“I will not.”
“You think that you will not. However, you will. If you do not you are lost.”
“Lost to what?”
“Well, to ease—to your own kind of command—finally perhaps to your life.”
She said in a strangled voice. “As I came here to this house so will I walk on by day or by night and come to another town.”
He turned quickly. “Try it!—or rather do not try it! You will find that you cannot.”
The holly berries were red, the leaves glossy and barbed. She looked at the pale winter sky. “Is it sky? It seems to me a poor tent that we have struggled to get up—poor, mean, low, ragged. I would it might fall and kill us!”
He smiled indulgently. “No, you do not so! Any day you could kill yourself. But you love life. Go to, now! Look at the curious dance of the time correctly! Mumming is no great sin. What! All the saints and higher than the saints were on the market-place stage last Middle Forest Fair. They talked and walked—even the Highest! Very good! It is but Miracle Play again, and truly for no ill ends—”
Red holly berries, barbed leaves. He won her to stand and listen, though with heaving bosom and dark brows. Pale sky and voice of Wander and birds of winter in naked oak and beech. The ruined farm—and her house above the river and her garden turned against her. Father Edmund preaching at town cross against the wicked time and each remaining sin—and they had swept up her house and garden and drummed forth Ailsa and Tony, who were God knew where! And Montjoy nor any cared any longer! Barbed leaves and miserable world bent on injury! He won her to nod her head and then to break into reckless laughter.