The starshine and the silence of the moor wrapped the two of them about. The fever-heat of August, the misery and fear, were softened, till they seemed, to Gaunt, if not to the widow, part of a tragedy much further off in point of time.
A peewit came straying down the moor, and wheeled and cried about the rowan-tree.
“Hark ye,” said Mrs. Mathewson, “there’s Peggy’s parson come to say a prayer or two above her. He’s constant, like, yond bird; she had him so tame, ye’ll mind, that he’d eat from her hand, and he never went south this winter, like most of his mates. He just comes drifting down each night, like a lost bairn seeking home, and says his prayers, and then goes lap-winging up the moor again. There, we’ll be getting home, Reuben. ’Tis a grand night for two together, if they happen to be springtime-young; but ye’re tired of an old woman’s chatter by this time.”
When they reached the porch, Gaunt stooped and kissed her awkwardly. Such tokens were rare between them, and his feeling was always one of shyness, as if he feared reproof.
“You’ve been kind to me to-night, mother,” he said.
“Well, I’ve a right to be. Take a breath o’ common sense down fro’ the moor to the valley lands, and quit thinking o’ last year’s nests. Good night, Reuben. I’m fancying lile Miss Cilla will not choose so far wide o’ the mark, after all.”
She stood at the porch-door long after he had gone. She was jealous no longer on Peggy’s behalf. A great weariness had come to her—tiredness of all things under this warm, soft sky, with its stars and its silent peace. She had paid her debt to Gaunt. Her knowledge of all he had done for her, when none but he came up to help her through the fever-time, had stood to Widow Mathewson as a debt, and she had always had a liking for meeting creditors.
Peggy lay under the rowan, with the quiet of the lapwing’s evensong above her. Reuben was striding down the fields, lusty and long to live. But this woman, standing at the porch, was empty of all courage.
“Spring blows warm to the young,” was her thought. “’Tis only right it should—but what of the old, sapless folk?”
She sighed, and laughed at herself the next moment, and answered her own question.