It was like a muddled dream—people seemed to have no reason for what they did or shouted; they just ebbed and flowed, jostled and jambed, ran hither and thither, sang and laughed and swore. Rose looked round her to see if she could recognise anyone; now and then a face glowed on her in the torch-light, then died away, once she thought she saw the back of a tradesman's daughter whom she knew—but her chief feeling was of an utter isolation with her loved one, as if he and she stood alone on some sea-pounded island against which the tides of the world roared in vain.
At last the crowd began to move. The band had crushed through to the front of it, and was braying Rule Britannia up Playden Hill; then came the waggons, then the stout champions of freedom, singing at the pitch of their lungs:
The stars winked on the black zenith, while troubled winds sped and throbbed over the fields that huddled in mystery and silence on either side of the road—where noise and skirmish and darting lights, with the odours of warm human bodies, and the thudding and scrabbling of a thousand feet, proclaimed the People's holiday.
They flowed through Playden like a torrent through an open sluice, sweeping up and carrying on all sorts of flotsam—villagers from cottage doors, ploughboys from the farms down by the Military Canal, gipsies from Iden Wood ... a mixed multitude, which the central mass absorbed, till all was one steaming and shouting blackness.
The first gate was at Mockbeggar, where the road to Iden joins that which crosses the Marsh by Corkwood and Baron's Grange. In a minute it was off its hinges, and swealing in tar, while lusty arms pulled twigs, branches, even whole bushes out of the hedges to build its pyre.
Rose shrank close to Handshut, so close that the clover scents of her laces were drowned in the smell of the cowhouse that came from his clothes. She found herself liking it, drinking in that soft, mixed, milky odour ... till a cloud of stifling tar-smoke swept suddenly over them, and she reeled against him suffocating, while all round them people choked and gasped and sneezed.
The fire was lighted, a great crimson tongue screamed up in front of two motionless poplars, leaped as high as their tops, then spread fan-shaped, roaring. Men and women joined hands and danced round the blaze—in the distance, above the surging pack of heads, Rose could see them jumping and capering, with snatches of song that became screams every minute.
The fire roared like a storm, and the wood crackled with sudden yelping reports. The dancing girls' hats flew off, their hair streamed wide, their skirts belled and swirled ... there was laughter and obscene remarks from the onlookers. Many from the rear pressed forward to join the dance, and those who were trampled on screamed or cursed, while one or two women fainted. Rose felt as if she would faint in the heat and reek of it all. She leaned heavily against Handshut and closed her eyes ... then she realised that his arm was round her. He held her against him, supporting her, while either she heard or thought she heard him say—"Döan't be scared, liddle Rose—I'm wud you. I wöan't let you fall."
She opened her eyes. The people were moving. The Mockbeggar gate had been accounted for, and they rolled on towards Thornsdale. The jamb was not so alarming, for a good many revellers had been left behind, dancing round the remains of the bonfire, crowding into the public-house, or scattering in couples over the fields.
But though the jostling was no longer dangerous, Handshut still kept his arm about Rose, and held her close to his side. Now and then she made a feeble effort as if to free herself, but he held her fast, and she never put out her full strength. They walked as if in a dream, they two together, not speaking to anyone, not speaking to each other. Rose saw as if in a dream the Sign of Virgo hanging above Stone. The dipping of the lane showed the Kentish marshes down in the valley, with the hills of Kent beyond them, twinkling with lights. The band lifted the strains of Hearts of Oak and Cheer, Boys, Cheer above the thud of marching feet, or occasionally drifted into sentiment with Love's Pilgrim—while every now and then, regardless of what was being played, two hundred throats would bray:
It was about nine o'clock when they came to Thornsdale, down on the Rother levels; the moon had risen and the marsh was smeethed in white. The air was thick with a strong-scented miasma, and beside the dykes long lines of willows faded into the mist. Here another orgy was started, in grotesque contrast with the pallid sleep of water. The gate that barred the Kent road was torn down, the bonfire prepared, the dance begun.
The mists became patched with leaping shadows, and a dull crimson wove itself into the prevailing whiteness. Flaming twigs and sparks hissed into the dykes, rolls of acrid tar-smoke spread like a pall over the river and the Highnock Sewer, under which their waters were spotted with fire. The ground was soon pulped and poached with the jigging feet, and mud and water spurted into the dancers' faces.
It was all rather ugly and ridiculous, and as before at Mockbeggar, the crowd began to straggle. This time there was no public-house to swallow up strays, but the marsh spread far and wide, a Land of Promise for lovers, who began to slink off two by two into the mists. Some who were not lovers formed themselves into noisy groups, and bumped about the lanes—waking the farmers' wives from Bosney to Marsh Quarter.
Rose felt Handshut's arm clinging more tenderly about her, and she knew that he wanted to lead her away from the noise and glare, to the coolness and loneliness of the waterside. She wanted to go—her head ached, her nostrils tingled, and her eyes were sore with the fumes of tar, her ears wearied with the din.
"Let's go home," she said faintly—"it's getting late."
"We can go back by Corkwood across the marshes. It'll be quicker, and we shan't have no crowd spanneling round."
They elbowed their way into the open, and soon the noise had died into a subdued roar, not so loud as the sigh of the reeds, while the bonfire showed only as a crimson stain on the eastward piling fogs.
In time the contrast of silence grew quite painful. It ached. Only the sough of the wind in the reeds troubled it—the feet of Rose and Handshut were noiseless on the grass, they breathed inaudibly, only the breath of the watching night was heard.
