Mr. Collins reflected. He believed, despite the eggshell necklace, that he still gained ground with Jonah's elder daughter in that she tolerated him at less than a yard's distance by fits and starts; but the necessity for not proposing marriage Henry felt to hamper his movements. That Sally might refuse—perhaps a dozen times—was nothing against the argument, for a rustic love-maker is as patient as Nature's self. But in the heart of Collins, obedience to anybody who ordered him with voice sufficiently loud, was a rooted instinct. He had abided by Jonah's clear utterance during time past; and now he remembered it, and, astonished at his own astuteness, sought to make a bargain.
"If I help 'e with this thing, will 'e let me offer marriage to your eldest darter?"
The other was much astonished, for his views upon the subject of Sally had changed somewhat under Margery's delicate manipulation.
"Offer! Powers! I thought as you'd axed her years agone. What's to hinder 'e? 'Tis a free country, an' you'm auld enough to knaw your awn minds, ban't 'e?"
The younger labourer was hurt, and showed as much.
"Your memory's grawin' short seemin'ly," he said. "No matter. If you say I may ax her—'tis all I want. Then I'll serve 'e to the best of my power."
In less than half an hour Henry Collins departed from the stable a haunted man. His eyes roamed like those of a frightened horse; he would have given the wide world to be a thousand miles from Bear Down; for the deed without a name made him tremble to the foundations of his being and threw him into an icy perspiration each time that its significance crossed his mind. Only the permission to propose to Sally sustained him; and even his love could hardly stand the ordeal of this test, for, to tell truth, he doubted more than once whether the game was worth the candle.
How he lived through those moments that separated him from the night Henry never afterwards remembered; but the suspense only endured through some few hours, for Mr. Cramphorn, after revealing his design, perceived that it must be put into immediate execution if the other's help was to be counted upon.
"Give the fule time and he'll draw back or bolt," reflected Jonah.
But the sombre minutes, deep laden each with its own horrid burden of terror and presentment, flapped their bat-wings away into the limbo of time past, and a moment arrived—midnight between two days of late July—when Collins and his leader met by appointment at a spot in the great hayfield of Endicott's, and together proceeded down the hill to Little Silver.