CHAPTER XIX
DAN FOSTER’S lad lost no time in delivering Gaunt’s message at Marshlands. Fright lent speed to his legs, and he was glad to pass on his terror to older folk, with a boy’s faith that they would be able, in their wisdom, to relieve him of it.
He got little comfort, however, from Gaunt’s housekeeper. Her face was scared as his own, and she half-closed the door against him.
“’Tis just like a trick o’ yond Mathewsons,” she snapped. “Keep themselves apart, they, and reckon to wear a mucky sort o’ pride o’ their own. Contrairy folk, I allus did say; and now they’ve brought fever into Garth. Oh, ay, ’tis like ’em.”
With that she closed the door outright on Dan Foster’s lad, just as her master had done upon the stranger-woman long ago. She and old Gaunt suffered from terror of different kinds, but the result in action was the same.
The lad whimpered afresh, just as Billy the Fool had done in that same long ago, as he found himself lonely in the cutting wind. Then he set off again for Good Intent. Miss Cilla would be there; and there was healing wherever Miss Cilla was.
He found her throwing corn to her pigeons.
“Where is your clutch of eggs, Dan?” she asked, looking at the empty basket on his arm.
A boy who has had one rebuff fears twenty afterwards to follow, and Dan kept his distance.
“Please, Mr. Gaunt wouldn’t let me come nigh.”
“Why, Dan?”
“I dursn’t tell.”
Cilla came to the gate of the croft. “You’re no coward, Dan. Never say ‘daren’t’ again in my hearing.”
“They’ve fever up at Ghyll,” he said, and turned half about, as if expecting to be driven away.
Priscilla lost her courage, as Dan Foster’s lad had done, but her excuse was cowardice for another. Personal fear she had none; and throughout the long reign of terror, whenever her father had gone in dread of fever at times, Cilla had never yielded to panic. She had met the danger as she had faced the heart-sickness which Gaunt had caused her in the spring; for Cilla’s slimness, the charm which all acknowledged, were made up of strength, not weakness.
“Tell me, Dan—tell me quickly—is it at Ghyll the fever is? It is not Mr. Gaunt who has it? That cannot be, for I saw him only a few hours since.”
“Nay,” the lad answered bluntly. “Mr. Gaunt he hasn’t got it yet, but he’ll have it soon, I reckon. Seems he’s helping up yonder at Ghyll. Said he wouldn’t be home for weeks, he did, and bade me carry a message for him to Marshlands.”
“Lord help us!” broke in Widow Lister’s soft, kittenish voice. “I said ’twould come, an’ what’s a poor widow-body to do if she catches it, and her living all by her lone without chick nor child to help her.”
The widow had a keen scent for disaster. She had seen Dan come down the road with a look of fright, had followed him, and now was standing close to Cilla’s elbow. As of old, her first thought was for herself; that was why,as she stood in the sunlight, no line or wrinkle showed on her babyish face, though other women of her age would have earned such marks of righteousness long since.
Cilla turned, and her smile was quick and eager. She was glad just now for a respite from her thoughts. “Lord help other folk, Mrs. Lister,” she answered briskly. “Have you ever tried that medicine?”
The widow sighed and her eyes sought the ground meekly. “Chit of a girl,” she was thinking, “to go lecturing me. As if I didn’t spend all my days i’ worriting about other folks’ troubles. Am always the first, I, to find troubles out. But, then, she doesn’t know what the fever means, the lile, daft lass.”
Dan had taken a look at the sun, his only timepiece, and had grown alert on the sudden.
“Will bid you good day, Miss Cilla,” he said, touching his cap. “’Tis five of the clock, or thereabouts, an’ I promised Billy the Fool to bellows-blow for him. He gets terrible short i’ the temper, does Billy, if I’m not there to a minute.”
Widow Lister followed him down the road. “Oh, Dan, my lad!” she called after him. “Tell Billy he’s never mended my bit of a window-fastener yet. David promised to do it, an’ went overseas; then Billy said he’d do the job; but men are all of a pattern, so ’twould seem.”
Cilla watched the two of them out of sight. Well as she knew the widow, there was something unexpected, ludicrous almost, in her remembrance of the window-fastener. The fever had come to Ghyll, it might steal down to Garth before the month was out; yet Widow Lister, in the midst of childish fright, could remember that David had left one job undone when he set sail for Canada.
“What’s amiss, lile lass?” asked her father, coming down the highway and seeing the troubled look on her face.
