§ 5.
By the end of the year Reuben had saved enough money to buy five acres of Boarzell, in the low grounds down by Totease. He had saved chiefly on the wages of Blackman and Becky, though, against that, he had been forced to engage outside help for the hay in June, and also for the wheat in August. However, he had been lucky enough to secure tramp labour for this, which meant payment largely in barn-room and bread.
Then there had been a host of minor retrenchments, each in itself so small as to be almost useless, but mounting together into something profitable. Chocolate had vanished from the Odiam supper-table, their bread was made of seconds, the genuines being sold to Iden Mill; they ate no meat on week-days except bacon, and eggs were forbidden in puddings. Reuben managed to get a small sale for his eggs and milk at the Manor and the curate's house, though he had not enough cows and poultry to make his dealing of much advantage.
Mrs. Backfield was the one to bear the brunt of these economies. She had been a trifle pampered during the latter days of her marriage, and set far more store than her sons on dainty food; also the work which she performed so well was a tax on her unaccustomedness. But she never grumbled, and this was not only because escape was near at hand. Strange to say, in these new days of his lordship, Reuben began to fill a place in her heart which he had never filled before. While her husband was alive, he had never really come inside her life, he had been an aloof, inarticulate being whom she did not understand. But now that he had asserted himself, she found herself turning towards him. She would have worked without prospect of release—indeed, as the days went by, Harry and his home and her promised idleness dwindled in her thoughts.
When Reuben told her he could now buy his first piece of Boarzell, she went through the day's work full of joy. Though, as far as the land itself was concerned, she would far rather have had new chintz covers for the parlour chairs.
They never sat in the parlour now.
Harry's pleasure was obviously insincere, just a mask put on out of kindness to his brother. Naomi was coming over on a few days' visit, and everything else was smoke. No one, Reuben reflected, as he walked over to Flightshot to see Sir Miles's agent, no one cared a rap about Boarzell. His mother thought more of her food and of her furniture, thought more of him and Harry, while Harry thought of nothing but Naomi. He would have to wage his fight alone.
The transaction was prompt and satisfactory. Reuben did not haggle over the price, and was careful to let the agent know of his eagerness to buy more—otherwise, he was afraid that the Squire might either give the land back to the people, pushed by his Liberal politics, or else part with it for a song to some speculator. So he paid really a bit more than the land was worth, and made the agent a confidant of his dreams.
"It'll want a tedious lot of fighting, will that plot," he asserted, to counteract any idea his eagerness might give that Boarzell was a mine of hidden fertility—"Dunno as I shall mäake anything out of it. But it's land I want—want to mäake myself a sort of landed praprietor"—a lie—"and raise the old farm up a bit. I'd like to have the whole of Boarzell. Reckon as Grandturzel 'ud sell me their bit soon as I've got the rest. They'll never mäake anything out of it."
He walked home over Boarzell, scarcely conscious of the ground he trod. He felt like a new-crowned king. As he looked round on the swart hummocks of the Moor, and its crest of firs, dim and bistred against the grey afternoon clouds, he found it hard to realise that it was not all his, that he still had almost the whole of it to fight for, acre by acre. He hurried towards his own little plot, bought, but as yet unconquered, still shagged with gorse and brittle with shards.
It was down in the hollow by Totease, as unpromising an estate as one could wish, all on a slope, gorse-grown at the top, then a layer of bracken, and at the Totease fence a kind of oozy pulp, where a lavant dribbled in and out of the grass; to Reuben, however, it was a land of milk and honey. He turned up the soil of it with his foot, and blessed the wealden clay.
"No flints here," he said; "reckon there's some stiff ground on the hill—but it's only the surface. Heather äun't growing—that's a tedious good sign. I'll have oats here—the best in Peasmarsh."
He stood staring at the grass with its dribbles of lavant and spines of rushes. The wind brought the sound of someone singing. At first he scarcely noticed, then gradually the song worked in with his daydream, and ended by rousing him out of it. He strolled across his domain, and marked half a dozen sturdy willows which must come out somehow roots and all. He climbed into the bracken zone, and from thence saw Harry sitting by a gorse thicket some hundred yards off with Naomi Gasson.
The wind puffed gently towards him, bringing him the song and the soft peach-smell of the gorse. Harry was a musician already of note among the farms; he had a beautiful voice, and there was very little he could not do with his fiddle, though of late this had been neglected for the claims of work and love. To-day he was singing an old song Reuben knew well—"The Song of Seth's House":
Harry's voice was very loud and clear, with that element of wildness which is a compensation for no training. When he had finished "The Song of Seth's House" he started another, but broke off in the middle of it, and Reuben saw the two heads suddenly droop together, and fuse, the golden hair and the brown.
Naomi leaned against Harry, and his hand stole up and down her arm, stroking its whiteness. Reuben stood watching them, and for a moment he hungered. This was what he had cast away.
He turned from them sharply, and threw himself down on the dead bracken. Then suddenly the hunger passed. The reek of the moist earth rose up in his nostrils; it was the scent of his love, who was sweeter to him than ever Naomi was to Harry. His hand stole over the short, mould-smelling grass, caressing it. He had a love more beautiful than Harry's, whose comeliness would stay unwithered through the years, whose fruitfulness would make him great, whose allure was salted with a hundred dangers.... His fingers dug themselves into the earth, and he embraced Boarzell with wide-flung trembling arms. "My land!" he cried—"mine!—mine!"
§ 6.
The neighbourhood sniggered when it heard of Odiam's new land. When it heard of Reuben's plans for it and the oats that were to be it grew openly derisive. The idea of anyone thinking he could grow oats on Boarzell was an excellent joke. Young Backfield, however, ignored public opinion, and bought rape-dust for manure.
He was as jealous of this strip of earth as of a wife—he would allow nobody to work there but himself. Alone and unhelped he grubbed up the bracken, turned the soil, and scattered rape-dust and midden till they had to shut their windows at Burntbarns. He believed that if the ground was properly manured it would be ready for sowing in the autumn. The only difficulty now was the trees; they were casting malevolent shadows, and dredging up the goodness out of the earth.
Where Ditch of Totease or Vennal of Burntbarns would have taken a couple of woodmen and a saw, Reuben took nothing but an axe and his bare arms. His muscles ached for this new carouse of exertion.
"Let me give you a hand," said Harry that day at dinner.
"No—why should I?"
"You'll never do it yourself," said Naomi, who was spending a few days at Odiam.
"Oh, wöan't I!" and Reuben showed his strong white teeth.
"How many trees are there?"
"Half a dozen—willers. The real trouble will be gitting their roots out."
"And will you do that alone?"
"I'll see about it."
Naomi looked across at Reuben without speaking. Her lips, a pale coral-pink, were parted, showing two tiny teeth. She was not the type he favoured—she was too soft and bloodless—but he could not help feeling flattered by the frank admiration he saw in her eyes. He knew that this last year of wind and sun and healthy work had narrowed the gulf between him and Beautiful Harry. He was as hard as iron and as brown as a nut, and there was a warm red glowing through the swarthiness of his cheeks like the bloom on a russet pear.
Harry looked up from his plate, and the gaze became three-cornered. Reuben, defiant of his brother, grew bold, and ogled, whereupon Naomi grew timid, and dropped her eyes; Harry found himself speaking with a rasp:
"I'm coming to help you, Reuben. You'll never tackle them rootses—it äun't everything you can do surelye!"
"I can do that much. You stay here and play the fiddle to Naomi."
Harry somehow felt he had been insulted, and opened his mouth to retort. But his brother suddenly began talking about an accident to a labourer at Grandturzel, and the occasion dropped.
After dinner Reuben set out with his axe, and Harry and Naomi sat together on the floor beside the kitchen fire. He gave her kisses like the wind, swift and cool. She was the only woman he had kissed, and she had never been kissed by any other man. Their love had its wildnesses, but not the wildnesses of fire—rather of the dancing boughs of some spring-caught wood, rioting together in May. Now and then he would sing as he held her to him, his fresh young voice ringing up to the roof....
Later in the afternoon they went out together. It seemed a pity to stay indoors in the soft swale, and Harry had to look at some poultry at Doozes. Naomi walked with her arm through his, her grey cloak over her shoulders.
"I wonder if Reuben's still at it?" said Harry, as the footpath began to skirt the new land.
"Yes—I see him yonder. He doesn't see us, I reckon."
They stood on the hillside and looked down at Reuben. He had felled five trees, and was now getting his axe into the sixth. They watched him in silence, and Naomi found herself remembering the way he had looked at her at dinner.
"He's a valiant man," said Harry.
Naomi saw him sweep the axe above his shoulder, and the ease and strength of his swing gave her a strange tingling sensation in her breast. The axe crashed into the wood, then Reuben pulled it up, and the muscles of his back made two long, ovoid lumps under his blue shirt. Again the axe swung and fell, again Naomi's body tingled as with a physical exhilaration.
The January twilight deepened, and soon Reuben's blue shirt was all that was clear in the hollow. The bites of the axe cracked out on the still air—and suddenly with a soft swish of boughs the tree fell.
§ 7.
That night Reuben came to supper as hungry as a wolf. He was in a fine good humour, for his body, pleasantly tired, glowing, aching, tickled with the smell of food, was giving him a dozen agreeable sensations.
"Got some splendid fire-wood fur you, mother," he said after a few minutes' silence enforced by eating.
"And wot about the rootses?" asked Harry, "wull you be digging those out to-morrer? It'll be an unaccountable tough job."
"Oh, I've found a way of gitting shut of them rootses—thought of it while I wur working at the trees. I'm going to blast 'em out."
"Blast 'em!"
"Yes. Blast 'em wud gunpowder. I've heard of its being done. I'd never dig all the stuff out myself—yards of it there be—willer rootses always wur hemmed spready."
"It's never bin done in these parts."
"Well, it'll be done now, surelye. It'll show the folk here I mean business—and that I'm a chap wud ideas."
There was indeed a mild excitement in the farms round Boarzell when Reuben's new plan became known. In those times gunpowder was seldom used for such purposes, and the undertaking was looked upon as a treat and a display....
"Backfield's going to bust up his willer-rootses—fine sight it'll be—like as not blow his own head off—I'll be there to see."
So when Reuben came to his territory the next afternoon he found a small crowd assembled—Ditch, Ginner, Realf of Grandturzel, Coalbran of Doozes, Pilcher of Birdseye, with a sprinkling of their wives, families, and farm-hands. He himself had brought Naomi, and Harry was to join them when he came back from an errand to Moor's Cottage. Reuben felt a trifle important and in need of spectators. This was to be the crowning act of conquest. When those roots were shattered away there would be nothing but time and manure between him and the best oat-crop in Peasmarsh.
A quarter of an hour passed, and there was no sign of Harry. Reuben grew impatient, for he wanted to have the ground tidied up by sunset. It was a wan, mould-smelling afternoon, and already the sun was drifting through whorls of coppery mist towards the shoulder of Boarzell. Reuben looked up to the gorse-clump on the ridge, from behind which he expected Harry to appear.
"I can't wait any longer," he said to Naomi, "something's kept him."
"He'll be disappointed," said Naomi softly.
"I can't help that—the sun's near down, and I must have everything präaper by dark."
He went to where the fuse lay like a snake in the grass, and struck his flint.
"Stand back everybody; I'm going to start her."
The group huddled back a few yards. The little flame writhed along towards the stump. There was silence. Reuben stood a little way in front of the others, leaning forward with eager, parted lips.
Suddenly Naomi cried out:
"There's Harry!"
A shadow appeared against the copper sky, and ran towards them down the hill.
For a moment nobody seemed to realise what was boding. Then they heard a shout that sounded like "Wait for me!" Naomi felt something rise in her throat and sear the roof of her mouth like a hot cinder. She tried to scream, but her parched tongue would not move. She staggered forward, but Reuben flung her back.
"Stop!" he shouted.
Harry did not seem to hear.
"Stop!" yelled Reuben again. Then he cried, "Stand back!" to the crowd, and ran towards his brother.
But it was too late. There was a sudden roar, a sheet of flame, a crash, a dreadful scream, and then a far more dreadful silence.
One or two flames sang out of a hole in the ground, but scarcely anything could be seen for the pall of smoke that hung over Boarzell, black, and evil-smelling. The fumes made men choke, then they shuddered and drew together, for through the smell of smoke and gunpowder came the horrible smell of burnt flesh.
Reuben was lying on his face a few yards in front of the others. For some seconds nobody moved. Then Backfield slowly raised himself on his arms.
"I'm not hurt," he said in a shaking voice.
"Harry!" cried Naomi, as if someone were strangling her.
Reuben tottered to his feet. His face was black, and he was still half stunned by the explosion.
"Harry!" cried Naomi—and then fainted.
The smoke clouds were lifting, and now everyone could see a smouldering object that lay close to the hole, among bits of wood and stone.
Reuben ran towards it, Ditch and Realf followed him. The others huddled stupidly together like sheep.
"His clothes are still burning—here, help me, you!" cried Reuben, beating at the flames with his hands.
"He's dead," said Realf.
"Oh Lord!" wailed Ditch—"Oh Lord!"
"He's bin hit on the head wud a piece of wood. I reckon he died painlessly. All this came afterwards."
"Wipe the blood off his face."
"Tell his poor girl he died wudout suffering."
"He äun't dead," said Reuben.
He had torn off the rags from his brother's heart, and felt it beating.
"He äun't dead."
"Oh Lord!" wailed Ditch.—"Oh Lord!"
"Here, you chaps, fetch a gëat and put him on it—and döan't let Naomi see him."
Naomi had been taken back to Odiam, when Harry, still motionless and apparently dead, was lifted on a gate, and borne away. Dark curds of smoke drifted among the willows, and the acrid smell of powder clung to the hillside like an evil ghost. The place where Harry had lain was marked by charred and trampled grass, and a great pool of blood was sinking into the ground ... it seemed to Reuben, as he turned shudderingly away, as if Boarzell were drinking it up—eagerly, greedily, as a thirsty land drinks up its first watering.
§ 8.
Dr. Espinette from Rye stood glumly by Harry's bed. His finger lay on the fluttering pulse, and his eye studied the little of the sick man's face that could be seen between its bandages.
"It's a bad business," he said at last; "that wound in the head's the worst of it. The burns aren't very serious in themselves. You must keep him quiet, and I'll call again to-morrow morning."
"When ull he wäake up?" asked Mrs. Backfield in the feeble voice her tears had left her.
"I don't know—it may be in an hour or two, it mayn't be for a week."
"A week!"
"I've known them unconscious longer than that. But, cheer up, ma'am—we're not going to let him slip past us."
The doctor went away, and after a time Reuben was able to persuade his mother to go and lie down in the next room. He had quite recovered from the shock of the explosion; indeed, he was now the only calm person in the house. He sat down by Harry's bed, gazing at the unconscious face.
How horrible everything had been! How horrible everything was still, with that loggish, inanimate thing lying there, all that was left of Beautiful Harry. Reuben wondered if he would die. If so, he had killed him—he had ignored his own inexperience and played splashy tricks with his new land. But no—he had not killed him—it was Boarzell, claiming a victim in the signal-rite of its subjection. He remembered how that thirsty ground had drunk up Harry's blood. Perhaps it would drink up much more blood before he had done with it—perhaps it would one day drink up his blood.... A vague, a sudden, a ridiculous fear clutched his thoughts; for the first time he felt afraid of the thing he had set out to conquer—for the first time Boarzell was not just unfruitful soil, harsh heather clumps and gorse-roots—it was something personal, opposing, vindictive, blood-drinking.
He sprang to his feet and began pacing up and down the room. The window square was black. He was glad he could not see Boarzell with its knob of firs. Gradually the motion of his legs calmed his thoughts, he fell to pondering more ordinary things—had his mother remembered to stand the evening's milk in the cream pans? She had probably forgotten all about the curate's butter to be delivered the next morning. What had Harry done about those mangolds at Moor's Cottage? Durn it! He would have to do all the work of the farm to-morrow—how he was to manage things he didn't know, what with the dairy and the new chicks and the Alderney having garget. He stopped pacing, and chin in hand was considering the expediency of engaging outside help, when a voice from the bed cried feebly:
"Oh!"
Reuben went to Harry's side, and bent over him.
"Oh," moaned his brother, "oh!—oh!"
"I'm here, old feller," said Reuben with a clumsy effort at tenderness.
"Bring a light, do—I can't abide this dark."
Reuben fetched the candle to the bedside.
"Where's Naomi?"
"She's asleep. Do you want her?"
"No—let her sleep. But bring me a light fur marcy's sake."
"I've brought it—it's here by the bed."
"I can't see it."
"You must—it's right in your eyes."
"I can't—oh!"
He started up in bed and gripped his brother's hand. He thrust his head forward, his eyeballs straining.
"Take it away! take it away!" he screamed.
"Wot?" cried Reuben, sick with the new-born terror.
"That black stuff in front of my eyes. Take it away! Take it away!"
He tore his hand free, and began clawing and beating at his face.
Reuben's teeth were chattering.
"Kip calm, lad—kip calm. There's naun there, naun, I tell you."
"Oh, oh!"—screamed Harry—"Oh, oh, oh!"
The outcry brought Mrs. Backfield from the next room, Naomi shivering in her wake. Reuben was trying to hold Harry down in bed.
Through the long night they wrestled with him, blind and raving. At first it seemed as if Naomi's presence soothed him, and he would let her stroke his arms and hands. But after a time he ceased to recognise her. He gabbled about her a good deal, but did not know she was there. His delirium was full of strange tags—a chicken brood he was raising, a sick cow, a jaunt into Rye with Realf of Grandturzel, a dozen harmless homely things which were all transfused with an alien horror, all somehow made frightful, so that Reuben felt he could never look on chickens, cows or Rye again without a shudder.
Sometimes there were crises of extraordinary violence when he was with difficulty held down in bed, and these at last wore him out. Towards dawn he fell into a troubled sleep.
Naomi slept too, huddled in a chair, every now and then a sob quivering through her. The winter dawn slowly crept in on her, showing her pitiful figure—showing Mrs. Backfield sick and puffy with tears, Reuben dry-eyed beside the bed, and Harry respited in sleep. Outside the crest of Boarzell was once more visible in the growing light—dark, lumpish, malevolent, against the kindling of the sky.
§ 9.
The next few days were terrible, in the house and on the farm. Indoors the women nursed Harry, and outdoors Reuben did double work, sleeping at night in an arm-chair by his brother's side.
Harry had recovered consciousness, but it could not be said that he had "come to himself." "Beautiful Harry," with all his hopes and ardours, his dreams and sensibilities, had run away like a gipsy, and in his place was a new Harry, blind and mad, who moaned and laughed, with stony silences, and now and then strange fits of struggling as if the runaway gipsy strove to come back.
Dr. Espinette refused to say whether this state was permanent or merely temporary. Neither could he be sure whether it was due to his injuries or to the shock of finding himself blind. Reuben felt practically convinced that his brother was sane during the few moments he had spoken to him alone, but the doctor seemed doubtful.
Reuben was glad to escape into his farm work. The atmosphere of sickness was like a cloud, which grew blacker and blacker the nearer one came to its heart. Its heart was that little room in the gable, where he spent those wretched nights, disturbed by Harry's moaning. Out of doors, in the yard or the cowshed or the stable, he breathed a cleaner atmosphere. The heaviness, the vague remorse, grew lighter. And strange to say, out on Boarzell, which was the cause of his trouble, they grew lightest of all.
Somehow out there was a wider life, a life which took no reck of sickness or horror or self-reproach. The wind which stung his face and roughed his hair, the sun which tanned his nape as he bent to his work, the smell of the earth after rain, the mists that brewed in the hollows at dusk, and at dawn slunk like spirits up to the clouds ... they were all part of something too great to take count of human pain—so much greater than he that in it he could forget his trouble, and find ease and hope and purpose—even though he was fighting it.
He mildly scandalised his neighbours by blasting—privately this time—the tree stumps yet in the ground. According to their ethics he should have accepted Harry's accident as the voice of Providence and abstained from his outlandish methods—also some felt that it was a matter of delicacy and decent feeling not to repeat that which had had such dire consequences for his brother. "I wonder he can bear to do it," said Ginner, when 'Bang! Bang!' came over the hummocks to Socknersh.
But Reuben did it because he was not going to be beaten in any respect by his land. He was not going to accept defeat in the slightest instance. So he blew up the stumps, tidied the ground, and spread manure—and more manure—and yet more manure.
Manure was his great idea at that moment. He had carefully tilled and turned the soil, and he fed it with manure as one crams chickens. It was of poor quality marl, mostly lime on the high ground, with a larger proportion of clay beside the ditch. Reuben's plan was to fatten it well before he sowed his seed. Complaints of his night-soil came all the way from Grandturzel; Vennal, humorously inclined, sent him a bag of rotten fish; on the rare occasions his work allowed him to meet other farmers at the Cocks, his talk was all of lime, guano, and rape-cake, with digressions on the possibilities of seaweed. He was manure mad.
The neighbours despised and mistrusted his enthusiasm. There he was, thinking of nothing but his land, when Harry, his only brother, lay worse than dying. But Reuben often thought of Harry.
One thing he noticed, and that was that the housework was always done for him by his mother as if there were no sickness to fill her time. Always when he came home of an evening, his supper was waiting for him, hot and savoury. He breakfasted whenever he had a mind, and there were slices of cold pie or dabs of bread and meat for him to take out and eat as he worked—he had no time to come home to dinner now. Really his mother was tumbling to things wonderfully well—she looked a little tired sometimes, it is true, and the lines of her face were growing thinner, but she was saving him seven shillings a month and the girl's food; and all that money and food was feeding the hungry earth.
Naomi helped her with the nursing, and also a little about the house. She had refused to go home to Rye, though Harry did not seem to recognise her.
"For sometimes," she said, "I think he does."
§ 10.
Towards the middle of February a change took place in Harry. At first it was little more than a faint creep of life, putting a little glow in his cheeks, a little warmth in his blood. Then the wounds which had been healing so slowly began to heal quickly, his appetite returned, and he slept long and sweetly at nights.
Mrs. Backfield's hope rekindled, but the doctor soon damped it down. This sudden recrudescence of physical health was a bad sign, for there was no corresponding revival of intellect, and now the prostration of the body could no longer account for the aberration of the mind. It was unlikely that Harry would ever recover his wits—the injuries to his skull, either with or without the shock of his blindness, had definitely affected his brain. The strong, clear will, the gay spirits, the quick understanding, the tender sensibilities which had made him so bright and lovable a being, were gone—how much of shreds and scraps they had left behind them to build up the semblance of a man, did not yet appear.
His looks would be only slightly marred. It was the optic nerve which had been destroyed, and so far there was nothing ugly in the eyes themselves, except their vacant rolling. The eyelashes and eyebrows had been burnt off, but they were growing again, and a scar on his cheek and another on his forehead were not likely to show much in a few weeks' time. But all the life, the light, the soul had gone out of his face—it was like a house which had been gutted, with walls and roof still standing, yet with its essential quality gone from it, a ruin.
Reuben thought long and anxiously about his brother. He did not speak much of him to his mother or Naomi, for he knew that they would not understand the problem that confronted him. He felt worn by the extra load of work, and his brain fretted, spoiling his good sleep. He was back in his own room now, but he slept worse than in Harry's; he would lie awake fighting mentally, just as all day he had fought physically—life was a continuous fight.
It was hard that just at the outset of his enterprise, fresh obstacles should be thrown in his way. He saw that it was practically impossible for him to go on working as he did; already he was paying for it in stiff muscles, loss of appetite, fitful sleep, and drugged wakings. Also he was growing irritable and frayed as to temper. If he went on much longer doing the work of three men—he had always done the work of two—he would end by breaking up completely, and then what would become of Odiam? He would have to engage outside help, and that would mean quite ten shillings a week—ten shillings a week, two pounds a month, twenty-six pounds a year, the figures were like blisters in his head during the long restless nights. They throbbed and throbbed through his dreams. He would have to spend twenty-six pounds a year, just when he was saving so desperately to buy more land and fatten what he already had. And in addition he would have to pay for Harry's keep. Not only must he engage a man to do his work, but he would have to support in absolute idleness Harry himself. He was quite unfit for farm work, he would be nothing but an expense and an incubus.
In those dark furious hours, Reuben would wish his brother had died. It was not as if life could be sweet to him. It was terrible to see him mouching and mumbling about the house, to hold even the brief converse with him which everyday life enforced. He had not as yet grown used to his blindness, indeed it would be difficult for him to do so without wits to stimulate and direct his other senses, and it was dreadful to see him tumbling over furniture, breaking things and crying afterwards, spilling food on his clothes and his beard—for now that he could not shave himself, and others had no time to do it for him, he wore a large fair beard, which added to his uncouthness.
Oh that his brother had died!
One day Reuben was so tired that he fell asleep over his supper. His mother cleared the table round him, glancing at him with fond, submissive eyes. Each day she had come to love him more, with an obedient love, almost instinctive and elemental, which she had never felt for the gentle husband or considerate son. This evening she laid her shawl over his shoulders, and went to her washing-up.
Suddenly a weird noise came from the parlour, a strange groaning and wailing. Reuben woke up, and rubbed his eyes. What was that? It was horrible, it was uncanny—and for him it also had that terrifying unnaturalness which a sudden waking gives even to the most ordinary sounds.
Then gradually out of the horror beauty began to grow. The sound passed into an air, faltering at first, then flowing—"Dearest Ellen," on Harry's violin.
"I'm glad he's found something to amuse him, poor son," said Mrs. Backfield, coming in to see if Reuben had waked.
"He's not playing badly, is he, mother?"
"Not at all. They say as sometimes blind folk are unaccountable good at music."
Reuben did not answer; she knew by his attitude—chin in hand—that he was thinking.
That night he thought it out.
Munds of Starvecrow had had a brother who fiddled at fairs and weddings and earned, so Munds said, thirty pounds a year. He had also heard of others who made as good a thing of it. If Harry earned thirty pounds a year he would pay the wages of an extra farm-hand and also something towards his own keep. They must find out exactly how many of the old tunes he remembered, and get somebody musical to teach him new ones.
The idea prospered in Reuben's thoughts that night. The next morning he was full of it, and confided it to his mother and Naomi.
Naomi, a little paler and more wistful than of old, still spent an occasional day or two at Odiam. At first she had made these visits for Harry's sake, flattering herself that he was the better for her presence; then when even her faith began to fail, she still came, partly to help Mrs. Backfield, partly driven by such feelings as might drive an uneasy ghost to haunt the house of his tragedy. Reuben saw little of her, for his work claimed him, but he liked to feel she was there, helping his mother with work which it was difficult for her to carry through alone to Odiam's best advantage.
She heard of Reuben's plan with some shrinking.
"He—he wouldn't like it," she stammered after a pause.
"You'll never go sending our Harry to fiddle at fairs," said Mrs. Backfield.
"Why not? There's naun shameful in it. Munds's brother did it for twenty years. And think of the difference it'll mäake to us—thirty pound or so a year, instead of the dead loss of Harry's keep and the wages of an extra man beside. I tell you, mother, I wur fair sick about the farm till I thought of this."
"It's always the farm wud you, Reuben. You might sometimes think of your own kin."
"I tell you Harry wöan't mind—he'll like it. It'll be something to occupy him. Besides, hem it all, mother! you can't expect me to kip him idling here, wud the farm scarce started yet, and nearly the whole of Boarzell still to buy."
But it was useless to expect either Mrs. Backfield or Naomi to appreciate the momentousness of his task. Were women always, he wondered, without ambition? However, though they did not sympathise, they would not oppose him—Naomi because she was not skilful at opposition, his mother because he was gradually taking the place of Harry in her heart.
He had more trouble when a day or so later he asked Naomi to inspect Harry's musical equipment.
"You see, I döan't know one tune from another, so I can't do it myself. You might git him to play one or two things over to you, Naomi, and find out what he remembers."
"I'd rather not," said Naomi, shuddering.
"Why?"
"Oh—I just can't."
"But why?"
She could not tell him. If he did not understand how every note from Harry's violin would jab and tear the tortured memories she was trying to put to sleep—if he did not understand that of himself, she would never be able to explain it to him.
As a matter of fact he did understand, but he was resolute.
"Help me, Naomi," he pleaded, "fur I can't manage wudout you."
His eyes searched her face. People who met him only casually were generally left with the impression that he had black eyes, but as a matter of fact they were dark blue. A hidden power forced Naomi's eyes to meet them ... they were narrow and deep-set, with extraordinarily long lashes. She gazed into them for a moment without speaking. Then suddenly her own filled with an expression of hatred, and she ran out of the room.
But he had won his point. That evening Naomi made Harry play over his "tunes," while Reuben sat in the chimney corner watching them both. Harry's memory was erratic—he would play through some well-known airs quite correctly up to a certain point, and then interpolate hysterical variations of his own. At other times memory failed him altogether, but his natural quickness of ear seemed to have increased since his blindness, and it only needed Naomi to sing the passage over for him to fill up the gaps.
She took him through "The Woodpecker Tapping," "Dearest Ellen," "I'd mourn the hopes that leave me," "The Song of Seth's House," and "The Blue Bells of Scotland." Each one of them was torment to her gentle heart, as it woke memory after memory of courtship—on the gorse-slopes of Boarzell, among the chasing shadows of Iden Wood, on the Rother marshes by Thornsdale, where the river slinks up from the Fivewatering ... or in this very kitchen here, where the three of them, divided from one another by dizzy gaps of suffering, desire and darkness, were gathered together in a horrible false association.
But Harry's face was blank, no memories seemed to stir for him, he just fiddled on, now and then receiving Naomi's corrections with an outbreak of childish temper. On these occasions Reuben would stamp his foot and speak to him in a loud, angry voice which inevitably made him behave himself.
Naomi always took advantage of these returns to docility, but later that evening in the dairy, she suddenly swung round on Mrs. Backfield and exclaimed petulently:
"I hate that Ben of yours!"
§ 11.
Harry made good progress, and Reuben decided that he was to start his career at the October Fair. There had been a fiddler at the Fair for years, partly for the lasses and lads to dance to, partly for the less Bacchic entertainments of their elders. It was at the Fair that men took his measure, and engaged him accordingly for weddings and such festivals. Luck would have it that for the last two years there had been no official fiddler—old Abel Pinch having been seduced by a semi-urban show, which wandered round London, camping on waste grounds and commons. The musical element had been supplied by strays, and Reuben had no doubt but that he should now be able to instal his brother honourably as chief musician.
He advertised him in the neighbourhood for some weeks beforehand, and gossip ran high. Condemnation of Backfield's ruthlessness in exploiting his brother was combined with a furtive admiration of his smartness as a business man. It was extraordinary how little he cared about "lowering himself," a vital matter with the other farmers of his position. Just as he had thought nothing of working his own farm instead of indulging in the dignity of hired labour, so he thought nothing of making money at Boarzell Fair with the gipsies and pikers.
Naomi no longer protested. For one thing Harry seemed to like his fiddling, and was quite overjoyed at the prospect of playing at the Fair. Strangely enough, he remembered the Fair and its jollities, though he had forgotten all weightier matters of life and love.
"Where shall I stand?—by the gipsies' tent?—or right forrard by the stalls? I'd like to stand by the stalls, and then maybe when I'm not fiddling they'll give me sweeties."
"You must behave yourself," said Reuben, in the tones he would have used to a child—"you mustn't go vrothering people to give you sweeties."
"I'll give you some sweeties, Harry," said Naomi.
"Oh, will you?—Then I'll love you!"
Naomi turned away with a shudder, her eyes full of inexpressible pain.
Reuben looked after her as she went out of the room, then he took a couple of strides and caught her up in the passage.
"It's I who'm täaking you to the Fair, remember," he said, his hand on her arm.
"Oh, no ... I couldn't go to the Fair."
"Nonsense—you're coming wud me."
"Oh, Ben, don't make me go."
It was the cry of her weakness to his purpose.
"I shall mäake you ... dear."
She flung herself from him, and ran upstairs. That night at supper she took no notice of him, talking garrulously all the time to Mrs. Backfield.
But she went to the Fair.
In the soft grey gown that the first of the cold demanded she walked with her arm through Reuben's up the Moor. Her bonnet was the colour of heather, tied with wide ribbons that accentuated the milkiness of her chin. Reuben wore his Sunday clothes—drab shorts and a sprigged waistcoat, and a wide-brimmed hat under which his face looked strangely handsome and dark. Harry shuffled along, clutching his brother's coat-sleeve to guide himself. Mrs. Backfield preferred to stay at home, and Reuben had not tried to make her come.
All Peasmarsh went to the Fair. It was a recognised holiday. All farm work—except the most barely necessary—was put aside, and the ploughman and dairymaid rollicked with their betters. The road across Boarzell was dark with them, coming from all quarters—Playden, Iden, Beckley, Northiam, Bodiam—Old Turk's Farm, Baron's Grange, Corkwood, Kitchenhour—even from Blackbrook and Ethnam on the Kentish border.
The tents and stalls were blocked as usual round the central crest of pines. It was all much as it had been five years ago on the day of the Riot. There was the outer fringe of strange dwellings—tents full of smoke and sprawling squalling children, tilt carts with soup-pots hanging from their axles over little fires, and gorgeously painted caravans which stood out aristocratically amidst the prevalent sacking. There was a jangle of voices—the soft Romany of the gipsies, the shriller cant of the pikers and half-breeds, the broad drawling Sussex of the natives. Head of all the Fair, and superintending the working of the crazy merry-go-round, was Gideon Teazel, a rock-like man, son, he said, of a lord and a woman of the Rosamescros or Hearnes. He stood six foot eight in his boots and could carry a heifer across his shoulders. His wife Aurora, a pure-bred gipsy, told fortunes, and was mixed up in more activities than would appear from her sleepy manner or her invariable position, pipe in mouth, on the steps of her husband's caravan. Gideon loved to display his devotion for her by grotesque endearments and elephantine caresses—due no doubt to the gaujo strain in him, for the true gipsies always treated their women in public as chattels or beasts of burden, though privately they were entirely under their thumbs.
Reuben brought Naomi and Harry into the middle of the Fair. Many people stared at them. It was Harry's first public appearance since his illness, and one or two comments louder than the general hum came to Naomi's ears and made them pink.
Harry was soon established on the upturned cask beside the fighting booth which had always been the fiddler's place. He began to play at once—"Nice Young Maidens"—to all appearances quite indifferent to the jostle round him. Naomi could not help marvelling at Reuben, too—he was so cool, possessed and assured, so utterly without anything in the way of embarrassment or self-consciousness.
Wonder was succeeded by wrath—how dare he be calm in the face of such terrible things? She tried to pull her hand out of his arm, but he held his elbow close to his side, and the little hand lay there like an imprisoned mouse.
"Let's go away," she whispered, half nervously and half angrily, "I hate standing here."
"I want to see how he's going to manage," said Reuben. "What'll he do when he comes to the end of this tune?"
"Oh, do let's go away."
He did not answer, but stood there imperturbable, till Harry, having successfully finished "Nice Young Maidens," started "The Woodpecker Tapping" without any ado.
"He's safe enough now—we may as well go and have a look round."
Naomi followed him out of the little crowd which had grouped round Harry, and they wandered into the Panorama tent to see the show. After having sat for half an hour on a crowded bench, in an atmosphere thick with foul tobacco and the smell of clothes long stored away—watching "The Coronation of Queen Victoria" and "Scenery on the West Coast of Scotland" rumble slowly past with many creaks—they moved on to the sparring booth, where Buck Washington, now a little knotted and disabled by a bout of rheumatism, arranged scraps between the ploughboys of the neighbouring farms.
Unluckily, the object of sparring, as practised locally, was to draw as much blood from the adversary as possible. The combatants went straight for each others' noses, in spite of the conjurations of Buck, and Naomi soon exercised her privilege as a town girl, and said she felt faint. Reuben took her out, and they walked round the stalls, at one of which he bought her a cherry ribbon for her fairing. At another they bought gingerbread. Gradually her spirits began to revive—she applauded his power at the shooting gallery, and when they came to the cocoanut shie, she was laughing out loud.
Reuben seemed to have an endless supply of money. He, whom she had seen deny himself white bread and tobacco, and scold his mother if she used eggs to make a pudding, did not seem now to care how much he spent for her amusement. He vowed, laughing, that she should not leave the shie till she had brought down a nut, and the showman pocketed pennies till he grinned from ear to ear, while Naomi threw the wooden balls in all directions, hitting the showman and the spectators and once even Reuben himself. At last he took her arm, and putting himself behind her managed after one or two attempts to guide a successful throw. They went off laughing with her prize, and came once more to the open ground where Harry was still playing his fiddle.
Evidently he had pleased the multitude, for there was now a thick crowd in the central space, and already dancing had begun. Farm-hands in clean smocks, with bright-coloured handkerchiefs round their necks, gambolled uncouthly with farm-girls in spotted and striped muslins. Young farmers' wives, stiff with the sedateness of their bridehead, were drawn into reluctant capers. Despairing virgins renewed their hope, and tried wives their liveliness in unaccustomed arms. Even the elders danced, stumping together on the outskirts of the whirl as long as their breath allowed them.
Harry played "The Song of Seth's House," which in spite of—or because of—its sadness was a good dancing tune. There was no definite step, just anything the dancers fancied. Some kicked up their heels vigorously, others slid them sedately, some held their partners by the hand, others with both arms round their waist.
Then suddenly Naomi found herself in the thick of the crowd, at once crushed and protected by Reuben's six foot three of strength. At first she was shocked, chilled—she had never danced at a fair before, and it seemed dreadful to be dancing here with Reuben while Harry fiddled. But gradually the jovial movement, the vigour and gay spirits of her partner, wore down her reluctance. Once more she was impressed by that entire absence of self-consciousness and false pride which characterised him. After all, why should they not dance here together? Why should they stand glum while everyone else was merrymaking? Harry did not notice them, and if he did he would not care.