Gaunt went out through the porch, and across to the gate of the croft, and stood there, leaning over the top bar, just as Peggy had when she said good-by to him. A great stillness lay over the lands; there was no movement of bird, or sheep, or cattle; no breeze stirred, and the sun, stark in the everlasting blue, seemed the one unwearied thing in nature.
A stillness lay, too, over Reuben Gaunt. He was groping toward the future. A few days since, Peggy had kissed him at the gate here, had bidden him return as quickly as he could. After that there was silence. Though he had seen her, watched beside her bed, no word had passed between them. Not a sign of recognition had come to soften the blow. He could only recall the girl’s vigour, her glowing health, and contrast them with what lay behind him at the farm.
Gradually the numbness left him, and the first sharp sense of grief intruded. He dwelt unduly on the ugliness and horror of Peggy’s death, as though they mattered, now that the soul had passed. He thought, in a vague, haphazard fashion, of many ways in which he might have dealt better with her. He had a senseless longing to have back that day at Linsall Fair, when he had tempted her to meet the fever. They might have chosen twenty other roads than that to Linsall. Mrs. Mathewson, with her creed that was old and pagan as the moor itself, would have told him that he was not to blame in this—that the road to Linsall Fair was planned out before ever Peggy lay in her cradle.
Gaunt had known pain of body; but this anguish that grew keener every moment was new to him. He had no knowledge of the way to meet it, and such ignorance makes all men cowardly.
He had lost all sense of time, until a glance at the sun showed that it was lying over Dingle Nook. He had spent two hours here at the gate, it seemed. Again he blamed himself, and thought of Widow Mathewson, and went back to the farm.
She met him at the door. “’Twas kind o’ ye, Reuben, to leave me to my work; but, then, ye’re always kind these days.”
“Thought I had left you in the lurch, mother.”
“Nay! There was summat to be done, and ye’d have been i’ the way.”
They looked at each other, the man who had suffered and the woman who had suffered much. On their faces was that light, steady, quiet and full of wonder, which touches those who have just stood near to death.
“Have you been—” he began, with quick intuition, and could not put his question into words.