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Reuben was going through a new experience. For the first time in his life he had fallen under the dominion of a personality. From his boyhood he had been enslaved by an idea, but people, in anything except their relation to that idea, had never influenced him. Now for the first time he had a life outside Boarzell, an interest, a set of thoughts, which were not only apart from Boarzell but antagonistic to it.
Hitherto he had always considered the opposite of his ambition to be the absence of it. Either one lived to subdue the hostile earth, or one lived with no object at all. It was a new experience to find someone whose life was full of hopes, ideals, and ambitions, all utterly unconnected with a farm, and it was even more strange than new that he should care to talk about them. Not that he ever found himself being tempted from his own—the most vital part of his relations with Alice Jury lay in their warfare. He fought her as he fought Boarzell, though without that sense of a waiting treachery which tinctured his battles with the Moor; their intercourse was full of conflict, of fiery, sacred hostilities. They travelled on different roads, and knew that they could never walk together, yet each wanted to count the other's milestones.
Sometimes Reuben would ask himself if he was in love with her, but as the physical element which he had always and alone called love was absent, he came to the conclusion that he was not. If he had thought he loved her he would have avoided her, but there was no danger in this parliament of their minds. Her attitude towards life, though it obsessed him, no more convinced him than his convinced her. They would rail and wrangle together by the hour.
Life is worth while, said Alice, "in itself, not because of what it gives you."
I agree with you there, said Reuben, "it's not wot life gives that's good, it's wot you t?ake out of it."
I don't see that. Suppose that because I liked that girl's face in the picture I tore it out and kept it for myself, I should only spoil the picture—the piece I'd torn out wouldn't be any good to me away from the rest.
I can't foller you, said Reuben gruffly.
Now don't pretend to be stupid—don't pretend you can't understand anything but turnips.
And d?an't pretend you can't understand naun but picturs. A good solid turnup in real life is worth a dozen pretty gals in picturs.
That's right—have the courage of your earthiness. But don't try to make me think that when you look out of the window at Boarzell, you don't see the sky beyond it.
And d?an't you try and make out as when you're looking at the sky you d?an't see Boarzell standing in between.
I don't try and make it out. I see your point of view, but it's only 'in between' me—and you—and something greater.
Rubbidge! said Reuben.
He always came away from these wrangles with a feeling as if he had been standing on his head. He was not used to mental scoutings and reconnoitrings. Also, he felt sometimes that Alice was laughing at him, which irritated him, not so much because she mocked as because he could never be really sure whether she mocked or not. Her laughter seemed to come from the remotest, most exalted part of her. The gulfs between their points of view never gaped so wide as when she laughed.
Reuben's constant visits to Cheat Land were soon noticed at Odiam, and every advantage was taken of them. A period of licence set in. Richard read Anne Bardon's Homer quite openly by the kitchen fire, Caro dropped tears over East Lynne in the dairy, and Jemmy spent long tarry hours at Rye, coming home with a rank chew in his mouth, and sailors' oaths to salt his work on the farm.
Tilly had private affairs of her own which occasionally led her out on Boarzell of an afternoon. She always took her sewing, for she dared not be behindhand with it. Strangely enough, in spite of Jemmy's and Tilly's truancies, the work was somehow got through as usual, for shortcomings would have been found out and punished on the master's return—or worse still, he might have stayed at home. For the first time a certain freemasonry was established between the brothers and sisters. Hitherto their rebellion had been too secret even for confederacy, but now some of the crushing weight was lifted, and they could combine—all except Peter, who was too much Reuben's man for them to trust him; luckily he was rather stupid. So Peter did not see and no one else took any notice if Caro read and wept over sentimental novels, or Jemmy brought home harbour mud on his shoes, or George, who was delicate and epileptic, slept away an hour under a haystack, or Richard pondered the Iliad, or Tilly ran out on the Moor—even though she went to meet Realf of Grandturzel.
They met on the further side of the fir clump, on the edge of Grandturzel's inclosure. Here Tilly would sit under a gorse-bush with her sewing, while young Realf lay along the grass at her feet. They did not talk much, for Tilly was busy, and generally had her mouth full of pins; but Realf's manhood worshipped her as she sat there, her delicious head bowed, and stains of sunshine, with sprinkled gorse-petals, in her hair. He loved her little determined chin, and the sweet smudge of freckles on her nose. Love filled their simplest actions, kindled their simplest words; it dreamed in their eyes and laughed on their lips; its silences linked them closer than the most passionate embraces.
Both unconsciously dreaded the time when they should demand more of each other—when the occasional enlacing of their hands would no longer be enough to open Paradise, when from sweet looking and longing they would have to pass into the bitterness of action. Tilly, though essentially practical and determined, was enjoying her first visit to faery, and also inherited her mother's gift of languor. She basked in those hours of sun and bees. She, like her father, was passing for the first time into a life outside the dominion of the farm—but, whereas he fought it, and sought it only to fight it, she submitted to it as to a caress.
She cared nothing for Odiam; it was no thought of disloyalty to it and her father, of breaking from her service, which made her mark time in dreams. As the weeks went by she felt more and more the hatefulness of the yoke. She now had a standard of comparison by which to judge Reuben and Odiam. She saw herself and her brothers and her sister more and more as victims. Other farmers' children were not slaves. Other farms did not hang like sucking incubuses on boys' and girls' backs, draining all the youth and joy and sport out of them.
It made her blood boil to think of Robert and Albert in their exile. Robert had now been released from gaol, and had been sent by a charitable society to Australia. Reuben had refused to move a hand to help him. As for Albert, a few months ago a piteous letter had arrived, begging for money. He had, through Mr. Hedges, found work on a small Radical paper which soon came to grief, and since then had been practically starving, having had no success as a freelance. A friend of his wanted to start a weekly review—Tory this time, for Albert's politics were subservient to occasion—and only required funds. Did Reuben feel prepared to make an investment? Thus poor Albert cloaked and trimmed his begging.
