John Galsworthy

“ Nedda saw her father wince. Then Stanley broke in again:
“Now that the whole thing's done with, do, for Heaven's sake, let's have a little peace!”
At that moment her aunt's face seemed wonderful to Nedda; so quiet, yet so burningly alive.
“Peace! There is no peace in this world. There is death, but no peace!” And, moving nearer to Tod, she rested her hand on his shoulder, looking, as it seemed to Nedda, at something far away, till John said:
“That's hardly the point, is it? We should be awfully glad to know that there'll be no more trouble. ”

“ While she sat, letting her fingers, that were growing slowly black, scrabble the grass and fern, a feeling came on her of a Presence, a creature with wings above and around, that seemed to have on its face a long, mysterious smile of which she, Nedda, was herself a tiny twinkle. She would bring Derek here. They two would sit together and let the clouds go over them, and she would learn all that he really thought, and tell him all her longings and fears; they would be silent, too, loving each other too much to talk. ”

“ Passing out of the house, sunk in its Monday hush, no vestige of a Bigwig left, Felix came to that new-walled mound where the old house of the Moretons had been burned 'by soldiers from Tewkesbury and Gloucester,' as said the old chronicles dear to the heart of Clara. And on the wall he sat him down. Above, in the uncut grass, he could see the burning blue of a peacock's breast, where the heraldic bird stood digesting grain in the repose of perfect breeding, and below him gardeners were busy with the gooseberries. 'Gardeners and the gooseberries of the great!' he thought. ”

“ Cottage lamps were already lighted for the evening meal. No laborer abroad at this hour! And Felix thought of Tryst, the tragic fellow—the moving, lonely figure; emanation of these solitary fields, shade of the departing land! One might well see him as that boy saw him, silent, dogged, in a gray light such as this now clinging above the hedgerows and the grass!
The old 'fly' turned into the Becket drive. It had grown dark now, save for the half-moon; the last chafer was booming by, and a bat flitting, a little, blind, eager bat, through the quiet trees. ”

“ She was lying on a sofa in a loose gray cashmere gown. The windows were open, and the light breeze just moved in the folds of the chintz curtains and stirred perfume from a bowl of pinks—her favorite flowers. There was no bed in this bedroom, which in all respects differed from any other in Clara's house, as though the spirit of another age and temper had marched in and dispossessed the owner. Felix had a sensation that one was by no means all body here. On the contrary. There was not a trace of the body anywhere; as if some one had decided that the body was not quite nice. ”

“ And dropping her pen, Nedda went again to her window and leaned out. So sweet the air smelled that it made her ache with delight to breathe it in. Each leaf that lived out there, each flower, each blade of grass, were sworn to conspiracy of perfume. And she thought: 'They MUST all love each other; it all goes together so beautifully!' Then, mingled with the incense of the night, she caught the savor of woodsmoke. It seemed to make the whole scent even more delicious, but she thought, bewildered: 'Smoke! Cruel fire—burning the wood that once grew leaves like those. ”

“ And when he had put in his day at the works he did turn the nose of his car toward Tod's. Travelling along grass-bordered roads, the beauty of this England struck his not too sensitive spirit and made him almost gasp. It was that moment of the year when the countryside seems to faint from its own loveliness, from the intoxication of its scents and sounds. Creamy-white may, splashed here and there with crimson, flooded the hedges in breaking waves of flower-foam; the fields were all buttercup glory; every tree had its cuckoo, calling; every bush its blackbird or thrush in full even-song. ”

“ When she left him to go up-stairs, Felix stayed consulting the dark night. As ever, in hours of ebbed vitality, the shapes of fear and doubt grew clearer and more positive; they loomed huge out there among the apple-trees, where the drip-drip of the rain made music. But his thoughts were still nebulous, not amounting to resolve. It was no moment for resolves—with the boy lying up there between the tides of chance; and goodness knew what happening to Tod and Sheila. The air grew sharper; he withdrew to the hearth, where a wood fire still burned, gray ash, red glow, scent oozing from it. ”

“ If only Mother likes them, and I can go and stay at Joyfields. Will she like them? It's all so different to what it would be if they were ordinary. But if he were ordinary I shouldn't love him; it's because there's nobody like him. That isn't a loverish fancy—you only have to look at him against Alan or Uncle Stanley or even Dad. Everything he does is so different; the way he walks, and the way he stands drawn back into himself, like a stag, and looks out as if he were burning and smouldering inside; even the way he smiles. Dad asked me what I thought of him! ”

“ And Felix thought: 'Nothing of Tod in either of them; regular Celts!'
The girl's vivid, open face, crisp, brown, untidy hair, cheeks brimful of color, thick lips, eyes that looked up and out as a Skye terrier's eyes look out of its shagginess—indeed, her whole figure struck Felix as almost frighteningly vital; and she walked as if she despised the ground she covered. The boy was even more arresting. What a strange, pale-dark face, with its black, uncovered hair, its straight black brows; what a proud, swan's-eyed, thin-lipped, straight-nosed young devil, marching like a very Highlander ”

