He had shrunk into the rattling shelter of some thorn-bushes. They scraped their boughs like grotesque violins, and every other moment they would sweep down over him and shut him into a cavern of snapping twigs. He was soaked to the skin and his teeth chattered. He lay close to the earth, seeking shelter even from the skeleton heather which writhed woody stems all round him. He cursed. Must he spend the night here, lost and grovelling, to listen while Boarzell screeched its triumph over his cold, drenched body....
Reuben's eyes swept the dim outlines of his farmthe yard, the barns, the oasts, the fields beyond, up to where his boundaries scarred the waste. It was all blurred and blanketed in the darkness, but his mind could see it in every detail. He saw the cow-stable empty except for the six cheap Suffolks which just supplied his household and one or two gentry with milk; he saw doors split and unhinged that he could not afford to mend, gaping roofs that he could not afford to retile, while the martins stole his thatch for their autumn broods; he saw his oat-harvest mostly straw, his hop-harvest gathered at a loss, his hay spoiled with sorrel; he saw himself short of labour, one man turned off, another run away; and he saw all the flints and shards and lime of Boarzell breaking his plough, choking his winter wheat, while on the lower ground runnels of clay made his corn sedgy, and everywhere the tough, wiry fibres of the gorse drank all the little there was of goodness out of the ground and scattered it from its blossoms in useless fragrance.
ONE:"We're no worser off than we wur before," Joseph Backfield had said a day or two ago to his complaining boy"we've our own meadows for the cows't?un't as if we were poor people."
THREE:Harry somehow felt he had been insulted, and opened his mouth to retort. But his brother suddenly began talking about an accident to a labourer at Grandturzel, and the occasion dropped."I d?an't care two straws about that. Albert wur born and christened Church, and he's not going to die chapel because a lousy Methody sings hymns over him when he's sick and d?an't know better. If I find that feller on my pl?ace again, I'll break every bone in his body."
THREE:Afterwards he felt better, but he was still fuming[Pg 275] when he came to Odiam, and dashed up straight to Rose's bedroom, where she lay with the ten-days-old David and a female friend from Rye, who had come in to hear details about her confinement. Both, not to say all three, were startled by Reuben's sudden entrance, crimson and hatless, his collar flying, the dust all over him.
"Now don't pretend to be stupiddon't pretend you can't understand anything but turnips.""Order from his grace," repeated Calverley, sarcastically: "Do you not know, my good friend, that your master is in disgrace with mine, and that the eloquent William of Wykeham will, ere many days pass, be high chancellor of England. Come, come, give me the writ, and don't lose time. I must not stir from my saddle this night, unless to change horses, till I reach Westminster.""And your mother, and Harry?""To Hailes.But when all is ready, I must go up the lane yonder," pointing to the right"'tis but a step, and fetch Stephen Holgraveand the poor fellow shall go with us to see his mother buried as she ought to be."All Reuben said was:
