CHAPTER XVIII
PEGGY’S high spirits did not forsake her as the time for her wedding drew near. Gaunt was eager, with a dash of haste and recklessness about the matter that appealed to her gipsy temper.
She knew that poor fools down in the valley were sick with the heat and the fever-dread; for herself, she lived on the cooler moor, and a glance at its clean acres, a touch of its heather-wind, were enough to banish all thought of fever like an unclean ghost that had no place here on the hill-tops. She did not know that a part at least of Gaunt’s haste was due to Priscilla of the Good Intent. Since the day when Cilla had met him on the Shepston Road, Reuben had found the old disquiet return. Like his father before him, he had an instinct toward a wife who was comely of speech and manner; he needed, as Mrs. Mathewson had said bitterly in time of April snow, “a ladyish mistress for Marshlands.” Do as he would these days, Gaunt saw constantly the picture of Cilla in her lilac frock. She would fit the old house as the well-ordered ivy which grew along its front. Her voice would sound cool and low under the dark rafter-beams. There would be flowers about the house again, and the spinet would awaken to life under Cilla’s fingers.
Reuben was tormented by that picture, and each detail of it grew clearer as the days went by. The man was to be pitied, maybe, for he had the gift of fancy, and at timesit bred in him a strange irresolution. The one instinct in him longed for an orderly home, a settled purpose in life; the other took him to the open lands, where such as Peggy Mathewson, and the pedlar-folk, and the poachers, lived free from all convention. Each attracted him, and he had not once been taught, during his heedless and ungoverned boyhood, that it was idle to pursue two whims at once.
Peggy, keen-sighted as she was, had no inkling of Gaunt’s weakness. He was eager, lover-like, full of plans for doing this and that about the house to make it ready for her. Even Widow Mathewson, though she looked for it, saw no hesitancy, no sign of withdrawal as the weeks drew on; and, in her own wry fashion, she was proud of Reuben, as a mother is proud of a weakling son when he shows stray glimpses of true manhood. It was little satisfaction to her, or none at all, that Peggy would be mistress of the biggest farm in Garth, would be wife to one of a yeoman breed so old that the Gaunts were counted as a sort of gentry among their farm-neighbours. The widow had her own pride of station, and not for a moment would she admit that her lass “was bettering herself” by marriage; she was simply glad that the girl, if she must needs set her heart on Reuben, was likely to be treated well.
For Peggy there was no shadow lying over these weeks. She had prayed, in her haphazard way, that there should be no break following the glamoured day at Linsall Fair; and her prayer was granted. It seemed strange to her that she had ever found hard words for Reuben. He was strong, and tender, and considerate; he asked only for a speedy wedding, and Peggy chided her mother because the widow was obstinate in her resolve.
“Nay, lass,” Mrs. Mathewson would say. “Ye’vebided long for Reuben, and ’tis a lile biding-time enough I’ve set him, surely. There’s no daughter o’ mine going to come pretty-come-quick to his call, just at the minute he cares to whistle.”
And Peggy would laugh, and tell herself that she was in no great haste for wedlock, after all. She asked for nothing beyond the present happiness. Strong at the churn, clear of vision, quick to see shortcomings in her neighbours, Peggy o’ Mathewson’s had yielded altogether to her love for Gaunt. He had put cobwebs over her eyes, as the Garth folk said; for she heard the fairies sing, when at nights she went up to the beck that trickled under the rowans, and looked down at the lights of Marshlands, and pictured Reuben there.
Towards the end of the waiting-time, Gaunt rode up to Ghyll and told them that he had to be away in the Midlands for a week. His father, in one of the buying fits that came on him at times, had bought property down there, and he had to look to it.
“’Twill be a wedding-gift for you, Peggy,” he said at parting.
“My lad, I want no wedding-gifts. If ye must go, ye must go, an’ good luck to ye; but, Reuben, never talk o’ gifts. The red kerchief ye bought me at the Fair was enough for me—that, and what ye whispered on the home-way walk.”
They were standing at the moor’s edge, and peace was stealing up from the hollows. After the sun’s heat and the weariness, the dusk had laid gentle fingers on the land. There was no limit to the heath, seen by this magical, soft light. Sharprise, crimson and gold and purple where the last of the sunset caught his crest, seemed to bound it on one side; but Peggy, looking out with practised eyes, could see further hills, and hillsbeyond, each putting on its nightcap of saffron haze. Light scents, stifled by the sun, began to creep abroad. It was a gloaming such as few could see without a quickened sense of the big life behind all frets and worries of the long day’s business.
