“I’ll be sure of one thing,” she returned: “I’ll be where my duty is.”
“You forget, you have a duty to yourself,” I said.
“Ay, man,” she replied, pounding at the dough; “will you have found that in the Bible, now?”
“Mary,” I said solemnly, “you must not laugh at me just now. God knows I am in no heart for laughing. If we could get your father with us, it would be best; but with him or without him, I want you far away from here, my girl; for your own sake, and for mine, ay, and for your father’s too, I want you far—far away from here. I came with other thoughts; I came here as a man comes home; now it is all changed, and I have no desire nor hope but to flee—for that’s the word—flee, like a bird out of the fowler’s snare, from this accursed island.”
She had stopped her work by this time.
“And do you think, now,” said she, “do you think, now, I have neither eyes nor ears? Do ye think I havena broken my heart to have these braws (as he calls them, God forgive him!) thrown into the sea? Do ye think I have lived with him, day in, day out, and not seen what you saw in an hour or two? No,” she said, “I know there’s wrong in it; what wrong, I neither know nor want to know. There was never an ill thing made better by meddling, that I could hear of. But, my lad, you must never ask me to leave my father. While the breath is in his body, I’ll be with him. And he’s not long for here, either: that I can tell you, Charlie—he’s not long for here. The mark is on his brow; and better so—maybe better so.”
I was a while silent, not knowing what to say; and when I roused my head at last to speak, she got before me.
“Charlie,” she said, “what’s right for me needna be right for you. There’s sin upon this house and trouble; you are a stranger; take your things upon your back and go your ways to better places and to better folk, and if you were ever minded to come back, though it were twenty years syne, you would find me aye waiting.”
“Mary Ellen,” I said, “I asked you to be my wife, and you said as good as yes. That’s done for good. Wherever you are, I am; as I shall answer to my God.”
As I said the words the wind suddenly burst out raving, and then seemed to stand still and shudder round the house of Aros. It was the first squall, or prologue, of the coming tempest, and as we started and looked about us, we found that a gloom, like the approach of evening, had settled round the house.