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Naomi spent a peaceful and happy convalescence. Everything combined for her blessedness. The soft April days scattered their scent and sunshine on her bed, where she lay with her baby, full of drowsy hopes. Even Boarzell's firs had a mellowness about them, as if her motherhood had sweetened not only herself and those about her, but the grim face of nature militant.
Her memories of those days were full of the smell of daffodils blown in at her window from the garden and of primroses set by Reuben in a bowl beside the bed—of Reuben stooping over her, smoothing back her hair, and stroking her face with hands that quivered strangely, or holding the baby as if it were made of fire and glass.
As soon as she was well enough the christening took place in Peasmarsh church. The heir of all the Backfields was important enough to receive three Christian names—Reuben after his father, Thomas after old Gasson, and Albert after the Prince Consort. "I shall call him Albert," said Naomi.
That spring and summer Reuben worked with a light heart. His fatherhood made him proud and expansive. He would boast about the baby to Beatup, tell him how many ounces it had gained in the week, enlarge on its strength and energy, with intimate details concerning its digestion—all of which were received open-mouthed by Beatup who knew pretty well as much about babies as he did about ?cumenical councils.
He'll soon be able to do a bit of work wud us, Beatup, said Reuben apocalyptically.—"I'll have him on when he's ten or thereabouts, and at fifteen he'll be doing full man's work. I shouldn't wonder as how I'd never want another hand but you—we could manage the pl?ace, I reckon, till the lad's old enough, and then there'll be others...."
Yus, M?aster, said Beatup.
The second piece of land had thriven better than the first. The hops were sturdy and promising beside the brook, and on the higher grounds the new pastures fattened. Reuben had decided to dig up a couple of his old grass meadows and prepare them for grain-sowing in the autumn. The soil was good, and it was only his father's want of enterprise which had kept so much of Odiam as mere grazing land. As for the cows, there was ample provision for them on the new pastures, which Boarzell would continue to yield, even if it refused oats—"But I'll have oats there some day, I reckon," said Reuben, "oats, and barley, and maybe wheat."
He pictured Odiam chiefly as a great grain farm—though there might be more money in fruit or milk, these would be mere temporary profit-making concerns, means to an end; for glory and real permanent fortune lay in wheat. He was terribly anxious lest the Corn Laws should be repealed, a catastrophe which had threatened farming for several years. For the first time he began to take an interest in politics and follow the trend of public opinion. He could not read, so was forced to depend on Naomi to read him the newspaper he occasionally had three days old from Rye.
The Backfields had always been Tory, just as they had always been Church, because Liberalism and Dissent were "low," and unworthy of yeomen farmers. But they had never felt very keenly about politics, which, except at election times, had not come much into their lives. Even at the elections the interest had been slight, because up till ten years ago Rye had been a pocket borough, and its Radical member went up to Parliament without any of the pamphlet-writing, bill-sticking, mud-throwing, or free-fighting, which stirred the blood in other towns.
Now, however, having vital interests at stake, Reuben became an absorbed and truculent Conservative. He never called in at the Cocks without haranguing the company on the benefits of the wheat-tax, and cursing Cobden and Bright. On the occasion of the '42 election, he abandoned important obstetric duties in the cow-stable to Beatup, and rode into Rye to record his vote for the unsuccessful Tory candidate. The neighbourhood was of Whig tendencies, spoon-fed from the Manor, but the Backfields had never submitted to Bardon politics; and now even the fact that the Squire held Reuben's land of promise, failed to influence him.
The Bardons were strongly anti-Corn Law, but their opposition had that same touch of inefficiency which characterised all their dealings and earned Reuben's contempt. In spite of their Liberalism they had been driven for financial considerations to inclose Boarzell—then even the inclosure had failed, and they were now, also against their will, surrendering the land piecemeal to a man who was in every way their opposite and antagonist. They agitated feebly for Repeal, but were unable to make themselves heard. They visited the poor, and doled out relief in ineffectual scraps. Reuben despised them. They were an old line—effete—played out. He and his race would show them what was a Man.
That summer Naomi realised that she was going to have another child. She was sorry, for her maternal instincts were satisfied for the present, and she had begun to value her new-returned health. It would be hard to have to go back to bondage again.
However, there was no help for it. Reuben was overjoyed, and once more she slipped under his tyranny. This time she found it irksome, his watchfulness was a nuisance, his anxiety was absurd. However, she did not complain. She was too timid, and too fond of him.
I hope it'll be a girl this time, she said one afternoon, when according to custom she was walking along Totease Lane, his arm under hers.
A girl—— Oh, no! I want another boy.
But we've got a boy, Reuben. It would be nice to have a girl now.
Why, liddle creature?
Oh, I justabout love baby girls. They're so sweet—and all their dresses and that.... Besides we don't want two boys.
To her surprise Reuben stopped in the road, and burst out laughing.
Two boys!—not want two boys!—Why, we want ten boys! if I cud have twenty, I shudn't grumble.
What nonsense you're talking, Backfield, said Naomi primly.
