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 times it 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’ve bided 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 hills beyond, 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.