With many tears, and the help of the kindly farmer's daughter at Eggs Hole, who acted as penwoman, Bessie wrote a letter to Robert in the Battery gaol:
"You must not think, my dearest lad, that anything what you have done can separate you and me. We belong to each other as it seems, and what you have done I forgive as you would if I had done it. I shall always be yours, Robby, no matter how long you are in prison, I shall be waiting, and thinking of you always. And I forgive you for not telling me you had taken the money, but that a friend had lent it to you, because you thought I would not have gone away with you, but I would have, surely. Be brave and do not fret. I wish it was all over, but we must not fret.
"From your loving
"Bessie."
The proceedings before the Rye magistrates had been brief, and ended in Robert's committal for trial at Quarter Sessions. He had made no attempt to deny his guilt—it would have been useless. He was almost dumb in the dock, for his soul was struck with wonder at the cruel circumstances which had betrayed him.
He had been tracked by the number on the note—it was the first time he realised that notes had numbers. This particular note had been given by Sir Miles Bardon to his son as a part of his quarterly allowance, and though Ralph was far too unpractical to notice the number himself, his father had a habit of marking such things, and had written it down.
The saddler at Rye had not heard of the theft when young Backfield handed over the note in payment of the harness bill. He had at the time remarked to his wife that old Ben seemed pretty flush with his money, but had thought no more of it till the matter was cried by the Town Crier that evening, after Robert and Pete had gone home. Then out of mere curiosity he had looked at the number on his note, and found it was the same as the Crier had announced. Early the next day he went to the Police Station, and as young Bardon now remembered lending his coat to Robert Backfield it was fairly easy to guess how the theft had been committed.
The Squire regretted the matter profoundly, but it was too late now not to proceed with it, so he made it a hundred times worse by writing an apologetic letter to Reuben, and asking the magistrate to deal gently with the offender. Robert's pathetic story, and the tearful evidence of his sweetheart, gave him at once all the public sympathy; the blame was divided pretty equally between the Bardons and Backfield.
Richard bitterly abused his father to Anne, as they met in the midst of the strife of their two families:
"It's always the same, he keeps us under, and makes our lives a misery till we do something mad. He's only got himself to thank for this. We're all the slaves of his tedious farm——"
"I should rather say 'abominable,'" Anne interrupted gently.
"His abominable farm—he gets every bit of work out of us he can, till we're justabout desperate——"
"Till we're absolutely desperate."
"And he expects us to care for nothing but his vulgar ambitions. Oh Lord! I wish I was out of it!"
"Perhaps you will be out of it some day."
He shrugged.
"How should I get free?"
"Perhaps a friend might help you."
He looked into her face, then suddenly crimsoned—then paled, to flush again:
"Oh, ma'am, ma'am—if ever you cud help me get free—if ever ... oh, I—I'd sarve you all my life—I'd——"
"Hush," she said gently—"that's still in the future—and remember not to say 'sarve.'"
The Quarter Sessions were held early in December, and Robert's case came wedged between the too hopeful finances of a journeyman butcher and the woes of a farmer from Guldeford who had tried to drown himself and his little boy off the Midrips. Robert was sentenced to three years' imprisonment.
There was nothing remarkable about the trial, and nothing to be said against the sentence from the point of either justice or humanity. Ten years ago the boy would have been transported to Van Diemen's Land. The Bardons took it upon themselves to be outrageously sorry, and were rather mystified by Reuben's contemptuous attitude towards them and their regrets.
The evidence had been merely a repetition of that which had been given before the magistrate, though Bessie did not cry this time in the witness-box, and Robert in the dock was not dumb—on the contrary, he tried to explain to the Recorder what it felt like to have absolutely no money of one's own.
Reuben was present at the trial, and sitting erect, in his good town clothes, drew the public glance away both from the prisoner and the Recorder. Feeling was against him, and when in his summing-up Mr. Reeve remarked on the strangeness of a young man of Backfield's age having no money and being compelled to work without wages, a low murmur went round the court, which Reuben did not seem to hear. He sat very stiffly while the sentence was pronounced, and afterwards refused to see his son before he was taken away to Lewes.
"Poor feller, this 'ull be the breaking of him," said Vennal outside the Court-house.
"No more'n he deserves. He's a hard man," said Ditch.
"Thinks only of his farm and nothing of his flesh and blood," said old Realf.
"It sarves un right," said Ginner.
So it was throughout the crowd. Some said "poor man," others muttered "his own fault." But all words, either of pity or blame, were silenced when Backfield came out of the Court-house and walked through the people, his head high, his step firm, his back straight.
The next few weeks were for Reuben full of bitter, secret humiliation. He might show a proud face and a straight back to the world, but his heart was full of miserable madness. It was not so much his son's disgrace that afflicted him as the attitude of people towards it—the Bardons with their regrets and apologies, the small fry with their wonder and cheap blame. What filled him with rage and disgust beyond all else was the thought that some people imagined that Robert had disgraced Odiam—as if a fool like Robert, with his tinpot misdoings, had it in his power to disgrace a farm like Odiam! This idea maddened him at times, and he went to absurd lengths to show men how little he cared. Yet everywhere he seemed to see pity leering out of eyes, he seemed to see lips inaudibly forming the words: "poor fellow"—"what a blow for his schemes!"—"how about the farm?—now he'll lie low for a bit."
This was all the worse to bear, as now, for the first time, he began seriously to dread a rival. The only farm in the district which could compete with Odiam was Grandturzel, but that had been held back by the indifference of its owner, old Realf. Early in the March of '65 old Realf died, and was succeeded by his son, Henry Realf, whom rumour spoke of as a promising and ambitious young man. Skill and ambition could do even more with Grandturzel than they could with Odiam, for the former had the freehold of forty acres of Boarzell. Reuben had always counted on being able to buy these some day from old Realf, but now he expected his son to cling to them. There would be two farms fighting for Boarzell, and Grandturzel would have the start.
All the more reason, therefore, that Odiam should stand high in men's respect. Now, of all times, Reuben could not afford to be looked upon with contempt or pity. He must show everyone how little he cared about his family disgrace, and do everything he could to bring himself more prominently into the social and agricultural life of the district.
For the first time since his father's death he gave suppers at Odiam; once more he spent money on French wines which nobody wanted to drink, and worked his mother and daughters to tears making puddings and pies. He bought a new gig—a smart turnout, with a sleek, well-bred horse between the shafts—and he refused to let Harry fiddle any more at Fairs and weddings; it was prestige rather than profit that he wanted now.
