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      Chapter 1

       Strange Blossoms and Strange New Budding

       Table of Contents

      Winter lay a long time prostrate on the earth. The men in the mines of Tempest, Warrall and Co. came out on strike on a question of the rearranging of the working system down below. The distress was not awful, for the men were on the whole wise and well-conditioned, but there was a dejection over the face of the country-side, and some suffered keenly. Everywhere, along the lanes and in the streets, loitered gangs of men, unoccupied and spiritless. Week after week went on, and the agents of the Miners’ Union held great meetings, and the ministers held prayer-meetings, but the strike continued. There was no rest. Always the crier’s bell was ringing in the street; always the servants of the company were delivering handbills, stating the case clearly, and always the people talked and filled the months with bitter, and then hopeless, resenting. Schools gave breakfasts, chapels gave soup, well-to-do people gave teas — the children enjoyed it. But we, who knew the faces of the old men and the privations of the women, breathed a cold, disheartening atmosphere of sorrow and trouble.

      Determined poaching was carried on in the squire’s woods and warrens. Annable defended his game heroically. One man was at home with a leg supposed to be wounded by a fall on the slippery roads — but really, by a man-trap in the woods. Then Annable caught two men, and they were sentenced to two months’ imprisonment.

      On both the lodge gates of Highclose — on our side and on the far Eberwich side — were posted notices that trespassers on the drive or in the grounds would be liable to punishment. These posters were soon mudded over, and fresh ones fixed.

      The men loitering on the road by Nethermere looked angrily at Lettie as she passed, in her black furs which Leslie had given her, and their remarks were pungent. She heard them, and they burned in her heart. From my mother she inherited democratic views, which she now proceeded to debate warmly with her lover.

      Then she tried to talk to Leslie about the strike. He heard her with mild superiority, smiled, and said she did not know. Women jumped to conclusions at the first touch of feeling; men must look at a thing all round, then make a decision — nothing hasty and impetuous — careful, long-thought-out, correct decisions. Women could not be expected to understand these things, business was not for them; in fact, their mission was above business — etc. etc. Unfortunately Lettie was the wrong woman to treat thus.

      “So!” said she, with a quiet, hopeless tone of finality.

      “There now, you understand, don’t you, Minnehaha, my Laughing Water. — So laugh again, darling, and don’t worry about these things. We will not talk about them any more, eh?”

      “No more.”

      “No more — that’s right — you are as wise as an angel. Come here — pooh, the wood is thick and lonely! Look, there is nobody in the world but us, and you are my heaven and earth!”

      “And hell?”

      “Ah — if you are so cold — how cold you are! — it gives me little shivers when you look so — and I am always hot — Lettie!”

      “Well?”

      “You are cruel! Kiss me — now — No, I don’t want your cheek — kiss me yourself. Why don’t you say something?”

      “What for? What’s the use of saying anything when there’s nothing immediate to say?”

      “You are offended!”

      “It feels like snow today,” she answered.

      At last, however, winter began to gather her limbs, to rise, and drift with saddened garments northward.

      The strike was over. The men had compromised. It was a gentle way of telling them they СКАЧАТЬ