FORE:De Boteler moved from the illuminated bier, and entered the hall with a haughty step; and as his eye fell on Father John, the frown on his brow increased. He did not, however, appear to heed him, but, turning to the abbot's messenger, said,
Oh, Boarzell, Boarzell!... his love, his dream, his promised land, lying there in the cold white hope of morning! No degenerate sons could rob him of his Moor, though they might leave him terribly alone on it. After all, better be alone with his ambition, than share it with their defiling thoughts, their sordid, humdrum, milk-and-water schemes. In future he would try no more to interest his children in Boarzell. He had tried to thrill Robert and Albert and Richard with his glorious enterprise, and they had all forsaken himone for love, one for fame, and one for some still unknown unworthiness. He would not trouble about the others;[Pg 191] they should serve him for no other reason but that he was a hard master. He had been hard with the three boys, but he had been exciting and confiding too. Now he would drop all that. He would cease to look for comradeship in his children, as years ago he had ceased to look for it in his wife. It would be enough if they were just slaves working under his whip. He had been a fool to expect sympathy.... Boarzell, looming blacker and blacker against the glowing pinks and purples of the sky, seemed to mock at sympathy and its cheap colours, seemed to bid him Be Hard, Be Strong, Be RemorselessBe Alone.Margaret shuddered, as she looked in his eyes.Early in September George arrived. Reuben's face kindled when the doctor told him he had escaped Georgina."Because, though all those things have happened, you're holding your head up still."Though strengthened in soul, Albert grew weaker in body, and Pete began to scamp his farm work. Even when the minister was present, he would not leave his brother. It grieved Reuben that, while outside matters prospered, indoors they should remind him of a Methodist conventicle. The house was full of hymns, they burst through the close-shut windows of Albert's bedroom and assaulted the ears of workers on Boarzell. In the evenings, when Ades was gone, Pete whistled them about the house. Reuben was ashamed; it made him blush to think that his stout churchmanship should have to put up with this. "I scarcely dare show my face in the pub, wud all this going on at h?ame," he remarked sorrowfully.