In May people began to talk of a general election; the death of Palmerston and the defeat of Gladstone's Reform Bill made it inevitable. Early in June Parliament was dissolved, and Rye electors were confronted with the postered virtues and vices of Captain MacKinnon (Radical) and Colonel MacDonald (Conservative).
Reuben had not hitherto had much truck with politics. He had played the part of a convinced and conscientious Tory, both at home and in the public-house; and every evening his daughter Tilly had read him the paper, as Naomi had used to do. But he had never done more at an election than record his vote, he had never openly identified himself with the political life of the district. Now it struck him that if he took a prominent part in this election it would do much to show his indifference to the recent catastrophe, besides giving him a certain standing as a politician, and thus bestowing glory and dignity on Odiam.
The local Tories would be glad enough of his support, for he was important, if not popular, in the neighbourhood, and had always been known as a man who took an intelligent interest in his country's affairs.
Not that Rye elections had ever been much concerned with national events. Borough had always been a bigger word than country on those occasions. It was the question of the Harbour rather than the Ballot which had sent up Captain Curteis in 1832, while later contests had centred round the navigation of the Brede River, the new Sluice at Scott's Float, or the Landgate clock. Reuben, however, cared little for these petty town affairs. His chief concern was the restoration of the tax on wheat, and he also favoured the taxing of imported malt and hops. He hated and dreaded Gladstone's "free breakfast table," which he felt would mean the ruin of agriculture in England. He would like to concentrate country Toryism into an organised opposition of Free Trade, and his wounded pride found balm in the thought of founding a local agricultural party of which he would be the inspirer and head.
Reuben began to attend the Tory candidate's meetings. Colonel MacDonald was not a local man, any more than Captain MacKinnon, but he had some property in the neighbourhood, down on the marsh by Becket's House. Like the other candidate, he had spent the last month or so in posting himself in local affairs, and came to Rye prepared, as he said, "to fight the election on herrings and sprats."
However, at his first meeting, held at Guldeford Barn, he was surprised to find a strong agricultural element in the audience. He was questioned on his attitude towards the wheat tax and towards the enfranchisement of six-pound householders. The fact was that for a fortnight previously Reuben had been working up public opinion in the Cocks, and also in the London Trader, the Rye tavern he used on market-days. He had managed to convince the two bars that their salvation lay in taxing wheat, malt, and hops, and in suppressing with a heavy hand those upstarts whom Radical sentimentalists wanted at all costs to educate and enfranchise.
Reuben could speak convincingly, and his extraordinary agricultural success gave weight to his words. If not liked, he was admired and envied. He was "a fellow who knew what he was doing," and could be trusted in important matters of welfare. In a word, he achieved his object and made himself head of an Agricultural Party, large enough to be of importance to either candidate.
It was not long before he had overtures from Captain MacKinnon. The Captain had expected an easy triumph; never since it became a free borough had Rye sent a Tory to Parliament. Now he was surprised and a little alarmed to see signs of definite Tory enterprise, banded under one of the most important and successful farmers in the district. It is true that he had the Bardons on his side, but the Bardons were too gentlemanly to be useful. He would have given much to corrupt Reuben, but Flightshot, which held the only bribe that could have made him so much as turn his head, insisted on keeping pure. He tried to hold his own by appealing to the fishermen and sailors against the agriculturists—but as these in the past had made little fortunes by smuggling grain, they joined the farmers in demanding a wheat-tax.
He then turned to the small householders and shop-keepers, dazzling them with visions of Gladstone's free breakfast table—he even invited the more prominent ones to an untaxed breakfast in the Town Hall; whereat the Colonel, at Reuben's instigation, retaliated with a sumptuous dinner, which he said would be within the reach of every farmer when a moderate wheat-tax no longer forced him to undersell his harvests.
Rye platforms, instead of being confined to arguments on herrings and sprats, rang unusually with matters of national import. The free education of the poor was then a vital question, which Reuben and his party opposed with all their might. Educated labourers meant higher wages and a loss of that submissive temper which resulted in so many hours' ill-paid work. Here the Bardons waxed eloquent, but Backfield, helped by Ditch of Totease, who could speak quite well if put through his paces beforehand, drew such a picture of the ruin which would attend an educated democracy, that the voice of Flightshot, always too carefully modulated to be effective, was silenced.
As usual the local printing-presses worked hard over pamphlets and posters, and as a Rye election was nothing if not personal, Reuben was soon enlightened as to the Radical opinion of him. Posters of a startlingly intimate and insulting nature began to appear about the town; a few were displayed in Peasmarsh, and some were actually found on the walls of his own barns.
"Bribed, stolen, or strayed, an Ugly Gorilla, answering to the name of Ben. The animal may be distinguished by his filthy habits, associates frequently with swine and like hogs, delights in rolling in manure, and is often to be found in Ditches. Is remarkable for his unnatural cruelty towards his own young, whom he treats with shocking unkindness. The animal has likewise a propensity for boasting and lies. The Gorilla's temper is dreadfully bad, horribly vicious, and fearfully vindictive. A reward of Five Pounds will be given by Jothan True Blue, chairman of the Poor Man's Big Loaf Association, to any Blue Lamb who may find this Odious Creature, as his one object while at large is to steal the Poor Man's Loaf. He would also take, if he could, the Poor Man's Vote, and confine the Poor Man's Children to the dirt and ignorance in which he himself wallows, being unable to read or write, and was once heard to ask the Cringing Colonel, his keeper, what was the meaning of Tory Principle and Purity' on his election banners. We too would like to know."
Reuben tore the posters down whenever he found them, but this kind of attack did not humiliate him as the old pitying curiosity had done. He was not lowered in his own esteem. On the contrary, he enjoyed the fame which Radical hate conferred on him. There was no doubt about Odiam's importance now.
The Tories were not to be beaten in invective, and posted Rye with enquiries after the Rabid Hybrid or Crazy Captain:
"The habits of this loathsome creature are so revolting that all who have beheld them turn from them in horror and disgust. It is afflicted with a dirty disease called Gladstone Fever, and in its delirium barks horribly 'Educate! Educate!'"
Much more was written in this strain on both sides, and Colonel MacDonald hired a band of youths to parade the streets singing:
or:
Reuben did not care much for these doings; they were, he thought, a mere appeal to scum, and he preferred to give his mind to weightier things. He organised meetings in the furthest hamlets of the district, and managed to stir up the interest of the farmers to such a pitch that it soon looked as if the Tory candidate would carry all before him. MacKinnon could not open his mouth on the platform without shouts of: "Wheat at seventy shillings a quarter!" or "What's the use of a big loaf if we've got no money to buy it with?"
The Radicals began to quake for their victory. Speakers were sent for from London, but could not even get a hearing, owing to the enemy's supplies of bad eggs. Meetings were everywhere broken up in disorder, and the Captain was reported to have said that the Liberal party ought to offer a knighthood to anyone who would poison Backfield's beer.
So time passed till within a week of polling day. The feeling in the district grew more and more tense—no prominent member of either party could appear in Rye streets without being insulted by somebody on the opposite side. Meetings were orgies of abuse and violence, but whereas the Radical meetings were invariably broken up in disorder by their opponents, interruptions at Tory meetings resulted only in the interrupters themselves being kicked out. For the first time it looked as if a Conservative would be returned for Rye, and the Colonel knew he owed his success to Backfield's agricultural party.
Then suddenly the unexpected happened. At the end of one of Reuben's most successful meetings in Iden Schoolhouse, a mild sandy-haired person, whom nobody knew, rose up and asked meekly whether it was true that the Scott's Float toll-gate was on Colonel MacDonald's estate, and if so, what use did he make of the tolls? He was answered by being flung into the street, but afterwards the Conservative tenant of Loose Farm on the Marsh remarked to Reuben that it was "a hemmed ark'ard question."
Reuben, however, absorbed by his enthusiasm for Protection and a restricted franchise, scarcely thought twice about the toll-gate, till the next day a huge poster appeared all over the district:
"MACDONALD'S GATE"
Hitherto any verse that had been written in the controversy had been meant for street singing, and turned out in the less serious moments of politicians who certainly were not poets. But "MacDonald's Gate" impressed the multitude as something altogether different. The sounding periods and the number of capitals proclaimed it poetry of the very highest order, and its prominent position throughout the town soon resulted in the collection of excited groups all discussing the Scott's Float toll-gate, which nobody hitherto had thought much about.
The Tories were a little disconcerted—the toll-gate did not fit into their campaign. Tolls had always been unpopular in the neighbourhood, even though Government-owned, and it was catastrophic that the enemy should suddenly have swooped down on the Colonel's private venture and rhymed it so effectively.
Of course a counter-attack was made, but it had the drawback of being made in prose, none of the Tory pamphleteers feeling equal to meeting the enemy on his own ground. Also there was not very much to be said, as it was impossible to deny the Scott's Float toll-gate. So the writers confined themselves to sneering at the Radical poet's versification, and hinting that Captain MacKinnon had done many worse things than own a toll-gate, and that all the money the Colonel had from his went to the upkeep of his land, a statement which deceived nobody.
The next day a fresh poster appeared, printed this time in flaming red letters:
Thenceforward the whole character of the election was changed. The Poor Man's Loaf was forgotten as completely as the wheat-tax which should make the farmer rich. Six-pound householders became as uninteresting as anybody else who had not a vote. Nobody cared a damn whether the poor were educated at the nation's expense or not. The conflict raged blindly, furiously, degradingly round the Scott's Float toll-gate.
No one thought or spoke or wrote of anything else. If at meetings Reuben tried to introduce Protection or the Franchise, he was silenced even by his own party. The Scott's Float toll-gate became as important as the Sluice or the Brede River or the Landgate Clock had been in other elections, and nothing, no matter of what national importance, could stand against it.
Reuben cursed the base trucksters who had brought it forward, and he cursed the scummy versifier who was its laureate—whose verses appeared daily on six-foot hoardings, and were sung by drunken Radicals to drown his speeches. No one knew who the Radical poet was, for his party kept him a mystery, fearful, no doubt, lest he should be bribed by the other side. Some said that he was a London journalist, sent down in despair by the Liberals at head-quarters. If so they must have congratulated themselves on their forlorn hope, for the tide of events changed completely.
The worst of that toll-gate was that the Conservatives could never explain it away. They printed posters, they printed handbills, they attempted verse, they made speeches, they protested their disinterestedness, they even tried to represent the abomination as a philanthropic concern, but all their efforts failed. They quickly began to lose ground. It was the Conservative instead of the Liberal meetings that were broken up in disorder. Colonel MacDonald was howled down, and Reuben came home every evening his clothes spattered with rotten eggs.
Polling day broke gloomily on Rye Tories. The country voters were brought into town at the Candidates' expense, having received according to custom printed notices that the Colonel, or the Captain, "would endeavour to ensure to every elector access to the poll free from every sort of insult."
In Rye bells were ringing and bands were playing, and the town looked quite strange with huge crowds surging through its grass-grown streets, which were, moreover, blocked with every kind of trap, gig, cart, and wain. About three hundred special constables had been enrolled for the occasion, and it was likely that they would be needed, for all the public-houses had been thrown open by the candidates.
In the market-place, where the hustings stood, a dense throng was packing itself, jostling and shoving, and—Reuben saw to his dismay as he drove up to the London Trader—showing strong Radical tendencies. Several Conservative banners waved from the windows of the public-house—"MacDonald the Farmer's Friend"—"MacDonald and Protection"—"Wheat at seventy shillings a quarter"—"Ratepayers! beware of Radical pickpockets." These had all been prepared at the beginning of the contest. The Radical banners bore but one device—"The Scott's Float Toll-gate." It waved everywhere, and any other banner which appeared in the streets was immediately seized and broken, the bearer being made to suffer so horribly for his convictions, that soon nobody could be found to carry one.
Every now and then the crowd would break into the latest rhymings of MacKinnon's poet:
Reuben felt his heart sink, and his beer nearly choked him. Soon a vast struggle was raging round the hustings, as the voters fought their way through fists and sticks, often emerging—especially the Conservatives—with their clothes half torn off their backs and quite ruined by garbage. The special constables were useless, for their own feelings betrayed them, and unluckily even in their ranks the Radicals predominated. The state of the poll at ten-thirty was twenty-seven for Captain MacKinnon and only eleven for Colonel MacDonald.
Speeches were made from time to time, but were lost in the general hubbub. One of the local butchers had delivered over his entire stock of entrails, skin and hoof cuttings, and old blood-puddings to the Radical cause, and Conservative Speakers were soon a sight to behold. When Reuben stood up his voice was drowned in shouts of "Ben the Gorilla! Stop the dirty animal!" while a bleeding sheep's head caught him full on the chest. Too proud to take his dismissal from the mob, he spoke unheard for five minutes, at the end of which he was silenced by half a brick, which hit his temple and stunned him sufficiently for Ditch and MacDonald to pull him away.
At twelve the poll stood at a hundred and one for the Captain and sixty-five for the Colonel. The Tories were getting desperate—they threw into the crowd handbills wet from the printers, declaring that MacDonald's toll-gate should not stand an hour after he was elected. But the crowd only sang derisively:
At three o'clock the poll stood at two hundred and twelve and eighty-three. Then came the close—Captain MacKinnon elected by a majority of sixty-nine.
Loud cheers rose up from the struggling, drunken mass in the market-place.
"Hurray for MacKinnon!—Down with the Tollkeepers!"
In the Court-house the beaten Conservatives heard the shouts and turned fiercely—on one another.
"It's that hemmed gëate of yourn—lost everything!" cried Reuben.
"By God, it's not my gate—it's your wheat."
"My wheat!—wot d'you mean, sir?"
"I mean that, thanks to you, we wasted about three weeks talking to those damned fools about a matter they don't care twopence about. You worked up a false interest, and the result is, that when anything that really touches them is brought forward, the whole campaign drops to pieces."
"It's unaccountable easy to put the blame on me, when it's your hemmed gëate——"
"I tell you, sir, it's your damned wheat——"
"And your damned son!" furiously cried Ditch of Totease.
"My son!"—Reuben swung round on the men who had once rallied under his leadership, but now stood scowling at him and muttering to themselves. "My son!"
"Yes," said Coalbran of Doozes, "you know as well as us as how it wur your Albert wrote them verses about the gëate, wot have bust up everything."
"You're a liar!" cried Reuben.
"You dare miscall me," and the two men, mad with private hate and public humiliation, flew at each other's throats.
Ditch and the Colonel pulled them apart.
"Hang it all, Coalbran, we don't know it's his son. But we do know it's his wheat. Good God, sir—if only you'd kept your confounded self out of politics——"
Reuben did not wait to hear more. He pushed his way out of the room and downstairs to where his trap was waiting. The crowd surged round him as he climbed into it. An egg burst against his ear, and the filthy yolk ran down his cheek to mingle with the spatter of blood on his neck and shirt-front.
"Ben the Gorilla! Ben the Gorilla! Give him tar and feathers!"
Reuben struck his horse with the whip, and the animal sprang forward. A man who had been trying to climb into the gig, fell off, and was nearly trampled on. Reuben flogged his way through the pack, a shower of missiles hurtling round him, while his ears burned with the abuse which had once been his badge of pride, but now in the hour of defeat smote him with a sick sense of impotence and degradation. "Ben the Gorilla! Ben the Gorilla!"
He was free of them at last, galloping down the Landgate hill towards Rye Foreign.
"I'm hemmed," he muttered, grinding his teeth, "if I ever touch their dirty politics again—from this day forward—so help me God!"
On reaching Odiam, Reuben did not go into the kitchen where his children were gathered, expectant and curious. He went straight upstairs. Caro, who caught a glimpse of him in the passage, ran away in terror—he looked so dreadful, his face all dabbled with blood and yolk of egg.
He went up to Albert's room. He had furiously given Ditch the lie in the Courthouse, but he had never trusted his son, and the accusation had poured over him a flood of shame which could be quelled only by its proof or its refutation. If Albert's guilt were proved—which Reuben, now bathing in this luminous shame, saw was quite probable—then he knew what to do to clean the smirch off Odiam; if, on the other hand, his innocence were established, then he would punish those swine who threw mud at him and his farm.
Albert slept in one of the attics with Jemmy and Pete. Reuben had no intention of meeting him till he had something to confront him with, for he was pretty sure that the boy would lie to him. He began turning the room topsy-turvy, and had soon found in a drawer a heap of papers scrawled over with writing. It was unlucky that he could not read, for he could not even tell whether the handwriting were Albert's—these might be some letters he had received. Suddenly, however, a word caught his eye which he had seen a hundred times on hoardings, letters, bills, and other documents—MacKinnon. He could trace it out quite clearly. What had Albert to do with MacKinnon? Reuben clenched the papers together in his fist, and went downstairs to the kitchen.
Albert was not there. All the better! Reuben strode up to Tilly, unaware of how terrible he looked with the traces of his battle not yet washed from his face, and banged the papers down in front of her.
"Wot's all this?"
Tilly was frightened.
"It's—it's only poetry, fäather."
"Read me some of it."
"It's only Albert's."
"That's why I want to hear wot it's about. You read it."
Tilly began to read in a faltering voice:
Reuben struck his fist on the table, and she dropped the paper with a little cry.
"It's true, then! Oh Lard! it's true!"
"Wot, fäather?"
"Them's Albert's verses right enough?"
"Yes, fäather, but——"
"Fetch him here."
Tilly was more frightened than ever. She had never heard anything about the great Gate controversy, and could not understand why Reuben was so angry with Albert. The verses seemed to her quite harmless, they were not even about love. However, she could not disobey her father, so she ran and fetched Albert out of the corn-chamber, begging him to be careful what he said, "fur fäather's unaccountable vrothered to-night about something."
"How did the Election go?"
"I never asked."
"Oh, you gals! Well, I expect that's wot's the matter. The Liberal's got in."
"But why should that mäake fäather angry wud you?"
Albert stuck out his chest and looked important, as he invariably did before an encounter with Reuben, in spite of the fact that these always ended most ingloriously as far as he was concerned.
"He's bin reading some poetry of yours, Bertie," continued his sister, "and he's justabout dreadful, all his clöathes tore about, and a nasty mess of blood and yaller stuff on his face."
Albert suddenly began to look uneasy.
"Oh Lard! perhaps I'd better bolt fur it.—No, I'll square him out. You'll stand by me, Tilly?"
"Yes, but döan't mäake him angry—he might beat you."
Bertie's pride was wounded by this suggestion, which was, however, soundly based on precedent, and he entered the kitchen with something very like a swagger.
Reuben was standing by the table, erect, and somehow dignified in spite of the mess he was in.
"Well," he said slowly, "well—MacKinnon's hound!"
Albert saw the heap of scribbled paper on the table, and blenched.
Reuben walked up to him, took him by the shoulders, and shook him as a dog might shake a rabbit.
"You hemmed, scummy, lousy Radical!"
Albert could not speak, for he felt as if his brains and teeth were rattling about inside his head. The rest of the family hunched together by the door, the boys gaping idiotically, the girls in tears.
"Well, wot've you got to say fur yourself before I kick you round the table?"
"I'll write wot I please, surelye," growled Albert, trying rather unsuccessfully to resume his swagger.
"Oh, will you! Well, there'll be naun to prevent you when you're out of this house—and out you go to-night; I'll have no Radical hogs on my farm. I'm shut of you!"
"Fäather!" cried Tilly.
"Hold your tongue! Does anyone here think I'm going to have a Radical fur my son?—and a tedious lying traitor, too, wot helps his fäather's enemies, and busts up the purtiest election that wur ever fought at Rye. Do you say you didn't write those lousy verses wot have lost us everything?"
"No—I döan't say it. I did write 'em. But it's all your fault that I did—so you've no right to miscall me."
"My fault!"—Reuben's jaw dropped as he faced the upstart.
"Yes. You've allus treated me lik a dog, and laughed at my writing and all I wanted to do. Then chaps came along as didn't laugh, and promised me all sorts o' things if I'd write fur them."
"Wot sort o' things?"
"Mr. Hedges, the Liberal agent, promised that if I'd write fur him, he'd git me work on a London paper, and I could mäake my fortune and be free of all this."
"All wot?"
"Odiam!" shrieked Albert.
Reuben faced him with straight lips and dilated nostrils; the boy was now quivering with passion, hatred seemed to have purged him of terror.
"Yes—Odiam!" he continued, clenching his fists—"that blasted farm of yourn wot's the curse of us all. Here we're made to work, and never given a penny fur our labour—we're treated worse than the lowest farm-hands, like dogs, we are. Robert stole money to git away, and can you wonder that when I see my chance I should täake it. I'm no Radical—I döan't care one way or t'other—but when the Radicals offered me money to write verses fur 'em, I wurn't going to say 'no.' They promised to mäake my fortun, and save me from you and your old farm, which I wish was in hell."
"Stop your ranting and tell me how the hogs got you."
"I met Mr. Hedges at the pub——"
"Wur it you or him wot thought of the Scott's Float Gëate?"
"I heard of it from old Pitcher down at Loose, and I töald Hedges. I justabout——"
A terrific blow from Reuben cut him short.
The rest of the family had gone to bed, though scarcely to sleep. Reuben had washed the blood and filth off his face, and had stripped to his shirt, but he felt too sick and restless to lie down. He sat at his window, staring out into the dark gulf of the night.
His skin burned, his pulses throbbed, in his head was a buzzing and humming.
"Wished my farm wur in hell, dud he? He cursed my farm, dud he? The young whelp!"
He peered out into the blackness. Was that something he saw moving against the sky on the shoulder of Boarzell? It was too dark for him to make sure. Where had Albert gone? To his Radical friends, of course. They had offered to make his fortune—well, let them make it, and durn them!
Two sons were gone now. Life was hitting him hard. But he would have no traitors in his camp. Albert was his son no longer.
He bowed his head on the sill, and his throbbing brain revisualised the whole horrible day. He owed the humiliation and defeat of it all to Albert, who for the sake of money and a milk-and-water career, had betrayed Odiam's glory, and foully smirched its name.
There was no denying it—he had been basely dealt with by his elder children. Robert was in prison, Albert existed no longer except in the memory of a bitter disgrace, Richard was contemptuous, and, his father suspected, up to nothing good.... And he had looked to them all to stand and fight by his side, to feel his ambition, and share his conquest. Pete was a good lad, but what was one where there should have been four? He could not deny it—his elder children had failed him.
Something almost like a sob shook Reuben. Then, ashamed of his weakness, he raised his head, and saw that behind Boarzell the night had lifted, and a cowslip paleness was creeping into the sky. The great dark hump of the Moor showed clearly against it with its tuft of firs. A faint thrill stole through Reuben's tired limbs. Boarzell was always there to be loved and fought for, even if he had no heart or arm but his own. Gradually hope stirred as the dawn crept among the clouds. The wind came rustling and whiffling to him over the heather, bringing him the rich damp smell of the earth he loved.
Oh, Boarzell, Boarzell!... his love, his dream, his promised land, lying there in the cold white hope of morning! No degenerate sons could rob him of his Moor, though they might leave him terribly alone on it. After all, better be alone with his ambition, than share it with their defiling thoughts, their sordid, humdrum, milk-and-water schemes. In future he would try no more to interest his children in Boarzell. He had tried to thrill Robert and Albert and Richard with his glorious enterprise, and they had all forsaken him—one for love, one for fame, and one for some still unknown unworthiness. He would not trouble about the others; they should serve him for no other reason but that he was a hard master. He had been hard with the three boys, but he had been exciting and confiding too. Now he would drop all that. He would cease to look for comradeship in his children, as years ago he had ceased to look for it in his wife. It would be enough if they were just slaves working under his whip. He had been a fool to expect sympathy.... Boarzell, looming blacker and blacker against the glowing pinks and purples of the sky, seemed to mock at sympathy and its cheap colours, seemed to bid him Be Hard, Be Strong, Be Remorseless—Be Alone.
Reuben's domestic catastrophes might be summed up in the statement that he had lost two farm hands. It is true that Albert had never been much good—if he had his father would probably not have turned him away—but he had been better than nothing, and now Reuben would have to hire a substitute. One would be enough, for Jemmy and George were now able to do a man's full work each. So another hand was engaged for Odiam—Piper, a melancholy, lean-jowled cowman from Moor's Cottage.
The family was forbidden to speak of the absent sons. No one ever wrote to Robert in Lewes gaol or to Albert living on London's cruel tender-mercies. The shame of them was to be starved by silence. Soon most of the children had forgotten them, and they lived solely in Tilly's unhappy thoughts or Richard's angry ones, or in certain bitter memories of their father's, sternly fought.
Reuben had learnt his first lesson from experience. Quietly but decidedly he altered his conduct. He no longer made the slightest appeal to his family's enterprise or ambition, he no longer interrupted his chidings with those pathetic calls to their enthusiasm which had mystified or irritated them in times past. On the other hand he was twice as hard, twice as fierce, twice as ruthless and masterful as he had ever been.
Old Mrs. Backfield was getting very decrepit. She could not walk without a stick, and her knotted hands were of little use either in the kitchen or the dairy. Reuben was anxious to avoid engaging anyone to help her, yet the developments of her sphere made such help most necessary. Odiam now supplied most of the neighbouring gentry with milk, butter, and eggs; the poultry-yard had grown enormously since it had been a mere by-way of Mrs. Backfield's labours, and she and the girls also had charge of the young calves and pigs, which needed constant attention, and meant a great deal of hard work. Besides this, there was all the housework to do, sweeping, dusting, cooking, baking, and mending and washing for the males.
It occurred to Reuben that Harry might be of some use to the women. Since he had given up fiddling he was entirely on the wrong side of Odiam's accounts; it would do much to justify his existence if he could help a little in the house and thus save engaging extra labour.
Unfortunately Harry's ideas of work were fantastic, and he was, besides, hindered by his blindness. Any use he could be put to was more than balanced by the number of things he broke. His madness had of late developed both a terrible and an irritating side. He was sometimes consumed by the idea that the house was burning, and had on one or two occasions scared the family by jumping out of bed in the middle of the night and running about the passages shouting—"The house is afire! the house is afire! Oh, God save us all!" After he had done this once or twice, young Piper was made to sleep in his room, but even so he was often visited by his terrors during the day, and would interrupt work or meals with shrieks of—"The house is afire! Oh, wot shall we do! The house is afire, and the children are burning."
Another habit of his, less alarming, but far more annoying, was to repeat some chance word or sentence over and over again for hours. If his mother said "Take these plates into the kitchen, Harry," he would spend the rest of the day murmuring, "Take these plates into the kitchen, Harry," till those about him were driven nearly as mad as he.
It was soon found that he hindered rather than helped the work, so Reuben had to cast about for fresh plans. He felt utterly ruthless now, and was resolved to make his daughters manage the house alone. He redistributed the labour, and by handing over the poultry, calves, and pigs to Beatup, and taking some of his work upon his own shoulders, made it physically possible for Caro and Tilly to run the house and dairy with the feeble help of old Mrs. Backfield. He told them that he could not afford to engage a woman, and that they must do without her—making no appeal to their interest or ambition as he might have done six months ago.
Caro and Tilly did not rebel. Somehow or other their young backs did not break under the load of household toil, nor, more strangely, did their young hearts, in the loneliness of their hard, uncared-for lives.
Tilly was now nearly eighteen. She had always been like her mother, but as she grew older the likeness became more and more pronounced, till sometimes it seemed to Reuben as if it were Naomi herself with her milky skin and fleeting rose-bloom who sat at his table and moved about his house. The only difference lay in a certain prominence of the chin which gave her an air of decision that Naomi had lacked. Not that Tilly was ever anything but docile, but occasionally Reuben felt that some time or other she might take her stand—a fear which had never troubled him with Naomi.
Caro was not like her sister; she was of larger build, yet thinner, and much darker, inheriting her father's swarthy skin and thick black hair. She did not give Reuben the same anxiety as Tilly—she was heavy and coltish, and, he felt, would not appeal to men. But Tilly, especially when the summer heats had melted together the little freckles over her nose, struck his masculine eye in a way that made him half proud, half fearful.
No young men ever visited Odiam. The young Ditches, the young Vennals, or Coalbrans, or Ginners, who had business to transact with Backfield, did so only at a safe distance. Reuben could not as yet afford to lose his housemaids. Some day, he told himself, he would see that the girls married to the honour of his farm, but at present he could not do without them.
They did not murmur, for they had known no different life. They had never, like other girls, wandered with bevies of young people through the lanes at dusk, or felt in the twilight a man's hand grope for theirs. They had not had suitors to visit them on Sundays, to sit very stiff and straight in the parlour, and pass decorous remarks about the weather all the while their eyes were eating up a little figure from toe to hair.
Nevertheless when they worked side by side in the kitchen or dairy, skimming milk, churning butter, watching puddings bubble and steam, or when they made Reuben's great bed together, they had queer, half-shy, half-intimate talks—in which their heads came very close and their voices sank very low, and an eavesdropper might have often caught the word "lover," uttered mysteriously and sometimes with an odd little sigh.
That spring the news flew round from inn to inn and farm to farm that Realf of Grandturzel had bought a shire stallion, and meant to start horse-breeding. This was a terrible shock to Reuben, for not only was horse-breeding extremely profitable to those who could afford it, but it conferred immeasurable honour. It seemed now as if Odiam were seriously threatened. If Realf prospered at his business he could afford to fight Reuben for Boarzell.
As a man in love will sometimes see in every other man a plotter for his beloved, and would never believe it if he were told that he alone sees charm in her and that to others she is undesirable, so Reuben could not conceive ambition apart from the rugged, tough, unfruitful Boarzell, whom no man desired but he. He at once started negotiations for buying another twenty acres, though at present he could ill afford it, owing to the expenses involved by his family misfortunes and his new mania for prestige.
He watched Grandturzel's developments with a stern and anxious eye, and kept pace with them as well as he could. The farm consisted of about fifty-five acres of grass and tilth, apart from the forty acres of Boarzell, which neither Realf nor his father had ever attempted to cultivate, using them merely for fuel and timber, or as pasturage for the ewes when their lambs were taken from them. Old Realf had allowed the place to acquire a dilapidated rakish look, but his son at once began to smarten it up. He tarred the two oast-houses till they shone blue with the reflected sky, he painted his barn doors green, and re-roofed the Dutch Barn with scarlet tiles that could be seen all the way from Tiffenden Hill. He enriched his poultry-yard with a rare strain of Orpington, and was the only farmer in the district besides Reuben to do his reaping and hay-making by machinery.
Realf was about twenty-five, a tall, well-set-up young fellow, with certain elegancies about him. In business he was of a simple, open-temperament, genuinely proud of his farm, and naïve enough to boast of its progress to Backfield himself.
Indeed he was so naïve that it was not till Reuben had once or twice sneered at him in public that he realised there was any friction between Grandturzel and Odiam, and even then he scarcely grasped its importance, for one night at the Cocks, Coalbran said rather maliciously to Reuben:
"Which of your gals is it that young Realf is sweet on?"
"My gals! Neither of 'em. Wot d'you mean?"
"Only that he walks home wud them from church every Sunday, and föalkses are beginning to wonder which he's going to mäake Mrs. Realf, surelye!"
Reuben turned brick-red with indignation.
"Neither of my gals is going to be Mrs. Realf. I'd see her dead fust! And the fellers as spread about such ugly lying tales, I'll——" and Reuben scowled thunderously at Coalbran, whom he had never forgiven since the scene in Rye Court-house.
"He slanders my sons and he slanders my daughters," he muttered to himself as he went home, "and I reckon as this time it äun't true."
However, next Sunday he astonished his family by saying he would accompany them to church. Hitherto Reuben's churchmanship had been entirely political, he had hardly ever been inside Peasmarsh church since his marriage, except for the christenings of his children—though he considered himself one of the pillars of the Establishment. His family were exceedingly suspicious of this change of heart, and the girls whispered guiltily together. "He's found out," said Caro, and Tilly sighed.
There was much turning of heads when Ben Backfield was seen to take his place with his children in their pew.... "Wot's he arter now?"—"Summat to do wud his farm you may be sartain."—"He's heard about his gals and young Realf."—"Ho, the wicked old sinner! I wish as Passon 'ud tip it to un straight."
Realf of Grandturzel sat a little way ahead on the opposite side, and Reuben watched him all through the service. Times had changed since Robert had hurled his big voice among the rafters with the village choir. The choir now sat in the chancel and wore surplices; the Parson too wore a surplice when he preached; for the Oxford Movement had spread to Peasmarsh, and Mr. Barnaby, the new clergyman, lived at the Rectory, instead of appointing a curate to do so, and unheard-of things happened in the way of week-day services and Holy Communion at eight o'clock in the morning. Reuben, however, scarcely noticed the changes, so absorbed was he in young Realf. Occasionally the boy would turn his head on his shoulder and rashly contemplate the Backfield pew. Reuben invariably met him with a stare and a scowl.
All through the sermon he sat with his eyes fixed on Realf's profile. There was his rival, the man with whom he would have to reckon most during the difficult future, with whom he was fighting for Boarzell. He looked marvellously young and comely as he sat there in the fretted light, and suddenly for the first time Reuben realised that he was not as young as he had been. He was forty-six—he was getting old.
Something thick and icy seemed to creep into his blood, and he gripped the edge of the pew, as he stared at Realf, sitting there so unconsciously, his damped and brushed hair gleaming ruddily in the light that poured through some saint's aureole. He must not let this youngster beat him.... Beat him?—the ice in his blood froze thicker—after all he had not done so very much during the twenty-six years he had toiled and struggled; he had won only a hundred acres of Boarzell—little more than Realf had to start with ... and Realf was only twenty-five.
Caro and Tilly, sitting carefully so as not to crush their muslins, both their heads slewed round a little towards Realf, noticed how their father's throat was working, how hot flows of colour rushed up and ebbed away under the tan on his cheeks. For the first time Reuben was contemplating failure, looking that livid horror full in the face, seeing himself beaten, after all his toil and heartache, by a younger man.
But the next moment he cast the coward feeling from him. His experience had given him immeasurable advantage over this babe. Realf who had never felt the sweat pouring like water down his tired body, who had never swooned asleep from sheer exhaustion, or lain awake all night from sheer anxiety, who had not sacrificed wife and children and friends and self to one dear, loved, darling ambition ... bah! what could he do against the man who had done all these things, and was prepared to go on doing them to the end?
When the congregation rose to sing Reuben held his head proudly and his shoulders square. He felt himself a match for any youngster.
That summer old Mrs. Backfield became completely bedridden. The gratefulness of sunshine to her old bones was counteracted by the clammy fogs that streamed up every night round the farm. It was an exceptionally wet and misty summer—a great deal of Reuben's wheat rotted in the ground, and he scarcely took any notice when Tilly announced one morning that grandmother was too ill to come downstairs.
When the struggle on the lower slopes of Boarzell between the damp earth and the determined man had ended in the earth's sludgy victory and a pile of rotten straw which should have been the glory of the man—then Reuben had time to think of what was going on in the house. He sent for the doctor—not Dr. Espinette, but a Cockney successor who boiled his instruments and washed his hands in carbolic—and heard from him that Mrs. Backfield's existence was no longer justified. She could not expect to work again.
Reuben was grieved, but not so much grieved as if she had been cut down in her strength—for a long time she had been pretty useless on the farm. He handed her over to the nursing of the girls, though they were too busy to do more for her than the barest necessities. Now and then he went up himself and sat by her bed, restlessly cracking his fingers, and fretting to be out again at his work.
Sometimes Harry would sit by her. He had wandered in one day when she was feeling especially ill and lonely, and in her desperation she had begged him to stay. At all events he was someone—a human being, or very nearly so. He shuffled restlessly round and round the room, fingering her little ornaments and pictures, and muttering to himself, "Stay wud me, Harry."
He liked her room, for she had a dozen things he could finger and play with—little vases with flowers modelled over them, woolly mats, a velvet pincushion, and other survivals of her married life, all very dusty and faded now. Soon she began to find a strange comfort in having him there; the uneasiness and vague repulsion with which he had filled her, died down, and she began to see in him something of the old Harry whom she had loved so much better than Reuben in days gone by.
As the summer wore on she grew steadily worse. She lay stiff and helpless, through the long August days, watching the sunlight creep up the wall, slip along the ceiling, and then vanish into the pale, heat-washed sky that gleamed with it even after the stars had come. She did not fret much, or think much—she watched things. She watched the sunshine from its red kindling to its red scattering, she watched the moon slide across the window, and haunt the mirror after it had passed—or the sign of the Scales dangling in the black sky. Sometimes the things she looked at seemed to fade, and she would see a room in which she and her husband were sitting or a lane along which they were walking ... but just as she had begun to wonder whether she were not really still young and happy and married and this vision the fact and the sickness and loneliness the dream, then suddenly everything would pass away like smoke, and she would be back in her bed, watching the travelling sun, or the haunting moon, or the hanging stars.
In October a steam-thresher came to Odiam. The wheat had been bad, but there was still plenty of grain to thresh, and for a whole day the machine sobbed and sang under the farmhouse walls—"Urrr-um—Urrr-um—Urrr-um."
Mrs. Backfield lay listening to it. She felt very ill, but everyone was too busy to come to her—Reuben was out in the yard feeding his monster, while the boys gathered up and sacked what it vomited out; Caro and Tilly were washing blankets. Harry had gone off on some trackless errand of his own.
The afternoon was very still and soft. It was full of the smell of apples—of apples warm and sunny on the trees, of apples fallen and rotting in the grass, of apples dry and stored in the loft. There were little apples on the walls of the house, and their skins were warm and bursting in the heat.
The thresher purred and panted under the window—"Urrr-um—Urrr-um." Now and then Reuben would call out sharply, "Now then! mind them genuines—they're mixing wud the seconds!" or "Kip them sacks closed, Beatup." But for most of the afternoon the stillness was broken only by the hum of the machine which sometimes almost seemed a part of it.
Mrs. Backfield according to her custom watched the sun. It bathed the floor at first, but gradually she saw the square of the window paint itself on the wall, and then slide slowly up towards the ceiling. Her eyes mechanically followed it; then suddenly it blazed, filmed, flowed out into a wide spread of light, in the midst of which she saw the kitchen at Odiam as it used to be, with painted fans on the chimney-piece and pots of flowers on the window-sill. Her husband sat by the fire, smoking his pipe, while Harry was helping her tidy her workbasket.
"There now!" she said to him, "I knew as it really wur a dream."
"Wot?" he asked her, and she, in her dream, felt a spasm of delight, for it was all happening so naturally—it must be true.
"About fäather being dead, and you being blind, and Ben having the farm."
"Of course it's a dream—fäather äun't dead, and I äun't blind, and Ben's picking nuts over at Puddingcake."
"You couldn't spik to me lik this if it wur a dream, Harry—could you, dear?"
He didn't answer—and then suddenly he turned on her and shouted:
"Sack your chaff, now—can't you sack your chaff?"
"Harry! Harry!" she cried, and came to herself in the little sun-smouldering room, while outside Reuben stormed at his boys to "sack their chaff," and the machine purred and sang—"Urrr-um—Urrr-um."
A sudden terrible lucidity came to Mrs. Backfield.
"It's machines as he wants," she said to herself, "it's machines as he wants...."
Then a gentle darkness stole upon her eyes, as her overworked machine of flesh and blood ran down and throbbed slowly into stillness and peace.
Outside the great fatigueless machine of steel and iron sang on—"Urrr-um—Urrr-um—Urrr-um."
The girls cried a great deal at their grandmother's death—she had never taken up enough room in the boys' lives for them to miss her much. As for Reuben, though he had been fond of her, he could not sincerely regret her, since for the last few months she had, so to speak, been carried on entirely at a loss.
He needed every penny and every minute more desperately than ever, for Grandturzel ran Odiam closer and closer in the race. Realf now plainly saw how matters stood. As yet there was no open breach between him and Reuben—when one of them came into the public-house the other always waited a decent interval before clearing out—but if there was no open breach, there was open rivalry. All the neighbourhood knew of it, and many a bet was made.
The odds were generally on Reuben. It was felt that a certain unscrupulousness was necessary to the job, and in that Backfield had the advantage. "Young Realf wudn't hurt a fly," his champions had to acknowledge. Though the money was with Reuben, the sympathy was mostly with Realf, for the former's dealings had scarcely made him popular. He was a hard man to his customers, he never let them owe him for grain or roots or fodder; his farm-hands, when drunk, spoke of him as a monster, and a not very tender-hearted peasantry worked itself sentimental over his treatment of his children.
For some months the antagonism between Odiam and Grandturzel remained in this polite state, most of the fighting being done by their champions. The landlord of the Cocks grew quite tired of chucking out Odiamites and Grandturzelites who could not, like their leaders, confine their war to words. But it only wanted some cause, however trivial, to make the principals show their fists. The time that Reuben would stay in the bar after Realf had entered it grew shorter and shorter, and his pretexts for leaving more and more flimsy. Realf himself, though a genial, good-tempered young man, could not help resenting the scorn with which he was treated. He once told Ginner that Backfield was an uncivilised brute, and Ginner took care to forward this remark to the proper quarter.
At last the gods, who are more open-handed than ungrateful people suppose, took pity on the rivals, and gave them something to fight about. The pretext was in itself trivial, but when the gunpowder is laid nothing bigger than a match is needed. This particular pretext was a barrow of roots which had been ordered from Kitchenhour by Reuben and sent by mistake to Grandturzel. Realf's shepherd, not seeing any cause for doubt, gave the roots as winter fodder to his ewes, and said nothing about them. When Reuben tramped over to Kitchenhour and asked furiously why his roots had never been sent, the mistake was discovered. He came home by Grandturzel, and found his precious roots, all thrown out on the fields, being nibbled by Realf's ewes.
Realf himself was away, but Reuben left such a stinging message for him, that apology was impossible except in a form that could only be regarded as a fresh insult. An apology in this shape reached Odiam at dinner-time, and Reuben at once sent off Beatup with an acceptance of it that was very nearly obscene. The result was that Realf himself arrived about three o'clock furiously demanding an explanation of his neighbour's insulting conduct.
The two men met in the kitchen, Peter backing up his father, and for a long time the scene was stormy, the word "roots" whirling about the conversation, with the prefix "my good" or "your hemmed" as the case might be. Realf was genuinely angry—Reuben's attitude of mingled truculence and scorn had wounded even his easy pride.
"You're justabout afeard of me, that's wot you are. You think I'll bust up your old farm and show myself a better man than you. You're afeard of me because I'm a younger man than you."
"Ho, afeard of you, am I?—and because you're a youngster? I'll justabout show you wot a youngster's worth. A better man, are you?—Put up your fists, and we'll see who's the better man."
Reuben began to take off his coat—young Realf drew back almost in disgust.
"I'm not going to fight a man old enough to be my father," he said, flushing.
"Ho, äun't you?—Come on, you puppy-dog, and see fur yourself if you need täake pity on my old age."
He had flung off his coat, and squared up to Realf, who, seeing no alternative, began to strip.
Peter interposed:
"Let me täake him on, fäather. I'll show him a thing or two."
Reuben turned on him savagely.
"Stand clear!—who wants your tricks? I'm going to show him wot a man's worth—a man wot's had his beard longer than this puppy's bin in the warld."
"But you're out of training."
"I'm in training enough to whip boys. Stand clear!"
Pete stood clear, as the two combatants closed. Neither knew much of the game. Realf had been born too late for boxing to have been considered a necessary part of his education, and Reuben had been taught in an old school—the school of Bendigo and Deaf Burke—mighty bashers, who put their confidence in their strength, despised finesse, and counted their victories in pints of blood.
He fairly beat down on Realf, who was lithe enough generally to avoid him, but not experienced enough to do so as often as he might. Every time Reuben struck him, the floor seemed to rush up to his eyes, and the walls to sag, and the house to fill with smoke. Pete danced round them silently, for while his sympathies were with his father his sporting instincts bade him keep outwardly impartial. He was disgusted with their footwork, indeed their whole style outraged his bruising ideals; but it pleased him to see how much Reuben was the better man.
They hardly ever clinched—on the other hand, there was much plunging and rushing. Reuben brought down Realf three times and Realf brought down Reuben once. It was noticeable that if the younger man fell more easily he also picked himself up more quickly. Between the rounds they leaned exhausted against the wall, Pete prowling about between them, longing to take his father on his knee, but still resolved to see fair play.
It was not likely that the fight would be a long one, for both combatants were already winded. Realf, moreover, was bleeding from the nose, and Reuben's left eye was swollen. Once he caught a hit flush on the mouth which cut his nether lip in two, and, owing to his bad footwork, brought him down. But he was winning all the same.
For once that Realf managed to land a blow, Reuben landed a couple, and with twice as much weight behind them. The younger man soon began to look green and sick, he staggered about, and flipped, while the sweat poured off his forehead into his eyes. Reuben breathed stertorously and could scarcely see out of his left eye, but was otherwise game. Pete felt prouder of him than ever.