The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Freelands, by John Galsworthy

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Title: The Freelands

Author: John Galsworthy

Release Date: June 14, 2006 [EBook #2309]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FREELANDS ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

THE FREELANDS

By John Galsworthy

"Liberty's a glorious feast."--Burns.

PROLOGUE

One early April afternoon, in a Worcestershire field, the only field in
that immediate landscape which was not down in grass, a man moved slowly
athwart the furrows, sowing--a big man of heavy build, swinging his
hairy brown arm with the grace of strength. He wore no coat or hat; a
waistcoat, open over a blue-checked cotton shirt, flapped against belted
corduroys that were somewhat the color of his square, pale-brown face
and dusty hair. His eyes were sad, with the swimming yet fixed stare of
epileptics; his mouth heavy-lipped, so that, but for the yearning eyes,
the face would have been almost brutal. He looked as if he suffered from
silence. The elm-trees bordering the field, though only just in leaf,
showed dark against a white sky. A light wind blew, carrying already a
scent from the earth and growth pushing up, for the year was early.
The green Malvern hills rose in the west; and not far away, shrouded by
trees, a long country house of weathered brick faced to the south. Save
for the man sowing, and some rooks crossing from elm to elm, no life
was visible in all the green land. And it was quiet--with a strange, a
brooding tranquillity. The fields and hills seemed to mock the scars of
road and ditch and furrow scraped on them, to mock at barriers of hedge
and wall--between the green land and white sky was a conspiracy to
disregard those small activities. So lonely was it, so plunged in a
ground-bass of silence; so much too big and permanent for any figure of
man.

Across and across the brown loam the laborer doggedly finished out
his task; scattered the few last seeds into a corner, and stood still.
Thrushes and blackbirds were just beginning that even-song whose
blitheness, as nothing else on earth, seems to promise youth forever to
the land. He pick