The Beautiful Thread Read Online Free PDF

standards instilled into us. Young people today think any slipshod nonsense will do. I expect it’s the way I grew up, but my generation had values. We knew what was expected of us.”
    â€œSo I felt there was no more I could do,” Lady Florence concluded. “I told Gervase it was still not too late to bring things to a halt. But he refused even to answer me – he turned away with extreme discourtesy. I shall entreat him one last time, on the night before his wedding – because I cannot believe he really wants to marry this wench. It can come to no good. What can he possibly see in her, after all?”
    Bleak and arid, her coldly questioning eye directed its glance at the abbot. Evidently this was the moment for his response.
    William raised his head and looked at John, at the ladies, impassively observing. John sat thinking, rubbed his chin, his mouth.
    â€œI regard this as a very poor return on all we have invested in him,” added Lady Florence, seeing the abbot not about to speak. “I don’t know how much your father put into your education, Father John – into the moulding of you to become a man fit to enter society – but you will realize it is a costly endeavour, in terms of effort, time and money. One needs a proper foundation to know how to comport oneself with refinement and dignity. It doesn’t just come naturally. It is very disappointing to see it thrown away like this. Very disappointing indeed. Gervase has wasted the family resources. One could call it theft, without overstating the matter.”
    â€œMy lady,” asked William quietly and smoothly into the silence that followed this; “are you intimating that the planned marriage may actually not take place?”
    â€œNot if I can help it.” Lady Florence sounded not so much vehement as resigned. “But it seems my counsel is not wanted. A mother is not to be consulted. So far as I know it will go ahead. But not by my wish.”
    â€œWhen I grew up,” added her mother, “young people respected their parents: ‘Honour thy father and thy mother that it may go well with thee, and thou mayest dwell long in the land.’ What happened to that? Young people today are grown so headstrong – they think of nothing but pleasing themselves and going their own way. My generation would never have dreamed of such a thing. But I suppose it must have been the way I grew up.”
    â€œYes, my lady,” murmured William in the familiar dulcet tone that filled John with immediate alarm, “I suppose it must have been.”
    Lady Florence’s calm, implacable gaze continued to rest on the abbot.
    â€œI know what you are thinking, Father John,” she said. That recalled his attention from William.
    Few things irritated John more than people telling him they knew what he was thinking. Knowing his annoyance likely to show, however hard he tried to hide it, he lowered his eyes. Flashing unbidden into his mind, a memory of his father surprised him. From his childhood, when Jude had been briefly at home between military skirmishes. They had stood outside in the breezy air, Jude showing his small son how to handle a longbow.
    Beautiful yew wood, John could still remember the feel of the thing, ludicrously big for him. His father’s touch light upon him – his back, his shoulders, his arms. The kindly voice explaining, “It’s not the strength of your arms, lad, you press your whole body into it. Rest your hand so – that’s it – and lay your body into the thing. Steady. Hold steady. Hold the strength of your core. Feel it in your belly. That’s it, lad.” His father’s smile. “That’s it, lad.”
    And John, holding steady, raised his eyes to her ladyship, feeling more than seeing William’s quick, perceptive, appraising glance checking that all was well.
    â€œYou are thinking,” said Lady Florence, “that I am a