ONE:But he had won his point. That evening Naomi made Harry play over his "tunes," while Reuben sat in the chimney corner watching them both. Harry's memory was erratiche would play through some well-known airs quite correctly up to a certain point, and then[Pg 57] interpolate hysterical variations of his own. At other times memory failed him altogether, but his natural quickness of ear seemed to have increased since his blindness, and it only needed Naomi to sing the passage over for him to fill up the gaps.She rose the next morning with a bad headache and her eyes staring rather plaintively out of black saucers. None the less she was happy, even in spite of her[Pg 344] regrets. She loved and had been loved, so she told herself over and over again as she dressed David and Bill and prepared the breakfast. Why, even if, when he got home, Joe Dansay discovered that he did not really love her, she would still have had his love, and as for herself, she would go on loving him for ever"for ever and ever and ever," she repeated in a low, trembling voice as she cut her father's bacon.
TWO:Boarzell, not Alice, should be his. He muttered the words aloud as he strained his eyes into the darkness, tracing the beloved outline. He despised himself for having wavered even in thought. Through blood and tearsothers' and his ownhe would wade to Boarzell, and conquer it at last. From that night all would be changed, the past should be thrust behind him, he would pull himself together, make himself a man. Alice must go where everything else had gonemother, wife, children, friends, and love. Thank God! Boarzell was worth more to him than all these.
TWO:Old Mrs. Backfield was getting very decrepit. She could not walk without a stick, and her knotted hands were of little use either in the kitchen or the dairy. Reuben was anxious to avoid engaging anyone to help her, yet the developments of her sphere made such help most necessary. Odiam now supplied most of the neighbouring gentry with milk, butter, and eggs; the poultry-yard had grown enormously since it had been a mere by-way of Mrs. Backfield's labours, and she and the girls also had charge of the young calves and pigs, which needed constant attention, and meant a great deal of hard work. Besides this, there was all the housework to do, sweeping, dusting, cooking, baking, and mending and washing for the males.
TWO:They walked on down the lane. Rose's chatter had ceased, and a complete silence dropped between the hedges. The moon had risen higher, and the western hazels were bloomed with light. The moon was no longer crimson in the dark sky, but had burnt down to copper, casting a copper glow into the mists, staining all the blues that melted into one another along the hills. Only the middle of the lane was blacklike a well. Reuben[Pg 248] and Rose could see each other's faces in a kind of rusty glimmer, but their feet stumbled in the darkness, and her hand lay clutching and heavy on his arm."Indeed, noble lady," replied Margaret, "the gloves cost but littleEdith, here, my husband's mother, knitted them, and I have striven to ornament them."
TWO:Reuben had no sympathy with these fancies when they took his son out of hard-working common sense into idle-handed, wander-footed dreams, or when perhaps he found them scribbled on the back of his corn accounts. He did not spare the rod, but Albert had all the rather futile obstinacy of weak-willed people, and could be neither persuaded nor frightened out of his dreams.
"What! the wife's brother! He who has attended the chapel since the death of the late good father?"Reuben always accepted such chaff good-humouredly, for he knew it was prompted by envy, and he would have scorned to let these men know how much he had been hurt. Also, though defeated, he was quite undaunted. He was not going to be beaten. That untractable slope of marl should be sown as permanent pasture in the spring, and he would grow oats on the new piece he would buy at the end of the year with his wife's fortune.She offered him a chair, and he sat down. Her coldness seemed to drive back the tides that had suddenly flooded his lips, and slowly too they began to ebb from his heart. Whom had he come to see?the only woman he had ever loved, whose love he had hoped to catch again in these his latter days, and hold transmuted into tender friendship, till he went back to his earth? Not so, it seemedbut an old woman who had once been a girl, with whom he had nothing in common, and from whom he had travelled so far that they could scarcely hear each other's voices across the country that divided them. Alice broke the silence by offering him some tea.Gradually the sun slanted and glowed, and a faint ripple of air stole into the room, lifting the hair on her forehead, tangled and damp. It struck her that she must be looking very uglyshe who had used to be such a pretty girl."Wot!""Git out, can't yerwot are you dawdling here for? You women are all the sameyou'd be as bad as her if you cud only git a man."
荣誉榜
THREE:"It was you who shot the arrow?"
THREE:Oakley was then led forth from the council by De Boteler, who pledged himself that the monk should not be harmed; and, after receiving, from Calverley, a part of the stipulated reward, he retired from the fortress by the way he had entered.He returned home gloomy and discontented; and, as he stood by the bed of the pallid Margaret, and inquired of her health, there was nothing of the tender solicitude with which he used to address her, in his manner or in his voice.