Of course Reuben had refused to help him, and Tilly had been unable to get any money out of Pete. Her heart bled for her brothers, and at the same time she could not help envying their freedom, though one enjoyed it as a beggar and the other as a felon.
At last the crisis came—through George, the youngest, least-considered son at Odiam. He had always been a weakling, as if Naomi had passed into his body her own passionate distaste for life. Also, as is common with epileptic children, his intellect was not very bright. It had been the habit to spare him, even Reuben had done so within reason. But he should not really have worked at all, or only in strict moderation—certainly he should not have been sent out that October evening to dig up the bracken roots on the new land. Tilly expostulated—"Anyhow he didn't ought to work alone "—but Reuben was angry with the boy, whom he had caught loafing once or twice that day, and roughly packed him off.
He himself went over to Moor's Cottage about a load of trifolium, and returning in the darkness by Cheat Land was persuaded to stay to supper. That was one of the nights when he did not like Alice Jury—he sometimes went through the experience of disliking her, which was an adventure in itself, so wild and surprising was it, so bewildering to remember afterwards. She seemed a little colourless—she was generally so vivid that he noticed and resented all the more those times when her shoulders drooped against her chair, and her little face looked strangely wistful instead of eager. It seemed as if on these occasions Alice were actually pleading with him. She lost that antagonism which was the salt of their relations, instead of fighting she pleaded. Pleaded for what? He dared not ask that question, in case the answer should show him some strange new Canaan which was not his promised land. So he came away muttering—"only a liddle stick of a woman. I like gurt women—I like 'em rosy, I like 'em full-breasted.... She'd never do fur me."
He tramped home through the darkness. A storm was rising, shaking the fir-plumes of Boarzell against a scudding background of clouds and stars. The hedges whispered, the dead leaves rustled, the woods sighed. Every now and then a bellow would come from the Moor, as the sou'wester roared up in a gust, then a low sobbing followed it into silence.
On the doorstep Reuben was greeted by Tilly—where was George? He had not been in to supper.
Have you looked in the new field?
Yes—Benjamin went round. But he ?un't there.
Well, I d?an't know where he is.
Reckon he's fallen down in a fit somewhere and died.
Tilly was not looking at all like Naomi to-night.
Nonsense, said Reuben, resenting her manner.
It ?un't nonsense. I always know when his fits are coming on because he's tired and can't work pr?aperly. He was like that to-day. And you—you drove him out.
Reuben had never been spoken to like this by his daughter. He turned on her angrily, then suddenly changed his mind. For the first time he really saw what a fine girl she was—all that Alice was not.
We'll go and look for him, he said—"send out the boys."
All that night they hunted for George on Boarzell. It was pitch dark. Soon great layers of cloud were sagging over the stars, and Boarzell's firs were lost in the blackness behind them. Reuben, his sons, Beatup, Piper, Handshut, Boorman, fought the dark with lanterns as one might fight Behemoth with pin-pricks. They scattered over the Moor, searching the thorn-clumps and gorse-thickets. It was pretty certain that he was not on the new ground by Flightshot. Richard said openly that he did not believe in the fit and that George had run away, and—less openly—that it was a good job too. The other boys, however, did not think that he had enough sense to run away, and agreed that his condition all day had foretold an attack.
Reuben himself believed in the fit, and a real anxiety tortured him as he thrust his lantern into the gaping caverns of bushes. He had by his thoughtless and excessive zeal allowed Boarzell to rob him of another man. Of course, it did not follow that George was dead, but unless they found him soon it was quite likely that he would not survive exposure on such a night. If so, Reuben had only himself to thank for it. He should have listened to his daughter, and either let George off his work or made him work near home. He did not pretend to himself that he loved this weakling son, or that his death would cause his fatherhood much grief, but he found himself with increasing definiteness brought up against the conviction that Boarzell was beating him, wringing its own out of him by slow, inexorable means, paying him back a hundredfold for every acre he took or furrow he planted.
He had become separated from the other searchers, and was alone on the west side of the Moor. The wind barked and howled, hurling itself upon him as he stood, beating his face with hail, which hissed into the dead tangles of the heather, while the stripped thorns yapped and rattled, and the bushes roared. So great was the tumult that he seemed to fall into it like a stone into a wave—it passed over him, round him, seemed even to pass under him, he was hardly conscious of the solid ground. The blackness was impenetrable, save where his lantern stained it with a yellow smudge. He shouted, but his voice perished in the din—it seemed as if his whole man, sight, voice, hearing, and sensation, was blurring into the storm, as if Boarzell had swamped him at last, made him merely one of its hundred voices, mocking the manhood which had tried so much against its earth.
The wind seemed to be laughing at him, as it bellowed up in gusts, struck him, sprayed him, roughed his hair out madly, smacked his cheeks, drove the rain into his skin, and then rumbled away with a hundred chatterings and sighings. It seemed to be telling him that as his breath was to this wind so was he himself to Boarzell. The wind was the voice of the Moor, and it told him that in fighting Boarzell, he did not fight the mere earth, an agglomeration of lime and clay which he could trample and compel, but all the powers behind it. In arming himself against Boarzell he armed himself against the whole of nature's huge resources, the winds, the storms, the droughts, the early and the latter rain, the poisons in plants, and the death in stones, the lusts which spilling over from the beasts into the heart of man slay him from within himself. He had armed himself against all these, and once again the old words sang in his head—"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?"
He had shrunk into the rattling shelter of some thorn-bushes. They scraped their boughs like grotesque violins, and every other moment they would sweep down over him and shut him into a cavern of snapping twigs. He was soaked to the skin and his teeth chattered. He lay close to the earth, seeking shelter even from the skeleton heather which writhed woody stems all round him. He cursed. Must he spend the night here, lost and grovelling, to listen while Boarzell screeched its triumph over his cold, drenched body....
"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever? His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.
" "The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold; the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.
