Gaunt whistled low and clear again, and sent down the sheep—a huddled, scampering flock—toward the woman. He was no fool in matters of the farm, but at usual times he was too indolent to use his gifts in that direction.
“Coals of fire!” he shouted, putting a hand to his mouth to carry the sound up-wind. “Here are your sheep—gather them in and drive ’em home, Widow.”
“Like him,” said Mrs. Mathewson, with patient wonder. “Kills the heart in a woman one minute, and the next goes out of his home-bee road to do her a good turn. Would God I knew what sort o’ clay this Reuben Gaunt is made of!”
She gathered her flock together, and started to drive them home; but Gaunt was riding straight across the moor, and riding fast, for Ghyll.
It was easy, seeing the farm to-day, with the mellow spring light dwarfed and sundered by its blackened walls—it was easy to understand the gospel in which Widow Mathewson and her daughter had been reared. It was chary of spring, this farm; it had received more kicks than halfpence from the weather; it looked askance at gifts o’ grace, and would not listen to the larks on this blithe morning.
Peggy had just finished churning, when she heard the sound of horse-hoofs. She stood and listened, and there was expectation in every line of her strong figure—and in her face a wild self-pity and derision.
“So you’ve come?” was her greeting, as Gaunt stepped inside the dairy, after slipping the cob’s bridle about the top bar of the outer gate. “Knew you would, soon or late—but ’tis full soon, Reuben, seeing that only last night—”
“I want us to part friends. That’s why I’m here,” broke in the other, tapping his riding-breeches restlessly with his crop.
The girl laughed. Gaunt had never heard disaster so assured in any voice. It was as if the farmstead, and the weather it had seen, and the tumults that had scarred its walls, took human shape and utterance.
“That’s how ye want us to part?” she said. “Will ye be a fool to the end, Reuben Gaunt, or are ye thinking life’s a game for bairns to sport with? Ride back through the ling to lile Miss Good Intent, and tell her I’ve returned ye with all the will in the world. Tell her that lasses catch ye, like the plague, and lose what little looks they’ve got through fretting for your tom-fool ways. Tell her—”