For Peggy o’ Mathewson’s it was home. These darkening hollows, the rough, winding ridges reaching out to the spaces where, in some heathen way of worship, she always sought her God, the cool, faint smell of the bracken, and the ling, were all that spelled life and freedom for Peggy. The gloaming’s quiet, Gaunt’s nearness, softened her reckless spirits, but could not check her laughter.
“Oh, Reuben, I am daft!” she said, putting both hands into his. “Thought I could hold my own, I, and I’m thinking only o’ ye. Will ye come back, or will ye not—and are ye true, or are ye not—and all such moonshine nonsense. Reuben, I’ve been happy these last days. Ye wouldn’t spoil it all?”
“Not lightly,” said Reuben, as he kissed her good-by, and went down the moor.
The next day Peggy was listless and out of heart. She fancied the heat ailed her, though until now she had been careless of all extremes of weather. Widow Mathewson noticed the change, as she smoked her pipe by the hearth that night.
“Lile lass,” she said, “ye’re fretting for Reuben.”
Peggy shivered, and crept nearer the peat-fire. “Oh, I’m thinking all o’ ghosts, mother. He has to be away, and the fool I am to be needing him so, and there’s many a mile ’twixt this and his home-coming.”
The widow smiled, but her face was full of compassion. “I loved your father i’ that way, Peggy. He was nivermuch to lean on, but I missed him sorely when he went down kirkyard lane.”
“You’re sneering at Reuben again, mother.” The girl’s temper was frayed to-day and broken at the edges.
“Nay, nay. I begin to think Reuben’s stauncher than your father iver war. Happen ye’ve come to your own, Peggy, for a man as can win a fell-race o’ the Linsall sort has summat behind it all. Ye’ll shape him by and by. Oh, ay, ye’ll shape him. Men are all like a blunt bit o’ millstone grit; they need a chisel, they.”
Peggy o’ Mathewson’s crept nearer still to the peats. The light of the one lamp shone on the pewter and the delftware that was Ghyll’s special pride, and the fire-glow played bo-peep in corners of the living-room.
“I scarce feel like a bride, mother,” said Peggy, after a long silence.
“Tuts!” answered Widow Mathewson. “Few maidens do. Ye talk as if there were no modesty left i’ the world.”
“I’m so cold. All day it has been like a goose walking ower my grave—just as I said to Reuben when we walked fro’ Linsall Fair.”
The widow was easy in her mind to-night. Her hidden liking for Gaunt need not be checked so much in future; only she knew how bitterly she would miss Peggy in and about the house; but she knew, too, that it was idle or worse, to keep her lass from a home of her own. A glance at the girl’s face, white and pinched, might have startled Widow Mathewson; but she smoked her pipe, and looked into the grate, and hugged her self-content as a luxury seldom found at Ghyll.
“Fiddle-me-ree,” she answered, with pleasant tartness. “Th’ only geese as are walking abroad, to my knowledge, are ye an’ Reuben—an’ he’s a gander.Oh, lass, Peggy, I’ve it all by heart! Niver sich a one i’ the world as your man; an’ ye know his shortcomings plain as your own face in a pool; an’ ye throw bits o’ pebble into th’ pool, just to stir his proper likeness into pleasanter shape; an’ ye call it loving the lad. Lord o’ mercy, there’s been many a woman at yond pool-edge afore your time, and will be after. I war there myseln once. ’Tis only nature.”
Peggy got up and went out through the porch, and stood looking out and away across the moor.
“I war there myseln once,” repeated Widow Mathewson, with a tolerant smile. “I munnot forget what ’twas like—just the wee, lile fairies dancing, an’ witchcraft ower the moor.”
She knocked her pipe out on the grate, and youth touched her brown, scarred face for a moment.
“Good sakes,” she murmured, “I’d like to be young again like that—cobwebs about my eyes or no. Better be a blithesome fool at two-and-twenty than a wiser one at sixty.”
Five days later Gaunt returned to Garth. He came by the morning mail-coach, and sat by Will the Driver’s side, and asked as many questions regarding the health of Garth folk as if he had been absent for a year.
“Oh, they’ve ’scaped fever right enough,” said Will, trying to answer all his questions at once. “They’re a bit scared still, but forgetting all such rubbish. Widow Lister’s hale and hearty—ay, just a shade too hale and hearty. Billy is laking at the forge, an’ doing as much real work as David did, an’ willun’t take a penny for ’t. Has made a box, he, an’ tells all folk to put their silly money in through the slit and let it bide there till David comes again. He has no use for money, he—lile, wise lad as he is.”
