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He made no reply, except to repeat: "Don't hurry it, mother don't hurry it." "No no" she said, laughing "I am not such a fool. There will be many natural opportunities of meeting." "There are some difficulties with the Vavasours. They have been disagreeable about the gardens. Ferrier and I have promised to go over and advise her."
He said eagerly that he and Lady Lucy must certainly come down to Tallyn every alternate Sunday, so that the various small matters he had made Diana intrust to him the finding of a new gardener; negotiations with the Vavasours, connected with the cutting of certain trees or the repairs of a ruinous gable of the house should still be carried forward with all possible care and speed.
Gautier Giffart, Sire de Longueville, to thee is the gonfanon." "Beau Sire," answered Gautier; "par Dex, Merci. But my head is grey and my arm weak; and the little strength left me I would spend in smiting the English at the head of my men." "Per la resplendar De," cried William, frowning; "do ye think, my proud vavasours, to fail me in this great need?"
The fierce and plotting William, the vain and worthless Rufus, the cold-blooded and relentless Henry, are no adequate representatives of the far nobler Norman vavasours, whom even the English Chronicler admits to have been "kind masters," and to whom, in spite of their kings, the after liberties of England were so largely indebted.
Of the rest of the courtly foreigners, some took refuge in the forts yet held by their countrymen; some lay concealed in creeks and caves till they could find or steal boats for their passage. And thus, in the year of our Lord 1052, occurred the notable dispersion and ignominious flight of the counts and vavasours of great William the Duke!
Horses were harnessed, horsemen equipped in haste, and with no unfitting retinue Lanfranc departed on the mission, the most important in its consequences that ever passed from potentate to pontiff. Rebraced to its purpose by Lanfranc's cheering assurances, the resolute, indomitable soul of William now applied itself, night and day, to the difficult task of rousing his haughty vavasours.
And in contrast to those pictures of a decrepit monarchy and a fated race, I have to bring forcibly before the reader the vigorous attributes of the coming conquerors, the stern will and deep guile of the Norman chief the comparative knowledge of the rising Norman Church the nascent spirit of chivalry in the Norman vavasours; a spirit destined to emancipate the very people it contributed to enslave, associated, as it imperfectly was, with the sense of freedom: disdainful, it is true, of the villein, but proudly curbing, though into feudal limits, the domination of the liege.
Of the rest of the courtly foreigners, some took refuge in the forts yet held by their countrymen; some lay concealed in creeks and caves till they could find or steal boats for their passage. And thus, in the year of our Lord 1052, occurred the notable dispersion and ignominious flight of the counts and vavasours of great William the Duke!
Helen, very new to a world of de Courcy Vavasours, and Wraggs, and Burnham-Joneses, forgave this hawklike pertinacity for sake of the apparent sympathy of her catechist. And she was painfully candid. "The weekly paper I represent is not at all well known," she explained; "but here I am, and I mean to enjoy my visit hugely. It is the chance of a lifetime to be sent abroad on such a mission.
"But Marsham tells me the Vavasours have been odious." "We have got the better of them! Mr. Marsham helped me." "He has an excellent head, has Oliver. This year he will have special need of it. It will be a critical time for him." Diana gave a vague assent.
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