But he knew he could do it. That morning he churned the soil with his heel, and knew he could conquer it.... He could plant those thistle-grounds with wheat.... Coward! his father was a coward if he shrank from fighting Boarzell. The land could be tamed just as young bulls could be tamed. By craft, by strength, by toughness man could fight the nature of a waste as well as of a beast. Give him Boarzell, and he would have his spade in its red back, just as he would have his ring in a bull's nose....
ONE:Naomi had not acquired the art of flouting him openly. She tearfully put Fanny into her cradle, and lay and sulked on the sofa for the rest of the evening.
welcome your challenge!!「あなたらしく」活躍できる場所がここにあります。
TWO:Soon the rumour spread round Peasmarsh that Backfield was going to buy some more land. Reuben himself had started it.
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TWO:Reuben often spoke to her severely, but with no result. There was a time when he could never chide her without her crying, but now she hardly seemed to care."F?ather!" cried Tilly.
TWO:"And what good will that do you?"Reuben himself, in his grey cloth suit, starched shirt, and spotted tie, was perhaps the most striking of the company. Albert, the only one who had more than a vague appreciation of his father's looks, realised how utterly he had beaten his sons in their young men's game before cracked mirrors, showing up completely the failure of their waistcoats, ties, and hair oils in comparison with his. As was usual on festive occasions, his hair was sleeked out of its accustomed roughness, lying in blue-black masses of extraordinary shininess and thickness on his temples; his tight-fitting trousers displayed his splendid legs, and when he spoke he showed finer teeth than any of the youngsters. Albert scowled as he admired, for he knew that no girl would take him if she had a chance of his father.
THREE:There was no reason why this ambition should not be fulfilled, for now that he himself was at the head of affairs it would be possible to save money. Reuben's lips straightenedof late they had grown fuller, but also sterner in that occasional straightening, which changed the expression of his mouth from half-ripened sensuality to a full maturity of resolve. Now he was resolvedthere should be changes at Odiam. He must give up that old easy, "comfortable" life on which his father had set such store. A ghost seemed to whisper in the room, as if the voice of the dead man once more declared his gospel"I've no ambitions, so I'm a happy man. I d?an't want nothing I haven't got, and so I haven't got nothing I d?an't want.""I heard as how Starvecrow had been bought at last," said Reuben; "not a bad farm, Muster, if you're fur green crops mostly."
Reuben crept out of his thorn cavern and looked down the slope. At the bottom by Socknersh one or two lanterns moved through the dusk. He stiffly threw up his arm and tried to shout. His throat felt cramped and swollen, and it was not till after one or two attempts that a sound pitifully like a bleat came out of it. A voice answered him from the hollow, and then he saw that they were carrying something. He limped painfully down to them. Richard, Boorman, and Handshut carried a hurdle between them, and on the hurdle lay a draggled boy, whose clenched hand clutched a tuft of earth and grass as a victim might clutch a handful of his murderer's hair."Peace, wretch!" said De Boteler, choking with passion. "Here, let these plotters be confined separately till the morrowand, Luke," he added, to the old steward, "let you and John Oakley go instantly to Holgrave, and see him removed from the keep, and put him into a warm bedand take ye a flask of wine and pour some down his throatand see that the leech attend him." He now turned to Isabella and strove to dispel from her mind the sad thoughts that the last half hour had called up, but it was not, as the baron imagined, the remembrance of her murdered child alone, which had sent a paleness to her cheek, and a tremor through her frame; it was rather the thought that through judging rashly she had been an accessory to the death of one who perhaps deserved reward rather than punishment.He sprang to his feet and began pacing up and down the room. The window square was black. He was glad he could not see Boarzell with its knob of firs. Gradually the motion of his legs calmed his thoughts, he fell to pondering more ordinary thingshad his mother remembered to stand the evening's milk in the cream pans? She had probably forgotten all about the curate's butter to be delivered the next morning. What had Harry done about those mangolds at Moor's Cottage? Durn it! He would have to do all the work of the farm to-morrowhow he was to manage things he didn't know, what with the dairy and the new chicks and the Alderney having garget. He stopped pacing, and chin in hand was considering the expediency of[Pg 48] engaging outside help, when a voice from the bed cried feebly:God save the Queen!"
