“Why should I sit?”
“Because I ask you. Sit down, Walter.”
“No. I understand how wise you will be, and how cold; and I understand, too, what a fool I have been.”
“Walter, will you not come when I ask you?”
“Why should I sit?”
“That I may try to tell you how dearly I love you.”
He did not sit, but he threw himself at her feet, and buried his face upon her lap. There were but few more words spoken then. When it comes to this, that a pair of lovers are content to sit and rub their feathers together like two birds, there is not much more need of talking. Before they had arisen, her fingers had been playing through his curly hair, and he had kissed her lips and cheeks as well as her forehead. She had begun to feel what it was to have a lover and to love him. She could already talk to him almost as though he were a part of herself, could whisper to him little words of nonsense, could feel that everything of hers was his, and everything of his was hers. She knew more clearly now even than she had done before that she had never loved Mr. Gilmore, and never could have loved him. And that other doubt had been solved for her. “Do you know,” she had said, not yet an hour ago, “that I think it always will be blank.” And now every spot of the canvas was covered.
“We must go home now,” she said at last.
“And tell Aunt Sarah,” he replied, laughing.
“Yes, and tell Aunt Sarah;—but not tonight. I can do nothing tonight but think about it. Oh, Walter, I am so happy!”
XIX
Sam Brattle Returns Home
The Tuesday’s magistrates’ meeting had come off at Heytesbury, and Sam Brattle had been discharged. Mr. Jones had on this occasion indignantly demanded that his client should be set free without bail; but to this the magistrates would not assent. The attorney attempted to demonstrate to them that they could not require bail for the reappearance of an accused person, when that accused person was discharged simply because there was no evidence against him. But to this exposition of the law Sir Thomas and his brother magistrates would not listen. “If the other persons should at last be taken, and Brattle should not then be forthcoming, justice would suffer,” said Sir Thomas. County magistrates, as a rule, are more conspicuous for common sense and good instincts than for sound law; and Mr. Jones may, perhaps, have been right in his view of the case. Nevertheless bail was demanded, and was not forthcoming without considerable trouble. Mr. Jay, the ironmonger at Warminster, declined. When spoken to on the subject by Mr. Fenwick, he declared that the feeling among the gentry was so strong against his brother-in-law, that he could not bring himself to put himself forward. He couldn’t do it for the sake of his family. When Fenwick promised to make good the money risk, Jay declared that the difficulty did not lie there. “There’s the Marquis, and Sir Thomas, and Squire Greenthorne, and our parson, all say, sir, as how he shouldn’t be bailed at all. And then, sir, if one has a misfortune belonging to one, one doesn’t want to flaunt it in everybody’s face, sir.” And there was trouble, too, with George Brattle from Fordingbridge. George Brattle was a prudent, hardheaded, hardworking man, not troubled with much sentiment, and caring very little what anyone could say of him as long as his rent was paid; but he had taken it into his head that Sam was guilty, that he was at any rate a thoroughly bad fellow who should be turned out of the Brattle nest, and that no kindness was due to him. With the farmer, however, Mr. Fenwick did prevail, and then the parson became the other bondsman himself. He had been strongly advised—by Gilmore, by Gilmore’s uncle, the prebendary at Salisbury, and by others—not to put himself forward in this position. The favour which he had shown to the young man had not borne good results either for the young man or for himself; and it would be unwise—so said his friends—to subject his own name to more remark than was necessary. He had so far assented as to promise not to come forward himself, if other bailsmen could be procured. But, when the difficulty came, he offered himself, and was, of necessity, accepted.
When Sam was released, he was like a caged animal who, when liberty is first offered to him, does not know how to use it. He looked about him in the hall of the Court House, and did not at first seem disposed to leave it. The constable had asked him whether he had means of getting home, to which he replied, that “it wasn’t no more than a walk.” Dinner was offered to him by the constable, but this he refused, and then he stood glaring about him. After a while Gilmore and Fenwick came up to him, and the Squire was the first to speak. “Brattle,” he said, “I hope you will now go home, and remain there working with your father for the present.”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” said the lad, not deigning to look at the Squire.
“Sam, pray go home at once,” said the parson. “We have done what we could for you, and you should not oppose us.”
“Mr. Fenwick, if you tells me to go to—to—to,”—he was going to mention some very bad place, but was restrained by the parson’s presence—“if you tells me to go anywheres, I’ll go.”
“That’s right. Then I tell you to go to the mill.”
“I don’t know as father’ll let me in,” said
