A month or so later, local gossip reached him about a Lynmouth girl who had run away from home, but he made no connection between the gossip and the couple he had seen.
Richard’s route home took him high onto the moors and back into the mist. He let Splash take his time and ate his bread and meat in the saddle. As at last he approached Allerbrook, he was both surprised and pleased to come across his own missing sheep, their fleeces spangled with damp, nibbling dismally at the thin autumn grasses and not at all unwilling to be rounded up by Ruff and shepherded home to the better pastures lower down.
Another half hour and he was there, riding in with them, a respectable farmer and shepherd who had gone out on the moor to look for missing stock, found them and brought them back.
Peter came home shortly afterward, complaining that he had not found any sheep. Richard described how he had searched in vain in the mist for hours and then discovered them just after he had given up trying.
All the rest of that day the talk was of nothing but sheep. In the morning, however, Richard remarked to Peter that they ought to ask Nicholas Weaver to bring Liza over for a visit to her future home, and a formal betrothal.
Peter, without answering, swallowed his final mouthful of breakfast and stalked out of the kitchen to go about his day’s work. Richard glared at his son’s retreating back, but for the moment held his tongue. Clearly he would have to think about this.
“The master’s got something on his mind,” Betsy said to Higg three nights later as they settled to sleep on the straw-filled mattress in their cottage. “He’s been goin’ around all grim-faced and hardly hears what’s said to him. He don’t look like he sleeps at night. And it’s plain as the nose on your face that him and Master Peter b’ain’t hardly on speakin’ terms.”
“Not much we can do about it,” said Higg tersely.
“I don’t like the look of things. Peter don’t want this marriage the master’s planned for ’un, and you know what Master Richard is like for getting ’un’s own way. Just like his father, he’s turning out to be. He’ll have his way, mark my words, but whether it’ll be a happy house afterward or not, I wouldn’t like to guess.”
“Let’s worry about that when it happens,” said Higg stolidly.
The fact that Marion no longer existed meant that she couldn’t now marry Peter, but Peter didn’t yet know this. Somehow or other he must be informed, and then coaxed into standing before a priest with Liza Weaver. But how? Richard asked himself, lying awake on his bed.
It was all too true that he was sleeping badly. Hour after hour, every night, slumber eluded him, while he relived that ill-fated walk through the Valley of the Rocks, and when at last he did sleep, he dreamed of it. Night after night, Marion’s last scream echoed for him again. What had it been like for her, throughout that long fall, knowing that she was still herself, healthy and alive, but would in the next few seconds be smashed and dead and that there was no miracle in the world that could save her? Sometimes he dreamed that he was the one who was falling.
She had died because he had tried to force his will on her. It seemed that compelling people to do one’s bidding could be disastrous. How then was he to force his will on Peter? Well, once Peter knew that Marion had disappeared, he might decide to be sensible of his own accord. With luck, he would. But how on earth was he to be told?
No one must suspect that Richard knew more than he should. Only, time was pressing and mustn’t be wasted. The betrothal to Liza ought to happen soon or Nicholas would be raising his eyebrows, and he’d expect the wedding to take place soon after. How much time would Peter need to get over the shock of learning that Marion was gone forever?
He’d killed her…no, she’d died in an unfortunate accident last Tuesday. Bit by bit, a scheme emerged.
On October 27, the following Saturday, as he and Peter went out after a breakfast at which neither had spoken to the other, he said, “Look here, boy, I’m tired of your dismal face round here. So be it. You go to Lynmouth and see Master Locke and ask him for Marion if you’re so determined. I don’t fancy he’ll agree and it’ll be for him to say. But maybe after you’ve talked to him, you’ll see that she’s not for you, and you can stop treating me as if I were a leper.”
“And what if he says yes?”
“Then he says yes. But you’d better bring her here before you handfast yourself to her. She might not like the look of Allerbrook. No betrothal until she’s seen what she’s coming to. Saddle your pony and go.”
Fifteen minutes later Peter was on his way, with a leather flask of spring water and a rabbit pasty for his midday meal, and hope in every line of his retreating back.
He returned in the afternoon, riding slowly. Richard, who had arranged to be close to the farmhouse all day, wandered into the farmyard to meet him as he was unsaddling. “So you’re back. How did it go?”
The face that his son turned to him was the face of grief, bloodless and stricken. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”
“Can’t believe what?”
“She’s gone! Just gone. The last time she went to take some herrings to her grandmother and her aunt, she never got there! But last year she was seen at times with a sailor from some Norwegian ship or other, and that ship’s been back in Lynmouth harbour lately and Marion was seen talking to the sailor again, on the quay. Seems his ship sailed on the very day that Marion set out and didn’t come back. They reckon she’s gone with him. Her father said she was flighty. He said he’d rather she had married me—at least it would be an honest marriage into an honest family! But it’s too late now. She’s…gone!”
And you don’t know how thoroughly and completely she’s gone, Richard said to himself.
“And even if she ever came back…” Peter said, but couldn’t finish the sentence.
Richard, carefully, said, “I’m sorry. You mightn’t believe me, but I am. You’re taking this hard and I’m truly sorry.” You have no idea how sorry or why, and pray God you never will.
“She never…” Peter began, and then stopped short again.
“Never loved you?” Richard said it quietly, though.
“Can’t have done, can she?”
“You’d best come inside. Did you eat your rabbit pasty?”
Peter took off the bag he had slung onto his back. It still bulged as it had when he rode away. “No.”
“Let’s see what Betsy can find for you. You need a hot meal.”
“You’re talking to me like a mother!” said Peter, half-angrily.
“Well, your mother’s not here, after all. Come on, boy. You fill your belly with good victuals. The world won’t look so dark after that.” He did not mention Liza. There was no need. The right moment would come.
It came three days later. “I suppose,” said Peter, late in the evening, when he and his father, having made sure that the poultry were shut up safely where foxes couldn’t get at them, were lighting candles so as to see their way to bed, “I suppose I may as well marry Liza Weaver. She’s a nice enough wench.”
“Yes. She is. You won’t regret it, my lad,” said his father.
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