“Oh, nothing, father. The day has been overwarm, and I’m feeling it, maybe—”
“Now, don’t go blaming the weather,” roared Yeoman Hirst, admitting all the parish into his confidence. “Weather comes, and it goes. There needs be more than that to shake you, Cilla.”
She told her news and Yeoman Hirst stood very still for a moment. He was afraid, and he was conquering his fear.
“’Twas bound to reach us soon or late,” he said, in a steady voice. “Fancied it might leave bonnie Garth alone, but ’twas not to be. We mun just look it straight i’ the face, lass, an’ get on with our day’s work as if naught had happened.”
Cilla put an arm through her father’s. There was something vastly clean, and strong, and childlike in the yeoman’s faith; he was a man to lean upon, as Widow Mathewson would have put it.
“It’s at Ghyll, you say?” went on the farmer, after a pause. “Which of the two has caught it—the mother, or Peggy?”
“Dan didn’t say. He was so scared, poor lad, that he seemed glad to be rid of his message and away. But Reuben Gaunt is there and means to bide.”
Hirst’s temper was ruffled by his fear and the need to check it, as a strong man’s way is. “Can understand his being there—but, as for biding, Gaunt was never one to bide two minutes i’ one place, ’specially if there happened to be danger to his durned, soft body.”
“You’re wrong, father.” Cilla’s voice was warm in defence of the man who had slighted her. “He may bethis and that, but not a coward. If he’d found all well at Ghyll, he might have roamed abroad; as it was, he stayed.”
“Oh, the snod ways o’ reasoning ye women have!” growled Hirst. “Dan brought false news, if he said Gaunt stayed in a fever-house. I wouldn’t do it myself, lass, and I should reckon myself a prudent man for taking to my heels. There, there! I never could bear to wrangle, least of all wi’ ye, Cilla. Come away in, and get my tea ready. I’m droughty and dry, like the roads that clem ye up wi’ dust these days.”
At Ghyll, up on the lonely moor, the hot day ended in weariness and hardship. Widow Mathewson had crept often up the stair, to see if she could help her lass. Now she and Reuben were smoking together beside the hearth. If courage needed proof, these two were finding the best gift of life—bravery won from fear. The fever was no fanciful scourge, to be tempted by encouragement into building foul nests about a house. It came like a sword that did not kill with a clean blade at once, but hacked its victims with a blunt rusty edge until the end came; and strength or weakness of the folk who met it mattered little, as with other plagues.
The widow and Reuben Gaunt smoked tranquilly by the hearth; and the quiet, hot silence lay about two folk who were learning to approve each other. The woman, after the moorland fashion, was passing the time with tales of the last visitation. It seemed to give her some relief, just as the sleepy fire of peats served, in some odd way, to cheer the sultriness which it intensified.
“Ye were in your cradle then,” she said, “an’ knew naught on’t, though it carried your mother off. Reuben, if ye ever want to know what flimsy stuff we’re made of, high and low, good ’uns an’ bad—ye’ve got to look on ata fever-time. Th’ fear seems more catching than th’ fever itseln, an’ always th’ big, hearty men catches it worst. Oh, the sights that come back to mind! Thirty-and-four year ago it war, and all comes back as plain as Peggy’s moanings up aboon us yonder.”
Gaunt saw that it eased her to talk of olden days. The man had grown gentle, considerate. He was full of this new experience of thinking for others, rather than himself.
“Tell me about them, mother,” he said.
“Oh, there’s no use i’ telling. Ye need to have seen it—as ye will do, happen, if ye’re spared—to know the muckiness o’ fright. Ivery house war a island to itseln. Men who’d faced bulls run mad at Shepston market-day, men who’d risked crossing the bogland at dark o’ neet, to bring comfort to a friend,—where were they, Reuben? Hugging their own firesides. Not a drop o’ milk could the poorer sort get—and milk was needed, ye’ll be sure, i’ the stricken cottages—for a watch was kept at th’ farm-gate, an’ they were fended off afore they could bring their pitchers nigh.”
The widow talked of things she had seen long ago with clear unfrightened eyes. She would pause to light her pipe, and then would fall into a friendly silence, taking up the tale again at leisure. For she knew that, however it went with Peggy, there would be time and to spare for talk with Reuben.
“I’ve heard young folks shiver an’ shake when small-pox was so much as named. Bless ye, I’ve seen worse nor small-pox. It may spoil your face—an’ what day of a hard life doesn’t help to spoil your looks?—but there’s a chance of living on. There’s the rub, lad! ’Tis when ye set folk face to face wi’ what’s all but certain death,that ye know what they’re made of. There’s rum i’ the cupboard, Reuben. I’m forgetting what manners I iver had.”
