'If I go on, sir, now, I mun ask yo' to promise as yo'll niver tell.
I do so need some one to tell me what I ought to do, and I were led
here, like, else I would ha' died wi' it all within my teeth. Yo'll
promise, sir?' Jeremiah Foster looked in her face, and seeing the wistful, eager
look, he was touched almost against his judgment into giving the
promise required; she went on.
'Upon a Tuesday morning, three weeks ago, I think, tho' for t'
matter o' time it might ha' been three years, Kinraid come home;
come back for t' claim me as his wife, and I were wed to Philip! I
met him i' t' road at first; and I couldn't tell him theere. He
followed me into t' house--Philip's house, sir, behind t' shop--and
somehow I told him all, how I were a wedded wife to another. Then he
up and said I'd a false heart--me false, sir, as had eaten my daily
bread in bitterness, and had wept t' nights through, all for sorrow
and mourning for his death! Then he said as Philip knowed all t'
time he were alive and coming back for me; and I couldn't believe
it, and I called Philip, and he come, and a' that Charley had said
were true; and yet I were Philip's wife! So I took a mighty oath,
and I said as I'd niver hold Philip to be my lawful husband again,
nor iver forgive him for t' evil he'd wrought us, but hold him as a
stranger and one as had done me a heavy wrong.' She stopped speaking; her story seemed to her to end there. But her
listener said, after a pause, 'It were a cruel wrong, I grant thee that; but thy oath were a sin,
and thy words were evil, my poor lass. What happened next?' 'I don't justly remember,' she said, wearily. 'Kinraid went away,
and mother cried out; and I went to her. She were asleep, I thought,
so I lay down by her, to wish I were dead, and to think on what
would come on my child if I died; and Philip came in softly, and I
made as if I were asleep; and that's t' very last as I've iver seen
or heared of him.' Jeremiah Foster groaned as she ended her story. Then he pulled
himself up, and said, in a cheerful tone of voice, 'He'll come back, Sylvia Hepburn. He'll think better of it: never
fear!' 'I fear his coming back!' said she. 'That's what I'm feared on; I
would wish as I knew on his well-doing i' some other place; but him
and me can niver live together again.' 'Nay,' pleaded Jeremiah. 'Thee art sorry what thee said; thee were
sore put about, or thee wouldn't have said it.' He was trying to be a peace-maker, and to heal over conjugal
differences; but he did not go deep enough.