They skirted the Corkwood dyke, from which rose the stupefying, sodden, almost flavorous, smell of dying reeds—a waterfowl suddenly croaked among them, and another answered her with a wail from beyond Ethnam. The willows were shimmering silver dreams, bathed in the light of the moon which hung above the Fivewatering and had washed nearly all the stars out of the sky—only Sirius hung like a dim lamp over Great Knell, while Lyra was faint above Reedbed in the north.
Rose walked half leaning against Handshut. She felt a very little feeble thing in the power of that great amorous night. The warm breath of the wind in her hair, the caress of moonlight on her eyes, the throbbing, miasmic, night-sweet scents of water and grass, the hush, the great sleep ... all tore at her heart, all weakened her with their huge soft strength, all crushed with their languors the poor resistance of her will.
The tears began to roll down her cheeks, they shone on her face in the moonlight—they fell quite fast as she walked on gripped against her lover's heart. She was leaning more and more heavily against him, for her strength was ebbing fast—oh, if he would only speak!—she could not walk much further, and yet she dared not rest beside him on that haunted ground.
At last they came to where the high land rose out of the levels like a shore out of the sea, with a lick of road on it, winding up to Peasmarsh. It was here that Rose's uncertain strength failed her, she lurched against Handshut, and still encircled by his arms slid to the grass.
They were in a huge meadow, sloping upwards to mysterious, night-wrapped hedges. The moonlight still trembled over the marsh, kindling sudden streaks of water, steeping fogs, silvering pollards and reeds. One could distinctly see the little houses on the Kent side of the Rother, Ethnam, and Lossenham, and Lambstand, some with lights blinking from them, others just black patches on the moon-grey country. Rose looked out towards them, and tried to picture in each a hearth beside which a husband and wife sat united ... then suddenly they were blotted out, as Handshut's face loomed dark between her and them, and his lips slowly fastened on her own.
For a moment she yielded to the kiss, then suddenly tore herself away.
"Rose ..."
"Let me go—I can't."
"Rose, why shud you pretend? You döan't love the mäaster, and you do love me. Why shudn't we be happy together?"
"We—I can't."
"Why?—I love you, and you love me. Come away wud me—you shan't have a hard life——"
"—It's not that."
"Wot is it then?"
"It's—oh, I can't—I'm his wife."
She pushed him from her as he tried to take her in his arms again, and stumbled to her feet.
"It's late—I—I must go home."
"Rose, you queer me."
He had risen too, and stood before her in mingled pain and surprise. He thought her resistance mere coyness, and suddenly flung his arms round her as she stood.
She began to cry.
"No, no—don't be so cruel! Let me go!—I'm his wife."
The walk home was dreary, for Rose and Handshut misunderstood each other, and yet loved each other too. She was silent, almost shamefaced, and he was a little disgusted with her—he felt that she had misled him, and in his soreness added "willingly."
They scarcely spoke, and the night spread round them its web of pondering silence. Aldebaran guttered above Kent, and the blurred patch of the Pleiades hung over the curded fogs that hid the Rother. There was no wind, but every now and then the grass rippled and the leaves fluttered, while a low hissing sound went through the trees. Sometimes from the distance came the shouts of some revellers still at large, echoing weirdly over the moon-steeped fields, and divinely purged by space and night.
Sobs were still thick in Rose's throat, when they came to Handshut's cottage, a little tumble-down place, shaped like a rabbit's head. She stopped.
"Don't come any further."
"Why?"
"It would be better if I wasn't seen with you."
He looked at her white face.
"You're frighted."
"No."
"Yes—and I'm coming wud you, surelye."
"I should be frightened if you came."
She managed to persuade him to go his different way—though the actual moment of their parting was always a blur in her memory. Afterwards she could not remember if they had kissed, touched hands, or parted without a word. Her throat was still full of sobs when she came to Odiam; she was panting, too, for she had run all the way—she did not know why.
The house was swimming in the light of the western moon. Its strange curves and bulges, its kiln-shaped ends, and great waving sprawl of roof all shone in a white glassy brilliance, which was somehow akin to peace. There was a soft flutter of wind in the orchard and in the sentinel poplars, while now and then came that distant night-purged scrap of song:
Rose wondered uneasily what time it was. Surely it could not be very late, and yet the house was shut up and the windows dark.
She gently rattled the door-handle. There was no denying it—the house was locked up. It must be later than she thought—that walk on the Rother levels must have been longer than it had seemed to her thirsty love. A thrill of fear went through her. She hoped Reuben would not be angry. She was his dutiful wife.
She stood hesitating on the doorstep. Should she knock? Then a terrible thought struck her. Reuben must have meant to lock her out. Otherwise he would have sat up for her, however late she had been. She started trembling all over, and felt her skin grow damp.
She began to knock, first softly, then more desperately. She must get in. Nothing was to be heard except her own despairing din—the house seemed plunged in sleep. Rose's fear grew, spread black bat's wings, and darkened all her thoughts—for she knew that someone must have heard her, she could not make all this racket quite unheard.
What could she do? Caro slept at the back of the house, and it struck her that she had better go round, and throw up some earth at her window. Perhaps Caro would let her in. She stepped back from the door, and was just turning the corner of the house when a window suddenly shot open above her, and Reuben's tousled head looked out.
"There's no use your trying to git in."
Rose gave a faint scream. In the moonlight her husband's face looked distorted, while his voice came thick and unnatural.
"Ben!"
"Go away. Go away to where you've come from. I shan't let you in."
"You can't keep me out here. It isn't my fault I'm late—and I'm not so very late, either."
"It's one o'clock o' the marnun."
She felt her heart grow sick. If she had been happy for four hours, why, in God's name, had they not passed like four hours instead of like four minutes?
"Ben, I swear I didn't know. I was up to no harm, I promise you. Please, please—oh please let me in!"
"Not I—at one o'clock o' the marnun—after you've bin all night wud a——"
"Ben, I swear I'm your true wife."
She fell against the wall, and her hair, disordered by embraces, suddenly streamed over her shoulders. The sight of it made Reuben wild.
"Git off—before I täake my gun and shoot you."
"Oh, Ben!..."
"Höald your false tongue. You're no wife o' mine from this day forrard. I wöan't be cuckolded in my own house."
His face was swollen, his eyes rolled—he looked almost as if he had been drinking.
"Ben, don't drive me away. I've been true to you, indeed I have, and Handshut's going to-morrow. Let me in—please let me in. I swear I've been true."
"I want none o' your lying swears—at one o'clock o' the marnun. Go back to the man you've come from—he'll believe you easier nor I."
"Ben, I'm your wife."
"I tell you, you're no wife of mine. I'm shut of you—you false, fair, lying, scarlet woman. You needn't cry and weep, nuther—none 'ull say as Ben Backfield wur a soft man fur woman's tears."
He shut the window with a slam. For some moments Rose stood leaning against the wall, her sobs shaking her. Then, still sobbing, she turned and walked away.
She walked slowly down the drive till she came to the little path that led across the fields to Handshut's cottage. A light gleamed from the window, and she crept towards it through tall moon-smudged grass—while from the distance came for the last time:
A glassy yellow broke into the sky like a curse. It shone on Reuben's eyes, and he opened them. They were pink and puffed round the rims, and the whites were shot with little blood-vessels. His cheeks were yellow, and round his mouth was an odd greyish tinge. He had lain dressed on his bed, and was surprised to find that he had slept. But the sleep had brought no refreshment—there was a bad taste in his mouth, and his tongue felt rough and thick.
He sat up on the tumbled bed and looked round him. Rose's nightgown was folded on her pillow, and over a chair lay a pair of the thin useless stockings he had often scolded her for wearing. A drawer was open, and from it came the soft perfume that adhered to everything she put on. He suddenly sprang out of bed and shut it with a kick.
"Durn her!" he said, and then two sobs tore their way painfully up his throat, shaking his whole body.
An hour later he went down. He had washed and tidied himself, none the less he disconcerted the household. Caro had lain awake all night, partly from misery, partly because of the baby, which she had been obliged to take charge of in the mother's absence. She had brought it down into the kitchen with her, and it had lain kicking in its cradle while she prepared the breakfast. She was worn out already after her sleepless night, and could not prevent the tears from trickling down her face as she cut bread for the meal.
"Stop that!" said Reuben roughly.
Except for this, he did not speak—nor after a few attempts on the former's part did Pete and Caro. They sat and gulped down their food in silence. Even Harry seemed to realise the general unrest. He would not sit at table, but wandered aimlessly up and down the room, murmuring, as was now his habit in times of domestic upheaval, "Another wedding—deary me! We're always having weddings in this house."
Then the baby began to howl because it was hungry. Rose had nursed it herself, and its wants had not occurred to the unhappy Caro or her father. There was delay and confusion while a bottle was fetched and milk prepared, and then—to crown all—cow's milk upset it, and it was sick. But Reuben escaped this final tragedy—he had left the room after a few mouthfuls, and gone to Handshut's cottage.
He could not restrain himself any longer. He must see Rose, and vent on her all the miserable rage with which his heart was seething. He longed to strike her—he longed to beat her, for the wanton that she was. And he longed to clasp her in his arms and weep on her breast and caress her, for the woman that she was.
But the cottage was shut. With its red-rotting roof between two tall chimneys it looked exactly like a rabbit's head between its ears; the windows were blind, though it was past seven o'clock, and though Reuben knocked at the door loudly, there was no one to be seen. He prowled once or twice round the house, fumbling handles and window-latches, but there was no way of getting in. He listened, but he could not hear a sound. He pictured Rose and Handshut in each other's arms, laughing at him in his wretchedness and their bliss—and all the time he wanted the woman's blood more than the man's.
At last he wandered desperately away, treading the furrows of his new ground on Boarzell, reckless that he trod the young seed harrowed into them. In that black moment even his winter crops were nothing to him. He saw, thought of, realised only one thing—and that was Rose, the false, the gay, the wanton, and the beautiful—oh the beautiful!—laughing at him from another man's arms. He could see her laughing, see just how her lips parted, just how her teeth shone—those little teeth, so regular except for the pointed canines—just how the dimples came at the corners of her mouth, those dear little hollows which he had dug with his kisses....
He ground his heel into the soft harrowed earth, and it cast up its smell into his nostrils unheeded. But the day of Boarzell was coming—its rival had been cleared out of the field, and the great hump with its knob of firs seemed to be lying in wait, till the man had pulled himself out of the pit of a false woman's love and given himself back to it, the strong, the faithful enemy.
About an hour later Reuben was down again at Handshut's cottage, but this time a change had worked itself. The door hung wide open—and the place was empty. He went through the two miserable little rooms, but there was no one, and nowhere for anybody to hide. The remains of a meal of bread and tea were on the table, and a fire of sticks was dying on the hearth. The lovers had flown—to laugh at him from a safe distance.
