Metcalf and the Governor were silent as they went their round, until the Squire turned abruptly.
"My wife is like that," he said, as if he had captured some new truth, unguessed by the rest of a dull world. "Ay, and my mother, God rest her. Memories of cradle-days return, when we are weak; they show their angel side."
"There's only one thing ails Miss Bingham—she's a woman to the core of her. Eh, Metcalf, it must be troublesome to be a woman. I'd liefer take all my sins pick-a-back, and grumble forward under the weight, and be free of whimsies."
Through the short summer's night, Miss Bingham tended Blake. She heard him talk of Knaresborough and the ferry-steps—always the ferry-steps. She learned all that she had seemed to him, and wondered how any man could view any woman through such a pleasant mist of worship. Then she listened to the tale of his rude awakening, and winced as he spoke in delirium words that could never be forgotten. And then again they were watching Nidd River swirl beneath them, and he was busy with a lover's promises. When he slept at last, wearied by the speed of his own fancies, she sat watching him. A round, white moon had climbed over the edge of Outlaw Moss. She saw the lines of hardship in his face—lines bitten in by harsh weather of the world and of the soul.
"Poor Blake," she thought, "ah, poor li'le Blake!"
From the foolery that had been her life till now there came a gust of sickliness. Blake could not live till dawn. She would go afield while they were hiding him under the earth, would bring wild flowers and strew them broadcast over his resting-place. She would pray tenderly at his graveside.
Already she half believed these pious exercises would recompense Blake for the loss of all he had cared for in this life. He would know that she was there, and look down on the fret and burden of his heartbreak as a thing well worth the while. She would smother his dead grief with flowers and penitence.
It was Blake himself who disordered the well-planned poetry. He did not die at dawn. They waited three days on Outlaw Moss till they knew that he would live, and four days afterwards until his old laugh returned, and he could get his knees about a saddle. Then they went forward another stage on the slow journey out to Nappa.
Miss Bingham stood between the old world and the new; and that experience, for any man or woman's soul, is hazardous. She saw herself in true outline. As others gambled with gold and silver pieces, she had played with hearts. She had not known the value of the stakes; but now she understood. One by one, in memory's cold procession, she saw them pass—Blake, his young soul on fire with worship; Anstruther, who had persisted in throning her among the stars, and who was now, they said, no company for any gentry save those of wayside taverns. She hid her eyes. Spoiled, wayward, she resented the discipline of penance. Day by day she thought more of Christopher, and welcomed his sturdy self-reliance as a shield against her past.
Day by day, too, Joan Grant grew more silent, more aloof from the haphazard routine of their life among the hills. And the whole camp looked on, afraid for their idol, Christopher, afraid for Joan, great loathing for Miss Bingham growing in their midst.