“No, and thank you, mother. Not just to-night.”
The widow got up and set glasses and a bottle on the table, and took down the kettle from the crane hanging over the peat-fire.
“Don’t you go too far wi’ godliness all at once, Reuben,” she said, with a flash of her old tartness. “Ye’re not going to save Peggy by keeping a drop o’ liquor out o’ ye, but happen ye’ll let the fever in by playing the miser that way.”
Gaunt had been right when he said that the widow could never have borne her loneliness without a man to help her. Already she was gentler than he had known her. She jested about the measure of rum she shared with him, saying that he led her into bad ways. She had found that interval of peace which sometimes comes to folk in the bitterest of their trouble; and those who have lived long, and suffered long, say that it is God’s breathing-space, granted to brave folk lest their courage fail them at the pinch.
Down at Garth, the stars lay tranquil over David’s forge. Dan Foster’s lad was sweating at the bellows, while Billy the Fool played at getting the day’s work done. Billy had finished the last of the job, when soon afterwards Yeoman Hirst came by, and, seeing the fire-glow across the road, stepped in to ask if his fence-rails were ready for the morrow.
“Te-he!” chuckled Billy. “Said they’d be done right fair in time, I did, and Billy keeps his word. Ye’d have nigh split your sides, Yeoman, to see Dan yonder a-blowing and a-blowing till I fancied he was going to burst his lile self and the bellows, too. You’re stepping up toGood Intent? Well, now, I’ll stretch my legs a bit, I will, after all this marlaking.”
He walked in silence beside Hirst, after accepting his customary match and pipeful of tobacco. It was not till they had reached Good Intent that the workings of the natural’s mind showed plainly.
“Dan tells me fever’s come to Ghyll,” he said, in the low, dispassionate voice which was always a sign, to those who knew him, of some troubled reaching-out to his blurred past.
“Ay, but don’t you go fearing it, lad Billy. ’Twould never hurt such as ye.”
“Was thinking of Mr. Gaunt, I. Dan says he’s up yonder. Now, ’twould be terrible pranksome if he happened to die on’t himself. There’d be such a clearing o’ the air, as a body might say.”
Hirst little as he cared for Reuben Gaunt was shocked by the quietness with which Billy uttered the wish. This lad, who was peaceable and kindly of face as Garth street itself, was asking a terrible punishment for his one enemy.
“Oh, tuts, lad!” said the yeoman, patting him roughly on the shoulder. “We don’t pray fever on any man, surely, whether we like him or no.”
“Well, now, I don’t pray fever. Couldn’t if I were minded to. I just think long o’ what I want—as hard as my daft-wits can be driven, Yeoman—and then I bide till it comes.”
Yeoman Hirst had no insight into the by-ways of prayer; he said his own on Sabbaths, while Billy was roaming wide across the moors, and he said them with the simple faith that was a part of his dealings with this and with the next world. He was non-plussed, for the natural at these times was self-possessed, and his quiet statements, as of fact, unsettled wiser men.
“Come in, lad,” said Hirst, pushing the other into the porchway. “I’ll tell Cilla to draw ye a sup of home-brewed ale, and we’ll talk o’ likelier things than fever.”
“Thank ye, but nay,” said Billy, after a pause. “I’ve a mind to shut down the forge, and then get home to bed among the heather. Terrible chap is Billy for playing all day, like. Then he needs his snug bed under sky-blankets, Yeoman. I’ll be bidding ye good night, I. There’s a laverock calls me up with the dawn, and he’ll miss me if I oversleep myself.”
“Cilla, is Billy a fool, or are ye and me?” asked Hirst, coming into the living-room and finding Priscilla tending the geraniums that lined the window-sill.
“Ye and me, father,” answered Cilla, with a queer little laugh. “I was thinking o’ Reuben Gaunt when you came in, and that was foolishness, you’ve always told me.”
Hirst settled himself in the hooded chair and stirred the peat-fire into a warmth that was no way needed. “So was Fool Billy. He wished the fever might take him up yonder at Ghyll.”
Cilla had been thinking her own thoughts; and she came and stood by the hearth, one hand on the mantel with its tea canisters and its china dogs. Through the heat, and the work of the farm, and the fever-dread, Priscilla was still the coolest and the bravest thing in Garth. She had something about her at all times of that starlight strength and constancy which Fool Billy courted as he slept among the heather-beds.