All the rest of the day he prowled aimlessly about his land. His men were afraid, for it was the first time they had seen him spend a day without work. He touched neither spade nor pitchfork, he gave no orders, just wandered restlessly about the fields and barns. He ate no supper, but locked himself into his room, while the baby's thin wail rose through the beams of the kitchen ceiling, and little David cried fractiously for "mother."
The next day Caro, haggard after another night made sleepless by her charges, knocked at his door. He had not come down to breakfast, and at eight o'clock the postman had brought a letter.
"It's from Rose," said Caro timidly.
"To me?"
"No, to me."
"Read it."
Caro read it. Rose was in London, but left that day for Liverpool. Handshut had saved a little money, and they were going to Canada. "I don't ask Ben to forgive me, for I know he never will."
"She's right there," said Reuben grimly.
Caro stood before him, creasing the letter nervously. Her father's wrath broke upon her, for want of his proper victim.
"Git out, can't yer—wot are you dawdling here for? You women are all the same—you'd be as bad as her if you cud only git a man."
Caro shrank from the jibe as if from a blow, and Reuben laughed brutally. He had made one woman suffer anyway.
Of course the neighbourhood gloated; and the rustic convention was set aside in Rose's favour, and all the shame of her elopement heaped on Reuben.
"No wäonder as she cudn't stick to him—hard, queer chap as he be."
"And thirty year older nor she, besides."
"Young Handshut wur a präaper lad, and valiant. I äun't surprised as she'd rather have un wudout a penny than old Ben wud all his gold."
"And he äun't got much o' that now, nuther. They say as he'll be bust by next fall."
Heads were shaken in triumphant commiseration, and the stones which according to all decent tradition should have been flung at Rose, hurtled round her husband instead.
Far away at Cheat Land, Alice Jury watched them fall—Alice Jury five years older than when she had struggled with Boarzell for Reuben before he married Rose. Her parents thought he had treated her badly, even though they did not know of the evening when she had humbled herself to plead for her happiness and his. She remembered that moment uneasily—it hurt her pride. But she could not regret having used her most desperate effort to win him, and she felt sure that he had understood her motive and realised that it was for him as well as for her that she had spoken.
Now, when she heard of his catastrophe, she wondered if he would come back. Did men come back?—and if they did, was she the type of woman they came back to? Perhaps she was too quick, too antagonistic. She told herself miserably that a softer woman could have saved Reuben, and yet, paradoxically, a softer woman would not have wished to do so.
She had seen very little of him or of Rose since their marriage. Rose and she had never been friends, and Reuben she knew was shy of her. He had been angry with her too, because she had not carried her aching heart on her sleeve. Outwardly she had worn no badge of sorrow—she was just as quick, just as combative, just as vivaciously intellectual as she had always been. Though she knew that she had lost him through these very characteristics, with which she had also attracted him, she made no effort to force herself into a different mould. She refused to regret anything, to be ashamed of anything, to change anything. If he came back he should find the same woman as he had left.
She felt that he would come—he would return to her in the reaction that swung him from Rose. But would she be able to keep him? She did not feel so sure of that—for that did not depend on her or on him, but on that mysterious force outside themselves with which they had both already struggled in vain.
Reuben scarcely knew what brought him to Cheat Land. It was about a week after the blow fell that he found himself treading the once familiar lane, lifting the latch of the garden gate, and knocking at the green house-door. Nothing had changed, except to fade a little and show some signs of wear and tear. Alice herself had not changed, nor had she faded, though her cheeks might have fallen in a trifle and a few lines traced themselves round her mouth.
"Welcome," she said, and laughed.
He took her hand, and forgot to be angry because she had laughed.
"Come in, and we'll have a talk. Father's out, and mother's upstairs."
She led the way into the queer little kitchen, which was also unchanged except for the fading of the curtains, and the introduction of one or two new books on the shelves. Alice pulled forward his old chair, and sat down opposite him on the settle. She wore one of her long wrapper-pinafores, this time of a warm clay-colour, which seemed to put a glow into her cheeks.
"Well, Alice," he said huskily.
"Well, Reuben, I'm glad to see you."
"You've heard?"
She nodded. Then she said gently:
"Poor Rose."
Reuben flushed.
"One o' my victims, eh?"
"Well, I knew you'd rather I said that than 'poor Reuben.'"
"Reckon I would. I remember as how you wur always trying to make out as my lazy good-fur-naun sons wur my victims, and as how I'd sacrificed them all to my farm; now I reckon you're trying to do the same wud Rose."
"Where is she?"
"I dunno. Somewheres between here and Canada. May she rot there lik a sheep on its back, and her man too. Now say 'poor Rose.'"
He turned on her almost fiercely, his lips curled back from his teeth in a sneer.
"If you speak like that I'll say 'poor Reuben.'"
"Well, say it—you wöan't be far wrong. Wot sort o' chap am I to have pride? My farm's ruined, my wife's run away, my children have left me—wot right have I to be proud?"
"Because, though all those things have happened, you're holding your head up still."
"But I äun't—yesterday I wur fair crying and sobbing in front of all the children. In the kitchen, it wur—after supper—I put down my head on the table, and——"
"Hush, I don't want to hear any more. I can guess what you must have suffered. I expect you miss Rose."
"I do—justabout."
"So should I in your place."
"She wur a beautiful woman, Alice."
Alice nodded.
"Oh, and her liddle dentical ways!"
Alice nodded again.
"You döan't mind me talking to you of her?"
"No, of course not."