“ What a shame!' Were people, then, to know nothing of the real cause of the revolt—nothing of the Tryst eviction, the threatened eviction of the Gaunts? Were they not to know that it was on principle, and to protest against that sort of petty tyranny to the laborers all over the country, that this rebellion had been started? For liberty! only simple liberty not to be treated as though they had no minds or souls of their own—weren't the public to know that? If they were allowed to think that it was all wanton mischief—that Derek was just a mischief-maker—it would be dreadful! ”

“ And suddenly he was assailed, very deep down, by a feeling with which in his firmness he had not reckoned—a sort of remorse that he was going to let a lot of loafing blackguards down onto his land, to toss about his grass, and swill their beastly beer above it. And all the real love he had for his fields and coverts, all the fastidiousness of an English gentleman, and, to do him justice, the qualms of a conscience telling him that he owed better things than this to those born on his estate, assaulted him in force. ”

“ Stanley was startled, but he said: “Remember that your principles, as you call them, may hurt other people besides yourself; Tod and your children most of all. How is the law unjust, may I ask?”
She had been sitting at the table opposite, but she got up now and went to the hearth. For a woman of forty-two—as he supposed she would be—she was extraordinarily lithe, and her eyes, fixed on him from under those twitching, wavy brows, had a curious glow in their darkness. The few silver threads in the mass of her over-fine black hair seemed to give it extra vitality. ”

“ It would only make me delight more in life of every kind. Only human beings brood and are discontented, and trouble about future life. While Derek and I were sitting in that field this morning, a bumblebee flew to the bank and tucked its head into the grass and went to sleep, just tired out with flying and working at its flowers; it simply snoozed its head down and went off. We ought to live every minute to the utmost, and when we're tired out, tuck in our heads and sleep.... If only Derek is not brooding over that poor man! Poor man—all alone in the dark, with months of misery before him! ”

“ Why people had to suffer; and the world be black to so many millions? Why one could not love more than one man at a time? Why—a thousand things? Felix's books supplied no answers to these questions, but they were comforting; for her real need as yet was not for answers, but ever for more questions, as a young bird's need is for opening its beak without quite knowing what is coming out or going in. When she and her father walked, or sat, or went to concerts together, their talk was neither particularly intimate nor particularly voluble; they made to each other no great confidences. ”

“ What had put this yearning spirit into so gross a frame, destroying its solid coherence? Why could not Tryst have been left by nature just a beer-loving serf, devoid of grief for his dead wife, devoid of longing for the nearest he could get to her again, devoid of susceptibility to this young man's influence? And the thought of all that was before the mute creature, sitting there in heavy, hopeless patience, stung Felix's heart so that he could hardly bear to look him in the face. ”

“ The ranch of Cousin Alick Morton (son of that brother of Frances Freeland, who, absorbed in horses, had wandered to Australia and died in falling from them) had extended a welcome to Derek. Those two would have a voyage of happiness—see together the red sunsets in the Mediterranean, Pompeii, and the dark ants of men swarming in endless band up and down with their coal-sacks at Port Said; smell the cinnamon gardens of Colombo; sit up on deck at night and watch the stars.... Who could grudge it them? Out there youth and energy would run unchecked. ”

“ The lovers were too tired the last evening of hay harvest to go rambling, and sat in the orchard watching the moon slide up through the coppice behind the church. They sat on Tod's log, deliciously weary, in the scent of the new-mown hay, while moths flitted gray among the blue darkness of the leaves, and the whitened trunks of the apple-trees gleamed ghostly. It was very warm; a night of whispering air, opening all hearts. And Derek said:
“You'll know to-morrow, Nedda.” ”

“ In a bare room with distempered walls, and bars to a window out of which she could see nothing but a high brick wall, Nedda waited. So rapid is the adjustment of the human mind, so quick the blunting of human sensation, that she had already not quite the passion of pitiful feeling which had stormed her standing under that archway. A kind of numbness gripped her nerves. There were wooden forms in this room, and a blackboard, on which two rows of figures had been set one beneath the other, but not yet added up. ”

“ Surely the spirit of the world was in the birds and the clouds, roaming, floating, and in the flowers and trees that never smelled anything but sweet, never looked anything but lovely, and were never restless. Why was one restless, wanting things that did not come—wanting to feel and know, wanting to love, and be loved? And at that thought which had come to her so unexpectedly—a thought never before shaped so definitely—Nedda planted her arms on the window-sill, with sleeves fallen down, and let her hands meet cup-shaped beneath her chin. ”