“I would have taken her to save the fuss—I really would—it's not my fault the thing's come out. I'm on a risky job. To have her with me might ruin the whole thing; it would affect my nerve. It isn't safe for her.”
“And what's her position to be,” I said, “while you're away? Do you think she'd have married you if she'd known you were going to leave her like this? You ought to give up this business.
“You stole her. Her life's in your hands; she's only a child!”
A quiver passed over his face; it showed that he was suffering.
“My last farthing's in it,” he sighed; “the chance of a lifetime.”
He looked at me doubtfully, appealingly, as if for the first time in his life he had been given a glimpse of that dilemma of consequences which his nature never recognises. I thought he was going to give in. Suddenly, to my horror, Dan growled, “Play the man!”
Pearse turned his head. “I don't want your advice anyway,” he said; “I'll not be dictated to.”
“To your last day,” said Dan, “you shall answer to me for the way you treat her.”
“Do you see that fly?” he said. “Wel—I care for you as little as this,” and he flicked the fly off his white trousers. “Good-morning...!”
The noble mariners who manned our boat pulled lustily for the shore, but we had hardly shoved off' when a storm of rain burst over the ship, and she seemed to vanish, leaving a picture on my eyes of the mate waving his cap above the rail, with his tanned young face bent down at us, smiling, keen, and friendly.
.... We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with each other; I started sulkily for home.
As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came down with a thud.
“The apples were ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall.”
I made up my mind to pack, and go away. But there's a strangeness, a sort of haunting fascination in it all. To you, who don't know the people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly. But it isn't the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in life. It's the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or evil.
The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch shone through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good news. John Ford himself opened the door to me.