I ?un't talking nonsense, I'm talking sound sense. How am I to run the farm wudout boys? I want boys to help me work all that land. I'm going to have the whole of Boarzell, as I've told you a dunnamany times, and I'll want men wud me on it. So d?an't you go talking o' girls. Wot use are girls?—none! They just spannel about, and then go off and get married.
But a girl 'ud be useful in the house—she could help mother when she's older.
No, thankee. However hard she works she ?un't worth half a boy. You give me ten boys, missus, and then I d?an't mind you having a girl or so to please yourself.
Naomi was disgusted. Reuben had once or twice offended her by his coarseness, but she could never get used to it.
Oh, how can you speak to me so! she gulped.
Now, you silly liddle thing, wot are you crying for? Mayn't I have a joke?
But you're so vulgar!
Reuben looked a little blank. None of the details of his great desire had hitherto struck him as vulgar.
Vulgar, am I? he said ruefully. "No matter, child, we w?an't go quarrelling. Come, dry your dear eyes, and maybe to-morrow I'll drive you over to Rye to see the market."
Naomi obediently dried her eyes, but it was rather hard to keep them from getting wet again. For in her heart she knew that it was not the vulgarity of Reuben's joke which had upset her, but a certain horrible convincingness about it. It was not so merely a joke as he would have her think.
During the days that followed her attitude towards him changed subtly, almost subconsciously. A strange fear of him came over her. Would he insist on her bearing child after child to help him realise his great ambition? It was ridiculous, she knew, and probably due to her state of health, but sometimes she found herself thinking of him not so much as a man as a thing; she saw in him no longer the loving if tyrannical husband, but a law, a force, to which she and everyone else must bow. She even noticed a kind of likeness between him and Boarzell—swart, strong, cruel, full of an irrepressible life.
The following spring Naomi gave birth to twin boys. With these twins really started the epic of her maternity. She was not to be one of those women for whom motherhood is a little song of baby shoes and blue sashes, and games and kisses and rockings to sleep. Hers was altogether a sterner business, her part in a battle—it was motherhood for a definite purpose, man and woman taking a leaf out of nature's book, playing her game to their own advantage, using her methods only to crush her at last. In a word it was epic—and the one drawback was that Naomi had never been meant for an epic part in life. She of all women had been meant for baby shoes and blue sashes, and here she was with her shoulder against Reuben's, helping him in the battle which even he found hard....
However, as yet there were few misgivings. That faintness of spirit which had come over her during the last few months of her pregnancy, faded like a ghost in the first joyous days of her deliverance. Reuben's pride, delight, and humble gratitude were enough to make any woman happy, even without those two dear fat little babies which the doctor said were the finest twins he had ever seen. Naomi was one of those women who, even without very strong maternal instincts, cannot resist a baby. The soft limbs, the big downy heads, the groping wet mouths of her boys were a sheer physical delight to her. She even forgot to regret that one of them was not a girl.
She made a quick recovery, and Robert and Peter were christened at Easter-time. Naomi looked every inch the proud mother. Her slight figure had acquired more matronly lines, and she even affected a more elderly style of dress. For some time afterwards, proud and beloved, she really felt that motherhood was her vocation, and when in the course of the summer she realised that her experiences were to be repeated, she was not so sorry as she had been before. She hoped desperately it would be a girl—but this time said nothing to Reuben.
Once more her attitude towards him had changed. She no longer felt the timid passion of the first months after her marriage, but she also no longer felt that sinister dread and foreboding which had succeeded it. She looked upon him less as her husband, inspiring alternately love and terror, than as the father of her children. She saw him, so to speak, through them. She loved him because they were his as well as hers. She spoke less of "I" and "he," and more of "us," "we," and "ours."
All the same she was bitterly disappointed when the following year another boy was born. She sobbed into her pillow, and even Reuben's delight and little Richard's soft kicks against her breast, could not comfort her. In fact she felt secretly angry with Reuben for his joy. He did not think of her and what she wanted. He thought only of his dirty old farm, and that dreary, horrible Boarzell.
As time wore on, and her hopes were once more roused, she became quite obsessed by the idea of having a girl. She thought of nothing but the little frocks, the ribbons with which she would tie the pretty hair. She pictured the times she and her daughter would have together, the confidences they would exchange—for old Mrs. Backfield grew more and more silent and unreceptive, and her neighbours were not of her mould. They would tell each other everything ... she had dreams of an impossible little pink-and-white girl like a doll, with golden curls and blue eyes and a white muslin frock. In her dreams she would stretch out her arms to this ached-for child, and would wake sobbing, with the tears running down her face.
Then, at last, after experiences which had had boredom added to their pain by repetition, she murmured—"What is it, mother?"—and a real, breathing, living, crying, little girl was put into her arms.
The positions of husband and wife were now reversed. It was Reuben who sulked and gloomed, looking at the baby askance, while Naomi moved in a daydream of peace and rapture and desire satisfied. She was too happy to care much about her husband's disappointment. She would never have believed it if anyone had told her in the first weeks of her marriage that she could have a joy and not mind if he did not share it, a child and not fret if he did not love it. But now her child sufficed her, or rather she had learned the lesson of wives, to suffice herself, and could love and rejoice without a comrade.
