“Promise, then, promise you’ll be dumb till arter Christmas.”
“So I will, if you ’m that set on it; but if you knawed what waitin’ meant to the likes o’ me, you wouldn’t ax. You’ve got my word, now keep quiet, theer ’s a dear love, an’ dry your eyes.”
He put her into bed, and soon stretched himself beside her. Then she clung to him as though powers were already dragging him away for ever. Will, bored and weary, was sorry for his wife with all his soul, and kept grunting words of good cheer and comfort as he sank to sleep. She still begged and prayed for delay, and by her importunity made him promise at last that he would take no step until after New Year’s Day. Then, finding she could win no more in that direction, Phoebe turned to another aspect of the problem, and began to argue with unexpected if sophistic skill. Her tears were now dry, her eyes very bright beneath the darkness; she talked and talked with feverish volubility, and her voice faded into a long-drawn murmur as Will’s hearing weakened on the verge of unconsciousness.
“Why for d’ you say you was wrong in what you done? Why d’ you harp an’ harp ’pon that, knawin’ right well you’d do the same again to-morrow? You wasn’t wrong, an’ the Queen’s self would say the same if she knawed. ’T was to save a helpless woman you runned; an’ her—Queen Victoria—wi’ her big heart as can sigh for the sorrow of even such small folks as us—she’d be the last to blame ’e.”
“She’ll never knaw nothin’ ’bout it, gude or bad. They doan’t vex her ears wi’ trifles. I deserted, an’ that’s a crime.”
“I say ’t weern’t no such thing. You had to choose between that an’ letting me die. You saved my life; an’ the facts would be judged the same by any as was wife an’ mother, high or low. God A’mighty ’s best an’ awnly judge how much you was wrong; an’ you knaw He doan’t blame ’e, else your heart would have been sore for it these years an’ years. You never blamed yourself till now.”
“Ess, awften an’ awften I did. It comed an’ went, an’ comed an’ went again, like winter frosts. True as I’m living it comed an’ went like that.”
Thus he spoke, half incoherently, his voice all blurred and vague with sleep.
“You awnly think ’t was so. You’d never have sat down under it else. It ban’t meant you should give yourself up now, anyways. God would have sent the sojers to find ’e when you runned away if He’d wanted ’em to find ’e. You didn’t hide. You looked the world in the faace bold as a lion, didn’t ’e? Coourse you did; an’ ’t is gwaine against God’s will an’ wish for you to give yourself up now. So you mustn’t speak an’ you must tell no one—not even faither. I was wrong to ax ’e to tell him. Nobody at all must knaw. Be dumb, an’ trust me to be dumb. ’T is buried an’ forgot. I’ll fight for ’e, my dearie, same as you’ve fought for me many a time; an’ ’t will all fall out right for ’e, for men ’s come through worse passes than this wi’ fewer friends than what you’ve got.”
She stopped to win breath and, in the silence, heard Will’s regular respiration and knew that he slept. How much he had heard of her speech Phoebe could not say, but she felt glad to think that some hours at least of rest and peace now awaited him. For herself she had never been more widely awake, and her brains were very busy through the hours of darkness. A hundred thoughts and schemes presented themselves. She gradually eliminated everybody from the main issue but Will, John Grimbal, and herself; and, pursuing the argument, began to suspect that she alone had power to right the wrong. In one direction only could such an opinion lead—a direction tremendous to her. Yet she did not shrink from the necessity ahead; she strung herself up to face it; she longed for an opportunity and resolved to make one at the earliest moment.