Next to Reuben sat Harrythe other man whom Boarzell had made. He slouched forward over his plate, in terror lest the food which dropped continually out of his mouth should fall on the tablecloth, and he should be scolded. He looked at least ten years older than Reuben, for his face was covered with wrinkles, and there were streaks of grey in his hair. As he sat and ate he muttered to himself. No one took any notice of him, for the children had been brought up to look upon Uncle Harry as a sort of animal, to whom one must be kind, but with whom it was impossible to hold any rational conversation. Tilly was the most attentive to him, and[Pg 165] would cut up his food and sometimes even put it in his mouth.
For once that Realf managed to land a blow, Reuben landed a couple, and with twice as much weight behind them. The younger man soon began to look green and sick, he staggered about, and flipped, while the sweat poured off his forehead into his eyes. Reuben breathed stertorously and could scarcely see out of his left eye, but was otherwise game. Pete felt prouder of him than ever."Did you administer the sacrament of penance to the incestuous wretch?"
ONE:Though the country in general chose to go to the dogs, Reuben had the consolation of seeing a Conservative returned for Rye. He put this down largely to his own exertions, and came home in high good humour from the declaration of the Poll. Mr. Courthope, the successful candidate, had shaken him by the hand, and so had his agent and one or two prominent members of the Club. They had congratulated him on his wonderful energy, and wished him many more years of usefulness to the Conservative cause. He might live to see a wheat-tax yet.
TWO:She had been a fool, and now she was paying the price of folly, which is always so much heavier than the price of sin. Here she was at twenty-five, prematurely old, exhausted, sick of life, and utterly alone. There[Pg 104] was no one to turn to in her wretchedness. Her neighbours were incapable of giving her real help or sympathy, Mrs. Backfield invariably took Reuben's part and resented the slightest criticism of him, old Gasson was hard and selfish, and not particularly interested in his daughter.
TWO:Reuben began to fidget about Grandturzel. He told his son-in-law that if things did not improve he would have to go. In vain Realf pleaded bad weather and bad luckneither of them was ever admitted as an excuse at Odiam.Then began a regular siege. Stones showered upon the farmhouse roof, the shiver of broken glass tinkled through the dull roar of the attackers, groans and screams answered the bursting bang of the shot-gun. Men began to seize faggots from the wood-pile, and run with them towards the house. Then some tore up a haystack, but the wind caught the hay and blew it[Pg 12] everywhere, flinging swathes and streamers of it into the rioters' faces, giving them sudden armfuls of it, making their noses and eyes smart with the dust and litter.
TWO:The messenger had heardfor state secrets will sometimes transpirethat the chancellor had a struggle to obtain the writ; and this knowledge, though it made him the more readily credit Calverley's assertion, yet vexed him that his master should be foiled. Looking, therefore, with a surly scrutiny at the steward
TWO:The summer wore on. The sallow tints in Naomi's skin were exchanged for the buttery ones which used to be before her marriage. Her hair ceased to fall, her cheeks plumped out, her voice lost its weak shrillness. She made herself a muslin gown, and Reuben bought ribbons for it at Rye."It is a pity she should be the wife of such a carle"mused his lord.
Rate, skate, and crabs.There was that in the voice and look of the monk, which made Calverley involuntarily shrink; and receiving at the same instant a glance from De Boteler, he withdrew to the upper end of the room; and father John, with a dignified step, passed on through the hall, and across the court-yard, and giving a blessing to the guard at the principal gate, who bent his knee to receive it, he went forth, having first shaken the dust from his sandals.
荣誉榜
THREE:Reuben moved away from the crest and stood looking round him at what had once been Boarzell Moor. A clear watery light had succeeded the sunset, and he was able to see the full extent of his possessions. From the utmost limits of Grandturzel in the south, to the Glotten brook in the north, from Socknersh in the east to Cheat Land in the westall that he could see was his. Out of a small obscure farm of barely sixty acres he had raised up this splendid dominion, and he had tamed the roughest, toughest, fiercest, cruellest piece of ground in Sussex, the beast of Boarzell.
THREE:So a polite if rather cold letter was written accepting Odiam's conditions, and Tilly thanked heaven that she had sacrificed herself and gone to plead with her father.