She had forgotten the Arabellas and Mariannas of the Keepsake, and the baby was called Fanny after Naomi's own mother, whom she dimly remembered. Fanny became the centre of Naomi's life; she was not as healthy as the other children, and her little pains and illnesses were all so many cords drawing her closer to her mother's heart. Though she required twice as much attention as the boys, Naomi never fretted or grew weary, as she had sometimes done in the service of the other little ones—on the contrary, she bloomed into a new beauty, and recovered the youthfulness she had begun to lose.
Strange to say, Harry, who had paid little attention to the earlier babies, seemed drawn to this one. He would hang round Naomi when she had her in her lap, and sometimes gingerly put out a hand and stroke the child's limbs. Naomi could not bear that he should touch her; but he amused Fanny, so she tolerated him. He had fallen into the habit of many half-witted people and occasionally made strange faces, which though repulsive to everyone else, filled Fanny with hilarious delight. Indeed they were the first thing she "noticed."
Oh, the pretty baby! save the pretty baby!—Harry would mutter and shriek, and he would wander about the house crying—"Save the pretty baby!" till Naomi declared that he gave her the shivers.
Keep him out of the way, can't you, Backfield? she said to her husband.
In Reuben's eyes Naomi was just as irritating and ridiculous as Harry. She made foolish clothes for Fanny, quite unfit for a child in her position—muslins and ribbon bows, little knitted shoes, which she was forever pulling off to kiss the baby's feet. She would seat her on some high big chair in which she lolled with grotesque importance, and would kneel before her and call her "Miss Fanny."
There, Miss Fanny—see what a grand baby you are. Soon all the boys will be courting you—see if they don't. You shall always wear silk and muslins and sit on cushions, and you will always love your mother, won't you, dear little miss?
Reuben was revolted—also a little hurt. It seemed to him that Naomi was neglecting the boys he was so proud of. Albert was nearly four years old, a fine sturdy child, worth a dozen puling Fannys, and Robert and Pete were vigorous crawlers and adventurers, who ought to rejoice any mother's heart. Richard was still in an uninteresting stage—but, hem it all! he was a boy.
Nearly as bad as her indifference to the children she had already borne, was her indifference to the child she was about to bear. She was expecting her confinement in the spring, but she did not seem to take the slightest interest in it or the slightest care of herself. Again and again she would start up from the sofa where she had lain down by his orders, because she heard Fanny crying upstairs. She risked injuring herself by continually carrying her about or by stooping over her as she rolled on the floor.
Reuben often spoke to her severely, but with no result. There was a time when he could never chide her without her crying, but now she hardly seemed to care.
As the autumn wore on Fanny became more and more ailing and Naomi more and more preoccupied. There were doctor's visits to be paid for, and on one or two occasions Naomi had sent for him unnecessarily. It maddened Reuben to think that he was not master of his own household, but though he could always enforce obedience in person, he was compelled continually to be out of doors, even sometimes away from the farm, and he could not control what went on in his absence.
Odiam was passing through anxious times. The expected and dreaded had happened—the Corn Laws had been repealed, and cursing farmers grubbed up their wheatfields, hoping no more from grain. Reuben was bitterly disappointed, the whole future of Odiam was bound up with grain, the most honourable and—in the long run—most profitable of a farm's concerns. In his dreams he had seen wind-rippled waves of wheat rolling up to Boarzell's very crest, he had seen the threshed corn filling his barn, or rumbling to Iden Mill. Now the cheap abundant foreign grain would fight his home-sown harvests. He would have to depend for revenue on milk and hops, and grow wheat only as an expensive decoration. Peel was a traitor; he had betrayed the staunch grain-growing Tories who had inconvenienced themselves with muddy rides to vote for his supporters. For a year or so Reuben hated the Conservatives, and would not vote at all at the next election.
He had trouble, too, with his new grass. One of his Jersey cows suddenly died, and it turned out that it had eaten some poisonous plant which had insinuated itself into the pasture. It was as if Boarzell fought treacherously—with stabbings in the dark as well as blastings in the open. The night the Jersey died, Reuben sat with his head buried in his arms on the kitchen table, while Naomi carried her Miss Fanny about the room, and told her about the beautiful silk gowns she would wear when she grew up.
That autumn he had sown catch-crops of Italian rye grass, which gave the stock a good early winter feed. He had grown sharper in his dealings with the land, he knew how to take it at a disadvantage, snatch out a few roots. Every inch of the farm was now at work, for every blade of grass now counted. He had even dug up the garden, casting aside rose-bushes, sweet-peas, and dahlias for dull rows of drum-head cabbages, potatoes, kale, and beans. And manure ... there was manure everywhere, lying under the very parlour windows, sending up its effluvium on the foggy winter air till it crept into even the close-shut bedroom, making Naomi conscious of Reuben in her dreams.
She was inclined to be sulky in those days. She disliked the smell of manure, she disliked being made to dream of Reuben, towards whom she now felt a vague hostility. What business had he to go and saddle her with another child? Surely she had enough—four boys and a girl. What business had he to make her languid and delicate just when she needed all her health for the ailing Fanny? He was so unsympathetic about Fanny, too, one really might think he did not care what the poor little creature suffered.
