‘Do you think, Mr. Protheroe,’ demanded Bertha, ‘that it’s the way to win a girl’s esteem to brawl about her in public on a Sunday?’
‘That’s what Thistlewood said,’ Lane answered, with cunning simplicity. ‘“It’s unbecoming,” said he, “in a man to brawl over the maid he wants to marry.”’
‘I was certain he would say so, and think so,’ returned Bertha, with a sinking of the heart. She wanted grounds for pardoning Lane.
‘Well,’ said Lane, with a retrospective air, ‘we talked for a while, and he was good enough to promise me a hiding if I didn’t keep out of his way—meaning, of course, at your father’s house. I didn’t seem to take it quite so meekly as he thought I ought to, and by and by says he, “You seem to be in a hurry for that hiding.” So I just made answer that hurry was no word for it, and then, the pair of us being keen set, we got to it. The day was an accident, and I daresay a piece of forgetfulness on both our sides. But you see, my dear, a man’s just as bound to guard his self-respect on a Sunday as on a week-day.’
‘I have been very deeply wounded,’ said Bertha. ‘I wished to respect you both, and now I can respect neither of you. Good-morning, Mr. Protheroe.’
Mr. Protheroe stood discomfited, and looked mournfully after her as she walked away. When she had disappeared round the bend of the road he sat down upon the bank and plucked grasses with mechanical fingers, turning the thing up and down in his mind for an hour or thereabouts. Suddenly he jumped to his feet and resumed his walk, smiling with head erect, and that mellow whistle of his rose on the air with jollity in every note of it, for it had broken upon his mind like sunshine to remember her first exclamation on seeing him. He was a young man who was in the habit of making sure of things, and he had never in his life been surer of anything than he felt about this. The name, the tone, the look, meant more than a common interest in him. She had called him ‘Lane’ for the first time in his life. She had clasped her hands, and turned pale at the sight of him. All this meant victory for his dearest hopes, and so he leapt to his feet, and marched off whistling like the throstle.
III
Bertha pursued her way along the tortuous bridlepath with thoughts which resembled the way she travelled. Like the road, her fancy seemed to turn back upon itself pretty often and yet in the main it held in the same direction. Of course, fighting was a brutal business to a girl’s way of thinking, but then, when she came really to think of it; men were strange creatures altogether, half terribly glorious and half contemptible. Lane had endured all these injuries simply and merely because he loved her! She could have no conception of the possibilities of masculine joy in a fight for its own sake, or of the masculine sense of honour which compelled the meeting of a challenge half-way. Of course it was mightily unpleasant to be talked about, as the heroine of such a business. The village tongues had been busy, and would never altogether stop wagging for the remainder of her lifetime.
The influence of long years of respect for Thistle-wood seemed to turn her mental steps backward now and then. That so quiet and retired a man, and so little given to proclaiming himself should have made the most sacred wishes of his heart a matter of common gossip was understandable only on one hypothesis. His love and his despair carried him out of himself. That, of course, was a daring thing for any girl to think, but then Bertha was bound to find reasons.