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Updated: May 18, 2025
He was accompanied half-way by Sally and his mother to the 'White Horse, at Chalk Newton where he was handed over to Darton's bailiff in a shining spring-cart, who met them there. The thoughtful taciturnity into which Darton had latterly fallen was quite dissipated by the presence of this boy. When the Christmas holidays came it was arranged that he should spend them with his mother.
Jim was watching her intently, noting, with that certain appraisal of his, the etched profile; and, with all an artist's sensibility, reading life into the line of head and shoulders. What if the idea went through my mind with the intensity of sudden pain what if Jim and Lisbeth ? The sound of sobbing broke in upon my reverie. Con Darton was delivering the funeral oration.
Only Lin Darton could have given promise then of the middle-class, semi-prosperous business man who was to justify the Darton tradition.
He seemed to feel that fate had impishly changed his vis-a-vis in the lover's jig he was about to foot; that while the gown had been expected to enclose a Sally, a Helena's face looked out from the bodice; that some long-lost hand met his own from the sleeves. Sally could see that whatever Helena might know of Darton, she knew nothing of how the dress entered into his embarrassment.
'I've lost most of my genteel fair complexion haymaking this hot weather, 'tis true, but I'll do your business as well as them that look better. There be scents and good hair-oil in the world yet, thank God, and they'll take off the roughest o' my edge. I'll compliment her. "Better late than never, Sally Hall," I'll say. 'It is not Sally, said Darton hurriedly. 'It is young Mrs. Hall.
He learnt not a single particular till, meeting Johns one day at a horse-auction, Darton exclaimed genially rather more genially than he felt 'When is the joyful day to be? To his great surprise a reciprocity of gladness was not conspicuous in Johns. 'Not at all, he said, in a very subdued tone. ''Tis a bad job; she won't have me.
He screwed himself up to as cheerful a pitch as he could without his former crony, and became content with his own thoughts as he rode, instead of the words of a companion. The sun went down; the boughs appeared scratched in like an etching against the sky; old crooked men with faggots at their backs said 'Good-night, sir, and Darton replied 'Good-night' right heartily.
By the time he reached the forking roads it was getting as dark as it had been on the occasion when Johns climbed the directing-post. Darton made no mistake this time. 'Nor shall I be able to mistake, thank Heaven, when I arrive, he murmured.
Hall assented; and Darton was left by himself. He spread his knees to the brands, lit up his tobacco as he had said, and sat gazing into the fire, and at the notches of the chimney- crook which hung above. An occasional drop of rain rolled down the chimney with a hiss, and still he smoked on; but not like a man whose mind was at rest.
Darton was as usual at his farm, twenty miles from Hintock, a note reached him from Helena. She thanked him for his kind offer about her children, which her mother-in-law had duly communicated, and stated that she would be glad to accept it as regarded the eldest, the boy.
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