BOOK IV

TREACHERIES

§ 1.

Reuben's domestic catastrophes might be summed up in the statement that

he had lost two farm hands. It is true that Albert had never been much

good--if he had his father would probably not have turned him away--but

he had been better than nothing, and now Reuben would have to hire a

substitute. One would be enough, for Jemmy and George were now able to

do a man's full work each. So another hand was engaged for Odiam--Piper,

a melancholy, lean-jowled cowman from Moor's Cottage.

The family was forbidden to speak of the absent sons. No one ever wrote

to Robert in Lewes gaol or to Albert living on London's cruel

tender-mercies. The shame of them was to be starved by silence. Soon

most of the children had forgotten them, and they lived solely in

Tilly's unhappy thoughts or Richard's angry ones, or in certain bitter

memories of their father's, sternly fought.

Reuben had learnt his first lesson from experience. Quietly but

decidedly he altered his conduct. He no longer made the slightest appeal

to his family's enterprise or ambition, he no longer interrupted his

chidings with those pathetic calls to their enthusiasm which had

mystified or irritated them in times past. On the other hand he was

twice as hard, twice as fierce, twice as ruthless and masterful as he

had ever been.

Old Mrs. Backfield was getting very decrepit. She could not walk

without a stick, and her knotted hands were of little use either in the

kitchen or the dairy. Reuben was anxious to avoid engaging anyone to

help her, yet the developments of her sphere made such help most

necessary. Odiam now supplied most of the neighbouring gentry with milk,

butter, and eggs; the poultry-yard had grown enormously since it had

been a mere by-way of Mrs. Backfield's labours, and she and the girls

also had charge of the young calves and pigs, which needed constant

attention, and meant a great deal of hard work. Besides this, there was

all the housework to do, sweeping, dusting, cooking, baking, and mending

and washing for the males.

It occurred to Reuben that Harry might be of some use to the women.

Since he had given up fiddling he was entirely on the wrong side of

Odiam's accounts; it would do much to justify his existence if he could

help a little in the house and thus save engaging extra labour.

Unfortunately Harry's ideas of work were fantastic, and he was, besides,

hindered by his blindness. Any use he could be put to was more than

balanced by the number of things he broke. His madness had of late

developed both a terrible and an irritating side. He was sometimes

consumed by the idea that the house was burning, and had on one or two

occasions scared the family by jumping out of bed in the middle of the

night and running about the passages shouting--"The house is afire! the

house is afire! Oh, God save us all!" After he had done this once or

twice, young Piper was made to sleep in his room, but even so he was

often visited by his terrors during the day, and would interrupt work or

meals with shrieks of--"The house is afire! Oh, wot shall we do! The

house is afire, and the children are burning."

Another habit of his, less alarming, but far more annoying, was to

repeat some chance word or sentence over and over again for hours. If

his mother said "Take these plates into the kitchen, Harry," he would

spend the rest of the day murmuring, "Take these plates into the

kitchen, Harry," till those about him were driven nearly as mad as he.

It was soon found that he hindered rather than helped the work, so

Reuben had to cast about for fresh plans. He felt utterly ruthless now,

and was resolved to make his daughters manage the house alone. He

redistributed the labour, and by handing over the poultry, calves, and

pigs to Beatup, and taking some of his work upon his own shoulders, made

it physically possible for Caro and Tilly to run the house and dairy

with the feeble help of old Mrs. Backfield. He told them that he could

not afford to engage a woman, and that they must do without her--making

no appeal to their interest or ambition as he might have done six months

ago.

Caro and Tilly did not rebel. Somehow or other their young backs did not

break under the load of household toil, nor, more strangely, did their

young hearts, in the loneliness of their hard, uncared-for lives.

Tilly was now nearly eighteen. She had always been like her mother, but

as she grew older the likeness became more and more pronounced, till

sometimes it seemed to Reuben as if it were Naomi herself with her milky

skin and fleeting rose-bloom who sat at his table and moved about his

house. The only difference lay in a certain prominence of the chin which

gave her an air of decision that Naomi had lacked. Not that Tilly was

ever anything but docile, but occasionally Reuben felt that some time or

other she might take her stand--a fear which had never troubled him with

Naomi.

Caro was not like her sister; she was of larger build, yet thinner, and

much darker, inheriting her father's swarthy skin and thick black hair.

She did not give Reuben the same anxiety as Tilly--she was heavy and

coltish, and, he felt, would not appeal to men. But Tilly, especially

when the summer heats had melted together the little freckles over her

nose, struck his masculine eye in a way that made him half proud, half

fearful.

No young men ever visited Odiam. The young Ditches, the young Vennals,

or Coalbrans, or Ginners, who had business to transact with Backfield,

did so only at a safe distance. Reuben could not as yet afford to lose

his housemaids. Some day, he told himself, he would see that the girls

married to the honour of his farm, but at present he could not do

without them.

They did not murmur, for they had known no different life. They had

never, like other girls, wandered with bevies of young people through

the lanes at dusk, or felt in the twilight a man's hand grope for

theirs. They had not had suitors to visit them on Sundays, to sit very

stiff and straight in the parlour, and pass decorous remarks about the

weather all the while their eyes were eating up a little figure from toe

to hair.

Nevertheless when they worked side by side in the kitchen or dairy,

skimming milk, churning butter, watching puddings bubble and steam, or

when they made Reuben's great bed together, they had queer, half-shy,

half-intimate talks--in which their heads came very close and their

voices sank very low, and an eavesdropper might have often caught the

word "lover," uttered mysteriously and sometimes with an odd little

sigh.

§ 2.

That spring the news flew round from inn to inn and farm to farm that

Realf of Grandturzel had bought a shire stallion, and meant to start

horse-breeding. This was a terrible shock to Reuben, for not only was

horse-breeding extremely profitable to those who could afford it, but it

conferred immeasurable honour. It seemed now as if Odiam were seriously

threatened. If Realf prospered at his business he could afford to fight

Reuben for Boarzell.

As a man in love will sometimes see in every other man a plotter for his

beloved, and would never believe it if he were told that he alone sees

charm in her and that to others she is undesirable, so Reuben could not

conceive ambition apart from the rugged, tough, unfruitful Boarzell,

whom no man desired but he. He at once started negotiations for buying

another twenty acres, though at present he could ill afford it, owing to

the expenses involved by his family misfortunes and his new mania for

prestige.

He watched Grandturzel's developments with a stern and anxious eye, and

kept pace with them as well as he could. The farm consisted of about

fifty-five acres of grass and tilth, apart from the forty acres of

Boarzell, which neither Realf nor his father had ever attempted to

cultivate, using them merely for fuel and timber, or as pasturage for

the ewes when their lambs were taken from them. Old Realf had allowed

the place to acquire a dilapidated rakish look, but his son at once

began to smarten it up. He tarred the two oast-houses till they shone

blue with the reflected sky, he painted his barn doors green, and

re-roofed the Dutch Barn with scarlet tiles that could be seen all the

way from Tiffenden Hill. He enriched his poultry-yard with a rare strain

of Orpington, and was the only farmer in the district besides Reuben to

do his reaping and hay-making by machinery.

Realf was about twenty-five, a tall, well-set-up young fellow, with

certain elegancies about him. In business he was of a simple,

open-temperament, genuinely proud of his farm, and naïve enough to boast

of its progress to Backfield himself.

Indeed he was so naïve that it was not till Reuben had once or twice

sneered at him in public that he realised there was any friction between

Grandturzel and Odiam, and even then he scarcely grasped its

importance, for one night at the Cocks, Coalbran said rather maliciously

to Reuben:

"Which of your gals is it that young Realf is sweet on?"

"My gals! Neither of 'em. Wot d'you mean?"

"Only that he walks home wud them from church every Sunday, and föalkses

are beginning to wonder which he's going to mäake Mrs. Realf, surelye!"

Reuben turned brick-red with indignation.

"Neither of my gals is going to be Mrs. Realf. I'd see her dead fust!

And the fellers as spread about such ugly lying tales, I'll----" and

Reuben scowled thunderously at Coalbran, whom he had never forgiven

since the scene in Rye Court-house.

"He slanders my sons and he slanders my daughters," he muttered to

himself as he went home, "and I reckon as this time it äun't true."

However, next Sunday he astonished his family by saying he would

accompany them to church. Hitherto Reuben's churchmanship had been

entirely political, he had hardly ever been inside Peasmarsh church

since his marriage, except for the christenings of his children--though

he considered himself one of the pillars of the Establishment. His

family were exceedingly suspicious of this change of heart, and the

girls whispered guiltily together. "He's found out," said Caro, and

Tilly sighed.

There was much turning of heads when Ben Backfield was seen to take his

place with his children in their pew.... "Wot's he arter now?"--"Summat

to do wud his farm you may be sartain."--"He's heard about his gals and

young Realf."--"Ho, the wicked old sinner! I wish as Passon 'ud tip it

to un straight."

Realf of Grandturzel sat a little way ahead on the opposite side, and

Reuben watched him all through the service. Times had changed since

Robert had hurled his big voice among the rafters with the village

choir. The choir now sat in the chancel and wore surplices; the Parson

too wore a surplice when he preached; for the Oxford Movement had spread

to Peasmarsh, and Mr. Barnaby, the new clergyman, lived at the Rectory,

instead of appointing a curate to do so, and unheard-of things happened

in the way of week-day services and Holy Communion at eight o'clock in

the morning. Reuben, however, scarcely noticed the changes, so absorbed

was he in young Realf. Occasionally the boy would turn his head on his

shoulder and rashly contemplate the Backfield pew. Reuben invariably met

him with a stare and a scowl.

All through the sermon he sat with his eyes fixed on Realf's profile.

There was his rival, the man with whom he would have to reckon most

during the difficult future, with whom he was fighting for Boarzell. He

looked marvellously young and comely as he sat there in the fretted

light, and suddenly for the first time Reuben realised that he was not

as young as he had been. He was forty-six--he was getting old.

Something thick and icy seemed to creep into his blood, and he gripped

the edge of the pew, as he stared at Realf, sitting there so

unconsciously, his damped and brushed hair gleaming ruddily in the light

that poured through some saint's aureole. He must not let this youngster

beat him.... Beat him?--the ice in his blood froze thicker--after all he

had not done so very much during the twenty-six years he had toiled and

struggled; he had won only a hundred acres of Boarzell--little more than

Realf had to start with ... and Realf was only twenty-five.

Caro and Tilly, sitting carefully so as not to crush their muslins, both

their heads slewed round a little towards Realf, noticed how their

father's throat was working, how hot flows of colour rushed up and ebbed

away under the tan on his cheeks. For the first time Reuben was

contemplating failure, looking that livid horror full in the face,

seeing himself beaten, after all his toil and heartache, by a younger

man.

But the next moment he cast the coward feeling from him. His experience

had given him immeasurable advantage over this babe. Realf who had never

felt the sweat pouring like water down his tired body, who had never

swooned asleep from sheer exhaustion, or lain awake all night from sheer

anxiety, who had not sacrificed wife and children and friends and self

to one dear, loved, darling ambition ... bah! what could he do against

the man who had done all these things, and was prepared to go on doing

them to the end?

When the congregation rose to sing Reuben held his head proudly and his

shoulders square. He felt himself a match for any youngster.

§ 3.

That summer old Mrs. Backfield became completely bedridden. The

gratefulness of sunshine to her old bones was counteracted by the clammy

fogs that streamed up every night round the farm. It was an

exceptionally wet and misty summer--a great deal of Reuben's wheat

rotted in the ground, and he scarcely took any notice when Tilly

announced one morning that grandmother was too ill to come downstairs.

When the struggle on the lower slopes of Boarzell between the damp earth

and the determined man had ended in the earth's sludgy victory and a

pile of rotten straw which should have been the glory of the man--then

Reuben had time to think of what was going on in the house. He sent for

the doctor--not Dr. Espinette, but a Cockney successor who boiled his

instruments and washed his hands in carbolic--and heard from him that

Mrs. Backfield's existence was no longer justified. She could not expect

to work again.

Reuben was grieved, but not so much grieved as if she had been cut down

in her strength--for a long time she had been pretty useless on the

farm. He handed her over to the nursing of the girls, though they were

too busy to do more for her than the barest necessities. Now and then he

went up himself and sat by her bed, restlessly cracking his fingers, and

fretting to be out again at his work.

Sometimes Harry would sit by her. He had wandered in one day when she

was feeling especially ill and lonely, and in her desperation she had

begged him to stay. At all events he was someone--a human being, or very

nearly so. He shuffled restlessly round and round the room, fingering

her little ornaments and pictures, and muttering to himself, "Stay wud

me, Harry."

He liked her room, for she had a dozen things he could finger and play

with--little vases with flowers modelled over them, woolly mats, a

velvet pincushion, and other survivals of her married life, all very

dusty and faded now. Soon she began to find a strange comfort in having

him there; the uneasiness and vague repulsion with which he had filled

her, died down, and she began to see in him something of the old Harry

whom she had loved so much better than Reuben in days gone by.

As the summer wore on she grew steadily worse. She lay stiff and

helpless, through the long August days, watching the sunlight creep up

the wall, slip along the ceiling, and then vanish into the pale,

heat-washed sky that gleamed with it even after the stars had come. She

did not fret much, or think much--she watched things. She watched the

sunshine from its red kindling to its red scattering, she watched the

moon slide across the window, and haunt the mirror after it had

passed--or the sign of the Scales dangling in the black sky. Sometimes

the things she looked at seemed to fade, and she would see a room in

which she and her husband were sitting or a lane along which they were

walking ... but just as she had begun to wonder whether she were not

really still young and happy and married and this vision the fact and

the sickness and loneliness the dream, then suddenly everything would

pass away like smoke, and she would be back in her bed, watching the

travelling sun, or the haunting moon, or the hanging stars.

In October a steam-thresher came to Odiam. The wheat had been bad, but

there was still plenty of grain to thresh, and for a whole day the

machine sobbed and sang under the farmhouse

walls--"Urrr-um--Urrr-um--Urrr-um."

Mrs. Backfield lay listening to it. She felt very ill, but everyone was

too busy to come to her--Reuben was out in the yard feeding his monster,

while the boys gathered up and sacked what it vomited out; Caro and

Tilly were washing blankets. Harry had gone off on some trackless errand

of his own.

The afternoon was very still and soft. It was full of the smell of

apples--of apples warm and sunny on the trees, of apples fallen and

rotting in the grass, of apples dry and stored in the loft. There were

little apples on the walls of the house, and their skins were warm and

bursting in the heat.

The thresher purred and panted under the window--"Urrr-um--Urrr-um." Now

and then Reuben would call out sharply, "Now then! mind them

genuines--they're mixing wud the seconds!" or "Kip them sacks closed,

Beatup." But for most of the afternoon the stillness was broken only by

the hum of the machine which sometimes almost seemed a part of it.

Mrs. Backfield according to her custom watched the sun. It bathed the

floor at first, but gradually she saw the square of the window paint

itself on the wall, and then slide slowly up towards the ceiling. Her

eyes mechanically followed it; then suddenly it blazed, filmed, flowed

out into a wide spread of light, in the midst of which she saw the

kitchen at Odiam as it used to be, with painted fans on the

chimney-piece and pots of flowers on the window-sill. Her husband sat by

the fire, smoking his pipe, while Harry was helping her tidy her

workbasket.

"There now!" she said to him, "I knew as it really wur a dream."

"Wot?" he asked her, and she, in her dream, felt a spasm of delight, for

it was all happening so naturally--it must be true.

"About fäather being dead, and you being blind, and Ben having the

farm."

"Of course it's a dream--fäather äun't dead, and I äun't blind, and

Ben's picking nuts over at Puddingcake."

"You couldn't spik to me lik this if it wur a dream, Harry--could you,

dear?"

He didn't answer--and then suddenly he turned on her and shouted:

"Sack your chaff, now--can't you sack your chaff?"

"Harry! Harry!" she cried, and came to herself in the little

sun-smouldering room, while outside Reuben stormed at his boys to "sack

their chaff," and the machine purred and sang--"Urrr-um--Urrr-um."

A sudden terrible lucidity came to Mrs. Backfield.

"It's machines as he wants," she said to herself, "it's machines as he

wants...."

Then a gentle darkness stole upon her eyes, as her overworked machine of

flesh and blood ran down and throbbed slowly into stillness and peace.

Outside the great fatigueless machine of steel and iron sang

on--"Urrr-um--Urrr-um--Urrr-um."

§ 4.

The girls cried a great deal at their grandmother's death--she had never

taken up enough room in the boys' lives for them to miss her much. As

for Reuben, though he had been fond of her, he could not sincerely

regret her, since for the last few months she had, so to speak, been

carried on entirely at a loss.

He needed every penny and every minute more desperately than ever, for

Grandturzel ran Odiam closer and closer in the race. Realf now plainly

saw how matters stood. As yet there was no open breach between him and

Reuben--when one of them came into the public-house the other always

waited a decent interval before clearing out--but if there was no open

breach, there was open rivalry. All the neighbourhood knew of it, and

many a bet was made.

The odds were generally on Reuben. It was felt that a certain

unscrupulousness was necessary to the job, and in that Backfield had the

advantage. "Young Realf wudn't hurt a fly," his champions had to

acknowledge. Though the money was with Reuben, the sympathy was mostly

with Realf, for the former's dealings had scarcely made him popular. He

was a hard man to his customers, he never let them owe him for grain or

roots or fodder; his farm-hands, when drunk, spoke of him as a monster,

and a not very tender-hearted peasantry worked itself sentimental over

his treatment of his children.

For some months the antagonism between Odiam and Grandturzel remained in

this polite state, most of the fighting being done by their champions.

The landlord of the Cocks grew quite tired of chucking out Odiamites and

Grandturzelites who could not, like their leaders, confine their war to

words. But it only wanted some cause, however trivial, to make the

principals show their fists. The time that Reuben would stay in the bar

after Realf had entered it grew shorter and shorter, and his pretexts

for leaving more and more flimsy. Realf himself, though a genial,

good-tempered young man, could not help resenting the scorn with which

he was treated. He once told Ginner that Backfield was an uncivilised

brute, and Ginner took care to forward this remark to the proper

quarter.

At last the gods, who are more open-handed than ungrateful people

suppose, took pity on the rivals, and gave them something to fight

about. The pretext was in itself trivial, but when the gunpowder is laid

nothing bigger than a match is needed. This particular pretext was a

barrow of roots which had been ordered from Kitchenhour by Reuben and

sent by mistake to Grandturzel. Realf's shepherd, not seeing any cause

for doubt, gave the roots as winter fodder to his ewes, and said nothing

about them. When Reuben tramped over to Kitchenhour and asked furiously

why his roots had never been sent, the mistake was discovered. He came

home by Grandturzel, and found his precious roots, all thrown out on the

fields, being nibbled by Realf's ewes.

