THE VICTORY
§ 1.
The next year, Richard and Anne Backfield took a house at Playden for
week-ends. Anne wanted to be near her relations at the Manor, and
Richard, softened by prosperity, had no objection to returning to the
scene of his detested youth.
A week or two before they arrived Reuben went to Playden, and looked
over the house. It was a new one, on the hill above Star Lock, and it
was just what he would have expected of Richard and Anne--gimcrack. He
scraped the mortar with his finger-nail, poked at the tiles with his
stick, and pronounced the place jerry-built in the worst way. It had no
land attached to it, either--only a silly garden with a tennis court and
flowers. Richard's success struck him as extremely petty compared with
his own.
He did not see much of his son and daughter-in-law on their visits.
Richard was inclined to be friendly, but Anne hated Odiam and all
belonging to it, while Reuben himself disliked calling at Starcliffe
House, because he was always meeting the Manor people.
The family at Flightshot consisted now of the Squire, who had nothing
against him except his obstinacy, his lady, and his son who was just of
age and "the most tedious young rascal" Reuben had ever had to deal
with. He drove a motor-car with hideous din up and down the Peasmarsh
lanes, and once Odiam had had the pleasure of lending three horses to
pull it home from the Forstal. But his worst crimes were in the hunting
field; he had no respect for roots or winter grain or hedges or young
spinneys. Twice Reuben had written to his father, through Maude the
scribe, and he vowed openly that if ever he caught him at it he'd take a
stick to him.
The result of all this was that George Fleet, being young and humorous,
indulged in some glorious rags at old Backfield's expense. He had not
been to Cambridge for nothing, and one morning Reuben found both his
house doors boarded up so that he had to get out by the window, and on
another occasion his pigs were discovered in a squalling mass with their
tails tied together. There was no good demanding retribution, for the
youth's scandalised innocence when confronted with his crimes utterly
convinced his fools of parents, and gave them an opinion of his accuser
that promised ill for his ultimate possession of the Fair-place.
Reuben still dreamed of that Fair-place, and occasionally schemed as
well; but everything short of the death of the Squire--and his
son--seemed useless. However, he now had the rest of Boarzell in such a
state of cultivation that he sometimes found it possible to forget the
land that was still unconquered. That year he bought a hay-elevator and
a steam-reaper. The latter was the first in the neighbourhood--never
very go-ahead in agricultural matters--and quite a crowd collected when
it started work in the Glotten Hide, to watch it mow down the grain,
gather it into bundles, and crown the miracle by tying these just as
neatly as, and much more quickly than, a man.
Though Reuben's corn had not done much for him materially, it had
far-reaching consequences of another kind. It immensely increased his
status in the county. Odiam had more land under grain cultivation than
any farm east of Lewes, and the local Tories saw in Backfield a likely
advocate of Tariff Reform. He was approached by the Rye Conservative
Club, and invited to speak at one or two of their meetings. He turned
out to be, as they had expected, an ardent champion of the new idea. "It
wur wot he had worked and hoped and prayed fur all his life--to git back
them Corn Laws." He was requested not to put the subject quite so
bluntly.
So in his latter days Reuben came back into the field of politics which
he had abandoned in middle age. Once more his voice was heard in
school-houses and mission-halls, pointing out their duty and profit to
the men of Rye. He was offered, and accepted, a Vice-Presidentship of
the Conservative Club. Politics had changed in many ways since he had
last been mixed up in them. The old, old subjects that had come up at
election after election--vote by ballot, the education of the poor, the
extension of the franchise, Gladstone's free breakfast table--had all
been settled, or deformed out of knowledge. The only old friend was the
question of a tax on wheat, revived after years of quiescence--to
rekindle in Reuben's old age dreams of an England where the corn should
grow as the grass, a golden harvest from east to west, bringing wealth
and independence to her sons.
§ 2.
The only part of the farm that was not doing well was Grandturzel. The
new ground had been licked into shape under Reuben's personal
supervision, but the land round the steading, which had been under
cultivation for three hundred years, yielded only feeble crops and
shoddy harvests--things went wrong, animals died, accidents happened.
Realf had never been a practical man--perhaps it was to that he owed his
downfall. Good luck and ambition had made him soar for a while, but he
lacked the dogged qualities which had enabled Reuben to play for years
a losing game. Besides, he had to a certain extent lost interest in land
which was no longer his own. He worked for a wage, for his daily bread,
and the labour of his hands and head which had once been an adventure
and a glory, was now nothing but the lost labour of those who rise up
early and late take rest.
Also he was in bad health--his hardships and humiliations had wrought
upon his body as well as his soul. He was not even the ghost of the man
whose splendid swaggering youth had long ago in Peasmarsh church first
made the middle-aged Reuben count his years. He stooped, suffered
horribly from rheumatism, had lost most of his hair, and complained of
his eyesight.
Reuben began to fidget about Grandturzel. He told his son-in-law that if
things did not improve he would have to go. In vain Realf pleaded bad
weather and bad luck--neither of them was ever admitted as an excuse at
Odiam.
The hay-harvest of 1904 was a good one--of course Realf's hay had too
much sorrel in it, there was always something wrong with Realf's
crops--but generally speaking the yield was plentiful and of good
quality. Reuben rejoiced to feel the soft June sun on his back, and went
out into the fields with his men, himself driving for some hours the
horse-rake over the swathes, and drinking at noon his pint of beer in
the shade of the waggon. In the evening the big hay-elevator hummed at
Odiam, and old Backfield stood and watched it piling the greeny-brown
ricks till darkness fell, and he went in to supper and the sleep of his
old age.
It took about a week to finish the work--on the last day the fields
which for so long had shown the wind's path in tawny ripples, were
shaven close and green, scattering a sweet steam into the air--a soft
pungency that stole up to the house at night and lapped it round with
fragrance. Old Reuben stretched himself contentedly as he went into his
dim room and prepared to lie down. The darkness had hardly settled on
the fields--a high white light was in the sky, among the stars.
