“Well, then,” he said, “well, then, doctor, and as a body might say, I was always one for playing.”
The exquisite, cool night lay like God’s blessing over the Strathgarth lands. Gaunt, too sound asleep to hear the doctor’s voice, or Billy’s slow answer, dreamed quietly of Cilla in her lilac frock—of Cilla, who carried scent o’ lilac with her, summertide or winter. There was no memory troubled him to-night of Peggy, and a grave high up the moor-face which he himself had dug for her; nor would he ever know, unless the doctor lost his habit of keeping his own counsel, how near the shadow of death had come to-night to Marshlands.
CHAPTER XXIII
WIDOW MATHEWSON, up at Ghyll Farm, was prepared to find Reuben’s visits grow fewer and fewer, until they ceased altogether.
“Stands to reason,” she told herself, with her half grim, half humorous outlook upon life, “stands to reason he’ll slacken now, when there’s no Peggy to ’tice him up the moor. ’Tis no way likely he’ll come for th’ pleasure of seeing my wry face.”
Her judgment was wrong for once. Through the gold September days and the russet glory of October, Reuben snatched every opportunity to ride or walk to Ghyll. He persuaded Mrs. Mathewson to replace his own farm-hind lent to her, and sorely needed now in the busy life at Marshlands, with a steady, hard-working man-of-all-jobs of his own choosing. He helped her with the in-gathering of the bracken. He took pains to set the new man in his place at once; to teach him that his work here was to save the mistress every trouble. All this Gaunt did, and more, though he could ill spare the time; and in between he would steal to the little glen and the rowan-tree that sheltered the stream and Peggy’s grave of peat.
The widow could not read his motive in all this, and he himself at no time halted to probe into his methods. Remorse for his light playing with the love that Peggy had given him, pity for her end, self-condemnation because he missed her so little, however hard he tried to feel the decency of grief, all played their part in urging him to come often up to Ghyll. But there was more than this. Those weeks of heat and fever had taught him to see life with clearer eyes, to understand the worth of the affection shown him, in a grim, half ashamed fashion, by the lonely woman who had nothing else except her farm to love.
“Seems I’ve gotten a son in my old age,” she said drily, when Gaunt had taken some special pains on her behalf one morning of November.
“Shouldn’t wonder, mother,” he answered cheerily.
“Well, now, there’s a daft thing for a tough old woman to be doing. Seems scarce modest, Reuben—almost flighty-like—”