|
Harold’s words went deep to Fordogrim’s heart – and cut a bit when they got there. He did know what it was like to love the woman in your life so much that you did crazy things for her: things that to outsiders must look like madness. He remembered back to the year of Great Tempest when he had spent much of the storm in the flower garden, staking up the sweet peas and gladiolas that his Prim loved so much when everyone else had been in the orchards trying to save the fruits of their harvest. He had seemed mad to everybody then – as his son had seemed to him now – but at the time he had not even thought about it. Prim’s happiness was simply more important than the crops. The old hobbit also had to admit the truth of Harold’s words about the move. There had been little choice. He began to see the Whitfoots in a wholly new light. For most of his life they had simply been his landlords; like the great stone in the middle of his fields, they were an uncomfortable fact of life that you had to work around. But perhaps his relation to them was somewhat different. He had always assumed that they thought about him in the same way – as a fact of their lives, but not a part of their daily existence. But the way they had treated Henry and May in their desire for babysitting came back to him. And Kalimac’s overbearing manner toward him in the ensuing fight. Perhaps the Whitfoots simply took the Chubbs for granted. His aged mind shifted and clunked into a new idea: Harold had not chosen to follow the Whitfoots as one chooses to accept a bad frost, he had been compelled to go with them on this crack-brained adventure.
His mind was still whirling with this when Sarah stood before him, her hands on her hips, and raged at him for his attack. At first, Fordogrim felt all of his anger well up at this affront to his dignity, but having just come to the realisation of his son’s position, Sarah’s words quickly followed Harold’s into his heart, where they stung deeply indeed. While there was truth to what she said about Harold, Fordogrim was not going to accept her accusations against him. His face grew red and he pulled himself upright. Harold placed a calming hand on his shoulder, and the gesture was so much like something that Prim would have done that he could have cried again. It did much to still his heart, but he could not hold back all of his words.
“I’m not easy to get along with, am I? Well, I’m an old hobbit and I’ve been around long enough to know the way I like things done, and there’s no denying that. Still, I’m not so old that I can’t see when I’ve gone and got something wrong, and I can see now that mayhap I’ve had this journey all wrong from the start. Mayhap it wasn’t that you and Harold had much of a choice in this. Mayhap it was others as I won’t go accusing here” but he looked pointedly at the Whitfoot camp “left us all with precious little choice. But you” and he pointed his cane angrily at Sarah, “you wanted to come on this here journey, and you can’t go as denying it! Now I’m sorry if you feel that I’ve been a-blaming you for all that’s gone wrong, as that’s just not how it is. There’s plenty of blame to go around” and he glared and Marcho, “and there’s far more of it than any one hobbit can bear. So I’m sorry to you for making you feel as though I hold you responsible for all, my Sarah, I really am. But as you’ve started this fight, I have to say that you’re no easy person to get along with either. There was a way of doing things about the hole that I’d been comfortable with for many years. Ways that I’d come to count on for when I gave over the running of the farm to my son, and all those ways were done and gone the moment you stepped across the threshold. Now there’s no way anyone could replace my Prim, and I don’t say as you should try, but as I said I’m an old hobbit and set in my ways and in my place, and I don’t take well to folk meddling with that. And Sarah – and I’m sorry to say this Harold, but she’s asked me for it – you are as meddlesome a hobbit lass as any I’ve met!”
|