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badly burned that he rushed into the pond and died there. I want you to get
the body out and bury it yes, at the far end of the apple orchard. Please.
Before you do anything else. Then come back to me, and I ll give you your
orders for the day.
 Aye, miss. But if he m only burnt, the meat ll be good.
 Bury him, I tell you! The order was fiercely harsh.
 Aye, miss. Yu says, an I ll du it.
She came back into the room, changed, mistress of herself. For a minute or
less she looked into
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Gees eyes, and her own eyes softened.
 I must have time, she said.  You ask me to forego so much. The patient
search that has lasted years, the gain I have had of it, the sight of greater
gain very near my hold, now that I had finished with
Jerome Naylor. All this, and against it ?
She made a question of the last sentence. Gees, chilled, shook his head. He
knew, even then, which way her choice would fall.
 Against it, magic, he said.  The only magic there is, Ira. For me, to look
at you and say  I love.
Till you have made your choice, I will not say it again. Nor may you.
 Do you know how much we have lived through since last night? she asked after
a pause.  Adolphus dead, the Rod gone, Naylor beaten down as we saw, and this
new wakening, greater than all the rest. I
think even I am tired and need time to rest. And you?
He knew he was tired, then up to that moment he had not realised how great had
been the strain of the night and its happenings and of the last stupendous,
fantastic, incredible happening in the light of dawn. He said, heavily  I too.
Yes. I shall see you again before I go, Ira. Be able to think clearly
again see you 
With no further word he went out. As he went, he heard the clanking of
pails Ephraim s boy was going to his milking, Gees divined. A small,
inconsequent thing was anything in life other than small and inconsequent? One
might live through what seemed great moments, but the small things of life
went on all the time, inexorable, inconsequent, unescapable. Ham and eggs at
The Three Thorns, a bed on which to sleep and sleep, to wake, perhaps, to
sanity and normal things, other than this unreal fantasy in which old gods
swung hammers&
It was a long, long way to the inn. When he got inside, he said,  I want some
ham and eggs, Todd lots of ham and lots of eggs. Don t cook  em yet I want a
sleep, first. If you wake me before
I ve slept it out, I ll murder you. When I ve had it, ham and eggs.
 Right you are, sir. Nuthin went wrong?
 Exactly that nothing. Because I know now that nothing exists, but everything
isn t. Do you know your Shakespeare, Todd?
 Not too well, sir. Wrote plays, didn t he? I learned bits at school, an that
sorter stopped me frettin
about him. When you get them things, an parse an analyse  em, they go sour
on you.
 Quite so, but he wrote one great truth that I ve had rubbed in since I came
to Troyarbour.  We are such stuff as dreams are made of. You get that? You re
a dream I m a dream all we do and say and think is nothing but a dream,
dreamed by what?
  Fraid that s way over me, sir. An if that brewer s man don t turn up with a
load before noon, you ll get no bitter to-night, because you got to give a
cask time to settle arter the finin s is put in. I hope he s somethin more
solid n a dream.
 I will now stagger up to dream, Gees said.  Ham and eggs when I wake, but
not till. Let me sleep it out, if 
Without ending the sentence, he went toward the stairs foot. As he went, he
questioned whether sleep were for him, in spite of his weariness. But, lying
down fully clothed as he was, he passed to dreamlessness almost instantly.
Ira, warm and pulsing in his hold, was a moment s recollection, and then she
passed all things passed.
At some point in the day he wakened enough to take off his shoes and, rousing
more fully with the movement, stripped off all he was wearing and got between
the sheets naked as a bathed infant, the way he liked best to sleep. He did
not look at the time, and so did not know if it were still morning or past
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noon, and, snuggling down between the warming sheets, went off again, to waken
in darkness. Then he lighted the candle beside the bed and, seeing that it was
past six o clock, got out, yearned for the bath that the inn could not
provide, and after a simple wash went down, to find Todd hovering.
 I was in two minds about comin up to wake ye, sir, Todd informed him.  I
reckoned you d slep it out long since, an must be bad.
 I am bad. Which reminds me how is the little lady?
 She s pickin up surprisin , sir. An  I hope it s all right wi you, sir, but
I told her you called her that, an she near on cried wi pleasure. You know
what women are, sir, I expect.
 I don t, you don t, and nobody ever will, Gees told him.  The eternal
puzzle. Well, you tell the little lady she s all that and then some, and I m
glad she s getting better. And this little matter of ham and eggs what about
letting me do the cooking?
 Oh, no, sir! I got Cowder s wife in to look arter Phyllis I can t keep an eye
on her an
the bar, openin time. An Mrs. Crowder s got the eggs all laid out riddy, an
the ham cut, f r me to say the word.
An seein you was up all night an slep all day 
 How many eggs, Todd? The truth, and nothing but!
 She got six laid out, sir. I reckoned 
 Don t! You simply can t reckon. Tell her to divide by two.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SHATTERED ROD
 SUCH stuff as dreams are made of. The miracle that Shakespeare was, the
clothing he could put on common things, making eternal verities of his clowns,
even! Sam Thatcher, and Jacob Cowder, seated at their nightly table with their
cronies, had been in the knowledge of that world-genius, were figured as
chorus in his work, for all time. They, too, were such stuff as dreams were
made of stuff for his dreams, fixed for ever in his prose of comic relief from
the poetry of his greater genius. Here in the bar room of The Three Horns sat
Bardolph and Nym, the two Dromios, Lance and Speed, the same in essence to-day
as when the world-genius portrayed them. So Gees reflected as, entering the
bar-room, he saw the worthies but only for a minute, to-night.
For, acting in concert with Sam Thatcher, one and all of them lifted their
glass mugs, finished their half-pints and, rising from their seats, stumped
solemnly to the door, and out. Firth, up by the bar, stared at the closed door
as Gees advanced to join them.
 What s bitten them all? he asked, more of Todd than of Gees.
 A slight disagreement I had with them this morning, I think, Gees answered
him before Todd could speak.  With them and a few others. I dunno, Todd if my
coming in here is going to rob you of custom like that, I d better take my
pint back to the coffee room and stop there.
 Not you, sir! Todd protested emphatically.  I make more outer you bein here
than I do outer what that lot ll spend in a week. They takin one night off [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]