But it has been a sweet thraldom. When Mary had made up her mind she was not one to let the grass grow under her feet, and the very next evening she told me to get me dressed if I meant to go with her to th’ Brigg. So off we set together by Kitchen Fold, over Crossland Moor, past the plantation where Mr. Horsfall had been shot, and so dropped down into th’ Brigg. I pointed out to Mary the marks of the bullets on the wall on the road side opposite the little wood; but Mary shivered and drew her shawl tighter about her and hurried on, casting frightened glances at the clump of trees and bush as if she feared to see a ghost. She would not let me go with her to Walker’s, bidding me meet her in an hour’s time on the Brigg and be ready to company her back. So I thought I might as well comfort myself with a glass at th’ Nag’s Head. It was not so long since that the landlord would have fussed about me as I drank my ale and offered me a treat. But now, as I sat aloof from the little company and took my drink, he talked pointedly to the other customers about the honest way he had always kept his house, saying he would have neither Luds nor their brass at th’ Nag’s Head and their room was better nor their company. But I would not be hurried for the likes of him, and called for another gill and made it last out my hour just to spite him.
Mary did not keep me waiting long on th’ Brigg, and fain I was to be off, for little knots of people were clustered in the street and many a look was cast at me, not over friendly; and faces that I knew well enough looked stonily at me, and one or two that knew me well enough, and to whom I gave the day, made as tho’ they did not know me from Adam. It was plain as a pike–staff that the folk at th’ Brigg were fleyed out of their wits of being suspected of having ought to do with the Luds. They altered their tune later on, when th’ first panic had passed, but for a week or two after George and Thorpe were taken every man was on his best behaviour, and a good many lived in hourly fear and trembling.
Be sure, then, we did not loiter in Longroyd Bridge. There was nothing there to tempt us to stay, and Mary was in a greater hurry to be gone than even I. She was very pale. She had had no spirits to talk of since we had heard George was taken, but now she was more down nor ever. Not a word spoke she right up th’ moor till we got to th’ top and turned round to look on th’ town lying at our feet. She was panting for breath, and I drew her to the roadside and made her sit upon the wall. There was nobody about, and the early night of late autumn had closed in. I tried to steal my arm about her waist, tho’ Mary was ever coy of suffering any such show of my love. But she put away my arm very gently—”Yo mustn’t do that again, Ben. It’s all ovver now. We’n had our dream, an’ it’s been a sweet ‘un. But I’ve had a rude wakening, an’ it’s all ovver, it’s all ovver.” And Mary hid her face in her hands and bent over as she sat, and tears trickled from under her hands down upon her lap.
I let her be, and she wept silently. Then she sprang to her feet and dried her eyes and tried to smile and would have had me take the road again; but I would not budge, and she had to sit by my side. The road was quiet enough, and what mattered it if all the world saw us? We’d as much right there as anyone.
“Now, Mary, tell me, like a sensible lass, what it all means.”
Mary did not speak to me. I saw she was considering so I did not hurry her. I was getting used to the ways of women. There’s nought like loving and courting for teaching a man th’ way to handle ’em, tho’ they’re kittle cattle to shoe at the’ best o’ times.
“There’s summat aw hannot told thee, Ben. Happen aw should ha’ done.”
“Aw think aw can guess it.”
“Tha nivver can.”
“Is it about Ben Walker?”