CHAPTER XVI
LINSALL was staid enough throughout the year; but, like Peggy Mathewson, she made the most of her big holiday. The cobbled inn-front, wide as it was, could hold no more farmers’ gigs; the stable-yard was full of traps; and those who rode in late on sturdy horses were forced to seek billets for their nags wherever a friendly farmstead offered hospitality.
The bridge, arched like a delicate, grey eyebrow above the peat-brown river, was white with faces which looked constantly toward the inn, as if watching for some spectacle. The Squire was there, and his womenfolk, rubbing shoulders with yeomen and their wives; farm-hands pressed close against the stonework of the bridge, and held their bairns to see what was going forward. The Green below was crowded, too, and men were running up the pastures that stepped briskly from the roadway to the moor. Only the road itself, from the fields right down to the inn-front, was clear of onlookers; and the dust of the highway showed hot and white as it made a lane between the folk.
It was time for the fell-race, and there were few dwellers in this land of climbing fields and overtopping hills whose hearts did not beat faster at prospect of the race. Of all their sports it was most in keeping with their daily lives. Each farmer, when he went to call the cattle into mistal, when he ploughed or won the hay-crop, was compelledto do his share of climbing; for all the fields at Linsall, save a few that lay along the river’s level, strode straight up-hill, straight down and up again. This fell-race indeed, was not so much a pastime as a test of endurance which has grown naturally out of their daily occupation, and the winner of it was counted the great man of the year.
“Reuben,” said Peggy o’ Mathewson’s, slipping a hand through his arm as they stood on the green, “the race is to start i’ less than a half-hour, and I’ve a fancy.”
“Let’s know it, lass. ’Tis not to-day I’m saying no to you, I reckon.”
“You must run, Reuben—and you must win.”
“You’re jesting? Why, I’m all out of practice—”
“Oh, you’re tough and hard! I’ve only to look at you to see you’re in condition. You used to win it easy enough i’ the old days, Reuben—try, just to please me.”
Gaunt laughed good-naturedly, and began to push a way through the crowd. “I’ll do my best, Peggy; but I sha’n’t be best pleased if I come home second, after being reckoned an easy first so long.”
He borrowed running-gear from the landlord of the inn, and a low hum went up from the crowd when they saw him step out again into the sunlight. For it was known that one of the big fell-racers from the Lake Country had entered for to-day’s struggle, and until now there had seemed no chance that Linsall could keep the honour within its own borders. At a meeting less happy-go-lucky and more set about with rules than this, there might have been trouble touching Gaunt’s late entry. But Linsall’s rule was that, till the moment when the starter shouted “Go,” any man was free to take his place along the line of combatants.
As Gaunt moved quietly to his place, he was stoppedby a shabby-genteel man, whose appearance seemed oddly out of keeping with the ruddy farmer-folk about him.
“Beg pardon, Mr. Gaunt, but you mean to run to-day?” whispered the stranger.
Gaunt nodded; he had followed horse-racing too long to have any doubt as to what was coming.
“You’ll upset all our bets, then, and poor men have to make their living. See, now, Mr. Gaunt, you’re well off, I know, but the richest need more, and if you’d a mind to fall out o’ the race—”
Reuben Gaunt, if by force of nature a crooked man when his affections were in case, was scrupulously straight in other matters; he had a plentiful lack of self-guidance, but no meanness; and the suggestion of the shabby-genteel man touched his temper to the quick.
“Here, lads,” he broke in, turning to the group of strapping lads who stood nearest to him. “Here’s one who wants me to run crooked for sake of a five pound note. Just cool his heels for him in the river.”
It was all over before the crowd had time to realize the meaning of the uproar. The intruder into Linsall’s peace was carried at a running pace to the pool under the bridge, was thrown in and seen to clamber up the further bank and seek cover like a fox. The farm-lads laughed and shrugged their shoulders, and went back to see the start of the race. They had upheld Linsall’s reputation for a race run fairly and with keenness, and there was little chance that other out-at-elbows gentry would try to-day to disturb that reputation.
Gaunt took his place on the starting line. There were nine of them—lean and wiry fellows all, since upland farming seldom makes for too much flesh—and next to Reuben was the Lake Country runner, Bownas by name. Long in limb, lithe and spare in the body, he dwarfedGaunt by a good four inches, and seemed built for this business of capturing the race.
There were five minutes to go before the signal for the start, and Bownas looked Gaunt up and down. Finally, he put out a hand.
“You’re Mr. Gaunt? Pleased to run against ye. I’ve heard o’ ye. Better a tough race than a slack one any day.”
