Nancy had remained standing and she held Inman by a haughty stare whilst these thoughts crossed her mind at telegraphic speed.
“You don’t leave your meaning to be guessed at, anyway,” she said in her most freezing tones; “but a woman isn’t like a hare; she can choose who she lets hunt her, and I don’t choose to be hunted by you. Those are plain words, Mr. Inman, and I hope you appreciate them.”
“I do,” he replied. “I’m a moorman and you’re a moorwoman. Moor-folk don’t go by round-about ways when there’s a straight cut. I tell you as I told you before that I love you and would make you my wife. ‘Not like a hare!’ Of course you aren’t. I want no woman for a wife who’s like a hare. An oily towns-man would have turned the tables on you and crooned out that he was hunting a ‘dear’; but I don’t deal in soft nothings. Maybe Jagger Drake does; I heard him this afternoon when he whined like a whipped dog, and I took his measure. If you marry him you’ll have a baby in your arms to start with——”
“I’ve listened to you long enough,” Nancy broke in at this point with increased hauteur. “Who’s been coupling my name with Jagger Drake’s I don’t know, but it’s no concern of either theirs or yours; and as there’s sure to be some eyes spying on us, and I’ve no wish to have my character taken away, as it’s likely enough it will be if I stop talking with a strange man, the first night he’s in the village, I’ll just wish you good-bye; and if you take my advice you’ll set off back where you came from to-morrow morning.”
“One minute then,” he replied, as she turned away with a frown on her face. “We mayn’t have another opportunity as good as this for understanding one another. You call me a stranger, and you propose to treat me as a stranger. So be it, I learn my lessons quickly, and I shan’t worry you, you may rely on that. But I’ve buried my mother since you saw me last, and I’ve a mind to get back to the moors. If I stop with Mr. Briggs I can help to ginger up the business, though it’s plain enough to see that he thinks himself God Almighty and wants no help. But if he won’t have me, or if you think fit to put a spoke in the wheel, I’ll just start for myself and maybe get our young friend Jagger to help me. Soft as he is there are sure to be some old women who’ll fancy him for their work, and I’ll bet between us we can make things hum. Whichever way I go, your road’ll cross mine, Miss Nancy, and we’ll go on arm in arm before the end; but it shall be of your own free will, I promise you that!”
She was staring him in the face with curling lip; but the effort to keep back hot, indignant words and to hide their nearness from him almost choked her; and all the time she was conscious of an icy feeling at her heart. He was meeting her glance with a smile of quiet assurance; and when she said—“We are just strangers, Mr. Inman. I shall not interfere with Mr. Briggs’ business arrangements, so you may be easy on that point. All I want is to be left alone!” he merely nodded, and raising his hat, wished her good-night.
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH JAGGER DRAKE SETS HIS TEETH
LIKE an impatient housewife whose activities have been thwarted, and who rises whilst others sleep to make onslaught on her foes with mop and besom, the wind busied itself in the night with the work of sweeping away the frosty mists which for a week past had been clinging to the sides of the hills and stretching across the gullies like thin, silvered cobwebs; and when the sun peeped over the shoulder of Cawden and sent his heralds with streaming banners of pink and lances tipped with gold to warn such few laggards as were still abed of his coming, the village was looking as bright as a healthy babe fresh from its morning bath. There was nothing babe-like, of course, about such a venerable place except the river, which tumbled and tinkled along its course as if it rejoiced in its liberty after being shut in underground so long, but which, seen from the slopes a few hundred yards away, seemed as restful as the grey hamlet itself.
If you estimate the importance of a place by its size you would never bestow a second glance at Mawm, even if the beam of bigness in your eye permitted you to see it, for the hamlet is a mere mote among the mountains; a speck of grey upon the moors. If you doze for twenty seconds you may pass through it in your car and find when you rouse yourself no hint of its existence; and you will have missed—what people with beams in their eyes must often miss—a pleasing picture in shotted green and grey that you might have carried away with you, and that would have enriched your gallery of memories through all the years.