"She wur the beautifullest I've known, and gay, and sweet, and a woman to love. But she deceived me. I married her expecting money, and there wur none—I married her fur her body, and she's given it to another."
"Well, you're not a hypocrite, anyway. You don't pretend you married her for any but the lowest motives."
"Wot should I have married her fur, then?"
"Some people marry for love."
"Love I—no. I've loved but one woman."
"Me!"
They had both said more than they intended, and suddenly realised it. Though the self-betrayal meant most to Alice, she was the first to recover a steady voice.
"But that does not matter now," she said calmly.
He leaned suddenly forward and took her hand.
"Alice."
Her hand lay in his, a very small thing, and her head bent towards it. She did not want him to see her cheeks flush and her eyes fill at this his first caress.
"Alice—how did you know?"
"I'm not a fool."
"I guessed too."
"Of course you did. I—I gave myself away. I pleaded with you."
He raised her hand slowly to his lips.
"I forgot you all the time I wur wud Rose," he remarked naively.
"You needn't tell me that."
"But now I—well, it's too late anyhow. I'm a married man, no matter that my wife's in Canada. Of course, I could git a divorce—but I wöan't."
"No—it would cost money."
"More than I could spare."
Alice laughed.
"I never looked upon Rose as my rival—I always knew my real rival was your farm, and though now Rose is out of the way, that still stands between us."
Reuben was silent. He sat leaning forward in his chair, holding Alice's hand. Then he abruptly rose to his feet.
"Well, I must be going. It's done me good, our talk. Not that you've said anything particular comforting, but then you never did. It's good anyway to sit wud a woman wot's not lik a fat stroked cat—not a thin kicked one, nuther," he added viciously, remembering Caro. "You're lik a liddle tit-bird, Alice. I love you. But I'm not sorry I didn't marry you, for you'd have busted me same as Rose, only in a different way."
"Most likely."
She laughed again. He stooped forward and kissed her forehead, and the laugh died on her lips.
The rest of that day Reuben was a little happier. He felt comforted and stimulated, life was not so leaden. In the evening he worked a little in the hop-gardens. They were almost cleared now, and the smoke of the drying furnaces was streaming through the cowls of the oasts, shedding into the dusk a drowsy, malt-sweetened perfume. When the moon hung like a yellow splinter above Iden Wood, the pickers went home, and Reuben turned in to his supper, which for the first time since Rose's flight he ate with hearty pleasure.
He could not tell exactly what it was that had invigorated him, and jerked him out of his despair. It would seem as if Alice's presence alone had tonic qualities. Perhaps the secret lay in her unchangeableness. He had gone back to her after an absence of five years, and found her just the same, still loving him, still fighting him, the old Alice. Everything else had changed—his farm which in the former days had been the thriving envy of the countryside was now little better than a ruin, his home life had been turned inside out, but in the woman over at Cheat Land nothing had altered, love and strength and faithfulness still flourished in her. It was as if a man stumbling in darkness should suddenly hear a loved, familiar voice say "Here I am." The situation summed itself up in three words—She was there; and his heart added—"for me to take if I choose."
In spite of his revived spirits he could not sleep, but he went up early to his room, for he wanted to think. During the evening the idea had gained on him that he could still have Alice if he wanted her, and with the idea had grown the sensation that he wanted her with all his heart.
His return had been complete. All that she had ever had and lost of empire had re-established itself during that hour at Cheat Land. He wanted her as he had wanted her before he met Rose, but with a renewed intensity, for he was no longer mystified by his desire. He no longer asked himself how he could possibly love "a liddle stick of a woman like her," for he saw how utterly love-worthy she was and had always been. For the first time he saw as his, if only he would take it, a great woman's faithful love. This love of Alice Jury's had nothing akin to Naomi's poor little fluttering passion, or to Rose's fascination, half appetite, half game. Someone loved him truly, strongly, purely, deeply, with a fire that could be extinguished only by death or—he realised in a dim way—her own will. The question was, should he pay the price this love demanded, take it to himself at the cost of the ambitions that had fed his life for forty years?
He sat down by the open window, leaning his elbow on the sill. The night was as soft as honey, and dark as a bowl of wine. The stars were scattered and dim, the moon had dipped into a belt of fogs, the fields were bloomed with darkness and sleep. The ridge of Boarzell was just visible under the Dog Star—the lump of firs stood motionless, for the wind had dropped, and not even a whisper from the orchard proclaimed its sleeping place.
Reuben's eyes swept the dim outlines of his farm—the yard, the barns, the oasts, the fields beyond, up to where his boundaries scarred the waste. It was all blurred and blanketed in the darkness, but his mind could see it in every detail. He saw the cow-stable empty except for the six cheap Suffolks which just supplied his household and one or two gentry with milk; he saw doors split and unhinged that he could not afford to mend, gaping roofs that he could not afford to retile, while the martins stole his thatch for their autumn broods; he saw his oat-harvest mostly straw, his hop-harvest gathered at a loss, his hay spoiled with sorrel; he saw himself short of labour, one man turned off, another run away; and he saw all the flints and shards and lime of Boarzell breaking his plough, choking his winter wheat, while on the lower ground runnels of clay made his corn sedgy, and everywhere the tough, wiry fibres of the gorse drank all the little there was of goodness out of the ground and scattered it from its blossoms in useless fragrance.
