Halliwell Sutcliffe

“ Exhausted by his eloquence, Hirst would reach out for his mug of ale, and Cilla would go softly up the stair, with shame in her cheeks and peace at her heart. She would lean at the open window, not knowing that the night wind blew cold, and would see new beauties in the moonlit street, the moonlit, hazy fields beyond.
It was to be the bitterest winter known for fifty years in Strathgarth. Yet, when December came, and the frost strengthened its grip, and all the land began to wear a pinched and sullen look, Gaunt felt the warmth of life increase. ”

“ Reuben Gaunt, for his part, had kept silence, and had thanked heaven, in his own random way, that the jest of his sitting down among the nettles was not common gossip now in Garth. For Reuben hated to be laughed at, as the half and between men of this world always shrink from the laughter of their neighbours.
“The birds are all a-mating and a-building, David the Smith,” said Billy. “Cannot ye hear the throstles calling to the hen-birds?”
“Ay,” growled David, a sudden anger coming to him; “but ye and me are no way mated, Billy the Fool. What ails us, lad?” ”

“ Gaunt,” she said. “His horse came to me just now, Billy, with no one in the saddle. He’s lying somewhere on the moor, and I cannot find him. You’re quick to find missing folk, they say, when they’re four-footed—well, find Mr. Gaunt for me.”
Cilla did not know her own voice; it was so eager, so impetuous. And she relied—and knew it, she who had been self-dependent until now—upon Billy the Fool.
The lad’s face altered. Across the plump and childish flesh stray wrinkles crept, as circles widen on a pool when a stone is thrown into its waters. ”

“ It was no friendly blue, such as pansies wear, when times go hard and the cool, quiet flowers look at a man with eyes of pity; it was a cold light and a hard light, for all its warmth, this never-ending sky that kept the Black Fever close to Garth’s borders.
“There’s no good news fro’ Shepston, David,” said Will, by and by. “Every day there’s the same tale when I drive in—more folk down wi’ fever, and bodies waiting to be buried because the coffiners are feared to go nigh them. I’m tough myself, but I’m getting a lile bit nervous. ”

“ Luck doesn’t run in my family, and never did.”
There was a silence between them, as they faced each other, the only human-folk in this lonely stretch of heath. In a place more busy, with others near at hand to temper the reality of what he saw in the woman’s face, of what he heard in her voice, Reuben Gaunt might have carried the matter off with more success; but they were alone with the rugged moor. He saw, during this time of silence, his past life stretching behind him like a miry, ill-found road. He knew himself dishonest, though he tried to find again his old, easy outlook upon life. ”

“ Peggy Mathewson had felt the motherhood of life rise up and cloud her judgment as she walked with Reuben a week ago through the sunlit fields; and now Priscilla of the Good Intent felt pity’s strength awake.
“’Tis a bad habit,” she said, moving a little closer to him, “this being out of heart with life, Reuben”—forgetting that she had vowed to call him Mr. Gaunt perpetually. “There’s enough and to spare of gladness, and we must just search for it when times fare ill. Shame on you, to go whimpering like a child when spring is flooding all the countryside!” ”

“ 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 prided [79] himself, God help him, on finding the better man in himself to-day. ”

“ So it would be with Billy until the mould lay heavy on his coffin; a love greater than Yeoman Hirst’s he had for Cilla, a love greater than David the Smith’s; but his thoughts were prisoned up in an unwieldy bulk of flesh, and to the end he would be Billy the Fool, Billy the Well-Beloved, just as the moor about Cilla and himself to-day would always be the moor, telling her secrets to none.
“Well, now,” said Billy patiently, “I can find Mr. Reuben Gaunt for ye.”
“Is he—is he hurt?”
“Sound as ye or me. Hurt? Not the sort o’ man, he, to get into hurt. ”

“ The doctor had earned his right-of-way to folk’s hearts after many an up-hill climb, and his power to help his neighbours was not limited to their bodies’ needs. Whenever he felt that death was certain, he told his patient bluntly that the next world, not this, was his concern. While there was doubt, he thrust down his throat, willy-nilly, the physic of hope and sweetened the draught, so far as he could, with some racy, village jest.
“There’s a good man goes down Garth Street,” thought Cilla, following the other’s sturdy figure as it disappeared among the shadows. ”

“ If her faith lay deep and hard to find, her fearlessness and honesty had in them the same massive power that underlay Billy’s oddities.
Unconsciously Gaunt yielded to her mood. He had spent himself generously to serve this late-found mother, and it was her turn now to stretch a helping hand to him.
Out of the quiet night, the fragrant moor, there came a quickened sense of motherhood to the woman. Spring leads the younger folk down paths where the valleys shelter primroses and nesting throstles; it leads the old to the higher tracks where the sky and the moor-winds talk of abnegation. ”

“ The stream frozen down to the pebbles that lined its bed; three feet of snow lay over the spot where they had kissed in the cool of a summer’s evening; and Peggy—Peggy, with her gipsy eyes, and her flaunting, crimson scarf and her wild, unstinting love for him—lay under a shroud of the moor’s making.
There comes an end to a man’s power to feel further grief, at these times of martyrdom self-imposed. The wise God has seen to that. Reuben turned at last, his shoulders bent, and went down the track which Peggy’s mother had made for him. ”

“ Spring, with its make-believe of primrose banks, and birds that litanied the sunshine, was a dream she had dreamed in company with Reuben Gaunt. That had passed, and hard winter had set in again. She was glad that it was so. Winter was a time of stress and hardship, that left no leisure for dreams. Better the snow than the soft air of an April gloaming, when all the tribes of furred and feathered things went wooing and set the like key-note for more sober human-folk. ”

“ Reuben Gaunt, meanwhile, had turned up the lane that led to Good Intent. He knew that John Hirst would be at Shepston market, and was sure therefore of his welcome at the farm. He did not get as far as the house, however, for Priscilla was standing in the home-croft as he came through the stile. From sheer frolic she had donned a sun-bonnet, pretending that this April sunshine was overwarm to bear uncovered. The bonnet was pink, and her simple gown was lavender-blue, and she looked, to Gaunt’s eyes, the trimmest and the bonniest maid that he had seen in all his travels. ”

“ To David Blake’s fancy—rough, kindly, not far wide of the mark at any time—she “made the day new-washed and happier”; yet it was Billy who next found his tongue.
“Te-he! Ye look as if life was playtime for ye, too,” said he, still blowing at his bellows, but looking at her slily over his shoulder.
“Maybe,” she laughed—and the kind, wise music of the thrush was in her laughter. “’Tis very true, Billy. Life’s playtime for me.” ”

“ Life’s always playing that queer game with me, Farmer; when folk are up and about, damned if they care a stiver for David the Smith—but when they’re down, ’tis always I’m their best friend, and must hurry off at once.”
“Up or down, folk look to ye, David,” said the other, with unabashed and honest praise. “Ye’re a bit like Sharprise Hill, ye—Garth folk will turn for a look at ye, come evil times or good, before they step indoors o’ night. So Joanna West, having no sons of her own, is lonely over yonder, now her good man’s gone, and she wants ye to go out and set things straight?” ”

“ See the love I’ll give ye—asking so little, Cilla, and giving so much—giving so much, my lass.”
Priscilla looked up slowly, and regarded him with a long, steady glance. Life was so great a matter, and she was so weak to cope with it. If David would only give little to her, and ask her to give much in return—if he would be less patient, and more masterful—if he would find some way of taking her perplexities into his hands and riving them to pieces—if he would be devil-may-care for once, as Gaunt had been in the spring—the girl felt, in a helpless way, that then she might bid him stay in Garth. ”

“ He was often at Good Intent, when work about the farm was done and he had leisure to stroll down for a pipe with Yeoman Hirst. Cilla would move about the house at these times, doing little, needless work of setting things to rights against the morrow; or she would sit beside the hearth, and intercept grave glances from Reuben—glances which she answered with the same look of question and of hope. It was their waiting-time, just as it was waiting-time for the frozen pastures; spring would have to step in before they found the answer to their riddle. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ There’s little of the heathen in me, I’ve seen too much of human sorrow to feel aught but fear o’ God. But my God’s different—yours is, and the widow’s is, and poor Peggy’s was—and I catch a sight of Him when I’m riding over the moor, Mr. Gaunt, at the end of a long day’s work, and the hills get up in front of my fiddle-headed horse, and the wind blows low through the heather, and I listen to the fairies. Oh, we doctor-folk learn a thing or two, when we ride with tired bodies and clear eyes, over the moor-top home to supper. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Other times ye’ll be half a man, or none at all. I’ve asked ye fifty times, Reuben, but could find myself no nearer an answer yet—what was left out of ye at birth?”
“Seems power to guide myself was left out of me,” he answered sharply. “Listen to me, Peggy! I’ve nothing much behind me to boast of—but I love Hirst’s lile lass.”
“Ay, so ye said,” put in the other drily. “It scarce helps me, Reuben, to hear it twice. For there’s my own life, as it happens, as well as yours to reckon with.”
Gaunt felt like a man whose feet are caught by the bog. ”

“ It will please her mood to let woodbine leaf in March, to throw a wealth of saffron sunlight into sheltered corners of the fields, so that a man may sit and bask, and tell himself—knowing it a pleasant self-deceit, if he be bred in Strathgarth—that spring this year is coming early and is staying late. The next day a northwest gale will bring sleet and snow with it. And so through April—and half of May, perhaps—the weather teases folk, till their tempers grow brittle, and they hint darkly that it is a fool’s job to go on living in such bleak lands. ”

“ He lay there on his back, and watched the stars, the waning moon whose colour was ivory tinged with saffron, the quiet blue of the sky. The wise folk spoke of the moor as a lonely place, where none could sleep without fear of the ghosts that were known to haunt it. To Billy it was home. If grouse were lying near him in the heather, they were friends; if the old dog-fox from Sharprise Wood chose this track for purposes connected with his larder, Billy was well acquainted with him; as for ghosts, there was only one that troubled him, and this had no dwelling among the marshes and the ling. ”

“ The gypsy wildness in her needed colour, warmth, the speed of strange adventures; as a child, and later as a woman, she had peopled the heath with voices other than the curlew’s and the plover’s. The countless hollows, bottomed by rank mosses and deep bracken, hid ambushed men; behind each hillock that concealed the track from her, she would look for some figure to come riding down to meet her, and no toil about the farm, no harshness of the workaday life which hemmed her in at Ghyll, had killed this glamour of the heath. ”

“ 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.” ”