
“Yes, if itwerelove, Reuben.” She was no longer proud, or self-secure. It was rather as if she reached out in search of guidance, feeling the throb of new, quick impulses, as if she asked Gaunt to tell her, out of his riper wisdom, whether it were good or ill to follow these same impulses.
There was flattery in this to Reuben. He felt big, protective, and again he yielded to a half-truth—that Cilla had shown him the good way of love.
“Lile lass,” he said—and Garth Valley knows no softer endearment than those words—“lile lass, must I be asking you again and again to marry me? Cilla, I love you, and I could house you well.”
She thrust her clasped hands outward, as if to ward off an evil thought. “What does the house matter, Reuben?” she said, with another gust of that passion which few suspected in Cilla of the Good Intent. “D’ye think I would wed for house and gear? I’m asking, Reuben, whether love is going to sit on the hearthstone and keep it warm—if love is going to sit at meat with us—”
“Try, and see, Cilla,” he broke in quietly.
More magical, and still more magical, the gloaming deepened over the patient fields. Sharprise Hill was a clear-cut wedge of purple now, pointing up into an amber sky, and Hilda Fell showed as a dark blue, jagged line, with a tuft of crimson cloud lying over it like the tattered banner of day’s defeated armies. Low and roving wide, deep and tremulous, the curlew’s voice went round and about the pastures, telling, it seemed to-night, that two human-folk were drifting on life’s glamour-tide, telling, too, of the mysteries, the tumult, and the pains which lay ahead.
They had been silent, awed by the kindred silence of the eventide, the subtle uproar of the curlews, awed by the gift that had come to each of them. On the sudden Reuben Gaunt set his arms about the girl, and drew her to him; and Cilla of the Good Intent, not knowing why, lay there and did not heed. And then again, not knowing why, she stood away, and her face was pitiful to see, because she tried to check her sobs.
“Why, lile lass, you’re crying!” cried Gaunt, awakening from his happiness.
At all times brave, at all times candid as the sky, Priscilla checked her tears, but not the sobs just yet. “I was never kissed before—and, Reuben—all my pride is gone.”
Gaunt laughed openly. He would never learn how likea child was Cilla, how like a braver woman, too, than he deserved.
“Because I ask to wed you, Cilla?”
“Because the old life is gone, and I fear the new one. I was never one to fear—yet now—Reuben, you’ll be kind and true? I can never give my heart at twice.”
“Don’t ask you to, lile lass,” he answered cheerily. “Once is good enough for me, seeing you’ve chosen Reuben Gaunt.”
Another silence fell on them, broken only by the low complaining of the curlews. Then Cilla, smiling and sobbing both, looked Reuben in the face again.
“It should be no time to be afraid? Tell me again ’tis happiness.”
“To our lives’ end,” said Gaunt, and meant it at the moment.
They were nearing the track to Good Intent, and their footsteps lagged. The Beyond, which Cilla had thought to lie out and away behind the fells, had come to Garth, it seemed, to-night; for each detail of this homely land she knew from childhood took on a warm, new aspect. This was her first love-time, and life held unsuspected melodies.
“Cilla,” whispered Gaunt, “you’re making a new man of me. You—”
He halted in his speech, and the girl, had she glanced at him, would have seen perplexity and helpless anger in his face; but she was looking ahead with dreamy eyes—looking so far ahead that she scarcely saw the strapping lass, limber and well-featured, who was coming up the stream-track.
Gaunt had seen her, though, and was asking himself why Peggy Mathewson had chosen this one hour for a saunter up the waterside. As they drew near his anger changed to fear; for Peggy was apt to be outspoken, andmight ruin with a word this new and better life which, to his fancy, opened out before him.
Banned by Garth village as she was, there was no man in it who could say that this lass from Dene Farm was anything but comely; more than one, indeed, had sought her company, in a diffident and non-committal way, to the anger of their womenfolk. Yet Peggy had never shown her beauty to the full, as she did now in the moment of her tribulation. She had seen Gaunt before he was aware that she was near, and had needed no second glance to convince her that a lover and his lass came wandering down the stream; and, having lived a country life, she knew that there was no way of dealing with a nettle save to grasp it. For that reason she straightened her firm, tall body—which had drooped a little because, until she turned the bend of the stream, she had been thinking kindly thoughts of Reuben—and she moved up the stream as if she were over-lady of Garth Valley.
