§ 12.
In time, as these battles became more usual, the family were forced to take sides. Peter supported Reuben, Caro supported Rose. There had been an odd kind of friendship between the downtrodden daughter and the gay wife ever since they had unpacked the latter's trunks together on her wedding night and Caro had cried because Rose had what she might never have.
Rose approved of this attitude—she liked to be envied; also Caro was useful to her in many ways, helping her in the house, taking the burden of many irksome duties off her shoulders, leaving her free to entertain her friends or mix complexion washes. Moreover, there was something in Caro which appealed in itself, a certain heavy innocence which tickled the humour of the younger, more-experienced woman. Once her stepdaughter had asked her what it felt like to be kissed, which had sent Rose into rockings of laughter and a carnival of reminiscence. She liked to dazzle this elderly child with her "affairs," she liked to shock her a little too. She soon discovered that Caro was deeply scandalised at the thought of a married woman having men friends to visit her, so she encouraged the counter-jumpers and the clerks for Caro's benefit as well as Reuben's.
It never occurred to her to throw these young people together, and give the girl a chance of fighting her father and satisfying the vague longings for adventure and romance which had begun to put torment into her late twenties. She often told her it was a scandal that she had never been allowed to know men, but her own were too few and useful to be sacrificed to the forlorn. Besides, Caro had an odd shy way with men which sometimes made them laugh at her. She had little charm, and though not bad-looking in a heavy black-browed style, she had no feminine arts, and always appeared to the very worst advantage.
Those were not very good times for Caro. She envied Rose, and at the same time she loved her, as women will so often love those they envy. Rose's attitude was one of occasional enthusiasm and occasional neglect. Sometimes she would give her unexpected treats, make her presents of clothes, or take her to a fair or to see the shops; at others she would seem to forget all about her. She thought Caro a poor thing for not standing up to Reuben, and despised her for her lack of feminine wiles. At the same time she would often be extremely confidential, she would pour out stories of love and kisses by moonlight, of ardent words, of worship, of ecstasy, and send Caro wandering over strange paths, asking strange questions of herself and fate, and sometimes—to the other's delight—of Rose.
"Wot do you do to make a man kiss you?"
"Oh, I dunno. I just look at him like this with my eyes half shut. Then if that isn't enough I part my lips—so."
The two women had been bathing. It was one of Rose's complaints that Odiam did not make enough provision for personal cleanliness in the way of baths and tubs. Reuben objected if she made the servant run up and downstairs ten times or so with jugs of hot water to fill a wash-tub in her bedroom—they had once had a battle royal about it, during which Rose had said some humorous things about her man's washing—so in summer she relieved the tension by bathing in the Glotten brook, where it ran temporarily limpid and reclused at the foot of the old hop-garden. She had persuaded Caro to join her in this adventure—according to her ideas it was not becoming for a woman to bathe alone; so Caro had conquered her objections to undressing behind a bush, and tasted for the first time the luxury of a daily, or all but daily, bath.
Now they were dry and dressed once more, all except their stockings, for Rose loved to splash her bare feet in the water—she adored the caress of water on her skin. It was a hot day, the sun blinked through the heavy green of the sallows, dabbling the stream with spots and ripples of light. June had come, with a thick swarthiness in the fields, and the scent of hayseed scorching into ripeness.
Rose leaned back against a trunk, a froth of fine linen round her knees. She splashed and kicked her feet in the stream.
"Yes—I've only to look at a man like this ... and he always does it."
"But not now!" cried Caro.
"What do you mean by 'not now'?"
"Now you're married."
"Oh, no—I'm talking of before. All the same...."
"Wot!"
"Nothing. You'd be shocked."
Caro looked gloomily at the water. She did not like being told she would be shocked, though she knew she would be.
At that moment there was a sound of "git back" and "woa" beyond the hedge. The next minute two horses stepped into the Glotten just by the bend.
"That must be Handshut," said Rose.
It was. He came knee-deep into the water with the horses, and, not seeing the women, plunged his head into the cool reed-sweetened stickle.
"Take care—he'll see us!"—and Caro sharply gathered up her legs under her blue and red striped petticoat. Rose continued to dabble hers in the water, even after Handshut had lifted his head and looked in her direction.
"Rose!" cried Caro.
"Well, why shouldn't he see my legs? They're unaccountable nice ones."
"All the more reason——"
"Not at all, Miss Prude."
Caro went crimson to the roots of her hair, and began pulling on her stockings. Rose continued to splash her feet in the water, glancing sidelong at Handshut.
"He's a nice lad, ain't he?"
Caro vouchsafed no reply.
"Reuben knows he's a nice lad, and he knows I know he's a nice lad. Hasn't he got a lovely brown skin?"
"Hush."
But Rose was in a devilish mood.
"Look here," she said suddenly, "I'm going to prove the truth of what I told you just now. I'm going to make that boy kiss me."
"Indeed you äun't."
"Yes I am. I'll go down and talk to him at the bend, and you can creep along and watch us through the hedge; and I'll shut my eyes and maybe part my lips, and he'll kiss me, you see if he don't."
"I won't see anything of the kind. I'm ashamed of you."
"Nonsense—it's only fun—we'll make a bet on it. If I fail, I'll give you my new white petticoat with the lace edging. And I'll allow myself ten minutes to do it in; that's quite fair, for it usually takes me longer."
"And what am I to give you if you succeed?"
"Nothing—the kiss'll be enough for me. I've been wanting to know what he was like to kiss for many a long day."
"Well, I'm justabout ashamed of you, and I wöan't have anything to do with it."
"You can keep out then."
"Wot if I tell fäather?"
"You wouldn't tell him—you wouldn't be such a sneak. After all, what's a man for, if it isn't to have a bit of fun with? I don't mean anything serious—it's just a joke."
"What'll Handshut think it?"
"Just a joke too. You're so glum, Caro—you take everything so seriously. There's nothing really serious in a kiss."
"Oh, äun't there!"
"No—it's just something one enjoys, same as cakes and bull's-eyes. I've kissed dozens of people in my time and meant nothing by it, nor they either. It's because you've no experience of these things that you think such a lot of 'em. They're quite unimportant really, and it's silly to make a fuss."
For some obscure reason Caro did not like to see herself credited with the harshness of inexperience. She did her best to assume an air of worldly toleration.
"Well, of course if it's only fun.... But fäather wudn't think it that."
"No, and I shouldn't like him to. You are funny, Caro. Don't watch me if you're shocked—you can know nothing about it, and then you won't be to blame. But I'm going to have my lark in spite of you."
"Put on your stockings first," said Caro sternly.
Rose made a face at her, but pulled on a pair of gauzy stockings, securing them with garters of pale blue ribbon. Then she scrambled to her feet and edged her way through the reeds and bushes to where young Handshut stood at the bend.
He was not visible from where Caro sat, for he had come out of the water, and for a minute or two she vowed that she would have nothing to do with Rose's disgraceful spree. But after a time her curiosity got the better of her. Would Rose be able to do as she said—persuade her husband's drover to kiss her, simply by looking at him through half-closed eyes? Of course Handshut was very forward, Caro told herself, she had often disliked his attitude towards his mistress—he would not want much encouragement. All the same she wanted to see if Rose succeeded, and if she succeeded—how. She craned her neck, but could see nothing till she had crept a few yards through the reeds. Then she saw Rose and Handshut sitting just beyond the hedge, by the water's rim.
The horses were drowsing in the stream, flicking at the flies with their tails. Rose's dress made a brave blue splash against the green, and the gold-flecked chestnut of her hair was very close to Handshut's brown curls. Caro could dimly hear their voices, though she could not distinguish what they said. Five minutes had passed, and still, though close, there was a decent space between them. Then there was a little lull in the flow of talk. They were looking at each other. Caro crept nearer, something like a hot cinder in her heart.
They were still looking at each other. Then Handshut began to speak in a lower voice than usual; he stopped—and suddenly their heads stooped together, the gold and the brown touched, mingled, lingered, then drew slowly apart.
Caro sprang to her feet. The couple in the field had risen too, but they did not see her through the hedge. Her heart beat fiercely with an uncontrollable anger. She could have shouted, screamed at them—at her rather, this gay, comfortable, plump, spoilt wife, who had so many kisses that she could look upon one more or less as fun.
Rose's merry, rather strident laugh rang out on the hushed noon. Handshut stood facing her with his head held down; then she turned away from him and laughed again. Her laugh rose, fluttered—then suddenly broke.
It snapped like a broken knife. She turned back towards Handshut, and they faced each other once more. Then Caro saw a strange and rather terrible thing. She saw those two who had kissed for fun stumble together in an embrace which was not for fun at all, and kiss with kisses that were closer to tears than laughter.
§ 13.
There was a convention of silence between Caro and Rose. From that day forward neither made any allusion to the escapade which had ended so unexpectedly. At the same time it was from the other's silence that each learned most; for Caro knew that if her eyes had deceived her and that last kiss been like the first, for fun, Rose would have spoken of it—while Rose knew that Caro had seen the transmutation of her joke into earnest, because if she had not she would have been full of comments, questions, and scoldings.
Sometimes Caro in her innocence would think that she ought to speak to Rose, warn her, and plead with her to go carefully. But a vague fright sealed her lips, and she was held at a distance by the reserve in which the merry communicative Rose had suddenly wrapped herself. Those few minutes by the brookside had changed her, though it would be hard to say exactly in what the change lay. Caro was both repelled and baffled by it. A more skilled observer would say that Rose had become suddenly adult in her outlook as well as her emotions. For the first time she had seen in its sorrowful reality the force which she had played with for so many years. The shock disorganised her, drove her into a strange silence. Love and she had always been hail-fellow-well-met, they had romped and rollicked together through life; she had never thought that her good comrade could change, or rather—more unimaginable still—that she should suddenly discover that she had never really known him.
She was sobered. Her attitude towards things insensibly altered—to her husband, her child, her servants she was different, and yet in such a manner that none could possibly lay hands on the difference. Reuben's jealousies and suspicions were increased. She avoided Handshut, and she flourished the shopmen and clerks but feebly, yet he mistrusted her in a way he had never done when her enthusiasms were flagrant. This was not due to any psychological deduction, rather to a vague kind of guess, an intuition, an uneasiness that communicated itself from her to him.
Rose had begun to question her attitude towards her husband. She had hitherto never doubted for a moment that she loved him—of course she loved him! But now she asked herself—"If I love him, how is it that our most tender moments have never meant so much to me as that second kiss of Handshut's?" None of Reuben's kisses stood out in her memory as that kiss, he had never made the thrill of life go through her, he had never filled her heart to bursting with joy so infinite that it was sorrow, and sorrow so exquisite that it was joy. She would observe Reuben, and she would see him—old. He was fifty-four, and his hair was grey; there were crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes, and straight lines between his brows, where he had furrowed them as the pitiless sun beat down upon his face. There were other lines too, seamed and scored by hard struggles. He was strong as an ox, but she told herself he was beginning to move a bit stiffly. He had exposed himself so ruthlessly to the wet and cold that his joints had become rheumatic. It was nothing very much, but he liked to have her rub them occasionally, and up till then she had liked it too. Now she suddenly saw something dreary and preposterous in it—here she was married to a man thirty years older than herself, his chattel, his slave. She did not really love him—how could she, with all those years between them? She was fond of him, that was all—and he was getting older, and horribly cantankerous; and she was young—oh, God! she had never known till then how young.
Then suddenly it all changed. One day she found herself alone with Handshut—and nothing happened. His manner was quite that of the respectful servant towards his mistress, he made no allusion to the scene by the brook, spoke entirely of indifferent things. And she, she herself—that was the biggest, best surprise of all—did not feel the slightest embarrassment, or the slightest pang. On the contrary, all the passion which had scorched and withered her heart since the day of the kiss, seemed to die away, leaving her the old Rose, gay, confident, and at peace with all men.
She had been a fool—she had brooded over a little trivial incident till it had assumed unwarranted proportions and frightened her. Nothing whatever had happened to her and Handshut—they had shared a joke, that was all. She did not love him, she loved her husband, and she was a fool to have thought anything else. Love was not a drama or a tragedy, but a game and a lark, or at times a comfortable emotion towards one's lawful husband, who was the best and finest man in the world.
The joy of this discovery quite restored Rose, and she flirted with Handshut so outrageously in front of Reuben, that afterwards they had one of the biggest quarrels of their lives.
§ 14.
'Seventy-four was another bad year for Odiam, and it was more hopeless than its predecessors, for Reuben had now no expectations to sustain him. His position was really becoming serious. In '68 he had bought more land than he could afford, for fear that Grandturzel would buy it if he did not, and in '71 he had started his accursed milk-round, which had proved nothing but an expense and a failure. He still clung to it, for the shop by the Landgate gave him prestige, and he had always hoped that affairs would mend, but he was gradually coming to realise that prestige can be bought too dear, and that his affairs were too heavily clogged to improve of their own accord.
He must take steps, he must make some sacrifice. He resolved to sell the milk-round. It was either that or a mortgage, and a mortgage was far the greater ignominy. After all he had not had the round more than two or three years, it had never flourished, and the parting wrench would not be a bad one. Of course his reputation would suffer, but hard cash was at the present moment more valuable than reputation.
Unfortunately it was also more difficult to get. Those years had been bad for everybody, and none of the surrounding farmers seemed disposed to add to his burdens by so uncertain a deal. If the thing had not thriven with Backfield it was not likely to thrive with anyone else. For the first time Reuben cursed his own renown.
However, he hoped better things from the next spring. If lambing was good and the season promising, farmers would not be so cautious. Meantime he would keep Odiam in chains, he would save every penny, skim, pare, retrench, and learn the lesson of his lean years.
Unfortunately he had reckoned without Rose—Rose saw no need for such drastic measures. Because her man had been venturesome and stupid, made rash speculations, and counted on a quite unwarranted legacy, that was no reason for her to go without her new spring gown or new covers for her parlour chairs. She was once more expecting motherhood, and considered that as a reward for such self-sacrifice the most expensive luxuries were inadequate.
At the same time, feeling quite at ease about herself and Handshut, she led Reuben a freakish dance of jealousy, going to extravagant lengths in the hope of breaking down his resistance and goading him into compliance. But she did not find jealousy such a good weapon as it had used to be. Reuben would grow furious, thundery and abusive, but she never caught him, as formerly, in the softness of reaction, nor did the fear of a rival stimulate any more profitable emotion than rage.
The truth was that Reuben had now become desperate. He could not give in to Rose. If he sacrificed his farm to her in the smallest degree he ran the risk of ruin. He was torn in two by the most powerful forces of his life. On one side stood Odiam, trembling on the verge of catastrophe, needing every effort, every sacrifice of his, every drop of his sweat, every drop of his blood. On the other stood Rose, the dearest human thing, who demanded that for her sake he should forget his farm and the hopes bound up in it. He would not do so—and at the same time he would not lose Rose. Though her love no longer gave him the gift of peace, he still clung to it; her presence, her voice, her touch, still fired and exalted him. He would not let her go—and he would not let Odiam go.
The struggle was terrible; it wore him out. He fought it desperately—to neither side would he surrender an inch. Sometimes with Rose's arms about him, her soft cheek against his and her perfidy forgotten, he would be on the brink of giving her the pretty costly thing, whatever it was, that she wanted at the expense of Odiam. At others, out in his fields, or on the slope of Boarzell—half wild, half tamed—with all those unconquered regions swelling above him, he would feel that he could almost gladly lose Rose altogether, if to keep her meant the sacrifice of one jot of his ambition, one tittle of his hope. Then he would go home, and find her ogling Handshut through the window, or giving tea in her most seductive manner to some young idiot with clean hands—and round would go the wheel again—round and round....
As a matter of fact he had never been so secure of Rose as then; the very shamelessness of her flirtations was a proof of it—a whoop of joy, so to speak, at finding herself free of what she had feared would be a devastating passion. But who could expect Reuben to guess that? He saw only the freak of a treacherous nature, turning from him to men younger and more compliant than himself. Jealousy, from a fit, became a habit. He grew restless and miserable—he would run in suddenly from his work to see what his wife was doing, he would cross-examine Caro, he would even ask Pete to keep an eye on her. Sometimes he thought of dismissing Handshut, but the lad was an excellent drover, and Reuben had bursts of sanity in which he saw the foolishness of such a sacrifice. Rose flirted nowadays with every man she met—she was, he told himself furiously, a thoroughly light and good-for-nothing girl—she was not worth the loss of a fellow like Handshut.
Thus the days dragged on wretchedly for everyone except Rose, and in time they grew wretched for her too. She began to tire of the cracklings of the flame she had kindled, of Reuben's continued distrust and suspicion, of Caro's goggle-eyed disapproval, of Peter's spying contempt. The time of her lying-in drew nearer, she had to give up her gay doings, and felt frightened and alone. Everyone was against her, everyone disapproved of her. She began to wish that she had not found her love for Handshut to be an illusion, to wish that the kiss beside the Glotten brook had been in reality what she had dreamed it.... After all, is it not better to embrace the god and die than to go through the unhappy days in darkness?
§ 15.
One evening when Reuben was out inspecting a sick cow, Rose lay on the sofa languidly shelling peas. Once more it was June, and a rusty heat was outside blurring the orchard. Her fingers often lay idle in the bowl of peas, for though her task relieved the sweltering boredom which had weighed on her all day, every now and then a great lassitude would sweep over her, slacking her muscles, slacking her thoughts, till she drooped into a vague stagnation of sorrow.
She felt horribly, uselessly tired, her gay spirits had trickled from her in sheer physical discomfort, and in her heart an insistent question writhed like a little flame.
Two tears formed slowly in the corners of her eyes, welled at last over the silky, spidery lashes, and rolled down her cheeks. In themselves they were portents—for Rose hardly ever cried. More wonderful still, she did not know that she was crying, she merely became stupidly conscious of a smudging of those motionless trees beyond the garden, and a washing of the hard, copper-coloured sky.
She feebly put up her hand and brushed the veil away—already something strange had loomed through it, whipping her curiosity. A man was at the window, his head and shoulders dark against the sunset.
"Handshut!"
"Yes, ma'am."
She frowned, for she seemed to catch a ring of mockery in the respectful words. She wondered if it had always been there.
"Where's master?"
"In the shed with Brindle."
"And how is she?"
"I dunno—we've sent for the veterinary."
There was silence. Outside the flowers rustled in the slow hot breeze. The background of trees was growing dim, a web of shadow at the foot of the garden.
Handshut still leaned on the sill, and she realised that if his words were decorous, his attitude was not. Surely he had something better to do than hang in at her window. Half his face was in shadow, half was reddened by the smouldering sky—it was the face of a young gipsy, brown, sullen, and mocking. She suddenly pulled herself into a sitting posture.
"What are you staying for?—I reckon the master wants you."
"No—it's you that wants me, surelye."
The blood ebbed from her lips. She felt afraid, and yet glad. Then suddenly she realised what was happening and dragged herself back into dignity and anger.
"I don't want you."
"Yes you do."
"Kindly go at once, or I shall call someone."
"Rose!"
Once more she fell back into her state of terror and delight. His coolness seemed to paralyse her—she could not act. She could only lie and watch him, trembling. Why had he changed so?—he, who had never faltered in his attitude of stiff respect under her most outrageous and flirtatious digs.
"Rose," he said again, and his voice quivered as he said it, "you do want me a liddle bit now."
"What—what makes you think so?"
He shrugged his shoulders—there must have been some foreign streak in his yokel's blood.
"I döan't think it—I know. A year agone you dudn't want me, so I kipt back, I wurn't a-going to mäake you suffer. You wur frightened of that kiss...."
He had spoken it—her terror. "Don't!" she cried.
"You wur frightened, so I saw you wurn't ready, and I tried to mäake you feel as naun had happened."
"Yes, I thought you were a gentleman," she said with a sudden rap of anger.
"I äun't that. I'm just a poor labouring man, wot loves you, and wot you love."
She tried to speak, but the words burnt up in her mouth.
"And a labouring man you love's worth more than a mäaster you döan't love, I reckon."
She shrank back on the sofa, folding her arms over her breast and gripping her shoulders.
"You needn't look so frightened. I'm only saying it. It wöan't mäake no difference—unless you want it to."
"How dare you speak to me like this?"
"Because I see you're justabout miserable, and I thought I'd say as how I'm beside you—only that."
"How—how d'you know I'm miserable?"
"Plain enough."
The sky had faded behind him and a crimson moon looked over his shoulder.
"Plain enough," he repeated, "but you needn't be scared. I'll do naun you döan't want; I'll come no nearer you than I am now—unless you call me."
She burst into tears.
He did not move. His head and shoulders were now nothing but a dark block against the purple and blue of the sky. The moon hung just above him like a copper dish.
"Döan't cry," he said slowly—"I'm only looking in at the window."
She struggled to her feet, sobs shaking and tearing her, and stumbled through the darkness to the door. Still sobbing she dragged herself upstairs, clinging to the rail, and every now and then stopping and bending double. Her loud sobs rang through the house, and soon the womenfolk were about her, questioning her, soothing her, and in the end putting her, still weeping, to bed. While outside in the barn Reuben watched in agony beside a sick cow.
§ 16.
When late the next morning a woman ran out of the house into the cow-stable, and told Reuben that his wife had given him a fine boy, he merely groaned and shook his head.
He sat on a stool at the foot of Brindle's stall, and watched her as she lay there, slobbering her straw. His face was grim and furrowed, lines scored it from nose to mouth and across the forehead; his hair was damp and rough on his temples, his eyes were dull with sleeplessness.
"Wöan't yer have summat t'eat, mäaster?" asked Beatup, looking in.
All Reuben said was:
"Has the Inspector come?"
"No, mäaster—I'll bring him räound soon as he does. Wöan't you have a bite o' cheese if I fetch it?"
Reuben shook his head.
"Mäaster——" continued the man after a pause.
"Well?"
"I hear as how it's a liddle son...."
Reuben mumbled something inarticulate, and Beatup took himself off. His master's head fell between his clenched hands, and as the cow gave a sudden slavering cough in the straw, a shudder passed over his skin, and he hunched himself more despairingly.
Odiam had triumphed at last. Just when Reuben's unsettled allegiance should have been given entirely to the wife who had borne him a son, his farm had suddenly snatched from him all his thought, all his care, his love, and his anxiety, all that should have been hers. It seemed almost as if some malignant spirit had controlled events, and for Rose's stroke prepared a counter-stroke that should effectually drive her off the field. The same evening that Rose had gone weeping and shuddering upstairs, Reuben had interviewed the vet. from Rye and heard him say "excema epizootica." This had not conveyed much, so the vet. had translated brutally:
"Foot-and-mouth disease."
The most awful of a farmer's dooms had fallen on Reuben. The new Contagious Diseases of Animals Act made it more than probable that all his herd would have to be slaughtered. Of course, there would be a certain amount of compensation, but government compensation was never adequate, and with the multitudinous expenses of disinfecting and cleansing he was likely to sustain some crippling losses, just when every penny was vital to Odiam. He knew of a man who had been ruined by an outbreak of pleuro-pneumonia, of another who had been forced by swine-fever to sell half his farm. Besides, any hope of a deal over his milk-round was now at an end. His dairy business, whether in town or country, was destroyed, and his reputation would be probably as unjustly damaged, so that he would not be able to adventure on that road for years—perhaps never again.
Small wonder, then, that the birth of a son brought no joy. The child was born to an inheritance of shame, the heir of disaster. Reuben's head bowed nearly to his knees. He felt old and broken. He began to see that it was indeed dreadfully possible that he had thriven all these years, conquered waste lands, and enriched fat lands, only to be overthrown at last by a mere arbitrary piece of ill-luck. How the disease had broken out he could not tell—he had bought no foreign cattle, indeed recently he had bought no cattle at all. He could not blame himself in the smallest degree; it was just a malignant capricious thrust—as if fate had wanted to show him that what had taken him years of labour and battle and sacrifice to build up, could be destroyed in as many days.
A little hope sustained him till the Inspector's visit—the vet. might have been mistaken, the Inspector might not order a wholesale destruction. But these faint sparks were soon extinguished. The loathed epidemic had undoubtedly lifted up its head at Odiam, and Reuben's entire herd of Jersey, Welsh, and Sussex cattle was doomed to slaughter.
The next few days were like a horrible jumbled nightmare, something malignant, preposterous, outside experience. Three men came over from the slaughterhouse at Rye, and plied their dreadful work till evening. The grey and dun-coloured Jerseys with their mild, protruding eyes, the sturdy Welsh with their little lumpy horns, the Sussex all coloured like a home-county landscape in reds and greys and browns—bowed their meek heads under the ox-killer, and became mere masses of meat and horn and hide. Profitless masses, too, for all the carcases were ordered to be burned.
The nightmare had its appropriate ending. Sixty dead beasts were burned in lime. Boarzell became Hinnom—it was the most convenient open space, so Reuben's herd was burned on it. From a dozen different pyres streamers of white smoke flew along the wind, and a strange terrible smell and tickling of the nostrils troubled the labourer on the westward lands by Flightshot or Moor's Cottage.
The neighbourhood sat up in thrilled dismay, and watched Odiam pass through its hour. The farm was shut off from civilisation by a barrier of lime—along every road that flanked it, outside every gate that opened on it, the stuff of fiery purification was spread. The fields with their ripening oats and delicately browned wheat, the orchards where apples trailed the boughs into the grass, the snug red house, and red and brown barns, the black, turrets of the oasts, all cried "Unclean! Unclean!"
Odiam was a leper. None might leave it without rubbing his boots in lime, no beasts could be driven beyond its hedges. More, the curse afflicted the guiltless—the markets at Rye and Battle were forbidden, the movements of cattle were restricted, and Coalbran once indignantly showed Reuben a certificate which he found he must have ready to produce every time he moved his single cow across the lane from the hedge pasture to the stream fallow.
Public opinion was against Backfield, and blamed him surlily for the local inconvenience.
"Döan't tell me," said Coalbran in the bar, "as it wurn't his fault. Foot-and-mouth can't just drop from heaven. He must have bought some furriners, and they've carried it wud 'em, surelye."
"Serve un right," said Ticehurst.
"Still, I'm sorry for him," said Realf of Grandturzel—"he's the only man hereabouts wot's really made a serious business of farming, and it's a shame he should get busted."
"He äun't busted yet," said Coalbran.
"But you mark my words, he will be," said Ticehurst; "anyways I shud lik him to be, fur he's a high-stomached man, and only deserves to be put down."
"He's down enough now, surelye! I saw him only yesterday by the Glotten meadows, and there was a look in his eye as I'll never forget."
"And yit he's as proud as the Old Un himself. I met him on Thursday, and I told him how unaccountable sorry we all wur fur him, and he jest spat."
"I offered to help him wud his burning," said Realf, "and he said as he'd see me and my lousy farm burnt first."
"He's a tedious contradictious old feller—he desarves all he's got. Let's git up a subscription fur him—that ud cut him to the heart, and he wudn't täake it, so it ud cost us naun, nuther."
The rest of the bar seemed to think, however, that Reuben might take the money out of spite, so Coalbran's charitable suggestion collapsed for lack of support.
Meantime, so fast bound in the iron of his misery that he scarcely felt the prick of tongues, Reuben lived through the final stages of his nightmare—those final stages of shock and upheaval when the fiery torment of the dream dies down into the ashes of waking. He wandered over his land in his lime-caked boots, scarcely talking to those at work on it, directing with mere mechanical activity the labour which now seemed to him nothing but the writhings of a crushed beetle. Everyone felt a little afraid of him, everyone avoided him as much as possible—he was alone.
His nostrils were always full of the smart of lime, and the stench of those horrible furnaces belching away on the slopes of the Moor. Would that burning never be done? For days the yellowy white pennons of destruction had flown on Boarzell, and that acrid reek polluted the harvest wind. Boarzell was nothing but a huge funeral pyre, a smoking hell.... "And the smoke of her went up for ever and ever."
§ 17.
An atmosphere of gloom lay over Odiam; Reuben brought it with him wherever he went, and fogged the house with it as well as the barns. Even Rose felt an aching pity for her strong man, something quite different from the easy gushes of condolence which had used to be all she could muster in the way of sympathy.
But Reuben did not take much notice of Rose, nor even of his little son. Now and then he would look at them together, sigh impatiently, then go out of the room.
Sometimes he would be more interested, and, in a fit of reaction from his proud loneliness, turn to her as of old for comfort. But those were the bitterest hours of all, for in them he would glimpse a difference, an aloofness. She had been much quieter since the birth of the second boy, she had not recovered her health so rapidly, and her eyes were big in the midst of bistred rings. She had given up flirting with Handshut, or with the young men from Rye, but she did not turn from them to her husband. Though he could see she was sorry for him, he felt—vaguely, uncertainly, yet tormentingly—that she was not all his, as she had been in brighter months. Sometimes he did not much care—sometimes a dreadful passion would consume him, and once he caught her to his breast and bruised her in his arms, crying—"I wöan't lose you—I wöan't lose you too."
Rose could not read his mood; one day she would feel her husband had been alienated from her by his sorrow, another that his need of her was greater than ever. She herself carried a heavy heart, and in her mind a picture of the man who was "only looking in at the window." She seemed to see him standing there, with the moon rising over his shoulder, while from behind him something in the garden, in the night, called ... and called.
She could still hear that call, muted, tender, wild—the voice of her youth and of her love, calling to her out of the velvet night, bidding her leave the house where the hearth was piled with ashes, and feel the rain and the south wind on her lips. There was no escape in sleep, for her dreams showed her that window framing a sky soft and dark as a grape, with the blackness of her lover's bulk against it, while the moon rose over his shoulder, red, like a fiery pan....
She felt afraid, and did not know where to turn. She avoided Handshut, who stood remote; and though her husband sometimes overwhelmed her with miserable hungry love, he often scarcely seemed to notice her or her children, and she knew that she counted far less than his farm. He was terribly harsh with her now, frowning by the hour over her account-books, forbidding this or that, and in his gloom scarcely noticing her submission.
July passed. Odiam was no longer cut off from the rest of the world by lime. Reuben with the courage of despair began to organise his shattered strength. He discharged Piper—now that his cows were gone he could easily do with a hand less. He sometimes wondered why he had not discharged Handshut, but the answer was always ready—Handshut was far the better workman, and Odiam now came easily before Rose. Not that Reuben's jealousies had left him—they still persisted, though in a different form. The difference lay in the fact that now he would not sacrifice to them the smallest scrap of Odiam's welfare.
He sometimes asked himself why he was still jealous. Rose no longer gave him provocation, she was much quieter than she had used to be, and seemed busy with her children and straitened house-keeping. It was once more a case of instinct, of a certain vague sensing of her aloofness. Often he did not trouble about it, but sometimes it seared through him like a hot bar.
One evening he came home particularly depressed. He had just finished the most degrading transaction of his life—the raising of a mortgage on the Flightshot side of his land. It was horrible, but it was unavoidable. He could not now sell his milk-round, and yet he absolutely must have ready money if he was to stand up against circumstances. The mortgagee was a wealthy Rye butcher, and Reuben had hopes that the disgraceful affair might be kept secret, but also an uneasy suspicion that it was at that moment being discussed in every public-house.
He went straight to find Rose, for that mood was upon him. The due of loneliness which his shame demanded had been paid during the drive home from Rye, and now he quite simply and childishly wanted his wife. She was in the kitchen, stooping over some child's garment, the little frills of which she was pleating in her fingers. She lifted her head with a start as he came in, and he saw that her face was patched with tearstains.
"Wot've you bin crying for?" he asked as he slid a chair close to hers. He wondered if the humiliation of Odiam had at last come to mean to her a little of what it meant to him.
"I haven't been crying."
"But your face ..."
"That's the heat."
He drew back from her a little. Why should she lie to him about her tears?
"Oh, well, if you döan't choose to tell me ... But I've eyes in my head."
She seemed anxious to propitiate him.
"How did it go off? Have you settled with Apps?"
He nodded.
"It's all over now—I've touched bottom."
"Nonsense, Ben. You mustn't say that. After all there's nothing extraordinary about a mortgage—uncle had one for years on a bit of his farm at Rowfant. Besides, think of all you've got left."
He laughed bitterly. "I äun't got much left."
Then suddenly he turned towards her as she sat there by him, her head bowed over her work—her delicate, rather impertinent nose outlined against the firelight, her cheek and neck bewitched with running shadows.
"But I've got you."
A great tenderness transported him, a great melting. He put his arm round her waist, and made as if to pull her close.
She drew back from him with a shudder.
It was only for a moment—the next she yielded. But he had seen her reluctance, felt the shiver of repulsion go through her limbs. He rose, and pushed back his chair.
"I'm sorry," he said in a low thick voice—"I'm sorry I interrupted your—crying."
Then he went out, and gave Handshut a week's notice.
§ 18.
Rose was intensely relieved. She felt that at last and for ever the tormenting mystery would have gone from her life. Once Handshut was away, she told herself, she would slip back into the old groove—a little soberer and softer perhaps, but definitely free of that Reality which had been so terribly different from its toy-counterfeit.
Once Handshut was gone, her heart would not pursue him. It was his continual presence that tormented. True, he never sought her out, or persecuted her, or even spoke to her without her speaking first—he only looked in at the window.... But a woman soon learns what it means to have a man's face between her and the simplicities of life in her garden, between her and the divinities of the stars and moon.
Rose did not find in her love a sweetness to justify the bitterness of its circumstances. The fact that it had been awakened by a man who was her inferior in the social-agricultural scale, who could give her nothing of the material prosperity she so greatly prized, instead of inspiring her with its beauty, merely convinced her of its folly. She saw herself a woman crazed, obsessed, bewitched, and she looked eagerly forward to the day when the spell should be removed and she should go back chastened to the common, comfortable things of life.
But meantime a strange restlessness consumed her, tinctured by a horrible boldness. There were moments when she no longer was afraid of Handshut, when she felt herself impelled to seek him out, and make the most of the short time they had together. There could be no danger, for he was going so soon ... so few more words, so few more glances.... Thus her mind worked.
She was generally able to control these impulses, but as the days slipped by they grew too strong for her untrained resistance. She felt that she must make the most of her chances because they were so limited—before he went for ever she must have one more memory of his voice, his look—his touch ... oh, no! her thoughts had carried her further than she had intended.
She found herself beginning to haunt the places where she would be likely to meet him—the edge of the horse-pond or the Glotten brook, the door of the huge, desolate cow-stable, where six cheap Suffolks emphasised the empty stalls. Reuben did not seem to take any notice of her, he had relieved his feelings by dismissing Handshut, and his farm had swallowed him up again. Rose felt defiant and forlorn. Both her husband and her lover seemed to avoid her. She would lean against the great wooden posts of the door, in the listless weary attitude of a woman's despair.
Then two days before the end he came. As she was standing by the barn door he appeared at the horse-pond, and crossed over to her at once. He had seen that she was waiting for him—perhaps he had seen it on half a dozen other occasions when she had not seen him.
Rose could calm the silly jumps of her heart only by telling herself that this was quite an accidental meeting. She made an effort to be commonplace.
"How's Topsy's foal?"
"Doing valiant. Will you come out wud me to-morrow evenun to see the toll-burning?"
She flushed at his audacity.
"No!—how can I?"
"You can quite easy, surelye. Mäaster's going to Cranbrook Fair, and wöan't be home till läate. It's the last night, remember."
She made a gallant effort to be the old Rose.
"What's that to me?—you've got some cheek!"
"I'm only not pretending as much as you are. Why shud you pretend? Pretending 'ull give you naun sweet to remember when I'm gone."
"What tolls are they going to burn?"
"The gëates up at Leasan and Mockbeggar, and then over the marsh to Thornsdale. It 'ud be a shame fur you to miss it, and mäaster can't täake you, since he's going to Cranbrook."
"It would never do if people saw us."
"Why? Since your husband can't go, wot's more likely than he shud send his man to täake you?"
Rose shuddered. "I'm not coming."
Handshut turned on his heel.
§ 19.
Already the turnpike gates had disappeared from the greater part of Sussex, but they still lingered in the Rye district, for various reasons, not always bearing close inspection. There had been an anti-toll party both before and after the famous Scott's Float gate had catastrophically ended Reuben's political career—and at last this had carried the day. All the gates were to come down except those on the Military Road, and the neighbourhood was to celebrate their abolition by burning them in tar.
Reuben, still proud and sore, stood aloof from local jollities—besides, he had heard that there were to be some cheap milkers for sale at Cranbrook Fair, and he was anxious to add a little to his dairy stock. Though a large milk-round was out of the question, the compensation money he had received from Government would allow him to carry on a small dairy business, as in humbler days. Of course, the fact that he had lost over sixty cows from foot-and-mouth disease would materially damage his prospects even in a limited sphere, but a farm which let its dairy rot was doomed to failure, and Reuben was still untamed by experience, and hoped much from small beginnings.
So early that morning he drove off in his gig, accompanied by Pete, who had a good eye for cattle, and had moreover challenged the Canterbury Kid for a purse of five guineas. Rose watched them go, and waved good-bye unnoticed to her man, as he leaned forward over the reins, thinking only of how much he could spare for a yearling. She went back into the house, and stoned plums. After dinner she mended the children's clothes, with a little grimace for the faded ribbons and tattered frills which Reuben would not allow her to renew. Then she took the baby and little David for an airing in the orchard—Handshut, raking unromantically in the midden, saw her sitting, a splash of faded violet under an apple tree—then she bathed them and put them to bed.
All this was a propitiatory offering to the god of the hearth, who, however, did not take the slightest notice, or stay as he so easily might (so the scripture saith) that hunger for her beloved which was gnawing at the young wife's heart. Instead, it seemed to grow in its devouring pain—her domesticity stimulated rather than deadened it, and by the time her day's tasks were over it had eaten up her poor heart like a dainty, and she was its unresisting prey.
After the children were in bed she changed her dress, putting on the best she had—a washing silk with pansies sewn over it, one of her wedding gowns. She frowned at it as she had frowned at the babies' dresses—it was so old-fashioned, and worn in places. She suddenly found herself wishing that she loved Reuben so much as not to mind wearing old clothes for his sake. For the first time she could visualise such a state of affairs, for she had met the man for whom she would have worn rags. If only that man had been Reuben, her lawful husband, instead of another! "But I'll be true to him! I'll be true to him!" she murmured, and found comfort in the words till she realised that it was the first time that she had ever glimpsed the possibility of not being true.
She went down into the kitchen, where Caro was baking suet.
"Caro, I'm going out to see the gates burned. I expect I'll be back before Ben is, but if I'm not, tell him where I'm gone."
"You can't go by yourself—he wudn't like it."
"I'm not going by myself—Handshut's taking me."
Caro's suety hands fell to her sides.
"Rose—you know—how can you?—that's worse than alone, surelye!"
"Nonsense! What's more natural that one of my servants should come with me, since my husband can't?"
"Your servant...."
"Yes, my servant."
Caro, regardless of the suet on her hands, hid her face in them.
"Oh, Rose, I can't tell him—I daren't. Why, he turned away Handshut because of you."
"He did not, miss—you're impudent!"
"Well, why shud fäather git shut of the best drover he ever had on his farm, if it äun't——"
"Be quiet! I won't hear such stuff. I'm not going to be a prisoner, and miss my fun just because you and Ben are jealous fools."
"But I daren't tell him where you've agone."
"I dare say you won't have to—I'm not staying out all night."
She laughed one of her coarse screaming laughs, with the additional drawback of mirthlessness; then she went out of the room, leaving Caro sobbing into suety palms.
Outside in the yard, Handshut stood by the pump, apparently absorbed in studying the first lights of Triangulum as they kindled one by one in the darkening sky.
Rose pattered up to him in the shabby white kid shoes that had been so trim and smart five years ago.
"I've changed my mind."
"Then you äun't coming."
"Yes, I am."
"Then you haven't changed it."
§ 20.
The roads outside Rye were dark with people. A procession was forming up at Rye Foreign, and another at the foot of Cadborough Hill. Outside the railway station a massed band played something rather like the Marseillaise, while the grass-grown, brine-smelling streets were spotted with stragglers, hurrying up from all quarters, some carrying torches that flung shifting gleams on windows and gable-ends.
Immense barrels of tar had been loaded on four waggons, to which four of the most prosperous farmers of the district had harnessed teams. Odiam was of course not represented, nor was Grandturzel, but three bell-ringing sorrels had come all the way from Kitchenhour, while the marsh farms of Leasan, the Loose, and Becket's House, accounted for the rest.
The crowd surged round the waggons, cheered, joked, sang. The whole of Rye was there—prosperous tradesmen from the High Street or Station Road, innkeepers, farmers, shop-assistants, chains of fishermen in high boots, jerseys, and gold ear-rings, coast-guards from the Camber, and one or two scared-looking women clinging to stalwart arms.
Rose shrank close to Handshut, though she did not take his arm. Sometimes the crowd would fling them together, so that they were close as in an embrace, at others they would stand almost apart, linked only by sidelong glances. The flare of a torch would suddenly slide over Handshut's face, showing her its dark gipsy profile, and she would turn away her eyes as from something too bright to bear.
Every now and then the crowd would start singing inanely: