But he was very good to Naomi. He tried to forget her indifference to his beloved boys, and to soothe and strengthen her into something like her old self. She did not repulse him. All the violence and the desperation in her had burnt themselves out during that night of frenzy. She lay in bed hour after hour without moving, her long hairwhich was now beginning to come out in handfuls when she brushed itspread over the pillow. Her muscles were slack, she lay without any suppleness, heavy against the mattress. After some weeks she was able to get up, and go about her duties with the children. She never spoke of her misery, she ate, she sewed, she even gossiped with the neighbours, as before. But something was gone from herher eye sometimes had a vacant, roving look, her shoulders stooped, and her skin grew sallow.
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She walked slowly down the drive till she came to the little path that led across the fields to Handshut's cottage. A light gleamed from the window, and she crept towards it through tall moon-smudged grasswhile from the distance came for the last time:"He's shamming," said Reuben.
ONE:About ten, a small boat was observed to approach the southern walls of the fortress. A man stepped from it and was permitted to ascend the terrace, and Calverley, who was standing there, challenged the stranger.
TWO:He mumbled curses as he dressed, and bathed his head in cold water. He did not deserve this visitationusually he regarded an after-debauch headache as one of the marvellous acts of Providence, in which he, like most sailormen, believed with a faith which though conveniently removed from works was deeply tinged with admiration. But yesterday he had not been really drunkwhy, he could remember nearly everything that had happened, the dancing, the songs, the girls, how he had walked home singing "Rio Bay," and how he had met that queer girl at the farmhouse gate, and thought he was going to have some fun with her and been disappointed.
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ONE:Byles looked at his interrogator as if he had been the evil one himself; but he had committed himself, so he thought it the wiser way to say nothing."Now, Mary Byles, I wish you to tell me what kind of a night it was when John Byles and your servitor, Sam, went into my Lord de Boteler's chase to kill a buck?"
TWO:"But you're all I've gotone go, and t'other stay."She 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.
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ONE:"Can't you mortgage?"The next year came the great unionist collapse. The Government which had bumped perilously through the South African war, went on the rocks of an indignant peacewrecked by Tariff Reform with the complication of Chinese Labour and the Education Bill. Once more Reuben took prominent part in a general election. The circumstances were alteredno one threw dead cats at him at meetings, though the common labouring men had a way of asking questions which they had not had in '65.
TWO:"It is strange!" said the monk, "yesterday, the low moaning sound it made, seemed to threaten immediate dissolution; and to-day, its lusty cries seem those of a healthy childit is quiet nowgive me the babe in my arms and let me look at it?"
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TWO:Calverley's specious arguments availed no longer, and, muttering curses upon the jailor, whose officiousness had prevented the possibility of that consummation he so devoutly wished, he received the command to set Holgrave at liberty.
FORE:The cry rose from the mass up at the stalls, as the big dark figure with flapping hat-brim suddenly sprang out of the dusk and ran to meet Mexico Bill. Reuben was an old man, and his arm had lost its cunning, but he carried a stout ash stick and the maniac saw no one but the women at the hedge. The next moment Reuben's stick had come against his forehead with a terrific crack, and he had tumbled head over heels into a gorse-bush.
FORE:But the strange thing was that he could not sleep, and stranger still, it was not the ache of his body that kept him awake, but the ache of his heart. Reuben was used to curling up and going to sleep like a little dog; only once had he lain awake at night, and that was with the toothache. Now he had scarcely any pain; indeed, the dull bruised feeling made him only more drowsy, but in his heart was something that made him tumble and toss, just as the aching tooth had done, made him want to snarl and bite. He rolled over and over in the straw, and was wide awake when they came to Rye. Neither did he sleep at all in the room where he and some other boys were locked for the night. The Battery gaol was full of adult rioters, so the youthful elementonly some half-dozen capturedwas shut up in the constable's house, where it played marbles and twisted arms till daylight.
FORE:Peter's strong frame and broad shoulders were shown off in all their glory by his tight blue coathe was spoiling for the fight, every now and then clenching his fists under the table, and dreaming of smart cuts and irresistible bashes. Albert thought of the pretty girls he would dance with, and the one he would choose to lead away into the rustling solitude of Boarzell when his father was not looking ... to lie where the gorse flowers would scatter on their faces, and her dress smell of the dead heather as he clasped her to him. Richard was inclined to sneer at these rustic flings, and to regret the westward pastures where Greek syntax and Anne[Pg 164] Bardon exalted life. Jemmy and George thought of nothing but the swings and merry-go-rounds; Tilly and Caro did not think at all, but wondered. Reuben watched their big eyes, so different from the boys', Tilly's very blue, Caro's very brown, and felt relieved when he looked from them to their grandmother, sitting stiffly in a patched survival of the widow's dress, her knotted hands before her on the table, at once too indifferent and too devoted to pity the questing youth of these two girls.Tyler had turned away while Black Jack was speaking, but suddenly stopping, turned abruptly round, and looking full at him
FORE:"Wot?"
FORE:Naomi often came over to Odiam, driving in her father's gig. Reuben disliked her visits, for they meant Harry's abandonment of spade and rake for the weightier matters of love. Reuben, moiling more desperately than ever, would sometimes catch a glimpse of her coloured gown through the bushes of some coppice, or skirting a hedge beside Harry's corduroy. He himself spoke to her seldom. He could not help being conscious of her milky sweetness, the soft droop of her figure under its muslins, her voice full of the music of stock-doves. But he disliked her, partly because she was taking Harry from Odiam, partly because he was jealous of Harry. It ought to be he who was to make a wealthy marriage, not his brother. He chafed to think what Naomi's money might do for the farm if only he had control of it.The smith was as great an enthusiast for the freedom of the bond as the monk himself; but his mode of obtaining it did not coincide with the peaceful bent of the father. Tyler's plan was bold and sanguinary,the monk's, intimidation without violence; and energetic and accustomed as was the smith to act on his own impulses, yet, even in his fiercest moods, he willingly yielded obedience to the monk's suggestions. Indeed, he had long been accustomed to pay that deference which father John's mildness had, as it were, extorted; and the circumstance of their first connection, from the liberation of Ball from the dungeon of Sudley to the present period, had so increased his affection and veneration, that now, deprived of this pillar of support, he felt a loneliness and dejection which nothing around could dispel.
FORE:However, next Sunday he astonished his family by saying he would accompany them to church. Hitherto Reuben's churchmanship had been entirely political, he had hardly ever been inside Peasmarsh church since his marriage, except for the christenings of his childrenthough he considered himself one of the pillars of the Establishment. His family were exceedingly suspicious of this change of heart, and the girls whispered guiltily together. "He's found out," said Caro, and Tilly sighed.Pete was following a train of thought.
FORE:The next few days were terrible, in the house and on the farm. Indoors the women nursed Harry, and outdoors Reuben did double work, sleeping at night in an arm-chair by his brother's side.
TWO:She saw them go out of the tent, still linked and in their dream, then watched their dark shapes stoop against the sky.An angry debate now ensued among the leaders. Some, confiding in their numerical force, and zealous for the liberation of the prophet, were for storming the fortress at any point, and for effecting their object more speedily, proposed razing to the foundation some of the neighbouring houses, and filling up the ditch with the materials. Others thought such an attack might rather militate against themselves than turn to any account in redress of grievances, and after all might fail to advantage the monk: these proposed that a parley should be demanded, and their resolutions submitted to the king, with a requisition for the prophet's release.
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TWO:Naomi smiled feebly, and that smile, so wan, so patient, so utterly wistful, so utterly unregretful, with which almost every mother first greets the father of her child, went straight to Reuben's heart. He fell on his knees by the bed, and covered her hand and her thin arm with kisses."Yesdidn't I tell you so this moment?" answered Bridget, rising somewhat indignantly, and replacing the flower-pot in its original position. "And trouble enough I have had," she continued, "to get in the table and the chairs, and the benches, and stools, and put the place so that it might be fit to be seen, all by myself. A fine holiday the wench has got!but she shall work for this next week!How many are coming?"
TWO:"Furniture?" said Rose, brisking up; "why from what you said I thought there was nothing. I could do with some furniture. I want a bedstead with brass knobs."
But Margaret was many minutes ere she could do more than kiss his hand, and wet it with her tears. At length, when her emotions of joy and surprise had in some degree subsided, she replied, that Holgrave was still living a villein at Sudley.His ambition flared up like a damped furnace, and he suddenly saw himself a coward ever to have thought of rest. Boarzell was more to him than any woman in the world. For the sake of one weak woman he was not going to sacrifice all his hopes and dreams and enterprises, the great love of his life."And you'll feel stove in furder when the Crier's done wud you.""I did, my lord," returned the monk firmly.