This was what his forty years of struggle had brought him to. He saw himself in the midst of a huge ambitious ruin. He had failed, his hopes were blighted—what could he expect to pull out of this wreck. It would be far better and wiser if he gave up the dreary uncertain battle, and took the sure rest at hand. If he sold some of the more fruitful part of his land he would be able to divorce Rose, then he could marry Alice and live with her a quiet, shorn, unambitious life. No one would buy the new ground on Boarzell, but he could easily sell the low fields by the Glotten brook; that would leave him with twenty or thirty acres of fairly good land round the farm, and all his useless encroachments on Boarzell which he would allow to relapse into their former state. He would have enough to live upon, to support his children and his delicate wife—he would be able to take no risks and make no ventures, but he would be comfortable.
His old father's words came back to him—"I've no ambitions, so I'm a happy man. I döan't want nothing I haven't got, so I haven't got nothing I döan't want." Perhaps his father had been right. After all, what had he, Reuben, got by being ambitious? Comfort, peace, home-life, wife, children, were all so many bitter words to him, and his great plans themselves had crumbled into failure—he had lost everything to gain nothing.
Far better give up the struggle while there was the chance of an honourable retreat. He realised that he was at the turning point—a step further along his old course and he would lose Alice, a step along the road she pointed, and he would lose Boarzell. After all he had not won Boarzell, most likely never would win it—if he persisted on his old ways they would probably only lead him to ruin, and later there might be no Alice to turn to. If he renounced her now, he would be definitely pledging himself to Boarzell and all his soaring, tottering schemes—he would not be able to "come back" a second time.
If he lost Alice now he might be losing her for a dream, a bubble, a will-o'-the-wisp. Surely he would be wise to pull what he could out of the wreck, take her, and forget all else. Only a fool would turn away from her now, and press forward. In the old days it had been different, he had been successful then—now he was a failure, and saw his chance to fail honourably. Better take it before it was too late.
His mind painted him a picture it had never dared paint before—the comfortable red house basking in sunshine, with a garden full of flowers, a cow or two at pasture in the meadow, the little hop-field his only tilth—his dear frail wife sitting in the porch, his children playing at her feet or reading at her knee—perhaps they were hers too, perhaps they were not. He saw himself contented, growing stout, wanting nothing he hadn't got, so having nothing he didn't want ... he was leaning over her chair, and gazing away into the southern distance where Boarzell lay against the sky, all patched with heather and thorns, all golden with gorse, unirrigated, uncultivated, without furrow or fence....
... A shudder passed through Reuben, a long shudder of his flesh, for in at the open window had drifted the scent of the gorse on Boarzell. It came on no wind, the night was windless as before. It just seemed to creep to him over the fields, to hang on the air like a reproach. It was the scent of peaches and apricots, of sunshine caught and distilled. He leaned forward out of the window, and thought he could see the glimmer of the gorse-clumps under the stars.
The edge of Boarzell was outlined black against the faintly paler sky—he traced it from the woods in which it rose, up to its crest of firs, then down into the woods again. Once more it lay between him and the soft desires of his weakness; as long ago at Cheat Land, it called him back to his allegiance like a love forsaken. In the black quiet it lay hullish like some beast—but it was more than a beast to-night. It was like the gorse on its heights, delicate perfume as well as murderous fibre, sweetness as well as ferocity. The scent, impregnating the motionless air, seemed to remind him that Boarzell was his love as well as his enemy—more, far more to him than Alice.
His ambition flared up like a damped furnace, and he suddenly saw himself a coward ever to have thought of rest. Boarzell was more to him than any woman in the world. For the sake of one weak woman he was not going to sacrifice all his hopes and dreams and enterprises, the great love of his life.
Boarzell, not Alice, should be his. He muttered the words aloud as he strained his eyes into the darkness, tracing the beloved outline. He despised himself for having wavered even in thought. Through blood and tears—others' and his own—he would wade to Boarzell, and conquer it at last. From that night all would be changed, the past should be thrust behind him, he would pull himself together, make himself a man. Alice must go where everything else had gone—mother, wife, children, friends, and love. Thank God! Boarzell was worth more to him than all these.
Leaning out of the window, he breathed in the scent of his slumbering land. His lips parted, his eyes brightened, the lines of care and age grew softer on his face. With his darling ambition, he seemed to recover his youth—once more he felt the blood glowing in his veins, while zeal and adventure throbbed together in his heart. He had conquered the softer mood, and banished the sweet unworthy, dreams for ever. Alice—who had nearly vanquished him—should go the way of all enemies.
And the last enemy to be destroyed is Love.
That night was a purging. From thenceforward Reuben was to press on straight to his goal, with no more slackenings or diversions.
He had learned one sound lesson, which was the superfluousness of women in the scheme of life. From henceforward he was "shut of" them. Long ago he had denied himself women in their more casual aspect, using them entirely for practical purposes, but now he realised that women no longer had any practical purpose as far as he was concerned. The usefulness of woman was grossly overrated. It is true that she produced offspring, but he thought irritably that Providence might have found some more satisfactory way of perpetuating the human race. Everything a woman did was bound to go wrong somehow. She was nothing but a parasite and an incubus, a blood-sucking triviality, an expense and a snare. So he tore woman out of his life as he tore up the gorse on Boarzell.
It was wonderful how soon he adapted himself to his new conditions. At first he missed Rose, but by the time he had got rid of her clothes and swept the perfume of her out of his room, he had ceased to hunger. He never heard of her again—he never knew what life she led in the new land, whether the reality of love brought her as much happiness as the game, or whether her old taste for luxury and pleasure reasserted itself and ruined both love and lover.
As for Alice, he found to his surprise that she was not so dangerous even as Rose, for an ideal is never so enslaving as a habit. He avoided Cheat Land, and there was nothing to bring her across his path as long as he did not seek her. So the yoke of woman dropped from Reuben's neck, leaving him a free man.
He formed a plan of campaign. The large unreclaimed tracts of Boarzell must be left for a time, while he devoted his attention to the land already cultivated. He must economise in labour, so he hired no one in Handshut's place, but divided his work among the other men. His rekindled zeal was hot enough to ignite even the dry sticks of their enterprise, and Odiam toiled as it had never toiled before. Even Harry was pressed for service, and helped feed the pigs and calves, besides proving himself a most efficient scarecrow.
Early the next spring Reuben had a stroke of luck, for he was able to sell the remainder of his lease of the Landgate shop to a greengrocer. With the proceeds he bought half a dozen more cows, and grounded his dairy business more firmly. In spite of his increased herd he still had several acres of superfluous pasture, and pocketing his pride, advertised "keep" for stock, which resulted in his pocketing also some much-needed cash. His most immediate ambition was to pay off the mortgage he had raised a year ago, and restore to Odiam its honourable freedom.
It seemed almost as if his luck had turned, for the harvests that year were exceedingly good. In most of his fields there were two hay-crops, while the oats and wheat yielded generously, even on Boarzell. As for the hops, he reaped a double triumph, for not only did his hop-gardens bring in more than the average to the acre, but almost everyone else in the neighbourhood did badly, so prices rose in a gratifying way.
Under this encouragement, part of the old adventurous spirit revived, and Reuben bought a Highly Commended bull at Lewes Fair, and advertised him for service. In spite of catastrophe, he still believed cattle-rearing to be the most profitable part of a farmer's business, and resolved to build up his own concern on its old lines. With regard to the dairy, Caro was an excellent dairy woman, besides looking after the two little children, and Odiam had a fair custom for its dairy produce, also for fruit and vegetables.
Thus, in a very small way, and with continual hard work and anxiety, the farm was beginning to revive. Reuben felt that he was recapturing his prestige in the neighbourhood, and, when his labours allowed him, assisted the good work by drinking slow glasses of sherry in the bar of the Cocks, and making patronising remarks about his neighbours' concerns.
He was glad from the bottom of his heart that he had not been wooed from his ambition, in a moment of weakness, by softer dreams which he now looked upon as so much dust.
In the course of the following year Reuben had news of all his absent sons, except Benjamin, who was never heard of again.
One day Caro came home from Rye, where she had gone with the vegetables to market, and said that she had met Bessie Lamb. Bessie was on her way to the station, where she would take the train for Southampton. Robert had written that he was now able to have her with him in Australia, and she had at once packed up her few belongings and set out to join him in the unknown.
Bessie was now thirty, and looked older, for she had lost a front tooth and her pretty hair had faded: but she was as confident of Robert's love as ever. He had written to her by every mail, she told Caro, and they had both saved and scraped and waited and counted the days till they could consummate the love born in those fields eternally fixed in twilight by their memory. There had been no intercourse between Odiam and Eggs Hole, so, as Robert had never written to his family, Caro heard for the first time of the sheep-farm in Queensland and its success. He had done badly at first, Bessie said, what with the drought and many other things against him, but now he was well established, and she would be far better off and more comfortable as the felon's wife than she had ever been as the daughter of honest parents.
She left Caro with a restless aching in her heart. In spite of the lost front tooth and the faded hair, she had impressed her in much the same way as Rose on her wedding night. Here was another woman sure of love looking confidently into a happy future, wooed and sought after, a man's bride.... Jolting home in the empty vegetable cart beside Peter, one or two tears found their way down Caro's cheek. Oh, if only some man, no matter whom, tyrant, criminal, no matter what, would love her, give her for one moment those divine sensations which she had seen other women enjoy! Why must she alone, of all the women she knew, be loveless?
It was her father's fault, he had kept her to work for him, he had starved her purposely of men's society—and now her youth was departing, she was twenty-nine, and she had never heard a man speak words of love, or felt his arms about her, or the sweetness of his lips on hers.
When they came to Odiam, she told Reuben what she had heard about Robert.
"Would you believe it, he has a hundred sheep—and a man working under him—and money coming in quite easy now. It wur hard at first, Bessie says, and he wur in tedious heart over it all, but he pulled through his bad times, and now he's doing valiant."
"And who has he got to thank fur it, I'd lik to know? Who taught him how to run a farm, and work, and never spare himself and pull things through? There he wur, wud no sperrit in him, grudging every ströake he did fur Odiam. If I hadn't kept him to it, where 'ud he be now?"
News of Richard came a few months later. He was heard of as a barrister on the Southern Circuit, and defended a gipsy on trial for turnip-stealing at Lewes. Rumours of him began to spread in the neighbourhood—he was doing well, Anne Bardon was working for him, and he was likely to be a credit to her. At the Cocks he was the subject of much respectful comment, and for the first time Reuben found himself bathed in glory reflected from one of his children. He could not help feeling proud of him, but wished he did not owe anything to the Bardons.
"Tedious argumentatious liddle varmint he wur—I'm not surprised as he's turned a lawyer. And he had good training fur it, too. There's naun to sharpen the wits lik a farmer's life, and I kept him at it, tough and rough, though he'd have got away if he cud. Many's the time I've wopped him near a jelly fur being a lazy-bones, and particular, which you can't be and a lawyer too. But I reckon he thinks it's all that Bardon woman's doing."
