“Best not put it that way. Doan’t drag my rascal of a bwoy in the argeyment. Say to yourself, ‘I must mate him as I promised to mate—him that’s wastin’ his life an’ gwaine all wrong for love o’ me.’ ’Tis plain duty, woman, looked at right. Not that I’d rob ’e of the pleasure of knowin’ you’d done a gert deed if you gived Tim up; but t’other’s the man as you’ve got to think of; an’, if you do this gude thing, ’tis just similar as he done for you. Wi’ Jan Aggett be your happiness wrapped up, if you could see it. An’ Jan’s much more like to go well in marriage harness than my son be, or I doan’t know carater.”
“I’ll try, I’ll try. It’s more than I’ve heart or strength for, but I’ll try, Maister Chave. I’ll try to do right by both of them.”
“Who could say fairer? An’ here’s the lane to blacksmith’s, so I’ll drop ’e. An’ give your faither my respects an’ tell un I want un to-morrow to the farm.”
After Sarah had dismounted the farmer spoke again.
“Take to heart what I’ve said to ’e, an’ remember that to please me won’t be a bad action from a worldly side. Go back to Jan Aggett, Sarah Belworthy; that’s my advice to you, an’ angels from heaven couldn’t give ’e no better, ’cause theer ban’t room for two ’pinions. Now let me hear what metal you’m made of, an’ that afore the week be out. So gude night.”
The man trotted off with knees stiff and elbows at right angles to his body; the girl entered her home; and that night, tossing and turning wearily, thrice she decided to give up her lover and thrice determined to take no definite step until she had again seen and spoken with Timothy. But her heart told her that such a course was of all the weakest. Presently she assured herself that many plans might be pursued and that wide choice of action lay before her. Then John Aggett chiefly occupied her thoughts. To go back to him now appeared absolutely impossible. He had given her up, at a cost even she but dimly guessed, and to return into his troubled life again struck her as a deed beyond measure difficult and dangerous.
Long she reflected miserably on the sorrow of her lot; then, in the small hours of morning and upon the threshold of sleep, Sarah determined to let another judge of her right course of conduct and dictate it to her.
“’Twas the white witch, Gammer Gurney, as foretold Tim would marry me that terrible night,” she thought. “Then ’tis for she to say what I should do an’ what I shouldn’t do. If ’tis ordained by higher things than men-folk as I’m to have Tim, what’s the use o’ weeping ’cause Farmer Chave wishes differ’nt?”
There was a sort of comfort in this philosophy; but her grey eyes closed upon a wet pillow as she slept, to wake with sudden starts and twitches from visions in great aisles of gloom, from dim knowledge of horrors hidden behind storm-clouds, from the murmur of remote callings and threatenings and cries of woe, from all-embracing dread begotten of a heavy heart, and an outlook wholly dreary and desolate.