|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 22
'Nay, Mr. Garstin, it canna be. Indeed it canna be at all. Ye'd best jest
put it right from yer mind, once and for all.'
'I'd jest best put it off my mind, had I? Ye talk like a child!' he
burst out scornfully. 'I intend ye t' coom t' love me, an' I will na tak
ye till ye do. I'll jest go on waitin' for ye, an', mark my words, my
day 'ull coom at last.'
He spoke loudly, in a slow, stubborn voice, and stepped suddenly towards
her. With a faint, frightened cry she shrank back into the doorway of
the hen-house.
'Ye talk like a prophet. Ye sort o' skeer me.'
He laughed grimly, and paused, reflectively scanning her face. He seemed
about to continue in the same strain; but, instead, turned abruptly on
his heel, and strode away through the garden gate.
IV
For three hundred years there had been a Garstin at Hootsey: generation
after generation had tramped the grey stretch of upland, in the
spring-time scattering their flocks over the fell-sides, and, at the
'back-end', on dark, winter afternoons, driving them home again, down
the broad bridle-path that led over the 'raise'. They had been a race of
few words, 'keeping themselves to themselves', as the phrase goes;
beholden to no man, filled with a dogged, churlish pride--an upright,
old-fashioned race, stubborn, long-lived, rude in speech, slow of
resolve.
Anthony had never seen his father, who had died one night, upon the
fell-top, he and his shepherd, engulfed in the great snowstorm of 1849.
Folks had said that he was the only Garstin who had failed to make old
man's bones.
After his death, Jake Atkinson, from Ribblehead in Yorkshire, had come
to live at Hootsey. Jake was a fine farmer, a canny bargainer, and very
handy among the sheep, till he took to drink, and roystering every week
with the town wenches up at Carlisle. He was a corpulent, deep-voiced,
free-handed fellow: when his time came, though he died very hardly, he
remained festive and convivial to the last. And for years afterwards, in
the valley, his memory lingered: men spoke of him regretfully, recalling
his quips, his feats of strength, and his choice breed of Herdwicke
rams. But he left behind him a host of debts up at Carlisle, in Penrith,
and in almost every market town--debts that he had long ago pretended to
have paid with money that belonged to his sister. The widow Garstin sold
the twelve Herdwicke rams, and nine acres of land: within six weeks she
had cleared off every penny, and for thirteen months, on Sundays, wore
her mourning with a mute, forbidding grimness: the bitter thought that,
unbeknown to her, Jake had acted dishonestly in money matters, and that
he had ended his days in riotous sin, soured her pride, imbued her with
a rancorous hostility against all the world. For she was a very proud
woman, independent, holding her head high, so folks said, like a Garstin
bred and born; and Anthony, although some reckoned him quiet and of
little account, came to take after her as he grew into manhood.
She took into her own hands the management of the Hootsey farm, and set
the boy to work for her along with the two farm servants. It was
twenty-five years now since his uncle Jake's death: there were grey
hairs in his sandy beard; but he still worked for his mother, as he had
done when a growing lad.
And now that times were grown to be bad (of late years the price of
stock had been steadily falling; and the hay harvests had drifted from
bad to worse) the widow Garstin no longer kept any labouring men; but
lived, she and her son, year in and year out, in a close parsimonious
way.
That had been Anthony Garstin's life--a dull, eventless sort of
business, the sluggish incrustation of monotonous years. And until Rosa
Blencarn had come to keep house for her uncle, he had never thought
twice on a woman's face.
The Garstins had always been good church-goers, and Anthony, for years,
had acted as churchwarden. It was one summer evening, up at the
vicarage, whilst he was checking the offertory account, that he first
set eyes upon her. She was fresh back from school at Leeds: she was
dressed in a white dress: she looked, he thought, like a London lady.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|