Naomi began to complain about him to the neighbours. She joined in those wifely discussions, wherein every woman plaintively abused her own man, and rose at once in fury if another woman ventured to do so.
Backfield he scarcely takes any notice of me now—always thinking about his farm. Talks of nothing but hops and oats. Would you believe it, Mrs. Ditch, but he hardly ever looks at this dear little Fanny. He cares for his boys right enough, because when they're grown up they'll be able to work for him, but he justabout neglects his girlie—that's what he does, he neglects her. The other night, there she was crying and sobbing her little heart out, and he wouldn't let me send for the doctor. Says he can't afford to have the doctor here for nothing. Nothing, indeed!...
So Naomi would maunder to her acquaintance; with Reuben she confined herself to hints and innuendoes. Sometimes she complained to Mrs. Backfield, but her husband's mother was unsympathetic.
You d?an't know when you're in luck, she said as she thumped the dough—"nothing to do but bath and dress the children, and yet you grumble. If you had to work like me—"
I don't know why you do it. Make Backfield get a girl to help you.
And pay eight shillings a month when he wants the money so badly! No, if a woman can't work fur her son, I d?an't see much good in her. Some women—rather venomously—"even work fur their husbands."
You know well enough he won't let me work for him.
I never said as you ought to work fur him—all I said wur as you shouldn't ought to grumble.
A loud wail from Fanny in her cradle drove the retort from Naomi's lips. She sprang from the arm-chair where she had been resting, and ran heavily across the room to the baby's side.
What's the matter, my darling? Come to mother, little Miss Fanny. Oh, I know something's wrong with her, or she wouldn't cry so. She's got such a sweet temper really.
She picked the child out of the cradle, and began to walk up and down the room, rocking it in her arms. Fanny's wails grew louder, more long-drawn, and more plaintive.
Reuben came in, and his brows contracted when he saw what his wife was doing. There was a slight moisture on her forehead, and she strained the child violently to her breast.
Come, Naomi, put her down. It's bad for you to carry her about like this.
Oh, Reuben, I'm sure she's ill. Can't we send Beatup over for the doctor?
No, we can't. There's naun the matter wud her really. She's always crying.
Naomi faced him almost spitefully.
If one of the boys had hurt his little finger you'd have doctor in at once. It's only because it's Fanny. You don't love her, you——
Now none o' that, missus, said Reuben roughly—"you put the child back in her cradle, and go and lie down yourself. I d?an't want to have to fetch doctor in to you."
Naomi had not acquired the art of flouting him openly. She tearfully put Fanny into her cradle, and lay and sulked on the sofa for the rest of the evening.
That night she dreamed that her new baby was born, and that Reuben had taken away Fanny and given her to Beatup. Beatup was carrying her down to the pond to drown her as he drowned the kittens, and Naomi stood in the garden with immovable weights on every limb listening to the despairing shrieks of her little girl. They were dreadful shrieks, not like a baby's at all.
They still sounded when Naomi woke. She sat up in bed, uncertain as to whether she were dreaming or not. Then from Fanny's little bed beside the big one came something terrible—a low long wail like an animal's dying into a moan. It seemed as if her heart stopped beating. She felt the sweat rush out all over her body. The next minute she was out of bed, groping for Fanny in the darkness.
She found her and lifted her in her arms; once more that dreadful wailing moan came from the little body, mingling this time with a snore from Reuben. Naomi, still grasping Fanny, managed to light a candle. The child's face was deadly white and drawn in a strange way, while her lips were blue.
Reuben! shrieked Naomi.
He did not wake. Worn out with hard work and his anxiety about his farm, he still slept heavily, rolled in the blanket. A sick insane rage seized Naomi. She sprang on the bed, tore the clothes off him, shook him, beat him, pulled his hair, while all the time she grasped the now silent Fanny convulsively between her left arm and her breast.
My child's dying. Get up, you brute. Fetch the doctor. My child's dying!
For a moment Reuben was bewildered with his sudden waking, but he soon came to himself at the sight of his wife's distorted face and the inanimate lop-headed baby. He sprang up, pulled on his trousers, and in two minutes had bundled the half-conscious but utterly willing Beatup out of his attic, and sent him off on the fastest horse to Rye. Then he came back into the bedroom. Naomi was sitting on the floor, her hair falling over her shoulders, the baby unconscious on her lap.
Give her to me, child—let me look.
No, no—get away, and Naomi once more caught up Fanny to her breast.
I'll go and fetch mother.
Mrs. Backfield arrived in a washed-out bed-gown. A fire was lit and water put on to boil. Fanny's, however, did not seem just an ordinary case of "fits"; she lay limp in her mother's arms, strangely blue round the mouth, her eyes half open.
Oh, what is it?—what is it? wailed Naomi—"can't we do anything? Oh, why doesn't the doctor come?"
Suddenly the baby stiffened on her lap. The limbs became rigid, the face black. Then something rasped in its throat.