"Sharp stones are under him....
A crash of thunder and a spit of lightning tore open the sky, and for a moment Reuben saw the slope of the Moor livid in the flash, and the crest of firs standing against the split and tumbling clouds. The air rang, screamed, hissed, rushed, and rumbled. Reuben, hardly knowing what he did, had sprung to his feet.
I'll have wheat growing here in a twelvemonth! he shouted.
The dawn broke over Boarzell like a reconciliation. The clamouring voices of wind and trees were still, and only a low sobbing came now and then from the woods. In the sky pale streamers of rose barred and striped a spreading violet. One or two clouds flew low, and slowly pilled themselves, scattering into the fields. On every blade of grass and twig of thorn, on every leaf and spine, glimmered pearls of rain, washing the air with a faint scent of stagnant water, perfuming it with the steams of sodden grass.
Reuben crept out of his thorn cavern and looked down the slope. At the bottom by Socknersh one or two lanterns moved through the dusk. He stiffly threw up his arm and tried to shout. His throat felt cramped and swollen, and it was not till after one or two attempts that a sound pitifully like a bleat came out of it. A voice answered him from the hollow, and then he saw that they were carrying something. He limped painfully down to them. Richard, Boorman, and Handshut carried a hurdle between them, and on the hurdle lay a draggled boy, whose clenched hand clutched a tuft of earth and grass as a victim might clutch a handful of his murderer's hair.
Is he dead? asked Reuben.
Yes, m?aster, said Boorman.
Richard's mouth twisted in contemptuous silence—Handshut being young and silly was crying.
He wurn't on the new land, continued Boorman, "he'd fallen into the ditch by Socknersh palings—that's why we cudn't find un. Reckon as he'd felt the fitses coming on un, and tried to git h?ame, pore souly."
When did you find him?
Half an hour agone. He'd bin dead for hours, m?aster. He must have choked in the ditch—see, his mouth is full of mud.
Reuben drew back with a shiver. He limped behind the little procession towards Odiam, slouching for the first time in his life. In spite of his conquests he and Boarzell still were quits, still had to prove which was the better man. George, lying there muddy, white, and crumpled, was a sign that the Moor had its victories, in spite of the spreading corn.
He looked down at George—the boy's face had an unhuman chalky appearance under the mudstains; on the forehead a vein had swollen up in black knots, others showed pale, almost aqueous, through the stretched skin. After all, George was the weakest, the best-spared of his children. This thought comforted and stiffened him a little, and he went into the house with something of his old uprightness.
The other children were in the kitchen. They had seen their dead brother from the window, and stood mute and tearless as he was carried into the room. Reuben gave orders for him to be taken upstairs and the doctor to be sent for. No one else spoke. Tilly's breast heaved stormily, and he did not like the dull blaze in her eyes. Strange to say, of his whole family, excepting Pete, she was the only one of whom he was not faintly contemptuous. She had spirit, that girl—he prophesied that she would turn out a shrew.
For the very reason that he could not despise her, he took upon himself to bully her now.
Get me some tea, he said roughly, "I'm cold."
Though there had been no open rupture, from that day forward Odiam was divided into two camps. On one side were Reuben and Pete, on the other, Tilly and Richard. Benjamin and Caro were neutrals; they were indifferent to vital issues, one engrossed in snatching holidays, the other in hankering after she did not quite know what. Pete had always been a good son, hard-working and enthusiastic, not exactly a comrade, but none the less an ally, always to be depended on and now and then taken into confidence. He seemed to accept his father's attitude towards George's death and to resent Richard's and Tilly's. That spring he beat Squinty Bream at Robertsbridge Fair, and gave half the purse to Reuben to buy a chaff-cutter.
Of the enemy Tilly was the most effective—Reuben did not quite know how to deal with her. His inability to despise her told heavily against him. Richard, on the other hand, he despised from the depths of his heart. The boy was insufferable, for he still had his old knack of saving his skin. It was nearly always impossible to pick any definite faults in his work—it was wonderful how he managed to combine unwillingness with efficiency. He also had an irritating habit of speaking correct English, and of alluding to facts and events of which Reuben had never heard in such a manner as to make it impossible for him not to show his ignorance.
Reuben never lost a chance of baiting him, he jibed at his squeamishness and fine manners, at his polite way of eating and the trouble he took to clean his nails; he despised him all the more for occasionally getting the better of him, verbally at any rate, in these encounters. One night at supper Reuben, having actually succeeded in finding this sneering son at fault, abused him roundly for the shocking condition of the ewes' fleeces. Richard had the bad sense to quote Shakespeare, whereat Reuben told him that if he could not speak English he could leave the room. Richard replied that he would be very pleased to do so, as certain people's table-manners made supper rather an ordeal. Reuben helped him out with a kick most vulgarly placed.
The next day Backfield was due at an auction at Northiam, but before leaving he ordered Richard to clean out the pig-sties. It was not, properly speaking, his work at all, but Reuben hoped it would make him sick, or that he would refuse to obey and thus warrant his father knocking him down.
Certainly, said Richard without a tremor.
Oh, thank you, said Reuben, bowing in mock politeness, and trying to copy his clipped English.
Ten minutes later he rode off, and the family separated to their tasks, or to such evasions of them as were possible in the master's absence.
Tilly cleared the table and began to prepare the dinner. She had promised the boys a bag pudding, and must start it early. She had not been cooking more than half an hour when the door opened, and Richard came in, dressed in a neat black suit with a stiff Gladstone collar. His hair was nicely brushed, and he carried a pair of gloves and a little valise.
Oh! cried Tilly.
I'm off, said Richard shortly, banging down his valise on the table.
Off!—where?
To London.
Tilly gaped at him.
I'm sick of all this, I'm sick of the old man and his beastliness. Miss Bardon is lending me money to go to London University, and perhaps I shall read for the Bar.
The Bar, repeated Tilly vaguely.
Yes, I've learned a heap of Latin and other things during the last five years, and two or three years at the University ought to be all I want. Miss Bardon's taught me—I owe everything to her.
I must say as how you've kept it dark.
She knew of his friendship with Anne Bardon, but had never expected it to bear such generous fruit.
Well, it would never have done if the old man had got to know of it. Good heavens, Tilly! How can you live on with that old brute?
Maybe I shan't much longer, said Tilly, looking down at her rolling-pin.
Richard stared at her for a moment—"I'm glad to hear it. But the others—oh, my dear girl, this is damnable!"
Tilly sighed.
The law ought to suppress such men—it ought to be a criminal offence to revert to type—the primordial gorilla.
But f?ather's a clever man—Albert always used to say so.
Yes, in a cunning, brutish sort of way—like a gorilla when he's set his heart on a particular cocoanut. Boarzell's his cocoanut, and he's done some smart things to get it—and in one way at least he's above the gorilla, for he can enslave other people of superior intelligence to sweat under his orders for what they care nothing about.
We're all very unlucky, said Tilly, "to have been born his children. But one by one we're gitting free. There'll soon be only Pete and Jemmy and Caro left."
And I hope to God they'll have the wit to follow the rest of us. I'd like to see that old slave-driver left quite alone. Heavens! I could have strangled him yesterday—I should have, if I hadn't had this to look forward to.
Where are you going to stay in London?
Miss Bardon's taken some rooms for me in Montague Street.
She's good to you, Richard.
She's an angel —he lifted his eyes, and his mouth became almost worshipful—"she's an angel, who's raised me out of hell. I shall never be able to repay her, but she doesn't expect it. All she wants is my success."
I wish Caro or Jemmy cud meet someone like her. I d?an't think as Pete minds.
No, he's quite the young gorilla. Now I must be off, Tilly. I'll write to you.
Oh, w?an't f?ather be in a taking!
I reckon—I expect he will. But don't you mind him, little sister. He isn't worth it.
He stooped and kissed her.
Good-bye. Say it to the others for me.
Good-bye—good luck to you.
... And he was gone—walking past the window in a top-hat.
It would be mere politeness to describe as a "taking" Reuben's condition when he heard Richard had gone. He was in a stamping, bellowing, bloodshot rage. He sent for various members of his family, questioned them, stormed at them, sent them away, then sent for them again. He boxed Caro's ears because she cried—hitherto he had kept his hands off the girls. As for Tilly, he would have liked to have whipped her—he felt sure that somehow it was all her doing—but the more furious he grew, the more he felt himself abashed by her manner, at once so soft and so determined, and he dared do no more than throw his boots at her.
After a night of cursings and trampings in his room, he took the fermenting dregs of his wrath to Cheat Land. It was queer that he should go for sympathy to Alice Jury, who was chief in the enemy's camp. But though he knew she would not take his part, she would not be like the others, leering and cackling. She would give him something vital, even if it was only a vital opposition. That was all the difference between her and everyone else—she opposed him not because she was flabby or uninterested or enterpriseless, but because she really hated what he strove for. She was his one strong candid enemy, so he went to her as his only friend.
She was shocked at his white twitching face and bloodshot eyes; for the first time since she had known him, Reuben came to her bereft of that triumphant manhood which had made him so splendid to watch in his struggles.
The hound! he cried, striking his fists together, "the miserable, cowardy hound!—gone and left me—gone to be a gentleman, the lousy pig. Oh, Lard, I wish as I had him in these hands o' mine!—I'd m?ake a gentleman of him!"
Alice, as he expected, had caustic for him rather than balm.
Once again, she said slowly, "I ask you—is it worth while?"
Wot's worth while?
You know. I asked you that question the first or second time I saw you. No one had ever asked it you before, and you would have liked to beat me.
I shud like to beat you now—talking of wot you know naun about.
I daresay—but I'm not your son or your daughter or your wife——
I never beat my wife.
Chivalrous, humane man!—well, anyhow I'm not anyone you can beat, so I dare ask—is it worth while?
And I ask wot d'you mean by 'worth while'?
You know that it's Boarzell and your farm which have lost you your boys.
I know nothing of the sort.
Well, would Robert have stolen money, or Albert disgraced your name, to get free, if you and your farm hadn't made them slaves? If you hadn't been a heartless slave-driver would George have died the other night alone on the Moor?—or would Richard have taken advantage of a neighbour's charity to escape from you? Don't you see that your ambition has driven you to make slaves of your children?
Well, they w?an't wark fur me of their free will. Lard knows I've tried to interest 'em....
But how can you expect them to be interested? Your ambition means nothing to them.
It ought to—Odiam's their home jest as it's mine.
But don't you see that you've forced them to give up all the sweet things of life for it?—Robert his love, and Albert his poetry, and Richard his education.
Well, I gave up all the sweet things of life, as you call 'em—and why shudn't they?
Because you gave those things up of your free will—they were made to give them up by force. You've no right to starve and deny other people as you have to starve and deny yourself.
I d?an't see that. Wot I can do, they can.
But—as experience has taught you—they won't. You can see now what your slave-driving's brought you to—you've lost your slaves.
Well, and I reckon they wurn't much loss, nuther—the caustic was healing after all—"Robert wur a fool wot didn't know how to steal a ten-pound note, Albert wur always mooning and wasting his time, and George wur a pore thing not worth his keep. As for Richard—that Richard—who wants a stuck-up, dentical, high-nosed, genteel swell about the pl?ace? I reckon as I'm well shut of the whole four of 'em. They wurn't worth the food they ate, surelye!"
That's what strikes me as so pathetic.
Wot?
That you should be able to comfort yourself with the thought that they weren't worth much to you as a farmer. What were they worth to you as a father?
Naun.
Quite so—and that's what makes me pity you, and suddenly her eyes kindled, blazed, as with her spirit itself for fuel—"I pity you, I pity you—poor, poor man!"
Adone do wud that—though you sound more as if you wur in a black temper wud me than as if you pitied me.
I am angry with you just because I pity you. It's a shame that I should have to pity you—you're such a splendid man. It ought to be impossible to pity you, but I do—I pity you from my soul. Think what you're missing. Think what your children might have been to you. How you might have loved that dear stupid Robert—how proud you might have been of Albert, and of Richard leaving you for a professional career ... and poor little George, just because he was weak and unlike the rest, he might have been more to you than them all. Then there's your brother Harry——
Come, come—stick to the truth. I ?un't to blame for Harry.
But can't you see that he's the chief part of the tragedy you're bringing on yourself and everyone?—He's the type, he's the chorus, the commentary on every act. Reuben, can't you see—oh, why won't you see?—he's you, yourself, as you really are!
Nonsense!—d?an't be a fool, my gal.
Yes—you—blind, crazy with your ambition, repulsive and alone in it. Don't you see?
He smiled grimly—"I d?an't."
No—you don't see this hideous thing that's pursuing you, that's stripping you of all that ought to be yours, that's making you miss a hundred beautiful things, that's driving you past all your joys—this Boarzell....
—?un't driving me, anyhow. I'm fighting it.
No, said Alice. "It's I who am fighting Boarzell."
Early the next year, Tilly married Realf of Grandturzel.
Reuben received the blow in silence—it stunned him. He did not go over to Cheat Land—something, he scarcely knew what, kept him away. In the long yellow twilights he wandered on Boarzell. The rain-smelling March wind scudded over the grass, over the wet furrows of his cornfields, over the humming tops of the firs that, with the gorse splashed round their trunks, marked the crest of the Moor and of his ambition. Would they ever be his, those firs? Would he ever tear up that gorse and fling it on the bonfire, as he had torn up the gorse on the lower slopes and burned it with roars and cracklings and smoke that streamed over the Moor to Totease? Perhaps Realf would have the firs and the gorse, and pile that gorgeous bonfire. Tilly would put him up to her father's game—Reuben's imagination again failed to conceive the man who did not want Boarzell—she would betray Odiam's ambitions, and babble its most vital secrets. Tilly, Reuben told Boarzell, was a bitch.
It became now all the more necessary to smash Realf. He could no longer be content with keeping just ahead of him; he must establish a sort of two-power standard, and crush his rival to the earth. That was not a good summer for expansion—a drought baked up the greater part of Sussex, and there was an insect plague in the hops—nevertheless, Reuben bought thirty-five acres of Boarzell, on the east slope, by the road. He was tormented by a fear that Realf would buy the land if he did not, and, moreover, during May two boards had appeared advertising it as "an eligible building site"; which was possibly bluff, possibly unusual cunning on the part of Flightshot, made resourceful by its straits.
He no longer had any direct intercourse with the Bardons. Their latest impropriety had put them beyond even the favour of a casual nod. If they chose to break up his family they must take the consequences. He only wished he could break up their estate, sell their rat-holed old Manor over their heads, and leave them unprotected by landed property to the sure workings of their own incompetence.
He did not fail to show his neighbours how he despised Flightshot, and the more humorously inclined among them were never tired of asking how soon it would be before Richard married Anne.
Your family seems to be in a marrying way jest now, Mus' Backfield—there's your daughter made an unaccountable fine match, and it's only nat'ral as young Richard shud want to do as well fur himself.
Reuben treated these irreverences with scorn. Nothing would make him abate a jot of his dignity. On the contrary, his manner and his presence became more and more commanding. He drove a splendid blood mare in his gig, smoked cigars instead of pipes, and wore stand-up collars about four inches high—when he was not working, for it had not struck him that it was undignified to work, and he still worked harder on his farm than the worst-paid pig-boy.
He was more stoutly resolved than ever that the mob of small farmers and incompetents should not gape at his misfortunes. So he hid under a highly repulsive combination of callousness and swagger his grief for his sons' defection, his rage and shame at Tilly's marriage, and his growing anxiety about Odiam. That summer had been terrible—a long drought had been followed too late by thundery rains. His harvest had been parched and scrappy, most of the roots shedding their seed before reaping; the green-fly had spoiled several acres of hops, which otherwise would have been the one bright patch in the season; his apples and pears had been eaten by wasps; and then a few untimely showers had beaten down two fields of barley yet unreaped and his only decent crop of aftermath hay.
If Grandturzel had fared as badly he could have borne it, but Grandturzel, though scarred, came out of the summer less battered than he. Realf's oats, being in a more sheltered position, did no private threshing of their own; his hops for the most part escaped the blight, and though he lost a good deal on his plums, his apples were harvested at a record, and brought him in nearly ten pounds an acre. On both farms the milk had done badly, but as Realf's dairy business was not so extensive as Backfield's, he was better able to stand its partial collapse.
Reuben felt that Tilly was at the bottom of his rival's success. She was practical and saving, the very virtues which Realf lacked and the want of which might have wrecked him. She doubtless was responsible for the good condition of his orchards and the immunity of his hops; she had probably told her husband of that insect-spray of her father's—which had failed him that summer, being too much diluted by the fool who mixed it, but had proved a miracle of devastation in other years.
He wanted to smash Tilly even more than he wanted to smash Realf. He had seen her twice since her marriage—meeting her once in Rye, and once on Boarzell—and each sight had worked him into a greater rage. Her little figure had strengthened and filled out, her demure self-confidence had increased, her prettiness was even more adorable now that the rose had deepened on her cheeks and her gowns strained over her breast; she was enough to fill any man with wrath at the joke of things. Tilly ought to be receiving the wages of her treachery in weariness and anxiety, fading colour and withering flesh—and here she was all fat and rosy and happy, well-fed and well-beloved. He hated her and called her a harlot—because she had betrayed Odiam for hire and trafficked in its shame.
He had been forced to engage a woman to help Caro in the house, and also a shepherd for Richard's work. His family had been whittled down to almost nothing. Only Caro, Pete, and Jemmy were left out of his eight splendid boys and girls. Caro, Pete, Jemmy, and hideous, mumbling Harry—he surveyed the four of them with contemptuous scowls. Pete was the only one who was worth anything—Caro and Jemmy would turn against him if they had the slightest chance and forsake him with the rest. As for Harry, he was a grotesque, an image, a hideous fum—"Reuben himself as he really was." He! He!
The weeks wore on and it dawned on him that he must pull himself together for a fresh campaign. He must have more warriors—he could not fight Boarzell with only traitors and hirelings. He must marry again.
It was some time since the abstract idea of marriage had begun to please him, but lately the abstract of marriage had always led to the concrete of Alice Jury, so he had driven it from his thoughts. Now, more and more clearly, he saw that he must marry. He wanted a woman and he wanted children, so he must marry. But he must not marry Alice.
Of late he had resumed his visits to Cheat Land, discontinued for a while at Tilly's marriage. The attraction of Alice Jury was as strong, unfathomable, and unaccountable as ever. Since the stormy interview after Richard's desertion they had not discussed his ambitions for Odiam and Boarzell, but that meeting was none the less stamped on Reuben's memory with a gloomy significance. It was not that Alice's arguments had affected him at all—she had not penetrated to the springs of his enterprise, she had not touched or conjured the hidden part of him in which his ambition's roots were twined round all that was vital and sacred in the man. But somehow she had expressed her own attitude with an almost sinister clearness—"It's I who am fighting Boarzell." What should she fight it for?—imagine that she fought it, rather, for a woman could not really fight Boarzell. She was fighting it for him. She wanted him.
He knew that Alice wanted him, and he knew that he wanted Alice. He did not know why he wanted Alice any more than he knew why Alice wanted him. "Wot is she?—a liddle stick of a creature. And I like big women."
There was something in the depths of him that cried for her, something which had never moved or cried in him before. In spite of her lack of beauty and beguilement, in spite of her hostility to all his darling schemes, there was something in him to which Alice actually and utterly belonged. He did not understand it, he could not analyse it, he scarcely indeed realised it—all he felt was the huge upheaval, the conflict that it brought, all the shouting and the struggling of the desperate and motiveless craving that he felt for her—a hunger in him calling through days and nights, in spite of her insignificance, her aloofness, her silences, her antagonism.
I reckon as how I must be in love.
That was the conclusion he came to after much heavy pondering. He had never been truly in love before. He had wanted women for various reasons, either for their charm and beauty, or because, as in Naomi's case, of their practical use to him. Alice had no beauty, and a charm too subtle for him to realise, though as a matter of fact the whole man was plastic to it—as for practical usefulness, she was poor, delicate, unaccustomed to country life, and hostile to all his most vital ambitions. She would not bring him wealth or credit, she was not likely to bear him healthy children—and yet he loved her.
Sometimes, roaming through murky dusks, he realised in the dim occasional flashes which illuminate the non-thinking man, that he was up against the turning-point of his fight with Boarzell. If he married Alice it would be the token of what had always seemed more unimaginable than his defeat—his voluntary surrender. Sometimes he told himself fiercely that he could fight Boarzell with Alice hanging, so to speak, over his arm; but in his heart he knew that he could not. He could not have both Alice and Boarzell.
Yet, in spite of all this, one day at Cheat Land he nearly fell at her feet and asked her to be his ruin.
It was a March twilight, cold and rustling, and tart with the scents of newly turned furrows. Reuben sat with Alice in the kitchen, and every now and then Jury's wretched house-place would shake as the young gale swept up rainless from the east and poured itself into cracks and chimneys. Alice was sewing as usual—it struck Reuben that she was very quick and useful with her fingers, whatever might be her drawbacks in other ways. Sometimes she had offered to read poetry to him, and had once bored him horribly with In Memoriam, but as he had taken no trouble to hide his feelings she had to his great relief announced her intention of casting no more pearls before swine.
She was silent, and the firelight playing in her soft, lively eyes gave her a kind of mystery which for the first time allowed Reuben a glimpse into the sources of her attraction. She was utterly unlike anything there was or had been in his life, the only thing he knew that did not smell of earth. The pity of it was that he loved that strong-smelling earth so much.
Alice, he said suddenly—"Do you think as how you could ever care about Boarzell?"
No, I'm quite sure I couldn't.
Not ever?
Never.
Why?
Because I hate it. It's spoiling your life. It's making a beast and a maniac of you. You think of nothing—absolutely nothing—but a miserable rubbish-heap that most people would be throwing their old kettles on.
That's just the point, my gal. Where most f?alkses 'ud be throwing old kettles, I shall be growing wheat.
And what good will that do you?
Good!—when I've two hundred acres sown with grain!
Yes, grain that's fertilised with the rotting remains of all that ought to have made your life good and sweet.
You w?an't understand. There's naun in the world means anything to me but my farm. Oh, Alice, if you could only see things wud my eyes and stand beside me instead of ag?unst me.
Then there would be no more friendship between us. What unites us is the fact that we are fighting each other.
D?an't talk rubbidge, liddle gal. It's because I see, all the fight there is in you that I'd sooner you fought for me than ag?unst me. Couldn't you try, Alice?
His voice had sunk very low, almost to sweetness. A soft flurry of pink went over her face, and her eyelids drooped. Then suddenly she braced herself, pulled herself taut, grew combative again, though her voice shook.
No, Reuben, I could never do anything but fight your schemes. I think you are wasting and spoiling your life, and there's no use expecting me to stand by you.
He now realised the full extent of his peril, because for the first time he saw her position unmasked. She would never beguile him with the thought that she could help him in his life's desire; she would not alter the essential flavour of their relationship to suit his taste—rather she would force him to swallow it, she would subdue by strength and not by stealth, and fight him to the end.
He must escape, for if he surrendered now the battle was over, and he would have betrayed Boarzell the loved to something he loved less—loved less, he knew it, though he wavered.
He rose to his feet. The kitchen was dark, with eddying sweeps of shadow in the corners which the firelight caressed—while a single star put faint ghostly romance into the window.
I—I must be gitting back home.
Alice rose too, and for a moment he was surprised that she did not try to keep him; instead, she said:
It's late.
He moved a step or two towards the door, and suddenly she added in a low broken voice:
But not too late.
The floor seemed to rise towards him, and the star in the window to dance down into Castweasel woods and up again.
Alice stood in the middle of the room, her face bloomed with dusk and firelight, her hands stretched out towards him....
There was silence, in which a coal fell. She still stood with her arms outstretched; he knew that she was calling him—as no woman had ever called him—with all that of herself which was in his heart, part of his own being.
Reuben.
Alice.
He came a few steps back into the room....
It was those few steps which lost him to her, for they brought him within sight of Boarzell—framed in the window, where Castweasel woods had been. It lay in a great hush, a great solitude, a quiet beast of power and mystery. It seemed to call to him through the twilight like a love forsaken. There it lay, Boarzell—strong, beautiful, desired, untamed, still his hope, still his battle. And Alice?... He gave her a look, and left her.
I once t?ald a boy of mine, he said to himself as he crossed the Moor, "that the sooner he found he could do wudout love the better.... Well, I reckon I'm not going to be any weaker than my words."
Reuben did not go back to Cheat Land for several weeks. Those five minutes had been too much for him. He would never again risk putting himself in the power of things he did not understand. Besides, he felt vaguely that after what had happened Alice would not want to see him. She had humiliated herself, or rather he had humiliated her—for she had put out in one swift dark minute all the powers of her nature to bind him, and she had failed. He remembered her voice when she whispered, "But not too late," and her eyes afterwards, smouldering in shadow, and her little hands held out to him.... There had been nothing definite, obvious, or masterful, yet in those few words and actions her whole self had pleaded on its knees—and he had turned away.
But sometimes what kept him from her more than the thought of her humiliation was the thought of his own. For sometimes it seemed almost as if she had humbled him more than he had humbled her. He could not tell whether this sick feeling of shame which occasionally swamped him was due to the fact that he had so nearly surrendered to her or to the fact that he had not quite done so. Sometimes he thought it was the latter. The whole thing was ridiculous and perplexing, a lesson to him not to adventure into subtleties but to keep in communion with the broad plain things of earth.
Early in May he found a visit to Cheat Land forced upon him. Jury wanted to buy a cow of his, but one of the sudden chills to which he was liable kept him indoors. Reuben was anxious to sell the animal, and, there being one or two weak points about her, would trust nobody but himself with the negotiations. However, the visit would be quite safe, for he was not likely to see Alice alone, indeed it was probable that he might not see her at all.
On reaching the farm he heard several voices in the kitchen, and found the invalid in an arm-chair by the fire, talking to an oldish man and a rather plump pretty girl of about twenty. Jury was an intellectual, incompetent-looking fellow, who seemed elderly, but at the same time gave one the impression that this was due to his health. His grey hair straggled over temples where the skin was stretched tight and yellow as parchment, his cheeks were hollow, his eyes astonishingly like his daughter's. He was one of the arguments against the marriage.
Alice had let Reuben in. She looked a little tired, but otherwise quite cheerful, and she welcomed him simply and naturally.
This is Miss Lardner, she said, introducing him to the girl, "and Mr. Lardner of Starvecrow."
I heard as how Starvecrow had been bought at last, said Reuben; "not a bad farm, Muster, if you're fur green crops mostly."
Potatoes, said Lardner, "potatoes—if farmers 'ud only grow potatoes and not think so much of grain and rootses, we shudn't hear of so many of 'em going bust."
The conversation became agricultural, but in spite of the interest such a topic always had for him, Reuben could not help watching the two girls. Miss Lardner, whom Alice called Rose, was a fine creature, so different from the other as to make the contrast almost laughable. She was tall and strapping—in later life she might become over stout, but at present her figure was splendid, superbly moulded and erect. She looked like a young goddess as she sat there, one leg crossed over the other, showing her white stocking almost to the knee. There was something arrogant in her attitude, as if she was aware of the splendour of her body, and gloried in it. Her face too was beautiful—though less classically so—rather broad, with high flat cheek-bones, and a wide full-lipped mouth which would have given it almost a Creole look, if it had not been for her short delicate nose and her fair ruddiness. Her hair seemed to hesitate between gold and brown—her eyes between boldness and languor.
Reuben found himself glancing at her continually, and though she seldom met his eyes, he knew that she was aware of his scrutiny. He sometimes felt that Alice was aware of it too.
As the conversation wore on, and became more general, Lardner said something about going over to Snailham and taking Rose home on the way.
Oh, no, Uncle—I don't want to go. Alice has asked me to stay to supper.
But you can't go home alone, and I can't wait wud you, surelye.
I'll take Miss Lardner home, said Reuben.
Directly he had said the words, he looked over at Rose to see how she would receive them. Her eyelashes lay black and curly against her cheek, then they lifted slowly, and her eyes looked out from under the half-raised lids with a kind of demure roguishness. At the same time her lower lip seemed to quiver and plump out, while the corners of her mouth rose and curled. He suddenly felt a desire to plant a kiss fairly on that wet red mouth, which from away across the room seemed to pout towards him.
Supper was a quiet meal. Old Jury and his invalid wife sat at each end of the table, while Alice did most of the helping and waiting. They seemed a sorry three to Reuben, pale, washed out, and weakly, their eyes bright as birds' with the factitious light of their enthusiasms for things that did not matter. They ate without much appetite, picking daintily at their food, their knives never in their mouths. Reuben found himself despising them as he despised the Bardons.
Rose did not talk much, but she ate heartily—she must be as healthy as she looked. Once or twice during the meal Reuben caught himself staring at her lips—they were extraordinarily red, and at the end of the meal the juice of her pudding had stained them purple.
She said that she must leave directly after supper. Alice fetched her hat, which was not the kind that Reuben had ever seen on country girls, being of the fashionable pork-pie shape. All her clothes were obviously town-made; she wore a blue stuff dress, tight-fitting round her bust and shoulders, full and flounced in the skirt—afterwards he heard that Rose had spent some years with relations in London before coming to live at Starvecrow.
He gave her his arm, said good-bye to Alice in the doorway, and went through the little garden where flowers crowded out vegetables in a very unbusiness-like way, into the lane which wound past Cheat Land and round the hanger of Boarzell, to the farms of the Brede Valley.
Rose, a little to his surprise, began to chatter volubly. She talked very much like a child, with na?ve comments, about simple things. She asked trivial questions, and screamed with delight when some dusk-blinded bird flew against her breast and dashed down heavily into the ruts. She exclaimed at the crimson moon which rose behind the hedge like a hot penny—she laughed at the slightest provocation; and yet all the while he was conscious of an underlayer of shrewdness, he had an extraordinary conviction of experience.
Besides, while she laughed and babbled like a child, her eyes continually rose towards his with a woman's calculated boldness. They spoke something quite different from her lips—the combination was maddening; and those lips, too, in their rare silences, were so unlike the words they uttered that he scarcely knew whether he wanted most to silence them completely or never let them be silent.
I don't like Alice Jury, she prattled, "she says just the opposite of what you say. She never lets herself agree with anyone. She's a contradictious female."
Then suddenly she was silent—and Reuben kissed her.
He crooked his arm round her and held her close to him, standing there in the lane. Her lips slowly parted under his, then suddenly she threw her head back in a kind of ecstasy, giving him the white expanse of her neck, which he kissed, giddy with a soft fragrance that rose from her clothes, reminding him a little of clover.
She was so obviously and na?vely delighted, that when he drew himself up, his idea of her was again one of extreme childishness. And yet it was evident that she was used to kisses, and that he had kissed her at her own unspoken invitation.
They walked on down the lane. Rose's chatter had ceased, and a complete silence dropped between the hedges. The moon had risen higher, and the western hazels were bloomed with light. The moon was no longer crimson in the dark sky, but had burnt down to copper, casting a copper glow into the mists, staining all the blues that melted into one another along the hills. Only the middle of the lane was black—like a well. Reuben and Rose could see each other's faces in a kind of rusty glimmer, but their feet stumbled in the darkness, and her hand lay clutching and heavy on his arm.
At last they came to Castweasel—three old cottages and a ruined one, leaning together in a hollow like mushrooms. Beside the ruined cottage a tree-trunk was lying, and Rose suddenly stretched herself with a little sigh.
I'm tired—let's sit down and rest a bit.
They sat down on the log, and she immediately crept close to him like a child. He put his arm round her, and once again she thrilled him with her own delight—she stole her arms round his neck, holding his head in the crook of her elbows, and laughed with her mouth against his. Then her hands crept into his hair, and rumpled it, while she whispered like a child finding some new virtue in its toy—"How thick! how thick!" At last she drew his head down to her breast, holding it there with both hands while she dipped her kisses on his eyes....
Reuben was in ecstasy by this time. It was years since he had caressed a woman, except casually, for he considered that women interfered with his work. Rose's eagerness could not cheapen her, for it was so childlike, and she continued to give him that sense of deep experience which robbed her attitude of insipidity. Her delight in his kisses was somehow made sweeter to him by the conviction that she could compare them with other men's.
She began to laugh—she became gay and mettlesome. Her whole nature seemed changed, and he found it hard to think of her as the beautiful yet rather lumpish girl who had sat in the silence of a good appetite at the Cheat Land supper-table. Behind them the ruin of the old cottage sent out bitter-sweet scents of decay—its crumbling plaster and rotting lath perfumed the night. Fragrances strove in the air—the scent of Rose's clothes, and of her big curls tumbling on his shoulder, the scent of still water, of dew-drenched leaves, and damp, teeming soil—sweet vagabond scents of bluebells, puffed on sudden breezes....
Reuben was growing drunken with it all—he strained Rose to him; she was part of the night. Just as her scents mingled with its scents, so he and she both mingled with the hush of the lightless, sorrowless fields, the blots of trees, the woods that whispered voicelessly.... Above the hedges, stars winked and flashed, dancing in the crystalline air. Right overhead the Sign of Cancer jigged to its image in Castweasel Pool. Reuben looked up, and through a gate he saw Boarzell rearing like a shaggy beast towards him. He suddenly became more aware of Boarzell than of anything in the night, than of the flowers or the water or the stars, or even Rose, drowsing against his shoulder with parted lips. Boarzell filled the night. The breeze became suddenly laden with scents of it—the faint bitterness of its dew-drenched turf where the bracken-crosiers were beginning to uncurl, of its noon-smelling gorse, of its heather-tangle, half budding, half dead, of its fir-needles and its fir-cones, rotting and sprouting. All seemed to blend together into a strong, heady, ammoniacal smell ... the great beast of Boarzell dominated the night, pawed Reuben, roared over him, made him suddenly mad, clutching Rose till she cried out with pain, kissing her till she broke free, and stood before him pale and dishevelled, with anger in her eyes.
He sprang to his feet, the mood had passed—the beast of Boarzell had ceased to worry him.
I'm sorry, he said sheepishly.
And well you may be, said Rose, "you've torn my gown."
They walked on down the lane; she pouted and swung her hat. Reuben, anxious to propitiate, picked primroses under the hedge and gave them to her.
She looked pleased at once, and began to eat them.
Wot, said Reuben, "you eat flowers?"
Yes, she answered, "I love eating primroses—pick me some more."
So for the rest of the walk to Starvecrow, he picked primroses, and she nibbled them with her white teeth, which were small and even, except for the two canines, which were pointed like a little animal's.