It was Peggy who broke the silence. They had reached the deep glen above Ghyll Farm, and she paused at the rowan-tree which branched across the dancing stream. She had spent long hours under shadow of the rowan before and after she had learned her love for Gaunt; the place was friendly to her, for it was haunted by familiar years.
She stood straight in the moonlight, facing him. The rowan-leaves threw feathery shadows on her face. “Reuben,” she said, “what’s amiss with us both?”
“Why, naught, lile lass. You want to be free of the churning and the rest? Well, there’s Marshlands waiting for ye, if you choose to come as mistress.”
“Reuben!”
He could not tell whether sorrow or keen gladness lay underneath the cry. He knew Peggy o’ Mathewson’s had never moved him as she did to-night.
“Reuben, I’m all lost on the moor,” she went on quickly. “I love the peat that ye tread on, and yet I doubt ye. I’ve seen ye a man to-day, Reuben, and yet I’m wondering whether it can last. The mood’s on ye to make me mistress yonder. Ay, but to-morrow? Love goes and comes wi’ some folk, but it stays wi’ women such as me—make no doubt o’ that.”
“It will stay with me. Are ye going with the rest o’ the flock, lile one—bleating me down, when I try to get my feet on a straight road?”
Peggy o’ Mathewson’s stood silent. The moonlight, dappled by the swaying rowan-leaves, showed a beauty that was scarcely of this world. Like the weather-stained mother who waited for her coming, down yonder at the farm, Peggy had peeped into a bigger life than this.
Suddenly she lost her straightness, and was sobbing in Gaunt’s arms. “You’ll be good to me, Reuben? ’Tis all or naught wi’ me, and you can break my heart, or mend it, just as you please. Oh, I should take shame to talk to ye like this—but I’ll come to Marshlands wi’ no half-love fro’ ye.”
Gaunt felt a new warmth, a generous impulse, not only to take this passionate, headstrong lass to Marshlands, but to make her happy there. He told her as much in few words, and the answer touch of her hands as he held them roused something manlier, more robust, in the man’s contrary nature.