He went to bed early with the birds and beasts. Before he climbed into
the bed, lying broad and white and dim in the background of the
candleless room, he opened the window, to drink in the scent of his land
as it fell asleep. The breeze whiffled in the orchard, fluttering the
boughs where the young green apples hid under the leaves, there was a
dull sound of stamping in the barns ... he could see the long line of
his new haycocks beyond the yard, soft dark shapes in the twilight.
He was just going to turn back into the room, his limbs aching
pleasantly for the sheets, when he noticed a faint glow in the sky to
southward. At first he thought it was a shred of sunset still burning,
then realised it was too far south for June--also it seemed to flicker
in the wind. Then suddenly it spread itself into a fan, and cast up a
shower of sparks.
The next minute Reuben had pulled on his trousers and was out in the
passage, shouting "Fire!"
The farm men came tumbling from the attics--"Whur, mäaster?"
"Over at Grandturzel--can't see wot's burning from here. Git buckets and
come!"
Shouts and gunshots brought those men who slept out in the cottages, and
a half-dressed gang, old Reuben at the head, pounded through the misty
hay-sweet night to where the flames were spreading in the sky. From the
shoulder of Boarzell they could see what was burning--Realf's new-made
stacks, two already aflame, the others doomed by the sparks which
scattered on the wind.
No one spoke, but from Realf's yard came sounds of shouting, the uneasy
lowing and stamping of cattle, and the neigh of terrified horses. The
whole place was lit up by the glare of the fire, and soon Reuben could
see Realf and his two men, Dunk and Juglery, with Mrs. Realf, the
girls, and young Sidney, passing buckets down from the pond and pouring
them on the blazing stacks--with no effect at all.
"The fools! Wot do they think they're a-doing of? Döan't they know how
to put out a fire?"
He quickened his pace till his men were afraid he would "bust himself,"
and dashing between the burning ricks, nearly received full in the chest
the bucket his son-in-law had just swung.
"Stop!" he shouted--"are your cattle out?"
"No."
"Then git 'em out, you fool! You'll have the whole pläace a bonfire in a
minnut. Wot's the use of throwing mugs of water lik this? You'll never
put them ricks out. Säave your horses, säave your cows, säave your
poultry. Anyone gone for the firemen?"
"Yes, I sent a boy over fust thing."
"Why didn't you send to me?"
"Cudn't spare a hand."
"Cudn't spare one hand to fetch over fifteen--that's a valiant idea. Now
döan't go loitering; fetch out your cattle afore they're roast beef, git
out the horses and all the stock--and souse them ricks wot äun't burning
yit."
The men scurried in all directions obeying his orders. Soon terrified
horses were being led blindfold into the home meadow; the cows and
bullocks, less imaginative, followed more quietly. Meantime buckets were
passed up from the pond to the stacks that were not alight; but before
this work was begun Reuben went up to the furthest stack and thrust his
hand into it--then he put in his head and sniffed. Then he called Realf.
"Cöame here."
Realf came.
"Wot's that?"
Realf felt the hay and sniffed like Reuben.
"Wot's that?" his father-in-law repeated.
Realf went white to the lips, and said nothing.
"I'll tell you wot it is, then!" cried Reuben--"it's bad stacking. This
hay äun't bin präaperly dried--it's bin stacked damp, and them ricks
have gone alight o' themselves, bust up from inside. It's your doing,
this here is, and I'll mäake you answer fur it, surelye."
"I--I--the hay seemed right enough."
"Maybe it seems right enough to you now?"--and Reuben pointed to the
blazing stacks.
Realf opened his lips, but the words died on them. His eyes looked wild
and haggard in the jigging light; he groaned and turned away. At the
same moment a pillar of fire shot up from the roof of the Dutch barn.
The flying sparks had soon done their work. Fires sprang up at a
distance from the ricks, sometimes in two places at once. Everyone
worked desperately, but the water supply was slow, and though
occasionally these sporadic fires were put out, generally they burned
fiercely. Wisps of blazing hay began to fly about the yard, lodging in
roofs and crannies. By the time the fire engine arrived from Rye, the
whole place was alight except the dwelling-house and the oasts.
The engine set to work, and soon everything that had not been destroyed
by fire was destroyed by water. But the flames were beaten. They hissed
and blackened into smoke. When dawn broke over the eastern shoulder of
Boarzell, the fire was out. A rasping pungent smell rose from a wreckage
of black walls and little smoking piles of what looked like black rags.
Water poured off the gutters of the house, and soused still further the
pile of furniture and bedding that had been pulled hastily out of it.
The farm men gathered round the buckets, to drink, and to wash their
smoke-grimed skins. Reuben talked over the disaster with the head of the
fire brigade, who endorsed his opinion of spontaneous combustion; and
Realf of Grandturzel sat on a heap of ashes--and sobbed.
§ 3.
That morning Reuben had a sleep after breakfast, and did not come down
till dinner-time. He was told that Mrs. Realf wanted to see him and had
been waiting in the parlour since ten. He smiled grimly, then settled
his mouth into a straight line.
He found his daughter in a chair by the window. Her face was puffed and
blotched with tears, and her legs would hardly support her when she
stood up. She had brought her youngest son with her, a fine sturdy
little fellow of fourteen. When Reuben came into the room she gave the
boy a glance, and, as at a preconcerted signal, they both fell on their
knees.
"Git up!" cried Backfield, colouring with annoyance.
"We've come," sobbed Tilly, "we've come to beg you to be merciful."
"I wöan't listen to you while you're lik that."
The son sprang to his feet, and helped his mother, whose stoutness and
stiffness made it a difficult matter, to rise too.
"If you've come to ask me to kip you and your husband on at
Grandturzel," said Reuben, "you might have säaved yourself the trouble,
fur I'm shut of you both after last night."
"Fäather, it wur an accident."
"A purty accident--wud them stacks no more dry than a ditch. 'Twas a
clear case of 'bustion--fireman said so to me; as wicked and tedious a
bit o' wark as ever I met in my life."
"It'll never happen agäun."
"No--it wöan't."
"Oh, fäather--döan't be so hard on us. The Lord knows wot'll become of
us if you turn us out now. It 'ud have been better if we'd gone five
years ago--Realf wur a more valiant man then nor wot he is now. He'll
never be able to start agäun--he äun't fit fur it."
"Then he äun't fit to work on my land. I äun't a charity house. I can't
afford to kip a man wud no backbone and no wits. I've bin too kind as it
is--I shud have got shut of him afore he burnt my pläace to cinders."
"But wot's to become of us?"
"That's no consarn of mine--äun't you säaved anything?"
"How cud we, fäather?"
"I could have säaved two pound a month on Realf's wage."
Tilly had a spurt of anger.
"Yes--you'd have gone short of everything and made other folks go
short--but we äun't that kind."
"You äun't. That's why I'm turning you away."
Her tears welled up afresh.
"Oh, fäather, I'm sorry I spöake lik that. Döan't be angry wud me fur
saying wot I did. I'll own as we might have managed better--only döan't
send us away--fur this liddle chap's sake," and she pulled forward young
Sidney, who was crying too.
"Where are your other sons?"
"Harry's got a wife and children to keep--he cudn't help us; and
Johnnie's never mäade more'n fifteen shilling a week since the war."
Reuben stood silent for a moment, staring at the boy.
"Does Realf know you've come here?" he asked at length.
"Yes," said Tilly in a low voice.
There was another silence. Then suddenly Reuben went to the door and
opened it.
"There's no use you waiting and vrothering me--my mind's mäade up."
"Fäather, fur pity's säake----"
"Döan't talk nonsense. How can I sit here and see my land messed about
by a fool, jest because he happens to have married my darter?--and
agäunst my wish, too. I'm sorry fur you, Tilly, but you're still young
enough to work. I'm eighty-five, and I äun't stopped working yet, so
döan't go saying you're too old. Your gals can go out to service ... and
this liddle chap here ..."
He stopped speaking, and stared at the lad, chin in hand.
"He can work too, I suppose?" said Tilly bitterly.
"I wur going to say as how I've täaken a liking to him. He looks a
valiant liddle feller, and if you'll hand him over to me and have no
more part nor lot in him, I'll see as he doesn't want."
Tilly gasped.
"I've left this farm to William," continued Reuben, "because I've naun
else to leave it to that I can see. All my children have forsook me; but
maybe this boy 'ud be better than they."
"You mean that if we let you adopt Sidney, you'll mäake Odiam his when
you're gone?"
"I döan't say for sartain--if he turns out a präaper lad and is a
comfort to me and loves this pläace as none of my own children have ever
loved it----"
But Tilly interrupted him. Putting her arm round the terrified boy's
shoulders, she led him through the door.
"Thanks, fäather, but if you offered to give us to-day every penny
you've got, I'd let you have no child of mine. Maybe we'll be poor and
miserable and have to work hard, but he wöan't be one-half so wretched
wud us as he'd be wud you. D'you think I disremember my own childhood
and the way you mäade us suffer? You're an old man, but you're
hearty--you might live to a hundred--and I'd justabout die of sorrow if
I thought any child of mine wur living wud you and being mäade as
miserable as you mäade us. _I'd rather see my boy dead than at Odiam._"
§ 4.
There was a big outcry in Peasmarsh against Backfield's treatment of the
Realfs. Not a farmer in the district would have kept on a hand who had
burnt nearly the whole farm to ashes through bad stacking, but this fact
did little to modify the general criticism. A dozen excuses were found
for Realf's "accident," as it came to be called--"and old Ben cud have
afforded to lose a stack or two, surelye."
Reuben was indifferent to the popular voice. The Realfs cleared out bag
and baggage the following month. No one knew their destination, but it
was believed they were to separate. Afterwards it transpired that Realf
had been given work on a farm near Lurgashall, while Tilly became
housekeeper to a clergyman, taking with her the boy she would rather
have seen dead than at Odiam. Nothing was heard of the daughters, and
local rumour had it that they went on the streets; but this pleasing
idea was shattered a year or two later by young Alce, the publican's
son, coming back from a visit to Chichester and saying he had found both
the girls in service in a Canon's house, doing well, and one engaged to
marry the butler.
Reuben did not trouble about the Realfs. Tilly had been no daughter of
his from the day she married; it was a pity he had ever revoked his
wrath and allowed himself to be on speaking terms with her and her
family; if he had turned them out of Grandturzel straight away there
would have been none of this absurd fuss--also he would not have lost a
good crop of hay. But he comforted himself with the thought that his
magnanimity had put about a thousand pounds into his pocket, so he could
afford to ignore the cold shoulder which was turned to him wherever he
went. And the hay was insured.
He gave up going to the Cocks. It had fallen off terribly those last
five years, he told Maude the dairy-woman, his only confidant nowadays.
The beer had deteriorated, and there was a girl behind the counter all
painted and curled like a Jezebubble, and rolling her eyes at you like
this.... If any woman thought a man of his experience was to be caught,
she was unaccountable mistaken (this doubtless for Maude's benefit, that
she might build no false hopes on the invitation to bring her sewing
into the kitchen of an evening). Then the fellows in the bar never
talked about stocks and crops and such like, but about race-horses and
football and tomfooleries of that sort, wot had all come in through the
poor being educated and put above themselves. Moreover, there was a
gramophone playing trash like "I wouldn't leave my little wooden hut for
you"--and the tale of Reuben's grievances ended in expectoration.
All the same he was lonely. Maude was a good woman, but she wasn't his
equal. He wanted to speak to someone of his own class, who used to be
his friend in days gone by. Then suddenly he thought of Alice Jury. He
had promised to go and see her at Rye, but had never done so. He
remembered how long ago she had used to comfort him when he felt
low-spirited and neglected by his fellows. Perhaps she would do the same
for him now. He did not know her address, but the new people at Cheat
Land would doubtless be able to give it to him, and perhaps Alice would
help him through these trying times as she had helped him through
earlier ones.
A few days later he drove off in his trap to Rye. Though he had scarcely
thought of her for ten years, he was now all aflame with the idea of
meeting her. She would be pleased to see him, too. Perhaps their
long-buried emotions would revive, and as old people they would enjoy a
friendship which would be sweeter than the love they had promised
themselves in more ardent days.
Alice lived in lodgings by the Ypres Tower. The little crinkled cottage
looked out over the marshes towards Camber and the masts of ships.
Reuben was shown into a room which reminded him of Cheat Land long ago,
for there were books arranged on shelves, and curtains of dull red linen
quaintly embroidered. There was a big embroidery frame on the table, and
over it was stretched a gorgeous altar-cloth all woven with gold and
violet tissue.
He was inspecting these things when Alice came in. Her hair was quite
white now, and she stooped a little, but it seemed to Reuben as if her
eyes were still as lively as ever. Something strange suddenly flooded up
in his heart and he held out both hands.
"Alice ..." he said.
"Good afternoon," she replied, putting one hand in his, and withdrawing
it almost immediately.
"I--I--äun't you pleased to see me?"
"I thought you'd forgotten all about me, certainly."
She offered him a chair, and he sat down. Her coldness seemed to drive
back the tides that had suddenly flooded his lips, and slowly too they
began to ebb from his heart. Whom had he come to see?--the only woman he
had ever loved, whose love he had hoped to catch again in these his
latter days, and hold transmuted into tender friendship, till he went
back to his earth? Not so, it seemed--but an old woman who had once been
a girl, with whom he had nothing in common, and from whom he had
travelled so far that they could scarcely hear each other's voices
across the country that divided them. Alice broke the silence by
offering him some tea.
"Thanks, but I döan't täake tea--I've never held wud it."
"How are you, Reuben? I've heard a lot about you, but nothing from you
yourself. Is it true that you've sent away your daughter and her family
from Grandturzel?"
"Yes--after they burnt the pläace down to the ground."
"And where are they now?"
"I dunno."
Alice said nothing, and Reuben fired up a little:
"I daresay you think badly of me, lik everyone else. But if a man mäade
a bonfire of your new stacks, I reckon you wouldn't say 'thank'ee,' and
raise his wages."
Another pause--then Alice said:
"How are you getting on with Boarzell? I hear that most of it's yours
now."
"All except the Fair-pläace--and I mean to have that in a year or two,
surelye."
This time it was she that kindled:
"You talk as if you'd all your life before you--and you must be nearly
eighty-five."
"I döan't feel old--at least not often. I still feel young enough to
have a whack at the Fair-pläace."
"So you haven't changed your idea of happiness?"
"How d'you mean?"
"Your idea of happiness always was getting something you wanted. Well,
lately I've discovered my idea of happiness, and that's--wanting
nothing."
"Then you _have_ got wot you want," said Reuben cruelly.
"I don't think you understand."
"My old fäather used to say--'I want nothing that I haven't got, and so
I've got nothing that I döan't want, surelye.'"
"It's all part of the same idea, only of course he had many more things
than I have. I'm a poor woman, and lonely, and getting old. But"--and a
ring of exaltation came into her voice, and the light of it into her
eyes--"I want nothing."
"I wish you'd talk plain. If you never want anything, then you äun't
präaperly alive. So you äun't happy--because you're dead."
"You don't understand me. It's not because I'm dead and sluggish that I
don't want anything, but because I've had fight enough in me to triumph
over my desires. So now everything's mine."
"Fust you say as how you're happy because you've got nothing, and now
you say as everything's yourn. How am I to know wot you mean?"
"Well, compare my case with yours. You've got everything you want, and
yet in reality you've got nothing."
"That's nonsense, Alice." He spoke more gently, for he had come to the
conclusion that sorrow and loneliness had affected her wits.
"It isn't. You've got what you set out to get--Boarzell Moor, and
success for Odiam; but in getting it you have lost everything that makes
life worth while--wife, children, friends, and--and--love. You're like
the man in the Bible who rebuilt Jericho, and laid the foundations in
his firstborn, and set up the gates in his youngest son."
"There you go, Alice! lik the rest of them--no more understanding than
anyone else. Can't you see that _it's bin worth while_?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, that it's worth losing all those things that I may get the one big
thing I want. Döan't you see that Boarzell and Odiam are worth more to
me than wife or family or than you, Alice. Come to that, you've got none
o' them things either, and you haven't a farm to mäake up fur it. So
even if I wur sorry fur wot I'm not sorry fur, I'm still happier than
you."
"No you aren't--because you want a thing, and I want nothing."
"I've got a thing, my girl, and you've got nothing."
They had both risen and faced each other, anger in their eyes. But their
antagonism had lost that vital quality which had once made it the salt
of their friendship.
"You döan't understand me," said Reuben--"I'd better go."
"You don't understand me," said Alice--"you can't."
"We've lost each other," said Reuben--"good-bye."
Alice smiled rather bitterly, and had a moment of vision.
"The fact is that we can't forgive each other--for being happy in
different ways."
"I tell you I'm sorry for nothing."
"Nor I."
So they parted.
Reuben drove back slowly through the October afternoon. A transparent
brede of mist lay over the fields, occasionally torn by sunlight.
Everything was very quiet--sounds of labour stole across the valley from
distant farms, and the barking of a dog at Stonelink seemed close at
hand. Now and then the old man muttered to himself: "We döan't
understand each other--we döan't forgive each other--we've lost each
other. We've lost each other."
He knew now that Alice was lost. The whole of Boarzell lay between them.
He had thought that she would be always there, but now he saw that
between him and her lay the dividing wilderness of his success. She was
the offering and the reward of failure--and he had triumphed over
failure as over everything else.
He drove through Peasmarsh and turned into the Totease lane. The fields
on both sides of it were his now. He sniffed delightedly the savour of
their sun-baked earth, of the crumpling leaves in their hedges, of the
roots, round and portly, that they nourished in their soil--and the west
wind brought him the scent of the gorse on Boarzell, very faintly, for
now only the thickets of the top were left.
Almost the whole south was filled by the great lumpish mass of the Moor,
no longer tawny and hummocky, but lined with hedges and scored with
furrows, here and there a spread of pasture, with the dotted sheep. A
mellow corn-coloured light rippled over it from the west, and the sheep
bleated to each other across the meadows that had once been wastes....
"My land," murmured old Reuben, drinking in the breeze of it. "My
land--more to me than Alice." Then with a sudden fierceness:
"I'm shut of her!"
§ 5.
The next year came the great Unionist collapse. The Government which had
bumped perilously through the South African war, went on the rocks of an
indignant peace--wrecked by Tariff Reform with the complication of
Chinese Labour and the Education Bill. Once more Reuben took prominent
part in a general election. The circumstances were altered--no one threw
dead cats at him at meetings, though the common labouring men had a way
of asking questions which they had not had in '65.
Old Backfield spoke at five meetings, each time on Tariff Reform and the
effect it would have on local agriculture. The candidate and the
Unionist Club were very proud of him, and spoke of him as "a grand old
man." On Election Day, one of the candidates' own cars was sent to fetch
him to the Poll. It was the first time Reuben had ever been in a motor,
but he did his best to dissemble his excitement.
"It's lik them trains," he said to the chauffeur, "unaccountable strange
and furrin-looking at first, but naun to spik of when you're used to
'em. Well I remember when the first railway train wur run from Rye to
Hastings--and most people too frightened to go in it, though it never
mäade more'n ten mile an hour."
Though the country in general chose to go to the dogs, Reuben had the
consolation of seeing a Conservative returned for Rye. He put this down
largely to his own exertions, and came home in high good humour from the
declaration of the Poll. Mr. Courthope, the successful candidate, had
shaken him by the hand, and so had his agent and one or two prominent
members of the Club. They had congratulated him on his wonderful energy,
and wished him many more years of usefulness to the Conservative cause.
He might live to see a wheat-tax yet.
He compared his present feelings with the miserable humiliation he had
endured in '65. Queer!--that election seemed almost as real and vivid to
him as this one, and--he did not know why--he found himself feeling as
if it were more important. His mind recaptured the details with
startling clearness--the crowd in the market-place, the fight with
Coalbran, the sheep's entrails that were flung about ... and suddenly,
sitting there in his arm-chair, he found himself muttering: "that hemmed
gëate!"
It must be old age. He pulled himself together, as a farm-hand came into
the room. It was Boorman, one of the older lot, who had just come back
from Rye.
"Good about the poll, mäaster, wurn't it?" he said--the older men were
always more cordial towards Reuben than the youngsters. They had seen
how he could work.
"Unaccountable good."
"I mäade sure as how Mus' Courthope ud git in. 'Täun't so long since we
sent up another Unionist--seems strange when you and me remembers that a
Tory never sat fur Rye till '85."
"When did you come back?"
"I've only just come in, mäaster. Went räound to the London Trader after
hearing the poll. By the way, I picked up a piece of news thur--old
Jury's darter wot used to be at Cheat Land has just died. Bob Hilder
töald me--seems as she lodges wud his sister."
"Um."
"Thought you'd be interested to hear. I remember as how you used to be
unaccountable friendly wud them Jurys, considering the difference in
your position."
"Yes, yes--wot did she die of?"
"Bob dudn't seem to know. She allus wur a delicate-looking woman."
"Yes--a liddle stick of a woman. That'll do, now."
Boorman went out, grumbling at "th' öald feller's cussedness," and
Reuben sat on without moving.
Alice was dead--she had died in his hour of triumph. Just when he had
succeeded in laying his hands on one thing more of goodness and glory
for Odiam, she who had nothing and wanted nothing had gone out into the
great nothingness. A leaden weight seemed to have fallen on him, for all
that he was "shut of her."
The clock ticked on into the silence, the fire spluttered, and a cat
licked itself before it. He sat hunched miserably, hearing nothing,
seeing nothing. In his breast, where his heart had used to be, was a
heavy dead thing that knew neither joy nor sorrow. Reuben was feeling
old again.
§ 6.
"Please, mäaster, there's trouble on the farm."
Reuben started out of the half-waking state into which he had fallen. It
was late in the afternoon, the sunlight had gone, and a wintry twilight
crept up the wall. Maude the dairy-woman was looking in at the door.
"Wot is it? Wot's happened?"
"Boorman asked me to fetch you. They've had some vrother wud the young
Squire, and he's shot a cow."
"Shot one of my cows!" and Reuben sprang to his feet. "Where woman?
Where?"
"Down at Totease. He wur the wuss for liquor, I reckon."
Reuben was out of the house bare-headed, and running across the yard to
the Totease meadows. He soon met a little knot of farm-hands coming
towards him, with three rather guilty-looking young men.
"Wot's happened?" he called to Boorman.
"Only this, mäaster--Dunk and me found Mus' Fleet a-tearing about the
Glotten meadow wud two of his friends, trying to fix Radical posters on
the cows--seems as they'd räaked up one or two o' them old Ben the
Gorilla posters wot used to be about Peasmarsh, and they'd stuck one on
Tawny and one on Cowslip, and wur fair racing the other beasts to death.
