Priscilla—whether the curlews had caused her this dismay, or not—felt restless, ill at ease, as if the light of some great truth were coming to her, and her eyes were unprepared for it.
“Now, listen, lile lass!” said Gaunt. He was helping her to cross a strip of marshy field, and his grasp tightened on her arm. “Suppose life was meant just otherwise? Suppose there was love of a man for a maid, and the lark singing up to the sun?”
The candour in her eyes bewildered Reuben for a moment, as she freed herself and sprang lightly to the drier ground, and stood facing him, her hands clasped in front of her.
“Yes, if it were love, Reuben.” She was no longer proud, or self-secure. It was rather as if she reached out in search of guidance, feeling the throb of new, quick impulses, as if she asked Gaunt to tell her, out of his riper wisdom, whether it were good or ill to follow these same impulses.
There was flattery in this to Reuben. He felt big, protective, and again he yielded to a half-truth—that Cilla had shown him the good way of love.
“Lile lass,” he said—and Garth Valley knows no softer endearment than those words—“lile lass, must I be asking you again and again to marry me? Cilla, I love you, and I could house you well.”
She thrust her clasped hands outward, as if to ward off an evil thought. “What does the house matter, Reuben?” she said, with another gust of that passion which few suspected in Cilla of the Good Intent. “D’ye think I would wed for house and gear? I’m asking, Reuben, whether love is going to sit on the hearthstone and keep it warm—if love is going to sit at meat with us—”
“Try, and see, Cilla,” he broke in quietly.
More magical, and still more magical, the gloaming deepened over the patient fields. Sharprise Hill was a clear-cut wedge of purple now, pointing up into an amber sky, and Hilda Fell showed as a dark blue, jagged line, with a tuft of crimson cloud lying over it like the tattered banner of day’s defeated armies. Low and roving wide, deep and tremulous, the curlew’s voice went round and about the pastures, telling, it seemed to-night, that two human-folk were drifting on life’s glamour-tide, telling, too, of the mysteries, the tumult, and the pains which lay ahead.
They had been silent, awed by the kindred silence of the eventide, the subtle uproar of the curlews, awed by the gift that had come to each of them. On the sudden Reuben Gaunt set his arms about the girl, and drew her to him; and Cilla of the Good Intent, not knowing why, lay there and did not heed. And then again, not knowing why, she stood away, and her face was pitiful to see, because she tried to check her sobs.