Secret Bread

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Secret Bread

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Secret Bread, by F. Tennyson Jesse This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Secret Bread
Author: F. Tennyson Jesse
Release Date: September 11, 2005 [EBook #16683]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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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