The next year, Richard and Anne Backfield took a house at Playden for week-ends. Anne wanted to be near her relations at the Manor, and Richard, softened by prosperity, had no objection to returning to the scene of his detested youth.
TWO:Then came the shearing, that queen of feasts. The local band of shearers called at Odiam for the first time, and were given an inaugural welcome. Richard sulked at the honour paid him as shepherdhe felt it was indeed a case of King among Sweepers. However, in point of fact, he enjoyed the actual shearing well enough. It was a warm July day, the air full of the scent of hayseed; the sheep came hustling and panting into the shearing-pens, and the shearers stripped them with songs and jokes and shouts of "Shear close, boys!" There was also ale in buckets, brought out by a girl hired for the occasion, who was stout and pretty and smiled at Richard. And it was good to watch the yellowish piles of fleece grow at one's knees, and comical to see the poor shorn sheep stagger up from the ground, all naked and confused, hardly knowing themselves, it seemed."What!" said Richard, as his eye ran over the characters, "John, duke of Lancaster; Simon Sudbury, lord chancellor; John Fordham, clerk of the privy seal; Sir Robert Hales, treasurer; the bishop of London; Sir Robert Belknap, the chief justice; Sir Ralph Ferrers, and Sir Robert Blessinton. What! is this all the noble blood they wish to spill? By my faith!" he added, trampling the parchment under his foot, "we will listen to nothing more the knaves have to say; and ye may tell them that as they are bondmen so shall they remain; and that as my fathers ruled them with a rod of iron, so shall I rule them with a rod of scorpions."
ONE:For though he did not care for Odiam he loved the country round it, and made a wonderland and a dreamland of it. He did not see in Boarzell Robert's tree-capped waste, though neither did he see his father's enemy and heart's delight. He saw instead a kind of enchanted ground, full of mysteries of sun and moon, full of secrets that were sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying. It seemed to have a soul and a voice, a low voice, hoarse yet sweet; and its soul was not the soul of a man or of a beast, but the soul of a fetch, some country sprite, that clumped, and yet could skip ... he[Pg 128] used to feel it skipping with him in the evening wind when the dusk made the heather misty round his knees ... but he knew that it danced heavy-footed round the farm at night, clumping, clumping, like a clod.
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THREE:"I never said as I'd do her work.""You shouldn't ought to ask mother that," said Harry. "She '?un't used to work. It's well enough fur you and me, we're strong chaps, and there's no reason we shouldn't pull to a bit. But mother, she'd never do wudout the girlyou see, there's the dairy and the fowls as well as the house."
THREE:"Here! Wot d'you think?" he shouted; "if that old man ?un't left all his money to a bastard."
TWO:Bessie was now thirty, and looked older, for she had lost a front tooth and her pretty hair had faded: but she was as confident of Robert's love as ever. He had[Pg 334] written to her by every mail, she told Caro, and they had both saved and scraped and waited and counted the days till they could consummate the love born in those fields eternally fixed in twilight by their memory. There had been no intercourse between Odiam and Eggs Hole, so, as Robert had never written to his family, Caro heard for the first time of the sheep-farm in Queensland and its success. He had done badly at first, Bessie said, what with the drought and many other things against him, but now he was well established, and she would be far better off and more comfortable as the felon's wife than she had ever been as the daughter of honest parents.Richard stared at her for a moment"I'm glad to hear it. But the othersoh, my dear girl, this is damnable!"
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THREE:He had now spent the whole of Naomi's dowry, and knew that he was not likely to get anything more out of old Gasson, whose housekeeper had during the last year smartly married him. However, he felt that the money had been laid out to the very best advantage, for Odiam was paying its way, and had, besides, of late become the most important farm in the neighbourhood except Grandturzel. Reuben watched Grandturzel jealously, though he was careful to hide his feelings. It had the advantage of forty acres of Boarzell, granted by the commissioners. Luckily old Realf was not very enterprising."I love her," faltered Robert.
THREE:"Have adone do wud your preaching. I'm ashamed[Pg 380] of you, led astray by lunies as if you wur no better nor poor Harry. You're a hemmed lousy traitor, you are, the worst of 'em all."
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THREE:His nostrils were always full of the smart of lime, and the stench of those horrible furnaces belching away on the slopes of the Moor. Would that burning never be done? For days the yellowy white pennons of destruction had flown on Boarzell, and that acrid reek polluted[Pg 299] the harvest wind. Boarzell was nothing but a huge funeral pyre, a smoking hell.... "And the smoke of her went up for ever and ever."Turner had not been above five minutes in releasing the monk; but, when he came to the entrance of the keep, Merritt and the remainder of the band were sharply engaged with the domestics and the few tenants who kept guard about the castle. The smith pushed on with the monk; passed Merritt and the others, who closed in his rear; and, with that boldness, which often effects what more prudent courage would fail to accomplish, rushed into the midst of the assailants, brandishing his weapons, and shouting defiance at the top of his stentorian lungs.
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ONE:"Most likely."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.
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Black Jack then buried his face in his hands for some minutes, meditating how he should supply the place of the defunct Beauchamp. In vain he racked his brain; he knew many who would accept the offer, but they were untried."But I mean," impatiently resumed Wells, "did you ever see him before he was with those Essex men?"
