She remembered that there had been a wedding at Gablehook. One of the farmer's girls had married a Rye fisherman, and this was probably a guest on his way home, a little the worse for drink.
The song with its hearty callousness broke strangely into the dusk and Caro's palpitating dreams. Something about it enticed and troubled her; the singer was coming nearer.
She stood at the gate and could see him as a blot on the Moor. He was coming towards Odiam, and she watched him as he plunged through the heather, singing at the pitch of his lungs:
He had struck the path that ran by the bottom of the garden, and swaggered along it with the seaman's peculiar rolling gait, accentuated by strong liquor. Caro felt him coming nearer, and told herself uneasily that she had better go back into the house. He was drunk, and he might speak to her. Still she did not move, she found herself clinging to the gate, leaning her breast against it, while her tongue felt thick and dry in her mouth.
He was quite close—she could hear the thud of his step on the soft earth. Her hands grasped the two gate-posts, and she leaned forward over the gate, so that her face caught the faint radiance that still lingered in the zenith. He had stopped singing, but she could see him now distinctly—a tall, loosely-built figure, with dark face, and woolly hair like a nigger's, while his seaman's earrings caught the starlight.
He drew level with her, not seeing her. She did not move, she scarcely breathed, and he had almost passed her ... then suddenly his eyes turned and met hers.
"Hello, Susan!"
He stood swaying before her on his heels, his hands in his trouser-pockets, his head a little on one side. Caro did not speak—she could not.
"What time is it, dear?"
"I—I dunno," she faltered, her voice sounding squeaky and unlike her own: "it might be nine."
he trolled, and Caro was suddenly afraid lest someone should hear in the house. She glanced back uneasily over her shoulder.
"Papa on the look-out?"
She coloured, and began to stutter something.
"I've been to a wedding," he said conversationally; "a proper wedding with girls and kisses."
He suddenly leaned over the gate and kissed Caro on the lips.
She gave a little scream and started back from him. For a moment earth, sky, and trees seemed to reel together in one crazy dance. She was conscious of nothing but the kiss, her first kiss; it had smelt and tasted strongly of brandy, if the truth were told, but it had none the less been a kiss, and her sacrament of initiation. She stood there in the darkness with parted lips and shining eyes. The dusk was kind to her, and she pleased the sailor.
"Come out for a walk," he said, and lifted the latch.
Caro trembled so that she could hardly move, and once again came the feeling that she ought to turn and run back into the house. But she was powerless in the clutch of her long-thwarted emotions. The tipsy sailor became God to her, and she followed him out on to the Moor.
After all he was not really drunk, only a little fuddled. He walked straight, and his roll was natural to him, while though he was exceedingly cheerful, and often burst into song, his words were not jumbled, and he generally seemed to have a fair idea of what he was saying.
She wondered if she were awake—everything seemed so strange, so new, and yet paradoxically so natural. Was she the same Caro who had washed the babies and cooked the supper and resigned herself to dying an old maid? She could not ponder things, ask herself how it was that a man who had not known her ten minutes could love her—all she realised was his arm round her waist, and in her heart a seethe of happy madness.
—sang the sailor sentimentally. His arm crept up from her waist to her shoulder and lay heavy there. They strolled on along the narrow path, and the darkness stole down on them from the Moor, wrapping them softly together. They told each other their names—his was Joe Dansay, and he was a sailorman of Rye, who had been on many voyages to South America and the Coral Seas. He looked about twenty-five, though he was tanned and weather-beaten all over. His eyes were dark and foreign-looking, so was his hair. His mouth was a trifle too wide, his nose short and stubborn.
He was now leaning heavily on Caro as he walked, and too shy, and perhaps reluctant, to ask him to lift his arm, she naively suggested that they should sit down and rest. Dansay was delighted—she was not the timid little bird he had thought, and directly they had sunk into the heather he seized her in his arms, and began kissing her violently on neck and lips.
Caro was frightened, horrified—she broke free, and scrambled to her feet. She nearly wept, and it was clear even to his muddled brain that her invitation had been merely the result of innocence more profound than that which had stimulated her shyness. Rough seaman though he was, he was touched, and managed to soothe her, for she was too bashful and frightened to be really indignant. They walked a few yards further along the path, then at her request turned back towards Odiam.
They parted uneasily, without any arrangement to meet again.
§ 4.
For the first few hours of her sleepless night, Caro's happiness outweighed her regret. Her mind sucked her little experience like a sugar-plum and filled her thoughts with sweetness. She lived over the adventure from its birth in a song on Boarzell to its consummation in the blessedness of a kiss. Afterwards it became a little smudged, a little terrifying, and the end had not been in keeping with the beginning. None the less, the fact remained that she had been kissed, that she had tasted at last of the glories of love, felt the touch of a man's lips, of his arm about her ... she was no longer without knowledge; when other women spoke of these things, an answering thrill would creep into her heart, and words of experience to her tongue.
Then she asked herself—would he come again? Her joy seemed almost too divine to be renewed, she could hardly picture such a profanity as its repetition. Yet as the night wore on, the question began to loom larger than all her blessed certainties—and with it came a growing tendency to dwell on the latter part of her experience, on the awkward aloofness of the walk home, and the uneasy parting at the gate. It struck her that she had been a fool to take fright at his violence. After all, if he loved her so much ... it was wonderful how quickly he had fallen in love, and quick things are more apt to be violent than slow ones. Besides, men were inclined to be rough and fierce by nature. Thus she reassured and reproached herself. Perhaps she had driven him away, perhaps her timidity had made him doubt her love. Perhaps she had been too squeamish. After all....
She rose the next morning with a bad headache and her eyes staring rather plaintively out of black saucers. None the less she was happy, even in spite of her regrets. She loved and had been loved, so she told herself over and over again as she dressed David and Bill and prepared the breakfast. Why, even if, when he got home, Joe Dansay discovered that he did not really love her, she would still have had his love, and as for herself, she would go on loving him for ever—"for ever and ever and ever," she repeated in a low, trembling voice as she cut her father's bacon.
During the rest of the day it was the same—she moved in a kind of exalted dream. The most common objects thrilled her, and gave her unexpected tokens of divinity. Her work was consuming, her leisure beatific. The children loved her, for that day she could do what she had never done properly to their mind, and that is—play; while with Harry, dribbling and muttering, she was tender, as no one but Naomi had been.
Towards evening uneasiness sprang up again, with the old question—would he return? She told herself that if he did, she would not hold back, she would not let her inexperience and timidity rob her or him of their love. She would let him kiss her as he pleased—love was too good a thing to risk for a few qualms. But would he come?—would he give her the chance of reparation? The sun dipped behind Castweasel, the hot sky cooled into a limpid green—stars specked it in the north, and the moon came up behind Iden Woods, huge and dim.
Caro ran out once or twice into the garden; the flowers hung pale and stirless on their stems, and from the orchard, full of the babble of a hidden wind, came a faint scent of plums. The old walls of Odiam seemed to smell of the sunshine they had caught and held during the day. The gable-ends broke into the stars, and the windows gleamed in the yellowing light of the moon. Up towards the south the mass of Boarzell rose hullish and deserted—far away at Ellenwhorne a dog was barking, but all else was still.
§ 5.
There was no doubt that Joe Dansay had got drunk at Willie Tailleur's wedding. The fact was cruelly emphasised by the headache with which he woke up the next morning. He thought it very hard luck, for after all, he had not got nearly so drunk as he might have, as he often had. However, he had been forced into abstinence by a long voyage from Sierra Leone, and put down his sufferings to nature's mutiny at such an unwholesome state of affairs.
At present he lodged with some relations in Watchbell Street, and round him were all the Dansays and Tailleurs and Espinettes and Perrots, the Rye fisher tribe, of French origin—which was still traceable in their names, in their brown eyes, and the sensitiveness of their mouths. He nearly always went to his people between voyages, for the Rye girls took his fancy. There was at this moment a charmer in Wish Ward on whom a good part of his pay had already been spent. Sometimes he went out in his uncle Bob Dansay's fishing boat, for he was not above handling a net between his ventures on the high seas.
He mumbled curses as he dressed, and bathed his head in cold water. He did not deserve this visitation—usually he regarded an after-debauch headache as one of the marvellous acts of Providence, in which he, like most sailormen, believed with a faith which though conveniently removed from works was deeply tinged with admiration. But yesterday he had not been really drunk—why, he could remember nearly everything that had happened, the dancing, the songs, the girls, how he had walked home singing "Rio Bay," and how he had met that queer girl at the farmhouse gate, and thought he was going to have some fun with her and been disappointed.
Though he had spent, on and off, some years in Rye, he had seen very little of the surrounding country, and did not know that Odiam was the farm of his adventure. Caro had told him her name, and he had heard of Ben Backfield, but did not remember much about him. The episode did not affect him very deeply. At dinner he asked his aunt the name of Backfield's farm, and forgot it as he walked down Wish Ward that evening, wearing his best guernsey and breeches, his hands in his pockets, his pipe in his mouth, his earrings glittering in the forest of his hair.
His headache had passed off, and he felt a man again; so he sought the woman. She lived in a small old house wedged tight between two new ones; her window was dark, and her threshold silent, though he knocked again and again. He walked up and down once or twice in front of the cottage whistling "Ropes and Rum"—perhaps she had gone to do some shopping; he saw himself sitting down to a feast of pickled herrings in her kitchen.
Then when he was about a hundred feet from the house the door opened stealthily and a man slunk out. The gleam of a street lamp passed over his face, and Dansay rushed at him with his fists up.
The story of Joe Dansay has nothing to do with us except so far as it affects Caro Backfield, so there will be no digression to explain why he and Albert Cock fought each other up and down Wish Ward till the police came running up and hauled them off to gaol. The next morning he came before the magistrate, and was fined ten shillings and costs or fourteen days. He was able to find the money, but it was not the fine which made him drag his footsteps and hang his head as he walked home, it was the sight of his victim of the night before leaving the court arm-in-arm with a certain pretty witness.
Evening came, the dusk fell, stars floated up out of the mists that piled themselves along the shore, the bleat of sheep came from the marsh, and the eye of Dungeness Lighthouse flashed off the Point into the fogs. Inland the country was wrapt in a tender haze, perfumed with hops and harvest. The moon rose above the Fivewatering, and bronzed the dark masses of wood huddling northward. The scented wind seemed to sigh to him of a woman's hair and lips, of the softness of a woman's hand in his, of her silly little voice talking love and nonsense. But the house in Wish Ward was shut to him—perfidious woman had added yet another perfidy to her score. For about the twentieth time his love dream had been shattered. Now she was eating pickled herrings with another man.
A kind of defiance, a kind of swagger possessed him. He would show her and himself how little he cared. He would find another woman this very night. He remembered the dark-browed, demure little thing of the farmhouse gate. He would go back to her, and she would not be so timid this time—they never were.
§ 6.
"Oh, I thought you wur never coming back."
She murmured it over and over again as he kissed her, and she clung to him like a child. There was something about her words and about herself as she quivered in his arms that touched him inexpressibly. He swore that he loved her, and forgot all about the woman in Wish Ward.
That evening Caro remembered her own counsels and did not draw back from his love. She let him kiss her as much as he chose, though he saw with amusement that he frightened her sometimes. They wandered on Boarzell through webs of star-fretted mist, they drank the night together, and sacramental silences. It was only when she realised that her father would be shutting up the house that Caro was able to tear herself away, and this time they parted with many kisses and vows to meet again.
He came nearly every night. If she was not at the gate he would whistle a few bars of "Rio Bay," and she would steal out as soon as she could do so without rousing suspicion. Boarzell became theirs, their accomplice in some subtle, beautiful way. There was a little hollow on the western slope where they would crouch together and sniff the apricot scent of the gorse, which was ever afterwards to be the remembrancer of their love, and watch the farmhouse lights at Castweasel gleam and gutter beside Ramstile woods.
Sometimes he would talk to her of the strange voyages he had made—how he had lived on ships ever since he was a boy of twelve, and had seen nearly the whole world, from the fiery steaming forests of Equador to the Northern Lights that make a mock day in Spitzbergen. He told her strange tales of wooded atolls in the South Seas, painting a fairyland she had scarcely dreamed, of palms motionless in the aromatic air, of pink and white shores, and lagoons full of fish all winged and frilled and iridescent—of the sudden swift sunrises and sunsets between Cancer and Capricorn, of the great ice-wall in the south, below Tasmania, which he had longed to penetrate, for who knew what lay beyond it in the Unknown? "And there's another like it what I've seen from Franz Josef Land—maybe there's countries beyond it, with gold." Then he told her of the terrible storms south of the Horn, of the uncharted Nelson Strait—of northern Baffin Land, where he had once gone on a whaler, of Rio Grande and the buried city of Tenoctitlan—"where there's gold." Gold seemed to be hidden in large quantities all over the world according to Dansay, and Caro once asked him why he had never brought any back. "Because I love what's better than gold," he answered, and drew her, happy and quivering, into his arms.
She became inexpressibly dear to him during those meetings. Her timidity and innocence charmed him so completely that he preserved them longer than he had at first felt inclined to do. His vanity was tickled to think that though she was past thirty he was the first man who had kissed her. She was not bad-looking, either, with her straight black brows and huge eyes—in spite of toil she did not look her years, and during the weeks of his courtship she seemed to grow younger and prettier, she grew daintier. Yet she largely retained the qualities that had first attracted him, her admiration for him was unbounded and guilelessly expressed—she would listen in tender reverence to his yarns, and received his caresses with a humble gratitude that went straight to his heart.
As for Caro, life was a rainbow dream. The hardships of the day were gladly lived through in expectation of the joys of the evening. She felt very few qualms of conscience, even when the barrier was past which she had thought impassable. Somehow love seemed to alter her whole point of view, or rather stripped her of one altogether—after all, her point of view had never been more than the acceptance of other people's. Besides, there were things in love that she had never guessed; nobody had ever done anything to make her realise that there was beauty in it—Rose's flirtations, her father's jealous passion had never suggested such a thing. But now her life was brimmed with beauty, unimaginable beauty that welled up into the commonest things and suffused them with light. Also, about it all was that surprising sense of naturalness; which almost always comes to women when they love for the first time, the feeling of "For this I was born."
Sometimes she would have anxious moments, a strange sense of fear. "I'm a bad woman," she would repeat to herself, and she would dread the thought of her sister Tilly. But the terrors did not last, they were driven away by the remembrance of what her life had been before she met Joe—its drabness, its aimless toil, its lassitude, its humiliations. She would have been a fool to spurn her golden chance when it came. It had been her only chance; after all it was not as if she ever could have married. She had had to choose between the life she had led up to that August evening and the life she was leading now, and she could not regret her choice.
She never asked Dansay to marry her. He had given her pretty clearly to understand that he was not a marrying man, and she was terrified of doing or saying anything that might turn him against her. One of the things about her that charmed him most was the absence of all demand upon him. She never asked for presents, and the few things he bought her stimulated both her humble gratitude and her alarm lest he should have spent too much money. One day he suggested that he should take her to Boarzell Fair.
"Oh, Joe, would you really!"
"Of course, if you can manage it without us being spotted."
"I reckon I cud, for fäather äun't going this year, he's got an auction at Appledore."
"Then you come along; I'll take you, and we'll have some fun."
"But I döan't want you to waste your money."
"It won't be wasting it. Why, Lord love ye, I'd rather spend it on you than anything in the world."
Her look of surprise and adoration was his reward.
§ 7.
Boarzell Fair was in many ways a mark of the passage of the years and a commentary on history. Not only did the atmosphere and persons of it change very much as the nineteenth century changed, but the side-shows were so many lights cast on popular opinion, politics, and progress.
For instance, in the year 1878, the Panorama which had started with the Battle of Trafalgar and the Royal Gardens of Vauxhall, now gave thrilling if belated episodes of the Siege of Paris, and a gorgeous picture of the Queen being declared Empress of India at Delhi. The merry-go round not only went by steam, but was accompanied by a steam organ playing "The Swell Commercial" and "Married to a Mermaid" unfalteringly from noon till night. In the shooting gallery men potted Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Dillon, and Charles Peace, instead of the Russian Czar or Nana Sahib of their youth, or the hated Boney of their fathers. It all moved with the times, and yet remained four or five years behind them. One came in contact with movements which had just ebbed from the country, waves that had rolled back everywhere except in these lonely rural districts where interests and hatreds came later and lingered longer than in more accessible parts.
The population had altered too. Old Gideon Teazel had died some years ago, and his son Jasper was boss in his place. He was unlike his father both in character and physique, an undersized little ruffian, seasoned by a long career in horse-stealing, who beat his wife openly on the caravan steps, and boasted that he had landed more flats at thimble-rig than any thimble-engro in England. He would have cheated the shirt off any man at the Show, and established a sort of ascendancy through sheer dread of his cunning. The only man who did not fear him was Mexico Bill, a half-breed in charge of the cocoanut shie. Mexico Bill feared only the man who could knock him out, and that man had not yet been found in Boarzell Fair. As a matter of fact he was usually pretty genial and docile, but he had been wounded in the head by Indians long ago, and sometimes went mad and ran amok. On these occasions the only thing to do was to trip him up, and enrol as many volunteers as possible to sit on him till he came to his senses.
There was no longer any fiddler at the Fair. Harry Backfield's successor had been a hurdy-gurdy which played dance music louder and more untiringly than any human arm could do. Dancing was still a vital part of the festivities, but it was more decorous than in the days when Reuben and Naomi had danced together to the tune of "Seth's House," or Robert and Bessie to "My Decided Decision." Only in the evening it became rowdy, when the sun had set and the mists had walled in the Show with nacreous battlements.
Joe and Caro joined the dancers on their arrival. It was the first time in her life that Caro had danced at the Fair, and the experience thrilled her as wonderfully as if it had not been just a link in the chain of a hundred new experiences. The hurdy-gurdy was playing "See me Dance the Polka," and off they skipped, to steps of their own, betraying in Dansay's case a hornpipe origin.
She saw people that she knew, but had no fear of betrayal, unless from Pete, who was, however, safe in the fighting-booth, now conveniently banished by public opinion to the outskirts of the Fair. Pete would "tell on" her, she knew, but no one else cared enough for Reuben to betray his daughter to him. She looked with kindly eyes on all the world as her accomplice—that all the world loves a lover is primarily the lover's point of view.
Besides, she was lost in the crowd which jigged and clumped around her, not even daunted by the unfamiliar waltz that the hurdy-gurdy struck up next. Nobody, except fanatics, bothered about steps, so one could dance to any tune.
In time Caro grew tired, and they wandered off to the shooting-gallery and the merry-go-round. They patronised the cocoanut shie, and won a gilt saucer at the hoop-là stall. In the gipsy's tent Caro was told that she would ride in a carriage with a lord, and have six fine children, all boys, while Dansay was promised such wealth that he would be able to throw gold to crossing-sweepers. They sat in the Panorama till it stuck fast at a gorgeous tableau of Britannia ruling the waves from what looked like a bath chair. Joe bought Caro a pie at the refreshment stall, and himself ate many beef rolls. She was overwhelmed by the lavish way he spent his money, and quite relieved for his sake when they went back to the dancing green.
The day had slipped by, and twilight was settling down on the Fair. The stalls flared up, a red glow streamed into the sky, and patched the shagginess of Boarzell's firs with crimson shreds. The dancing had become more disorderly, the decent folk had retired, and left the madder element to its revels. The mass of the dancers was blurred, confused in the grey smeeth. It seemed to invite Joe and Caro, for now in the thick of it one could give and take surreptitious kisses; some of the kisses were not even surreptitious—the love-making was becoming nearly as open as in the days when Reuben and Naomi had danced together. Caro was no longer shocked at the "goings-on," which had used to scandalise her in earlier years when she knew them scarcely more than by hearsay. Her very innocence had made her easier to corrupt, and she now joined in the revel with a delight scarcely less abandoned, if more naïve, than that of the cottage wantons who bumped round her. It was all so new, and yet so natural, this kicking and capering to a jigging tune. Who would have imagined that the lonely bitter Caro, enviously watching the fun in earlier years, should now have both a partner and a lover? She laughed like a child at the thought.
Then suddenly her laughter died; her expression became fixed, and she swayed a little in Joe's arms, as she stared into the crowd of spectators. They were on the outskirts of the dancers, and quite close to them stood Pete. He had come out of the fighting-booth, still in his bruiser's dressing-gown, evidently to watch the fun. He was looking straight at Caro as she danced dishevelled, and both he and Dansay knew that he had recognised her. They saw his lips tighten, and an angry look came on his face which his profession had not made more benevolent than Nature intended.
"Quick," muttered Joe, and he guided her cleverly enough through the pack of dancers, leading her out on the opposite side.
"Oh, Joe, he's seen us."
Dansay bit his lip—he was afraid so.
Caro began to cry.
"My fäather will kill me, surelye."
She knew for certain that Pete would tell him, and then almost quite as certainly she would lose the adventure which had become life itself to her. She would be driven back into the old prison, the old loneliness, the old despair. She clung to Dansay, weeping and frantic:
"Oh, Joe—döan't let them find me. I can't lose you—I wöan't lose you—I love you so."
He was leading her away from the people, to the back of the stalls. He was nearly as miserable and aghast as she. For he had become extraordinarily fond of her during those few weeks, and the thought of losing her turned him cold. He had been a fool to bring her to the Fair.
"You must come away with me," he said abruptly.
"Oh, Joe!"
It was a bold step, but he saw that none other would serve, and he realised that she was not the kind of woman to take advantage of him and make herself a permanent encumbrance.
"Yes—there's nothing for it but that. We'll go down and stay at the Camber. You'll be safe with me, and I've got a little money put by."
Considering how much she had already given him, it was perhaps strange that she shuddered a little at this open venture.
"You'll be good to me, Joe!"
"Won't I, just!"
Something in the wistfulness and humility of her appeal had touched him to the heart; he clasped her to him with a passion for once free from roughness, and for one moment at least had every intention of sticking to her for ever.
§ 8.
It was not from Pete that Reuben first heard of his daughter's goings-on. Caro's benevolent trust in humanity had been misplaced, and at the Seven Bells where he called for a refresher on arriving at Rye station, various stragglers from Boarzell eagerly betrayed her, "just to see how he wud täake it."
Reuben received the news with the indifference due to outsiders. But he was not so calm when Pete told his tale at Odiam.
"The bitch," he growled, "I'll learn her. Dancing wud a sailor, you say she wur, Pete?"
"Yes," said Pete, "and wud her hair all tumbling."
"I'll learn her," repeated Reuben. But he never had the chance. By the time the two males had sat up till about three or four the next morning, they came to the conclusion that Caro must have seen Pete watching her and run away.
"She'll never come back," said Pete that evening—"you täake my word fur it."
"That's another of my daughters gone fur a whore."
"Who wur the fust?"
"Why Tilly—goes off wud that lousy pig-keeper up at Grandturzel. She's no better than Caro."
"And there wur Rose," added Pete, anxious to supply instances.
Reuben swore at him.
He felt Caro's disappearance more acutely than he would allow to show. First, she had left him badly in the lurch in household matters—he had to engage a woman to take her place, and pay her wages. Also she had caused a scandal in the neighbourhood, which meant more derisive fingers pointed at Odiam. Pete was now the only one left of his original family—his children and their runnings-away had become a byword in Peasmarsh.
In the course of time he heard that Caro was living with Joe Dansay down at the Camber, but he made no effort to bring her back. "I'm shut of her," he told everyone angrily. If Caro preferred a common sailor and loose living to the dignity and usefulness of her position at Odiam, he was not going to interfere. Besides, she had disgraced his farm, and he would never forgive that.
It struck him that his relations with women had been singularly unfortunate. Caro, Tilly, Rose, Alice, had all been failures—indeed he had come to look back on Naomi as his only success. Women were all the same, without ambition, without self-respect, ready to lick the boots of the first person who stroked them and was silly enough not to see through their wiles.
During those days he spent most of his time digging on Boarzell. It relieved him to thrust viciously into the red dripping clay, turn in on his spade, and fling it back over his shoulder. It was strange that so few men realised that work was better than women—stranger still that they did not realise how much better than a woman's beauty was the beauty of the earth. Toiling there on the Moor, Reuben's heart gave itself more utterly to its allegiance. The curves of Boarzell against the sky, its tuft of firs, its hummocked slopes, its wet life-smelling earth, even its savagery of heather, gorse, and thorn brought healing to his heart, and strength. Caro and other women could do what they chose, love, hate, follow, cheat, and betray whom they chose, as long as they left him the red earth and the labour of his hands.
§ 9.
Early the next year Reuben heard that Caro and her lover had left Camber, and gone no one knew where, but by that time the elapse of months had dulled his feelings on the matter, and Caro, never very important in herself, was buried under the concerns of his farm.
Odiam, after superhuman efforts, was looking up again. Years of steady work and strenuous economy had restored it to something like its former greatness. Reuben was no longer hampered by an extravagant wife, and he also had the advantage of a clear field. For at last Grandturzel had given up the battle. Realf and Tilly were now the parents of four healthy, growing, hungry children, and had come to the conclusion that domestic happiness was better than agricultural triumph. They were contented with their position on a farm of considerable importance and fair prosperity. They took no risks, but lived happily with each other and their children, satisfied that they could comfortably rear and educate their little family, and leave it an inheritance which, if not dazzling, was not to be despised.
This was an infinite relief to Reuben. He was now no longer under the continual necessity of going one better than somebody else—he could rebuild along his own lines, and economise in the way he chose. However, this very convenient behaviour of Grandturzel did nothing to soften his resentment. Tilly and Realf were, and were always to be, unforgiven. Sometimes he could see that they seemed inclined to be friendly—Realf would touch his hat to him if they met, and perhaps Tilly would smile—but Reuben was not to be won by such treacly tactics. It was largely owing to the rivalry of Grandturzel that ruin had nearly swallowed him up four years ago—and he would never be weak enough to forget it.
Meantime it was soothing to contemplate the result of his efforts. After all, his own striving had done more for him than any slackness or grass-fed contentment on the part of Grandturzel. His greatest achievement was the paying off of his mortgage, which he managed in the spring of '79. Now he could once more begin saving money to buy another piece of Boarzell. There was something both novel and exhilarating about this return to old ways. It was over ten years since he had bought any land, but now were renewed all the ticklish delights of calculation, all the plannings and layings-out, all the contrivances and scrapings and wrestlings.
There were still about two hundred acres to acquire, including the Grandturzel inclosure, on which, however, he looked more hopefully than of old. He had so far subdued not more than about a hundred and forty acres—most of the northern slope of Boarzell adjoining Odiam and Totease, and also a small tract on the Flightshot side. This was not very encouraging, for it represented the labours of two-thirds of a lifetime, and at the same time left him with more than half his task still unaccomplished. If it had not been for his setback ten years ago he would now probably have over two hundred and fifty acres to his credit. But he told himself that he would progress more quickly now. Also, though he had not enlarged his boundaries during the last ten years, he had considerably improved the quality of the land within them. The first acquired parts of Boarzell were nearly as fruitful and richly cultivated as the original lands of the farm, and even the '68 ground was showing signs of coming into subjection.
Besides, Reuben had now a respectable herd of cattle—not quite so numerous or valuable as the earlier lot which had been sacrificed, but none the less respectable, and bringing him in good returns. He had made some sound profit out of his service-bull, and his sheep were paying better than they had paid for years. He no longer "kept" other people's cattle. Odiam, whether in stock or cash, was now inviolate.
Soon the rumour spread round Peasmarsh that Backfield was going to buy some more land. Reuben himself had started it.
"He's done better nor he desarved," said Coalbran of Doozes.
"He's warked fur it all the same, surelye," said Cooper of Kitchenhour.
"He's worked like the Old Un fur the last five year," said Dunn, the new man at Socknersh.
"Well, let's hope as he's found it worth while now as he's lost two wives and eight children," was the sage comment of old Vennal of Burntbarns.
Then the conversation wandered from Reuben's successes to the price he had paid for them, which proved more interesting and more comforting to those assembled.
At Flightshot the Squire viewed Odiam's recovery with some uneasiness. It would be a good thing for him if he could sell more land to old Backfield, but at the same time his conscience was restless about it. Backfield was a rapacious old hound, who forced the last ounce of work out of his labourers, and the last ounce of money out of his tenants. He was a hard master and a hard landlord, and ought not to be encouraged. All the same, Bardon did not see how he was to avoid encouraging him. If Backfield applied for the land it would be suicidal folly to refuse to sell it. He was in desperate straits for money. He had appealed to Anne, who had money of her own, but Anne's reply had been frigid. She wrote:—
"I do not see my way to helping Flightshot while I have so many other calls upon me. Richard is still unsettled, and unable entirely to support himself. I should be a poor friend indeed if after having induced my protégé to abandon his home and rely on me, I should forsake him before he was properly established. Be a man, Ralph, and refuse to sell any more land to that greedy, selfish, unscrupulous old Backfield."
But Ralph only sighed—it was all very well for Anne to talk!
§ 10.
Except for a steady maintenance of prosperity by dint of hard work, the year was uneventful. Autumn passed, and nothing broke the strenuous monotony of the days, not even news of the absent children. Then came an evening in winter when Reuben, Pete, and Harry were sitting in front of the kitchen fire. Reuben and his son were half asleep, Harry was mumbling to himself and playing with a piece of string.
A great quiet was wrapped round the house, and a great darkness, pricked by winking stars. The barns were shut, the steamings of the midden were nipped by brooding frosts—now and then the dull movements of some stalled animal could be heard, but only from the yard; in the house there was silence except for the singing fire, and Harry's low muttering which seldom rose into words. Then suddenly there was a knock at the door.
Reuben started, and Pete awoke noisily. Harry was frightened and dropped his string, crying because he could not find it. The knock came again, and this time Pete crossed the room yawning, and opened the door.
For a moment he stood in front of it, while the icy wind swept into the room. Then he dashed back to Reuben's chair.
"Fäather—it's Albert!"
Reuben sprang to his feet. He was still only half awake, and he rubbed his eyes as he stared at the figure framed in the doorway. Then suddenly he pulled himself together.
"Come in, and shut the door behind you."
The figure did not move. Reuben took a step towards it, and then it tottered forward, and to his horror fell against him, almost bearing him to the floor.
Pete, who had recovered his faculties to some extent, helped support his brother. But he had fainted clean away, and the only thing to do was to let him down as gently as possible.
"Lordy!" said Pete, and stooped over Albert, his hands on his knees.
"You're sure that's Albert?" asked Reuben, though he really did not doubt it for a moment.
"Course I am. That's his face sure enough, though he's as thin as wire."
"It's nigh fifteen year since he went away. Wot did he want to come back fur?"
"I reckon he's half starved—and he looks ill too."
"Well, he's swooneded away, anyhow. Can't you do something to mäake him sensible?"
"Poor feller," said Pete, and scratched his head.
Reuben was irritated by this display of sentiment.
"You needn't go pitying him, nuther—he's a lousy Radical traitor. You do something to mäake him sensible and out he goes."
At this juncture Albert opened his eyes.
"Hullo," he said feebly.
"Hullo," said Pete. Something in his brother's pitiable condition seemed to have touched him.
Albert sat up—then asked for some water.
Pete fetched a jug, which he held awkwardly to Albert's lips. Then he helped him to a chair, and began to unlace his boots.
"Stop that," shouted Reuben—"he äun't to stay here."
"You'll let me stop the night," pleaded Albert. "I'll explain things when I'm better. I can't now."
"You can go to the Cocks—I wöan't have you in my house."
"But I haven't got a penny—cleaned myself out for my railway ticket. I've walked all the way from the station, and my lungs are bad."
"Wot did you come here fur?"
"It struck me that you might have some natural affection."
"Me!—fur a hemmed Radical! You'd better have saved your money, young feller—I'm shut of you."
"If you're still harping on my politics," said Albert fretfully, "you needn't worry. Either side can go to the devil, for all I care. I suppose it's natural to brood over things down here, but in London one forgets a rumpus fifteen years old."
"I'll never disremember the way you shamed me in '65."
"I don't ask you to disremember anything. Only let me have supper and a bed, and to-morrow——"
A fit of coughing interrupted him. He strained and shook from head to foot. He had no handkerchief, and spat blood on the floor.
"Fäather!" cried Pete, "you can't turn him out lik this."
"He's shamming," said Reuben.
"Quite so," said Albert, who seemed to have learned sarcasm in exile—"hæmorrhage is so deuced easy to sham."
"He's come back to git money out of me," said Reuben, "but he shan't have a penny—I've none to spare."
"I don't ask for that to-night—all I ask is food and shelter, same as you'd give to a dog."
"Well, I'll leave you to Pete," said Reuben, and walked out of the room. He considered this the more dignified course, and went upstairs to bed.
The brothers were left alone, except for Harry, who was busy imitating Albert's cough, much to his own satisfaction.
Pete fetched some soup from the larder and heated it up to a tepid condition; he also produced bread and cold bacon, which the prodigal could not touch. Albert sat hunched up by the fire, coughing and shivering. He had not altered much since he left Odiam; he was thin and hectic, and had an unshaved look about him, also there were a few grey streaks in his hair—otherwise he was the same. His manner was the same too, though his voice had changed completely, and he had lost his Sussex accent.
Pete ministered to him with a strange devotion, which he carried finally to the pitch of putting him into his own bed. The absence of so many of the children did not make much more room in the house, as Reuben's ideas on sleeping had always been compact—also there were the little boys, the new dairy woman, and a big store of potatoes. Pete's large untidy bed was the only available accommodation, and Albert was glad of it, for he had reached the last stage of exhaustion.
"I bet you anything," he said before he fell asleep, "that now I'm here the old boy won't be able to turn me out, however much he wants to."
§ 11.
Whether Reuben would have succeeded or not is uncertain, for he was never put to the proof. The next day Albert was feverish and delirious, and the doctor had to be sent for. He cheerfully gave the eldest Backfield three months to live—his lungs were in a dreadful state, one completely gone, the other partly so. He had caught a chill, too, walking in the dark and cold. There could be no thought of moving him.
So Albert stayed in Pete's room, almost entirely ignored by his father. After some consideration, Reuben had come to the conclusion that this was the most dignified attitude to adopt. Now and then, when he was better, he sent him up some accounts to do, as it hurt him to think of his son lying idle week after week; but he never went near him, and Albert would never have willingly crossed his path. Those were not the days of open windows and fresh-air cures, so there was no especial reason why he should ever leave the low-raftered stuffy room, where he would lie by the hour in a frowsty dream of sickness, broken only by fits of coughing and hæmorrhage.
His return had created a mild stir in the neighbourhood, and in Reuben's breast, despite circumstances and appearances, many thrills of gratification. Albert's penniless and broken condition was but another instance of the folly of those who deserted Odiam. None of the renegades, Reuben told himself, had prospered. Here was Albert come home to die; Robert, after a prelude in gaol, had exiled himself to Australia, where the droughts lasted twenty years; Richard, in spite of studyings and strivings and spendings, had only an occasional brief, and was unable to support himself at thirty-five; Tilly was living on a second-rate farm instead of a first-rate one; Caro was living in sin; Benjamin was probably not living at all. There was no denying it—they had all done badly away from Odiam.
However, he refused all temptations to discuss this latest prodigal. If anyone asked him how his son was doing, he would answer, "I dunno; ask Pete—he's the nurse."
Pete's attitude was Reuben's chief perplexity. It is true that in early years Albert seemed to have exercised a kind of fascination over his younger brothers and sisters; still that was long ago, and Pete did not appear to have given him a thought in the interval. But now he suddenly developed an almost maternal devotion for the sick and broken Albert. He would sit up whole nights with him in spite of the toils of the day, he trod lumberingly about on tiptoe in his presence, he read to him by the sweat of his brow. Something in his brother's weakness and misery seemed to have appealed to his clumsy strength. The root of sentimentality which is always more or less encouraged by a brutal career was quickened in his heart, and sprouted to an extent that would have mystified the many he had bashed. It perplexed and irritated his father. To see Pete hulking about on tiptoe, carrying jugs of water and cups of milk, shutting doors with grotesque precaution, and perpetually telling someone upstairs in a voice hoarse with sympathy that he "wurn't to vrother, as he'd be better soon"—was a foolish and maddening spectacle. Also Reuben dreaded that Pete would scamp his farm work, so he fussed round after everything he did, and called him from Albert's bedside times without number to hoe turnips or guide the plough.
However, someone had to look after the invalid, and Pete might as well do it as anybody else—as long as he realised that his sick-nursing was a recreation, and not a substitute for his duties on the farm.
Spring came on, and Albert grew worse. Pete began to look haggard; even his bullish strength was faltering under sleepless nights, days of moil and sweat, and constant attendance on the sick man. The dairy-women helped a little, but what they did they did unwillingly; and as the dairy was short-handed, Reuben did not like them to take up any extra work. Pete's existence was a continual round of anxiety and contrivance, and he was not used to either.
There was also another depressing factor. As he felt his end approaching Albert began to develop a conscience and remorse. He said he had wasted his life, and as time wore on and he became weaker he passed from the general to the particular. The memory of certain sins tormented him, and he used Pete as his confessor.
Pete was a very innocent soul. He had spoilt many a man's beauty for him, but he had never been the slave of a woman's. He had broken arms and ribs, and noses by the score—and he had once nearly killed a man, and only just escaped being arrested for manslaughter; but he had remained through it all an innocent soul. He had always lived in the open air, always worked hard, always fought hard—his recreations had been whistling and sleep. He had never thought about sin or evil of any kind, he had never troubled about sex except as it manifested itself in the brutes he had the care of, he had never read or talked bawdry. All the energies of his nature had been poured into hard work and hard blows.
Therefore the confessions of a man like Albert came upon him as a revelation. Indeed, at first he scarcely understood them. They disquieted him and sometimes made him nervous and miserable, not because he had any very definite moral recoil, but because they forced him to think. Few can gauge the tragedy of thinking when it visits an unthinking soul. For the first time in his life Pete found himself confused, questioning, lying awake of nights and asking "why?" The world suddenly showed itself to him as a place which he could not understand. It frightened him to think about it. Sometimes he was acutely miserable, but he would not betray his misery to Albert, as the poor fellow seemed to find relief in his confidences. And on and on the stream flowed, swifter and muddier every day.
§ 12.
At last matters reached a climax. It was late in March; Albert was much worse, and even the doctor looked solemn. "He won't last till the summer," he said in answer to one of Pete's questions, and unluckily the sick man heard him.
When Pete went back into the room he found him struggling under the bedclothes, the sweat trickling down his face.
"Pete!" he cried chokingly—"I won't die!—I won't die!"
"And you wöan't, nuther," said Pete, soothing him.
"But I heard what the doctor said to you."
Pete was at a loss. He could lie if the lie were not too constructive, but in a case like this he was done for.
"Well, döan't you fret, nohow," he murmured tenderly.
But it was no good telling Albert not to fret. He threw himself from side to side in the bed, moaned, and almost raved. For months now he had known that he must die soon, but somehow the idea had not really come home to him till this moment. He would not let Pete leave him, though there was a load of mangolds to be brought in; he clung to his brother's hand like a child, and babbled of strange sins.
"I've been so wicked—I daren't die. I've been the lowest scum. I'm lost. Pete, I'm damned—I shall go to hell."
Albert had been known openly to scoff at hell, whereas Pete had never thought much about it. Now it confronted them both under a new aspect—the scoffer trembled and the thoughtless was preoccupied.
"Döan't fret," reiterated poor Pete, desperate under the fresh complication of theology, "I reckon you're not bad enough to go to hell, surelye."
"But I'm the worst—the worst that ever was. I'm scum, I'm dirt"—and out poured more of the turbid stream, till Pete sickened.
"If I could only see a parson," sobbed Albert at last.
"A parson?"
"Yes—maybe he could comfort me. Oh, I know I've mocked 'em and scoffed 'em all my life, but I reckon they could do summat for me now."
In his weakness he had gone back not only to the religious terrors of his youth, but to the Sussex dialect he had long forgotten.
Pete scarcely knew what to do. He had become used to his brother's gradual disintegration, but this utter collapse was terrifying. He offered his own ministrations.
"You've told me a dunnamany things, and you can tell me as many more as you justabout like"—touching the climax of self-sacrifice.
But Albert's weak mind clung to its first idea with scared tenacity. He was still raving about it when Pete came in from his work that evening.
"I want a parson," he moaned, throwing himself about the bed, and his terrors seemed to grow upon him as the darkness grew.
Neither of them slept that night. Albert was half delirious, and obsessed by the thought of hell. The room looked out on Boarzell, and he became convinced that the swart, tufted mass outlined against the sprinkled stars was hell, the country of the lost. He pictured himself wandering over and over it in torment. He said he saw fire on it, scaring the superstitious Pete out of his life.