Realf himself was away, but Reuben left such a stinging message for him,

that apology was impossible except in a form that could only be regarded

as a fresh insult. An apology in this shape reached Odiam at

dinner-time, and Reuben at once sent off Beatup with an acceptance of it

that was very nearly obscene. The result was that Realf himself arrived

about three o'clock furiously demanding an explanation of his

neighbour's insulting conduct.

The two men met in the kitchen, Peter backing up his father, and for a

long time the scene was stormy, the word "roots" whirling about the

conversation, with the prefix "my good" or "your hemmed" as the case

might be. Realf was genuinely angry--Reuben's attitude of mingled

truculence and scorn had wounded even his easy pride.

"You're justabout afeard of me, that's wot you are. You think I'll bust

up your old farm and show myself a better man than you. You're afeard of

me because I'm a younger man than you."

"Ho, afeard of you, am I?--and because you're a youngster? I'll

justabout show you wot a youngster's worth. A better man, are you?--Put

up your fists, and we'll see who's the better man."

Reuben began to take off his coat--young Realf drew back almost in

disgust.

"I'm not going to fight a man old enough to be my father," he said,

flushing.

"Ho, äun't you?--Come on, you puppy-dog, and see fur yourself if you

need täake pity on my old age."

He had flung off his coat, and squared up to Realf, who, seeing no

alternative, began to strip.

Peter interposed:

"Let me täake him on, fäather. I'll show him a thing or two."

Reuben turned on him savagely.

"Stand clear!--who wants your tricks? I'm going to show him wot a man's

worth--a man wot's had his beard longer than this puppy's bin in the

warld."

"But you're out of training."

"I'm in training enough to whip boys. Stand clear!"

Pete stood clear, as the two combatants closed. Neither knew much of the

game. Realf had been born too late for boxing to have been considered a

necessary part of his education, and Reuben had been taught in an old

school--the school of Bendigo and Deaf Burke--mighty bashers, who put

their confidence in their strength, despised finesse, and counted their

victories in pints of blood.

He fairly beat down on Realf, who was lithe enough generally to avoid

him, but not experienced enough to do so as often as he might. Every

time Reuben struck him, the floor seemed to rush up to his eyes, and the

walls to sag, and the house to fill with smoke. Pete danced round them

silently, for while his sympathies were with his father his sporting

instincts bade him keep outwardly impartial. He was disgusted with their

footwork, indeed their whole style outraged his bruising ideals; but it

pleased him to see how much Reuben was the better man.

They hardly ever clinched--on the other hand, there was much plunging

and rushing. Reuben brought down Realf three times and Realf brought

down Reuben once. It was noticeable that if the younger man fell more

easily he also picked himself up more quickly. Between the rounds they

leaned exhausted against the wall, Pete prowling about between them,

longing to take his father on his knee, but still resolved to see fair

play.

It was not likely that the fight would be a long one, for both

combatants were already winded. Realf, moreover, was bleeding from the

nose, and Reuben's left eye was swollen. Once he caught a hit flush on

the mouth which cut his nether lip in two, and, owing to his bad

footwork, brought him down. But he was winning all the same.

For once that Realf managed to land a blow, Reuben landed a couple, and

with twice as much weight behind them. The younger man soon began to

look green and sick, he staggered about, and flipped, while the sweat

poured off his forehead into his eyes. Reuben breathed stertorously and

could scarcely see out of his left eye, but was otherwise game. Pete

felt prouder of him than ever.

Suddenly Backfield's fist crashed into Realf's body, full on the mark.

The wind rushed out of him as out of a bellows, and he doubled up like a

screen. This time he made no effort to rise; he lay motionless, one arm

thrown out stiff and jointless as a bough, while a little blood-flecked

foam oozed from between his teeth.

"You've done it!" cried Pete.

Reuben had flopped down in a heap on the settle, and his son ran off for

help. He flung open the door, and nearly fell over Tilly who was

cowering behind it.

§ 5.

"Here--bring some water!" cried Peter, too much relieved to see her to

be surprised at it.

Tilly flung one wide-eyed glance over her shoulder into the room where

young Realf lay, and dashed off for water and towels, while Pete fetched

a piece of raw meat out of the larder.

It was a minute or two before Realf opened his swollen, watering eyes,

and gazed up bewildered into the face of the woman he had said his

prayers to for a dozen Sundays. She held his head in the crook of her

arm, and wiped the froth and blood from his lips.

"Better now?" asked Pete.

Realf suddenly seemed to shrink into himself. The next minute he was

swaying unsteadily on his legs, refusing the hands held out to support

him.

"I'm going home," he mumbled through his bruised lips.

"I'll täake you," said Pete cheerily.

But Realf of Grandturzel shook his head. His humiliation was more than

he could bear. Without another look at Pete or Tilly, or at Reuben

holding the raw chop to his eye, he turned and walked out of the room

with bent head and dragging footsteps.

For a moment Pete looked as if he would follow him, but Reuben

impatiently called him back.

"Leave the cub alone, can't you? Let him go and eat grass."

Tilly stood motionless in the middle of the room, her little nose

wrinkled with horror at the bloodstains on the floor and at Reuben whose

face was all bruised and swollen and shiny with the juice of the raw

meat. Pete saw her shudder, and resented it.

"It wur a präaper fight," he declared. "You want to manage them feet of

yourn a bit slicker, fäather--but you wur justabout smart wud your

fists."

Tilly's blood ran thick with disgust; she turned from them

suddenly--that coarse, bloodthirsty, revolting pair--and ran quickly out

of the room.

She ran out of the house. Away on Boarzell a man plodded and stumbled.

She saw him stagger as the wind battered him, reel and nearly fall among

the treacheries of the dead heather. He was like a drunken man, and she

knew that he was drunk with shame.

All flushed with pity she realised the bitterness of his fate--he who

was so young and strong and clean and gay, had been degraded, shamed by

her father, whom in that moment she looked upon entirely as a brute. It

must not be. He had been so good to her, so friendly and courteous in

their Sunday walks--she must not let him go away from her shamed and

beaten.

She gathered up her skirts and ran across the garden, out on to the

Moor. She ran through the heather, stumbling in the knotted thickness.

The spines tore her stockings, and in one clump she lost her shoe. But

she did not wait. Her little chin was thrust forward in the obstinacy of

her pursuit, and when she came closer to him she called--"Mr. Realf! Mr.

Realf!"

He stopped and looked round, and the next minute she was at his side.

Her hair was all blown about her face, her cheeks were flushed the

colour of bell-heather, and her breast heaved like a wave. She could not

speak, but her eyes were blessing him, and then suddenly both her hands

were in his.

§ 6.

Early in the next year Sir Miles Bardon died, and his son Ralph became

Squire. Reuben had now, as he put it, lived through three Bardons. He

despised the enfeebled and effete race with its short life-times, and

his own body became straighter when he thought of Sir Miles's under the

earth.

For every reason now, Odiam was being forced on. Realf had sought

comfort for his personal humiliation in making his farm more spick and

span than ever. Reuben became aware of a certain untidiness about Odiam,

and spent much on paint and tar--just as the frills of a younger rival

might incite to extravagance a woman who had hitherto despised the

fashions. He painted his waggons a beautiful blue, and his oasts were

even blacker and shinier than Grandturzel's. He had wooden horses to

dance on their pointers, whereupon Realf put cocks on his.

The thought of Tilly did not check the young man in this

beggar-my-neighbour, for he knew that her father's ambition meant her

slavery. So when Reuben added a prize Jersey heifer to his stock, Realf

bought a Newlands champion milker, and when Reuben launched desperately

on a hay-rope twister, Realf ran him up with a wurzel-cutter. Finally

Reuben bought twenty acres, of Boarzell, in which Realf did not attempt

to rival him, for he already had forty which he did not know what to do

with. Reuben's strugglings with Boarzell struck him as pathetic rather

than splendid, an aberration of ambition which would finally spoil the

main scheme.

So Realf's answer took the form of an extra cowman, whereupon Reuben

hired a couple of new hands, causing his family to leap secretly and

silently for joy and to bless the man who by his rivalry had lightened

their yoke. As a matter of fact, Reuben would have been forced to engage

one man, anyhow; for the new piece of land had at once to be prepared

for cultivation, and gave even more trouble than the pieces which had

already been cultivated but showed a distressing proneness to relapse

into savagery. The lower slope of Boarzell was now covered with fields,

where corn grew, as the neighbours said, "if one wur careful not to spik

too loud," and the ewes could pasture safely if their shepherd were

watchful. But it somehow seemed as if all these things were only on

sufferance, and that directly Reuben rested his tired arm Boarzell would

snatch them back to itself, to be its own for ever.

Reuben swaggered a little about his new farm-hands, especially as Realf

showed no signs of going any further in hirelings. One man, Boorman,

came from Shoyswell near Ticehurst, and was said to be an authority on

the diseases of roots, while the other, Handshut, came from Cheat Land

on the western borders of Peasmarsh. Reuben went over to get his

"character" from Jury the tenant--and that was how he met Alice Jury.

§ 7.