“I’ve wished better things for Reuben,” she said. “I was thinking, when you stepped in, father, that he’s done what few in Garth would do.”
“Won a fell-race, eh? To be sure, there’s summat i’ doing that; but, Cilla, there’s harder races i’ this life, and ye’re daft to think o’ Reuben.”
“Oh, father no! It was more than the fell-race I was thinking of. From what Dan said, he is staying at Ghyll. You need have no doubt of that, as you had this morning. How many would have done as much—how many, of all the folk we know? To run a race, father, and hear them clapping hands, and know your feet are going nimble underneath ye—that seems easy, and soon over, win it or lose it—but to wait beside a fever-bed—”
Hirst stirred uneasily in his chair. “Now, Cilla, you’re letting fancy play the dangment with you, same as Gaunt always did. Fancies are well enough, lass, but I’m for the day’s work, and beef and ale in between to prop up all the chancy-come-quick notions.”
“Reuben is for the day’s work,” said Cilla quietly. “A harder working day than I’ve had yet.”
Hirst reached for his pipe and sat in silence. Priscilla rested both hands lightly on the mantel, and stooped to the smouldering peats, and saw fire-pictures there. All her love for Gaunt had found resurrection. The shame that had followed the green, soft ways of spring went out and away from her. If he could run with the best of those who ran at Linsall Fair, if afterwards he could face the quietness of that dread which few met bravely, he had shown courage of two kinds. His faults—were they not all on the surface? He had found little chance as yet to show his strength.
It was so that Cilla went excusing him; and presently, as she looked deeper into the peats, she grew angry with herself for thinking that excuse of any kind was needed. She remembered Widow Mathewson’s tale, her picture of Reuben’s motherless, untended boyhood. Her heart went out to him; and suddenly she flushed with keen dismay. Under all other thoughts was the question whether it were Peggy who had caught the fever. She hadcome near to making a dream picture of what might follow if Gaunt were free—if Gaunt were free—
She checked herself. “Father, there’s nothing so idle as thoughts,” she said, standing straight to her comely height, and seeking wisdom from the other’s bigness and look of well-being. “’Tis time I got to bed, if I’m to be fit for any work in the morning. Good night, father.”
She lingered on the last words, and Hirst, who was no fool so far as observation went, laughed quietly over his pipe when she had gone.
“She’s tender, she, with the old man,” he muttered. “Bless me, if the lile fool hasn’t been thinking o’ Gaunt again. I know that note i’ her voice. She had it i’ spring, and it put me in mind of a blackbird’s when she’s all about building her nest. Well, I’ve known queer cattle i’ my time, but the queerest of all is women. I like ’em, for all that.”
He tried to banish Gaunt from his thoughts, as a man of no account, and could not. Like Cilla, he was just—and for that reason was laughed at now and then by his neighbours—and he knew that Gaunt, if it were true that he had stayed by choice at Ghyll, was a better man to-day than he.
“Mind ye, I don’t believe the tale,” he said stubbornly, stirring the peats with needless vigour. “Dan Foster’s lad is like others—light o’ feet, and light o’ thought. He brought a wrong tale down to Garth; but we shall know, I reckon, by the morning.”
Cilla, in her room above, was less anxious to get to bed betimes than she had seemed. She leaned at the open casement, and watched the half moon ride the sky. Not a breath of air came from the steaming night; it was cooler within doors than without. The apple-tree whose branches had lit the window-panes with tender green in spring,showed dry and drooping leaves; its sickly fruit lay shrivelled, asking only for a breeze to come and snap the withered stalks. Even the hills, ranging out and out across the clearness of the night, suggested weariness instead of strength. It was weather to help no man’s crops; but the fever throve on it.
Cilla had no thought of heat. She had returned to the cool days of spring, when Gaunt had made her feel the beauty of this land which she had known from childhood. She cared less for the man, maybe, than for the glamour he had brought her; and each proof that he was strong, was proof, too, that the glamour had not lied to her.
When at last she got to bed, it was only to fall asleep and dream of Keta’s Well, and of saunters by the stream, and softer golds and deeper crimsons than she had ever seen in the skies at Garth, until Reuben came to teach her what the homeland meant.
Once she stirred in her sleep. “David, dreams cannot last,” she murmured. “You know they cannot. David, come home again to Garth!”
Then afterwards she dreamed quiet thoughts of Reuben; and they were wandering up the streamway that led to Keta’s Well.