Bring the water!—Bring the water! screamed Naomi, hardly knowing what she said.
Mrs. Backfield poured the water into a basin, and Naomi lifted Miss Fanny to put her into the steaming bath.
It's no use, said Reuben. He knew the child was dead.
But Naomi insisted on putting Fanny into the basin. She held her up in it for a moment. Then suddenly let her drop, and fell forward, wailing.
Reuben and Mrs. Backfield tried in vain to soothe her, and put her back to bed. She was like a mad woman. She who had always been so timid and gentle, peevish at the worst, now shouted, kicked and raved.
You've killed her! it's your doing ... you're a murderer! she screamed at Reuben.
He lifted her bodily and laid her on the bed. But she was still half insane—
I hate you! I hate you! she cried, and threw herself about.
When the doctor arrived an hour later, his services were needed after all. For Naomi gave birth to a little boy at dawn.
Naomi had met her tragedy. In course of time she recovered from her confinement, but all the joy of life and motherhood had gone from her. It was inexplicable to Reuben that she could mourn so hopelessly over the death of a little weak girl, who would have been nothing but a care and an expense if she had lived. It was inexplicable that she could take no interest in young Benjamin, a sound, well-made little fellow in spite of his premature birth. For the first time she was unable to suckle her baby, and Reuben was forced to engage a nurse, not liking the responsibility of bringing him up by hand.
But he was very good to Naomi. He tried to forget her indifference to his beloved boys, and to soothe and strengthen her into something like her old self. She did not repulse him. All the violence and the desperation in her had burnt themselves out during that night of frenzy. She lay in bed hour after hour without moving, her long hair—which was now beginning to come out in handfuls when she brushed it—spread over the pillow. Her muscles were slack, she lay without any suppleness, heavy against the mattress. After some weeks she was able to get up, and go about her duties with the children. She never spoke of her misery, she ate, she sewed, she even gossiped with the neighbours, as before. But something was gone from her—her eye sometimes had a vacant, roving look, her shoulders stooped, and her skin grew sallow.
She was still fond of her children, but in a listless, mechanical way. Sometimes when she had them all gathered round her, for their bedtime or a bath, she would find the tears welling up in her eyes till all the little faces were blurred. Poor mites! what future lay ahead of them? They were their father's slaves as well as she—the utmost would be ground out of them as it had been ground out of her.
Once more she had taken up her unwilling part in Boarzell's epic. She was expecting another child for the following spring. This would be her seventh.
She was no longer merely dissatisfied. In her heart she passionately rebelled. She hated herself, and her condition, for now she hated Reuben. The vague hostility she had felt towards him during Fanny's short life had given place to a definite hatred. She looked upon Reuben as the murderer of her child, and she hated him. During the first days of her grief he had been so kind to her that she had grown dependent on him and hatred was delayed, but now dependence and dazed gratitude had passed away, and in their place was a sick, heavy loathing for the man whose neglect and indifference she believed had killed her child. She could not endure the thought of giving him another. Sometimes she thought she would like to kill herself, but she was too weak a soul for anything desperate.
In those days she could not bear the sound of Harry's fiddle, and he was told he must not play it in the house.
The Repeal of the Corn Laws did not have such a bad effect on Odiam as Reuben had feared. The harvests in '46 and '47 were unusually good, and a general revival of prosperity throughout the country atoned for the low price of grain. It was not to be expected, however, that he would forgive at once the party which had betrayed agricultural interests. He transferred his political allegiance to Disraeli, whose feudalistic attitude won his entire respect. It was a great trial to him that he could not read the newspapers, for nowadays he did not care to have Naomi read to him. She used to sometimes, but her utter lack of interest and understanding was no longer atoned for by a voice love-modulated or a soft hand stroking his. He resolved that none of his children should share his disabilities, and already the infant Albert toddled daily to a little house in the village where two vague-looking sisters taught the rising generation mysteries hidden from their parents. Reuben could spell out one or two words, and could write "Reuben Backfield" in big printing letters at the bottom of any document he had to sign, but he had no time to educate himself further.
He was now twenty-seven, looking in some ways strangely older, in others far younger, than his age. The boy in him had not had much chance of surviving adolescence. Life had come down too hard on him. A grim struggle does not nourish youth, and mentally Reuben was ten or twelve years ahead of twenty-seven. His splendid health and strength, however, had maintained a physical boyishness, expressing itself in zeal and high spirits, a keen appetite, a boundless capacity for work, an undaunted enterprise. He was always hungry, he fell asleep directly his head touched the pillow, and slept like a child beside the tossing and wakeful Naomi.
His work had made him splendid. His skin was the colour of the soil he tilled, a warm ruddy brown, his hair was black, growing low on the forehead, and curling slightly behind the ears. The moulding of his neck and jaw, his eyes, dark, bright, and not without laughter in them, his teeth, big, white, and pointed, like an animal's—all spoke of clean and vigorous manhood. He was now unmistakably a finer specimen than Harry. Harry had lost to a great measure his good looks. Not only had the vacancy of his face robbed it of much of its attraction—for more beautiful than shape or colouring or feature had been the free spirit that looked out of his eyes—but his constant habit of making hideous grimaces had worked it into lines, while the scar of his burning sometimes showed across his cheek. Add to this a stoop and a shambling gait, and it is no longer "Beautiful Harry," nor even the ghost of him, so much as some changeling, some ill-done counterfeit image, set up by vindictive nature in his stead.