Gaunt’s spirits were rising every moment. He laughed as he took the other’s hand. “By the Lord, we’ll show them what running means, if they’ve never known it before.”
He was heartened by the murmurs of the crowd behind him. “Gaunt’s running to-day,” said one, with a hint of hero-worship in his voice. “We’ll keep the winner i’ our own country yet,” said another. The shabby-genteel man’s assumption that his bets were in danger had been in itself a tribute to his skill. Sympathy was a spur to Gaunt always, and he felt that the crowd was with him.
“You’ve to win, Reuben! Make no mistake o’ that,” murmured Peggy from behind. “I wouldn’t have ’ticed ye to run at all, if I hadn’t been sure o’ your winning.”
He turned and looked her in the eyes. “I begin to fancy I shall, Peggy,” he said; “but ’tis long odds to put me up at a minute’s notice against Bownas of Shap.”
“Ready, are ye?” cried the starter. “Ready? Go!”
There was no excitement at the beginning of the race; and this, too, was in keeping with the dales-folk, who liked their pleasures to be long drawn out. It was only the raw youngsters who showed signs of their paces along the dusty line of road; Gaunt and Bownas trotted quietly at the rear, remembering that a good deal of ground hadto slip under their feet before the last swift struggle home.
The haze had lifted now, and the sunlight lay so keen on moor and pasture that those on the bridge, the remotest point of vantage, could see each figure as it climbed the pastures, could follow the men when they gained the darker background of the moor.
Not one of the nine was running now, and three at least were creeping painfully up the breast of the moor.
“Gaunt’s at his old game,” said one of the crowd.
“Ay, he takes it straight as it comes. Sakes, how he sticks to his business!”
It was not then that eagerness began to show itself among the onlookers. Much depended on the down-hill scamper, but more on that stubborn climb up the hill-face which, from below and in the sun-glare, showed steep as a house-wall.
Bownas of Shap was playing his old game, too. They could see him turning warily along the dingles, instead of facing the high bluffs. He counted on saving wind and gaining speed, as he had done in other struggles of the kind; but he had not run against Reuben Gaunt before.
The onlookers—and every face now was turned to the moor with fine expectancy—could see Gaunt keeping a straight line for the summit, though now and then he seemed to be pulling himself forward by sheer grip of the tough heather that hindered his feet no less than did the steepness of the moor.
They were lost for awhile, Bownas and Gaunt, in the shadow of the highest ridge. At the ridge-top, pencilled clear against the hard blue of the sky, stood the turning-post and the man who guarded it. Then, out of the shadowed space, Gaunt’s figure showed; he had gonestraight as a gunshot, and, without turn or halt, had reached the flag.
Peggy could not rest quiet in the road below. She had climbed to the brink of the moor by now, and three or four of the crowd had followed her. It was Peggy’s day, and she wished it to be full. Gaunt might be this and that, she told herself, her eyes fixed on the moor above; but she would forgive him fickleness and all if she could dance on the green to-night, and know that he was the winner of the race.
“Gaunt climbs like a wildcat,” said a tough, old yeoman, standing at Peggy’s side.
“Climbs like a man,” answered Peggy, and kept her eyes on the hill-top.
Bownas had reached the flag by now, and had turned to follow Gaunt down the moor. From below, Peggy o’ Mathewson’s could hear the eager uproar of the crowd. None thought of the seven stragglers who followed; it was a race between the homelander and the “foreigner,” and Gaunt himself, though the blood was surging in his ears, could hear a stifled echo of the roar that meant good-will to him.
Gaunt had been used to say that he won his races because his wind was a special gift, in token that his legs were short. He needed the gift now; for, out of practice as he was, the straight, unswerving climb had punished him.
Bownas was still following his bent, down-hill as up-hill. He chose the gentler slopes, while Gaunt ran helter-skelter down, straight for the wall that guarded the pastures from the moor.
“The wildcat’s won!” shouted the old yeoman at Peggy’s ear. “He’s a furlong forrarder, and all easy-going now.”
A long, brown line of shale lay in Gaunt’s path. He would not turn aside, but trusted to his old trick of sliding down it, feet foremost, with the shingle scattering round his knees.
“Oh, be durned!” muttered the yeoman. “’Tis all over wi’ Gaunt! Just when he had the race i’ his hands, an’ all.”
Peggy’s face was white; for she had seen the runner trip against a stone which did not yield to his foot, as the shale had done. So great was Gaunt’s speed that he could not think of checking himself; head over heels he went, and landed on his feet again as if by a miracle. For a second or two he stood dazed by the shock, and Bownas got to within fifty yards of him. Then, shaking himself together and setting his face as hard as a flint, Gaunt started down the moor again.
