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.