A cloud was hurrying across the moon and had laid a shadow on the whiteness of the open.
“Where?” he asked, turning to follow her gaze.
“There, there,” she repeated. “Didn’t ye see some one a-movin’ across behind the bushes? Charley, Charley, there’s father’s eyes everywheres—a-gleamin’ out at us all the time. Let’s get away from ’em—do!”
The lad moved forward, though still holding her fast with one hand.
“No, no,” said he reassuringly. “Ye’re a bit excited, that’s what it is,—ye fancy things. We should ha’ been bound to see any one move across the open there, you take my word for it.”
She pressed closer to his side, but she trembled still.
“I b’lieve father ’d kill me if he knowed as I’d been with ye to-night,” she whispered. “Ye don’t know what ’e’s like, father. It’s bad enough when ’e ’aven’t got the drink in ’im. ’E’s mad agin you and yours—downright crazy-mad. Oh, Charley,” she moaned again, clinging to him with trembling hands, “take me with ye, do, now! Don’t leave me wi’ father! I’d not be a bit o’ trouble to ye, that I wouldn’t! You try me. I’d rather live on a crust for weeks than stay ’ere alone. I’m frightened, I am. It seems as if somethin’ bad was bound to ’appen if ye go away and leave me. Take me along with ye, Charley!”
The boy wavered. He too was frightened, though he would not have acknowledged it. He too, with the headlong recklessness of youth, would have adventured all to hold what he had won, to have what he wanted; but a vague sense of responsibility born of this new and strangely constraining love, an uncomprehended instinct to protect what clung to him, prevailed at last. He kissed her again, but it was no longer feverishly; he was as he had said—a man.
“There, now, there,” said he soothingly, “ye mustn’t be onreasonable, ye know. I shouldn’t be actin’ right by ye if I was to take ye from yer ’ome afore I’d somethin’ to keep ye on. I ’aven’t acted just as I should ha’ done by ye, may be, but I can make that right. Only ye must let me go and work for ye. If I was a ’cute un like my brother Ben, I’d say to the Guv’nor: ‘Give me the bit o’ money what’d be mine some day, and let me go and take my own chance wi’ it.’ But it’d be trickin’ ’im to do that for to marry the darter o’ the man as ’e ’ates—and I ain’t a bad lot. No, I’ll make my own way, and we’ll be man and wife, fair and open, and please God father ’ll come to love ye too—some day. ’Tain’t in nature as both on ’em shouldn’t forgive when it’s done. Ay, we’ll be man and wife come Lady Day, Bess. I swear it, and it shall be done square. I ain’t a bad lot, dear, and I’ll make ye a good ’usband, s’elp me God.”
His voice shook a little, but he lifted one hand to the moon that was bright on them for a moment, while he strained her wildly to his breast with the other; and she felt the purpose in him and bowed to the inevitable.