“There’s you and the farm to think of, mother. That’s enough to carry me forward.”
Then he led her on to talk of olden times, for he had learned already that this was her surest road to peace. He mixed her rum and milk, and set it down on the ledge at the right hand of the hooded chair, and coaxed a smile from her and a crisp assurance, that “living wi’ ne’er-do-weels was sure to bring ye into loosish ways.” She talked of Peggy’s childhood, recounted a score of escapades, with a mother’s pitiful and tender regard for detail. She spoke of her husband, and laughed slily at his weaknesses. It is in this way that bereaved folk find shelter sometimes, for their little hour, from the bleak face of death.
“Mathewson war as he war made,” she finished, “an’ I munnot say naught agen them as has gone—but he war shammocky, Reuben. If it war no bigger job than sticking a row o’ peas, he war shammocky still. He’d start th’ job after breakfast, and put in happen a dozen sticks; then he’s sit on th’ wall, an’ light his pipe, an’ look at what he’d done till I came out, an’ flicked him off o’ th’ wall-top; and somewhere about nightfall, if I war lucky and could get away fro’ my work often enough to stir him up, he’d have finished yond row o’ peas. Then he’d step indoors, an’ draw hisseln a mug of ale, an’ say he’d allus known there was naught like good, honest work for making a body enjoy his sup o’ beer. Poor Mathewson! He war made as he war made, an’ he niver varied mich. Now, Peggy was a different breed—”
And Gaunt listened to her praise of Peggy, putting in a word here, or a question there, till it was bedtime. The widow rose at last, and took a rush candle from the mantel.
“Well, we’d best be getting to sleep, Reuben. Ye’ll lig on th’ settle, as on other nights? I’ve had many a watch-dog i’ my time, lad, but ye’re th’ best o’ th’ lot, I fancy. I sleep sounder when I know that you’re below stairs.”
There was affection in the glance she gave him; and Reuben, when he lay down to sleep an hour later, found no ill dreams to trouble him.
Yet these two had not been open the one with the other. The widow had concealed her visit to the grave, three nights ago. Gaunt had concealed the dread that beset him through the daytime.
The dread awoke with him the next morning, and dogged his footsteps as he went across the croft. It kept close beside him until noon, when he came home across the burned-up fields in search of dinner. He had known no fear until Peggy died. There had been the hope that she would recover, the need of constant listening for a call to the bedside. Hope and the urgent need were gone, and life for its own sake was sweet again to Gaunt. Fever, and the all but certain death, had grown to the shape of Barguest, the brown dog.
He halted now at the gate where Peggy had kissed him for the last time. He looked at the sun, set high in a sky of blue that had no soul behind it—a sky as hard as beaten metal that seemed to press upon the earth and keep in the suffocating heat. If ever a man prayed for rain, Gaunt prayed for it now with a whole heart. He sought for one wisp of cloud to break the fierce monotony of blue; there was none. Each undulation of the hill-tops showed strangely clear, as if cut by a keen-edged knife. The silence was unbearable.
Gaunt’s courage, when he chose to enter Ghyll and share its dangers, was child’s play to the pluck that now was asked of him. There was no longer any warmth of impulse, of zest in sacrifice for its own fine sake; fear had reached him, and the shelterless heat weakened every effort at resistance, till there were times when dread merged into outright panic and set him trembling like a child. He would recover, win back his manhood with the dogged perseverance that had won him the fell-race; then, and not before, he would seek out the widow, and day by day she found him stronger, more considerate, more bent on naming her “mother” and on proving himself a real son.