Cilla of the Good Intent knew her own mind as little, this mid April time, as Gaunt himself. The man’s plausible, deft homage when he met her; his seeming forgetfulness of the day when he had wanted her to marry him, and she had answered with a laugh; his low, quiet voice as he talked of glamoured countries far away—all these were fast making Reuben the centre of her thoughts. She missed him if he failed to come, though she might draw aloof and set a barrier between them when he did approach her.
Yet David the Smith was about Garth Street each day, and his nearness, though she did not guess as much, steadied Priscilla. Beneath all else there was an assured and pleasant liking for David, a dependence on his judgment, a looking-out for him, as if her eyes needed shading against the glare of life, when troubles came too thickly on her. For this reason she seemed nowadays to play with Reuben Gaunt, though she was wondering only what her own heart had to say to her.
News seldom travelled from Ghyll Farm to Garth. The house lay so far up on the border of the moor, and Widow Mathewson had discouraged intercourse so long, that you might have travelled through the village, and asked by the way for news of those at Ghyll, and yet have learned no tidings at the end of all. Had the widow been ill, or Peggy dying, days might well have passed before they knew in Garth what had chanced at the lone and churlish farmstead. So they guessed nothing nowadays of Reuben’s new infatuation for Peggy Mathewson; had they guessed it, Cilla of the Good Intent would have had a whisper, kindly and wholesome, dropped into her ear.
She heard no rumour, would have disdained rumour had she heard it. Clean of thought and heart, Priscilla wondered if she loved Reuben Gaunt just well enough to marry him. She never questioned his good faith. It was hers to say no or yes—spoiled little queen of the little village as she was—and she asked herself, over and over again, with Puritan self-question, if this light of the glamoured lands were not a will-o’-the-wisp such as danced across the upland marshes. When she saw David, and spoke with him, it was sure that marshlights flickered about her fancied love for Gaunt. Then Reuben would come, soft of speech and pliable, and David would seem a big and country lad upon the sudden.
Spring, meanwhile, flushed into splendour round about the gardens of Garth Street, and in the woods, and along the length of mossy lane-banks. A foam of green-stuff feathered the larches and the rowans, the dog-rose bushes and the blackthorns. The low, sequestered dingle hiding Eller Beck was banked so thick with primroses on either side that it seemed a thousand golden eyes looked up, winking the dew away, when farm-folk went through the dene at blithe of the dawning-time.
The weather held, with playful showers that were like a child’s tears, gusty and soon over. Seldom in the memory of Garth had the pomp and circumstance of the young summer proceeded with so few mischances. There had been no sudden snow to hinder the lambs new-dropped about the pastures; there had been no frost o’ nights; and the throstles sang their clarion note as if no winter’s wind had ever piped a harsher tune about the grey fell-village.
At eight of one of these spring mornings—the wind light from the south, and the sun playing bo-peep with fleecy clouds—Priscilla of the Good Intent stood waiting under the elm tree which long ago had given its name to the village inn. She had been fitful lately in her temper, and Yeoman Hirst, thinking a day’s holiday would be “good for the lile lass,” had asked her to carry out some farming business for him at Keta’s Well, high up the valley.
So Cilla waited, a trim and slender figure, near the old elm tree. The public vehicle by which the Dales folk went from Shepston to Keta’s Well—a vehicle half coach, half omnibus—halted here to take up passengers. The coach was overdue, as it happened, and while she waited, Priscilla saw Reuben Gaunt ride down the street.
Reuben saw her, too, but pretended that his mare was fidgeting upon the rein. He pulled her sharply back at the entry to the stable-yard, plucked her forward again, and disappeared.
“He does not see me,” murmured Priscilla of the Good Intent. “Light to come and light to go, is Reuben Gaunt, they say—but surely—”