“Been fool enough to love me,” he answered. “But it’s never too late for a woman to change her mind. Leave a sinking ship, or rather a ship that never got properly launched, but, sticking out of its element, was left to rot. Why don’t you leave me, Chris?”
She stroked his hand, then picked it up and laid her soft cheek against it.
“Not till the end of the world comes for wan of us, Clem. I’ll love ’e always, and the better and deeper ’cause you ’m so wisht an’ unlucky somehow. But you ’m tu wise to be miserable all your time.”
“You ought to make me a man if anything could. I burn away with hopes and hopes, and more hopes for the future, and miss the paltry thing at hand that might save me.”
“Then miss it no more, love; seek closer, an’ seek sharper. Maybe gude work an’ gude money ’s awnly waitin’ for ’e to find it. Doan’t look at the moon an’ stars so much; think of me, an’ look lower.”
Slowly the beauty of the hour and the sweet-hearted girl at his elbow threw some sunshine into Clement’s moody heart. For a little while the melancholy and shiftless dreamer grew happier. He promised renewed activity in the future, and undertook, as a first step towards Martin Grimbal, to inform the antiquary of that great fact which his foolish whim had thus far concealed.
“Chance might have got it to his ears through more channels than one, you would have thought; but he’s a taciturn man, asks no questions, and invites no confidences. I like him the better for it. Next week, come what may, I’ll speak to him and tell him the truth, like a plain, blunt man.”
“Do ’e that very thing,” urged Chris. “Say we’m lovers these two year an’ more; an’ that you’d be glad to wed me if your way o’ life was bettered. Ban’t beggin’, as he knaws, for nobody doubts you’m the most book-learned man in Chagford after parson.”
Together they followed the winding of the river and proceeded through the valley, by wood, and stile, and meadow, until they reached Rushford Bridge. Here they delayed a moment at the parapet and, while they did so, John Grimbal passed on foot alone.
“His house is growing,” said Clement, as they proceeded to Mrs. Blanchard’s cottage.