"Yes, and so I will; but you know I have neither home nor kin. Now one doesn't like to stand alone in the world like a deserted wreck in the midst of the oceannobody caring a straw whether it sinks or swims. I think I should not have done as I have done if I had thought any heart would have grieved to hear I was not steering right."
"Poor babe! it was a sad night I laid ye there," said Holgrave, bending over the grave, and looking earnestly at the little corpse; and then kneeling down, he attempted to raise one of the hands, but it dropped crumbling from his touch.Reuben never lost a chance of baiting him, he jibed at his squeamishness and fine manners, at his polite way of eating and the trouble he took to clean his nails; he despised him all the more for occasionally getting the better of him, verbally at any rate, in these encounters. One night at supper Reuben, having actually succeeded in finding this sneering son at fault, abused him roundly for the shocking condition of the ewes' fleeces. Richard[Pg 228] had the bad sense to quote Shakespeare, whereat Reuben told him that if he could not speak English he could leave the room. Richard replied that he would be very pleased to do so, as certain people's table-manners made supper rather an ordeal. Reuben helped him out with a kick most vulgarly placed.
ONE:Chapter 3
TWO:That night was another Hell. Robert lay wakeful in a rigor of despair. It was all over now. The constable would be at Odiam the first thing next morning. Bardon was bound to remember that his pocket-book was in the coat he had lent Bessie. He might even think that Bessie had taken it! This fresh horror nearly sent Robert out of the window and over the fields to the Manor to confess his crime. But he was kept back by the glimmerings of hope which, like a summer lightning, played fitfully over his mental landscape. He dared not stake everything. Perhaps after all young Bardon could not remember where he had put the pocket-book; he must have forgotten where it was when he offered the coat to Bessie, and it was possible that he would not remember till the lovers had escapedafter which he might remember as much as he liked, for Robert never[Pg 161] thought for a moment that he could be traced once he had left Peasmarsh.
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ONE:"Thomas Calverley, I told him who delivered the message, that I would not quit the castle till I had seen Stephen; and I tell you now, that I shall not go till I know what you have done with him."
TWO:"Now, Mary Byles," resumed Sir Robert, speaking more decisively than he had yet spoken, "I insist upon your giving me a true answer to thisDid you not say to your husband, on the evening you returned from Gloucester, after Edith's trial, 'Edith's death lies like murder on my conscience; oh, I wish I hadn't taken Calverley's advice, but had told my lady of the mistake?'"
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ONE:Margaret was exceedingly agitated, and was rising to call for assistance, but he caught her hand in his cold grasp. "Do not go yet," he said, in a low voice"I came far to see you!" His grasp relaxed, and Margaret, drawing away her hand, poured some wine in a cup, and held it to his lips; he swallowed a little, and, looking up in her face, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. "You are going to leave me, Margaret?"
TWO:"Master Tyler," said Wells, springing up to the chief, "they are boarding a prize yonder;" and he pointed to the half-concealed door.
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TWO:"Roseyou knowhow can you?that's worse than alone, surelye!"
FORE:Odiam had triumphed at last. Just when Reuben's unsettled allegiance should have been given entirely to the wife who had borne him a son, his farm had suddenly snatched from him all his thought, all his care, his love, and his anxiety, all that should have been hers. It seemed almost as if some malignant spirit had controlled events, and for Rose's stroke prepared a counter-stroke that should effectually drive her off the field. The same evening that Rose had gone weeping and shuddering upstairs, Reuben had interviewed the vet. from Rye and heard him say "excema epizootica." This had not conveyed much, so the vet. had translated brutally:
FORE:It must be old age. He pulled himself together, as a farm-hand came into the room. It was Boorman, one of the older lot, who had just come back from Rye.
FORE:"Well, let's hope as he's found it worth while now as he's lost two wives and eight children," was the sage comment of old Vennal of Burntbarns.
FORE:"Confound the whole rising, if he escapes me! Stephen Holgrave! as the father doesn't like me to go, tell Leicester to take a chosen body of the Kentish men; and, mark ye, he must catch that fiend, and bring him to the Tower, dead or alive!"She managed to persuade him to go his different waythough the actual moment of their parting was always a blur in her memory. Afterwards she could not remember if they had kissed, touched hands, or parted without a word. Her throat was still full of sobs when she came to Odiam; she was panting, too, for she had run all the wayshe did not know why.
FORE:"I, John Hartwell, will be to you, my Lord Roland de Boteler, true and faithful, and bear to you fealty and faith for the lands and tenements which I hold of you; and I will truly do and perform the customs and services that I ought to do to you, so help me God!" The old man then kissed the book, and retired to give place to the next; and so on till all who owed fealty had gone through the ceremony.Reuben began to take off his coatyoung Realf drew back almost in disgust.
FORE:"Yes, in a cunning, brutish sort of waylike a gorilla when he's set his heart on a particular cocoanut. Boarzell's his cocoanut, and he's done some smart things to get itand in one way at least he's above the gorilla, for he can enslave other people of superior intelligence to sweat under his orders for what they care nothing about.""Nothey ?un't."
FORE:Chapter 9
FORE:For the first time the courage dimmed in her eyes."I, ma'am?no. I want to be a gentleman."
TWO:"If you fall in love wud a gal you can't say no to her, and she'll find it out lamentable soon. When either of you boys finds a nice strong, sensible gal, wud a bit o' money, and not self-willed, such as 'ull be a good darter-in-law' to me, I shan't have nothing to say ag?unst it.[Pg 399] But d?an't you go running after petticoats and m?ake fools of yourselves and disgrace Odiam, and call it being in love. Love m?akes you soft, and if you're soft you might just as well be buried fur all the good you're likely to do yourself."
TWO:Although, from the growth of the boy thus introduced, it might be judged he was about eight years, yet there was that sparkling vivacity, and that lightness of lip and eye which belong to an earlier age; and, as the wandering glance of the dark eye, and the smile of the red lip, met De Boteler's gaze, a tumultuous throbbing in his bosom told him that the child was indeed his own.Byles looked at Calverley for an instant, perfectly astonished at his condescension.
TWO:"By the green wax!" said Black Jack, approaching at this instant, "as I stood yonder, reconnoitring the ground, a man shewed his head behind that ruined wall!"
Chapter 2She cared nothing for Odiam; it was no thought of disloyalty to it and her father, of breaking from her service, which made her mark time in dreams. As the weeks went by she felt more and more the hatefulness of the yoke. She now had a standard of comparison by which to judge Reuben and Odiam. She saw herself and her brothers and her sister more and more as victims. Other farmers' children were not slaves. Other farms did not hang like sucking incubuses on boys' and girls' backs, draining all the youth and joy and sport out of them."Well, Alice," he said huskily."Why, as for kings," said Turner, "I am not sure; Richard is but a boy yet, and his father was a"In the middle of the night he woke up feeling quite differently. A sick and guilty horror overwhelmed him. He must have been delirious the day before, light-headed with pain and misery. Now he saw clearly what he had done. He was a thief. He had committed a terrible sinbroken one of the Ten Commandments. He might be caught and put in prison, anyhow, the God who said, "Thou shalt not" would punish him and perhaps Bessie too. The sweat poured down Robert's forehead and off his cheeks. The future seemed to be closing in upon him with iron walls. He trembled, cowered, and would have said, "Our Father" if he dared. Oh God, why had he done this dreadful thing?