The door was opened to him by a tall young woman in a grey dress covered

by an apron. Reuben was struck by that apron, for it was not the sacking

kind to which he was accustomed, or the plain white muslin which his

women-folk wore on Sundays, but a coarse brick-coloured cotton, hanging

from her shoulders like a pinafore. The girl's face above it was not

pretty, but exceptionally vivid--"vivid" was the word, not prominent in

Reuben's vocabulary, which flashed into his mind when he saw her. Her

colouring was pale, and her features were small and irregular, her hair

was very frizzy and quite black, while her grey eyes were at once the

narrowest and the liveliest he had ever seen.

"I'm sorry--father's not at home," she said in answer to his question.

"But I töald him as I wur coming over--it's about that Handshut."

She smiled.

"I'm afraid father forgets things. But come in, he's bound to be home to

his dinner soon."

Reuben grumbled and muttered to himself as he crossed the

threshold--small fry like these Jurys must not be allowed to think that

he had any time to spare. The young woman led him into the kitchen and

offered him a seat. Reuben took it and crossed his legs, looking

appraisingly round the room, which was poorly furnished, but beautifully

kept, with some attempts at decoration. There was a print of Rossetti's

"Annunciation" above the meal-chest, and a shelf of books by the

fireplace. It all struck him as strange and rather contemptible. He

remembered what he had been told about the Jurys, who had only just come

to Cheat Land. Tom Jury had, so rumour said, kept a bookshop in

Hastings, but trade had gone badly, and as his health demanded an

outdoor life and country air, charitable friends had established him on

a small holding. He had an invalid wife, and one daughter, who was not

very strong either--an ignoble family.

The daughter must be the girl who was talking to him now. She sat on a

little stool by the fire, and had brought out some sewing.

"You come from Odiam, don't you?" she asked.

"Yes, that's it."

"Is Odiam that farm near Totease?"

Reuben looked as if he had swallowed the poker. He stared at her to see

if she were making fun of him, but her bright eyes were quite innocent.

"Yes," he said huskily--"it is."

"We've only been here a month, so I haven't got the neighbourhood quite

clear. You see I can't often go out, as my mother's generally in bed,

and I have all the house-work to do. That's why my father has to have a

man to help him out of doors. It's a pity, for wages are so

high--Handshut's leaving us because we could do with someone cheaper and

less experienced."

Reuben liked her voice, with its town modulation, the only vestige of

Sussex taint being a slight drawl. It struck him that Alice Jury was a

"lady," and that he was not condescending very much in speaking to her.

"It's unaccountable hard to know what to do about labour. Now as these

fellers are gitting eddicated they think no end of theirselves and 'ull

ask justabout anything in wages--as if a man hoed turnups any better for

being able to read and write."

"But don't you think he does?"

"No--I döan't. I'm all agäunst teaching poor people anything and setting

them above theirselves. It's different fur their betters. Now I've got

six boys, and they can all read and write and cast accounts."

"Six boys, have you? Are they grown up?"

"Yes, the youngest's sixteen."

"And do they help you on the farm?"

"Yes--leastways four of 'em do. Two have--have left home."

"I suppose they didn't care for farming?"

"One's in prison, and t'other I turned away."

Reuben had no idea why he said this. It must have been the way her eyes

were fixed on him, glowing above bistred shadows.

"Oh, indeed!--how sad."

He flushed the colour of her apron. What a fool he was!--and yet after

all she would be bound to hear the truth sooner or later; he had only

been beforehand. All the same he was surprised at himself. A sudden tide

of anger went over him.

"Sad fur them, I reckon, but not fur me. I'm well shut of them."

"Don't you miss them at all?"

"Naun particular. Robert he wur good and plodding-like, but you couldn't

trust his stacking, and he'd be all nohow wud the horses--and Albert

he'd shirk everything wotsumdever, he'd go off into dreams in the middle

of killing a pig--surelye!"

"But in themselves, I mean."

"Wot's that--in themselves?"

"Well, as boys, as sons, not as farm-servants."

"I döan't never think of them that way. One's no good to me wudout

t'other."

Alice Jury said nothing, and Reuben began to feel vaguely uncomfortable.

What queer eyes she had!--they seemed to bore into him like nails. He

suddenly rose to his feet.

"See here--I must be going."

"But father won't be long now."

"I'm sorry--I can't wait. I've a load of field-bean coming in. I'll be

round agäun to-morrow."

"What time?--and I'll promise father shall be here to see you."

"About eleven, say. Good-bye, miss."

"Good-bye."

She went with him to the door. A great lump of phlox grew on either side

of it. She stood between them, and suddenly pointed out over Jury's

miserable little root-patch towards Boarzell, heaving its great hummocks

against the east.

"What's that?" she asked.

§ 8.

Reuben came away from Cheat Land with odd feelings of annoyance,

perplexity, and exhilaration. Alice Jury was queer, and she had insulted

him, nevertheless those ten minutes spent with her had left him tingling

all over with a strange excitement.

He could not account for it. Women had excited him before, but merely

physically. He took it for granted that they had minds and souls like

men, but he had not thought much about that aspect of them or allowed it

to enter his calculations. Of late he had scarcely troubled about women

at all, having something better to think of.

Now he found himself thrown into a kind of dazzle by Alice Jury. He

could not explain it. Her personal beauty was negligible--"a liddle

stick of a thing," he called her; their conversation had been limited

almost entirely to her tactless questions and his forbearing answers.

"She äun't my sort," he mumbled as he walked home, "she äun't at all my

sort. Dudn't know where Odiam wur--never heard of Boarzell--oh, yes,

seems as she remembered hearing something when I töald her"--and

Reuben's lip curled ironically.

He had not told her of his ambitions with regard to Boarzell, and now he

found himself wishing that he had done so. He had been affronted by her

ignorance, but as his indignation cooled he longed to confide in her.

Why, he could not say, for unmistakably she "wasn't his sort"; it was

not likely that she would sympathise, and yet he wanted to pour all the

treasures of his hope into her indifference. He had never felt like this

towards anyone before.

He spent the day restlessly, and the next morning walked over to Cheat

Land before half-past ten. Alice Jury opened the door, and looked

surprised to see him.

"You said you were coming at eleven. I'm afraid father's out again."

"I wur passing this way, so thought I'd call in on the chance," said

Reuben guiltily--"I döan't mind waiting."

She called a long-legged boy who was weeding among the turnips, and bade

him go over to Puddingcake and fetch the master. Then she led the way to

the kitchen, which smelled deliciously of baking bread.

"You don't mind if I go on with my baking? I've twelve loaves in the

oven."

"Oh, no," said Reuben, sitting in yesterday's chair, and gazing up at

the Rossetti.

"Do you like pictures?" asked Alice, thumping dough.

"Some," said Reuben, "but I like 'em coloured best."

"I paint a little myself," said Alice--"when I've time."

"Wot sort o' things do you paint?"

"Oh, landscapes mostly. That's mine"--and she pointed to a little

water-colour sketch of a barn.

"Could you paint a picture of Odiam?"

"I expect I could--not really well, you know, just something like this."

"Could you paint Boarzell?"

He leaned towards her over the back of his chair.

"Yes, I dare say."

"Could you do it wud all the colours on it and all that?--all the pinks

you git on it sometimes, and the lovely yaller the gorse mäakes?"

She was surprised at his enthusiasm. His eyes were kindling, and a blush

was creeping under his sunburn.

"Oh, I could try! Do you want a picture of Boarzell?"

"I'd like one if you could really do it to look natural."

She smiled. "Perhaps I could. But why do you think so much of Boarzell?"

"Because I'm going to mäake it mine."

"Yours!"

"Yes--I mean to have the whole of it."

"But can you grow anything on a waste like that?"

"_I_ can. I've got near a hundred acres sown already" ... and then all

the floodgates that had been shut for so long were burst, and the tides

of his confidence rolled out to her, moaning--all the ache of his

ambition which nobody would share.

Her eyes were fixed on him with their strange spell, and her sharp

little face was grave. He knew that she did not sympathise--he had not

expected it. But he was glad he had told her.

Her first words startled him.

"Do you think it's worth while?"

"Wot's worth while?"

"To give up so much for the sake of a piece of land." Reuben gaped at

her.

"I've no right to preach to you; but I think I may be allowed to ask

you--'is it worth while?'"

He was too flabbergasted to be angry. The question had simply never come

into his experience. Many a man had said, "Do you think you'll do it?"

but no one had ever said, "Do you think it's worth while?"

Alice saw her blunder. She saw that she had insulted his ambition; and

yet, though she now understood the ferocities of that ambition, it

filled her with a definite hostility which made her want to fight and

fight and fight it with all the strength she had. At the same time, as

his surprise collapsed, his own antagonism rose up. He felt a sudden

hatred, not for the girl, but for the forces which somehow he knew she

was bringing to oppose him. They faced each other, their eyes bright

with challenge, their breasts heaving with a stormier, earthlier

emotion--and the white flame of antagonism which divided them seemed at

the same time to fuse them, melt them into each other.

§ 9.

Reuben was going through a new experience. For the first time in his

life he had fallen under the dominion of a personality. From his boyhood

he had been enslaved by an idea, but people, in anything except their

relation to that idea, had never influenced him. Now for the first time

he had a life outside Boarzell, an interest, a set of thoughts, which

were not only apart from Boarzell but antagonistic to it.

Hitherto he had always considered the opposite of his ambition to be the

absence of it. Either one lived to subdue the hostile earth, or one

lived with no object at all. It was a new experience to find someone

whose life was full of hopes, ideals, and ambitions, all utterly

unconnected with a farm, and it was even more strange than new that he

should care to talk about them. Not that he ever found himself being

tempted from his own--the most vital part of his relations with Alice

Jury lay in their warfare. He fought her as he fought Boarzell, though

without that sense of a waiting treachery which tinctured his battles

with the Moor; their intercourse was full of conflict, of fiery, sacred

hostilities. They travelled on different roads, and knew that they could

never walk together, yet each wanted to count the other's milestones.

Sometimes Reuben would ask himself if he was in love with her, but as

the physical element which he had always and alone called love was

absent, he came to the conclusion that he was not. If he had thought he

loved her he would have avoided her, but there was no danger in this

parliament of their minds. Her attitude towards life, though it obsessed

him, no more convinced him than his convinced her. They would rail and

wrangle together by the hour.

"Life is worth while," said Alice, "in itself, not because of what it

gives you."

"I agree with you there," said Reuben, "it's not wot life gives that's

good, it's wot you täake out of it."

"I don't see that. Suppose that because I liked that girl's face in the

picture I tore it out and kept it for myself, I should only spoil the

picture--the piece I'd torn out wouldn't be any good to me away from the

rest."

"I can't foller you," said Reuben gruffly.

"Now don't pretend to be stupid--don't pretend you can't understand

anything but turnips."

"And döan't pretend you can't understand naun but picturs. A good solid

turnup in real life is worth a dozen pretty gals in picturs."

"That's right--have the courage of your earthiness. But don't try to

make me think that when you look out of the window at Boarzell, you

don't see the sky beyond it."

"And döan't you try and make out as when you're looking at the sky you

döan't see Boarzell standing in between."

"I don't try and make it out. I see your point of view, but it's only

'in between' me--and you--and something greater."

"Rubbidge!" said Reuben.

He always came away from these wrangles with a feeling as if he had been

standing on his head. He was not used to mental scoutings and

reconnoitrings. Also, he felt sometimes that Alice was laughing at him,

which irritated him, not so much because she mocked as because he could

never be really sure whether she mocked or not. Her laughter seemed to

come from the remotest, most exalted part of her. The gulfs between

their points of view never gaped so wide as when she laughed.

§ 10.

Reuben's constant visits to Cheat Land were soon noticed at Odiam, and

every advantage was taken of them. A period of licence set in. Richard

read Anne Bardon's Homer quite openly by the kitchen fire, Caro dropped

tears over East Lynne in the dairy, and Jemmy spent long tarry hours at

Rye, coming home with a rank chew in his mouth, and sailors' oaths to

salt his work on the farm.

Tilly had private affairs of her own which occasionally led her out on

Boarzell of an afternoon. She always took her sewing, for she dared not

be behindhand with it. Strangely enough, in spite of Jemmy's and Tilly's

truancies, the work was somehow got through as usual, for shortcomings

would have been found out and punished on the master's return--or worse

still, he might have stayed at home. For the first time a certain

freemasonry was established between the brothers and sisters. Hitherto

their rebellion had been too secret even for confederacy, but now some

of the crushing weight was lifted, and they could combine--all except

Peter, who was too much Reuben's man for them to trust him; luckily he

was rather stupid. So Peter did not see and no one else took any notice

if Caro read and wept over sentimental novels, or Jemmy brought home

harbour mud on his shoes, or George, who was delicate and epileptic,

slept away an hour under a haystack, or Richard pondered the Iliad, or

Tilly ran out on the Moor--even though she went to meet Realf of

Grandturzel.

They met on the further side of the fir clump, on the edge of

Grandturzel's inclosure. Here Tilly would sit under a gorse-bush with

her sewing, while young Realf lay along the grass at her feet. They did

not talk much, for Tilly was busy, and generally had her mouth full of

pins; but Realf's manhood worshipped her as she sat there, her delicious

head bowed, and stains of sunshine, with sprinkled gorse-petals, in her

hair. He loved her little determined chin, and the sweet smudge of

freckles on her nose. Love filled their simplest actions, kindled their

simplest words; it dreamed in their eyes and laughed on their lips; its

silences linked them closer than the most passionate embraces.

Both unconsciously dreaded the time when they should demand more of each

other--when the occasional enlacing of their hands would no longer be

enough to open Paradise, when from sweet looking and longing they would

have to pass into the bitterness of action. Tilly, though essentially

practical and determined, was enjoying her first visit to faery, and

also inherited her mother's gift of languor. She basked in those hours

of sun and bees. She, like her father, was passing for the first time

into a life outside the dominion of the farm--but, whereas he fought

it, and sought it only to fight it, she submitted to it as to a caress.

She cared nothing for Odiam; it was no thought of disloyalty to it and

her father, of breaking from her service, which made her mark time in

dreams. As the weeks went by she felt more and more the hatefulness of

the yoke. She now had a standard of comparison by which to judge Reuben

and Odiam. She saw herself and her brothers and her sister more and more

as victims. Other farmers' children were not slaves. Other farms did not

hang like sucking incubuses on boys' and girls' backs, draining all the

youth and joy and sport out of them.

It made her blood boil to think of Robert and Albert in their exile.

Robert had now been released from gaol, and had been sent by a

charitable society to Australia. Reuben had refused to move a hand to

help him. As for Albert, a few months ago a piteous letter had arrived,

begging for money. He had, through Mr. Hedges, found work on a small

Radical paper which soon came to grief, and since then had been

practically starving, having had no success as a freelance. A friend of

his wanted to start a weekly review--Tory this time, for Albert's

politics were subservient to occasion--and only required funds. Did

Reuben feel prepared to make an investment? Thus poor Albert cloaked and

trimmed his begging.

Of course Reuben had refused to help him, and Tilly had been unable to

get any money out of Pete. Her heart bled for her brothers, and at the

same time she could not help envying their freedom, though one enjoyed

it as a beggar and the other as a felon.

§ 11.

At last the crisis came--through George, the youngest, least-considered

son at Odiam. He had always been a weakling, as if Naomi had passed into

his body her own passionate distaste for life. Also, as is common with

epileptic children, his intellect was not very bright. It had been the

habit to spare him, even Reuben had done so within reason. But he should

not really have worked at all, or only in strict moderation--certainly

he should not have been sent out that October evening to dig up the

bracken roots on the new land. Tilly expostulated--"Anyhow he didn't

ought to work alone "--but Reuben was angry with the boy, whom he had

caught loafing once or twice that day, and roughly packed him off.

He himself went over to Moor's Cottage about a load of trifolium, and

returning in the darkness by Cheat Land was persuaded to stay to supper.

That was one of the nights when he did not like Alice Jury--he sometimes

went through the experience of disliking her, which was an adventure in

itself, so wild and surprising was it, so bewildering to remember

afterwards. She seemed a little colourless--she was generally so vivid

that he noticed and resented all the more those times when her shoulders

drooped against her chair, and her little face looked strangely wistful

instead of eager. It seemed as if on these occasions Alice were actually

pleading with him. She lost that antagonism which was the salt of their

relations, instead of fighting she pleaded. Pleaded for what? He dared

not ask that question, in case the answer should show him some strange

new Canaan which was not his promised land. So he came away

muttering--"only a liddle stick of a woman. I like gurt women--I like

'em rosy, I like 'em full-breasted.... She'd never do fur me."

He tramped home through the darkness. A storm was rising, shaking the

fir-plumes of Boarzell against a scudding background of clouds and

stars. The hedges whispered, the dead leaves rustled, the woods sighed.

Every now and then a bellow would come from the Moor, as the sou'wester

roared up in a gust, then a low sobbing followed it into silence.

On the doorstep Reuben was greeted by Tilly--where was George? He had

not been in to supper.

"Have you looked in the new field?"

"Yes--Benjamin went round. But he äun't there."

"Well, I döan't know where he is."

"Reckon he's fallen down in a fit somewhere and died."

Tilly was not looking at all like Naomi to-night.

"Nonsense," said Reuben, resenting her manner.

"It äun't nonsense. I always know when his fits are coming on because

he's tired and can't work präaperly. He was like that to-day. And

you--you drove him out."

Reuben had never been spoken to like this by his daughter. He turned on

her angrily, then suddenly changed his mind. For the first time he

really saw what a fine girl she was--all that Alice was not.

"We'll go and look for him," he said--"send out the boys."

All that night they hunted for George on Boarzell. It was pitch dark.

Soon great layers of cloud were sagging over the stars, and Boarzell's

firs were lost in the blackness behind them. Reuben, his sons, Beatup,

Piper, Handshut, Boorman, fought the dark with lanterns as one might

fight Behemoth with pin-pricks. They scattered over the Moor, searching

the thorn-clumps and gorse-thickets. It was pretty certain that he was

not on the new ground by Flightshot. Richard said openly that he did not

believe in the fit and that George had run away, and--less openly--that

it was a good job too. The other boys, however, did not think that he

had enough sense to run away, and agreed that his condition all day had

foretold an attack.

Reuben himself believed in the fit, and a real anxiety tortured him as

he thrust his lantern into the gaping caverns of bushes. He had by his

thoughtless and excessive zeal allowed Boarzell to rob him of another

man. Of course, it did not follow that George was dead, but unless they

found him soon it was quite likely that he would not survive exposure on

such a night. If so, Reuben had only himself to thank for it. He should

have listened to his daughter, and either let George off his work or

made him work near home. He did not pretend to himself that he loved

this weakling son, or that his death would cause his fatherhood much

grief, but he found himself with increasing definiteness brought up

against the conviction that Boarzell was beating him, wringing its own

out of him by slow, inexorable means, paying him back a hundredfold for

every acre he took or furrow he planted.

He had become separated from the other searchers, and was alone on the

west side of the Moor. The wind barked and howled, hurling itself upon

him as he stood, beating his face with hail, which hissed into the dead

tangles of the heather, while the stripped thorns yapped and rattled,

and the bushes roared. So great was the tumult that he seemed to fall

into it like a stone into a wave--it passed over him, round him, seemed

even to pass under him, he was hardly conscious of the solid ground. The

blackness was impenetrable, save where his lantern stained it with a

yellow smudge. He shouted, but his voice perished in the din--it seemed

as if his whole man, sight, voice, hearing, and sensation, was blurring

into the storm, as if Boarzell had swamped him at last, made him merely

one of its hundred voices, mocking the manhood which had tried so much

against its earth.

The wind seemed to be laughing at him, as it bellowed up in gusts,

struck him, sprayed him, roughed his hair out madly, smacked his cheeks,

drove the rain into his skin, and then rumbled away with a hundred

chatterings and sighings. It seemed to be telling him that as his breath

was to this wind so was he himself to Boarzell. The wind was the voice

of the Moor, and it told him that in fighting Boarzell, he did not fight

the mere earth, an agglomeration of lime and clay which he could

trample and compel, but all the powers behind it. In arming himself

against Boarzell he armed himself against the whole of nature's huge

resources, the winds, the storms, the droughts, the early and the latter

rain, the poisons in plants, and the death in stones, the lusts which

spilling over from the beasts into the heart of man slay him from within

himself. He had armed himself against all these, and once again the old

words sang in his head--"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? or

bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make a covenant with thee?

Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?"

He had shrunk into the rattling shelter of some thorn-bushes. They

scraped their boughs like grotesque violins, and every other moment they

would sweep down over him and shut him into a cavern of snapping twigs.

He was soaked to the skin and his teeth chattered. He lay close to the

earth, seeking shelter even from the skeleton heather which writhed

woody stems all round him. He cursed. Must he spend the night here, lost

and grovelling, to listen while Boarzell screeched its triumph over his

cold, drenched body....

"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? or bore his jaw through with

a thorn? Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a

servant for ever?

"His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether

millstone.

"The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold; the spear, the dart,

nor the habergeon.

"He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.

"Sharp stones are under him...."

A crash of thunder and a spit of lightning tore open the sky, and for a

moment Reuben saw the slope of the Moor livid in the flash, and the

crest of firs standing against the split and tumbling clouds. The air

rang, screamed, hissed, rushed, and rumbled. Reuben, hardly knowing what

he did, had sprung to his feet.

"I'll have wheat growing here in a twelvemonth!" he shouted.

§ 12.

The dawn broke over Boarzell like a reconciliation. The clamouring

voices of wind and trees were still, and only a low sobbing came now and

then from the woods. In the sky pale streamers of rose barred and

striped a spreading violet. One or two clouds flew low, and slowly

pilled themselves, scattering into the fields. On every blade of grass

and twig of thorn, on every leaf and spine, glimmered pearls of rain,

washing the air with a faint scent of stagnant water, perfuming it with

the steams of sodden grass.

Reuben crept out of his thorn cavern and looked down the slope. At the

bottom by Socknersh one or two lanterns moved through the dusk. He

stiffly threw up his arm and tried to shout. His throat felt cramped and

swollen, and it was not till after one or two attempts that a sound

pitifully like a bleat came out of it. A voice answered him from the

hollow, and then he saw that they were carrying something. He limped

painfully down to them. Richard, Boorman, and Handshut carried a hurdle

between them, and on the hurdle lay a draggled boy, whose clenched hand

clutched a tuft of earth and grass as a victim might clutch a handful of

his murderer's hair.

"Is he dead?" asked Reuben.

"Yes, mäaster," said Boorman.

Richard's mouth twisted in contemptuous silence--Handshut being young

and silly was crying.

"He wurn't on the new land," continued Boorman, "he'd fallen into the

ditch by Socknersh palings--that's why we cudn't find un. Reckon as he'd

felt the fitses coming on un, and tried to git höame, pore souly."

"When did you find him?"

"Half an hour agone. He'd bin dead for hours, mäaster. He must have

choked in the ditch--see, his mouth is full of mud."

Reuben drew back with a shiver. He limped behind the little procession

towards Odiam, slouching for the first time in his life. In spite of his

conquests he and Boarzell still were quits, still had to prove which was

the better man. George, lying there muddy, white, and crumpled, was a

sign that the Moor had its victories, in spite of the spreading corn.

He looked down at George--the boy's face had an unhuman chalky

appearance under the mudstains; on the forehead a vein had swollen up in

black knots, others showed pale, almost aqueous, through the stretched

skin. After all, George was the weakest, the best-spared of his

children. This thought comforted and stiffened him a little, and he went

into the house with something of his old uprightness.

The other children were in the kitchen. They had seen their dead brother

from the window, and stood mute and tearless as he was carried into the

room. Reuben gave orders for him to be taken upstairs and the doctor to

be sent for. No one else spoke. Tilly's breast heaved stormily, and he

did not like the dull blaze in her eyes. Strange to say, of his whole

family, excepting Pete, she was the only one of whom he was not faintly

contemptuous. She had spirit, that girl--he prophesied that she would

turn out a shrew.

For the very reason that he could not despise her, he took upon himself

to bully her now.

"Get me some tea," he said roughly, "I'm cold."

§ 13.

Though there had been no open rupture, from that day forward Odiam was

divided into two camps. On one side were Reuben and Pete, on the other,

Tilly and Richard. Benjamin and Caro were neutrals; they were

indifferent to vital issues, one engrossed in snatching holidays, the

other in hankering after she did not quite know what. Pete had always

been a good son, hard-working and enthusiastic, not exactly a comrade,

but none the less an ally, always to be depended on and now and then

taken into confidence. He seemed to accept his father's attitude towards

George's death and to resent Richard's and Tilly's. That spring he beat

Squinty Bream at Robertsbridge Fair, and gave half the purse to Reuben

to buy a chaff-cutter.

Of the enemy Tilly was the most effective--Reuben did not quite know how

to deal with her. His inability to despise her told heavily against him.

Richard, on the other hand, he despised from the depths of his heart.

The boy was insufferable, for he still had his old knack of saving his

skin. It was nearly always impossible to pick any definite faults in his

work--it was wonderful how he managed to combine unwillingness with

efficiency. He also had an irritating habit of speaking correct English,

and of alluding to facts and events of which Reuben had never heard in

such a manner as to make it impossible for him not to show his

ignorance.

Reuben never lost a chance of baiting him, he jibed at his squeamishness

and fine manners, at his polite way of eating and the trouble he took to

clean his nails; he despised him all the more for occasionally getting

the better of him, verbally at any rate, in these encounters. One night

at supper Reuben, having actually succeeded in finding this sneering son

at fault, abused him roundly for the shocking condition of the ewes'

fleeces. Richard had the bad sense to quote Shakespeare, whereat Reuben

told him that if he could not speak English he could leave the room.

Richard replied that he would be very pleased to do so, as certain

people's table-manners made supper rather an ordeal. Reuben helped him

out with a kick most vulgarly placed.

The next day Backfield was due at an auction at Northiam, but before

leaving he ordered Richard to clean out the pig-sties. It was not,

properly speaking, his work at all, but Reuben hoped it would make him

sick, or that he would refuse to obey and thus warrant his father

knocking him down.

"Certainly," said Richard without a tremor.

"Oh, thank you," said Reuben, bowing in mock politeness, and trying to

copy his clipped English.

Ten minutes later he rode off, and the family separated to their tasks,

or to such evasions of them as were possible in the master's absence.

Tilly cleared the table and began to prepare the dinner. She had

promised the boys a bag pudding, and must start it early. She had not

been cooking more than half an hour when the door opened, and Richard

came in, dressed in a neat black suit with a stiff Gladstone collar. His

hair was nicely brushed, and he carried a pair of gloves and a little

valise.

"Oh!" cried Tilly.

"I'm off," said Richard shortly, banging down his valise on the table.

"Off!--where?"

"To London."

Tilly gaped at him.

"I'm sick of all this, I'm sick of the old man and his beastliness. Miss

Bardon is lending me money to go to London University, and perhaps I

shall read for the Bar."

"The Bar," repeated Tilly vaguely.

"Yes, I've learned a heap of Latin and other things during the last

five years, and two or three years at the University ought to be all I

want. Miss Bardon's taught me--I owe everything to her."

"I must say as how you've kept it dark."

She knew of his friendship with Anne Bardon, but had never expected it

to bear such generous fruit.

"Well, it would never have done if the old man had got to know of it.

Good heavens, Tilly! How can you live on with that old brute?"

"Maybe I shan't much longer," said Tilly, looking down at her

rolling-pin.

Richard stared at her for a moment--"I'm glad to hear it. But the

others--oh, my dear girl, this is damnable!"

Tilly sighed.

"The law ought to suppress such men--it ought to be a criminal offence

to revert to type--the primordial gorilla."

"But fäather's a clever man--Albert always used to say so."

"Yes, in a cunning, brutish sort of way--like a gorilla when he's set

his heart on a particular cocoanut. Boarzell's his cocoanut, and he's

done some smart things to get it--and in one way at least he's above the

gorilla, for he can enslave other people of superior intelligence to

sweat under his orders for what they care nothing about."

