§ 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."
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