“That I can’t tell, whether anything’s happened to her. She never went to Snowfield—she took the coach to Stoniton, but I can’t learn nothing of her after she got down from the Stoniton coach.”
“Why, you donna mean she’s run away?” said Martin, standing still, so puzzled and bewildered that the fact did not yet make itself felt as a trouble by him.
“She must ha’ done,” said Adam. “She didn’t like our marriage when it came to the point—that must be it. She’d mistook her feelings.”
Martin was silent for a minute or two, looking on the ground and rooting up the grass with his spud, without knowing what he was doing. His usual slowness was always trebled when the subject of speech was painful. At last he looked up, right in Adam’s face, saying, “Then she didna deserve t’ ha’ ye, my lad. An’ I feel i’ fault myself, for she was my niece, and I was allays hot for her marr’ing ye. There’s no amends I can make ye, lad—the more’s the pity: it’s a sad cut-up for ye, I doubt.”
Adam could say nothing; and Mr. Poyser, after pursuing his walk for a little while, went on, “I’ll be bound she’s gone after trying to get a lady’s maid’s place, for she’d got that in her head half a year ago, and wanted me to gi’ my consent. But I’d thought better on her”—he added, shaking his head slowly and sadly—“I’d thought better on her, nor to look for this, after she’d gi’en y’ her word, an’ everything been got ready.”
Adam had the strongest motives for encouraging this supposition in Mr. Poyser, and he even tried to believe that it might possibly be true. He had no warrant for the certainty that she was gone to Arthur.
“It was better it should be so,” he said, as quietly as he could, “if she felt she couldn’t like me for a husband. Better run away before than repent after. I hope you won’t look harshly on her if she comes back, as she may do if she finds it hard to get on away from home.”
“I canna look on her as I’ve done before,” said Martin decisively. “She’s acted bad by you, and by all of us. But I’ll not turn my back on her: she’s but a young un, and it’s the first harm I’ve knowed on her. It’ll be a hard job for me to tell her aunt. Why didna Dinah come back wi’ ye? She’d ha’ helped to pacify her aunt a bit.”
“Dinah wasn’t at Snowfield. She’s been gone to Leeds this fortnight, and I couldn’t learn from th’ old woman any direction where she is at Leeds, else I should ha’ brought it you.”
“She’d a deal better be staying wi’ her own kin,” said Mr. Poyser, indignantly, “than going preaching among strange folks a-that’n.”