Harry was no more his mother's favourite son. She was not the type of woman to whom a maimed child is dearer than half a dozen healthy ones. On the contrary he filled her with a vague terror and repulsion. She spoke to him gently, tended him carefully, even sometimes forced herself to caress him—but for the most part she avoided him, feeling as she did so a vague shame and regret.
On the other hand, her devotion to Reuben grew more and more absorbing and submissive. Her type was obviously the tyrant-loving, the more primitive kind, which worships the strong of the tribe and recoils instinctively from the weak. Where many a woman, perhaps rougher and harder than she, would have flung all the love and sweetness of her nature upon the blasted Harry, she turned instead to the strong, stalwart Reuben, who tyrannised over her and treated her with less and less consideration ... and this after twenty years of happy married life, during which she had idled and been waited on, and learned a hundred dainty ways.
She had no patience with Naomi's simmering rebellion; she scoffed at her complaints, and always took Reuben's part against her.
As long as there's men and women in the world, the men 'ull be top and the women bottom.
Why? asked Naomi.
Because it wur meant so. If we'd bin meant fur masters d'you think we'd have bin made so liddle and dentical like?
But we're a sight smarter than men.
Yes—that makes up to us a bit, but it d?an't do us any real good ... only helps us git round a man sometimes when we can't git over him.
Then it does us some good after all. A sad state we'd be in if the men always had their own way.
You take it from me that it's much better when a man has his own way than when he hasn't. Then he's pleased wud you and makes life warm and easy for you. It's women as are always going against men wot are unhappy. Please men and they'll be good to you and you'll be happy, d?an't please them and they'll be bad to you and you'll be miserable. But women who're for ever grumbling, and making a fuss about doing wot they've got to do whether they like it or not, and are cross-grained wives, and unwilling mothers ... and so on, and so on.
Yet Mrs. Backfield did not, any more than Naomi, understand Reuben's great ambition.
That autumn Naomi entered on a time of black depression—an utter gloom and weariness of body and mind. It was no mere dull staggering under blows, merciful in its blindness and lack of acute feeling—it was a clear-eyed misery, in which every object was as distinct as it was dark, like one of those sudden clearings of a stormy landscape, when trees, hedges, meadows, loom under the frowning sky, outstanding and black in detail, more vivid than in sunshine.
She saw now what she was—her husband's victim, the tool of his enterprise. He had never really loved her. He had been attracted by her—her beauty, her gentleness, her breeding, had appealed to him. But that was not why he had married her. He had married her for her money, which he was now spending on his farm, and he had married her because he wanted children and she was the most suitable mother he could find. He had never really loved her.
And she had never really loved him. That was another of the things she saw clearly. She had married him because his strength and good looks, his ardent wooing, had turned her head, because she had been weak and he had been masterful. But she had never loved him.
She had been a fool, and now she was paying the price of folly, which is always so much heavier than the price of sin. Here she was at twenty-five, prematurely old, exhausted, sick of life, and utterly alone. There was no one to turn to in her wretchedness. Her neighbours were incapable of giving her real help or sympathy, Mrs. Backfield invariably took Reuben's part and resented the slightest criticism of him, old Gasson was hard and selfish, and not particularly interested in his daughter.
She wished, with all the wormwood that lies in useless regrets, that she had never married. Then, paradoxically, she would not have been so utterly alone. She would have had at least the help of sweet memories undefiled. She could have taken refuge in them from her sorrow, built them perhaps at last into hope. Now she had to thrust them from her, for they were one and all soiled by her unfaithfulness.
For the first time she began definitely to reproach herself for her treatment of Harry. Though she could never have married him, she could at least have been faithful to him.
"O why, because sickness hath wasted my body, Should you do me to death with your dark treacherie? O why, because brothers and friends all have left me, Should you leave me too, O my faithless ladie!
"Moreover, she still sometimes had a vague feeling that at the start Harry had not been quite so mad as people thought, that he might perhaps have recovered if she had made him understand that she was true to him, still hoping. No doubt that was all nonsense, but she could not quite smother the idea that she had betrayed Harry. Perhaps it was partly because even before his accident she had cast longing eyes at Reuben. Once again she called up memories of him cutting down willows on his new land, and she acknowledged miserably to herself that in that hour she had already been unfaithful to Harry in her heart, and that all that came afterwards was but the following up of that initial act of treachery. A strong arm, a broad back, a blue shirt in the January twilight ... and Naomi had set out on a road every step of which was now over rough stones and broken shards.
In February her child was born—another girl. But this time Reuben was not sorry, for he realised that his mother would not last for ever, and that he must have a girl to take her place. It might have been expected that a baby girl would comfort Naomi for the lost Fanny, but such was not the case. It seemed as if with Fanny she had lost all power of loving and of rising again. Once more she was unable to feed the child, and her convalescence was dragging and miserable. When at last she was able to go about, a permanent ill-health seemed to have settled on her, the kind that rides tired women, making their faces sallow, their hair scanty, filling their backs with strange pains. She grew fretful, too, and her temper was none of the best.
That year Reuben bought ten more acres of Boarzell, and limed them for oats. He felt that now he had strength to return to his first battle, and wring a grain crop out of that grudging soil. The new piece of ground abutted the Odiam lands on the Flightshot side, and he could see it from his window. Before going to bed at night, he would lean out and feast his eyes on it as it lay there softly covered in the dark, or glimmering in the faint star-dazzle of spring. Sometimes it seemed almost as if a breath came from it, a fragrance of sleep, and he would sit there inhaling it till Naomi peevishly begged him to shut the window and come to bed. Then in the mornings, when he woke according to healthy habit at five, he would sit up, and even from the bed he could see his land, waiting for him in the cold whiteness of dawn, silently calling him out to the freshness of its many dews.
He still kept the farm modestly, for he was anxious to be able to do without help except from Beatup. His young family were also an expense. For a few years more he must expect to have them rather heavily on his hands ... then Albert and the twins would be able to do a little work, and gradually both the capacity and number of his labourers would increase, till at last perhaps he would be able to discharge Beatup, and Backfield alone fight Backfield's battle.
Meantime he was worried about Naomi. It says much for the ineffectiveness of her emotions that he had not till just then realised her hostility towards him. Now that he saw it, he put it down to her ill-health, and re-established the tyrannous watch over her which he had kept up in the old days. He was sorry for her, and knew now that he had made a mistake in marrying her. He should have chosen a sturdier, more ambitious mate. However, there was no help for it, he could not give up the battle because his fellow-fighter had no stomach for it. He was grieved for the loss of her beauty, and would make things as easy for her as possible, but he could not let her off altogether. She must do her share in the struggle which was so much greater than either of them. She had rested from child-bearing a year, but he still longed desperately for children, and she became a mother again at the end of '49.
The baby was a girl, and Reuben was bitterly disappointed. One girl was quite enough, and he badly wanted more boys. Besides, Naomi was very ill, and the doctor told him in private that she ought not to have any more children, at least for some time.
She never was a strong woman, and these repeated confinements have quite worn her out. You have seven children, Mr. Backfield, and I think that ought to be enough for any man.
But two of them are girls—it's boys I want, surelye!
Aren't five boys enough for you?
No—they ?un't.
Well, of course, if she has a thorough rest from all work and worry, and recovers her health in the meantime, I don't say that in three or four years.... But she's not a strong subject, Mr. Backfield, and you'd do well to remember it.
Reuben was very kind to Naomi during her illness. He helped his mother to nurse her, and spent by her side all the time he could spare from the farm. He was too strong to vent on her personally the rage and disappointment with which circumstances had filled him. He pitied her fragility, he even pitied her for the antagonism which he saw she still felt towards him.
At nights he slept upstairs in one of the attics, which always smelt of apples, because it was next to the loft where the apples were stored. He was happy there, in spite of some dark hours when the deadlock of his married life kept him awake. He wondered if there was a woman in the world who could share his ambitions for Odiam. He expected not, for women were an ambitionless race. If Naomi had had a single spark of zeal for the great enterprise in which he and she were engaged, she would not now be lying exhausted by her share in it. He had honoured her by asking her to join him in this splendid undertaking, and all she had done had been to prove that she had no fight in her.
He could now gaze out on Boarzell uninterrupted. The sight of the great Moor made his blood tingle; his whole being thrilled to see it lying there, swart, unconquered, challenging. How long would it be, he wondered, before he had subdued it? Surely in all Sussex, in all England, there had never been such an undertaking as this ... and when he was triumphant, had achieved his great ambition, won his heart's desire, how proud, how glorious he would be among his children....
The wind would carry him the scent of gorse, like peaches and apricots. There was something in that scent which both mocked and delighted him. It was an irony that the huge couchant beast of Boarzell should smell so sweet—surely the wind should have brought him a pungent ammoniacal smell like the smell of stables ... or perhaps the smell of blood.
But, after all, this subtle gorse-fragrance had its suitableness, for though gorse may cast out the scent of soft fruit from its flowers, its stalks are wire and its roots iron, its leaves are so many barbs for those who would lay hands on its sweetness. It was like Boarzell itself, which was Reuben's delight and his dread, his beloved and his enemy.
The day would come when Boarzell would no longer drench the night with perfume, when the gorse would be torn out of its hide to make room for the scentless grain. Then Reuben would no longer lean out of his window and dream of it, for dreams, like the peach-scent of the gorse, would go when the corn came. But those days were not yet.
Naomi's illness dragged. Sometimes Reuben suspected her of malingering, she so obviously did not want to get well. He guessed her reasons, and took an opportunity to tell her of the doctor's verdict. The struggle was in abeyance—at least her share of it. Nature—which was really what he was fighting in Boarzell—had gained a temporary advantage, and his outposts had been forced to retire.
