There was silence. Outside the flowers rustled in the slow hot breeze. The background of trees was growing dim, a web of shadow at the foot of the garden.
ONE:Pete looked in some surprise at the bruiser, who continued:
TWO:"I'm only not pretending as much as you are. Why shud you pretend? Pretending 'ull give you naun sweet to remember when I'm gone."He rose to his feet. The kitchen was dark, with eddying sweeps of shadow in the corners which the firelight caressedwhile a single star put faint ghostly romance into the window.
THREE:The cool and determined tone of the chief justice exasperated the abbot; and, fixing a stern glance upon the judge,
TWO:"I want none o' your lying swearsat one o'clock o' the marnun. Go back to the man you've come fromhe'll believe you easier nor I.""Tush, tush!" interrupted the galleyman; "if Stephen Holgrave has forgotten Robin Wells, how should Thomas Calverley remember him?"
TWO:"Because it wur meant so. If we'd bin meant fur masters d'you think we'd have bin made so liddle and dentical like?"He pottered about the farm all the morning. Somehow these terrible events reminded him of the birth of his first child, when he had moped and fretted and sulkedand all for nothing. That seemed twenty years ago. Now he did not fret for nothing. His wife was dying, still young, still sometimes beautiful. His mind was full of jumbled memories of herhe saw her as Harry's sweetheart, sitting with him on Boarzell while he sang; he saw her in the dairy where he had first kissed her stooping over the cream; he saw her as his bride, flushed and timid beside him at the wedding-feast, as the mother of his boys, proud and full-bosomed. But mostly his thoughts were more trivial and tatteredmemories of her in certain gowns, in a cap she had bought because, having three little boys, she thought she must "dress older"; memories of little things she had said"Why don't you keep bees, Reuben? Why don't you keep bees? They're such pretty things, and I like the honey...."
TWO:He went straight to find Rose, for that mood was upon him. The due of loneliness which his shame demanded had been paid during the drive home from Rye, and now he quite simply and childishly wanted his wife. She was in the kitchen, stooping over some child's garment, the little frills of which she was pleating in her fingers. She lifted her head with a start as he came in, and he saw that her face was patched with tearstains.
TWO:Reuben would imagine the corpse saying all sorts of insulting things to him, and he had horrible nightmares of its gibes and mockery. One night Rose woke in the dubious comfort of the new brass bedwhich she had wheedled Reuben into sparing from the auctionto find her husband kneeling on his pillow and pinning some imaginary object against the wall while he shouted"I've got you, you old grinning ghostynow we'll see who's sold!"She thought this immensely funny, and retailed it with glee to her female friends who continued to invade the place. The multitude of these increased as time went by, for Rose had the knack of attaching women to herself by easy bonds. She was extremely confidential on intimate subjects, and she was interested in clothesindeed in that matter she was even practical, and a vast amount of dressmaking was done on the kitchen table, much to the disorganisation of Caro's cooking.
In October a steam-thresher came to Odiam. The wheat had been bad, but there was still plenty of grain to thresh, and for a whole day the machine sobbed and sang under the farmhouse walls"Urrr-umUrrr-umUrrr-um."It was wonderful how soon he adapted himself to his new conditions. At first he missed Rose, but by the time he had got rid of her clothes and swept the perfume of her out of his room, he had ceased to hunger. He never heard of her againhe never knew what life she led in the new land, whether the reality of love brought her as much happiness as the game, or whether her old[Pg 332] taste for luxury and pleasure reasserted itself and ruined both love and lover."Are they spirits?" asked the stranger in a subdued and terrified tone.
荣誉榜
THREE:"It's one o'clock o' the marnun."
THREE:
