“Just this, my lass,” said Hirst, blurting it out like a school lad. “When I asked Gaunt to come in, it was because I owed him a debt, like, and wanted to pay it. When I asked him at the door to come a second time, ’twas for a different reason.”
“Yes, father,” said Cilla, still looking at the peats.
“Ye’re bound to meet each other, ye two, and I’d rather ye met here—-well, as often as in the pastures or the bridle-ways. I think ye’re a fool for your heartache, Cilla, but I’d liefer watch Reuben courting ye under my roof than the sky’s.”
Cilla flushed, and her voice was piteous. “We’ve no thought of that kind, father; we’re friendly, he and I, and I’m sorry for his trouble—-there is no more than that.”
“Ay, ye’re friendly, and ye’re sorry; and I should know by this time, Cilla, what that means between a man and a maid. Get me my pipe, lass, and say good night, and think ower what I’ve said.”
Gaunt, meanwhile, rode slowly home to Marshlands. The moon was softening all the outlines of the hills, and owls were calling here and there, making the silence of the land more friendly, if that were needed.
The man was bewildered by the peace of it all—-peace of the hearth at Good Intent, with Cilla dainty and her father full of comradeship—-peace of the night, that was cool and fragrant, and at ease. He had stood too near, till now, to the drought and trouble of the days at Ghyll to meet well-being without distrust. Whenever a cool breeze had met him, with a touch of moisture in it, he had recalled the heat and the naked furnace-sky that had shut the moorland in while Widow Mathewson and he held out against the adversary. Whenever an owl had called, he had started, thinking Peggy o’ Mathewson’s was waking from her fever and needed him in a little up-stairs room.
All was changed to-night. The soft, September scents were abroad, quiet ghosts that promised immortality to the summer which had seemed to die; the clouds about the moon were light as thistle-down; the two at Good Intent, father and daughter, had given him a new hold on life.
He did not know it—men seldom grasp at once these hands reached out to them from the bigger sky above—but he rode down to Marshlands a likelier man to-night, a man more brave to meet the future. All that he could think of, as he slipped from saddle, and gave the reins to a farm-lad, and went indoors, was the peace that lay about Good Intent. Cilla’s clean, homely daintiness, like lavender; her father’s uprightness, and the smell of honest cattle and good horses about him; the peat-glow stealing ruddy across the yellow candle-light at Good Intent and tricking the grave rows of pewter, china and delft mugs into a show of warmth; these fireside matters were full of meaning to him.
When he went up to bed, and opened his window to the September night, it was the same tale. A throstle was whistling a note or two, as if getting ready for the spring.