THREE:"And you think that if you learn Latin, it'll help you be a gentleman someday?"The bondmen, or legally speaking, the villeins, concluded the array. These were either attached to the soil or to the person. The former were designated villeins appendant, because following the transfer of the ground, like fixtures of a freehold, their persons, lands, and goods, being the property of the lord; they might be chastised, but not maimed. They paid a fine on the marriage of females; who obtained their freedom on marriage with a free man, but returned again to bondage on surviving their husband. The latter class were called villeins in gross, and differed nothing from the others except in name; the term signifying that they were severed from the soil, and followed the person of the lord. Neither of the classes were permitted to leave the lands of their owner; and on flight or settlement in towns or cities, might be pursued and reclaimed. An action for damages lay against those who harboured them, or who refused to deliver them up,the law also provided a certain form of writ by which the sheriff was commanded to seize, or obtain them by force. There was one mode, however, of nullifying the right of capture. If the runaway resided on lands of the king, for a year and a day, without claim, he could not be molested for the future; although he was still liable, if caught beyond the precincts of the royal boundary, to be retaken.
FORE:When he left her, ten minutes later, she struck him as better. He could not quite smother the hope that Dr.[Pg 118] Espinette was mistaken and that she would recover with nursing and care. After all, even the doctor himself had said that one could never be certain. He felt his spirits revive, and called Beatup to go with him to the hop-fields.Naomi submitted languidly. Her days passed in a comfortable heaviness, and though she occasionally felt bored, on the whole she enjoyed being fussed over and waited on. During those months her relations with Reuben's mother became subtly changed. Before her marriage there had been a certain friendship and equality between them, but now the elder woman took more the place of a servant. It was not because she waited on Naomi, fetched and carriedReuben did that, and was her master still. It was rather something in her whole attitude. She had ceased to confide in Naomi, ceased perhaps to care for her very much, and this gave a certain menial touch to her services. It would be hard[Pg 83] to say what had separated the two womenperhaps it was because one toiled all day while the other lay idle, perhaps it was a twinge of maternal jealousy on Mrs. Backfield's part, for Reuben was beginning to notice her less and less. After a time Naomi realised this estrangement, and though at first she did not care, later on it came to distress her. Somehow she did not like the idea of being without a woman associatein spite of her love for Reuben, now more passive and more languid, like every other emotion, she craved instinctively for someone of her own sex in whom she could confide and on whom she could rely.
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THREE:The flashing eye and indignant rebuke of the monk, on beholding this scene, unnerved the fear-stricken peasants.
THREE:Something in the wistfulness and humility of her appeal had touched him to the heart; he clasped her to him with a passion for once free from roughness, and for one moment at least had every intention of sticking to her for ever.
