He was the answer to her thoughts—one might say to her prayers; the embodiment of the image she had been carrying with her all the afternoon; the substance of her hopes and fears.
Very strong and masculine and altogether desirable he looked as he stood there, though his clothes were well worn and the collar he had put on for the occasion of Saturday was badly frayed. An uneasy smile was on his face, and his hands played awkwardly with the stick they held; but Nancy knew by intuition that he had come to make his peace, and her heart bounded; yet the perverse adviser who is the instrument of our worse selves, bade her harden her voice and hold back the answering smile which had almost escaped control. She had been rehearsing the smooth things she would say if they should meet; but now that the movement had come from the other side she stiffened, yielding to the traitor within the gates; and by that act wrecked her hopes.
“If I’d known you were here I’d as like as not have kept to the road. I’ve things that want thinking out.”
It was a lie; but how was he to know it? How was he to know that all he had to do was to seize her in his arms and master her? His own voice hardened, and the light died down in his eyes, yet he made a brave attempt at self-control, remembering his father’s advice, and it was not perhaps entirely his fault that his tone was querulous and unconvincing.
“I’m wanting to make it up, Nancy. I’ve been miserable this last three weeks; and it’s a shame it should have come to this just when we’d got to an understanding. If it hadn’t been for you I shouldn’t have been so particular about a rise, and Baldwin and me wouldn’t have quarrelled. Not but what it ’ud have had to come sooner or later, for there’s nobody knows better than you that he taxes your patience past all bearing, and there comes a time when a fellow’s bound to make a stand.”
He paused, realising that this was not what he had meant to say, and Nancy stood with her eyes averted and her hands clasped in front of her.
“I don’t know that all this gets us much forrader,” she answered coldly, hating herself all the while for her coldness, but yielding to the miserable pressure from within. “I’d been thinking that maybe you’d come and say you were sorry, and fall in with what’s best for both of us. To go straight away, same as you did, and plan to start for yourself when you knew the business was my living as well as Baldwin’s, didn’t seem as if you thought overmuch o’ me——”
Where were all the tender thoughts, all the pleasing projects, she had entertained for hours past and been seeking an opportunity to reveal? Where were all the cajoling artifices she had designed to melt his stubborn mood and convict him of folly? All flung to the winds forsooth, for no better reason than that he had made the first overtures for peace.
“I’m sorry,” he answered; but only too doggedly; “not for what I did but for t’ way I did it. I wouldn’t have hurt you for t’ world, neither i’ your pocket or any other way, and I wasn’t meaning ought o’ t’ sort——”
“There’s a way of showing that,” Nancy interrupted, with a degree more warmth in her tone. “If you mean what you say you’ll be willing to drop it——” She avoided the word “shop” or “business,” but Jagger understood her. “You’ll see for yourself you were too hasty, and if you’d only taken me into your confidence we could have planned something together that would have put a flea in Baldwin’s ear.”