“Wheer shall I meet ’e to?”
“By the beech—you know. Through the woods be the nearest road for us. To the gert beech, wheer I set our letters in a love knot. No better place. Theer I’ll come, an’ theer I’ll count to see ’e when the moon rises over the hill. An’ doan’t ’e keep me waitin’—not a moment, not the atom of a moment! I’ve gone through enough, an’ my brain spins yet to think o’ the past. Suffer more I can’t—no more at all. You’ll be sorry to your dying day if you’m late. Better never come than that. My head be full o’ strange things at this wonnerful happy happening,—strange things,—but I’ll say no more than bid you be to the beech by moon-rise, if ’tis true that you love me an’ not false. Be theer—or you’ll awnly repent it once, Sarah, an’ that’s so long as you do live arter.”
He exhibited little love now and less tenderness. It almost appeared that a mind long familiar with darkness was unable to accept and understand the light suddenly shed upon it. A note of impending catastrophe sounded in his words, seemed shadowed in his wild eyes.
“You fright me,” said Sarah. “You doan’t take me as I hoped you would. You ban’t your old self, yet. How should you be for that matter? ’Tis only poor second-hand goods I’m bringing to ’e.”
“Not so. ’Tis what I had first promise of. I’ll be all a man can be to ’e—all I should be. Forgive me for harsh words; but I be dazed wi’ this gert come-along-o’-it. I’ve been sore let for many days, an’ ’twill take time to make me see wi’ the old eyes when the brains in my head grow sweet an’ cool again, an’ the poison works out of ’em.”
They talked a little while longer, then the white witch from her chamber window saw them turn and together retrace their steps.
CHAPTER X
That highest hope, long abandoned, should thus suddenly return within his reach, staggered John Aggett, and went far to upset the man’s mental equilibrium. Indeed, it had been but a little exaggeration to describe his mind as, for the time, unhinged. The splendour of his changed position dazed him. Joy and bewilderment strove for mastery, and from a medley of poignant sensations was bred the passionate desire of possession, and a wild hunger to secure for his own what had been withheld so long.
Sarah Belworthy, for her part, experienced great turbulence of conflicting fears. Her mind was fixed, yet had something in it of absolute terror, as she reflected upon the recent interview. She had offered herself to him as a sudden inspiration; and now, retracing that fevered scene, John Aggett’s frenzy of demeanour alarmed her much, for it was a revelation of the man she had not encountered until then. Presently an answer came to her puzzled mind—a solution of a sort that made the blood surge hotly to Sarah’s face. Could it be that she had offered herself where she was wanted no more? Had John’s chivalry alone been responsible for his ready undertaking to receive her back? She nearly screamed in the silence of her little chamber at this thought; she desisted from her labour of preparation and flung herself upon her bed in secret shame. But reason quickly banished the fear. She remembered the man’s intoxication of joy, his delirious thanksgiving. She felt her bosom sore where he had hugged her to himself and praised the God of Justice. Next she retraced his subsequent display of passion, his extravagant utterances and threats. She realized very fully that he held the pending crisis as one of vital magnitude and knew that he was strung to a pitch far beyond any that previous experience of him had exhibited or revealed to her. She determined to give him no cause for further excitement and so returned to her work, wondering the while what this ingredient of fear might be that had entered into her emotions concerning him.
Anon her thoughts passed to the other man, and the last struggle began. For his own salvation she was leaving him, but with natural human weakness she much desired that he should know of her great sacrifice in the time to come. That Timothy should pursue his life in ignorance of the truth after she had departed was a terrible thought to Sarah; but, since to see him again appeared out of the question, there remained a possibility that he would deem her faithless and worthless to the end. She knelt and prayed that the nature of the thing she had done might be revealed to him in fulness of time; and then her mind grew active in another direction and she marvelled why she had thrown herself back into her first lover’s arms and not taken his advice to remain free of both. Her feelings toward Aggett eluded all possibility of analysis or understanding. She fled from them to the task of setting her small possessions in order and packing her basket for the forthcoming departure.