The Project Gutenberg EBook of Secret Bread, by F. Tennyson Jesse

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Title: Secret Bread

Author: F. Tennyson Jesse

Release Date: September 11, 2005 [EBook #16683]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SECRET BREAD ***

Produced by Suzanne Shell, David Clarke and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

SECRET BREAD

BY

F. TENNYSON JESSE

Author Of "The Milky Way,"
"Beggars On Horseback," Etc.

"Bread eaten in secret…"

New York
George H. Doran Company

Copyright, 1917,
By George H. Doran Company

Printed In The United States Of America

TO

EUSTACE TENNYSON D'EYNCOURT JESSE MY FATHER AND FRIEND

CONTENTS

BOOK I—SOWING

Prologue

CHAPTER

    I High Adventures in a Farmyard
   II The Mill
  III The Kitchen
   IV Pagan Pastoral
    V Head of the House
   VI Reactions
  VII The Chapel
 VIII Seed-Time
   IX Fresh Pasture
    X Hilaria
   XI The Place on the Moor
  XII Some Ambitions and an Announcement
 XIII The Wrestling
  XIV The Wind upon the Grass-Field

BOOK II—GROWTH

CHAPTER

    I A Family Album
   II What Men Live By
  III First Furrow
   IV The Shadow at the Window
    V Lull Before Storm
   VI The Bush-Beating
  VII The Heart of the Cyclone
 VIII New Horizons
   IX Hidden Springs
    X Blind Steps
   XI Glamour
  XII Sheaves
 XIII The Stile
  XIV A Letter
   XV Blown Husks
  XVI The Grey World
 XVII The Cliff and the Valley
XVIII The Immortal Moment

BOOK III—RIPENING

CHAPTER

    I Under-Currents
   II The Passage
  III Phoebe Pays Toll
   IV The Discovering of Nicky
    V Centripetal Movement
   VI The Nation and Nicky
  VII Paradise Cottage Again
 VIII What Nicky Did
   IX Judith's White Night
    X Lone Trails
   XI Ways of Love
  XII Georgie

BOOK IV—THE SHADOW OF THE SCYTHE

CHAPTER

    I Questions of Vision
   II Autumn
  III Bodies of Fire
   IV The New Judith
    V The Parson's Philosophy
   VI "Something Must Come to All of Us…"
  VII Earth

BOOK V—HARVEST

CHAPTER

    I The Four-Acre
   II Archelaus, Nicky, Jim
  III The Letters
   IV Hester
    V Reaping
   VI Threshing
  VII Garnered Grain

Epilogue

BOOK I

SOWING

SECRET BREAD

PROLOGUE

There was silence in the room where James Ruan lay in the great bed, awaiting his marriage and his death—a silence so hushed that it was not broken, only faintly stirred, by the knocking of a fitful wind at the casement, and the occasional collapse of the glowing embers on the hearth. The firelight flickered over the whitewashed walls, which were dimmed to a pearly greyness by the stronger light without; the sick man's face was deep in shadow under the bed canopy, but one full-veined hand showed dark upon the blue and white check of the counterpane. All life, both without and within, was dying life—waning day at the casement, failing fire on the hearth, and in the shadowy bed a man's soul waiting to take wing.

Ruan lay with closed eyes, so still he might have been unconscious, but in reality he was gathering together all of force and energy he possessed; every sense was concentrated on the bare act of keeping alive—keenly and clearly alive—until the wished-for thing was accomplished. Then, the effort over, the stored-up vitality spent, he hoped to go out swiftly, no dallying on the dim borderland. As he lay his closed lids seemed like dull red films against the firelight, and across them floated a series of memory-pictures, which he noted curiously, even with a dry amusement.

He saw himself, as a big-boned surly lad, new to his heritage; then as a middle-aged man, living in a morose isolation save for Annie and the children. Little half-forgotten incidents drifted past him, and always, with the strange detachment of the dying, he saw himself from the outside, as it were, even as he saw Annie and the children. Finally, his travelling mind brought him to the present still hour of dusk, so soon to deepen into night. Thinking of that which was to come, his mouth twitched to a smile; he flattered himself he had kept his neighbours well scandalised during his life; now, from his death-bed, he would send widening circles of amazement over the whole county, and set tongues clacking and heads wagging at the last freak of that old reprobate, Ruan of Cloom. He lay there, grimly smiling, the pleasure of the successful creator in his mind as he thought over the last situation of his making. The smouldering patches of red on the crumbling logs shrank smaller and smaller as the close-set little points of fire died out, and the feathery ash-flakes fell in a soft pile on the hearthstone.

Opening his eyes, Ruan turned his head a little on the pillow, so that he could watch the changing square of sky. A ragged curtain of cloud, blurred and wet-looking at the edge, hung almost to the hill-top, but between ran a streak of molten pallor, and against it the hedge of wilted thorns that crowned the hill stood out black and contorted. One great ploughed field stretched from the garden to the hill-crest; in the middle of its curve a tall grey granite monolith reared up, dark where its top came against the sky, but at its base hardly distinguishable from the bare earth around, which was charmed by the hour to a warm purple hue; when Ruan's eyes left the gleam in the sky they could find out the subdued green of the nearer hedge-row. For the last time, he told himself; then, as the gleam faded from the sky and was gone, he swallowed hard upon the knowledge that never again, for him, would the daylight live behind the clouds. He rubbed his finger up and down the sheet, that he might still feel a tangible sensation at will; then, lifting his bare forearm, he looked closely and curiously at it, noting the way the brown hairs lay across the back, and the finer texture of skin down the inside of elbow and wrist. He, his living self, was in that arm—he could still make the fingers contract and straighten, could still pinch the flesh gently till it whitened—could still call it part of himself. He was not thirsty, but he laboriously lifted the glass of water at his side and