A few weeks later Richard wrote himself, breaking the silence of years. Success had made him feel more kindly towards his father. He forgave the frustrations and humiliations of his youth, and enquired after his brothers and sisters and the progress of the old farm. Anne Bardon had kept him fairly well posted in Backfield history, but though he knew of Reuben's unlucky marriage and of the foot-and-mouth catastrophe, he had evidently lost count of absconding sons, for he seemed to think Pete had run away too, which Reuben considered an unjustifiable aspersion on his domestic order. However, the general tone of his letter was conciliatory, and his remarks on the cattle-plague "most präaper."
As for himself, his life had been full of hard work and the happiness of endeavour crowned at last by success. Anne Bardon he referred to as an angel, which made Reuben chuckle grimly. He had already had a brief, though he was called to the bar only two years ago—which struck his father as very slow business.
He also gave news of Albert, but not good news. He had kept more or less in touch with his brother, and had done what he could to help him, yet Albert had made a mess of his literary life, partly through incapacity, partly through dissipation. He had wasted his money and neglected his chances, and his friends could do little for him. Richard had come more than once to the rescue, but it was impossible to give real help to one of his weak nature—also Richard was still poor, and anxious to pay off his debts to Anne Bardon.
"I reckon," said Reuben, "as how they'd all have been better off if they'd stayed at home."
Soon afterwards a letter came from Albert, asking for money, but again Reuben forbade any notice to be taken of it. For one thing he could not afford to help anyone, for another he would not even in years of plenty have helped a renegade like Albert. His blood still boiled when he remembered the boy's share in his political humiliation. He had shamed his father and his father's farm. Let him rot!
So Albert's letter remained unanswered—Caro felt that Reuben was unjust. She had grown very critical of him lately, and a smarting dislike coloured her judgments. After all, it was he who had driven everybody to whatever it was that had disgraced him. He was to blame for Robert's theft, for Albert's treachery, for Richard's base dependence on the Bardons, for George's death, for Benjamin's disappearance, for Tilly's marriage, for Rose's elopement—it was a heavy load, but Caro put the whole of it on Reuben's shoulders, and added, moreover, the tragedy of her own warped life. He was a tyrant, who sucked his children's blood, and cursed them when they succeeded in breaking free.
Caro had been much unhappier since Rose's flight. She had loved her in an erratic envious way, and Rose's gaiety and flutters of generosity had done much to brighten her humdrum life. Now she was left to her brooding. She felt lonely and friendless. Once or twice she went over to Grandturzel, but the visits were always difficult to manage, and somehow the sight of her sister's happiness made her sore without enlivening her.
It was only lately that her longing for love and freedom had become a torment. Up till a year or two ago her desires had been merely wistful. Now a restless hunger gnawed at her heart, setting her continually searching after change and brightness. She had come to hate her household duties and the care of the little boys. She wanted to dance—dance—dance—to dance at fairs and balls, to wear pretty clothes, and be admired and courted. Why should she not have these things? She was not so ugly as many girls who had them. It was cruel that she should never have been allowed to know a man, never allowed to enjoy herself or have her fling. Even the sons of the neighbouring farmers had been kept away from her—by her father, greedy for her work. Tilly, by a lucky chance, had found a man, but lucky chances never came to Caro. She saw herself living out her life as a household drudge, dying an old maid, all coarsened by uncongenial work, all starved of love, all sick of, yet still hungry for, life.
Sometimes she would be overwhelmed by self-pity, and would weep bitterly over whatever task she was doing at the time, so that her tears were quite a usual sauce to pies and puddings if only Reuben had known it.
The year passed, and the new year came, showing the farm still on the upward struggle, with everyone hard at work, and no one, except Reuben, enjoying it particularly. Luck again favoured Odiam—the lambing of that spring was the best for years, and as the days grew longer the furrows bloomed with tender green sproutings, and hopes of another good harvest ran high.
Caro watched the year bud and flower—May came and creamed the hedges with blossom and rusted the grass with the first heats. Then June whitened the fields with big moon-daisies and frothed the banks with chervil and fennel. The evenings were tender, languorous, steeped in the scent of hay. They hurt Caro with their sweetness, so that she scarcely dared lift her eyes to the purpling twilight sky, or breathe the wind that swept up heavy with hay and roses from the fields. July did nothing to heal her—its yellow, heat-throbbing dawns smote her with despair—its noons were a long-drawn ache, and when in the evening hay and dust and drooping chervil troubled the air with shreds and ghosts of scent, something almost akin to madness would twist her heart.
She felt as one whose memory calls and yet has nothing to remember, whose thoughts run to and fro and yet has nothing to think of, whose hopes pile themselves, and yet is hopeless, whose love cries out from the depths, and yet is loveless.
One evening at the beginning of August she wandered out of the kitchen for a breath of fresh air in the garden before going up to bed. Her head ached, and her cheeks burned from the fire. She did not know it, but the flush and fever made her nearly beautiful. She was not a bad-looking woman, though a trifle too dark and heavy-featured, and now the glow on her cheeks and the restless brilliancy of her eyes had kindled her almost into loveliness.
She picked one or two roses that drooped untended against the fence, she held them to her breast, and the tears came into her eyes. It was nearly dark, and the lustreless cobalt sky held only one star—Aldebaran, red above Boarzell's firs. A puff of wind came from the west, and with it a snatch of song. Someone was singing on the Moor, and the far-away voice wove itself into the web of trouble and yearning that dimmed her heart.
She moved down to the gate and leaned over it, while her eyes roved the twilight unseeing. The voice on the Moor swelled clearer. It was a man's voice, low-pitched and musical: