Priscilla of the Good Intent: A Romance of the Grey Fells

The blacksmith’s forge stood just this side of the village as you entered it from Shepston, and David Blake, the smith, was blowing lustily at his bellows, while the sweat dripped down his face. The cool of a spring morning came through the doorway, against which leaned a heavy, slouching lad.

“Te-he, David the Smith! Sparks do go scrambling up chimney,” said Billy the Fool, with a fat and empty laugh.

They called him Billy the Fool, for old affection’s sake, with no sense of reproach; for the old ways of thought had a fast hold on Garth village, and a natural was held in a certain awe, as being something midway between a prophet and a child.

“Ay, sparks are scrambling up. ’Tis a way they have, Billy,” answered the other cheerily. “What’s your news?”

Again Billy laughed, but cunningly this time. “Grand news--all about myself. Was up at sunrise, and been doing naught ever since. I’m main fond of doing naught, David. Seems to trickle down your body, does idleness, like good ale.”

The blacksmith loosed his hold on the bellows’ handles and turned about, while he passed a hand across his forehead.

“Is there nought ye like better than idleness?” he asked. “Think now, Billy--just ponder over it.”

“Well, now,” answered the other, after a silence, “there’s playing--what ye might call playing at a right good game. Could ye think of some likely pastime, David?”

“Ay, could I. Blowing bellows is the grandest frolic ever I came across.”

Billy was wary, after his own fashion, and he looked at the blacksmith hard, his child’s eyes--blue and unclouded by the storms of life--showing big beneath their heavy brows of reddish-brown.

“I doubt ’tis work, David,” he said dispassionately.

“Nay, now! Would I ask thee to work, lad? Fond o’ thee as I am, and knowing labour’s harmful to thee?”

“I shouldn’t like to be trapped into work. ’Twould scare me when I woke o’ nights and thought of it.”

“See ye, then, Billy”--blowing the bellows gently--“is it work to make yon sparks go, blue and green and red, as fast as ever ye like to drive ’em? Play, I call it, and I’ve a mind, now I come to think on’t, just to keep ye out o’ the game, and go on playing it myself.”

Billy drew nearer, with an anxious look. “Ye wouldn’t do that, or ye’d not be blacksmith David,” he said, with unerring knowledge of the other’s kindliness. “Te-he! ’Tis just a bit o’ sporting--I hadn’t thought of it i’ that light.”

And soon he was blowing steadily; for the lad’s frame was a giant’s, when he chose to use it, and no fatigue had ever greatly touched him. From time to time, as the blacksmith paused to take a red-hot bar from the furnace or to put a cold one in, he would nod cheerfully at Billy the Fool and emphasize the frolicsome side of his employment.

“Ye’ve an easy time, Billy,” he would say. “See me sweating here at beating iron into horseshoe shape--and ye playing at chasing sparks all up the chimley!”

The sweat was pouring from Billy, too, by this time, but he did not heed. Plump and soft his laugh came, as he forced the sparks more swiftly from the coals.

“Was born for playtimes, I, David,” he cried in great delight. “I’ve heard tell of silver spoons, popped unbeknownst-like into babbies’ cradles. I war a babby o’ that make, I reckon, for sure ’tis I’m always playing, when I’m not always idling in between times.”

“Ye were lucky fro’ birth,” David answered, driving the hole for the last nail. “Some folk is, while other-some must work.”

“Why do ye work, David?” asked the other, with entire simplicity.

“Oh, just a fancy, lad. Seems as I have to, somehow. There were no silver spoons dropped into my cradle. Hive o’ bees swarmed there, I fancy, for I’ve had a few in my bonnet ever since.”

There was another silence, while Billy the Fool, working hard at the bellows, looked long and meditatively at David Blake.

“I wouldn’t like to hurt ye, David,” he said at last, “but I reckon ye’re just a bit daft-witted like. Why don’t ye play or idle all your time, same as I do?”

David threw the finished horseshoe on the heap at his left hand, and was about to answer when a shadow came between the reeking smithy and the fresh and open sunshine beyond the door.

“Oh, ’tis ye, Priscilla?” he said, looking up. “Ye’ve got the spring-look in your face.”

As she stood half in, half out of the smithy door, Priscilla was radiant in her young and pliant beauty. To David Blake’s fancy--rough, kindly, not far wide of the mark at any time--she “made the day new-washed and happier”; yet it was Billy who next found his tongue.

“Te-he! Ye look as if life was playtime for ye, too,” said he, still blowing at his bellows, but looking at her slily over his shoulder.

“Maybe,” she laughed--and the kind, wise music of the thrush was in her laughter. “’Tis very true, Billy. Life’s playtime for me.”

David Blake looked at her, and liked her a little the better; for he knew that Priscilla worked hard, worked long and with a blithe face, each day of her life. To the blacksmith it seemed, in between doing odd jobs that brought him in a livelihood, that his prime work in life was to love Priscilla ever and ever a little more--and each day to find himself more tongue-tied in her presence.

Again it was Billy who took up the talk, though Blake would think to-morrow of twenty things he might have said, and curse himself in a quiet way for having failed to say them.

“I’m always playing, as a man might say, myself,” chuckled the Fool. “Playing at bellows-blowing now. See the lile sparks go up, Miss Priscilla--’tis I that send them, right enough.”

“Why, yes,” she said, nodding pleasantly at his wide and gaping face. “We’re playing, Billy, you and I. Only the blacksmith works.”

“He’s a bit of a fool, by that token,” hazarded Billy.

The blacksmith, when he laughed at all, laughed from his lungs outward. “Always guessed it, Priscilla,” said he, making his anvil ring. “Billy’s a child, but old in wisdom. Bit of a fool I’ll be to the end, I reckon.”

“I’m playing, David,” said Billy, while the blacksmith halted in his work to steal a glance at Priscilla. “Get ye on with your work o’ making horseshoes, if I’m playing the tune to ye.”

Again David laughed. “Keeps me at it, Priscilla,” he said. “Never met a taskmaster so hard to drive a man as Billy.”

“We want ye at Good Intent,” said Priscilla, laughing too--and her laughter was a pleasant thing to hear, reminding David again of throstles when the spring comes in.

“You can ease your hold of the bellows, Billy,” said David, with an alacrity that was patent to the girl, modest and proud as she was. “When I am called to Good Intent Farm--well, I go, most times, and ne’er ask what’s wanted, and leave smithy-work behind.”

“Robbing me o’ my playtime,” panted Billy the Fool, as he mopped his forehead.