United States or Malta ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But Old Widger did not know why he had behaved in that fashion, nor did any one in Boveyhayne. "Don't seem no sense in it," he said, but nevertheless he did it, and nothing on earth would have prevented him from doing it. It was the custom.... But there was no custom in London. There were no habits, no traditions, nothing to hold on to in times of crisis or distress.
He had gone to the memorial service in Boveyhayne Church, and had seen the friends of those men mingling their tears ... but there had been none of this emotional savagery, this howling like women in kraals, this medicine-man grief.... They were both in the drawing-room when he returned. "I've written to Roger," he said, to explain his absence.
He would go straight to Boveyhayne from Liverpool. He could catch the Bournemouth Express, and change at Templecombe. ... "That's what I'll do," he said, and he hurried downstairs to prepare for his journey. He changed his mind at Liverpool. "I'll go to London first," he said, "and see Roger and Rachel. I might as well hear anything there is to hear!"
There was a long climb out of Whitcombe and then a long descent into Boveyhayne, after which the road ran on the level to the end of Hayne lane which led to the Manor. Before they reached the end of the lane, Old Widger turned to them and, pointing with his whip in front of him, said, laughingly, "Here be Miss Mary waitin' for 'ee, Mas'er Ninyan!" Ninian stood up in the carriage and looked ahead.
"And jolly nice, too!" He stayed at Boveyhayne until the time came to return to Rumpell's, and the holiday passed so quickly that he could not believe that it was really over.
"I should like to get married at once," said Henry. "No, not yet," Mrs. Graham insisted. "I won't be left alone yet awhile...." There was a learned discourse from Ninian on lengthy engagements which filled the time until the carriage drove up to Boveyhayne House, where it was dropped as suddenly as it was begun. Indoors, Henry read Gilbert's letter.
Henry twirled Ninian's letter in his fingers. "I'd like to go to Boveyhayne," he said. "I want to see Ninian and Gilbert again!..." "But the language, Henry!..." "I hate the damned language!" Henry exclaimed passionately. "I'm sick of Ireland. I'm sick of!..." Mr. Quinn got up and put his hand on Henry's shoulder. "All right, Henry," he said. "You can go to Boveyhayne!"
I can only just remember my father, and how I cried when he was taken away, and so I know how hard it must be for you. Your friend, Mary. He read Mrs. Graham's note, and Mary's several times, and as he read them, he had a longing to go to Boveyhayne again. The house at Ballymartin was so lonely, now that his father's heavy footsteps no longer sounded through the hall.
There was snow, thick and long-lying, on the ground when he reached Boveyhayne, and the crunch-crunch of it under their feet, as Mary and he walked home, gave him a feeling of pleasure, and the cold, bracing air exhilarated him so that he laughed at things which would otherwise barely have made him smile.
And later in that afternoon, he thought he saw a resemblance between Mary Graham and a brown squirrel that sat on a branch and cracked nuts, throwing the shells away carelessly ... the Mary he had known when he first went to Boveyhayne, not the Mary he had seen on his last visit. He wondered whether Sheila had altered much, and then he wondered what change four years had made in Mary Graham.
Word Of The Day