She kissed and admired the infant, inquired of Margaret's health, bade her hope for better days, and then proceeded to talk of affairs at the castle;how the baroness still continued to weep and lament; and how De Boteler, ever since he had returned from London, had been almost distractedone minute crying and raving that there was some traitor at the castle who had connived at the abduction of his child, and that he would discover him and hang him up without form of trial,and the next offering large rewards and free pardon to any one who could give the slightest information, even though they should have aided in the theft;and once he even went so far as to promise pardon to the actual offender. As, of course, this strange occurrence had been a prolific source of speculation to the gossips, Lucy proceeded to detail a number of stories she had heard on the subject.
"Young Handshut wur a pr?aper lad, and valiant. I ?un't surprised as she'd rather have un wudout a penny than old Ben wud all his gold.""Your f?ather must be in lamentable heart about all this, surelye.""Rose," he said again, and his voice quivered as he said it, "you do want me a liddle bit now."
ONE:All flushed with pity she realised the bitterness of his fatehe who was so young and strong and clean and gay, had been degraded, shamed by her father, whom in that moment she looked upon entirely as a brute. It must not be. He had been so good to her, so friendly and courteous in their Sunday walksshe must not let him go away from her shamed and beaten."I'm the Lord's lost lamb," announced Pete.
TWO:"Nothing has been done to him but what he merited," answered Calverley, haughtily, surprised at her firmness, and by a singular feeling annoyed that solicitude for her husband should have called forth such an unusual demonstration.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
ONE:Rose had begun to question her attitude towards her husband. She had hitherto never doubted for a moment that she loved himof course she loved him! But now she asked herself"If I love him, how is it that our most tender moments have never meant so much to me as that second kiss of Handshut's?" None of Reuben's kisses stood out in her memory as that kiss,[Pg 287] he had never made the thrill of life go through her, he had never filled her heart to bursting with joy so infinite that it was sorrow, and sorrow so exquisite that it was joy. She would observe Reuben, and she would see himold. He was fifty-four, and his hair was grey; there were crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes, and straight lines between his brows, where he had furrowed them as the pitiless sun beat down upon his face. There were other lines too, seamed and scored by hard struggles. He was strong as an ox, but she told herself he was beginning to move a bit stiffly. He had exposed himself so ruthlessly to the wet and cold that his joints had become rheumatic. It was nothing very much, but he liked to have her rub them occasionally, and up till then she had liked it too. Now she suddenly saw something dreary and preposterous in ithere she was married to a man thirty years older than herself, his chattel, his slave. She did not really love himhow could she, with all those years between them? She was fond of him, that was alland he was getting older, and horribly cantankerous; and she was youngoh, God! she had never known till then how young.
TWO:He then sprung up the ladder, and threw himself upon the heap of rushes.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
ONE:O why when we kissed 'mid the ewes on the hanger,"The blackbird flew out from the eaves of the Manor,
TWO:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
TWO:"O yes, my brave heart!" said the foreman, with something of ridicule; "they are spirits, but spirits in the fleshlike good wine in stout bottles."
FORE:"O why, because sickness hath wasted my body,
FORE:He did not have to wait long. A few days later he was told that somebody wanted to see him, and in the parlour found his daughter Tilly."You know me, father John?"
FORE:That night, the freemen and serfs that dwelt on the estate of De Boteler, and even the inmates of the castle itself, were alarmed by the sudden glare of red flames rising in a bright column above the tallest trees, and so fiercely burned the flame, that in a few minutes the horizon was tinged with a ruddy glow. There was an eager rush to discover from whence the phenomenon arose, and many were the exclamations, and many the whispered surmises, when it was ascertained that the cottage was on fire from which Holgrave had been so recently ejected."But wot's to become of us?"
FORE:His headache had passed off, and he felt a man again; so he sought the woman. She lived in a small old house wedged tight between two new ones; her window was dark, and her threshold silent, though he knocked again and again. He walked up and down once or twice in front of the cottage whistling "Ropes and Rum"perhaps she had gone to do some shopping; he saw himself sitting down to a feast of pickled herrings in her kitchen.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.
FORE:"Then you admit knowing where he is hidden?""Come hither, Holgrave," said De Boteler, as Holgrave entered. "Is this your wife?"
FORE:"My Lord de Boteler," said Holgrave, drawing the child almost forcibly from Margaret, "as I hope that my mother is a saint in heaven, the child is yours. I was a bondmanwas motherlesschildlessand I thought it would be no crime to make you, too, desolate!"There was much murmuring and discontent at the tenor of this epistle; and but little disposition manifested to obey the mandate: but the example of their principal leader, Jack Straw, who instantly, as in obedience to the prophet's command, divested himself of his sword, and presented it to Sir Aubrey de Vere, intimating his submission to the king, occasioned a sort of general panic, or rather, a distrust of their own powers. This, added to the specious and equivocal promises of Richard, who now approached; and the persuasive eloquence of Oakley, operated so far on the credulous multitude, that the king, amidst a universal shout of "Long live the king of the Commons," turned his horse's head towards London, rejoicing in his heart that so far the rebels were dispersed.
FORE:Naomi smiled feebly, and that smile, so wan, so patient, so utterly wistful, so utterly unregretful, with which almost every mother first greets the father of her child, went straight to Reuben's heart. He fell on his knees by the bed, and covered her hand and her thin arm with kisses.
TWO:Rose's child was born towards the end of October. Once more Reuben had a son, and as he looked down on the little red hairless thing all his hopes and dreams were built anew. He had always lived too near the earth to let experience thump him into cynicism. He raised as glorious dreams over this baby as he had raised over the others, and seen crumble into ashes. Indeed, the fact that his earlier hopes had failed made him warm himself more gratefully at this rekindling. He saw himself at last raised out of the pit of difficultyhe would not lose this boy as he had lost the others, he would perhaps be softer and more indulgent, he would at all events be wiser, and the child should indeed be a son to him and to Odiam. "Unto UsReuben and Odiama child is born; unto Us a son is given."
It was all a return to Albert's childhood. In spite of fifteen years in London, of a man's work and a man's love and a man's faith, he had gone back completely to the work and love and faith of his childhood. Odiam had swallowed him up, it had swallowed him up completely, his very hell was bounded by it. He spoke with a Sussex accent; he forgot the names of the women he had loved, and cried instead the names of places, and he forgot that he did not believe in hell, but thought of it as Boarzell Moor punctured by queer singing flames.It would have been still worse if Gray had rented his farm of one whose religious principles were more defined than De Boteler's; but even he, though he would not drive them from the soil, refused to take recompense for the small portion of land that the man himself could attend to, and even this portion, small as it was, presented little of the healthy and cultivated appearance that his broad fields had formerly exhibited. Sickness often came; and there was the enervating consciousness of being a shunned and solitary man. Then, too, there were domestic bitterness and mutual upbraidings and reproaches; and often did the once industrious and light-hearted Giles, instead of saving his hay or cutting down his slender crop, lie the whole day beneath the shadow of a tree, brooding in gloomy discontent over the dark prospect before him.There was now scarcely light to distinguish external objects, when a sudden rush was heard from the town, and, in an instant, a dozen persons surrounded the peddling merchant, and seizing him violently, while uttering threats and imprecations, dragged the dusty-foot to the court of Pie-powder.[1] As they were hauling him along, the crowd increased, the fair was forsaken, all pressing eagerly forward to learn the fate of the unlucky pedlar. The galleyman seemed perfectly to comprehend the nature of his dangernot by the changing colour of his cheek, for that exhibited still the same glowing brownbut by the restless flash of his full black eyes, glancing before and around, as if looking for some chance of escape."Have you heard the news, Wat?" asked the mason.On the doorstep Reuben was greeted by Tillywhere was George? He had not been in to supper.
TWO:
