"But, master, where, think you, shall it be found?" answered Harvey: "you might as well dissolve this society, as think of making us refund what is already scattered in every corner of Gloucester."
ONE:"Margaret!" said Holgrave fiercely, "can this be true? answer me! Has Calverley spoken of marriage to you?why do you not answer? Have I loved a false one?"BOOK II THE WOMAN'S PART Chapter 1
His nostrils were always full of the smart of lime, and the stench of those horrible furnaces belching away on the slopes of the Moor. Would that burning never be done? For days the yellowy white pennons of destruction had flown on Boarzell, and that acrid reek polluted[Pg 299] the harvest wind. Boarzell was nothing but a huge funeral pyre, a smoking hell.... "And the smoke of her went up for ever and ever."But David's death struck home. David and William were the only two children whom he had really loved. They were his hope, his future. Once again he tasted the agonies of bereaved fatherhood, with the added tincture of hopelessness. He would never again see David's brown, strong, merry face, hear his voice, build plans for him. For some days the paternal feeling was so strong that he craved for his boy quite apart from Odiam, just for himself. It had taken eighty years and his son's death to make a father of him."You talk as if you'd all your life before youand you must be nearly eighty-five.""Well, they w?an't wark fur me of their free will. Lard knows I've tried to interest 'em....""Is the room ready, Bridget?" he abruptly asked his wife.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.