TWO:Farewell to Jane and Caroline!"During the days that followed her attitude towards him changed subtly, almost subconsciously. A strange fear of him came over her. Would he insist on her bearing child after child to help him realise his great ambition? It was ridiculous, she knew, and probably due to her state of health, but sometimes she found herself thinking of him not so much as a man as a thing; she saw in him no longer the loving if tyrannical husband, but a law, a force, to which she and everyone else must bow. She even noticed a kind of likeness between him and Boarzellswart, strong, cruel, full of an irrepressible life.
Paul Morrison - BlackTie.co
TWO:Fate, having thus generously given him a start, continued to encourage him in the race he was running against her. On the way to Rye he fell in with Bertie Ditch. Bertie was going to marry a girl up at [Pg 162]Brightling, and Robert found that there was nothing easier than to discuss with him the ways and means of marriage. From his ravings on his marriage in particular precious information with regard to marriage in general could be extracted. Oh, yes, he had heard of fellows who got married by licence, but banns were more genteel, and he didn't doubt but that a marriage by banns was altogether a better and more religious sort. He and Nellie, etc., etc.... Oh, he didn't think a licence cost muchtwo or three pounds, and an ordinary wedding by banns would cost quite as much as that; when one had paid for the choir and the ringers and the breakfast. Now he and Nellie ... oh, of course, if you were in a hurryyes; but anyhow he thought one of the parties must live a week or so in the parish where the marriage was to take place.He would have been exceedingly indignant if in bygone days anyone had ever hinted that he did not[Pg 389] love the sons and daughters whom he had beaten, kicked out of doors, frustrated, suppressed, or driven to calamity. All the same, he acknowledged that there was a difference between his feelings towards Rose's children and Naomi's. Though Naomi was the wife more pleasant to remember, Rose's were the children he loved best. They had not grown up in the least like her, and he was glad of that, for he would have hated to confront again her careless, lovely face, or the provoking little teeth of her smile; they were Backfields, dark of hair and swarthy of skin, David with grey eyes, William with brown.
Mike Wellington - BlackTie.co