Then when me and the lads cöame up and interfere, they want to fight
us--and when we täake höald of 'em, seeing as they 'pear to be a liddle
the wuss for drink, why Mus' Fleet he pulls out a liddle pistol and
shoots all around, and hits poor öald Dumpling twice over."
"Look here, farmer," said one of the young men--"we're awfully sorry,
and we'll settle with you about that cow. We were only having a rag.
We're awfully sorry."
"Ho, indeed! I'm glad to hear it. And you'll settle wud me about the
cow! Wur it you who shot her, I'd lik to know?"
"I didn't actually fire the pistol--but we're all in the same boat. Had
a luncheon over at Rye to cheer ourselves up after seeing the Tory get
in. We're awfully sorry."
"You've said that afore," said Reuben.
He pondered sternly over the three young men, who all looked sober
enough now. As a matter of fact, Dumpling was no great loss; fifteen
pounds would have paid for her. But he was not disposed to let off
George Fleet so easily. Against the two other youths he bore no
grudge--they were just ordinary ineffective young asses, of Radical
tendencies, he noted grimly. George, however, stood on a different
footing; he was the mocker of Odiam, the perpetrator of many gross and
silly practical jokes at its expense. He should not escape with the mere
payment of fifteen pounds, for he owed Reuben the punishment of his
earlier misdeeds.
"The man as shot my cow shall answer fur it before the magistrate," he
said severely.
"Look here----" cried George Fleet, and his two friends began to bid for
mercy, starting with twenty pounds.
"Be a sport," pleaded one of them, when they had come to forty, "you
simply can't hand him over to the police--his father's Squire of the
Manor, and it would be no end of a scandal."
"I know who his fäather is, thank'ee," said Reuben.
Then suddenly a great, a magnificent, a triumphant idea struck him. He
nearly staggered under the force of it. He was like a general who sees
what he had looked upon hitherto as a mere trivial skirmish develop into
a battle which may win him the whole campaign. He spoke almost faintly.
"Someone go fur the Squire."
"Sir Eustace!"
"Yes--fetch him here, and I'll talk the matter over wud him."
"But----"
"Either you fetch him here or I send fur the police."
The two young men stared at each other, then George Fleet nodded to
them:
"You'd better go. The dad'll be better than a policeman anyhow. Try and
smooth him down a bit on the way."
"Right you are"--and they reluctantly moved off, leaving their comrade
in the enemy's hands.
However, Reuben's whole manner had changed. His attitude towards George
Fleet became positively cordial. He took him into the kitchen, and made
Maude give him some tea. He himself paced nervously up and down, a queer
look of exaltation sometimes passing over his face. One would never have
taken him for the same man as the old fellow who an hour ago had huddled
weak and almost senile in his chair, broken under his life's last
tragedy. He felt young, strong, energetic, a soldier again.
The Squire soon arrived. Reuben had him shown into the parlour, and
insisted on seeing him alone.
"You finish your tea," he said to George, "and bring some more, Maudie,
for these gentlemen," nodding kindly to the two young men, who stared at
him as if they thought he had taken leave of his senses.
In the parlour, Sir Eustace greeted him with mingled nervousness and
irritation.
"Well, Backfield, I'm sorry about this young scapegrace of mine. But
boys will be boys, you know, and we'll make it all right about that cow.
I promise you it won't happen again."
"I'm sorry to have given you the trouble of coming here, Squire. But I
thought maybe you and I cud come to an arrangement wudout calling in the
police."
"Oh, certainly, certainly. You surely wouldn't think of doing that,
Backfield. I promise you the full value of the cow."
"Quite so, Squire. But it äun't the cow as I'm vrothered about so much
as these things always happening. This äun't the first 'rag,' as he
calls it, wot he's had on my farm. I've complained to you before."
"I know you have, and I promise you nothing of this kind shall ever
happen again."
"How am I to know that, Squire? You can't kip the young man in a
prammylator. Now if he wur had up before the magistrate and sent to
prison, it 'ud be a lesson as he'd never disremember."
"But think of me, Backfield! Think of his mother! Think of us all! It
would be a ghastly thing for us. I promise to pay you the full value of
the cow--and of your damaged self-respect into the bargain. Won't that
content you?"
"Um," said Reuben--"it might."
The Squire thought he had detected Backfield's little game, and a
relieved affability crept into his manner.
"That'll be all right," he said urbanely. "Of course I understand your
feelings are more important to you than your cow. We'll do our best to
meet you. What do you value them at, eh?"
"The Fair-pläace."
§ 7.
He had triumphed. He had beaten down the last resistance of the enemy,
won the last stronghold of Boarzell. It was all his now, from the clayey
pastures at its feet to the fir-clump of its crown. A trivial event
which he had been able to seize and turn to his advantage had
unexpectedly given him the victory.
The Squire had called it blackmail and made a terrible fuss about it,
but from the first the issues had been in Reuben's hands. A public
scandal, the appearance of Flightshot's heir before the county
magistrates on the charge of shooting a cow in a drunken frolic, was
simply not to be contemplated; the only son of the Manor must not be
sacrificed to make a rustic holiday. After all, ever since the Inclosure
the Fair had been merely a matter of toleration; and as Backfield
pointed out, it could easily go elsewhere--to the big Tillingham meadow
outside Rye, for instance, where the wild beast shows pitched when they
came. All things considered, resistance was not worth while, and
Flightshot made its last capitulation to Odiam.
Of course there was a tremendous outcry in Peasmarsh and the
neighbourhood. Everyone knew that the Fair was doomed--Backfield would
never allow it to be held on his land. His ploughs and his harrows were
merely waiting for the negotiations to be finished before leaping, as it
were, upon this their last prey. He would even cut down the sentinel
firs that for hundreds of years had kept grim and lonely watch over the
Sussex fields--had seen old Peasen Mersch when it was only a group of
hovels linked with the outside world by lanes like ditches, and half the
country a moor like the Boar's Hyll.
The actual means by which he acquired the Fair-place never quite
transpired, for the farm-men were paid for their silence by Sir Eustace,
and also had a kindly feeling for young George which persisted after the
money was spent. However, one or two of the prevalent rumours were worse
for Reuben than the facts, and if anyone, in farmhouse or cottage, had
ever had a grudging kindness for the man who had wrested a victory out
of the tyrant earth, he forgot it now.
But Reuben did not care. He had won his heart's desire, and public
opinion could go where everything else he was supposed to value, and
didn't, had gone. In a way he was sorry, for he would have liked to
discuss his triumph at the Cocks, seasoning it with pints of decadent
ale. As things were, he had no one to talk it over with but the
farm-men, who grumbled because it meant more work--Maude, who said she'd
be sorry when all that pretty gorse was cleared away--and old mad Harry,
now something very like a grasshopper, whose conversation since the
blaze at Grandturzel had been limited entirely to the statement that
"the house was afire, and the children were burning."
But this isolation did not trouble Reuben much. He had lost mankind, but
he had found the earth. The comfort that had sustained him after the
loss of David and William, was his now in double measure. The earth, for
which he had sacrificed all, was enough for him now that all else was
gone. He was too old to work, except for a snip or a dig here and there,
but he never failed to direct and supervise the work of the others.
Every morning he made his rounds on horseback--it delighted him to think
that they were too long to make on foot. He rode from outpost to
outpost, through the lush meadows and the hop-gardens of Totease, across
the lane to the wheatlands of Odiam, and then over Boarzell with its
cornfields and wide pastures to Grandturzel, where the orchards were now
bringing in a yearly profit of fifteen pounds an acre. All that vast
domain, a morning's ride, was his--won by his own ambition, energy,
endurance, and sacrifice.
In the afternoon he took life easy. If it was warm and fine he would sit
out of doors, against the farmhouse wall, his old bones rejoicing in the
sunshine, and his eager heart at the sight of Boarzell shimmering in the
heat--while sounds of labour woke him pleasantly from occasional dozes.
When evening came and the cool of the day, he would go for a little
stroll--round by Burntbarns or Socknersh or Moor's Cottage, just to see
what sort of a mess they were making of things. He was no longer upright
now, but stooped forward from the hips when he walked. His hair was
astonishingly thick--indeed it seemed likely that he would die with a
full head of hair--but he had lost nearly all his teeth--a very sore
subject, wisely ignored by those who came in contact with him. The
change that people noticed most was in his eyes. In spite of their thick
brows, they were no longer fierce and stern;--they were full of that
benign serenity which one so often sees in the eyes of old men--just as
if he had not ridden roughshod over all the sweet and gentle things of
life. One would think that he had never known what it was to trample
down happiness and drive love out of doors--one would think that having
always lived mercifully and blamelessly he had reaped the reward of a
happy old age.
§ 8.
Reuben did not go to the Fair that autumn--there being no reason why he
should and several why he shouldn't. He went instead to see Richard, who
was down for a week's rest after a tiring case. Reuben thought a
dignified aloofness the best attitude to maintain towards his son--there
was no need for them to be on bad terms, but he did not want anyone to
imagine that he approved of Richard or thought his success worth while.
Richard, for his part, felt kindly disposed towards his father, and a
little sorry for him in his isolation. He invited him to dinner once or
twice, and, realising his picturesqueness, was not ashamed to show him
to his friends.
There were several of his friends at Starcliffe that afternoon--men and
women rising in the worlds of literature, law, and politics. It was
possible that Richard would contend the Rye division--in the Liberal
interest, be it said with shame--and he was anxious to surround himself
with those who might be useful to him. Besides, he was one of those men
who breathe more freely in an atmosphere of Culture. Apart from mere
utilitarian questions, he liked to talk over the latest books, the
latest _cause célèbre_ or diplomatic _coup d'étât_. Anne, very upright,
very desiccated, poured out tea, and Reuben noted with satisfaction that
Nature had beaten her at the battle of the dressing-table. Richard, on
the other hand, in spite of an accentuation of the legal profile, looked
young for his age and rather buckish, and rumour credited him with an
intrigue with a lady novelist.
He received his father very kindly, giving him a seat close to the table
so that he might have a refuge for his cup and saucer, and introducing
him to a gentleman who, he said, was writing a book on Sussex commons
and anxious for information about Boarzell.
"But I owe you a grudge, Mr. Backfield, for you have entirely spoilt one
of the finest commons in Sussex. The records of Boarzell go back to the
twelfth century, and in the Visitations of Sussex it is referred to as a
fine piece of moorland three hundred acres in extent and grown over with
heather and gorse. I went to see it yesterday, and found only a tuft of
gorse and firs at the top."
"And they're coming out this week," said Reuben triumphantly.
"Can't I induce you to spare them? There are only too few of those
ancient landmarks left in Sussex."
"And there'd be fewer still, if I had the settling of 'em. I'd lik to
see the whole of England grown over wud wheat from one end to the
other."
"It would be a shame to spoil all the wild places, though," said a
vague-looking girl in an embroidered frock, with her hair in a lump at
her neck.
"One wants a place where one can get back to Nature," said a young man
with a pince-nez and open-work socks.
"But my father's great idea," said Richard, "is that Nature is just a
thing for man to tread down and subdue."
"It can't be done," said the young man in the open-work socks--"it can't
be done. And why should we want to do it?--is not Nature the Mother and
Nurse of us all?--and is it not best for us simply to lie on her bosom
and trust her for our welfare?"
"If I'd a-done that," said Reuben, "I shouldn't have an acre to my näum,
surelye."
"And what do you want with an acre? What is an acre but a man's toy--a
child's silly name for a picture it can't understand. Have you ever
heard Pan's pipes?"
"I have not, young man."
"Then you know nothing of Nature--the real goddess, many-breasted Ceres.
What can you know of the earth, who have never danced to the earth's
music?"
"I once stayed on the Downs," said the girl in the embroidered frock,
speaking dreamily, "and one twilight I seemed to hear elfin music on the
hill. I tore off my shoes and let down my hair and I danced--I
danced...."
"Ah," said the youth in the open-work socks approvingly. "That's very
like an episode in 'Meryon's House,' you know--that glorious scene in
which Jennifer the Prostitute goes down to the New Forest with Meryon
and suddenly begins dancing in a glade."
"Of course, being a prostitute, she'd be closer to Nature than a
respectable person."
"I thought 'Meryon's House' the worst bilge this year has given us,"
said a man in a braided coat.
"Or that Meryon has given us, which is saying more," put in someone
else.
"I hate these romantic realists--they're worse than the old-fashioned
Zola sort."
The conversation had quite deserted Reuben, who sat silent and forgotten
in his corner, thinking what fools all these people were. After he had
wondered what they were talking about for a quarter of an hour, he rose
to go, and gave a sigh of relief when the fresh air of Iden Hill came
rustling to him on the doorstep.
"He's a fine old fellow, your father, Backfield," said the man who was
writing a book on Sussex commons. "I can almost forgive him for spoiling
one of the best pieces of wild land in the county."
"A magnificent old face," said a middle-aged woman with red hair--"the
lining of it reminds me of those interesting Italian peasants one
meets--they wrinkle more beautifully than a young girl keeps her bloom.
I should like to paint him."
"So should I," said the girl in the embroidered frock--"and I've been
taking note of his clothes for our Earlscourt Morris Dancers."
Richard felt almost proud of his parent.
"He's certainly picturesque--and really there's a good deal of truth in
what he says about having got the better of Nature. Thirty years ago I'd
have sworn he could never have done it. But it's my firm conviction that
he has--and made a good job of it too. He's fought like the devil, he's
been hard on every man and himself into the bargain, he's worked like a
slave, and never given in. The result is that he's done what I'd have
thought no man could possibly do. It's really rather splendid of him."
"Ah--but he's never heard Pan's pipes," said the youth in the open-work
socks.
§ 9.
Reuben drove slowly homewards through the brooding October dusk. The
music of the Fair crept after him up the Foreign, and from the crest he
could see the booths and stalls looking very small in the low fields by
the Rother. "I wouldn't leave my little wooden hut for you," played the
merry-go-round, and there was some mysterious quality in that distant
tune which made Reuben whip the old horse over the hill, so as to be out
of reach of it.
So much of his life had been bound up with the Fair that somehow a part
of him seemed to be jigging at it still, down in the Rother field. It
was at the Fair that he had first resolved to conquer Boarzell, and he
saw himself rushing with the crowd to Totease, scuffling round the barns
while the big flames shot out ... and later he saw himself dancing with
Naomi to Harry's fiddle. What had Harry played?--a strange tune, "The
Song of Seth's Home"--one never heard it now, but he could remember
fragments of it....
These troubling thoughts were forgotten when he came to his own
frontiers. He drove up to the farmhouse door, and handing over the trap
to a boy, went out for his evening inspection of Boarzell.
The sunset guttered like spent candles in the wind--the rest of the sky
was grey, like the fields under it. The distant bleating of sheep came
through the dropping swale, as Reuben climbed the Moor. His men were
still at work on the new ground, and he made a solemn tour of
inspection. They were cutting down the firs and had entirely cleared
away the gorse, piling it into a huge bonfire. All that remained of
Boarzell's golden crown was a pillar of smoke, punctured by spurts and
sparks of flame, rising up against the clouds. The wind carried the
smell away to Socknersh and Burntbarns, and the farm-men there looked up
from their work to watch the glare of Boarzell's funeral pyre.
Reuben moved away from the crest and stood looking round him at what had
once been Boarzell Moor. A clear watery light had succeeded the sunset,
and he was able to see the full extent of his possessions. From the
utmost limits of Grandturzel in the south, to the Glotten brook in the
north, from Socknersh in the east to Cheat Land in the west--all that he
could see was his. Out of a small obscure farm of barely sixty acres he
had raised up this splendid dominion, and he had tamed the roughest,
toughest, fiercest, cruellest piece of ground in Sussex, the beast of
Boarzell.
His victory was complete. He had done all that he had set out to do. He
had done what everyone had told him he could never do. He had made the
wilderness to blossom as the rose, he had set his foot upon Leviathan's
neck, and made him his servant for ever.
He stood with his arms folded over his chest, and watched the first
stars flicker above Castweasel. The scent of the ground steamed up to
mingle with the mists, a soft rasp of frost was in the air and the earth
which he had loved seemed to breathe out towards him, and tell him that
by his faithful service he had won not only Boarzell but all gracious
soil, all the secrets of seed-time and harvest, all the tender mysteries
of sap, and growth.
He knew that not only the land within these boundaries was his--his
possessions stretched beyond it, and reached up to the stars. The wind,
the rain, dawns, dusks, and darkness were all given him as the crown of
his faithfulness. He had bruised Nature's head--and she had bruised his
heel, and given him the earth as his reward.
"I've won," he said softly to himself, while behind him the blazing
gorse spat and crackled and sent flames up almost to the clouds with
triumphant roars--"I've won--and it's bin worth while. I've wanted a
thing, and I've got it, surelye--and I äun't too old to enjoy it,
nuther. I may live to be a hunderd, a man of my might. But if I go next
week, I shan't complain, fur I've lived to see my heart's desire. I've
fought and I've suffered, and I've gone hard and gone rough and gone
empty--but I haven't gone in vain. It's all bin worth it. Odiam's great
and Boarzell's mine--and when I die ... well, I've lived so close to the
earth all my days that I reckon I shan't be afraid to lie in it at
last."
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND