BOOK I

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SUSSEX GORSE

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

THE TRAMPING METHODIST

STARBRACE

SPELL LAND

ISLE OF THORNS

THREE AGAINST THE WORLD

SAMUEL RICHARDSON

WILLOW'S FORGE AND OTHER POEMS

SUSSEX GORSE

THE STORY OF A FIGHT

BY

SHEILA KAYE-SMITH

[Illustration: Decoration]

NEW YORK

ALFRED A. KNOPF

MCMXVI

CONTENTS

PAGE

PROLOGUE. THE CHALLENGE 1

BOOK I THE BEGINNING OF THE FIGHT 22

BOOK II THE WOMAN'S PART 78

BOOK III THE ELDER CHILDREN 120

BOOK IV TREACHERIES 192

BOOK V ALMOST UNDER 243

BOOK VI STRUGGLING UP 331

BOOK VII THE END IN SIGHT 382

BOOK VIII THE VICTORY 432

SUSSEX GORSE

PROLOGUE

THE CHALLENGE

§ 1.

Boarzell Fair had been held every year on Boarzell Moor for as long as

the oldest in Peasmarsh could remember. The last Thursday in October was

the date, just when the woods were crumpling into brown, and fogs

blurred the wavy sunsets.

The Moor was on the eastern edge of the parish, five miles from Rye.

Heaving suddenly swart out of the green water-meadows by Socknersh, it

piled itself towards the sunrise, dipping to Leasan House. It was

hummocked and tussocked with coarse grass--here and there a spread of

heather, growing, like all southern heather, almost arboreally. In

places the naked soil gaped in sores made by coney-warrens or uprooted

bushes. Stones and roots, sharn, shards, and lumps of marl, mixed

themselves into the wealden clay, which oozed in red streaks of

potential fruitfulness through their sterility.

The crest of Boarzell was marked by a group of firs, very gaunt and

wind-bitten, rising out of a mass of gorse, as the plumes of some savage

chief might nod mangily above his fillet. When the gorse was in bloom,

one caught the flare of it from the Kentish hills, or away westward from

Brightling and Dallington. This day in the October of 1835, the

flowerets were either nipped or scattered, or hidden by the cloths the

gipsies had spread to dry on the bushes.

The gipsies always camped on the flanks of the Fair, which they looked

on with greater detachment than the gaujos who crowded into its heart,

either selling or buying, doing or being done. Just within the

semicircle of their earth-coloured tents were the caravans of the

showmen, gaudily painted, with seedy horses at tether, very different

from the Romany gris. Then came the booths, stalls piled with sweets in

an interesting state of preservation, trays of neck and shoulder

ribbons, tinsel cords, tin lockets with glass stones, all fairings, to

be bought out of the hard-won wages of husbandry in love. Then there was

the panorama, creaking and torn in places, but still giving a realistic

picture of the crowning of King William; there was the merry-go-round,

trundled noisily by two sweating cart-horses; there was the cocoa-nut

shy, and the fighting booth, in the doorway of which half-breed Buck

Washington loved to stand and display his hairy chest between the folds

of his dressing-gown; and there was the shooting-gallery, where one

could pot at the cardboard effigies of one's hates, Lord Brougham who

had robbed the poor working man of his parish relief, or Boney, still a

blood-curdler to those who had seen the building of the Martello towers.

To-day business was bad. Here and there a ploughboy pulled up his slop

and fumbled for pennies in his corduroys, but for the most part the

stalls were deserted, even in certain cases by their holders. This was

not because the Fair was empty. On the contrary, it was much more

crowded than usual; but the crowd clotted into groups, all discussing

the same thing--the Inclosure.

It was some months since Sir John Bardon, Squire of the Manor of

Flightshot, had taken advantage of the Inclosure Act and manoeuvred a

bill for the inclosure of Boarzell. Since then there had been visits of

commissioners, roamings of surveyors, deliveries of schedules, strange

talk of turbary and estovers, fire-bote and house-bote. The

neighbourhood was troubled, perplexed. Then perplexity condensed into

indignation when all that Inclosure stood for became known--no more

pasturage for the cow or goat which meant all the difference between

wheaten and oaten bread, no more wood-gleanings for fire or wind-beaten

roof, no more of the tussocky grass for fodder, or of gorse to toughen

palings against escaping fowls.

Then, when Fair-time came, people began to mutter "no more Fair." It was

as hard to imagine Boarzell without the Fair as without its plume of

firs. The Squire gave out his intention of tolerating the Fair, as long

as it did not straggle from the crest. But this failed to soothe the

indignant and sore, for it was humbling to have the Fair as a matter of

toleration. Also at that time there was talk of fences. All the Moor had

been mapped out, the claims considered, the road repaired, and now

nothing more was to be done except to put up the fences which would

definitely seal Boarzell as Flightshot's own.

There was naturally a party who championed Manor rights--Sir John Bardon

was a good landlord, and would have been better had his budget cramped

him less. Now he would sell Boarzell in building plots, and his tenants

would reap the benefit. He had not inclosed the land for himself. More

houses would mean more trade for shops and farms, Peasmarsh might flower

into a country town....

But the majority was anti-Bardon. There were grumblings about

allotments, especially from copyholders. The commissioners had been

off-hand in their treatment of claims, ignoring everyone except

freeholders, of whom there were only two.

"They say as how Realf's not done badly fur himself at Grandturzel,"

said old Vennal of Burntbarns; "forty acres they gave him, and all bush

and timber rights."

"And what about Odiam?" asked Ticehurst of Hole. "I haven't seen

Backfield these three weeks, but there's a tale going räound as how the

commissioners have bin tedious sharp, and done him out of everything he

hoped to get--surelye!"

"And him freehold!"

"Sixty acres."

"How did they do it?"

"Oh, it's just a tale that's going räound--says they found some lawyer's

mess in his title-deed. His father never thought of common rights when

he bought the land, and it seems as how they must be written down just

lik anything else.... But there's young Ben Backfield talking to

Coalbran. He'll tell us, I reckon."

They went over to a man and a lad, standing together by the gingerbread

stall.

"We was wondering wot yer fäather had got out o' them commissioners,

Ben," said Ticehurst.

Reuben Backfield scowled. His thick black brows scowled easily, but the

expression of his face was open and cheerful, would have been kindly

even, were it not for a certain ruthlessness of the lips. There was more

character in his face than is usual with a boy of fifteen--otherwise he

looked younger than his age, for though tall and well-knit, his limbs

had all the graceful immaturity and supple clumsiness one sees in the

limbs of calves and foals.

"Fäather äun't got naun--haven't you heard? He made his claim, and then

they asked to see the title-deeds, and it turned out as how he hadn't

got no common rights at all--leastways so the lawyers said."

"But he used to send the cows on, didn't he?"

"Yes--now and agäun--didn't know it wurn't right. Seems it 'ud have

been better if he'd sent 'em oftener; there's no understanding that

lawyer rubbidge. Now he mayn't täake so much as a blade of grass."

"Realf of Grandturzel has got his bit all safe."

Reuben spat.

"Yes--they couldn't pick any holes in his claim, or they would have, I

reckon. The Squire 'ud like every rood of Boarzell, though the Lard

knows wot he'll do wud it now he's got it."

"Your fäather must be in lamentable heart about all this, surelye."

The boy shrugged and frowned.

"He döan't care much. Fäather, he likes to be comfortable, and this

Inclosure wöan't make much difference to that. 'Täun't as if we wanted

the pasture badly, and Fäather he döan't care about land."

He dragged the last word a little slowly, and there was the faintest

hint of a catch in his voice.

"And your mother, and Harry?"

"They döan't care, nuther--it's only me."

"Lard, boy!--and why should you care if they döan't?"

Reuben did not speak, but a dull red crept over the swarthiness of his

cheeks, and he turned away.

He walked slowly, his hands in his pockets, to where the gable of the

booth jutted between him and his questioners. From here he could see the

slope of Boarzell, rolling slowly down to some red roofs and poplars.

These roofs and poplars were Odiam, the farm which his grandfather had

bought, which his father had tilled and fattened ... and now it was

humbled, robbed of its rights--and his father still went whistling to

the barn, because, though fifty acres had been withheld from him by a

quibble, he still had a bright fire, with a pretty wife and healthy boys

beside it.

Reuben's lip curled. He could not help despising his father for this

ambitionless content.

"We're no worser off than we wur before," Joseph Backfield had said a

day or two ago to his complaining boy--"we've our own meadows for the

cows--'täun't as if we were poor people."

"But, fäather, think wot we might have had--forty acres inclosed for us,

like they have at Grandturzel."

"'Might have--might have'--that döan't trouble me. It's wot I've got I

think about. And then, say we had it--wot 'ud you mäake out o'

Boarzell?--nasty mess o' marl and shards, no good to anyone as long as

thistles äun't fashionable eating."

"_I_ cud mäake something out of Boarzell."

At this his father burst into a huge fit of laughter, and Reuben walked

away.

But he knew he could do it. That morning he churned the soil with his

heel, and knew he could conquer it.... He could plant those

thistle-grounds with wheat.... Coward! his father was a coward if he

shrank from fighting Boarzell. The land could be tamed just as young

bulls could be tamed. By craft, by strength, by toughness man could

fight the nature of a waste as well as of a beast. Give him Boarzell,

and he would have his spade in its red back, just as he would have his

ring in a bull's nose....

But it was all hopeless. Most likely in future all that would remain

free to him of Boarzell would be this Fair ground, crowded once a year.

The rest would be built over--fat shop-keepers would grow fatter--oh,

durn it!

He dashed his hand over his eyes, and then swung round, turning back

towards the groups, lest he should become weak in solitude. Somehow the

character of the crowd had changed while he had been away. Angry murmurs

surged through it like waves, curses beat against one another, a rumour

blew like foam from mouth to mouth.

"They're putting up the fences--workmen from Tonbridge--fences down by

Socknersh."

"Drat 'em! durn 'em!"

"And why shudn't there be fences? What good did this old rubbidge-pläace

ever do anyone? Scarce a mouthful fur a goat. Now it'll be built on, and

there'll be money fur everybody."

"Money fur Bardon."

"Money fur us all. The Squire äun't no Tory grabber."

"Then wot dud he täake our land fur?"

"Wot wur the use of it?--save fur such as wanted a quiet pläace fur

their wenching."

"Put up yer fists!"

The fight came, the battering of each other by two men, seemingly

because of a private insult, really because they were representatives of

two hostile groups, panting to be at each other's throats. They fought

without science, staggering up and down, swinging arms like windmills,

grabbing tufts of hair. At last old Buck Washington the bruiser could

stand it no longer, and with a couple of clouts flung them apart, to

bump on the ground and sit goggling stupidly at each other through

trickles of blood.

That gave the crowd its freedom--hitherto the conflict had been squeezed

into two representatives, leaving some hundred men merely limp

spectators; but with the collapse of his proxy, each man felt the rage

in him boil up.

"Come, my lads, we'll pull down their hemmed fences!"

"Down wud the fences! down wud Bardon!"

"Stand by the Squire, men--we'll all gain by it."

"Shut the Common to wenchers!"

But the Anti-Inclosure party was the strongest--it swept along the

others as it roared down to Socknersh, brandishing sticks and stones and

bottles that had all appeared suddenly out of nowhere, shouting and

stumbling and rolling and thumping.... Reuben was carried with it,

conscious of very little save the smell of unwashed bodies and the

bursting rage in his heart.

§ 2.

The fences were being put up in the low grounds by Socknersh, a

leasehold farm on the fringe of the Manor estate. The fence-builders

were not local men, and had no idea of the ill-feeling in the

neighbourhood. Their first glimpse of it was when they saw a noisy black

crowd tilting down Boarzell towards them--nothing definite could be

gathered from its yells, for cries and counter-cries clashed together,

the result being a confused "Wah-wah-wah," accompanied by much

clattering of sticks and stones, thudding of feet and thumping of ribs.

When it came within ten yards of the fences, it doubted itself suddenly

after the manner of crowds. It stopped, surged back, and mumbled. "Down

with the fences!" shouted someone--"Long live the Squire!" shouted

someone else. Then there was a pause, almost a silence.

Suddenly a great hullish lad sprang forward, rushed up to one of the

fence-stakes, and flung it with a tangle of wire into the air.

"Down wud Bardon!"

The spell of doubt was broken. A dozen others sprang towards the

palings, a dozen more were after them to smite. The workmen swung their

tools. The fight began.

It was a real battle with defences and sallies. The supporters of the

Inclosure miraculously knotted together, and formed a guard for the

labourers, who with hammers ready alternately for nail or head, bent to

their work. They had no personal concern in the matter, but they

resented being meddled with.

The Squire's party was much the weakest in numbers, but luck had given

it the best weapons of that chance armament. Alce of Ellenwhorne had a

fine knobbed stick, worth a dozen of the enemy's, while Lewnes of

Coldblow had an excellent broken bottle. Young Elphee had been through

the bruiser-mill, and routed his assailants with successive upper-cuts.

The anti-Bardonites, on the other hand, were inclined to waste their

strength; they fought in a congested, rabblesome way; also they threw

their bottles, not realising that a bottle is much better as a club than

a missile. The result was that quite early in the conflict their

ammunition gave out, and they were reduced to sticks and fists.

This made the two parties fairly equal, and the tide of battle ebbed and

flowed. Now a bit of fence was put up, then it was torn down again; now

it looked as if the fence-builders were going to be swept off the Moor,

then it looked as if their posts were going to straggle up to Totease.

The Fair was quite deserted, the tenants of Socknersh and Totease

climbed to their windows. Someone fetched the constable from Peasmarsh,

but after surveying the battlefield from a distance he strategically

retired. At Flightshot Manor the Squire was troubled. The Inclosure of

Boarzell had been no piece of land-grabbing on his part, but a move for

the good of his estate. He had always wanted to improve his tenants'

condition, but had been thwarted by lack of means. He wondered if he

ought to give orders to stop the fence-building.

"Sir, that would be folly!" cried his son.

"But it seems that there's a regular riot going on--quite a number of

people have been hurt, and two ploughlands trodden up. Kadwell went

over, but says he can do nothing."

"Send to Rye, then. Let 'em swear in some special constables, and drive

the fellows off. But as for stopping the work--that would be to play

into their hands."

So the fight raged on, the Battle of Boarzell. Unfortunately it did not

rage on Boarzell itself, but on its fruitful fringe, where the great

ploughfields lapped up to the base of the Moor, taking the sunset on

their wet brown ridges. Poor Ginner's winter wheat was all pulped and

churned to ruin, and the same doom fell on Ditch's roots. Sometimes it

seemed as if the Squire's men would attain their object, for the

fence--very tottery and uncertain, it must be confessed--had wound a bit

of the way past Totease towards Odiam. Dusk had fallen, but the men

still worked, for their blood was up.

However, the Squire's party began to feel their lack of numbers; they

were growing tired, their arms swung less confidently, and then Lewnes'

bottle was broken right up at the neck, cutting his hand. He shouted

that he was bleeding to death, and frightened the others. Someone sent a

stone into Alce's eye. Then he too made a terrible fuss, threw down his

stick, and ran about bleeding among the workmen.

The ground, soft with autumn rains, was now one great mud broth, and the

men were daubed and spattered with it even to their hair. The attackers

pressed on the wavering ring--one of the fence-builders was hit, and

pitched down, taking a post and a whole trail of wire over with

him--about thirty yards of fence came down with the pull, and flopped

into the mud. The ring broke.

"Hop it, lads!" shouted a workman. Their protectors were gone, mixed

indescribably with their assailants. They must run, or they would be

lynched.

A hundred yards off a Totease barn-door gaped, and the workmen sprinted

for it. In the darkness they were able to reach it without losing more

than one of their number, who fell down and had the wit to pretend to be

dead. The crowd seethed after them, but the door was shut, and the heavy

bolts rattled behind it.

The barn was part of the farmhouse, and from one of the upper windows

Ditch, furious at having his roots messed up, made pantomime to the

effect that he would shoot any man who came further than the yard.

It was then for the first time that Reuben was frightened. Hitherto

there had been too much violence and confusion for him to feel

intensely, even rage. He had thrown stones, and had once been hit by a

stone--a funny dull sore pain on his shoulder, and then the feeling of

something sticky under his shirt. But he had never felt afraid, never

taken any initiative, just run and struggled and shouted with the rest.

Now he was frightened--it would be dreadful if the farmer fired into

that thick sweating mass in the midst of which he was jammed.

Then, just because he was afraid, he flung up his arm, and the stone he

had been grasping crashed into Ditch's window, sending the splintering

glass into the room. He had no thought of doing it, scarcely knew he had

done it--it was just because he was horribly frightened.

The next moment there was a bang, and Ditch's gun scattered duck-shot

into the crowd. Men yelled, fought, struggled, stumbled about with their

arms over their faces. For a moment nothing but panic moved them, but

the next rage took its place. A volley of stones answered the gun, which

being an old one and requiring careful loading, could not be brought

into action again for some minutes.

"Burn him down!--Burn him down!--the hemmed murderer!"

Then began a regular siege. Stones showered upon the farmhouse roof, the

shiver of broken glass tinkled through the dull roar of the attackers,

groans and screams answered the bursting bang of the shot-gun. Men began

to seize faggots from the wood-pile, and run with them towards the

house. Then some tore up a haystack, but the wind caught the hay and

blew it everywhere, flinging swathes and streamers of it into the

rioters' faces, giving them sudden armfuls of it, making their noses and

eyes smart with the dust and litter.

It was quite dark now. The hulk of Boarzell loomed black behind the

struggle, its fir crown standing out against a great wall of starless

sky. Then suddenly something began to blaze--no one seemed to know what,

for it was behind the crowd; but it roared and crackled, and sparks and

great burning strands flew out from it, threatening house and besiegers

alike with destruction.

They had piled the faggots against the door of the barn. The workmen

inside were tumbling about in the dark, half ignorant of what was going

on.

"Bring a light!" called someone. A boy dashed up with a handful of

flaming straw--it blew out of his hand and flared away over the roof,

scattering showers of sparks. A man yelled out that his shirt was

burning. "Bring a light!" someone called again. Then someone else

shouted--"The constables from Rye!"

The crowd ebbed back like a wave, carrying Reuben, now screaming and

terrified, towards where something unknown burned with horrible crackles

and roaring.

"The constables from Rye!"

The crowd was like a boa-constrictor, it seemed to fold itself round

him, smashing his ribs. He screamed, half suffocated. His forehead was

blistered with heat. Again the crowd constricted. A dizziness came this

time with the suffocation, and strange to say, as consciousness was

squeezed out of him like wind out of a bellows, he had one last visit of

that furious hate which had made him join the battle--hate of those who

had robbed his father of Boarzell, and hate of Boarzell itself, because

he would never be able to tame it as one tames a bull with a ring in its

nose.

He choked, and fell into the darkness.

§ 3.

His first sensation on returning to consciousness was of being jolted.

It was, like most half-realised experiences, on the boundary line

between sensation and emotion, an affair almost of the heart. Then

gradually it became more physical, the heart-pain separated itself from

the body-pain. His body was being jolted, his heart was just sick with

the dregs of hate.

Then he saw Orion hanging over him, very low in the windy sky, shaking

with frost. His eyes fixed themselves on the constellation, then

gradually he became aware of the sides of a cart, of the smell of straw,

of the movement of other bodies that sighed and stirred beside him. The

physical experience was now complete, and soon the emotional had shaped

itself. Memory came, rather sick. He remembered the fight, his terror,

the flaming straw, the crowd that constricted and crushed him like a

snake. His rage and hate rekindled, but this time without focus--he

hated just everyone and everything. He hated the wheels which jolted

him, his body because it was bruised, the other bodies round him, the

stars that danced above him, those unknown footsteps that tramped beside

him on the road.

Where was he? He raised himself on his elbow, and immediately a head

looked over the side of the cart.

"Wot's the matter wud you?" asked a gruff voice.

"I want to know where I'm going, surelye."

"You're going to Rye, that's where you're going, just fur a täaste of

the rope's end, you young varmint."

The tones were not unkindly, and Reuben plucked up courage.

"Is the fight over?"

"Surelye! It all fizzled out, soon as them beasts saw the constables.

Fifty speshul constables sworn in at Rye Town Hall, all of 'em wud

truncheons! You couldn't expect any rabble-scrabble to face 'em."

"Reckon that lot had just about crunched me up. I feel all stove in."

"And you'll feel stove in furder when the Crier's done wud you."

It was part of the Rye Town Crier's duties to flog the unruly youth of

the district. Reuben made a face--not that he minded being flogged, but

he felt badly bruised already. He fell back on the straw, and buried his

head in it. They were on the Playden road, near Bannister's Town, and he

would have time for a sleep before they came to Rye. Sleep helped things

wonderfully.

But the strange thing was that he could not sleep, and stranger still,

it was not the ache of his body that kept him awake, but the ache of his

heart. Reuben was used to curling up and going to sleep like a little

dog; only once had he lain awake at night, and that was with the

toothache. Now he had scarcely any pain; indeed, the dull bruised

feeling made him only more drowsy, but in his heart was something that

made him tumble and toss, just as the aching tooth had done, made him

want to snarl and bite. He rolled over and over in the straw, and was

wide awake when they came to Rye. Neither did he sleep at all in the

room where he and some other boys were locked for the night. The Battery

gaol was full of adult rioters, so the youthful element--only some

half-dozen captured--was shut up in the constable's house, where it

played marbles and twisted arms till daylight.

The other boys were much younger than Reuben, who thumped their heads to

let off some of his uncomfortable feelings. Indeed, there was talk of

putting him with the grown-up prisoners, till the magistrate realised

that juveniles were more easily disposed of. The scene at the

court-house was so hurried that he scarcely knew he had been tried till

the constable took him by the collar and threw him out of the dock. Then

came some dreary moments of waiting in a little stuffy, whitewashed

room, while the Town Crier dealt with the victims separately.

Reuben did not in the least mind being flogged--it was all in the day's

work--and showed scant sympathy for those fellow-criminals who cried for

their mothers. Most of the cramp and stiffness had worn off, and his

only anxiety was to have the thing over quickly, so that he could be

home in time for supper.

At one o'clock he was given some bread and cheese, which he devoured

ravenously; then he spent an hour in thinking of the sausages they

always had for supper at Odiam on Fridays. At two the constable fetched

him to his doom; he was grumbling and muttering to himself, and on

arriving at the execution chamber it turned out that he had had words

with the Town Crier, because the latter thought he had only six boys to

flog, so had put on his coat and was going off to the new sluice at

Scott's Float, meaning to get back comfortably in time for an oyster and

beer supper at the London Trader. Having seven boys to flog made all the

difference--he would be late, both at the sluice and the supper.

He took off his coat again, growling, and for the first time Reuben felt

shame. It was such a different matter, this, from being beaten by

somebody who was angry with one and with whom one was angry. He saw now

that a beating was one of the many things which are all right as long as

they are hot, but damnable when they are cold. He hunched his shoulders,

and felt his ears burn, and just the slightest stickiness on his

forehead.

One thing he had made up his mind to--he would not struggle or cry. Up

till now he had not cared much what he did in that way; if yelling had

relieved his feelings he had yelled, and never felt ashamed of it; but

to-day he realised that if he yelled he would be ashamed. So he drove

his teeth into his lower lip and fought through the next few minutes in

silence.

He kept his body motionless, but in his heart strange things were

moving. That hatred which had run through him like a knife just before

he lost consciousness in the battle of Boarzell, suddenly revived and

stabbed him again. It was no longer without focus, and it was no longer

without purpose. Boarzell ... the name seemed to dance before him in

letters of fire and blood. He was suffering for Boarzell--his father had

not been robbed, for his father did not care, but he, Reuben, had been

robbed--and he had fought for Boarzell on Boarzell, and now he was

bearing shame and pain for Boarzell. Somehow he had never till this day,

till this moment, been so irrevocably bound to the land he had played on

as a child, on which he had driven his father's cattle, which had broken

with its crest the sky he gazed on from his little bed. Boarzell was

his, and at the same time he hated Boarzell. For some strange reason he

hated it as much as those who had taken it from him and as those who

were punishing him because of it. He wanted to tame it, as a man tames a

bull, with a ring in its nose.

There, at the post, quivering with a pain he scarcely felt, Reuben swore

that he would tame and conquer Boarzell. The rage, the fight, the

degradation, the hatred of the last twelve hours should not be in vain.

In some way, as yet unplanned, Boarzell should one day be his--not only

the fifty acres the commissioners had tweaked from his father, but the

whole of it, even that mocking, nodding crest of firs. He would subdue

it; it should bear grain as meekly as the most fruitful field; it should

feed fat cattle; it should make the name of Odiam great, the greatest in

Sussex. It should be his, and the world should wonder.

He left the post with a great oath in his heart, and a thin trickle of

blood on his chin.

§ 4.

It was still early in the afternoon when Reuben set out homewards, but

he had a long way to go, and felt tired and bruised. The constable had

given him an apple, but as soon as he had munched up its sweetness, life

became once more grey. The resolve which for a few minutes had been like

a flame warming and lighting his heart, had now somehow become just an

ordinary fact of life, as drearily a part of his being as his teeth or

his stomach. One day he would own Boarzell Moor, subdue it, and make

himself great--but meantime his legs dragged and his back was sore.

All the adventure and excitement he had been through, with no sleep, and

eccentric feeding, combined to make him wretched and cast down. Once he

cried a little, crouching low under the hedge, and thoroughly ashamed of

himself.

However, things grew better after a time. The road broke away from the

fields, and free winds blew over it. On either side swelled a soft

common, not like Boarzell, but green and watery. It was grown with

bracken, and Reuben laughed to see the big buck rabbits loppetting

about, with a sudden scuttle and bob when he clapped his hands. Then a

nice grinning dog ran with him a mile of the way, suddenly going off on

a hunt near Starvecrow. Reuben came to Odiam aching with nothing worse

than hunger.

Odiam Farm was on the northern slope of Boarzell--sixty acres, mostly

grass, with a sprinkling of hops and grain. There was a fine plum

orchard, full of old gnarled trees, their branches trailing with the

weight of continued crops. The house itself was red and weather-stung as

an August pippin, with strange curves in its gable-ends, which had once

been kilns. It was one of those squat, thick, warm-tinted houses of

Sussex which have stood so long as to acquire a kind of naturalisation

into the vegetable kingdom--it was difficult to imagine it had ever been

built, it seemed so obviously a growth, one would think it had roots in

the soil like an oak or an apple tree.

Reuben opened the door, and the welcome, longed-for smell stole out to

him--smothering the rivalry of a clump of chrysanthemums, rotting in

dew.

"Sossiges," he whispered, and ran down the passage to the kitchen.

Here the sound of voices reminded him that he might have difficulties

with his family, but Reuben's attitude towards his family, unless it

forced itself directly into his life, was always a little aloof.

"Well, lad," said his father, "so you're back at last."

"You knew where I wur?"

"Lucky we dud--or we'd have bin in tedious heart about you, away all

night."

Reuben pulled up his chair to the table. His father sat at one end, and

at the other sat Mrs. Backfield; Harry was opposite Reuben.

"If only you wud be a good boy lik Harry," said his mother.

Reuben looked at Harry with detachment. He was not in the least jealous

of his position as favourite son, he had always accepted it as normal

and inevitable. His parents did not openly flaunt their preference, and

they were always very kind to Reuben--witness the gentleness with which

he was received to-day after his escapade--but one could not help seeing

that their attitude towards the elder boy was very different from what

they felt for the younger.

The reasons were obvious; Harry was essentially of a loving and

dependent nature, whereas Reuben seemed equally indifferent to caresses

or commands. He was not a bad son, but he never appeared to want

affection, and was always immersed in dark affairs of his own. Besides,

Harry was a beautiful boy. Though only a year younger than Reuben, in

the midst of the awkward age, his growing limbs quite lacked the

coltishness of his brother's. He was like Reuben, but with all the

little variations that make the difference between good and ordinary

looks. Just as he had Reuben's promising body without that transitory

uncouthness so natural to his years, so he had Reuben's face, more

softly chiselled, more expressive and full of fire. His brows were

lighter, his eyes larger, his hair less shiny and tough, growing in a

soft sweep from his forehead, with the faintest hint of a curl at his

ears. Neighbours spoke of him as "beautiful Harry." Reuben pondered him

occasionally--he would have liked to know his brother better, liked to

love him, but somehow could never quite manage it. In spite of his

clinging nature, there was something about Harry that was unhuman,

almost elfin. The father and mother did not seem to notice this, but

Reuben felt it, scarcely knowing how or why.

To-night Harry did not ask him any questions, he just sat dreamily

listening while Reuben poured out his story, with all the enthusiasms

and all the little reservations which were characteristic of him. Once

Harry put out his hand and stroked his mother's, once he smiled at his

father.

"Well, I shan't go scolding you, lad," said Joseph Backfield, "fur I

reckon you've bin punished enough. Though it wur unaccountable lucky you

dudn't git anything worse. I hear as how Pix and Hearsfield are to be

transported, and there'll be prison for some thirty more. Wot dud yer

want to go mixing up in them things fur?"

"I wur justabout mad."

"How, mad?"

"Mad that they shud shut up Boarzell and that Odiam shudn't have its

rights."

"Wot's Odiam to you?--It äun't yours, it's mine, and if I döan't care

about the land, why shud you go disgracing yourself and us all because

of it?"

"You ought to care, surelye!"

A dull brick-red had crept into the brown cheeks, and Reuben's brows had

nearly met over his nose.

"Ought to! Listen to that, mother. Dud you ever hear the like? And if I

cared, my lad, where wud you all be? Where wud be that plate o' sossiges

you're eating? It's just because I äun't a land-grabber lik so many I

cud näum that you and Harry sit scrunching here instead of working the

flesh off your böans, that your mother wears a muslin apron 'stead of a

sacking one, that you have good food to eat, and white bread, 'stead of

oaten. Wot's the use of hundreds of acres if you äun't comfortable at

höame? I've no ambitions, so I'm a happy man. I döan't want nothing I

haven't got, and so I haven't got nothing I döan't want. Surelye!"

Reuben was silent, his heart was full of disgust. Somehow those

delicious sausages stuck in his throat, but he was too young to push

away his plate and refuse to eat more of this token of his father's

apathy and Odiam's shame. He ate silently on, and as soon as he had

finished rose from table, leaving the room with a mumble about being

tired.

When he was half-way upstairs he heard his mother call him, asking him

if he would like her to bathe his shoulders. But he refused her almost

roughly, and bounded up to the attic under the crinkled eaves, which was

his own, his sanctuary--his land.

It was odd that his parents did not care. Now he came to think of it,

they did not seem to care about anything very much, except Harry. It

never struck him to think it was odd that he should care when they did

not.

He sat down by the window, and leaning his elbow on the sill, looked

out. It was still windy, and the sky was shredded over with cloud, lit

by the paleness of a hidden moon. In the kitchen, two flights below, a

fiddle sounded. It was Harry playing to his parents as he always played

in the evening, while they sat on either side of the fire, nodding,

smiling, half-asleep. Clods! Cowards! A sudden rage kindled in his heart

against those three, his father, his mother, and beautiful Harry, who

cared nothing about that for which he had suffered all things.

The crest of Boarzell was just visible against the luminous sky. There

was something sinister and challenging about those firs. The gorse round

their trunks seemed in that strange half-stormy, half-peaceful night to

throw off a faint glimmer of gold. The fiddle wept and sang into the

darkness, and outside the window two cherry trees scraped their boughs

together.

Reuben's head dropped on his arm, and he slept out of weariness. An hour

later the cramp of his shoulders woke him; the fiddle was silent, the

moon was gone, and the window framed a level blackness. With a little

moan he flung himself dressed on the bed.

BOOK I

THE BEGINNING OF THE FIGHT

§ 1.

It was five years later, in the February of 1840.

A winter sunset sparkled like cowslip wine on the wet roofs of Odiam. It

slipped between the curtains of the room where Reuben watched beside his

dead father, and made a golden pool in the dusk.

Joseph Backfield had been dead twelve hours. His wife had gone, worn out

with her grief, to rest on the narrow unaccustomed bed which had been

put up in the next room when he grew too ill to have her at his side.

Reuben knew that Harry was with her--Harry would be sitting at her head,

his arm under the pillow, ready for that miserable first waking, when

remembering and forgetting would be fused into one pain. Reuben knew

that they did not need him, that they had all they wanted in each

other--now, as during the nights and days of illness, when he had never

felt as if he had any real link with those three, his father and mother

and Harry.

This evening he sat very still beside the dead. Only once he drew down

the sheet from his father's face and gazed at the calm features, already

wearing that strange sculpt look which is the gift of death. The

peaceful lips, the folded hands, seemed part of an embracing

restfulness. Reuben's heart warmed with a love in which was little

grief. He thought of his father's life--calm, kindly, comfortable,

ambitionless. He had been happy; having wanted little he had attained

it and had died enjoying it.

Reuben recalled the last five years--they had been fat years. One by one

small comforts, small luxuries, had been added to the house, as the farm

throve modestly, fulfilling itself within the narrow boundaries its

master had appointed. And all the time that mocking furious crest of

Boarzell had broken the sky in the south--telling of beauty unseized,

might unconquered, pride untamed.

So now was it strange that clashing with his sorrow, and his regretful

love for one who, if he had never truly loved him, had always treated

him with generosity and kindness, there should be a soaring sense of

freedom and relief?--a consciousness of standing on the edge of a

boundless plain after years of confinement within walls? For Reuben was

master now. Odiam was his--and the future of Odiam. He could follow his

own will, he could take up that challenge which Boarzell Moor had flung

him five years ago, when he fought and was flogged because he loved the

red gaping clay between the gorse-stumps.

His plans of conquest were more definite now. He had been forming them

for five years, and he could not deny that during his father's illness

he had shaped them with a certain finality. The road was clear before

him, and to a slight extent fate had been propitious, keeping open a way

which might well have been blocked before he began to tread it. Reuben

had never been able to settle what he should do if the Squire's first

project were fulfilled and the Moor sold in building plots. House

property entered with difficulty into his imagination, and he coveted

only Boarzell virgin of tool and brick. Luckily for him, Bardon's scheme

had completely failed. The position of the common was bad for houses,

windy and exposed in days when the deepest hollows were the most

eligible building sites; the neighbourhood was both unfashionable and

unfruitful, therefore not likely to attract either people of means or

people without them. Also there were grave difficulties about a water

supply. So Boarzell remained desolate, except for the yearly jostle of

the Fair, and rumour said that Bardon would be only too glad to sell it

or any piece of it to whoever would buy.

If Sir Peter had been alive he would probably have given the common back

to the people, but Sir Miles was more far-sighted, also of prouder

stuff. Such a policy would give the impression of weakness, and there

was always a chance of selling the land piecemeal. Reuben's ambition was

to buy a few acres at the end of that year, letting the Squire know of

his plan to buy more--this would encourage him to keep Boarzell

inclosed, and would act as a check on any weak generosity.

There was no reason why this ambition should not be fulfilled, for now

that he himself was at the head of affairs it would be possible to save

money. Reuben's lips straightened--of late they had grown fuller, but

also sterner in that occasional straightening, which changed the

expression of his mouth from half-ripened sensuality to a full maturity

of resolve. Now he was resolved--there should be changes at Odiam. He

must give up that old easy, "comfortable" life on which his father had

set such store. A ghost seemed to whisper in the room, as if the voice

of the dead man once more declared his gospel--"I've no ambitions, so

I'm a happy man. I döan't want nothing I haven't got, and so I haven't

got nothing I döan't want."

Yes--there was no denying his father had been happy. But what a

happiness! Even there by his side Reuben despised it. He, Reuben, would

never be happy till he had torn up that gorse and lopped those firs from

the top of Boarzell. In a kind of vision he saw the Moor with

wheatfields rolling up to the crest, he smelt the baking of glumes in

brown sunlight, the dusty savour of the harvest-laden earth. He heard

the thud of horses' hoofs and the lumber of waggon-wheels, the shouts of

numberless farm-hands. That sinister waste, profitless now to every man,

should be a source of wonder and wealth and fame. "Odiam--the biggest

farm in Sussex. Backfield made it. He bought Boarzell Moor acre by acre

and fought it inch by inch, and now there's nothing like it in the

south." ...

He sprang up and went to the window, pulling back the curtain. The sun

had gone, and the sky was a grey pool rimmed with gold and smoke.

Boarzell, his dreamland, stood like a dark cloud against it, shaggy and

waste. There in the dimness it looked unconquerable. Suppose he should

be able to wring enough money from the grudging earth to buy that

wilderness, would he ever be able to subdue it, make it bear crops? He

remembered words from the Bible which he had heard read in

church--"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 brought his fist down heavily on the sill. He was just as confident,

just as resolute as before, but now for the first time he realised all

that the battle would mean. He could fight this cruel, tough thing only

by being cruel and tough himself. He must be ruthless as the wind that

blustered over it, hard as the stones that covered it, wiry as the

gorse-roots that twisted in its marl. He must be all this if he was even

to start the fight. To begin with, he would have to make his mother and

Harry accept the new state of things. They must realise that the old

soft life was over, that they would have to work, pull from the

shoulder, sacrifice a hundred things to help fulfil his great ambition.

He must not spare them--he must not spare anyone; he would not spare

them, any more than he would spare himself.

§ 2.

Joseph Backfield was buried four days later. His body was carried to the

church in a hay-waggon, drawn by the meek horses which had drawn his

plough. Beside it walked Blackman, the only farm-hand at Odiam, in a

clean smock, with a black ribbon tied to his hat. Five men from other

farms acted with him as bearers--they were volunteers, for old Joseph

had been popular in the neighbourhood, dealing sharply with no man.

Immediately behind the cart walked Reuben with his mother on his arm.

Her face was hidden in a clumsy black veil, which the Rye mantua-maker

had assured her was the London fashion, and she was obviously ill at

ease in the huge black shawl and voluminous skirts which the same

fashion, according to the Rye mantua-maker, had decreed. Her hand pulled

at Reuben's sleeve and stroked it as if for comfort. It was a smallish

hand, and wonderfully soft for a farmer's wife--but then Mary Backfield

had not lived like an ordinary farmer's wife. Under the thick veil, her

face still had a certain soft colour and youthfulness, though she was

nearly forty, and most women of her position were wrinkled and had lost

their teeth by thirty-five. Also the curves of her figure were still

delicate. She had been cherished by her husband, had done only light

household work for him and borne him only two children. She carried the

tokens of her happiness in smooth surfaces and soft lines.

After Mrs. Backfield and her eldest son, walked Harry and his

sweetheart, Naomi Gasson. They had been sweethearts just three months,

and were such a couple as romance gloats over--young, comely, healthy,

and full of love. Years had perfected the good looks of "beautiful

Harry." He was a tall creature, lithe and straight as a birch tree. His

face, agreeably tanned, glowed with youth, half dreamy, half riotous;

his eyes were wild as a colt's, and yet tender. Naomi was a fit mate

for him, with a skin like milk, and hair the colour of tansy. She wore a

black gown like Mrs. Backfield, but she had made it herself, and it was

friendly to her, hinting all the graciousness of her immaturity. These

two tried to walk dejectedly, and no doubt there was some fresh young

sadness in their hearts, but every now and then their bodies would

straighten with their happiness, and their eyes turn half afraid from

each other's because they could not help smiling in spite of the drooped

lips.

Then came old Gasson, Naomi's father, and well-known as a shipbuilder at

Rye--for this was a good match of Harry's, and Reuben hoped, but had no

reason to expect, he would turn it to Odiam's advantage. After him

walked most of the farmers of the neighbourhood, come to see the last of

a loved, respected friend. Even Pilbeam was there, from beyond

Dallington, and Oake from Boreham Street. The Squire himself had sent a

message of condolence, though he had been unable to come to the funeral.

Reuben did not particularly want his sympathy. He despised the Bardons

for their watery Liberalism and ineffectual efforts to improve their

estates.

It was about half a mile to the church--over the hanger of Tidebarn

Hill. The morning was full of soft loamy smells, quickening under the

February sun, which is so pale and errant, but sometimes seems to have

the power to make the earth turn in its sleep and dream of spring.

Peasmarsh church-tower, squab like a toadstool, looked at itself in the

little spread of water at the foot of the churchyard. Beside this pool,

darkened with winter sedges, stood Parson Barnaby, the Curate-in-Charge

of Peasmarsh, Beckley, and Iden. His boots under his surplice were muddy

and spurred, for he had just galloped over from a wedding at Iden, and

his sweat dropped on the book as he read "I know that my Redeemer

liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth."

Before committing the body to the ground, he said a few words in praise

of the dead man. He spoke of his generosity to his neighbours, his

kindness to his dependents, his excellences as a husband and a father.

"This, brethren, was indeed a man after God's own heart. He lived simply

and blamelessly, contented with his lot, and seeking no happiness that

did not also mean happiness to those around him. The call of the

world"--by which Mr. Barnaby meant Babylonish Rye--"fell unheard on ears

attuned to sweet domestic sounds. Ambition could not stir him from the

repose of his family circle. Like a patriarch of old, he sat in peace

under his vine and his fig-tree...."

Reuben stood motionless at the graveside, erect, like a soldier at

attention. People in the crowd, who wearied of the dead man's virtues,

whispered about the eldest son.

"Surelye!--he's a purty feller, is young Ben. To-day he looks nearly as

valiant as Harry."

"He's a stouter man than his brother."

"Stouter, and darker. What black brows he has, Mus' Piper!"

"How straight he stands!"

"I wäonder wot he's thinking of."

§ 3.

Reuben was strangely silent on the walk home. His mother made one or two

small remarks which passed unheeded. She noticed that his arm, on which

her hand lay, was very tense.

When they came to the group of cottages at the Forstal, a girl ran down

the garden path and leaned against the fence. She was a pretty brown

girl, and as they went by she smiled at Reuben. But he did not seem to

see her, he walked steadily on, and she slunk back to the house, biting

her lips. "Dudn't he see me, or wur he jest pretending not to?" she

muttered.

At Odiam dinner was waiting. It was a generous meal, which combined the

good things of this world with the right amount of funereal state.

Several of the neighbours had been invited, and the housewife wished to

do them honour, knowing that her table boasted luxuries not to be found

at other farms--a bottle of French wine, for instance, which though

nobody touched it, gave distinction to the prevalent ale, and one or two

light puddings, appealing to the eye as well as to the palate. As soon

as the meal was over and the guests had gone, Reuben took himself off,

and did not reappear till supper-time.

During dinner he had been even more thoughtful than the occasion

warranted, leaving his mother and Harry to talk to the company, though

he had taken with a certain dignity his place as host and head of the

house. Now at supper he was still inclined to silence. A servant girl

laid the dishes on the table, then retired. Mrs. Backfield and Harry

spoke in low tones to each other.

... "Mother, how much did this chocolate cost wot we're drinking?"

Reuben's voice made them both jump.

"How much? why, two shillings a pound," said Mrs. Backfield, rather

surprised.

"That's too much." Reuben's brows and mouth were straight lines.

"Wot d'you mean, Reuben?"

"Why, two shillings is too much fur farm-folks lik us to give fur a

pound of chocolate. It's naun but a treat, and we can do wudout it."

"But we've bin drinking chocolate fur a dunnamany years now--your poor

fäather always liked it--and I döan't see why we should stop it."

"Look'ee, mother, I've something to tell you. I've a plan in my head,

and it'll justabout mean being shut of a lot of things besides

chocolate. I know fäather dudn't care much about the farm, about mäaking

it grow and buying more land, and all that. But I do. I mean to buy the

whole of Boarzell."

There was a gasping silence.

"The whole of Boarzell," repeated Reuben.

He might have said the whole world, to judge by his mother's and Harry's

faces.

"Yes--I mean every bit, even the bit Grandturzel's got now. Squire he

wöan't be sorry to sell it, and I mean to buy it piece by piece. I'll

buy my first piece at the end of this year. We must start saving money

at wunst. But I can't do naun wudout you help me, you two."

"Wot d'you want to go buying Boarzell fur?" asked Mrs. Backfield in a

bewildered voice; "the farm's präaper as it is--we döan't want it no

bigger."

"And Boarzell's wicked tedious stuff," put in Harry; "naun'll grow there

but gorse."

"I'll have a good grain growing there in five year--döan't you go

doubting it. The ground wants working, that's all. And as fur not

wanting the farm no bigger, that wur fäather's idea--Odiam's mine now."

"Why can't we jest go on being happy and comfortable, lik we wur

before?"

"Because I've thought of something much grander, surelye. I'm going to

mäake us all gurt people, and this a gurt farm. But you've got to help

me, you and Harry."

"Wot d'you want us to do?"

"Well, first of all, we must save all the money we can, and not go

drinking chocolate and French wine, and eating sweet puddens and all

such dentical stuff. And then, Harry and me, we're valiant chaps, and

there never wur enough work for us to do. I'm going to send Blackman

away--Harry and I can do quite easily wudout him and save his wages."

"Send away Blackman!--oh, Ben, he's bin with us fifteen year."

"I döan't care if he's bin a hunderd. There äun't enough work for three

men on this farm, and it's a shame to go wasting ten shilling a week.

Oh, mother, can't you see how glorious it'll be? I know fäather wanted

different, but I've bin thinking and dreaming of this fur years."

"You always wur queer about Boarzell. But your fäather 'ud turn in his

grave to think of you sending off Blackman."

"He'll easily git another pläace--I'll find him one myself. And,

mother--there's something more. Now you haven't got fäather to work fur,

you'll find the time unaccountable long. Wot if you let Becky go, and

did the cooking and that yourself?"

"Oh, Reuben...."

"You shouldn't ought to ask mother that," said Harry. "She 'äun't used

to work. It's well enough fur you and me, we're strong chaps, and

there's no reason we shouldn't pull to a bit. But mother, she'd never do

wudout the girl--you see, there's the dairy and the fowls as well as the

house."

"We could help her out of doors."

"Lard!--you want some work!"

Reuben sprang to his feet. "Yes--I do! You're justabout right there. I'm

starved fur work. I've never really worked in my life, and now I want to

work till I drop. Look at my arm"--and he showed them his brown hairy

arm, where the muscles swelled in lumps under the skin--"that's a

workman's arm, and it's never worked yet--präaperly. You let me send off

Blackman and Becky, and see how we manage wudout 'em. I'll do most of

the work myself, I promise you. I couldn't have too much."

"You're a queer lad, Reuben--and more masterful than your poor fäather

wur."

"Yes--I'm master here." He sat down, and looked round the table quite

calmly. A vague uneasiness disturbed Mrs. Backfield and Harry. For some

unfathomable reason they both felt a little afraid of Reuben.

He finished his supper and went out of the kitchen. Harry and his mother

sat for a moment or two in silence.

"He always wur queer about Boarzell," said Mrs. Backfield at last; "you

remember that time years ago when he got mixed up wud the riot? I said

to his fäather then as I was sure Ben 'ud want to do something crazy wud

the farm. But I never thought he'd so soon be mäaster," and a tear

trickled over her smooth cheek.

"I döan't see no harm in his buying a bit of Boarzell if it's going

cheap--but it äun't worth mäaking all ourselves uncomfortable for it."

"No. Howsumdever, we can't stand agäunst him--the pläace is his'n, and

he can do wot he likes."

"Hush--listen!" said Harry.

The sound of voices came from the passage outside the kitchen. Reuben

was talking to the girl. A word or two reached them.

"Durn! if he äun't getting shut of her!"

"I never said as I'd do her work."

Harry sprang to his feet, but his mother laid her hand on his arm.

"Döan't you go vrothering him, lad. It'll only set him agäunst you, and

I döan't care, not really; there'll be unaccountable liddle work to do

in the house now your poor fäather's gone, and Blackman wöan't be eating

wud us. Besides, as he said, I'll find the days a bit slow wud naun to

occupy me."

"But it's sass of him to go sending off the girl wudout your leave."

"He's mäaster here."

"Ho! we shall see that."

"Now you're not to go quarrelling wud him, Harry. I'd sooner have peace

than anything whatsumdever. I äun't used to being set agäunst people.

Besides, it wöan't be fur long."

"No--you're justabout right there. I ought to be able to wed Naomi next

April year, and then, mother--think of the dear liddle house we shall

live in, you and she and I, all wud our own fields and garn, and no

trouble, and Ben carrying through his own silly consarns here by

himself."

"Yes, dearie, I know, and it's unaccountable good of you and Naomi to

let me come wud you. I döan't think we should ought to mind helping your

brother a bit here, when we've all that to look forrard to. But he's a

strange lad, and your fäather 'ud turn in his grave to see him."

§ 4.

For the next few months Odiam was in a transitional state. It was

gradually being divested of its old comfortable ways, and clad in new

garments of endeavour. Gradually the life grew harder, and gradually the

tense thought, the knife-edged ambition at the back of all the changes,

came forward and asserted themselves openly.

Harry and his mother had not realised till then how hard Reuben could

be. Hitherto they had never truly known him, for he had hidden in

himself his dominant passion. But now it was nakedly displayed, and they

began to glimpse his iron and steel through the elusive nebulousness

that had veiled them--as one might see the body of a steam-engine emerge

through the clouds of draping smoke its activity has flung round it.

They could not help wondering at his strenuousness, his unlimited

capacity for work, though they failed to understand or sympathise with

the object that inspired them. Blackman, grumbling and perplexed, had

gone off early in March to the milder energies of Raisins Farm; Becky,

for want of a place, had married the drover at Kitchenhour--and it was

no empty boast of Reuben's that he would take the greater part of their

work on his own shoulders. From half-past four in the morning till nine

at night he laboured almost without rest. He drove the cows to pasture,

milked them, and stalled them--he followed the plough over the

spring-sown crops, he groomed and watered the horses, he fed the fowls,

watched the clutches, fattened capons for market--he cleaned the pigsty,

and even built a new one in a couple of strenuous days--he bent his back

over his spade among the roots, over his barrow, wheeling loads of

manure--he was like a man who has been starved and at last finds a

square meal before him. He had all the true workman's rewards--the

heart-easing ache of tired muscles, the good bath of sweat in the sun's

heat, the delicious sprawl, every sinew limp and throbbing, in his bed

at nights--and then sleep, dreamless, healing, making new.

But though Reuben bore the brunt of the new enterprise, he had no

intention of sparing others their part. All that he by any exertions

could do himself he did, but the things which inevitably he could not

compass, because he had only two hands, one back, one head, and seven

days a week to work in, must be done by others. He showed himself

unexpectedly stiff, and Mrs. Backfield and Harry found themselves

obeying him as if he were not the son of the one and only a year older

than the other. As a matter of fact, custom gave Reuben authority, in

spite of his years. He was the master, the eldest son inheriting his

father's lordship with his father's farm. Mrs. Backfield and Harry would

have been censured by public opinion if they had set themselves against

him.

Besides, what was the use?--it was only for a few months, and then Harry

would be in a little house of his own, living very like his father,

though more dreamily, more delicately. Then Mrs. Backfield would once

more wear muslin aprons instead of sacking ones, would sit with her

hands folded, kid shoes on the fender.... Sometimes, in the rare moments

they had together, Harry would paint this wonderland for her.

He had been left a small sum by his father--resulting from the sale of a

water-meadow, and securely banked at Rye. Naomi, moreover, was well

dowered; and Tom Gasson, anxious to see the young couple established,

had promised to help them start a grass farm in the neighbourhood. The

project had so far gone no further than discussion. Reuben was opposed

to it--he would have liked Harry to stay on at Odiam after his marriage;

Naomi, too, would be useful in many ways, her dowry supplying a

much-felt want of capital. However, he realised that in this direction

his authority had its limits. He was powerless to prevent Harry leaving

Odiam, and there was nothing to do but to wring as much as possible out

of him while he stayed. Of his mother's planned escape he knew nothing.

Naomi often came over to Odiam, driving in her father's gig. Reuben

disliked her visits, for they meant Harry's abandonment of spade and

rake for the weightier matters of love. Reuben, moiling more desperately

than ever, would sometimes catch a glimpse of her coloured gown through

the bushes of some coppice, or skirting a hedge beside Harry's corduroy.

He himself spoke to her seldom. He could not help being conscious of her

milky sweetness, the soft droop of her figure under its muslins, her

voice full of the music of stock-doves. But he disliked her, partly

because she was taking Harry from Odiam, partly because he was jealous

of Harry. It ought to be he who was to make a wealthy marriage, not his

brother. He chafed to think what Naomi's money might do for the farm if

only he had control of it.

Marriage was beginning to enter into his scheme. Some day he must marry

and beget children. As the farm grew he would want more hands to work

it, and he would like to think of others carrying on its greatness

after he was dead. He must marry a woman with money and with health, and

he was not so dustily utilitarian as not also to demand something of

youth and good looks.

Since his father's death he had denied himself woman's company, after

two years lived in the throb and sweetness of it. A warm and vigorous

temperament, controlled by a strong will, had promised a successful

libertinism, and more than once he had drunk the extasies of passion

without those dregs which spoil it for the more weakly dissolute. But

now, with that same fierce strength and relentless purpose which had

driven him to do the work of two men, to live hard, and sleep rough, he

renounced all the delights which were only just beginning. Henceforth,

with his great ambition before him, there could be nothing but

marriage--prudent, solid, and constructive. His girl at the Forstal knew

him no more, nor any of her kind. He had set himself to build a house,

and for the sake of that house there was nothing, whether of his own or

of others, that he could not tame, break down, and destroy.

§ 5.

By the end of the year Reuben had saved enough money to buy five acres

of Boarzell, in the low grounds down by Totease. He had saved chiefly on

the wages of Blackman and Becky, though, against that, he had been

forced to engage outside help for the hay in June, and also for the

wheat in August. However, he had been lucky enough to secure tramp

labour for this, which meant payment largely in barn-room and bread.

Then there had been a host of minor retrenchments, each in itself so

small as to be almost useless, but mounting together into something

profitable. Chocolate had vanished from the Odiam supper-table, their

bread was made of seconds, the genuines being sold to Iden Mill; they

ate no meat on week-days except bacon, and eggs were forbidden in

puddings. Reuben managed to get a small sale for his eggs and milk at

the Manor and the curate's house, though he had not enough cows and

poultry to make his dealing of much advantage.

Mrs. Backfield was the one to bear the brunt of these economies. She had

been a trifle pampered during the latter days of her marriage, and set

far more store than her sons on dainty food; also the work which she

performed so well was a tax on her unaccustomedness. But she never

grumbled, and this was not only because escape was near at hand. Strange

to say, in these new days of his lordship, Reuben began to fill a place

in her heart which he had never filled before. While her husband was

alive, he had never really come inside her life, he had been an aloof,

inarticulate being whom she did not understand. But now that he had

asserted himself, she found herself turning towards him. She would have

worked without prospect of release--indeed, as the days went by, Harry

and his home and her promised idleness dwindled in her thoughts.

When Reuben told her he could now buy his first piece of Boarzell, she

went through the day's work full of joy. Though, as far as the land

itself was concerned, she would far rather have had new chintz covers

for the parlour chairs.

They never sat in the parlour now.

Harry's pleasure was obviously insincere, just a mask put on out of

kindness to his brother. Naomi was coming over on a few days' visit, and

everything else was smoke. No one, Reuben reflected, as he walked over

to Flightshot to see Sir Miles's agent, no one cared a rap about

Boarzell. His mother thought more of her food and of her furniture,

thought more of him and Harry, while Harry thought of nothing but Naomi.

He would have to wage his fight alone.

The transaction was prompt and satisfactory. Reuben did not haggle over

the price, and was careful to let the agent know of his eagerness to buy

more--otherwise, he was afraid that the Squire might either give the

land back to the people, pushed by his Liberal politics, or else part

with it for a song to some speculator. So he paid really a bit more than

the land was worth, and made the agent a confidant of his dreams.

"It'll want a tedious lot of fighting, will that plot," he asserted, to

counteract any idea his eagerness might give that Boarzell was a mine of

hidden fertility--"Dunno as I shall mäake anything out of it. But it's

land I want--want to mäake myself a sort of landed praprietor"--a

lie--"and raise the old farm up a bit. I'd like to have the whole of

Boarzell. Reckon as Grandturzel 'ud sell me their bit soon as I've got

the rest. They'll never mäake anything out of it."

He walked home over Boarzell, scarcely conscious of the ground he trod.

He felt like a new-crowned king. As he looked round on the swart

hummocks of the Moor, and its crest of firs, dim and bistred against the

grey afternoon clouds, he found it hard to realise that it was not all

his, that he still had almost the whole of it to fight for, acre by

acre. He hurried towards his own little plot, bought, but as yet

unconquered, still shagged with gorse and brittle with shards.

It was down in the hollow by Totease, as unpromising an estate as one

could wish, all on a slope, gorse-grown at the top, then a layer of

bracken, and at the Totease fence a kind of oozy pulp, where a lavant

dribbled in and out of the grass; to Reuben, however, it was a land of

milk and honey. He turned up the soil of it with his foot, and blessed

the wealden clay.

"No flints here," he said; "reckon there's some stiff ground on the

hill--but it's only the surface. Heather äun't growing--that's a tedious

good sign. I'll have oats here--the best in Peasmarsh."

He stood staring at the grass with its dribbles of lavant and spines of

rushes. The wind brought the sound of someone singing. At first he

scarcely noticed, then gradually the song worked in with his daydream,

and ended by rousing him out of it. He strolled across his domain, and

marked half a dozen sturdy willows which must come out somehow roots and

all. He climbed into the bracken zone, and from thence saw Harry sitting

by a gorse thicket some hundred yards off with Naomi Gasson.

The wind puffed gently towards him, bringing him the song and the soft

peach-smell of the gorse. Harry was a musician already of note among the

farms; he had a beautiful voice, and there was very little he could not

do with his fiddle, though of late this had been neglected for the

claims of work and love. To-day he was singing an old song Reuben knew

well--"The Song of Seth's House":

"'The blackbird flew out from the eaves of the Manor,

The Manor of Seth in the Sussex countrie,

And he carried a prayer from the lad of the Manor,

A prayer and a tear to his faithless ladie.

"'To the lady who lives in the Grange by the water,

The water of Iron in the Sussex countrie,

The lad of Seth's House prays for comfort and pity--

Have pity, my true love, have pity on me!

"'O why when we loved like the swallows in April,

Should beauty forget now their nests have grown cold?

O why when we kissed 'mid the ewes on the hanger,

Should you turn from me now that they winter in fold?

"'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?

"'One day when your pride shall have brought you to sorrow,

And years of despair and remorse been your fate,

Perhaps your cold heart will remember Seth's Manor,

And turn to your true love--and find it too late.'"

Harry's voice was very loud and clear, with that element of wildness

which is a compensation for no training. When he had finished "The Song

of Seth's House" he started another, but broke off in the middle of it,

and Reuben saw the two heads suddenly droop together, and fuse, the

golden hair and the brown.

Naomi leaned against Harry, and his hand stole up and down her arm,

stroking its whiteness. Reuben stood watching them, and for a moment he

hungered. This was what he had cast away.

He turned from them sharply, and threw himself down on the dead bracken.

Then suddenly the hunger passed. The reek of the moist earth rose up in

his nostrils; it was the scent of his love, who was sweeter to him than

ever Naomi was to Harry. His hand stole over the short, mould-smelling

grass, caressing it. He had a love more beautiful than Harry's, whose

comeliness would stay unwithered through the years, whose fruitfulness

would make him great, whose allure was salted with a hundred dangers....

His fingers dug themselves into the earth, and he embraced Boarzell with

wide-flung trembling arms. "My land!" he cried--"mine!--mine!"

§ 6.

The neighbourhood sniggered when it heard of Odiam's new land. When it

heard of Reuben's plans for it and the oats that were to be it grew

openly derisive. The idea of anyone thinking he could grow oats on

Boarzell was an excellent joke. Young Backfield, however, ignored public

opinion, and bought rape-dust for manure.

He was as jealous of this strip of earth as of a wife--he would allow

nobody to work there but himself. Alone and unhelped he grubbed up the

bracken, turned the soil, and scattered rape-dust and midden till they

had to shut their windows at Burntbarns. He believed that if the ground

was properly manured it would be ready for sowing in the autumn. The

only difficulty now was the trees; they were casting malevolent

shadows, and dredging up the goodness out of the earth.

Where Ditch of Totease or Vennal of Burntbarns would have taken a couple

of woodmen and a saw, Reuben took nothing but an axe and his bare arms.

His muscles ached for this new carouse of exertion.

"Let me give you a hand," said Harry that day at dinner.

"No--why should I?"

"You'll never do it yourself," said Naomi, who was spending a few days

at Odiam.

"Oh, wöan't I!" and Reuben showed his strong white teeth.

"How many trees are there?"

"Half a dozen--willers. The real trouble will be gitting their roots

out."

"And will you do that alone?"

"I'll see about it."

Naomi looked across at Reuben without speaking. Her lips, a pale

coral-pink, were parted, showing two tiny teeth. She was not the type he

favoured--she was too soft and bloodless--but he could not help feeling

flattered by the frank admiration he saw in her eyes. He knew that this

last year of wind and sun and healthy work had narrowed the gulf between

him and Beautiful Harry. He was as hard as iron and as brown as a nut,

and there was a warm red glowing through the swarthiness of his cheeks

like the bloom on a russet pear.

Harry looked up from his plate, and the gaze became three-cornered.

Reuben, defiant of his brother, grew bold, and ogled, whereupon Naomi

grew timid, and dropped her eyes; Harry found himself speaking with a

rasp:

"I'm coming to help you, Reuben. You'll never tackle them rootses--it

äun't everything you can do surelye!"

"I can do that much. You stay here and play the fiddle to Naomi."

Harry somehow felt he had been insulted, and opened his mouth to retort.

But his brother suddenly began talking about an accident to a labourer

at Grandturzel, and the occasion dropped.

After dinner Reuben set out with his axe, and Harry and Naomi sat

together on the floor beside the kitchen fire. He gave her kisses like

the wind, swift and cool. She was the only woman he had kissed, and she

had never been kissed by any other man. Their love had its wildnesses,

but not the wildnesses of fire--rather of the dancing boughs of some

spring-caught wood, rioting together in May. Now and then he would sing

as he held her to him, his fresh young voice ringing up to the roof....

Later in the afternoon they went out together. It seemed a pity to stay

indoors in the soft swale, and Harry had to look at some poultry at

Doozes. Naomi walked with her arm through his, her grey cloak over her

shoulders.

"I wonder if Reuben's still at it?" said Harry, as the footpath began to

skirt the new land.

"Yes--I see him yonder. He doesn't see us, I reckon."

They stood on the hillside and looked down at Reuben. He had felled five

trees, and was now getting his axe into the sixth. They watched him in

silence, and Naomi found herself remembering the way he had looked at

her at dinner.

"He's a valiant man," said Harry.

Naomi saw him sweep the axe above his shoulder, and the ease and

strength of his swing gave her a strange tingling sensation in her

breast. The axe crashed into the wood, then Reuben pulled it up, and the

muscles of his back made two long, ovoid lumps under his blue shirt.

Again the axe swung and fell, again Naomi's body tingled as with a

physical exhilaration.

The January twilight deepened, and soon Reuben's blue shirt was all that

was clear in the hollow. The bites of the axe cracked out on the still

air--and suddenly with a soft swish of boughs the tree fell.

§ 7.

That night Reuben came to supper as hungry as a wolf. He was in a fine

good humour, for his body, pleasantly tired, glowing, aching, tickled

with the smell of food, was giving him a dozen agreeable sensations.

"Got some splendid fire-wood fur you, mother," he said after a few

minutes' silence enforced by eating.

"And wot about the rootses?" asked Harry, "wull you be digging those out

to-morrer? It'll be an unaccountable tough job."

"Oh, I've found a way of gitting shut of them rootses--thought of it

while I wur working at the trees. I'm going to blast 'em out."

"Blast 'em!"

"Yes. Blast 'em wud gunpowder. I've heard of its being done. I'd never

dig all the stuff out myself--yards of it there be--willer rootses

always wur hemmed spready."

"It's never bin done in these parts."

"Well, it'll be done now, surelye. It'll show the folk here I mean

business--and that I'm a chap wud ideas."

There was indeed a mild excitement in the farms round Boarzell when

Reuben's new plan became known. In those times gunpowder was seldom used

for such purposes, and the undertaking was looked upon as a treat and a

display....

"Backfield's going to bust up his willer-rootses--fine sight it'll

be--like as not blow his own head off--I'll be there to see."

So when Reuben came to his territory the next afternoon he found a

small crowd assembled--Ditch, Ginner, Realf of Grandturzel, Coalbran of

Doozes, Pilcher of Birdseye, with a sprinkling of their wives, families,

and farm-hands. He himself had brought Naomi, and Harry was to join them

when he came back from an errand to Moor's Cottage. Reuben felt a trifle

important and in need of spectators. This was to be the crowning act of

conquest. When those roots were shattered away there would be nothing

but time and manure between him and the best oat-crop in Peasmarsh.

A quarter of an hour passed, and there was no sign of Harry. Reuben grew

impatient, for he wanted to have the ground tidied up by sunset. It was

a wan, mould-smelling afternoon, and already the sun was drifting

through whorls of coppery mist towards the shoulder of Boarzell. Reuben

looked up to the gorse-clump on the ridge, from behind which he expected

Harry to appear.

"I can't wait any longer," he said to Naomi, "something's kept him."

"He'll be disappointed," said Naomi softly.

"I can't help that--the sun's near down, and I must have everything

präaper by dark."

He went to where the fuse lay like a snake in the grass, and struck his

flint.

"Stand back everybody; I'm going to start her."

The group huddled back a few yards. The little flame writhed along

towards the stump. There was silence. Reuben stood a little way in front

of the others, leaning forward with eager, parted lips.

Suddenly Naomi cried out:

"There's Harry!"

A shadow appeared against the copper sky, and ran towards them down the

hill.

For a moment nobody seemed to realise what was boding. Then they heard a

shout that sounded like "Wait for me!" Naomi felt something rise in her

throat and sear the roof of her mouth like a hot cinder. She tried to

scream, but her parched tongue would not move. She staggered forward,

but Reuben flung her back.

"Stop!" he shouted.

Harry did not seem to hear.

"Stop!" yelled Reuben again. Then he cried, "Stand back!" to the crowd,

and ran towards his brother.

But it was too late. There was a sudden roar, a sheet of flame, a crash,

a dreadful scream, and then a far more dreadful silence.

One or two flames sang out of a hole in the ground, but scarcely

anything could be seen for the pall of smoke that hung over Boarzell,

black, and evil-smelling. The fumes made men choke, then they shuddered

and drew together, for through the smell of smoke and gunpowder came the

horrible smell of burnt flesh.

Reuben was lying on his face a few yards in front of the others. For

some seconds nobody moved. Then Backfield slowly raised himself on his

arms.

"I'm not hurt," he said in a shaking voice.

"Harry!" cried Naomi, as if someone were strangling her.

Reuben tottered to his feet. His face was black, and he was still half

stunned by the explosion.

"Harry!" cried Naomi--and then fainted.

The smoke clouds were lifting, and now everyone could see a smouldering

object that lay close to the hole, among bits of wood and stone.

Reuben ran towards it, Ditch and Realf followed him. The others huddled

stupidly together like sheep.

"His clothes are still burning--here, help me, you!" cried Reuben,

beating at the flames with his hands.

"He's dead," said Realf.

"Oh Lord!" wailed Ditch--"Oh Lord!"

"He's bin hit on the head wud a piece of wood. I reckon he died

painlessly. All this came afterwards."

"Wipe the blood off his face."

"Tell his poor girl he died wudout suffering."

"He äun't dead," said Reuben.

He had torn off the rags from his brother's heart, and felt it beating.

"He äun't dead."

"Oh Lord!" wailed Ditch.--"Oh Lord!"

"Here, you chaps, fetch a gëat and put him on it--and döan't let Naomi

see him."

Naomi had been taken back to Odiam, when Harry, still motionless and

apparently dead, was lifted on a gate, and borne away. Dark curds of

smoke drifted among the willows, and the acrid smell of powder clung to

the hillside like an evil ghost. The place where Harry had lain was

marked by charred and trampled grass, and a great pool of blood was

sinking into the ground ... it seemed to Reuben, as he turned

shudderingly away, as if Boarzell were drinking it up--eagerly,

greedily, as a thirsty land drinks up its first watering.

§ 8.

Dr. Espinette from Rye stood glumly by Harry's bed. His finger lay on

the fluttering pulse, and his eye studied the little of the sick man's

face that could be seen between its bandages.

"It's a bad business," he said at last; "that wound in the head's the

worst of it. The burns aren't very serious in themselves. You must keep

him quiet, and I'll call again to-morrow morning."

"When ull he wäake up?" asked Mrs. Backfield in the feeble voice her

tears had left her.

"I don't know--it may be in an hour or two, it mayn't be for a week."

"A week!"

"I've known them unconscious longer than that. But, cheer up,

ma'am--we're not going to let him slip past us."

The doctor went away, and after a time Reuben was able to persuade his

mother to go and lie down in the next room. He had quite recovered from

the shock of the explosion; indeed, he was now the only calm person in

the house. He sat down by Harry's bed, gazing at the unconscious face.

How horrible everything had been! How horrible everything was still,

with that loggish, inanimate thing lying there, all that was left of

Beautiful Harry. Reuben wondered if he would die. If so, he had killed

him--he had ignored his own inexperience and played splashy tricks with

his new land. But no--he had not killed him--it was Boarzell, claiming a

victim in the signal-rite of its subjection. He remembered how that

thirsty ground had drunk up Harry's blood. Perhaps it would drink up

much more blood before he had done with it--perhaps it would one day

drink up his blood.... A vague, a sudden, a ridiculous fear clutched his

thoughts; for the first time he felt afraid of the thing he had set out

to conquer--for the first time Boarzell was not just unfruitful soil,

harsh heather clumps and gorse-roots--it was something personal,

opposing, vindictive, blood-drinking.

He sprang to his feet and began pacing up and down the room. The window

square was black. He was glad he could not see Boarzell with its knob of

firs. Gradually the motion of his legs calmed his thoughts, he fell to

pondering more ordinary things--had his mother remembered to stand the

evening's milk in the cream pans? She had probably forgotten all about

the curate's butter to be delivered the next morning. What had Harry

done about those mangolds at Moor's Cottage? Durn it! He would have to

do all the work of the farm to-morrow--how he was to manage things he

didn't know, what with the dairy and the new chicks and the Alderney

having garget. He stopped pacing, and chin in hand was considering the

expediency of engaging outside help, when a voice from the bed cried

feebly:

"Oh!"

Reuben went to Harry's side, and bent over him.

"Oh," moaned his brother, "oh!--oh!"

"I'm here, old feller," said Reuben with a clumsy effort at tenderness.

"Bring a light, do--I can't abide this dark."

Reuben fetched the candle to the bedside.

"Where's Naomi?"

"She's asleep. Do you want her?"

"No--let her sleep. But bring me a light fur marcy's sake."

"I've brought it--it's here by the bed."

"I can't see it."

"You must--it's right in your eyes."

"I can't--oh!"

He started up in bed and gripped his brother's hand. He thrust his head

forward, his eyeballs straining.

"Take it away! take it away!" he screamed.

"Wot?" cried Reuben, sick with the new-born terror.

"That black stuff in front of my eyes. Take it away! Take it away!"

He tore his hand free, and began clawing and beating at his face.

Reuben's teeth were chattering.

"Kip calm, lad--kip calm. There's naun there, naun, I tell you."

"Oh, oh!"--screamed Harry--"Oh, oh, oh!"

The outcry brought Mrs. Backfield from the next room, Naomi shivering in

her wake. Reuben was trying to hold Harry down in bed.

Through the long night they wrestled with him, blind and raving. At

first it seemed as if Naomi's presence soothed him, and he would let her

stroke his arms and hands. But after a time he ceased to recognise her.

He gabbled about her a good deal, but did not know she was there. His

delirium was full of strange tags--a chicken brood he was raising, a

sick cow, a jaunt into Rye with Realf of Grandturzel, a dozen harmless

homely things which were all transfused with an alien horror, all

somehow made frightful, so that Reuben felt he could never look on

chickens, cows or Rye again without a shudder.

Sometimes there were crises of extraordinary violence when he was with

difficulty held down in bed, and these at last wore him out. Towards

dawn he fell into a troubled sleep.

Naomi slept too, huddled in a chair, every now and then a sob quivering

through her. The winter dawn slowly crept in on her, showing her pitiful

figure--showing Mrs. Backfield sick and puffy with tears, Reuben

dry-eyed beside the bed, and Harry respited in sleep. Outside the crest

of Boarzell was once more visible in the growing light--dark, lumpish,

malevolent, against the kindling of the sky.

§ 9.

The next few days were terrible, in the house and on the farm. Indoors

the women nursed Harry, and outdoors Reuben did double work, sleeping at

night in an arm-chair by his brother's side.

Harry had recovered consciousness, but it could not be said that he had

"come to himself." "Beautiful Harry," with all his hopes and ardours,

his dreams and sensibilities, had run away like a gipsy, and in his

place was a new Harry, blind and mad, who moaned and laughed, with stony

silences, and now and then strange fits of struggling as if the runaway

gipsy strove to come back.

Dr. Espinette refused to say whether this state was permanent or merely

temporary. Neither could he be sure whether it was due to his injuries

or to the shock of finding himself blind. Reuben felt practically

convinced that his brother was sane during the few moments he had spoken

to him alone, but the doctor seemed doubtful.

Reuben was glad to escape into his farm work. The atmosphere of sickness

was like a cloud, which grew blacker and blacker the nearer one came to

its heart. Its heart was that little room in the gable, where he spent

those wretched nights, disturbed by Harry's moaning. Out of doors, in

the yard or the cowshed or the stable, he breathed a cleaner atmosphere.

The heaviness, the vague remorse, grew lighter. And strange to say, out

on Boarzell, which was the cause of his trouble, they grew lightest of

all.

Somehow out there was a wider life, a life which took no reck of

sickness or horror or self-reproach. The wind which stung his face and

roughed his hair, the sun which tanned his nape as he bent to his work,

the smell of the earth after rain, the mists that brewed in the hollows

at dusk, and at dawn slunk like spirits up to the clouds ... they were

all part of something too great to take count of human pain--so much

greater than he that in it he could forget his trouble, and find ease

and hope and purpose--even though he was fighting it.

He mildly scandalised his neighbours by blasting--privately this

time--the tree stumps yet in the ground. According to their ethics he

should have accepted Harry's accident as the voice of Providence and

abstained from his outlandish methods--also some felt that it was a

matter of delicacy and decent feeling not to repeat that which had had

such dire consequences for his brother. "I wonder he can bear to do it,"

said Ginner, when 'Bang! Bang!' came over the hummocks to Socknersh.

But Reuben did it because he was not going to be beaten in any respect

by his land. He was not going to accept defeat in the slightest

instance. So he blew up the stumps, tidied the ground, and spread

manure--and more manure--and yet more manure.

Manure was his great idea at that moment. He had carefully tilled and

turned the soil, and he fed it with manure as one crams chickens. It was

of poor quality marl, mostly lime on the high ground, with a larger

proportion of clay beside the ditch. Reuben's plan was to fatten it well

before he sowed his seed. Complaints of his night-soil came all the way

from Grandturzel; Vennal, humorously inclined, sent him a bag of rotten

fish; on the rare occasions his work allowed him to meet other farmers

at the Cocks, his talk was all of lime, guano, and rape-cake, with

digressions on the possibilities of seaweed. He was manure mad.

The neighbours despised and mistrusted his enthusiasm. There he was,

thinking of nothing but his land, when Harry, his only brother, lay

worse than dying. But Reuben often thought of Harry.

One thing he noticed, and that was that the housework was always done

for him by his mother as if there were no sickness to fill her time.

Always when he came home of an evening, his supper was waiting for him,

hot and savoury. He breakfasted whenever he had a mind, and there were

slices of cold pie or dabs of bread and meat for him to take out and eat

as he worked--he had no time to come home to dinner now. Really his

mother was tumbling to things wonderfully well--she looked a little

tired sometimes, it is true, and the lines of her face were growing

thinner, but she was saving him seven shillings a month and the girl's

food; and all that money and food was feeding the hungry earth.

Naomi helped her with the nursing, and also a little about the house.

She had refused to go home to Rye, though Harry did not seem to

recognise her.

"For sometimes," she said, "I think he does."

§ 10.

Towards the middle of February a change took place in Harry. At first it

was little more than a faint creep of life, putting a little glow in his

cheeks, a little warmth in his blood. Then the wounds which had been

healing so slowly began to heal quickly, his appetite returned, and he

slept long and sweetly at nights.

Mrs. Backfield's hope rekindled, but the doctor soon damped it down.

This sudden recrudescence of physical health was a bad sign, for there

was no corresponding revival of intellect, and now the prostration of

the body could no longer account for the aberration of the mind. It was

unlikely that Harry would ever recover his wits--the injuries to his

skull, either with or without the shock of his blindness, had definitely

affected his brain. The strong, clear will, the gay spirits, the quick

understanding, the tender sensibilities which had made him so bright and

lovable a being, were gone--how much of shreds and scraps they had left

behind them to build up the semblance of a man, did not yet appear.

His looks would be only slightly marred. It was the optic nerve which

had been destroyed, and so far there was nothing ugly in the eyes

themselves, except their vacant rolling. The eyelashes and eyebrows had

been burnt off, but they were growing again, and a scar on his cheek and

another on his forehead were not likely to show much in a few weeks'

time. But all the life, the light, the soul had gone out of his face--it

was like a house which had been gutted, with walls and roof still

standing, yet with its essential quality gone from it, a ruin.

Reuben thought long and anxiously about his brother. He did not speak

much of him to his mother or Naomi, for he knew that they would not

understand the problem that confronted him. He felt worn by the extra

load of work, and his brain fretted, spoiling his good sleep. He was

back in his own room now, but he slept worse than in Harry's; he would

lie awake fighting mentally, just as all day he had fought

physically--life was a continuous fight.

It was hard that just at the outset of his enterprise, fresh obstacles

should be thrown in his way. He saw that it was practically impossible

for him to go on working as he did; already he was paying for it in

stiff muscles, loss of appetite, fitful sleep, and drugged wakings. Also

he was growing irritable and frayed as to temper. If he went on much

longer doing the work of three men--he had always done the work of

two--he would end by breaking up completely, and then what would become

of Odiam? He would have to engage outside help, and that would mean

quite ten shillings a week--ten shillings a week, two pounds a month,

twenty-six pounds a year, the figures were like blisters in his head

during the long restless nights. They throbbed and throbbed through his

dreams. He would have to spend twenty-six pounds a year, just when he

was saving so desperately to buy more land and fatten what he already

had. And in addition he would have to pay for Harry's keep. Not only

must he engage a man to do his work, but he would have to support in

absolute idleness Harry himself. He was quite unfit for farm work, he

would be nothing but an expense and an incubus.

In those dark furious hours, Reuben would wish his brother had died. It

was not as if life could be sweet to him. It was terrible to see him

mouching and mumbling about the house, to hold even the brief converse

with him which everyday life enforced. He had not as yet grown used to

his blindness, indeed it would be difficult for him to do so without

wits to stimulate and direct his other senses, and it was dreadful to

see him tumbling over furniture, breaking things and crying afterwards,

spilling food on his clothes and his beard--for now that he could not

shave himself, and others had no time to do it for him, he wore a large

fair beard, which added to his uncouthness.

Oh that his brother had died!

One day Reuben was so tired that he fell asleep over his supper. His

mother cleared the table round him, glancing at him with fond,

submissive eyes. Each day she had come to love him more, with an

obedient love, almost instinctive and elemental, which she had never

felt for the gentle husband or considerate son. This evening she laid

her shawl over his shoulders, and went to her washing-up.

Suddenly a weird noise came from the parlour, a strange groaning and

wailing. Reuben woke up, and rubbed his eyes. What was that? It was

horrible, it was uncanny--and for him it also had that terrifying

unnaturalness which a sudden waking gives even to the most ordinary

sounds.

Then gradually out of the horror beauty began to grow. The sound passed

into an air, faltering at first, then flowing--"Dearest Ellen," on

Harry's violin.

"I'm glad he's found something to amuse him, poor son," said Mrs.

Backfield, coming in to see if Reuben had waked.

"He's not playing badly, is he, mother?"

"Not at all. They say as sometimes blind folk are unaccountable good at

music."

Reuben did not answer; she knew by his attitude--chin in hand--that he

was thinking.

That night he thought it out.

Munds of Starvecrow had had a brother who fiddled at fairs and weddings

and earned, so Munds said, thirty pounds a year. He had also heard of

others who made as good a thing of it. If Harry earned thirty pounds a

year he would pay the wages of an extra farm-hand and also something

towards his own keep. They must find out exactly how many of the old

tunes he remembered, and get somebody musical to teach him new ones.

The idea prospered in Reuben's thoughts that night. The next morning he

was full of it, and confided it to his mother and Naomi.

Naomi, a little paler and more wistful than of old, still spent an

occasional day or two at Odiam. At first she had made these visits for

Harry's sake, flattering herself that he was the better for her

presence; then when even her faith began to fail, she still came, partly

to help Mrs. Backfield, partly driven by such feelings as might drive an

uneasy ghost to haunt the house of his tragedy. Reuben saw little of

her, for his work claimed him, but he liked to feel she was there,

helping his mother with work which it was difficult for her to carry

through alone to Odiam's best advantage.

She heard of Reuben's plan with some shrinking.

"He--he wouldn't like it," she stammered after a pause.

"You'll never go sending our Harry to fiddle at fairs," said Mrs.

Backfield.

"Why not? There's naun shameful in it. Munds's brother did it for twenty

years. And think of the difference it'll mäake to us--thirty pound or so

a year, instead of the dead loss of Harry's keep and the wages of an

extra man beside. I tell you, mother, I wur fair sick about the farm

till I thought of this."

"It's always the farm wud you, Reuben. You might sometimes think of your

own kin."

"I tell you Harry wöan't mind--he'll like it. It'll be something to

occupy him. Besides, hem it all, mother! you can't expect me to kip him

idling here, wud the farm scarce started yet, and nearly the whole of

Boarzell still to buy."

But it was useless to expect either Mrs. Backfield or Naomi to

appreciate the momentousness of his task. Were women always, he

wondered, without ambition? However, though they did not sympathise,

they would not oppose him--Naomi because she was not skilful at

opposition, his mother because he was gradually taking the place of

Harry in her heart.

He had more trouble when a day or so later he asked Naomi to inspect

Harry's musical equipment.

"You see, I döan't know one tune from another, so I can't do it myself.

You might git him to play one or two things over to you, Naomi, and find

out what he remembers."

"I'd rather not," said Naomi, shuddering.

"Why?"

"Oh--I just can't."

"But why?"

She could not tell him. If he did not understand how every note from

Harry's violin would jab and tear the tortured memories she was trying

to put to sleep--if he did not understand that of himself, she would

never be able to explain it to him.

As a matter of fact he did understand, but he was resolute.

"Help me, Naomi," he pleaded, "fur I can't manage wudout you."

His eyes searched her face. People who met him only casually were

generally left with the impression that he had black eyes, but as a

matter of fact they were dark blue. A hidden power forced Naomi's eyes

to meet them ... they were narrow and deep-set, with extraordinarily

long lashes. She gazed into them for a moment without speaking. Then

suddenly her own filled with an expression of hatred, and she ran out of

the room.

But he had won his point. That evening Naomi made Harry play over his

"tunes," while Reuben sat in the chimney corner watching them both.

Harry's memory was erratic--he would play through some well-known airs

quite correctly up to a certain point, and then interpolate hysterical

variations of his own. At other times memory failed him altogether, but

his natural quickness of ear seemed to have increased since his

blindness, and it only needed Naomi to sing the passage over for him to

fill up the gaps.

She took him through "The Woodpecker Tapping," "Dearest Ellen," "I'd

mourn the hopes that leave me," "The Song of Seth's House," and "The

Blue Bells of Scotland." Each one of them was torment to her gentle

heart, as it woke memory after memory of courtship--on the gorse-slopes

of Boarzell, among the chasing shadows of Iden Wood, on the Rother

marshes by Thornsdale, where the river slinks up from the Fivewatering

... or in this very kitchen here, where the three of them, divided from

one another by dizzy gaps of suffering, desire and darkness, were

gathered together in a horrible false association.

But Harry's face was blank, no memories seemed to stir for him, he just

fiddled on, now and then receiving Naomi's corrections with an outbreak

of childish temper. On these occasions Reuben would stamp his foot and

speak to him in a loud, angry voice which inevitably made him behave

himself.

Naomi always took advantage of these returns to docility, but later that

evening in the dairy, she suddenly swung round on Mrs. Backfield and

exclaimed petulently:

"I hate that Ben of yours!"

§ 11.

Harry made good progress, and Reuben decided that he was to start his

career at the October Fair. There had been a fiddler at the Fair for

years, partly for the lasses and lads to dance to, partly for the less

Bacchic entertainments of their elders. It was at the Fair that men took

his measure, and engaged him accordingly for weddings and such

festivals. Luck would have it that for the last two years there had

been no official fiddler--old Abel Pinch having been seduced by a

semi-urban show, which wandered round London, camping on waste grounds

and commons. The musical element had been supplied by strays, and Reuben

had no doubt but that he should now be able to instal his brother

honourably as chief musician.

He advertised him in the neighbourhood for some weeks beforehand, and

gossip ran high. Condemnation of Backfield's ruthlessness in exploiting

his brother was combined with a furtive admiration of his smartness as a

business man. It was extraordinary how little he cared about "lowering

himself," a vital matter with the other farmers of his position. Just as

he had thought nothing of working his own farm instead of indulging in

the dignity of hired labour, so he thought nothing of making money at

Boarzell Fair with the gipsies and pikers.

Naomi no longer protested. For one thing Harry seemed to like his

fiddling, and was quite overjoyed at the prospect of playing at the

Fair. Strangely enough, he remembered the Fair and its jollities, though

he had forgotten all weightier matters of life and love.

"Where shall I stand?--by the gipsies' tent?--or right forrard by the

stalls? I'd like to stand by the stalls, and then maybe when I'm not

fiddling they'll give me sweeties."

"You must behave yourself," said Reuben, in the tones he would have used

to a child--"you mustn't go vrothering people to give you sweeties."

"I'll give you some sweeties, Harry," said Naomi.

"Oh, will you?--Then I'll love you!"

Naomi turned away with a shudder, her eyes full of inexpressible pain.

Reuben looked after her as she went out of the room, then he took a

couple of strides and caught her up in the passage.

"It's I who'm täaking you to the Fair, remember," he said, his hand on

her arm.

"Oh, no ... I couldn't go to the Fair."

"Nonsense--you're coming wud me."

"Oh, Ben, don't make me go."

It was the cry of her weakness to his purpose.

"I shall mäake you ... dear."

She flung herself from him, and ran upstairs. That night at supper she

took no notice of him, talking garrulously all the time to Mrs.

Backfield.

But she went to the Fair.

In the soft grey gown that the first of the cold demanded she walked

with her arm through Reuben's up the Moor. Her bonnet was the colour of

heather, tied with wide ribbons that accentuated the milkiness of her

chin. Reuben wore his Sunday clothes--drab shorts and a sprigged

waistcoat, and a wide-brimmed hat under which his face looked strangely

handsome and dark. Harry shuffled along, clutching his brother's

coat-sleeve to guide himself. Mrs. Backfield preferred to stay at home,

and Reuben had not tried to make her come.

All Peasmarsh went to the Fair. It was a recognised holiday. All farm

work--except the most barely necessary--was put aside, and the ploughman

and dairymaid rollicked with their betters. The road across Boarzell was

dark with them, coming from all quarters--Playden, Iden, Beckley,

Northiam, Bodiam--Old Turk's Farm, Baron's Grange, Corkwood,

Kitchenhour--even from Blackbrook and Ethnam on the Kentish border.

The tents and stalls were blocked as usual round the central crest of

pines. It was all much as it had been five years ago on the day of the

Riot. There was the outer fringe of strange dwellings--tents full of

smoke and sprawling squalling children, tilt carts with soup-pots

hanging from their axles over little fires, and gorgeously painted

caravans which stood out aristocratically amidst the prevalent sacking.

There was a jangle of voices--the soft Romany of the gipsies, the

shriller cant of the pikers and half-breeds, the broad drawling Sussex

of the natives. Head of all the Fair, and superintending the working of

the crazy merry-go-round, was Gideon Teazel, a rock-like man, son, he

said, of a lord and a woman of the Rosamescros or Hearnes. He stood six

foot eight in his boots and could carry a heifer across his shoulders.

His wife Aurora, a pure-bred gipsy, told fortunes, and was mixed up in

more activities than would appear from her sleepy manner or her

invariable position, pipe in mouth, on the steps of her husband's

caravan. Gideon loved to display his devotion for her by grotesque

endearments and elephantine caresses--due no doubt to the gaujo strain

in him, for the true gipsies always treated their women in public as

chattels or beasts of burden, though privately they were entirely under

their thumbs.

Reuben brought Naomi and Harry into the middle of the Fair. Many people

stared at them. It was Harry's first public appearance since his

illness, and one or two comments louder than the general hum came to

Naomi's ears and made them pink.

Harry was soon established on the upturned cask beside the fighting

booth which had always been the fiddler's place. He began to play at

once--"Nice Young Maidens"--to all appearances quite indifferent to the

jostle round him. Naomi could not help marvelling at Reuben, too--he was

so cool, possessed and assured, so utterly without anything in the way

of embarrassment or self-consciousness.

Wonder was succeeded by wrath--how dare he be calm in the face of such

terrible things? She tried to pull her hand out of his arm, but he held

his elbow close to his side, and the little hand lay there like an

imprisoned mouse.

"Let's go away," she whispered, half nervously and half angrily, "I

hate standing here."

"I want to see how he's going to manage," said Reuben. "What'll he do

when he comes to the end of this tune?"

"Oh, do let's go away."

He did not answer, but stood there imperturbable, till Harry, having

successfully finished "Nice Young Maidens," started "The Woodpecker

Tapping" without any ado.

"He's safe enough now--we may as well go and have a look round."

Naomi followed him out of the little crowd which had grouped round

Harry, and they wandered into the Panorama tent to see the show. After

having sat for half an hour on a crowded bench, in an atmosphere thick

with foul tobacco and the smell of clothes long stored away--watching

"The Coronation of Queen Victoria" and "Scenery on the West Coast of

Scotland" rumble slowly past with many creaks--they moved on to the

sparring booth, where Buck Washington, now a little knotted and disabled

by a bout of rheumatism, arranged scraps between the ploughboys of the

neighbouring farms.

Unluckily, the object of sparring, as practised locally, was to draw as

much blood from the adversary as possible. The combatants went straight

for each others' noses, in spite of the conjurations of Buck, and Naomi

soon exercised her privilege as a town girl, and said she felt faint.

Reuben took her out, and they walked round the stalls, at one of which

he bought her a cherry ribbon for her fairing. At another they bought

gingerbread. Gradually her spirits began to revive--she applauded his

power at the shooting gallery, and when they came to the cocoanut shie,

she was laughing out loud.

Reuben seemed to have an endless supply of money. He, whom she had seen

deny himself white bread and tobacco, and scold his mother if she used

eggs to make a pudding, did not seem now to care how much he spent for

her amusement. He vowed, laughing, that she should not leave the shie

till she had brought down a nut, and the showman pocketed pennies till

he grinned from ear to ear, while Naomi threw the wooden balls in all

directions, hitting the showman and the spectators and once even Reuben

himself. At last he took her arm, and putting himself behind her managed

after one or two attempts to guide a successful throw. They went off

laughing with her prize, and came once more to the open ground where

Harry was still playing his fiddle.

Evidently he had pleased the multitude, for there was now a thick crowd

in the central space, and already dancing had begun. Farm-hands in clean

smocks, with bright-coloured handkerchiefs round their necks, gambolled

uncouthly with farm-girls in spotted and striped muslins. Young farmers'

wives, stiff with the sedateness of their bridehead, were drawn into

reluctant capers. Despairing virgins renewed their hope, and tried wives

their liveliness in unaccustomed arms. Even the elders danced, stumping

together on the outskirts of the whirl as long as their breath allowed

them.

Harry played "The Song of Seth's House," which in spite of--or because

of--its sadness was a good dancing tune. There was no definite step,

just anything the dancers fancied. Some kicked up their heels

vigorously, others slid them sedately, some held their partners by the

hand, others with both arms round their waist.

Then suddenly Naomi found herself in the thick of the crowd, at once

crushed and protected by Reuben's six foot three of strength. At first

she was shocked, chilled--she had never danced at a fair before, and it

seemed dreadful to be dancing here with Reuben while Harry fiddled. But

gradually the jovial movement, the vigour and gay spirits of her

partner, wore down her reluctance. Once more she was impressed by that

entire absence of self-consciousness and false pride which characterised

him. After all, why should they not dance here together? Why should they

stand glum while everyone else was merrymaking? Harry did not notice

them, and if he did he would not care.

"The blackbird flew out from the eaves of the Manor,

The Manor of Seth in the Sussex countrie,

And he carried a prayer from the lad of the Manor,

A prayer and a tear to his faithless ladie."

She found herself bending to the rhythm of the music, swaying in

Reuben's arms. He held her lightly, and it was wonderful how clever he

was in avoiding concussion with the other dancers, most of whom bumped

about regardless of anybody else.

"To the lady who lives in the Grange by the water,

The water of Iron in the Sussex countrie,

The lad of Seth's House prays for comfort and pity--

Have pity, my true love, have pity on me!"

A sudden weariness passed over Naomi, and Reuben led her out of the

dance and brought her a drink of mild icy ale. He did not offer to take

her home, and she did not ask to go. If he had offered she would have

gone, but she had no will of her own--all desire, all initiative was

drowned in the rhythm of the dance and the sadness of the old tune.

"O why when we loved like the swallows in April,

Should beauty forget now their nests have grown cold?

O why when we kissed 'mid the ewes on the hanger,

Should you turn from me now that they winter in fold?"

He led her back into the crowd, and once more she felt his arms round

her, so light, so strong, while her feet spun with his, tricked by

magic. She became acutely conscious of his presence--the roughness of

his coat-sleeve, the faint scent of the sprigged waistcoat, which had

been folded away in lavender. And all the while she had another picture

of him in her heart, not in his Sunday best, but in corduroys and the

blue shirt which had stood out of the January dusk, the last piece of

colour in the day. She remembered the swing of his arm, the crash of the

axe on the trunk, the bending of his back as he pulled it out, the

muscles swelled under the skin ... and then the tingling creep in her

own heart, that sudden suffocating thrill which had come to her there

beside Harry in the gloam....

The dusk was falling now, splashed by crude flares over the stalls, and

once more that creep--delicious, tingling, suffocating--was in her

heart, the intoxication of the weak by the strong. It seemed as if he

were holding her closer. She grew warm, and yet she would not stop.

There was sweat on her forehead, she felt her woollen gown sticking to

her shoulders--but she would not rest. The same old tune jigged on--it

was good to dance to, and Harry liked playing it.

"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?"

The dance was becoming more of a rout. Hats fell back, even Naomi's

heather-coloured bonnet became disorderly. Kerchiefs were crumpled and

necks bare. Arms grew tighter, there were few merely clasping hands now.

Then a lad kissed his partner on the neck while they danced, and soon

another couple were spinning round with lips clinging together. The

girls' hair grew rough and blew in their boys' eyes--there were sounds

of panting--of kissing--Naomi grew giddy, round her was a whirl of

colour, hands, faces, the dusk and flaring lights. She clung closer to

Reuben, and his arms tightened about her.

"One day when your pride shall have brought you to sorrow,

And years of despair and remorse been your fate,

Perhaps your cold heart will remember Seth's Manor,

And turn to your true love--and find it too late."

§ 12.

Reuben was pleased with the results of that Fair Day. Harry had been a

complete success. Even on the day itself he was engaged to fiddle at a

local wedding, and thenceforth no festival was complete without him. He

became the fashion in Peasmarsh. His birth and family gave proceedings

an air of gentility, and his tragic story imparted romance. Also his

real musical gifts were appreciated by some, as well as his tirelessness

and good nature. Occasionally he would have fits of crazy ill-temper,

but only required firm handling. Reuben saw that his brother, instead of

being entirely on the debit side of Odiam's accounts, would add

materially to its revenues. He became exceedingly kind to Harry, and

gave him apples and sweets.

That autumn he had sown his oats. He sowed English Berlie, after

wavering for some time between that and Barbachlaw. Quantities of rape

cake had been delivered in the furrows with the seed, and now the fields

lay, to the eye, wet and naked--to the soul, to Reuben's farmer-soul,

full of the hidden promise which should sprout with May.

He had a man to help him on the farm, Beatup, an uncouth coltish lad,

with an unlimited capacity for work. Reuben never let him touch the new

ground, but kept him busy in barn and yard with the cattle. Mrs.

Backfield worked in the house as usual, and she now also had charge of

the poultry; for Reuben having given them up to her when he was

single-handed, had not taken them back--he had to look after Beatup, who

wanted more watching than Harry, and he also had bought two more pigs as

money-makers. He was saving, stinting, scraping to buy more land.

Mrs. Backfield sometimes had Naomi to help her. Naomi often came to stay

at Odiam. She did not know why she came; it was not for love of Mrs.

Backfield, and the sight of Harry wrung her heart. She had fits of

weeping alternating with a happy restlessness.

Ever since the day of the Fair a strange feeling had possessed her,

sometimes just for fitful moments, sometimes for long days of panic--the

feeling of being pursued. She felt herself being hunted, slowly, but

inevitably, by one a dozen times more strong, more knowing, more

stealthy than herself. She heard his footsteps in the night, creeping

after her down long labyrinths of thought, sometimes his shadow sped

before her with her own. And she knew that one day he would seize

her--though she struggled, wept and fled, she knew that one day she

would be his at last, and of her own surrender. The awful part of that

seizing would be that it would be a matter of her will as well as

his....

She was afraid of Reuben, she fled before him like a poor little lamb,

trembling and bleating--and yet she would sometimes long for the

inevitable day when he would grasp her and fling her across his

shoulders.

She could not discipline her attitude towards him--sometimes she was

composed, distant even in her thoughts; at others a kind of delirious

excitement possessed her, she flushed and held down her head in his

presence, could not speak to him, and groped blindly for escape. She

would, on these occasions, end by returning to Rye, but away from Reuben

a restless misery tormented her, driving her back to Odiam.

She sometimes asked herself if she loved him, and in cold blood there

was only one answer to that question--No. What she felt for him was not

love, but obsession--if she had never loved she might have mistaken it,

but with her memories of Harry she could not. And the awful part of it

was that her heart was still Harry's, though everything else was

Reuben's. Her desires, her thoughts, her will were all Reuben's--by a

slow remorseless process he was making them his own--but her heart, the

loving, suffering part of her, was still Harry's, and might always be

his.

She was not continuously conscious of this--sometimes she forgot Harry,

sometimes he repulsed her, often she was afraid of him. But in moments

of quiet her heart always gave her the same message, like distant music,

drowned in a storm.

One day she was in the dairy at Odiam, skimming the cream-pans. The

sunshine, filtered to a watery yellow by the March afternoon, streamed

in on her, putting a yellow tinge into her white skin and white apron.

Her hair was the colour of fresh butter, great pats and cakes of which

stood on the slabs beside her. There was a smell of butter and standing

milk in the cold, rather damp air. Naomi skimmed the cream off the pans

and put it into a brown bowl.

Suddenly she realised that Reuben had come into the dairy, and was

standing beside her, a little way behind.

"Hullo, Ben," she said nervously--it was one of her nervous days.

"How's the cream to-day?"

"Capital."

He dipped his finger into the pan, and sucked it.

"Oughtn't it to stand a bit longer?"

"I don't think so."

"Taste it----"

He dipped his finger again, and suddenly thrust it between her lips.

She drew her head away almost angrily, and moved to the next pan.

Then he stooped and kissed her quite roughly on the neck, close to the

nape.

She cried out and turned round on him, but he walked out of the dairy.

For a moment Naomi stood stockish, conscious only of two sensations in

her body--the taste of cream on her lips, and a little cold place at the

back of her neck. She began to tremble, then suddenly the colour left

her cheeks, for in the doorway of the wash-house, three yards off, stood

Harry.

He did not move, and for some unaccountable reason she felt sure that he

knew Reuben had kissed her. A kind of sickness crept up to her heart;

she held out her hands before her, and tottered a little. She felt

faint.

"Harry!" she called.

He came shuffling up to her, and for a moment stood straining his blind

eyes into her face.

"Harry--will you--will you take this basin of cream to your mother?"

He was still looking into her eyes, and she was visited by a terrible

feeling that came to her sometimes and went as quickly--that he was not

so mad as people thought.

"Will you take it?"

He nodded.

She gave him the cream bowl. Their hands accidentally touched; she

pulled hers away, and the bowl fell and was broken.

§ 13.

The next day Naomi left for Rye, where she stayed three weeks. She was

mistaken, however, in thinking she had found a place of refuge, the hunt

still went on. Reuben knew that his kiss had given him a definite

position with regard to her, and Naomi knew that he knew. Twice he came

over and visited her at Rye. He never attempted to kiss her again, and

carefully avoided all talk of love. Indeed, her father was generally in

the room. He was much taken with young Backfield, who was ready to talk

shipping and harbour-work with him for hours.

"He's a solider man than ever poor Harry was," said old Gasson to Naomi,

"more dependable, I should think. Reckon he'll do well for himself at

Odiam. She'll be a lucky girl whom he marries."

Naomi had no mother.

Reuben was pleased with the impression he had made. He was now working

definitely. At first he had merely drifted, drawn by the charm of the

female creature, so delicate, soft and weak. Then commonsense had taken

the rudder--he had seen Naomi's desirableness from a practical point of

view; she was young, good-looking, sound if scarcely robust, well

dowered, and of good family--fit in every way to be the mother of his

children. Since Harry was debarred from marrying her, his brother could

even more profitably take his place. Her money would then go direct to

his ambition; he realised the enormous advantage of a little reserve

capital and longed for a relaxation of financial strain. The Gassons

were an old and respected family, and an alliance with them would give

lustre to Odiam. Also he wanted children. He was fond of Naomi for her

own sake. Poor little chicken! Her weakness appealed to him, and he

rather enjoyed seeing her fluttering before his feet.

Towards the middle of April she came back to the farm to help Mrs.

Backfield with her house-cleaning. She clung to the older woman all day,

but she knew that Reuben would at last find her alone.

He did. She was laying the supper while Mrs. Backfield finished mending

a curtain upstairs, when he marched suddenly into the room. He had come

in from the yard, and his clothes smelt of the cow-stalls and of the

manure that he loved. His face was moist; he stood in front of her and

mopped his brow.

"I'm hungry, Naomi. Wot have you got fur me?"

"There's eggs...."

"Wot else?"

"Bread ... cheese...."

She could scarcely frame the homely words. For some unaccountable reason

she felt afraid, felt like some poor creature in a trap.

"Wot else?"

"That's all."

"All! But I'm still hungry. Wot more do you think I want?"

She licked her lips.

He leaned over the table towards her.

"Wot more have you got fur me?"

"Nothing, I--I'm going upstairs. Let me pass, please."

"Maybe I want a kiss."

"Oh, no, no!" she cried, trying to edge between him and the wall.

"Why not?"

He put his hands on her shoulders, she felt the warmth and heaviness of

them, and was more frightened than ever because she liked it.

"Maybe I want more than a kiss."

She was leaning against the wall, if he had released her she could not

have run away. She was like a rabbit, paralysed with fear.

He bent towards her and his lips closed on hers. She nearly fainted, but

she did not struggle or try to scream. It seemed years that they stood

linked by that unwilling kiss. At last he raised his head.

"Will you marry me, Naomi?"

"No---- Oh, no!"

"Why?"

"No--no--I can't--I won't!"

Strength came to her suddenly; it was like awaking from a nightmare. She

thrust him from her, slipped past, and ran out of the room.

The next morning she returned to Rye. But she could not stay there. Her

heart was all restlessness and dissatisfaction. Soon Mrs. Backfield

announced that she was coming back.

"I reckoned she would," said Reuben.

She arrived in the swale. A tender grey mist was in the air, smeething

Boarzell, mingling with the smoke of Odiam chimneys, that curled out

wood-scented into the dark. As Naomi climbed from the carrier's cart

which had brought her, she smelled the daffodils each side of the garden

path. The evening was full of pale perfumes, of ghostly yellows, massing

faintly amidst the grey.

Reuben stood in the doorway and watched her come up the path, herself

dim and ghostly, like the twilight and the flowers. When she was close

he held out his arms to her, and she fell on his breast.

§ 14.

From thenceforward there was no looking back. Preparations for the

wedding began at once. Old Gasson was delighted, and dowered his girl

generously. As for Naomi, she gave herself up to the joys of

bride-elect. Her position as Reuben's betrothed was much more important

than as Harry's. It was more definite, more exalted, the ultimate

marriage loomed more largely and more closely in it. She and Reuben were

not so much sweethearts as husband and wife to be. Their present

semi-attached state scarcely counted, it was just an unavoidable

interval of preparation for a more definite relationship.

She was glad in a way that everything was so different, glad that

Reuben's love-making was so utterly unlike Harry's. Otherwise she could

never have plunged herself so deep into forgetfulness. She was quite

without regrets--she could never have imagined she could be so free of

them. She lived for the present, and for the future which was not her

own. She was at rest. No longer the pursuing feet came after her, making

her life a nightmare of long flights--she was safe in her captor's

grasp, borne homeward on his shoulder.

She was not exaltedly happy or wildly expectant. Her anticipations were

mostly material, buyings and stitchings. She looked forward to her

position as mistress of Odiam, and stocked her linen cupboard. As for

Reuben, her attitude towards him had changed at once with surrender. If

he no longer terrified, also he no longer thrilled. She had grown fond

of him, peacefully and domestically so, in a way she could never have

been fond of Harry. She loved to feel his strong arm round her, his

shoulder under her head, she loved to nestle close up to him and feel

his warmth. His kisses were very different from Harry's, more lingering,

more passionate, but, paradoxically, they thrilled her less. There had

always been a touch of the wild and elfin in Harry's love-making which

suggested an adventure in fairyland, whereas Reuben's suggested nothing

but earth, and the earth is not exciting to those who have been in

faery.

At last the wedding-day came--an afternoon in May, gloriously white and

blue. Naomi stood before her mirror with delicious qualms, while one or

two girl friends took the place of her mother and helped her to dress.

She wore white silk, very full in the skirt, with a bunch of lilies of

the valley in the folds of the bodice, which was cut low, showing the

soft neck that in contrast to the dead white of the silk had taken a

delicious creamy cowslip tint. Her lovable white hat was trimmed with

artificial lilies of the valley, and she had white kid gloves and tiny

white kid shoes.

She was very happy, and if she thought of Harry and what might have

been, it only brought a delightful sad-smiling melancholy over her

happiness like a bridal veil.

"How do I look?" she asked her friends.

"You look charming!"--"how well your hat becomes you!"--"how small your

feet seem in your new shoes!"--"how sweet you smell!"--chorused the

girls, loving her more than ever because they envied her, after the

manner of girls.

Naomi walked to church on her father's arm. She held her head down, and

her bridesmaids saw her neck grow pink below the golden fluff on the

nape. She hid her face from Reuben and would not look at him as they

stood side by side before Rye altar. No one could hear her responses,

they were spoken so faintly, she was the typical Victorian bride, all

shy, trembling, and blushing.

Only once she dared look up, and that was when they were walking

solemnly from the communion table to the vestry--then she suddenly

looked up and saw Reuben's great strong shoulder towering above her own,

his face rather flushed under its sunburn, and his hair unusually sleek

and shining with some oil.

They did not speak to each other till he had her in his gig, driving up

Playden Hill. Then he muttered--"Liddle Naomi--my wife," and kissed her

on the neck and lips. She did not want him to kiss her, because she

wished to avoid crumpling her gown, and also she was afraid Reuben's

horse might choose that moment to kick or run away. But of course such

reasons did not appeal to him, and it was a dishevelled and rather cross

little bride whom he lifted out at Odiam.

The wedding supper was to be held at the bridegroom's house, as old

Gasson's rooms were not large enough, and he objected to "having the

place messed up." During the marriage service Mrs. Backfield had been

worrying about her pie-crusts--indeed she almost wished she had stayed

at home. Naomi helped her dish up the supper, while Reuben received the

guests who were beginning to arrive, some from Rye, some from the

neighbouring farms. There had been a certain amount of disgusted comment

when it became known that Backfield was marrying his brother's

sweetheart; but criticism of Reuben always ended in reluctant

admiration for his smartness as a business man.

"He'll go far, that young feller," said Realf of Grandturzel.

"Where's Harry?" Vennal asked.

"Sh-sh--döan't you go asking ork'ard questions."

"They wöan't have him to fiddle, I reckon," said Realf.

"I shud say even young Ben wudn't do that."

"Why not?" put in Ditch--"he döan't know naun about it. He's forgotten

she ever wur his girl."

"You can't be sure o' that, Mus' Ditch--only the Lard knows wot mad

folkses remember and wot they forget. But there's the supper ready; git

moving or we'll have to sit by the door."

Odiam's strict rule had been relaxed in honour of the wedding, and a

lavish, not to say luxurious, meal covered two long tables laid end to

end across the kitchen. There was beef and mutton, there was stew, there

were apple and gooseberry pies, and a few cone-shaped puddings, pink and

white and brown, giving an aristocratic finish to the supper.

Naomi and Reuben sat at the head of the table, Mr. Gasson and Mrs.

Backfield on either side of them. Harry was not present, for his methods

of feeding made him rather a disgusting object at meals. Naomi had put

herself tidy, but somehow she still felt disordered and flustered. She

hated all this materialism encroaching on her romance. The sight of the

farmers pushing for places at the table filled her with disgust--the

slightest things upset her, the untidy appearance of the dishes after

they had been helped, some beer stains on the cloth, even her husband's

hearty appetite and not quite noiseless eating. The room soon became

insufferably hot, and she felt herself getting damp and sticky--a most

unlovely condition for a bride.

When the actual feeding was over there were speeches and toasts. Vennal

of Burntbarns proposed the health of the bride, and Realf of Grandturzel

that of the groom. Then Mrs. Backfield's health was drunk, then Mr.

Gasson's. There were more toasts, and some songs--"Oh, no, I never

mention her," "The Sussex Whistling Song," and old farmhouse ballads,

such as:

"Our maid she would a hunting go,

She'd never a horse to ride;

She mounted on her master's boar,

And spurred him on the side.

Chink! chink! chink! the bridle went,

As she rode o'er the downs.

So here's unto our maiden's health,

Drink round, my boys! drink round!"

Naomi felt bored and sick; twice she yawned, and she stretched her tired

shoulders under her dress. At last Reuben noticed her discomfort.

"You're tired--you'd better go to bed," he whispered, and she at once

gladly rose and slipped away, though she would not have gone without his

suggestion.

"Can I help you, dear?" asked Mrs. Backfield as she passed her chair.

But Naomi wanted to be alone.

She stole out of the kitchen into the peace of the dark house, ran up

the stairs, and found the right door in the unlighted passage. The

bedroom was very big and cold, and on the threshold she wrinkled up her

nose at a strange scent, something like hay and dry flowers.

She groped her way to the chimney-piece and found a candle and a

tinder-box. The next minute a tiny throbbing flame fought unsuccessfully

with the darkness which still massed in the corners and among the

cumbrous bits of furniture. Naomi's new kid shoes were hurting her, and

she bent down to untie them; but even as she bent, her eyes were growing

used to the dim light, and she noticed something queer about the room.

She lifted her head and saw that the outlines of the dressing-table and

bed were rough ... the scent of dry grass suddenly revolted her.

She looked round, and this time she saw clearly. About the mirror, along

the bed-head, and garlanding the posts, were crude twists and lumps of

field flowers--dandelions buttercups, moon daisies, oxlips, fennel, and

cow-parsley, all bunched up with hay grass, all dry, withered, rotting,

and malodorous. There was a great sheaf of them on her pillow, an armful

torn up from a hay-field, still smelling of the sun that had blasted

it....

In a flash Naomi knew who had put them there. No sane mind could have

conceived such a decoration or seeing eyes directed it. Harry, exiled

from church and feast, had spent his time in a crazy effort to honour

the happy pair. He knew she was to marry Reuben, but had not seemed to

take much interest. Doubtless the general atmosphere of festivity and

adornment had urged him to this.

How dreadful! Already she saw an insect crawling over the bed--probably

there were lots of others about the room; and these flowers, all

parched, dead, and evil-smelling, gave a sinister touch to her wedding

day. A lump rose in her throat, the back of her eyes was seared by

something hot and sudden.... Oh, Harry ... Harry....

Then misery turned to rage. It was Reuben who had brought her to this,

who had stolen her from Harry, forced her into marrying him, and exposed

her to this anguish. She hated Reuben. She hated him. With all the

fierceness of her conquered soul and yielded body she hated him. She

would have nothing more to do with him, she would be revenged on him,

punish him ... a little hoarse scream of rage burst from her lips, and

she turned suddenly and ran out of that dreadful room.

She ran down the passage, panting and sobbing with rage. Then at the

stair head something even blacker than the darkness met her. It seized

her, it swung her up, she was powerless as a little bird in its grasp.

Her struggles were crushed in the kind strong arms that held her, and

rage was stifled from her lips with kisses.