"We're all very unlucky," said Tilly, "to have been born his children.

But one by one we're gitting free. There'll soon be only Pete and Jemmy

and Caro left."

"And I hope to God they'll have the wit to follow the rest of us. I'd

like to see that old slave-driver left quite alone. Heavens! I could

have strangled him yesterday--I should have, if I hadn't had this to

look forward to."

"Where are you going to stay in London?"

"Miss Bardon's taken some rooms for me in Montague Street."

"She's good to you, Richard."

"She's an angel "--he lifted his eyes, and his mouth became almost

worshipful--"she's an angel, who's raised me out of hell. I shall never

be able to repay her, but she doesn't expect it. All she wants is my

success."

"I wish Caro or Jemmy cud meet someone like her. I döan't think as Pete

minds."

"No, he's quite the young gorilla. Now I must be off, Tilly. I'll write

to you."

"Oh, wöan't fäather be in a taking!"

"I reckon--I expect he will. But don't you mind him, little sister. He

isn't worth it."

He stooped and kissed her.

"Good-bye. Say it to the others for me."

"Good-bye--good luck to you."

... And he was gone--walking past the window in a top-hat.

§ 14.

It would be mere politeness to describe as a "taking" Reuben's condition

when he heard Richard had gone. He was in a stamping, bellowing,

bloodshot rage. He sent for various members of his family, questioned

them, stormed at them, sent them away, then sent for them again. He

boxed Caro's ears because she cried--hitherto he had kept his hands off

the girls. As for Tilly, he would have liked to have whipped her--he

felt sure that somehow it was all her doing--but the more furious he

grew, the more he felt himself abashed by her manner, at once so soft

and so determined, and he dared do no more than throw his boots at her.

After a night of cursings and trampings in his room, he took the

fermenting dregs of his wrath to Cheat Land. It was queer that he should

go for sympathy to Alice Jury, who was chief in the enemy's camp. But

though he knew she would not take his part, she would not be like the

others, leering and cackling. She would give him something vital, even

if it was only a vital opposition. That was all the difference between

her and everyone else--she opposed him not because she was flabby or

uninterested or enterpriseless, but because she really hated what he

strove for. She was his one strong candid enemy, so he went to her as

his only friend.

She was shocked at his white twitching face and bloodshot eyes; for the

first time since she had known him, Reuben came to her bereft of that

triumphant manhood which had made him so splendid to watch in his

struggles.

"The hound!" he cried, striking his fists together, "the miserable,

cowardy hound!--gone and left me--gone to be a gentleman, the lousy pig.

Oh, Lard, I wish as I had him in these hands o' mine!--I'd mäake a

gentleman of him!"

Alice, as he expected, had caustic for him rather than balm.

"Once again," she said slowly, "I ask you--is it worth while?"

"Wot's worth while?"

"You know. I asked you that question the first or second time I saw you.

No one had ever asked it you before, and you would have liked to beat

me."

"I shud like to beat you now--talking of wot you know naun about."

"I daresay--but I'm not your son or your daughter or your wife----"

"I never beat my wife."

"Chivalrous, humane man!--well, anyhow I'm not anyone you can beat, so I

dare ask--is it worth while?"

"And I ask wot d'you mean by 'worth while'?"

"You know that it's Boarzell and your farm which have lost you your

boys."

"I know nothing of the sort."

"Well, would Robert have stolen money, or Albert disgraced your name,

to get free, if you and your farm hadn't made them slaves? If you hadn't

been a heartless slave-driver would George have died the other night

alone on the Moor?--or would Richard have taken advantage of a

neighbour's charity to escape from you? Don't you see that your ambition

has driven you to make slaves of your children?"

"Well, they wöan't wark fur me of their free will. Lard knows I've tried

to interest 'em...."

"But how can you expect them to be interested? Your ambition means

nothing to them."

"It ought to--Odiam's their home jest as it's mine."

"But don't you see that you've forced them to give up all the sweet

things of life for it?--Robert his love, and Albert his poetry, and

Richard his education."

"Well, I gave up all the sweet things of life, as you call 'em--and why

shudn't they?"

"Because you gave those things up of your free will--they were made to

give them up by force. You've no right to starve and deny other people

as you have to starve and deny yourself."

"I döan't see that. Wot I can do, they can."

"But--as experience has taught you--they won't. You can see now what

your slave-driving's brought you to--you've lost your slaves."

"Well, and I reckon they wurn't much loss, nuther"--the caustic was

healing after all--"Robert wur a fool wot didn't know how to steal a

ten-pound note, Albert wur always mooning and wasting his time, and

George wur a pore thing not worth his keep. As for Richard--that

Richard--who wants a stuck-up, dentical, high-nosed, genteel swell about

the pläace? I reckon as I'm well shut of the whole four of 'em. They

wurn't worth the food they ate, surelye!"

"That's what strikes me as so pathetic."

"Wot?"

"That you should be able to comfort yourself with the thought that they

weren't worth much to you as a farmer. What were they worth to you as a

father?"

"Naun."

"Quite so--and that's what makes me pity you," and suddenly her eyes

kindled, blazed, as with her spirit itself for fuel--"I pity you, I pity

you--poor, poor man!"

"Adone do wud that--though you sound more as if you wur in a black

temper wud me than as if you pitied me."

"I am angry with you just because I pity you. It's a shame that I should

have to pity you--you're such a splendid man. It ought to be impossible

to pity you, but I do--I pity you from my soul. Think what you're

missing. Think what your children might have been to you. How you might

have loved that dear stupid Robert--how proud you might have been of

Albert, and of Richard leaving you for a professional career ... and

poor little George, just because he was weak and unlike the rest, he

might have been more to you than them all. Then there's your brother

Harry----"

"Come, come--stick to the truth. I äun't to blame for Harry."

"But can't you see that he's the chief part of the tragedy you're

bringing on yourself and everyone?--He's the type, he's the chorus, the

commentary on every act. Reuben, can't you see--oh, why won't you

see?--he's you, yourself, as you really are!"

"Nonsense!--döan't be a fool, my gal."

"Yes--you--blind, crazy with your ambition, repulsive and alone in it.

Don't you see?"

He smiled grimly--"I döan't."

"No--you don't see this hideous thing that's pursuing you, that's

stripping you of all that ought to be yours, that's making you miss a

hundred beautiful things, that's driving you past all your joys--this

Boarzell...."

"--äun't driving me, anyhow. I'm fighting it."

"No," said Alice. "It's I who am fighting Boarzell."

§ 15.

Early the next year, Tilly married Realf of Grandturzel.

Reuben received the blow in silence--it stunned him. He did not go over

to Cheat Land--something, he scarcely knew what, kept him away. In the

long yellow twilights he wandered on Boarzell. The rain-smelling March

wind scudded over the grass, over the wet furrows of his cornfields,

over the humming tops of the firs that, with the gorse splashed round

their trunks, marked the crest of the Moor and of his ambition. Would

they ever be his, those firs? Would he ever tear up that gorse and fling

it on the bonfire, as he had torn up the gorse on the lower slopes and

burned it with roars and cracklings and smoke that streamed over the

Moor to Totease? Perhaps Realf would have the firs and the gorse, and

pile that gorgeous bonfire. Tilly would put him up to her father's

game--Reuben's imagination again failed to conceive the man who did not

want Boarzell--she would betray Odiam's ambitions, and babble its most

vital secrets. Tilly, Reuben told Boarzell, was a bitch.

It became now all the more necessary to smash Realf. He could no longer

be content with keeping just ahead of him; he must establish a sort of

two-power standard, and crush his rival to the earth. That was not a

good summer for expansion--a drought baked up the greater part of

Sussex, and there was an insect plague in the hops--nevertheless, Reuben

bought thirty-five acres of Boarzell, on the east slope, by the road. He

was tormented by a fear that Realf would buy the land if he did not,

and, moreover, during May two boards had appeared advertising it as "an

eligible building site"; which was possibly bluff, possibly unusual

cunning on the part of Flightshot, made resourceful by its straits.

He no longer had any direct intercourse with the Bardons. Their latest

impropriety had put them beyond even the favour of a casual nod. If they

chose to break up his family they must take the consequences. He only

wished he could break up their estate, sell their rat-holed old Manor

over their heads, and leave them unprotected by landed property to the

sure workings of their own incompetence.

He did not fail to show his neighbours how he despised Flightshot, and

the more humorously inclined among them were never tired of asking how

soon it would be before Richard married Anne.

"Your family seems to be in a marrying way jest now, Mus'

Backfield--there's your daughter made an unaccountable fine match, and

it's only nat'ral as young Richard shud want to do as well fur himself."

Reuben treated these irreverences with scorn. Nothing would make him

abate a jot of his dignity. On the contrary, his manner and his presence

became more and more commanding. He drove a splendid blood mare in his

gig, smoked cigars instead of pipes, and wore stand-up collars about

four inches high--when he was not working, for it had not struck him

that it was undignified to work, and he still worked harder on his farm

than the worst-paid pig-boy.

He was more stoutly resolved than ever that the mob of small farmers and

incompetents should not gape at his misfortunes. So he hid under a

highly repulsive combination of callousness and swagger his grief for

his sons' defection, his rage and shame at Tilly's marriage, and his

growing anxiety about Odiam. That summer had been terrible--a long

drought had been followed too late by thundery rains. His harvest had

been parched and scrappy, most of the roots shedding their seed before

reaping; the green-fly had spoiled several acres of hops, which

otherwise would have been the one bright patch in the season; his apples

and pears had been eaten by wasps; and then a few untimely showers had

beaten down two fields of barley yet unreaped and his only decent crop

of aftermath hay.