“And Widow Mathewson?” asked Gaunt.
Driver Will knew well enough what news the other was seeking; it was common knowledge now that Peggy o’ Mathewson’s and Gaunt had been “asked” three times at church. For that reason Will concealed his knowledge, as if it were a crime, and affected a fine ignorance as he flicked his team with the whip.
“Oh, she’s well enough, or was a few days since. Have not seen Peggy or th’ widow since Monday last. Terrible home-bird folk, both on ’em. I liken ’em always i’ my mind to a brace o’ nesting grouse, so shy an’ fierce an’ prideful as they are.”
Gaunt asked for no more news until the coach rounded the curve that brought him within two miles of Garth.
“And Miss Priscilla?”
The driver gave him a shrewd, hasty glance. “Oh, well enough. She never alters—a breath o’ rosemary along the dusty road. Wish I’d been born a lile thought higher in station, and could cast my eyes that way. There never were two made like Miss Good Intent. And there she is, by that token, walking just ahead.”
“You can put me down,” said Gaunt.
Driver Will wasted little time in stopping and in starting off again. He greeted Priscilla with a friendly, courteous salute when a moment later he passed her on the road; and then he touched his horses’ ears with a gentle whip that spoke of deep reflection on his part. Will had leisure for reflection during those long drives between Shepston and the remote hamlet that ended his twenty-mile journey, and it was second nature to him now to piece together the life stories of those who dwelt along the road.
“It must feel odd to be one o’ Mr. Gaunt’s sort,” he was thinking. “I mind yond day i’ spring when theydrove out wi’ me, sweet as kiss-me-quicks, to Keta’s Well. I mind the way they came home again—she with the clover-pink in her cheeks, and Gaunt with a queer look in his eyes I’d not seen there before. Get along, Captain, or they’ll take ye for a tramp. Gee-up! And now he’s come home to wed Peggy o’ Mathewson’s; and I fancied, when he was seeking news just now, ’twar Peggy he war asking for, until—well, until he named Miss Good Intent. Eh, well—get along, Captain! The Queen doesn’t wait for her mails while such as ye catch a sleep along the road.”
Gaunt had overtaken Cilla long ago, and she had turned to meet his greeting with the clover-pink in her cheeks that Will the Driver had thought of.
“Will you come to my wedding?” he asked, ill at ease after his journey south, and all the brave thoughts that had kept him company on the northward road.
Priscilla laughed. It was the Garth way, when trouble must be met. “You have asked me, Reuben—and father, too; of course we shall be at the kirk.”
They walked side by side in silence until the grey gable of Good Intent showed near at hand. Reuben could not take his eyes from the girl’s face, and presently she looked up, embarrassed by a feeling of shame and unrest for which she could find no reason.
“I wish you both well,” she said, halting at the gate.
The voice was not Cilla’s; it was hesitating, cold. A random impulse took Gaunt unawares.
“Cilla,” he began eagerly.
She withdrew, and her coldness disappeared. She was self-reliant again, full of a dainty, half-mocking rebuke that would not stoop to anger.
“Good-by,” she said. “They call you running-water, Reuben, but I’ve better hopes of you.”
Reuben stayed a moment, watching her, until the house-porch hid her. For once he was troubled by the knowledge of his own weakness. An hour ago he had been full of his wedding plans, full of his early scamper out to Garth by the mail. Peggy did not expect him until late afternoon, and he had looked forward, with a boy’s zest, to the surprise of a morning visit to Ghyll. It was Thursday, and Peggy would be busy at the churn; he would help her at the work; Widow Mathewson would have her gibe, half tart, half friendly, when she put her head round the door of the dairy and found him “doing real work for once in a long journey.” That was the picture he had seen—until he overtook Priscilla on the road.
Gaunt set his face toward the moor and made his way up to Ghyll; but the brightness of the picture had gone. He blamed himself for that moment’s treason with Cilla; it seemed an ill beginning for his wedding. The day was hot and garish, too, and the fierce summer had set its mark on the pastures and the hedgerows. Such leaves as were left unshrivelled showed lifeless and drab, and never a bird sang. Thirst was walking like a spectre through the land, side by side with the heat. The fields were gaping wide, entreating rain. Even the yarrow flowers liking a lean and scanty soil, carried drooping heads. The sheep stood staring up into the sky, for they were tired of cropping grass that was tough and lifeless as ill-won hay.
When he reached the moor, Gaunt looked for Ghyll Farm. Its roof was set in the middle of waving lines of heat-haze, and no life stirred about the house. Fancy had played Reuben many a surly trick, but it helped him now to brace himself for coming trouble. Dalliance in sheltered Garth was forgotten; he knew that ill newsawaited him, and went forward, preparing himself to meet it. With all his faults, Gaunt was apt to meet an open danger in the face.
Mrs. Mathewson, from the window of Peggy’s bedroom, had seen him come up the moor, and ran down and out into the croft. She found him opening the gate.
“Don’t come nigh, Reuben,” she cried. “I tell you, don’t come nigh.”
Her strong, lean arms were stretched towards him, motioning him away; there was trouble in her face, and her eyes had the look which tired folk wear when they have been awake throughout the night.
He thought at first that her old distrust of him had returned and laughed. “I’m not to be kept away from Ghyll these days, mother. Peggy is pledged to marry me next week, and ’tis overlate for you to say no to that.”
As he came nearer Widow Mathewson withdrew. Gaunt could make nothing of the look she gave him—tragical, and full of pity, and weary beyond all belief.
“Ye’ll not come in,” she said sharply.
“And why shouldn’t I?”
“Oh, Reuben, Reuben, the fever’s come to Ghyll. Peggy ligs yonder i’ her bed, and her face is ill to look at. Ye’ll catch it, too, if ye come nigh the house—for me ’tis no matter—I’m ower-old to care.”
Gaunt paused for a moment, shocked by the news. Then he crossed the garden-strip, and stood beside her in the porch.
“Mother,” he said quietly, “it seems we’ve to know one another better. D’ye think I’m feared o’ the fever, if Peggy has caught it?”
She stood away from him. In the hour of fear she could not rid herself of this habit of denying all courage in a man.
“Fever means little to me,” she said drily. “I’m over and done with, Reuben, and care niver at all whether I lig me down or no. But ye’re young, lad—”
“And a coward,” broke in Reuben.
She glanced again at his face. “Well, no,” she said. “I was wrong there, and I own it. But, Reuben—there’s one i’ five lives on to tell on’t if they catch the fever.”
“Then Peggy must be the one, that’s all, mother. We’ll save her yet between us.”
He had no thought of himself. His face, after he had heard her news, was softened, yet full of quiet strength. The widow felt a grudging admiration for this man, with whom she had fought so bitterly in days gone by; she looked again at his trim, healthy body, at the young health in his face, and she was filled with pity.
“Reuben, lad, go back ower th’ moor,” she said, peremptorily. “If one’s to die, there’s lile use killing two. I tell ye,” she broke off, with a touch of her old bitterness, “the fever takes no more count o’ Mr. Gaunt o’ Marshlands than it does o’ plain Peggy Mathewson. ’Tis not just a risk ye’re taking; ’tis as near to certain as aught i’ this life can be that ye’ll catch it, an’ die on’t, an’ no more o’ Gaunt o’ Marshlands.”
“Well, there’s not much to boast of as it is. If you put it that way, I’m risking little.”
Widow Mathewson, though she and Peggy had lived high up above the peopled villages, had a sure instinct for truth or meanness in her fellows. She could detect no sign of cowardice under Gaunt’s quiet acceptance of his destiny. There was no bluster, covering a weak purpose. He meant to share Peggy’s trouble.
“Reuben, there’s few i’ Garth would be so daft,” she said, still guarding the porch. “Think while! I’veknown what the fever means longer than ye could know it. Thirty year back it came to Garth, an’ good men o’ their hands—good men o’ their lives, too, an’ honest—dared not come nigh a house that had the white cross on it.”
“My father used to tell of it.” Reuben was indifferent, as if it were no time to listen to bygone tales. He was thinking of Peggy, lying helpless in the up-stairs room.
“Did he tell you that the coffiners were found missing, when they were needed to see bodies buried decently fro’ end to end o’ Garth? Did he tell ye that men who’d faced storm on th’ moor, an’ danger o’ most sorts, sat shivering by their fires, an’ dursn’t stir a finger to help stricken folk? Oh, Reuben, lad, ’tis no game o’ kiss me by the stream, this, and naught to bother ye after.”
“Never said it was, mother,” said Gaunt drily. “I’m here to see we do our best for Peggy.”
The widow understood, somehow, that Reuben the despised was her master in this time of stress. Weak as running water he might be afterwards, when better days arrived; but now he had the strength of many a likelier man. Her good man had been weak in all days, fair or foul, and memory of him had hindered her outlook upon Gaunt.
She stood in silence for awhile, her spare height framed against the entry to this house of sickness. Far down the reaches of the moor, a tired haze lay, and prayed for rain; from the blue of the weary sky the sun shone fiercely. Again the mother-pity came to Widow Mathewson. For herself, it did not matter; she could tend Peggy, and could die if her time had come, and no tears wasted; but Gaunt had no need to die just yet. She guarded the grey old porch as men, in the lawless times, had fought for their wives and bairns at this same door.
“’Tis the waiting-time will trouble ye, Reuben,” she said, in a matter of fact, quiet voice. “Th’ men are cowards when th’ fever comes, for that reason. If they could know i’ a day or so whether they’d caught it or no, they’d niver heed the danger, like. Women are used to waiting, and they’re bolder at these times.”
“I’m coming in, mother.”
“Nay, think ower it, lad! Think ower it! There’ll be six weeks o’ waiting afore iver ye know whether ye’ve caught th’ fever. Six weeks, Reuben! Plenty o’ men wouldn’t wait as long for a maid that was bonnie and well.”
Reuben took her by the arms, and made a way for himself. “There, mother, ’tis done now, I take it. Lucky I told them down at Marshlands that I might or might not be home to-day. They’ll not sit up for me to-night, and to-morrow I must get a message down somehow.”
Mrs. Mathewson and Gaunt stood facing each other in the living-room. If there had been enmity between them, they did not remember it; a grave silence held between them, for each knew that death lay very near, not to Peggy only, but to themselves.
“There’s still a chance to go back, Reuben,” she said at last. “Ye may or may not have caught it by stepping into t’ house, and ye need say naught to nobody; but, if ye once go up into th’ chamber—an’ I see your eyes on th’ stair-door—there’ll be no return for ye.”
A troubled moaning sounded from the room above, and Gaunt laid a hand on the sneck of the staircase door. “Maybe ’twould ease the lass if she knew I was near,” he said gently.
“She willun’t know, she’s ower far gone, I tell ye! Reuben, my lad, have just a thought for yourseln.”
He glanced at her, with his curious, new look of gravityand self-effacement, and went up the stair. The widow heard his step on the boards overhead, then a startled cry. She knew what the cry meant. The Peggy who had watched him win the fell-race, who had danced on Linsall Green, was not the lass who lay on the bed up there; for the fever laid ugly hands on the faces of its victims, and on their minds its hold was still more cruel. There were no wild outbursts of delirium, followed by intervals of sanity and hope; there was only the low, helpless muttering, the sluggish apathy, the denial of all power or will to find healing from any human ministry.
Widow Mathewson paced up and down the living-room with her manlike strides; and by and by she heard Gaunt pacing up and down the floor above. It was Gaunt’s hour of bitterness, the first hour of his heedless life that had found him ready to hearken to his lesson. If he had dealt ill with Peggy o’ Mathewson’s in times past, he was paying something of the penalty now. It was not so much the bodily change in her that shocked and terrified him; it was the knowledge, brought suddenly home to him, that she did not care whether he stood at her bedside or not, that likely she would never care again in this world. The incessant moaning maddened him; it seemed to tell of an anguish that was beyond reach of his help. He could not believe that Peggy herself felt nothing, knew nothing—that it was he, in full vigour of mind and body, who suffered for her, just by looking on.
He came down the stone stairway at last, and the widow ceased her restless walk. She looked at his face. It was white and stern, but there was no trace of personal fear on it.
“It was as well I came,” he said.
“As well you came,” she echoed. “You say that after—after going in yond up-stairs room?”
“Yes, mother. You may be tough, but ’twould drive ye mad to live alone with what’s in the house here. Mother, is there naught at all we can do to ease her?” he broke off.
“Ay, but not mich. I’m skilled enough i’ nursing-work, so far as that goes. But t’ fever shoves a body aside, an’ willun’t let nursing have its say.”
For the first time she let weakness overcome her. Her tears were few, but full of passionate relief; and they were a tribute to the sense that, for once in her stormy life, she had a man about her in time of need.
Gaunt patted her gently on the shoulder. All the hidden liking between the oddly-assorted pair was patent to them both.
“That’s better!” he said. “Wish Peggy up yonder could cry like that. ’Twould do her a power o’ good.”
Toward gloaming of that day, as Reuben stood at the window after one of his fruitless visits to the room above, he saw a lad come up the slope of the moor. He ran out across the croft, and shouted to the lad. Already he had learned the instinct of all who had seen the fever close—the instinct to cry, like a leper of old, that none must come too near.
The lad ceased whistling, and halted in surprise; for Reuben, though he did not know it, was waving his arms like one far gone in drink or madness.
“I war nobbut stepping up for a sitting of eggs fro’ th’ widow. Miss Cilla o’ Good Intent telled me to come,” he said, half blubbering. “’Twas promised, yond clutch of eggs, an’ Miss Good Intent wants t’ chickens reared i’ good time for the winter.”
Gaunt saw now that it was Dan Foster’s lad, whose delight, like that of bigger men-folk, was to run errands for Priscilla when he was not blowing the bellows for Fool Billy at the forge.
“Bide where ye are!” he called sharply. “I want you to go back to Marshlands, and tell them I shall not be home for weeks. Have you got that message into your head, Dan?”
“Ay,” said the lad, recovering from his bewilderment.
“And then go to Good Intent, and tell Miss Cilla that for God’s sake she is not to come nor send to Ghyll here.” Gaunt, with a backward thought of Peggy lying in the up-stairs room, was ashamed of his eagerness that Cilla should be saved. “You’ll not forget, Dan?”
“No,” said the boy, his native curiosity conquering the last trace of fear. “No, I’ll not forget, Mr. Gaunt; but what mun I say is t’ reason, like, that Miss Good Intent can’t get her eggs? She’s main set on getting that clutch, she is, an’ she’ll fancy it war me as disappointed her.”
Gaunt laughed harshly. “The reason? Tell her that the fever’s come to Ghyll.”
Like a wounded rabbit the lad sought cover. To him the fever meant all that was terrible, mysterious; he had heard his elders talk of it these months past beside the hearth; he feared that, even at this distance and with the clean breath of the heath between himself and Ghyll, he might be overtaken by the pestilence. Gaunt watched him run far down the moor, and turn the shoulder of a hillock, and then he went indoors again. Mrs. Mathewson was sitting by the hearth.
“I’ve sent word to Marshlands,” he said, taking a seat in the settle-corner, as if the widow and he were friends of long standing. “They’ll not look for me till I come home again; and meanwhile the farm and all that will be cared for.”
The widow lifted her head and looked at Gaunt with the keen glance which, until to-day, he had found disconcerting.No anxiety, no brooding instinct of disaster, could check the tongue of this woman who had seen life’s soft illusions leave her one by one.
“You’re not likely to reach home again, Reuben.”
“Likely not,” he answered, feeling for his pipe and filling it with careful fingers. “There’s few would miss me, come to think of it, save you and Peggy.”
“I’d miss ye, Reuben Gaunt?” she snapped, with a tired effort to resist her new outlook on the man.
“Yes, you, mother. D’ye hear Peggy moaning up above us? ’Twas time that I, or another, came to help ye to bear it.”
Widow Mathewson reached out for her black clay pipe, and took a bit of live peat from the fire, and lit the half-filled bowl. “We mun as weel smoke in company, Reuben,” she said.
They smoked in friendship for awhile.
“Gaunt,” said the widow suddenly, “d’ye know what fear means or what death means, or are ye a likelier lad than I thought ye?”
“I know what death means, mother,” said Reuben, as he moved from the settle-corner to stir the peat-fire into life. “I’ve learned to-day.”
Again a silence fell between them. Then the widow lit her pipe afresh, and her voice was gentler than Gaunt had known it hitherto.
“You’ve fooled a good few women i’ your time, Reuben; but I fancy ye’re not by way o’ fooling now.”
“No,” said Gaunt, “I’m not by way of fooling now.”
Outside there was no breath of ease to hint that rain might come to-morrow, or the next day after that. In the red of a stagnant sunset the day had ceased, and night brought only a sultry heat that taxed man’s endurance to the breaking point.
“Reuben,” said Widow Mathewson, “I wish th’ wind would ding the house-door down, if only to stifle yond moaning up above us. She’s all I’ve got, an’ I can do naught at all.”
“Bide and see, mother. All’s not over yet. There, let me fill your pipe again for you, mother. ’Twill never do to let you go handling an empty bowl.”
Their vigil had begun. Widow Mathewson stole quiet glances now and then at the other’s face. She was wondering if the fever had been sent, after all, to make a man of Gaunt of Marshlands.