“An’ whenever ye see a bit o’ sweetbriar, ye’ll think o’ me?” said Rebecca.
Yes, he would think of her then and always.
“I do want the sweetbriar to remind you o’ me,” went on the girl, “because—because—I reckon it’s like me—full of prickles. I’ve often been a bad maid to ye, Davy, haven’t I? Often an’ often I’ve pricked ye and hurt ye, but I’ve loved ye all the time.”
And thereupon David assured her he didn’t mind the prickles, and that there was nothing in all the world so sweet as the sweetbriar, and then having reached the top of the lane they kissed each other again and came home through the scented dusk full of a melancholy happiness.
The memory of that hour comforted David during the first weeks of separation, but as time went on the old habit of jealous distrust reasserted itself in some measure. Rebecca was a bad correspondent. The wilful little maid had never taken much pains to make herself a scholar and letter-writing was to her a matter of difficulty. David would brood over each scanty ill-spelt scrawl, torturing himself with doubts: Rebecca said so little—was she already beginning to forget him? She was so pretty, so gay—surely somebody else would “snap her up” while his back was turned.
Yet now and then a little word in one of Rebecca’s letters would make his heart thrill afresh with hope and love, and he would be filled with remorse for his unworthy suspicions. And when towards the end of autumn she sent him a sprig of sweetbriar saying that “it would mind him of her,” he carried the thorny trophy in his breast till it shrivelled and fell to pieces.
The northern winter was long and cold and the lad thought regretfully many a time of genial Dorset with its unseasonable flowers peeping out at all manner of times, its gleams of sunshine and blue sky even on the shortest days, the breeze rushing over the Downs, mild for all its freshness, and carrying with it always a hint of the sea not far distant. He dreamed of Dorset often, of his father’s little homestead, of the farm on which he had used to work, of the animals he had been wont to tend, of the church to which he had betaken himself Sunday after Sunday—but strangely enough, though he longed and almost prayed to dream of Rebecca, the vision which haunted his thoughts by day kept aloof from his pillow.
One night, however, he did dream of Rebecca, and his dream was so vivid that he could hardly believe that it was not indeed reality. He thought he saw her standing in the sunshine on the Downs at the top of Sweetbriar Lane; he was toiling up this lane at some distance from her, running, but after the manner of dreams, not seeming to make much progress, and she kept afar off, waving one little slender arm and calling:—
“I want you, David!” she cried. “Davy—Davy—I want you!”
Her voice was ringing in his ears when he woke; the sweat stood on his brow, and his heart was thumping violently.