If Grandturzel had fared as badly he could have borne it, but

Grandturzel, though scarred, came out of the summer less battered than

he. Realf's oats, being in a more sheltered position, did no private

threshing of their own; his hops for the most part escaped the blight,

and though he lost a good deal on his plums, his apples were harvested

at a record, and brought him in nearly ten pounds an acre. On both farms

the milk had done badly, but as Realf's dairy business was not so

extensive as Backfield's, he was better able to stand its partial

collapse.

Reuben felt that Tilly was at the bottom of his rival's success. She was

practical and saving, the very virtues which Realf lacked and the want

of which might have wrecked him. She doubtless was responsible for the

good condition of his orchards and the immunity of his hops; she had

probably told her husband of that insect-spray of her father's--which

had failed him that summer, being too much diluted by the fool who mixed

it, but had proved a miracle of devastation in other years.

He wanted to smash Tilly even more than he wanted to smash Realf. He had

seen her twice since her marriage--meeting her once in Rye, and once on

Boarzell--and each sight had worked him into a greater rage. Her little

figure had strengthened and filled out, her demure self-confidence had

increased, her prettiness was even more adorable now that the rose had

deepened on her cheeks and her gowns strained over her breast; she was

enough to fill any man with wrath at the joke of things. Tilly ought to

be receiving the wages of her treachery in weariness and anxiety, fading

colour and withering flesh--and here she was all fat and rosy and happy,

well-fed and well-beloved. He hated her and called her a harlot--because

she had betrayed Odiam for hire and trafficked in its shame.

§ 16.

He had been forced to engage a woman to help Caro in the house, and also

a shepherd for Richard's work. His family had been whittled down to

almost nothing. Only Caro, Pete, and Jemmy were left out of his eight

splendid boys and girls. Caro, Pete, Jemmy, and hideous, mumbling

Harry--he surveyed the four of them with contemptuous scowls. Pete was

the only one who was worth anything--Caro and Jemmy would turn against

him if they had the slightest chance and forsake him with the rest. As

for Harry, he was a grotesque, an image, a hideous fum--"Reuben himself

as he really was." He! He!

The weeks wore on and it dawned on him that he must pull himself

together for a fresh campaign. He must have more warriors--he could not

fight Boarzell with only traitors and hirelings. He must marry again.

It was some time since the abstract idea of marriage had begun to please

him, but lately the abstract of marriage had always led to the concrete

of Alice Jury, so he had driven it from his thoughts. Now, more and more

clearly, he saw that he must marry. He wanted a woman and he wanted

children, so he must marry. But he must not marry Alice.

Of late he had resumed his visits to Cheat Land, discontinued for a

while at Tilly's marriage. The attraction of Alice Jury was as strong,

unfathomable, and unaccountable as ever. Since the stormy interview

after Richard's desertion they had not discussed his ambitions for

Odiam and Boarzell, but that meeting was none the less stamped on

Reuben's memory with a gloomy significance. It was not that Alice's

arguments had affected him at all--she had not penetrated to the springs

of his enterprise, she had not touched or conjured the hidden part of

him in which his ambition's roots were twined round all that was vital

and sacred in the man. But somehow she had expressed her own attitude

with an almost sinister clearness--"It's I who am fighting Boarzell."

What should she fight it for?--imagine that she fought it, rather, for a

woman could not really fight Boarzell. She was fighting it for him. She

wanted him.

He knew that Alice wanted him, and he knew that he wanted Alice. He did

not know why he wanted Alice any more than he knew why Alice wanted him.

"Wot is she?--a liddle stick of a creature. And I like big women."

There was something in the depths of him that cried for her, something

which had never moved or cried in him before. In spite of her lack of

beauty and beguilement, in spite of her hostility to all his darling

schemes, there was something in him to which Alice actually and utterly

belonged. He did not understand it, he could not analyse it, he scarcely

indeed realised it--all he felt was the huge upheaval, the conflict that

it brought, all the shouting and the struggling of the desperate and

motiveless craving that he felt for her--a hunger in him calling through

days and nights, in spite of her insignificance, her aloofness, her

silences, her antagonism.

"I reckon as how I must be in love."

That was the conclusion he came to after much heavy pondering. He had

never been truly in love before. He had wanted women for various

reasons, either for their charm and beauty, or because, as in Naomi's

case, of their practical use to him. Alice had no beauty, and a charm

too subtle for him to realise, though as a matter of fact the whole man

was plastic to it--as for practical usefulness, she was poor, delicate,

unaccustomed to country life, and hostile to all his most vital

ambitions. She would not bring him wealth or credit, she was not likely

to bear him healthy children--and yet he loved her.

Sometimes, roaming through murky dusks, he realised in the dim

occasional flashes which illuminate the non-thinking man, that he was up

against the turning-point of his fight with Boarzell. If he married

Alice it would be the token of what had always seemed more unimaginable

than his defeat--his voluntary surrender. Sometimes he told himself

fiercely that he could fight Boarzell with Alice hanging, so to speak,

over his arm; but in his heart he knew that he could not. He could not

have both Alice and Boarzell.

Yet, in spite of all this, one day at Cheat Land he nearly fell at her

feet and asked her to be his ruin.

It was a March twilight, cold and rustling, and tart with the scents of

newly turned furrows. Reuben sat with Alice in the kitchen, and every

now and then Jury's wretched house-place would shake as the young gale

swept up rainless from the east and poured itself into cracks and

chimneys. Alice was sewing as usual--it struck Reuben that she was very

quick and useful with her fingers, whatever might be her drawbacks in

other ways. Sometimes she had offered to read poetry to him, and had

once bored him horribly with In Memoriam, but as he had taken no trouble

to hide his feelings she had to his great relief announced her intention

of casting no more pearls before swine.

She was silent, and the firelight playing in her soft, lively eyes gave

her a kind of mystery which for the first time allowed Reuben a glimpse

into the sources of her attraction. She was utterly unlike anything

there was or had been in his life, the only thing he knew that did not

smell of earth. The pity of it was that he loved that strong-smelling

earth so much.

"Alice," he said suddenly--"Do you think as how you could ever care

about Boarzell?"

"No, I'm quite sure I couldn't."

"Not ever?"

"Never."

"Why?"

"Because I hate it. It's spoiling your life. It's making a beast and a

maniac of you. You think of nothing--absolutely nothing--but a miserable

rubbish-heap that most people would be throwing their old kettles on."

"That's just the point, my gal. Where most föalkses 'ud be throwing old

kettles, I shall be growing wheat."

"And what good will that do you?"

"Good!--when I've two hundred acres sown with grain!"

"Yes, grain that's fertilised with the rotting remains of all that ought

to have made your life good and sweet."

"You wöan't understand. There's naun in the world means anything to me

but my farm. Oh, Alice, if you could only see things wud my eyes and

stand beside me instead of agäunst me."

"Then there would be no more friendship between us. What unites us is

the fact that we are fighting each other."

"Döan't talk rubbidge, liddle gal. It's because I see, all the fight

there is in you that I'd sooner you fought for me than agäunst me.

Couldn't you try, Alice?"

His voice had sunk very low, almost to sweetness. A soft flurry of pink

went over her face, and her eyelids drooped. Then suddenly she braced

herself, pulled herself taut, grew combative again, though her voice

shook.

"No, Reuben, I could never do anything but fight your schemes. I think

you are wasting and spoiling your life, and there's no use expecting me

to stand by you."

He now realised the full extent of his peril, because for the first

time he saw her position unmasked. She would never beguile him with the

thought that she could help him in his life's desire; she would not

alter the essential flavour of their relationship to suit his

taste--rather she would force him to swallow it, she would subdue by

strength and not by stealth, and fight him to the end.

He must escape, for if he surrendered now the battle was over, and he

would have betrayed Boarzell the loved to something he loved less--loved

less, he knew it, though he wavered.

He rose to his feet. The kitchen was dark, with eddying sweeps of shadow

in the corners which the firelight caressed--while a single star put

faint ghostly romance into the window.

"I--I must be gitting back home."

Alice rose too, and for a moment he was surprised that she did not try

to keep him; instead, she said:

"It's late."

He moved a step or two towards the door, and suddenly she added in a low

broken voice:

"But not too late."

The floor seemed to rise towards him, and the star in the window to

dance down into Castweasel woods and up again.

Alice stood in the middle of the room, her face bloomed with dusk and

firelight, her hands stretched out towards him....

There was silence, in which a coal fell. She still stood with her arms

outstretched; he knew that she was calling him--as no woman had ever

called him--with all that of herself which was in his heart, part of his

own being.

"Reuben."

"Alice."

He came a few steps back into the room....

It was those few steps which lost him to her, for they brought him

within sight of Boarzell--framed in the window, where Castweasel woods

had been. It lay in a great hush, a great solitude, a quiet beast of

power and mystery. It seemed to call to him through the twilight like a

love forsaken. There it lay, Boarzell--strong, beautiful, desired,

untamed, still his hope, still his battle. And Alice?... He gave her a

look, and left her.

"I once töald a boy of mine," he said to himself as he crossed the Moor,

"that the sooner he found he could do wudout love the better.... Well, I

reckon I'm not going to be any weaker than my words."