The widow’s face softened a little, but she did not spare him. “Very well,” she said, her fine, keen eyes reading every line of his face. “Ay, very well indeed, Reuben Gaunt, if ye can hold to th’ same mind two days running. When I see Peggy wedded I shall believe ’at Peggy’s wedded. Good night to ye. I’m fair clemmed wi’ all th’ day’s work, while ye two were gadding ower to Linsall Fair.”
Peggy went with Gaunt to the gate of the croft. “Ne’er heed mother,” she whispered. “’Tis her way, Reuben. She’ll soften to ye by and by.”
“I heed naught, lass, so long as ye’re lying lile and soft i’ my two arms. What a fool I’ve been all these years—what a fool!”
He was swept away by his passion, by the girl’s free, reckless beauty and reckless tenderness. He pictured her down yonder in the lonely house at Marshlands. The liberty he had cherished—liberty to come and go as he listed, like the wind—was shorn of all attraction. There would be warmth and well-doing about his house, and ties to keep him safe from wandering.
They stood looking down the moor. The moon outlined each smooth ridge; her light was nestled in the misty vagueness of the hollows; away and away to the grey-blue of the silent sky she touched the land with witchery. And Peggy sighed.
“Why, lass, you’re shivering,” said Gaunt, roused from his dreams of what might be.
“Oh, a goose walked over my grave,” she answered lightly. “A silly goose, Reuben, to choose just to-day for wandering.”
She did not tell him that she feared the day’s happiness, feared lest all should be changed when she woke on the morrow. Hardship was more easy to believe in, after all, and in her experience it followed pleasure always.
They watched the moor; and the tenderness, the mute, uncomplaining sorrow of the land, came close to Peggy, as to one who had known the heath from childhood.
“Reuben,” she sobbed, “if only ye had one mind in a day, instead of fifty—or if only I could care for ye less—”