Naomi began now decidedly to improve. She put on flesh, and showed a faint interest in life. Towards the end of April she was able to come downstairs. She was obviously much better, and old Mrs. Backfield hinted that she was even better than she looked. Reuben watched over her anxiously, delighted to notice day by day fresh signs of strength. She began to do little things for the children, she even seemed proud of them. They were splendid children, but it was the first time that she had realised it. She helped the scholastic elders with their sums and made frocks for the little girls. She even allowed baby Mathilda to wear Fanny's shoes.
The summer wore on. The sallow tints in Naomi's skin were exchanged for the buttery ones which used to be before her marriage. Her hair ceased to fall, her cheeks plumped out, her voice lost its weak shrillness. She made herself a muslin gown, and Reuben bought ribbons for it at Rye.
The husband and wife now lived quite independently. They no longer made even the pretence of walking on the same path. Naomi played with the children, did a little sewing and housework—exactly what she chose—and occasionally went over to Totease or Burntbarns for a chat with the neighbours. She once even spent a couple of nights at her father's, the first time since her marriage that she had slept away from Odiam.
As for Reuben, he worked as hard as ever, but never spoke of it to his wife. He seemed to enjoy her society at meals, and now and then would take her out for a stroll along the lanes, or sit with her in the evening by the kitchen fire. Once more he liked to have her read him the papers; and though she understood no more than she had ever done, her voice had ceased to be dull and fretful. Then at night he would go up to his attic and drink in the smell of gorse at the window, till he grew drowsy and shut himself in with the smell of apples.
After a time they began to notice a convergence in these independent ways. It seemed as if only by running apart had they learned at last to run together. A certain friendliness and comradery began to establish itself between them. Reuben began to talk to Naomi about politics and agricultural doings, and gradually her character underwent a strange blossoming. She became far more adult in her opinions; she took interest in matters outside her household and immediate surroundings. He never spoke to her of his plans for Boarzell, for that would have brought them back into the old antagonism and unrest; but when she read the papers to him he would discuss them with her, occasionally interrupt her with comments, and otherwise show that he had to do with an intelligent being. She in her turn would enquire into the progress of the hops or the oats, ask him if his new insect-killer was successful, or whether Ditch had done well with his harvest, or how much Realf's had fetched at the corn-market.
Three months passed in this new way. Reuben would never have believed that Naomi could be a companion to him, especially after the last few hostile years. As for her, she looked young and pretty again; delicious slim lines had come into her figure—no longer the slack curves and emaciation of recent months, or the matronly fullness of earlier times. Her health seemed completely restored.
Then came a day early in December, when they were walking home together through the mud of Totease Lane, their faces whipped into redness by the south-west wind. Naomi wore a russet cloak and hood, and her hair, on which a few rain-drops glistened, was teasing her eyes. She held Reuben's arm, for the ruts were treacherous, and he noticed the spring and freedom of her walk. A sudden turn of the lane brought them round due west, and between them and the sunset stood Boarzell, its club of firs knobbily outlined against the grape-red sky. It smote itself upon Reuben's eyes almost as a thing forgotten—there, half blotting out the sunset with its blackness. Unconsciously his arm with Naomi's hand on it contracted against his side, while the colour deepened on his cheek-bones.
Naomi.
What is it?
Boarzell.
She lifted her eyes to the shape between her and the sky, and as unconsciously he had flushed so unconsciously she shuddered.
Well, what about it? she asked in a voice that stuck a little.
It's wunnerful ... he murmured, "all that great big dark Moor, wot's going to be mine."
She did not speak.
Mine! he repeated almost fiercely.
Then suddenly she began to plead:
Can't you let it alone, Reuben?—we—we've been so happy these last months not worrying about it. Must we ever start again?
Her voice came anxiously, timidly like a child's. He dropped her hand from his arm.
Yes—we must, he said shortly.
They reached Odiam, both feeling that the glory of those last three months had departed. The sight of Boarzell, lying black and hullish across their path, had made them realise that their happiness was but an interval, an interlude between more significant, more sinister things. Naomi had lost her peace and confidence, she seemed to avoid her husband, was tongue-tied in his presence, gave him a hurried good night from the door. Reuben was silent and meditative—when his eyes rested on Naomi they were half regretful.
That night he lay awake long hours in the smell of apples. He pondered many things. Those past months had been sweet in their revived tenderness, their simple freedom. But Boarzell had reasserted itself—Naomi was now quite well again—she must no longer shirk her duties. She must have more children.
It was cruel, he knew. She had already given him seven, she could not realise that her task was not yet done. She had just felt what it was to be well and strong again after long months of illness. It would be cruel to impose on her once more the pains and weariness of motherhood. It would be cruel.—But, hem it all! was not the thing he was fighting cruel? Was not Boarzell cruel, meeting his endeavours with every form of violence and treachery? If he was to conquer it he too must be cruel, must harden his heart, and press forward, without caring how much he or anyone bled on the way. He could not stop to consider even his nearest and dearest when his foe had neither mercy nor ruth for him.