“He’ll break his neck one day at yond job,” said the yeoman to Peggy. “Glad he hasn’t done as much to-day. Want to see him win, I.”
The runners were scaling the wall between moor and pasture now, and Gaunt was a trifle the quicker in getting over. He passed so close to Peggy that she could have touched him.
“Run!” she panted. “Reuben, you have it! You have it, lad!”
He heard her, and so did Bownas o’ Shap; and both men raced forward with a quickened sense of rivalry.
It was now that the crowd lost all restraint, save just as was needed to keep a clear path to the inn. From the bridge, and from the green, and from the inn-front—where men were standing on tiptoe in the gigs to get a clearer view—a deafening clamour rose. It was no spasmodic cheering, broken by silences, but a steady, ever-growing roar, like the thunder of a stream when snowis loosened from the hills. Never since this yearly battle of the fells first took its place in Linsall’s story had such a race been watched. The time between out and home was shorter by five minutes than the fastest record known; but, more than this, there were two men left to fight it out to the end—two men who came with swift, loping strides through the dust of the roadway—two men whose faces at another time would have been terrible to see, so contorted were they with weariness, and desperation, and fierce effort to keep up.
Bownas led by a few feet now, and the onlookers were making frenzied calls to Gaunt to make a last spurt for it. The uproar rose to the hills that hemmed in Linsall village, and it broke against the fells with muffled echo. It was a moment when a man might well prove stronger than himself, and a strange gaiety caught Reuben unawares. There were still two hundred yards to go, and he saw that Bownas was content to keep his lead and was waiting for his last big effort until nearer home. Gaunt could not wait; he gathered all his strength, and glanced past Bownas with sudden speed and crossed the winning-line with an impetus he could not check. The inn doorway was in front of him—otherwise he would have crashed against the wall in his blind rush—and he ran down the long passage, and checked himself when he reached the settle at the far end, and sat with his head between his hands. A darkness and great sickness closed about him for awhile; then he lifted his head, and saw the landlord standing near him with an air of much good-will and some anxiety.
“Bring me something—something in a mug, Jonas,” said Gaunt, with a feeble smile.
Jonas laughed, as he patted the other on the back. “Not just sure whether ye’ve any inward parts left at all,Mr. Gaunt? Want to cure that durned, queer feel of emptiness? Oh, bless ye, I know it. I’ve run i’ fell-races before, but niver as ye ran to-day! God bless me, ye’ve the legs of a deer!”
Peggy had seen from the pasture-fields how Gaunt came home far down below; and, when she reached the village, it was to find the hero of the year being carried shoulder-height by six of the Linsall men. No leader of old, returning from victory through a crowded capital, could have claimed more honour than Reuben Gaunt. Unprepared, to gratify a lass’s whim, he had won a contest that would go down in Garth’s history so long as there were folk to sit beside the hearth o’ nights and tell of it.
Peggy o’ Mathewson’s had had her wish. A buoyancy, an exultation like Gaunt’s own as he covered those last ten score yards, possessed her. It was the woman’s pride, unalterable through changing generations, that “her man” had won his battle.
When the evening came, and the sun dropped low over Linsall Moor, and the moon climbed big and round over the shoulder of Harts Fell, the green was full of couples dancing to the tunes of three fiddlers perched on Mother Lambert’s empty counter. And Peggy, though the men pressed round her like a swarm of bees, would dance with few but Gaunt.
The scene was fairy-like in its remoteness from the humdrum round of work. The fells on the one side were white and magical; the moor on the other showed a dark jagged line of mystery; and between moor and fell, Linsall village lay steeped in fleecy moonlight, her bridge a slender arch of gossamer that spanned a stream of pearl and blue. There was no sound, save the gentle thud of feet on the grass, the squeak of the fiddles, thelow tranquil laugh of some country lass as she heard what her lover stooped to tell her in the pauses of the dance.
When Gaunt and Peggy left the green at last, and struck up the pastures toward home, they were followed by much nodding of heads and wagging of tongues.
“Gaunt’s not content wi’ winning the race, ’twould seem,” said one.
“Nay,” said another, “he seems like as he’s set on winning Peggy o’ Mathewson’s as well. There’ll be lile trouble i’ that, if the look in her face be aught to go by.”
Peggy and her man moved steadily up the field-track, then more quietly when they reached the heath.
“’Twas here you ran so well,” said Peggy, her eyes shining with some great, unreasoning happiness.
“’Twas because you asked it,” answered Gaunt, slipping her arm through his own as they turned to look down on moonlit Linsall. The faint screech of fiddles reached them, reedy as the breeze that blew fitfully about the heather-stems. She was silent, and Gaunt felt that she was trembling. “Why, what’s amiss? Surely you’re not cold on such a night?”
“Oh, it is naught, Reuben! I’ve had my day—as full a one as ever I could wish for—and I’m frightened, somehow, to go back, and begin to churn, and bake, and wash, and tend the fowls.”
“I can ease you of all that.”
Her eyes were soft, and full of the tenderness which life had tried its best to kill. She seemed about to speak, but checked herself.
“Will you listen, Peggy?”
“Oh, we must hurry, Reuben. Come away over the moor; there’s mother wondering all this while whatever can have come to me.”
He did not understand her mood, did not understandthe withdrawal which was at once proud and full of mute appeal. They crossed the moor in a silence broken only by the scuffle of a sheep as they awakened it in passing, by the sudden whirr of a cock grouse as he rose from the ling and went barkingto-bac, to-bac, to-bacacross the moor.
It was Peggy who broke the silence. They had reached the deep glen above Ghyll Farm, and she paused at the rowan-tree which branched across the dancing stream. She had spent long hours under shadow of the rowan before and after she had learned her love for Gaunt; the place was friendly to her, for it was haunted by familiar years.
She stood straight in the moonlight, facing him. The rowan-leaves threw feathery shadows on her face. “Reuben,” she said, “what’s amiss with us both?”
“Why, naught, lile lass. You want to be free of the churning and the rest? Well, there’s Marshlands waiting for ye, if you choose to come as mistress.”
“Reuben!”
He could not tell whether sorrow or keen gladness lay underneath the cry. He knew Peggy o’ Mathewson’s had never moved him as she did to-night.
“Reuben, I’m all lost on the moor,” she went on quickly. “I love the peat that ye tread on, and yet I doubt ye. I’ve seen ye a man to-day, Reuben, and yet I’m wondering whether it can last. The mood’s on ye to make me mistress yonder. Ay, but to-morrow? Love goes and comes wi’ some folk, but it stays wi’ women such as me—make no doubt o’ that.”
“It will stay with me. Are ye going with the rest o’ the flock, lile one—bleating me down, when I try to get my feet on a straight road?”
Peggy o’ Mathewson’s stood silent. The moonlight,dappled by the swaying rowan-leaves, showed a beauty that was scarcely of this world. Like the weather-stained mother who waited for her coming, down yonder at the farm, Peggy had peeped into a bigger life than this.
Suddenly she lost her straightness, and was sobbing in Gaunt’s arms. “You’ll be good to me, Reuben? ’Tis all or naught wi’ me, and you can break my heart, or mend it, just as you please. Oh, I should take shame to talk to ye like this—but I’ll come to Marshlands wi’ no half-love fro’ ye.”
Gaunt felt a new warmth, a generous impulse, not only to take this passionate, headstrong lass to Marshlands, but to make her happy there. He told her as much in few words, and the answer touch of her hands as he held them roused something manlier, more robust, in the man’s contrary nature.
They stayed awhile under the rowan, and Peggy touched its smooth trunk from time to time.
“I’m happy to-day,” she laughed, “just happy, Reuben. And I’m touching rowan-wood while I say it.”
There was a light in the kitchen of Ghyll Farm when they came across the croft, and at the porch-door they could see Widow Mathewson, her gaunt figure softened by the moonlight.
“So ye’ve been wi’ Gaunt? I guessed as mich,” was the mother’s greeting. There was little complaint in her tone, but her usual half-sad, half-bitter acceptance of the day’s troubles as they came.
Peggy was not contrite. “I’d finished the baking, mother, and I knew ye’d guess I was off to Linsall Fair. Mother, I never had such a day—and Reuben won the fell-race.”
“Ay, he would. Give him a bit o’ straight runningfor foolishness’ sake, an’ he’s clever; ’tis when ye want him to do summat wi’ sense at th’ back on’t that Gaunt fails ye—fails ye ivery time.”
“I want you to ask me indoors for once,” put in Reuben.
The widow looked at him curiously. Without emotion, as if she were counting up her egg money and finding the total right, she realized that there was a change for the better in him. His tone was grave, and he had lost his light, come-and-go air altogether.
“As ye please,” she answered, stepping aside to let him pass. “’Tis so late now for us early-to-bed folk that a bit later willun’t signify.”
In grim silence she brought cake and elderberry wine from the corner cupboard and set them on the table. Whether a guest was a welcome one or no, he must not leave without a show of hospitality.
“Just help yourself, Mr. Gaunt,” she said, with a certain stateliness that was no way out of keeping with her rough gown and weather-stained, tired face.
“Oh, by and by,” he said. Peggy and he were standing on either side the hearth, and Widow Mathewson saw the confident, warm glances that passed between them. “We’ve something to tell you, Mrs. Mathewson. Peggy was pleased with my running, maybe—or perhaps she saw I was fondish of her—anyway, she has promised to come down to Marshlands as mistress there.”
Mrs. Mathewson began to stride up and down the floor. It was her way—the man’s way—when deeply moved. Folly, disaster, she had looked for whenever Gaunt had crossed their path; she was not prepared for honesty.
“See ye,” she cried fiercely, turning to meet Gaunt’s eyes, “are ye meaning this? I tell ye, we’re proud,bitter-proud, up here at Ghyll. I’ve no man to look after Peggy—th’ one I lost would have been littlish use even if he’d lived—but I was not built after a gentle pattern, Reuben Gaunt. If ye’re planning some fresh bit o’ devilry, I’ll bid ye keep clear o’ my hands. They’re strong hands—when I care to use ’em.”
Reuben was at his ease for once in the widow’s presence. This new sense of honesty was a gentler, and yet a stronger feeling than he had known since childhood.
“’Tis this way,” he said quietly. “We happen to want one another, and we’re bent on getting one another.”
“Ay, ye’re bent on it,” said the widow drily, not taking her eyes from Reuben’s face. “You’re bent on it to-night. The full moon glamours folk, so they say. Will ye be bent on it to-morrow?”
“Mother, you’re hard on Reuben!” broke in Peggy.
“No harder than he’s been on me, these years and years past. Are ye playing wi’ my lass, or are ye not? She’s all I have, mind.”
Gaunt would take no offence. His spirits were high, and that curious sense of well-doing was with him still. “I shall be getting things to rights at Marshlands to-morrow. A house that has had no mistress all these years will need setting straight. After that, Peggy has only to choose the day when she’ll come to it.”
The widow’s face softened a little, but she did not spare him. “Very well,” she said, her fine, keen eyes reading every line of his face. “Ay, very well indeed, Reuben Gaunt, if ye can hold to th’ same mind two days running. When I see Peggy wedded I shall believe ’at Peggy’s wedded. Good night to ye. I’m fair clemmed wi’ all th’ day’s work, while ye two were gadding ower to Linsall Fair.”
Peggy went with Gaunt to the gate of the croft. “Ne’erheed mother,” she whispered. “’Tis her way, Reuben. She’ll soften to ye by and by.”
“I heed naught, lass, so long as ye’re lying lile and soft i’ my two arms. What a fool I’ve been all these years—what a fool!”
He was swept away by his passion, by the girl’s free, reckless beauty and reckless tenderness. He pictured her down yonder in the lonely house at Marshlands. The liberty he had cherished—liberty to come and go as he listed, like the wind—was shorn of all attraction. There would be warmth and well-doing about his house, and ties to keep him safe from wandering.
They stood looking down the moor. The moon outlined each smooth ridge; her light was nestled in the misty vagueness of the hollows; away and away to the grey-blue of the silent sky she touched the land with witchery. And Peggy sighed.
“Why, lass, you’re shivering,” said Gaunt, roused from his dreams of what might be.
“Oh, a goose walked over my grave,” she answered lightly. “A silly goose, Reuben, to choose just to-day for wandering.”
She did not tell him that she feared the day’s happiness, feared lest all should be changed when she woke on the morrow. Hardship was more easy to believe in, after all, and in her experience it followed pleasure always.
They watched the moor; and the tenderness, the mute, uncomplaining sorrow of the land, came close to Peggy, as to one who had known the heath from childhood.
“Reuben,” she sobbed, “if only ye had one mind in a day, instead of fifty—or if only I could care for ye less—”
“Best care for me more instead of less,” laughedReuben. “I’ve no heed, myself, for geese walking over a grave.”
“It was silly, I own. There, ye’ve had kisses enough and to last—”
“Until to-morrow?”
“Well—maybe—if ye come not too early, while I’m milking the cows—or not overlate, when the house will need looking to, after all the work I’ve given mother to-day. There, Reuben—oh, there and there, if ye must better one good kiss. Good night, Reuben.”
Gaunt swung down the moor. The moon stood silver-gold in the middle of the blue sky. A sheep got up beneath his feet. He startled a grouse from its bed among the heather. Far down below him he could see a light set like a little star above the porch of Marshlands.
“They’re used to late home-comings o’ nights,” he laughed. “There’ll be fewer such when Peggy comes to Marshlands.”