To Gaunt’s surprise she took no heed of him, but stayed to pass the time of day with Cilla.
“Spring’s here at last, after the long winter,” she said, in the rich voice that even now moved Reuben.
“Here at last, Peggy,” answered Priscilla, who banned no one, child or man or woman, whatever folk might say of them. “You’ve chosen the best time of day for your saunter, too.”
“Likely I have,” laughed the other. “I’m courtship-high, Miss Priscilla, as they say in Garth, and my lad waits me somewhere up the stream.”
“Well, then, I wish you happiness,” said Cilla, out of the warmth of her own glamour-tide. “’Twill be no secret soon, Peggy, that Mr. Gaunt here wants me to marry him some day.”
Cilla rarely stayed to measure the wisdom of her words,and never when her heart was glad, because then, of all times, it was right to give sunshine out.
Peggy Mathewson winced, recovered as from a blow, and turned to Gaunt with an impassive face.
“Did not see you before, Mr. Gaunt. Miss Priscilla here wears such a look of spring about her that a plain body seems to want to see no farther, like. You might have chosen worse.”
With a nod to Priscilla she went her way, and Cilla turned to look after her and to admire the bold, free swing of limbs and body.
“There’s something whimsical about her, Reuben. Yet why they give the Mathewsons so bad a name, I could never guess.”
“Nor I,” said the other lamely.
“’Tis not as though they did aught amiss, save live outlandishly away from Garth and show little care for company. They’re an odd couple, mother and daughter both; but they carry themselves as if they had a pride in life, and even father owns that they know how to treat their cattle and how to rake the hay-crop in. That’s much for father to say, who thinks that women’s place is in the dairy and the house-place.”
“I was thinking of you, Cilla,” broke in Reuben desperately. “Why spoil the night with talk of Peggy Mathewson?”
“Nay, I know not. The girl has always puzzled me. I could have liked her, and been friendly, Reuben, but she seems always like the east wind, that will be friends with none.”
Peggy herself, meanwhile, had carried her aching heart till she was sure of being out of sight. Then she stumbled to the nearest gate, and looked out at the grey, soft darkening of the hills. Sharprise was an ill-defined, blue-purplesplash across the fell-scape now, and the curlew’s note waned softer and more soft.
“’Twas to be,” murmured Peggy. “Oh, ay, ’twas like as it was to be. The queer thing is, that I bear no malice to slim Miss Good Intent. Should hate her, I—yet, if ’twere not she, ’twould be another.”
She spoke as if half stunned; for, though her judgment had foreseen such trouble long ago, her heart had covered up its doubts. She, too, heard the wailing farewell of the curlews to the twilight; but it reminded her only of sad weather on the moor—of wet east winds, with snow behind them, just when the lambing season seemed like to prosper—of frosty labour in the fields of barren harvests.
“He’ll break my life in two. Tried hard to, once, did Reuben Gaunt; and now he’s home-returned to finish off the brave job, ’twould seem.”
She gathered the remnants of her courage together. With a pitiful defiance she laughed, though a sob broke half-way through the laugh.
“Kept my pride to the end. Told Miss Good Intent I went to meet my lad. Oh, I know Reuben! He’ll think of that in a while, and grow jealous.—Pity o’ life!” she broke off, straightening herself with sudden passion and flinging out her capable, strong arms with a gesture that was tragic in its impotence. “Women keep crying, crying out to God—if there is one—and asking why men were sent into the world for mischief. And no answer comes, not if you mucky your knees with going down in the peat to pray for ’t. And women go on saying there’s no such thing as heart-break; and men believe ’em, because they daren’t do otherwise; and graves keep being dug, and good lives shovelled under ’em, with a word or two from parson to smooth the sods down. Lord, I wish a few o’the surpliced folk would come to Peggy Mathewson for guidance!”
The last silence of the fells came down about the girl. Yet she stood there, not thinking much, but feeling more than weaker folk could have borne. So quiet it grew that the busy travels of the field mice could be heard, as they pattered through the grass, and the nestling of the lambs against their mother’s fleece was a call, almost, across the stillness of the night.
“I knew all along, and I wouldn’t heed,” she whispered to the night. “I wouldn’t heed again, if all were to be done afresh. Yet what he’s missed! God, what the lad has missed!”