BOOK III

THE ELDER CHILDREN

§ 1.

For some time after Naomi's death Reuben was sick with grief. Her going had been so cruel, so unexpected--and he could not forget how they had found her, her eyelashes wetted with tears.

He also missed her in the house--her soft pale face and gentle ways. He forgot the sallowness and the peevishness of later years, and pictured her always with creamy roseal skin and timid voice. He was the only one who missed her. Mrs. Backfield's softer feelings seemed to have been atrophied by hard work--she grew daily more and more like a machine; the children were too young to care much, and Harry was incapable of regret. However, the strange thing about Harry was that he did indeed seem to miss someone, but not Naomi. For the first time since little Fanny's death he began to ask for her, and search for her about the house--"Where's the pretty baby?--oh, save the pretty baby!" he would wail--"she's gone, she's gone--the pretty baby's gone."

Reuben, as was usual with him, tried to drown sorrow in hard work. He spent his whole day either in the yard or in the fields or out on Boarzell. He was digging a ditch round his new land, to let off the winter rain, and throughout the cool November damps he was on the Moor, watching the sunset's fiery glow behind the gorse, seeing the red clay squash and crumble thickly under his spade--spouting out drops of blood. In time all this fire and blood brought him back into his old purpose. Gradually the lust of conquest drove away regret. He had no more cause for self-reproach than an officer who loses a good soldier in battle. It is the fortune of war. And Naomi had not died without accomplishing her work and giving him men to help him in the fight.

The young Backfields were beginning to grow into individualities. Albert, the eldest, was eight, and showed certain tokens of a wilful nature, which had not much chance where his father was concerned. Strange fits of dreaminess alternated with vigorous fits of passion. He was a difficult child to manage, for in addition to his own moods he had a certain corrupting influence over his more docile brothers. Reuben already kept him at work most of the day--either at the village school, or scaring birds from the orchard or the grain fields.

Robert and Peter also did their share, feeding fowls, weeding vegetables. Robert was a stolid, well-behaved child, a trifle uninteresting, but hard-working and obedient. Pete was Reuben's delight--a wonderfully sturdy little fellow, who often amazed his father and Beatup by his precocious feats of strength. To amuse them he would sometimes shoulder Beatup's tools, or pick up a bag of chicken-meal with his teeth--he could even put his back against a young calf and prevent it entering a gate or reaching its stall. Reuben was careful not to let him strain himself, but he loved to handle his son's arms and shoulders, feeling the swell of the muscles under the skin. He even taught him the rudiments of boxing; he had had some practice himself as a boy in the Fair sparring booth, and though of late years he had been too busy to keep it up, he was a good teacher for little Pete, who could soon lick all his brothers and even deliver respectable punishment on Beatup's nether limbs. Richard at the age of six was not of any great agricultural value, but at the village school he outshone the elder boys. Sometimes he gave Reuben anxious moments, for the smell of the midden now and then made him sick, which was scarcely a hopeful sign.

The younger children were to their father so many bundles--meek and mute, but good to count as they sat at table with porridge bowls and staring eyes. It never occurred to him to pick any of them up and caress them. Indeed they had no very distinct personalities apart from Odiam, though Tilly sometimes looked uncomfortably like Naomi.

§ 2.

Towards the end of '53, Reuben bought a pedigree bull at Rye market. He knew that he could increase his importance and effectiveness in the neighbourhood if he started as a cattle-breeder, and there was also a sound profit to be made by the animal's hiring fees. The next year he bought ten acres more of Boarzell for grass.

He had now spent the whole of Naomi's dowry, and knew that he was not likely to get anything more out of old Gasson, whose housekeeper had during the last year smartly married him. However, he felt that the money had been laid out to the very best advantage, for Odiam was paying its way, and had, besides, of late become the most important farm in the neighbourhood except Grandturzel. Reuben watched Grandturzel jealously, though he was careful to hide his feelings. It had the advantage of forty acres of Boarzell, granted by the commissioners. Luckily old Realf was not very enterprising.

In spite of the farm's new activities, he found that he could still manage without engaging fresh labour. The odds and ends of work which his boys took off him and Beatup left them free to attack the bigger enterprises. And as Odiam grew the children would grow. Even now they were all impressed for service, except little George, who was delicate and, moreover, subject to fits. Their work was varied--they scared birds from the crops, fed the poultry, collected the eggs, drove the cows to and from pasture, fed the pigs, ran errands to the neighbouring farms. In course of time Albert learned milking, and could saddle old Crump the roan, or put him into the gig.

Then, in the house, the little girls were useful. Mrs. Backfield was not so energetic as she used to be. She had never been a robust woman, and though her husband's care had kept her well and strong, her frame was not equal to Reuben's demands; after fourteen years' hard labour, she suffered from rheumatism, which though seldom acute, was inclined to make her stiff and slow. It was here that Caro and Tilly came in, and Reuben began to appreciate his girls. After all, girls were needed in a house--and as for young men and marriage, their father could easily see that such follies did not spoil their usefulness or take them from him. Caro and Tilly helped their grandmother in all sorts of ways--they dusted, they watched pots, they shelled peas and peeled potatoes, they darned house-linen, they could even make a bed between them.

Needless to say there was not much playtime at Odiam.

§ 3.

During the next ten years the farm went forward by strides. Reuben bought seven more acres of Boarzell in '59, and fourteen in '60. He also bought a horse-rake, and threshed by machinery. He was now a topic in every public-house from Northiam to Rye. His success and the scant trouble he took to conciliate those about him had made him disliked. Unprosperous farmers spoke windily of "spoiling his liddle game." Ditch and Ginner even suggested to Vennal that they should club together and buy thirty acres or so of the Moor themselves, just to spite him. However, money was too precious to throw away even on such an object, especially as everyone felt sure that Backfield would sooner or later "bust himself" in his dealings with Boarzell.

After all, he had only fifty-six acres out of a possible three hundred, and had not made much profit out of them, judging by the austerity of ways at Odiam. Horse-rakes and steam-threshers could not blind his neighbours to the absence of muslin curtains and butcher's meat. "And the way he's working them pore childer, too ... all of 'em hard at it from mornun till evenun, surelye ... enough to make their mother turn in her grave, pore girl ... not but wot she hadn't every reason to expect it, considering the way he treated her," etc. etc.

At Flightshot Manor comment was more enlightened.

"I can't understand, papa," said Anne Bardon, "how you can go on selling land to that odious Backfield."

"Well, my dear, he pays me good money for it, and I'm in precious need of that just now."

"But in time the whole Moor will fall into his hands--see if it doesn't. And he's a Tory, a reactionary. It would be a dreadful thing for the parish if he became a big landowner."

Anne's politics were the most vigorous in the family.

"My dear, if anyone else would buy the Moor, I'd be only too pleased to sell it to them. But so far there hasn't been a nibble. Backfield's the only man who has the temerity to think he could make anything out of a desert like Boarzell, and I must say I admire his pluck."

"It's only because he has no imagination. He's a thick-skinned brute, and I hate the idea of a man like that becoming powerful. Why don't you give the land back to the parish? Acknowledge that grandpapa's inclosure has failed, and let the people have their common again."

"It's all very well for you to talk, Anne," said her brother Ralph, "you have your godmamma's fortune, and don't need to think of money. But papa and I have to think of it, and after all we're making a little, a very little, out of Boarzell--just enough to keep up the Village Institute. As time goes on, and Backfield gets richer and more ambitious, we shall sell larger pieces at higher rates, and then we'll be able to repair those wretched cottages at Socknersh, and do a lot more besides."

"I think it would be better if you gave up the Institute and let the cottages tumble down. It's no good trying to raise the people if you leave a man like Backfield loose among them."

"I think you exaggerate his importance, and fail to realise that of the improvements we are making in Peasmarsh. I can't help thinking, as most of the people round here think, that Backfield will, as they call it, 'bust himself' over the Moor. After all he's not educated, and an uneducated man is hampered even in the least intellectual undertakings."

"I do not agree with you, papa."

Anne turned away from her father and brother, and walked towards the window. She disliked arguing, she thought it undignified. She was a tall woman, about twenty-eight years old, severely yet rather imposingly dressed, with a clear complexion, grey eyes, and a nose which was called by her friends aquiline, by her enemies hooked. She despised the Squire in his truck with Odiam, yet she was too fair-minded not to see the considerations that weighed him. And even she, as she gazed from the window, at the southward heap of Boarzell--stony, gorsy, heather-shagged, and fir-crowned--could not withhold a certain admiration from the man who expected of his own arm and tool to subdue it.

§ 4.

The Crimean War had meant the stoppage for a time of Russian grain supplies, and Reuben had taken every advantage of this. He had some forty acres under grain cultivation, mostly oats, but also some good kinds of wheat and barley. In rotation with these were peas and clover, turnips and mangolds. He also had twenty acres of hops--the rest was pasture for his neat Dutch and Jersey cows, which, with the orchard and poultry yard, were still the most profitable if not the most glorious of his exploits. The bull had not proved so splendid an investment as he had hoped; the farmers of the district could not afford big hiring fees, and at present his space was too limited for extensive breeding of his own stock. However, he exhibited Alfriston King at Lewes Agricultural Show, and won a first prize for him. The next year he sold him to a big cattle breeder down Horeham way, and bought a cheaper but more serviceable animal for his own business.

His sons were now growing up--Albert was nearly eighteen, and Peter, though a year younger, looked a full-grown man, with his immense build and dark hairy skin. Pete was still the most satisfactory of Reuben's children, he had a huge and glad capacity for work, and took a real interest in Odiam's progress, though it was not his life, as it was his father's. It was strange, Reuben thought, that none of the other boys seemed to have a glimmer of enthusiasm. Though they had grown up under the shadow of Boarzell, and from their earliest childhood taken part in the struggle, they seemed still to think more about the ordinary things of young men's lives than the great victory before them. It was disappointing. Of course one expected it of girls, but Reuben's heart ached a little because the men children on whom he had set such hope and store cared so little about what was life itself to him. It is true that Robert worked well, nearly as well as Pete, but that was only because he was of a docile, tractable nature. He did not share his father's dreams--Boarzell to him was only a piece of waste ground with some trees on it.

As for Albert and Richard, they did not even work well, and they grumbled and shirked as much as they dared. They had ambitions, but so utterly at variance with Odiam's as to be worse than none. Albert wanted to be a poet and Richard to be a gentleman.

What there was in either Reuben or Naomi to make a poet of their eldest son would be hard to say. Perhaps it was the glow of their young love, so golden and romantic during the first year of their marriage. If so, there was something of bitter irony in this survival and transmutation of it. Odiam was no place for poets, and Reuben tried by every means in his power to knock the poetry out of Albert. It was not the actual poetry he objected to so much as the vices which went with it--forgetfulness, unpracticalness, negligence. Albert would sometimes lose quite half an hour's work by falling into a dream, he also played truant on occasions, and would disappear for hours, indeed now and then for a day or more, wandering in the fields and spinneys, tasting the sharp sweetness of the dawn and the earth-flavoured sleep of the night.

For though he did not care for Odiam he loved the country round it, and made a wonderland and a dreamland of it. He did not see in Boarzell Robert's tree-capped waste, though neither did he see his father's enemy and heart's delight. He saw instead a kind of enchanted ground, full of mysteries of sun and moon, full of secrets that were sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying. It seemed to have a soul and a voice, a low voice, hoarse yet sweet; and its soul was not the soul of a man or of a beast, but the soul of a fetch, some country sprite, that clumped, and yet could skip ... he used to feel it skipping with him in the evening wind when the dusk made the heather misty round his knees ... but he knew that it danced heavy-footed round the farm at night, clumping, clumping, like a clod.

Reuben had no sympathy with these fancies when they took his son out of hard-working common sense into idle-handed, wander-footed dreams, or when perhaps he found them scribbled on the back of his corn accounts. He did not spare the rod, but Albert had all the rather futile obstinacy of weak-willed people, and could be neither persuaded nor frightened out of his dreams.

However, though he was a great trouble to his father, he was not so irritating as Richard. He had the advantage that one could lay hands on him and vent one's fury in blows, but Richard had an extraordinary knack of keeping just on the safe side of vengeance. For one thing he was the best educated of all Reuben's children, and the result of education had been not so much to fill his mind as to sharpen his wits to a formidable extent. For another, he loathed to be beaten, and used all his ingenuity to avoid it. Reuben could flog Albert for going off to the Moor when he was told to clean out the pigsties, but he could not flog Richard for being sick at his first spadeful. As a matter of fact he did actually perpetrate this cruelty when Richard's squeamishness caused him any gross inconvenience, but there was no denying that the boy was on the whole successful in avoiding his dues.

Richard had been the brightest light in the Misses Harmans' school. His teachers had often praised him, and on one occasion suggested in their ignorance that he should take up a more intellectual trade than farming. Then when the Curate-in-Charge had inspected the school he had been struck by Richard's clever, thoughtful answers, and had, for some months after his leaving, lent him books. Reuben on discovering this, had gone over at once to the parsonage, and with all the respect due to a Minister of the Established Church, had informed Mr. Munk that he didn't want no nonsense put into his boy's head, and spades and spuds were for Richard's hands, not books.

"I'm going to mäake a farmer of un, your reverence."

"But he says he doesn't want to be a farmer."

"That's why I've got to _mäake_ un one, surelye."

§ 5.

Reuben had sold Alfriston King for two hundred pounds, and this new capital made possible another enterprise--he bought twenty head of sheep. For some time he had considered the advantages of keeping sheep. It was quite likely that his new land on Boarzell would be mostly pasture, at all events for some time to come, and sheep, properly managed, ought to be a good source of revenue as well as a hall-mark of progress. He did not want Odiam to be a farm of one idea; his father had kept it ambitionlessly to grass, but Reuben saw grain-growing, dairy-keeping, cattle-breeding, sheep-rearing, hops, and fruit, and poultry as branches of its greatness.

He decided that the sheep should be Richard's special charge--they, at all events, could not make him sick; and if he was kept hard at work at something definite and important it would clear his mind of gentility nonsense. Reuben also had rather a pathetic hope that it might stir up his ambition.

Richard grumbled of course, but discreetly. His brothers were inclined to envy him--Albert saw more romance and freedom in keeping sheep than in digging roots or cleaning stables, Pete was jealous of an honour the recipient did not appreciate, Robert and Jemmy would have liked a new interest in their humdrum lives. Richard was initiated into the mysteries of his art by a superannuated shepherd from Doozes, only too glad of a little ill-paid casual labour.

None of the Backfield boys was ever paid a penny of wages. Reuben's idea in employing them was to save money, besides he feared that his young men with full pockets might grow independent. It was essential to his plan that he should keep them absolutely dependent on him, otherwise they might leave home, marry without his consent, or at best fritter away their--or rather his--time by running after girls or drinking at pubs. It is true that now and then stalwart Pete made a few shillings in the sparring-booth at the Fair, but Reuben could trust Pete in a way he could not trust the other boys, so he did not offer much objection.

Pete had once given a shilling to Richard, who had bought with it a second-hand Latin grammar, which he kept carefully hidden under his pillow by night, and in his pocket by day. He had an idea that the mastery of its obscurities would give him a key to freedom, but he had had so far little opportunity of studying it, as he worked and slept with his brothers. Richard did not extort the same sympathy for his rebellion as Albert. Albert had a certain influence over Pete and Jemmy, which he maintained partly by a definite charm of personality, partly by telling them tales after they were in bed at night. They had never betrayed his copy of Byron, also bought with a shilling from Pete, but Richard dared not trust them with his Lilly. Some day he would manage to irritate them--show his contempt for their bearish manners, scoff at their talk, or otherwise insult them--and they would deliver him over, grammar and all, into his father's hands.

His new occupation, however, gave him undreamed-of opportunities. One of the advantages of shepherding was that it alternated periods of strenuous work with others of comparative idleness. During these Richard would pore over his "hic, hæc, hoc," and parse and analyse on bits of waste paper. He learned very quickly, and was soon casting about for means to buy a Greek grammar. He felt that his father could not possibly keep him at the farm if he knew both Latin and Greek.

Thus Richard lived through the feasts and fasts of the Shepherd's Year. In spring there were hazy, drowsy days when he sat with his book under the hedge--some hole close by where he could stuff it if Reuben came that way--now and then lifting an eye to the timid, foolish faces buried in the sun-stained meadow-grass. Then later came the dipping, the collie Havelock barking and blustering at one end of the bath, while old Comfort poked the animals through it with his crook, and Richard received them terrified and evil-smelling at the other side. He grew furious because his hands were all sore and blistered with the dip. Reuben laughed at him grossly--"Yur granny shall mäake you a complexion wash, surelye!"

Then came the shearing, that queen of feasts. The local band of shearers called at Odiam for the first time, and were given an inaugural welcome. Richard sulked at the honour paid him as shepherd--he felt it was indeed a case of King among Sweepers. However, in point of fact, he enjoyed the actual shearing well enough. It was a warm July day, the air full of the scent of hayseed; the sheep came hustling and panting into the shearing-pens, and the shearers stripped them with songs and jokes and shouts of "Shear close, boys!" There was also ale in buckets, brought out by a girl hired for the occasion, who was stout and pretty and smiled at Richard. And it was good to watch the yellowish piles of fleece grow at one's knees, and comical to see the poor shorn sheep stagger up from the ground, all naked and confused, hardly knowing themselves, it seemed.

When the shearing was done there was supper in the kitchen at Odiam, with huge drinks of "black ram," and sheep-shearing songs such as "Come, all my jolly boys," and "Here the rose-buds in June." Also the Sussex Whistling Song:

"There was an old Farmer in Sussex did dwell, And he had a bad wife, as many knew well."

But Richard did not enjoy the supper as much as the shearing, for most of the men over-ate themselves, and all of them over-drank. Also the pretty serving-girl forsook him for Albert, who on one occasion was actually seen to put his arm round her waist, and hold it there till a scowl from his father made him drop it.

Then in winter came the lambing, which is the shepherd's Lent. Richard and the old man from Doozes kept long vigils in the lambing hut, and those nights and days were to young Backfield dreams of red, fuggy solitude, the stillness broken only by the slip of coals in the brazier, or the faint bleating of the ewes outside--while sometimes mad Harry's fiddle wept down the silences of Boarzell.

Richard began to take a new interest in his flock--hitherto they had merely struck him as grotesque. Their pale silly eyes, their rough, tic-ridden fleeces, their scared repulsiveness after the dipping, their bewildered nakedness after the shearing, had filled him either with amusement or disgust; but now, when he saw them weakly lick the backs of their new-born lambs, while the lambs' little tails quivered, and tiny, entreating sounds came from their mouths, he found in them a new beauty, which he had found nowhere else in his short, hard life--the beauty of an utterly loving, tender, and helpless thing.

He had his Lilly with him in the hut, for there were long hours of idleness as well as of anxiety, but he was careful to hide away the book if Reuben came to inspect; for he knew that his father would have sat through the empty hours in concentration and expectancy, his ears straining for the faintest sound. He would have thought of nothing but the ewes, and he looked to everyone to think of nothing else. But Richard studied Latin, and the old Doozes man put in plenty of light, easily startled sleep.

§ 6.

Towards the end of February there was a period of intense cold, and some heavy falls of snow. Snow was rare in that south-east corner, and all farm-work was to a certain extent dislocated. Reuben would have liked to spread blankets over his corn-fields and put shirts on his cattle. Adverse weather conditions never failed to stir up his inborn combativeness to its fiercest. His sons trembled as his brain raged with body-racking plans for fighting this new move of nature's. Richard was glad to be away from farmyard exertions, most of which struck him as absurd. He was now busy with the last of his lambing, the snow blew against the hut from the north-east, piling itself till nothing was to be seen from that quarter but a white lump. Inside was a crimson stuffiness, as the fumes of the brazier found their way slowly out of the little tin chimney. Sometimes before the brazier a motherless lamb would lie.

There was a lamb there on the last evening in February, its tiny body and long, weak legs all rosed over with the glow. Above it Richard crouched, grammar in hand. There had been a lull in the snowstorm during the afternoon, but now once more the wind was piping and screaming over the fields and the whiteness heaping itself against the wall.

Suddenly he heard a knock at the door, and before he could answer, it flew open, and the icy blast, laden with snow, rushed in, and whirled round the hut, fluttering the pages of Lilly's grammar and the fleece of the lamb.

"Shut that door!" cried Richard angrily, and then realised that he was speaking to a lady.

She had shut the door, and stood against it, a tall, rather commanding figure, in spite of her snow-covered garments and dishevelled hair.

"Oh--ma'am!" said Richard, rising to his feet, and recognising Miss Anne Bardon.

"I trust I'm not in the way," she said rather coldly, "but the storm is so violent, and the drifts are forming so fast, that I hope you will not mind my sheltering here."

Richard was embarrassed. Her fine words disconcerted him. He had often watched Miss Bardon from a respectful distance, but had never spoken to her before.

"You're welcome, ma'am," he replied awkwardly, and offered her his chair.

She sat down and held her feet to the brazier. He noticed that her shoes were pulped with wet, and the water was pouring off her skirts to the floor. He did not dare speak, and she evidently did not want to. He felt the colour mounting to his face; he knew that he was dirty and unkempt, for he had been hours in the hut--his hands were grimed from the brazier, and he wore an old crumpled slop. She probably despised him.

Suddenly he noticed that the wet of her garments was dropping on the lamb. He hastily gathered it up in his arms.

"What a dear little creature!"

She spoke quite graciously, and Richard felt his spirits revive.

"His mother's dead, and I have to be looking after him, surelye."

"Poor little thing!"

She asked him a few questions about the lambing, then:

"You're one of Mr. Backfield's sons, are you not?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm Richard."

"I've seen you before--in church, I think. Are you your father's shepherd?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Again I hope I am not in your way. I've been over to see the carter's widow at Socknersh--he died two days ago, you know, and she hasn't a penny to go on with. Then when I saw the storm coming I thought I would take a short cut home across the fields; I was caught after all--and here I am!"

She smiled suddenly as she finished speaking. It was a sweet smile, rather aloof, but lighting up the whole of her face with a sudden flash of youth and kindness. Richard gazed at her, half fascinated, and mumbled lamely--"you're welcome, ma'am."

She suddenly caught sight of his Latin grammar.

"That's a strange thing to see in a shepherd's hand."

He felt encouraged, for he had wanted her to see the difference between him and an ordinary shepherd, but had been too awkward to show her.

"I've had it three months--I can construe a bit of Horace now."

"Acquam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem," said Anne.

"Onmes eodem cogimen," said Richard, and blushed.

There was silence, but not of the former discouraging sort. Richard was even bold enough to break it:

"I never knew ladies cud speak Latin."

"Some can. I was educated with my brother, you know, and when we construed Horace I was always five or six pages ahead. What made you want to learn Latin?"

"I want to git out o' this."

"Out of your farm duties, you mean?"

"Yes."

"But surely your father would let you adopt some other profession if he knew you did not like this one?"

Richard shook his head.

"He wants justabout all of us--we've got to push on the farm."

"Yes--I know he is ambitious, but surely he doesn't want unwilling helpers."

"Oh, he döan't mind who it is, so long as the work's done."

"And don't you care about the farm?"

"I, ma'am?--no. I want to be a gentleman."

Anne was growing interested. This farm boy was gloriously unlike others of his kind that she had met.

"And you think that if you learn Latin, it'll help you be a gentleman someday?"

"Yes--and Greek, when I've adone wud the Latin."

"Have you many books?"

"No--only this one."

"Then I must lend you some books."

Richard flushed with pleasure. After all he was not acquitting himself so badly with this fine lady. They talked together for a few more minutes, the boy trying to clip his speech like hers. He noticed how much shorter and crisper it was than his--while he said "döan't," she could say "don't" twice.

They were interrupted by the entrance of the Doozes shepherd, accompanied by a swirl of flakeless wind. The old man was astonished and rather scandalised to find Anne Bardon. She looked positively rakish sitting there in her steaming clothes, her hat over one ear, her hair in wisps, and her face more animated and girlish than any of his kind had ever seen it.

Old Comfort scraped and mumbled, and fussed over the lamb, which the two Latinists had entirely forgotten. Then Richard, seeing himself free and the sky clear, offered to help her through the drifts to Flightshot. She let him accompany her as far as the edge of the Manor estate, where the going was no longer dangerous.

"Your servant, ma'am," he said, as he opened the gate; and she answered classically:

"Vale!"

§ 7.

On the whole, the most unsatisfactory of Reuben's sons was Albert. Richard might be more irritating, but Albert had that knack of public sinning which gives a certain spectacular offensiveness to the most trivial faults. Any trouble between Reuben and his eldest son invariably spread itself into the gossip of ten farms; the covert misdoings of and private reckonings with the other boys gave place to tempestuous scandals, windy stormings, in which Albert contrived to grab the general sympathy, and give a decorative impression of martyrdom.

At the same time he tantalised Reuben with vague hints of enthusiasm, sometimes almost making him think that, undependable and careless as he was, he had in him certain germs of understanding. But these were mere promises that were never fulfilled. Albert would whet Reuben's hopes by asking him questions about the country round: Why was such and such a farm called Stilliand's Tower or Puddingcake? Why were there about six places called Iden Green within a square of twenty miles? Was there any story to account for the names of Mockbeggar, Golden Compasses, Castweasel, or Gablehook? But directly Reuben digressed from these general questions to the holy particulars of Odiam and Boarzell, he would lose his interest and at last even his attention, escaping into some far-wandering dream.

Reuben could not understand how his sons could care so little about that which was all things to him. He had brought them up to his ambitions--they were not like Naomi, thrust into them in later, less-impressionable years. He had not been weak with them, and not been cruel--yet only Pete was at all satisfactory. However, he was not the man to sit down and despair before his obstacles. He made the best of things as they were--ground work out of his lads, since he could not grind enthusiasm, and trusted to the future to stir up a greater hope. He somehow could not believe that his boys could go through all their lives not caring for Odiam.

Albert continued weakly and picturesquely to offend. He was now nearly twenty-one, and had begun to run after girls in a stupid way. Reuben, remembering how sternly he had deprived himself of pleasures of this kind, ruthlessly spoiled his son's philanderings ... but the crime he could not forgive, which set the keystone on his and the boy's antagonism, was the publication of some verses by Albert in the _Rye Advertiser_.

To begin with, it was a Liberal paper, and though the verses were of a strictly non-political kind, dealing chiefly with Amelia's eyes, it seemed to Reuben shockingly unprincipled to defile oneself in any way with Radical print. But even without that the thing was criminal and offensive.

"I wöan't have no hemmed poetry in my family!" stormed Reuben, for Albert had as usual stage-managed a "scene." "You've got your work to do, and you'll justabout do it."

"But fäather, it didn't täake up any of my time, writing that poem. I wrote it at my breakfast one mornun two months ago----"

"Yes, that's it--instead of spending twenty minnut at your breakfast, you spend forty. You idle away my time wud your hemmed tricks, and I wöan't have it, I tell you, I wöan't have it. Lord! when I wur your age, I wur running the whole of this farm alone--every ströak of work, I did it. I didn't go wasting time over my meals, and writing rubbidge fur low-down Gladstone päapers. Now döan't you go sassing me back, you young good-fur-nothing, or I'll flay you, surelye!"

Albert could not help a grudging admiration of his father. Reuben could be angry and fling threats, and yet keep at the same time a certain splendour, which no violence or vulgarity could dim. The boy, in spite of his verses, which were execrable enough, had a poet's eye for the splendid, and he could not be blind to the qualities of his father's tyranny, even though that tyranny crushed him at times. Reuben was now forty-three; a trifle heavier in build, perhaps, but otherwise as fine and straight a man as he had been at twenty. His clear brown skin, keen eyes, thick coal-black hair, his height, his strength, his dauntless spirit, could not fail to impress one in whom the sense of life and beauty was developing. Albert even once began a poem to his father:

"You march across the mangold field, And all our limbs do shake...."

But somehow found the subject more difficult to grapple than the fascinations of Amelia.

With Richard things were different. He despised Reuben as bestial, and sometimes jeopardised his skin by nearly showing his contempt. He now had a peculiar friendship with Anne Bardon. They had met accidentally a second time, and deliberately half a dozen more. In Richard Anne had made a discovery--he appealed to her imagination, which ran on severe lines. She sympathised with his ambition to break free from the grind and grossness of Odiam, and resolved to help him as much as she could. She lent him books, and guided him with her superior knowledge and education.

Their meetings were secret, from her family as well as his. But they were dignified--there was no scurrying like rabbits. Richard's work kept him mostly on the Flightshot borders of Odiam, and often the grave Anne would walk down to the hedge, and help him construe Tacitus or parse from Ovid. There was an old tree by the boundary fence, in the hollow of which she put new books for him to find, and into which he would return those he had finished. She was very careful to maintain the right attitude towards him; he was always her humble servant, he never forgot to call her "ma'am."

But the disciple of Anne Bardon could aspire to be master among other men. Richard began to startle and amuse his family by strange new ways. He took to washing his neck every morning, and neatly combed his hair. He cut up an old shirt into pocket-handkerchiefs. He began to model his speech on Miss Bardon's--clipping it, and purging it ridiculously. Reuben would roar with laughter.

"'Pray am I to remove this dirt?'--Did you ever hear such präaperness and denticalness?--all short and soft lik the Squire himself. You wash out all that mucky sharn, my lad, if that's wot you mean."

§ 8.

Robert Backfield was a member of Peasmarsh choir. He had a good, ringing bass voice, which had attracted the clerk's notice, and though Reuben disapproved of his son's having any interests outside Odiam, he realised that as a good Tory he ought to support the Church--especially as the hours of the practices did not clash with Robert's more important engagements.

Peasmarsh choir consisted of about eighteen boys and girls, with an accompaniment of cornets, flutes, and a bass viol--the last played by an immensely aged drover from Coldblow, who, having only three fingers on his left hand, had to compromise, not always tunefully, with the score. The singing was erratic. Eighteen fresh young voices could not fail to give a certain pleasure, but various members had idiosyncrasies which did not make for the common weal--such as young Ditch, who never knew till he had begun to sing whether his voice would be bass or alto, all intermediary pitches being somehow unattainable--or Rosie Hubble from Barline, who was always four bars behind the rest--or even young Robert himself, who in crises of enthusiasm was wont to sing so loud that his voice drowned everyone else's, or in a wild game of follow-my-leader led the whole anthem to destruction.

Robert loved these choir practices and church singings. Though he never complained of his hard work, he was unconsciously glad of a change from the materialism of Odiam. The psalms with their outbreathings of a clearer life did much to purge even his uncultured soul of its muddlings, the hymns with their sentimental farawayness opened views into which he would gaze enchanted as into a promised land. He would come in tired and throbbing from the fields, scrape as much mud as possible off his boots, put on his Sunday coat, and tramp through the dusk to the clerk's house ... the little golden window gleaming to him across Peasmarsh street and pond was the foretaste of the evening's sweetness.

The practices were held in the clerk's kitchen, into which the choristers would crush and huddle. On full attendance nights all elbows touched, and occasionally old Spodgram's bow would be jolted out of his hand, or someone would complain that Leacher was blowing his trumpet down his neck. Afterwards the choristers would wander home in clusters through the fields; the clusters generally split into small groups, and then the groups into couples. The couples would scatter widely, and vex their homes with late returnings.

Robert was first of all part of a cluster which included young Coalbran from Doozes, Tom Sheane from Dinglesden, the two Morfees from Edzell, Emily Ditch, and Bessie Lamb from Eggs Hole. Then in time the company reduced itself to Robert, Emily, and Bessie--and one wonderful night he found himself with Bessie alone. How they had chosen each other he could not say. All he knew was that for sometime she had become woven with the music into his thoughts. She was a poor labourer's daughter, living in a crumbled, rickety cottage on Eggs Hole Farm, helping her mother look after eight young children. She was only seventeen herself, sturdy yet soft, with a mass of hay-coloured hair, and rather a broad face with wistful eyes. Robert thought she was beautiful--but Robert thought that old Spodgram's playing and the choir's singing were beautiful.

Though they were technically a Couple, they never spoke of love. They never even kissed or held each other's hands, however tenderly the velvet darkness called. He told her about his work at Odiam--about the little calf that was born that day, or the trouble he had had, patching the rent in the pigsty, or how the poultry had not taken well to their new food, but preferred something with more sharps in it. She in her turn would tell him how she had washed little Georgie's shirt--taking advantage of a warm day when he could run about naked--how her mother had lamentable hard pains all down her back, how her father had got drunk at the harvest supper and tried to beat her.

Sometimes they looked in the hedges for birds' nests, or watched the rabbits skipping in the dusk. They would gape up at the stars together and call the constellations by names of their own--Orion was "the gurt tree," and Cassiopeia was "the sheep trough," and Pegasus was "the square meadow."

It was all very wonderful and sweet to Robert, and when at last he crept under the sheets in the apple-smelling garret he would dream of him and Bessie wandering in the Peasmarsh fields--or sometimes in those starry meadows where the hedges shone and twinkled with the fruit of constellations, and Charles drove his waggon along a golden road, and sheep ate from a flickering trough under a great tree of lamps.

§ 9.

Bessie tinted the world for Robert like a sunrise. All through the day he carried memories of lightless woods, of fields hushed in the swale, of the smudge of her old purple cotton beside him--of, perhaps, some dim divine moment when his hand had touched hers hanging at her side.

Then winter came, with carol-singing, and the choristers tramped round, lantern-led, from farm to farm. There in the fluttering light outside Kitchenhour, Old Turk, Ellenwhorne, or Edzell, Robert would watch Bessie's chicory-flower eyes under her hood, while the steam of their breath mingled in the frosty air, and they drooped their heads together, singing to each other, only to each other, "Good King Wenceslas," "As Joseph was a-walking," or "In the Fields with their Flocks."

As they were both simple souls, their love only made the words more real. Sometimes it seemed almost as if they could see up in the white glistering field behind the barn, the manger with the baby in it, the mother watching near, and the ox and the ass standing meekly beside them in the straw. Bessie said she felt sure that the shepherds watched their flocks by night in the little old meadow at the corner of Totease ... she once thought she had heard them singing. But she would not go and look.

As the year climbed up again into spring, a tender pity for Bessie mingled with Robert's love. It was not the pity which begets love, but the sweeter kind which is begotten of it. Robert forgot all about his own hard life, the monotonous ruthless grind of work, the absence of all softness, homeliness, or sympathy, the denial of all gaiety and sport. He thought only of Bessie's troubles, and would have given the world to lighten them. He longed to give her some little treat, or a present. But he had no money. For the first time he inwardly rebelled against the system which kept him penniless. None of the boys had any money, except Pete on Fair days--not even Albert, for the _Rye Advertiser_ did not pay its poets. For the first time Robert saw this as unjust.

March blew some warm twilights to Peasmarsh, and the choristers began their summer lingering. Bessie and Robert often took the longer way home by Ellenwhorne--he would not leave her now till they were at her cottage door, and often he would run home hare-footed from Eggs Hole, afraid that he might be shut out of Odiam, and perhaps his precious comradeship discovered and put under the tyrant's ban.

Then came an evening in April, when the air smelled of primroses and young leaves. The choir practice was early, and rifts of sunshine sloped up the clerk's kitchen, linking in one golden slant Robert's dark healthy face just under the ceiling, Bessie's shoulders pressed against his arm, the frail old hands of Joe Hearsfield on his flute, and the warm plum-brown of the bass viol close to the floor. To Robert it was all a dream of holiness and harmony. Old Spodgram confined himself almost entirely to two notes, Miss Hubble insisted on her four bars of arrears, young Ditch extemporised an alto of surprising reediness, and Robert bellowed the last lines of the last verse just as the other choristers were loudly taking in breath preparatory to line three--but the whole thing was to him a foretaste of Paradise and the angels singing ever world without end.

When the practice was over it was still light, and Robert and Bessie turned inevitably along the little bostal that trickles through the fields towards Ramstile. As usual they did not speak, but in each glowed the thought that they had a full two hours to live through together in the mystery of these sorrowless fields.

The sun set as they came to Ellenwhorne. They stood and watched it dip behind the little cluster of roofs and oast-houses in the west. The turrets of the oasts stood out black against the crimson, then suddenly they purpled, faded into their background of night-washed cloud.

The fields were very dark in their low corners, only their high sweeps shimmered in the ghostly lemon glow. Out of the rabbit-warrens along the hedges, from the rims of the woods, ran the rabbits to scuttle and play. Bessie and Robert saw the bob of their white tails through the dusk, and now and then a little long-eared shape.

The boy and girl were still silent. But in the consciousness each had of the other, kindled and spread a strange dear poignancy. They walked side by side through the dusk, now faintly cold. Dew began to tremble and shine on the grass, to pearl the brambles and glimmer on the twigs.

Robert looked sideways at Bessie. She was colourless in the dark, or rather coloured all over with the same soft grey, which gathered up into itself the purple of her gown and the pale web of her hair. In her eyes was a quiver of starlight.

Their feet splashed on the soaking grass, and suddenly Bessie stopped and lifted her shoe:

"It's justabout wet, Robby."

He looked.

"So it be--I shudn't have brought you through all this damp grass. We shud have gone by the lane, I reckon."

"Oh, no," she breathed, and her voice and the half-seen glimmer of her eyes troubled him strangely.

"Lookee, I'll carry you--you mustn't git wet."

She opened her lips to protest, but the sound died on them, for he stooped and swept her up in his arms. She slipped her hand to his neck to steady herself, and they went forward again towards the south.

Bessie was a sturdily built little person, but the weight of her was a rich delight, and if his arms strained, they strained with tenderness as well as with effort. Under them her frock crushed and gave out a fragrance of crumpled cotton, her hand was warm against his neck, and on his cheek tickled her soft hair. The shadows ran towards them from the corners of the field, slipping like ghosts over the grass, and one or two pale stars kindled before them, where the sky dropped into the woods.... An owl lifted his note of sadness, which wandered away over the fields to Ellenwhorne....

Her young face bowed to his neck, and suddenly his lips crept round and lay against the coolness of her cheek. She did not move, and he still walked on, the grass splashing under his feet, the rabbits scampering round him, showing their little cotton-tails in the dark.

Then his mouth stole downwards and groped for hers. Their lips fluttered together like moths. Then suddenly she put her arms round his neck, and strained his head to her, and kissed him and kissed him, with queer little sobs in her throat....

He still walked on through the deepening night and skipping rabbits. He never paused, just carried her and kissed her; and she kissed him, stroking his face with her hands--and all without a word.

At last they reached the lane by Eggs Hole Cottage, which with shimmering star-washed front looked towards the south. He stopped, and she slid to the ground. Then suddenly the words came.

"Oh, my liddle thing! My dear liddle thing ... my sweet liddle thing!"

"Robby, Robby...."

They kissed each other again and again, eagerly like children, but with the tears of men and women in their eyes.

"Robby ... I love you ... I love you so!"

"Oh, you liddle thing!"

They were hungry ... their arms wound about each other and their faces pressed close, now cheek to cheek, now with lips fluttering together in those sweet kisses of youth which have so much of shyness in their passion.

Suddenly a light kindled in the little house. Bessie slipped from him, and ran up the pathway into the dark gape of the door.

§ 10.

In August Reuben bought ten more acres of Boarzell, and the yoke tightened on Odiam. All had now been pressed into service, even the epileptic George. From morning till night feet tramped, hoofs stamped, wheels rolled, backs bent, arms swung. Reuben himself worked hardest of all, for to his actual labour must be added long tramps from one part of the farm to the other to superintend his sons' work. Besides, he would allow nothing really important to be undertaken without him. He must be present when the first scythe swept into the hay, when his wonderful horse-reaper took its first step along the side of the cornfield, he must himself see to the spreading of the hops over the drying furnaces in the oasts, or rise in the cold twinkling hour after midnight to find out how Buttercup was doing with her calf.

Pete made an able and keen lieutenant, but the other boys were still disappointing. It is true that Benjamin worked well and was often smart enough, but he had a roving disposition, which was more dangerous than Albert's, since it led him invariably down to the muddy Rother banks at Rye, where the great ships stood in the water, filling the air with good smells of fish and tar. Jemmy would loaf for hours round the capstans and building-stocks, and the piles of muddy rope that smelled of ooze, and he would talk to the sailormen and fishermen about voyages to the Azores and the Cape or to the wild seas south of the Horn, and would come home prating of sails and smoke-stacks, charts and logs, and other vain things that had nothing to do with Odiam. Reuben remembered that the boy's mother came of a family of ship-builders and sailormen, and he would tremble for Jemmy's allegiance, and punish his truancies twice as severely as Albert's.

Another trial to him now was that Robert seemed half-hearted. Hitherto he had always worked conscientiously and well, even though he had never been smart or particularly keen; but now he seemed to loaf and slack--he dawdled, slipped clear of what he could, and once he actually asked Reuben for wages! This was unheard-of--not one of Reuben's sons had ever dreamed of such a thing before.

"Wages!--wot are you wanting wages fur, young räascal? You're working to save money, not to earn it. You wait till all yon Moor is mine, and Odiam's the biggest farm in Sussex, before you ask fur wages."

Up till then Robert had never troubled much about money. He did not want to buy books like Albert and Richard, neither did he care for drinking in Rye pubs with fishermen like Jemmy. But now everything was changed. He wanted money for Bessie. He wanted to marry her, and he must have money for that, no matter how meanly they started; and also he wanted to give her treats and presents, to cheer the dullness of her life. Reuben had indeed been wise in trying to keep the girls away from his sons!

There are no two such things for sharpening human wits as fullness of love and shortness of cash. Robert's brain was essentially placid and lumbering, but under this double spur it began to work wonders. After much pondering he thought of a plan. It was part of his duties to snare rabbits on Boarzell. Every evening he went round and inspected the traps, killed any little squealing prisoners that were in them, and sold them on market days at Rye. It was after all an easy thing to report and hand over the money for ten rabbits a week, while keeping the price of, say, three more, and any other man would have thought of it sooner.

In this way he managed to do a few little things to brighten Bessie's grey life--and his own too, though he did not know it was grey. Every week he put aside a shilling or two towards the lump sum which was at last to make their marriage possible. It was Reuben's fight for Boarzell on an insignificant scale--though Robert, who had not so much iron in him as his father, could not resist spending money from time to time on unnecessary trifles that would give Bessie happiness. For one thing he discovered that she had never been to the Fair. She had never known the delights of riding on the merry-go-round, throwing balls at Aunt Sally, watching the shooting or the panorama. Robert resolved to take her that autumn, and bought her a pair of white cotton gloves in preparation for the day.

Unluckily, however, he was not made for a career of prolonged fraud, and he ingloriously foundered in that sea of practical details through which the cunning man must steer his schemes. He fixed the number of rabbits to be sold at Rye as ten a week, pocketing the surplus whether it were one or six. This was a pretty fair average, but its invariable occurrence for seven or eight weeks could not fail to strike Reuben, whose brain was not placid and slow-moving like his son's.

The one thing against the idea that Robert was swindling him was that he thought Robert utterly incapable of so much contrivance. However, he had noticed several changes in the boy of late, and he resolved to wait another two weeks, keeping his eyes open and his tongue still. Each week ten rabbits were reported sold at Rye and the money handed over to him. On the morning of the next market day, when Robert's cart, piled with eggs, fruit, vegetables, and poultry, was at the door, Reuben came out and inspected it.

"Let's see your conies," he said briefly.

It was as if someone had suddenly laid a cold hand on Robert's heart. He guessed that his father suspected him. His ears turned crimson, and his hands trembled and fumbled as he opened the back of the cart and took out his string of properly skinned and gutted conies.

Reuben counted them--ten. Then he pushed them aside, and began rummaging in the cart among cabbages and bags of apples. In a second or two he had dragged out five more rabbits. Robert stood with hanging head, flushed cheeks, and quivering hands, till his father fulfilled his expectations by knocking him down.

"So that's the way you queer me, you young villain. You steal, you hide, you try to bust the farm. It's luck you're even a bigger fool than you are scamp, and I've caught you justabout purty."

He kicked Robert, and called up Richard to drive the cart over to Rye.

An hour later the whole of the boy's plans, and worse still his sinews of war, were in the enemy's possession. Reuben ransacked his son's mind as easily as he ransacked his pockets and the careful obvious little hiding-place under his mattress where lay the twenty-two shillings of which he had defrauded Odiam. His love for Bessie, his degraded and treacherous hopes, filled the father with shame. Had he then lived so meanly that such mean ambitions should inspire his son?

"A cowman's girl!" he groaned, "at Eggs Hole, too, where they döan't know plums from damsons! Marry her! I'd sooner have Albert and his wenches."

"I love her," faltered Robert.

"Well, you'll justabout have to stop loving her, that's all. I'm not going to have my place upset by love. Love's all very well when there's something wud it or when there's nothing in it. But marrying cowmen's girls wudout a penny in their pockets, we can't afford to kip that sort o' love at Odiam."

"Fäather," pleaded Robert, "you loved my mother."

"Yes--but she wur a well-born lady wud a fortun. D'you think I'd have let myself love her if she'd bin poor and a cowman's daughter? Not me, young feller!"

"But you can't help loving, surelye."

"Well, if that's wot you think, the sooner you find out that you can help loving the better. Did I ever hear such weak womanish slop! Help loving? You'll help it before you're many days older. Meantime you kip away from that girl, and all them hemmed choir-singings which are the ruin of young people."

The colour rushed into Robert's cheeks, and something very unfamiliar and very unmanly into his eyes.

"I'll----" he began desperately. But even Robert had the wit not to finish his sentence.

§ 11.

For the next two or three days the boy was desperate. His manhood was in a trap. He thought of a dozen plans for breaking free, but whichever way he turned the steel jaws seemed to close on him. What could he do? He was not strong and ruthless like his father, or he might have broken his way out; he was not clever like Richard, or he might have contrived it. Money, money--that was what lay at the bottom of his helplessness. Even if he had a very little he could take Bessie away and marry her, and then they could both find work together on a farm. But he had not a penny. He tried to borrow some of Pete, but Pete showed him his empty pockets:

"If you'd asked me after the Fair, lad, I might have been able to let you have a shillun or two. But this time o' year, I'm as poor as you are."

Meantime Bessie knew nothing of the darkness in her lover's life. She was working away sturdily and patiently at Eggs Hole, looking forward to meeting him on practice night, and going with him to the Fair a week later.

Saturday came, the day which had always been Robert's Sabbath, with a glimpse into Paradise. He toiled miserably with the horses, Reuben's stern eye upon him, while hatred rose and bubbled in his heart. What right had his father to treat him so?--to make a prisoner and a slave of him? He vowed to himself he would break free; but how?--how?... A chink of pence in Reuben's pocket seemed like a mocking answer.

In the evening the taskmaster disappeared, to gloat over his wheatfields. Robert knew he would not be back till supper-time; only Albert was working with him in the stable, and he felt that he could persuade his brother to hold his tongue if he disappeared for an hour or two.

"I want to go into Peasmarsh," he said to Albert; "if Fäather comes and asks where I am, you can always tell him I've gone over to Grandturzel about that colt, can't you now?"

"Reckon I can," said Albert good-naturedly, knowing that some day he might want his brother to do the same for him.

So Robert put on his Sunday coat as usual and tramped away to the village. The only drawback was that from the high wheatfield Reuben distinctly saw him go.

He reached the clerk's house a little while after the practice had started, and stood for a moment gazing in at the window. A terrible homesickness rose in his heart. Must he really be cut off from all these delights? There they stood, the boys and girls, his friends, singing "Disposer Supreme" till the rafters rang. Perhaps after to-night he would never sing with them again. Then his eyes fell on Bessie, and the hunger drove him in.

He took his place beside her, but he could not fix his mind on what they sang. In the intervals between the anthems he was able to pour out instalments of his tragedy. Bessie was very brave, she lifted her eyes to his, and would not let them falter, but he felt her little coarse fingers trembling in his hand.

"I döan't know what I'm to do, my dear," he mumbled; "I think the best thing 'ud be fur me to git work on a farm somewheres away from here, and then maybe in time I cud put a liddle bit of money by, and you cud join me."

"Oh, döan't leave me, Robert."

For the first time the courage dimmed in her eyes.

"Wot else am I to do?" he exclaimed wretchedly; "'täun't even as if I cud go on seeing you here. Oh, Bessie! I can't even täake you to the Fair on Thursday!"

"Wot does a liddle thing lik that count when it's all so miserable?"

"Disposer Supreme, And judge of the earth, Who choosest for thine The weak and the poor...."

The anthem crashed gaily into their sorrow, and grasping the hymn-sheet they sang together.

"Wöan't you be never coming here no more?" whispered Bessie in the next pause.

"Depends on if my fäather catches me or not."

He drank in the heat and stuffiness of the little room as a man might drink water in a desert, not knowing when the next well should be. He loved it, even to the smoke-stains on the sagging rafters, to the faint smell of onions that pervaded it all.

"All honour and praise, Dominion and might, To God, Three in One, Eternally be, Who round us hath shed His own marvellous light, And called us from darkness His glory to see."

Young Ralph Bardon had come into the room, and stood by the door while the last verse was being sung. He was there to give an invitation from his father, for every year the Squire provided the choristers with a mild debauch at Flightshot. Robert had been to several of these, and they glittered in his memory--the laughter and games, the merry fooling, the grand supper table gay with candles. What a joke it had been when someone had given the salt to Rosie Hubble instead of the sugar to eat with her apple pie, and when some other wag had pulled away Ern Ticehurst's chair from under him....

"Thank you, sir--thank you kindly."

The invitation had been given, and the choristers were crowding towards the door. Robert followed them mechanically. It was raining hard.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear," said Bessie, "I never brought my cloak."

"You must put on my coat."

He began taking it off when he heard someone beside them say:

"I have a great-coat here."

Robert turned round and faced Bardon, whose eyes rested approvingly on the gleaming froth of Bessie's hair.

"I'm driving home in my gig with a rug and hood," continued the young man, "so I've no need of a great-coat as well."

Robert opened his mouth to refuse. He was offended by the way the Squire looked at Bessie. But on second thoughts he realised that this was no reason for depriving her of a wrap; his own coat was too short to be much good. After all he could see that the acquaintance went no further.

Bessie had, however, already taken the matter out of his hands by saying--"Thank you kindly, sir."

"You see, this is my very best gown," she confided to Robert outside the house, "and I döan't know wot I shud do if anything happened to it."

"Well, you're not to täake that coat back to Flightshot yourself. Give it to me when we come to Eggs Hole, and I'll see that he has it."

"Very well, dear," she answered meekly.

They did not speak much on that walk home. Their minds seemed dank and washed out as the night. Their wet fingers gripped and twined ... what was the use of speaking? Everything seemed hopeless--no way to turn, no plans to make, no friends to look to.

It was quite dark when they reached Eggs Hole, and parted after kisses no longer as shy as they used to be.

On arriving at Odiam, Robert was seized by his father and flogged within an inch of his life.

§ 12.

Reuben thought that he had efficiently broken his son's rebellion. All the next day Robert seemed utterly cowed. He was worn out by the misery of the last few hours, and by the blows which in the end had dulled all the sore activities of mind and soul into one huge physical ache. Reuben left him alone most of the day, smiling grimly to himself when he saw him. Robert spent several hours lying on the hay in the Oast barn, his mind as inert and bruised as his body. He had ceased to contrive or conjecture, even to dread.

Towards evening, however, a new alarm stirred him a little. He remembered Bardon's coat, which he had brought back with him to Odiam. If he did not take it over to Flightshot, the young Squire might call for it at Eggs Hole. Robert was most anxious that he should not meet Bessie again; he could not forget the admiration in his eyes, and was consumed with fear and jealousy lest he should try to take his treasure from him, or frighten or hurt her in any way. It is true that Bardon had a blameless record, and also a most shy and fastidious disposition, but Robert was no psychologist. And if anyone had said that the Squire's gaze had merely been one of tolerant approval of a healthy country-wench, and that he would not have taken the peerless Bessie as a gift, and rather pitied the man who could see anything to love in that bursting figure and broad yokelish face--then Robert would not only have disbelieved him, but fought him into the bargain.

So he managed with an effort to pull himself together and walk a couple of miles across the fields to the Manor. He was climbing the gate by Chapel Barn when something fell out of the pocket of the coat. Unluckily it fell on the far side of the gate, and Robert with many groans and curses forced his stiff body over again, as the object was a smart shagreen pocket-book, evidently of some value. It had dropped open in its fall, and as he picked it up, a bank-note fluttered out and eddied to the grass. It was a note for ten pounds, and Robert scowled as he replaced it in the pocket-book.

It was a hemmed shame--life was crooked and unfair, in spite of the Disposer Supreme and Judge of the Earth. For the first time he doubted the general providence of things. Why should young Bardon with his easy manners and roving lustful eye have a pocket full of money to spend as he pleased, whereas he, Robert, who loved truly and wanted to marry his love, should not have a penny towards his desires? This was the first question he had ever asked of life, and its effect was to upset not only the little store of maxims and truisms which made his philosophy, but those rules of conduct which depended on them. One did not take what did not belong to one because in church the Curate said, "Thou shalt not steal," whereat the choristers would sing, "Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law." Nevertheless, that bank-note spent the last mile of the way in Robert's pocket.

The act was not really so revolutionary as might at first appear, for up to the very steps of the Manor he kept on telling himself that he would put it back. But somehow he did not do so--when he handed the coat to the man-servant the pocket-book was still in his stable-smelling corduroys.

Well, he had taken it now--it was too late to give it back. Besides, why should he not have it? Those ten pounds probably did not mean much to the Squire, but they meant all things to him and Bessie. He could marry her now. He could take her away, find work on some distant farm, and comfortably set up house. The possibilities of ten pounds were unlimited--at all events they could give him all he asked of life.

In the middle of the night he woke up feeling quite differently. A sick and guilty horror overwhelmed him. He must have been delirious the day before, light-headed with pain and misery. Now he saw clearly what he had done. He was a thief. He had committed a terrible sin--broken one of the Ten Commandments. He might be caught and put in prison, anyhow, the God who said, "Thou shalt not" would punish him and perhaps Bessie too. The sweat poured down Robert's forehead and off his cheeks. The future seemed to be closing in upon him with iron walls. He trembled, cowered, and would have said, "Our Father" if he dared. Oh God, why had he done this dreadful thing?

Luckily his body was so tired that even his kicking mind could not keep it awake. Suddenly, in the midst of all his remorse and terror, he fell asleep, and did not wake till sunshine two hours old was on his pillow.

When he woke, the nightmare had passed. Instead, he saw things as he had seen them yesterday. He could marry Bessie--and he must do so quickly, seize his chance for fear it should slip from him again. This time he must not muddle things. Above all he must avoid coming into conflict with his father--he was more afraid of Reuben than of all the police in Sussex.

§ 13.

All that day he expected to hear that the theft had been discovered. The Squire would be sure to remember his pocket-book and where he had put it. However, time passed and nothing happened. It was possible that young Bardon had not yet found out his loss. But Robert felt sure that when, sooner or later, the money was missed, it would be traced to him. He must act quickly. Oh Lord! how he hated having to act quickly! It was now a race between him and fate--and Fate must have smiled....

First of all he had to see Bessie. He could not send her a letter, for she could not read. He must somehow manage to go over to Eggs Hole. He would not tell her how he had come by the ten pounds. A pang went into his heart like a thorn as he realised this, but he felt that if she knew she might refuse to go away with him. He would marry her first, and confess to her afterwards. Perhaps some day they might be able to return the money--meantime he would say that a friend had lent it to him. The thought of this, his first lie to her, hurt him more than the actual theft.

He managed to slip over to Eggs Hole that evening. Albert, whom his father had not treated gently on the day of the choir practice, refused to be his accomplice a second time, but Reuben, thinking his rebellion crushed, kept a less strict watch over him, and took himself off after supper to the Cocks, where he had weighty matters of politics and agriculture to discuss. Robert seized his opportunity, and ran the whole way to Eggs Hole--laid his plans before Bessie--and ran the whole way back again.

Bessie was as surprised as she was delighted to hear that he should suddenly have found a friend to lend him ten pounds--"a feller called Tim Harman, lives over at Rolvenden," said Robert in a perspiring effort to be convincing. However, it never struck her to doubt his word, and she put down to emotion and hard running all that seemed strange in her sweetheart's manner.

Bessie was quicker and more practical than Robert, and between them they evolved a fairly respectable scheme. Next Thursday was Fair Day, and all the Backfield family, including Robert, would be at the Fair. She would meet him in Meridiana the gipsy's tent at five--it was right on the outskirts of the Fair, and they could enter separately without attracting attention, on the pretext of having their fortunes told. Then they could easily steal off under cover of dusk. They would go to Wadhurst, where there were many farms--get work together, and marry at once. Meantime Robert was to divert suspicion by his blameless conduct, and find out as well as he could exactly what one did to get married.

On arriving home he was uncertain as to whether it would be more diplomatic to go straight to bed or let his father on his return from the Cocks find him industriously working at the corn accounts. He decided on the latter, and was soon with many groans and lickings of his pencil crediting and debiting Odiam's wheat.

Backfield came in about nine, by which time Robert's panting had completely subsided and his complexion lost the beetroot shade which might have betrayed his exertions. His father was in a good temper, and over-flowed with the Cocks' gossip--how Realf had got twenty-five pounds for his heifer at Battle, how the mustard had mixed in with Ticehurst's beans and spoilt his crop, how Dunk of Old Turk said he would vote Radical at the next election, and how young Squire Bardon had been robbed of his pocket-book, with certificates for three hundred pounds of Canadian stock and a ten-pound bank-note in it.

Robert bit off the end of his pencil, which his father, who was looking the other way, luckily did not see. The boy crouched over the fire, trying to hide his trembling, and longing yet not daring to ask a hundred questions. He was glad and at the same time sorry when Reuben having explained to him the right and the wrong way of sowing beans, and enlarged on the wickedness of Radicals in general and Gladstone in

## particular, returned to Bardon's loss.

"Of course he äun't sure as it wur stolen--he may have dropped it. But policeman döan't think that's likely."

"Then policeman's bin töald about it?" came faintly from Robert.

"Surelye! I wur spikking to him over at the Cocks. I said to him as I wur sartain as one of those lousy Workman's Institute lads of his had done it. That's wot comes of trying to help labourers and cowmen and such--there's naun lik helping the poor fur putting them above themselves, and in these times when everyone's fur giving 'em votes and eddicating them free, why----" and Reuben launched into politics again.

That night was another Hell. Robert lay wakeful in a rigor of despair. It was all over now. The constable would be at Odiam the first thing next morning. Bardon was bound to remember that his pocket-book was in the coat he had lent Bessie. He might even think that Bessie had taken it! This fresh horror nearly sent Robert out of the window and over the fields to the Manor to confess his crime. But he was kept back by the glimmerings of hope which, like a summer lightning, played fitfully over his mental landscape. He dared not stake everything. Perhaps after all young Bardon could not remember where he had put the pocket-book; he must have forgotten where it was when he offered the coat to Bessie, and it was possible that he would not remember till the lovers had escaped--after which he might remember as much as he liked, for Robert never thought for a moment that he could be traced once he had left Peasmarsh.

As a matter of fact his simplicity had done much for him in this matter. A man with a readier cunning would have taken out the money and restored the pocket-book exactly as he had found it. Robert had blunderingly grabbed the whole thing--and to that he owed his safety. If Bardon had found the pocket-book in his great-coat, he would at once have reconstructed the whole incident. As things were, he scarcely remembered lending the coat to Bessie, and it had certainly never occurred to him that his pocket-book was in it. Being rather a careless and absent-minded young man, he had no recollection of putting it there after some discussion with Sir Miles about his certificates. He generally kept it in his drawer, and thought that it must have been taken out of that.

So no constable called at Odiam the next morning, and at breakfast the whole Backfield family discussed the Squire's loss, with the general tag of "serve him right!"

The following day was market-day at Rye, and Robert and Peter were to take over the cart. Robert was glad of this, for he had made up his mind that he must change the bank-note. If he tried to change it at the Fair or after he had gone away with Bessie it might arouse suspicion; but no one would think anything of his father having so large a sum, and he could offer it when he went to pay the harness bill at the saddler's. As for the pocket-book, he threw that into the horse-pond when no one was looking; it was best out of the way, and the three hundred pounds' worth of certificates it contained meant nothing to him.

Fate, having thus generously given him a start, continued to encourage him in the race he was running against her. On the way to Rye he fell in with Bertie Ditch. Bertie was going to marry a girl up at Brightling, and Robert found that there was nothing easier than to discuss with him the ways and means of marriage. From his ravings on his marriage in

## particular precious information with regard to marriage in general could

be extracted. Oh, yes, he had heard of fellows who got married by licence, but banns were more genteel, and he didn't doubt but that a marriage by banns was altogether a better and more religious sort. He and Nellie, etc., etc.... Oh, he didn't think a licence cost much--two or three pounds, and an ordinary wedding by banns would cost quite as much as that; when one had paid for the choir and the ringers and the breakfast. Now he and Nellie ... oh, of course, if you were in a hurry--yes; but anyhow he thought one of the parties must live a week or so in the parish where the marriage was to take place.

Robert, after some considering, decided to go with Bessie to Wadhurst, and ask the clergyman there exactly what they ought to do. He could easily find a room for her where she could stay till the law had been complied with. They would travel by the new railway. It would be rather alarming, but Jenny Vennal had once been to Brighton by train and said that the only thing against it was the dirt.

So gradually the difficult future was being settled. When they came to Rye Robert left Peter to unpack the cart and went to pay the harness bill at the saddler's. Reuben had given him five pounds, but he handed over the terrible bank-note, which was accepted without comment.

Fate still allowed him to run ahead.

§ 14.

Thursday broke clear and windy--little curls of cloud flew high against spreads of watery blue, and the wind raced over Boarzell, smelling of wet furrows. As usual everyone at Odiam was going to the Fair--even Mrs. Backfield, for Reuben said that he would not let the girls go without her. Caro and Tilly were now fifteen and sixteen, and their father began to have fears lest they should marry and leave him. Tilly especially, with her creamy complexion like Naomi's, and her little tip-tilted nose, freckled over the bridge, gave him anxious times. He sternly discouraged any of the neighbouring farmers' sons who seemed inclined to call; he was not going to lose his daughters just when Mrs. Backfield's poor health made them indispensable. It could not be long before his mother died--already her bouts of rheumatism were so severe that she was practically crippled each winter--and when she died Tilly and Caro must take her place.

Robert had not slept at all that night. Already sleeplessness, excitement, and anxiety had put their mark on him, giving a certain waxiness to his complexion and dullness to his eyes; but this morning he had curled and oiled his hair and put on his best clothes, which diverted the family attention, and in some way accounted for his altered looks. Everyone at the breakfast-table wore Sunday-best, except Beatup, who was to mind the farm in the morning, Richard taking his place in the afternoon.

Peter's strong frame and broad shoulders were shown off in all their glory by his tight blue coat--he was spoiling for the fight, every now and then clenching his fists under the table, and dreaming of smart cuts and irresistible bashes. Albert thought of the pretty girls he would dance with, and the one he would choose to lead away into the rustling solitude of Boarzell when his father was not looking ... to lie where the gorse flowers would scatter on their faces, and her dress smell of the dead heather as he clasped her to him. Richard was inclined to sneer at these rustic flings, and to regret the westward pastures where Greek syntax and Anne Bardon exalted life. Jemmy and George thought of nothing but the swings and merry-go-rounds; Tilly and Caro did not think at all, but wondered. Reuben watched their big eyes, so different from the boys', Tilly's very blue, Caro's very brown, and felt relieved when he looked from them to their grandmother, sitting stiffly in a patched survival of the widow's dress, her knotted hands before her on the table, at once too indifferent and too devoted to pity the questing youth of these two girls.

Reuben himself, in his grey cloth suit, starched shirt, and spotted tie, was perhaps the most striking of the company. Albert, the only one who had more than a vague appreciation of his father's looks, realised how utterly he had beaten his sons in their young men's game before cracked mirrors, showing up completely the failure of their waistcoats, ties, and hair oils in comparison with his. As was usual on festive occasions, his hair was sleeked out of its accustomed roughness, lying in blue-black masses of extraordinary shininess and thickness on his temples; his tight-fitting trousers displayed his splendid legs, and when he spoke he showed finer teeth than any of the youngsters. Albert scowled as he admired, for he knew that no girl would take him if she had a chance of his father.

Next to Reuben sat Harry--the other man whom Boarzell had made. He slouched forward over his plate, in terror lest the food which dropped continually out of his mouth should fall on the tablecloth, and he should be scolded. He looked at least ten years older than Reuben, for his face was covered with wrinkles, and there were streaks of grey in his hair. As he sat and ate he muttered to himself. No one took any notice of him, for the children had been brought up to look upon Uncle Harry as a sort of animal, to whom one must be kind, but with whom it was impossible to hold any rational conversation. Tilly was the most attentive to him, and would cut up his food and sometimes even put it in his mouth.

After breakfast the whole family set out for the Moor. Odiam looked unnatural with its empty yard, where the discouraged Beatup mouched, gazing longingly and chewing a straw. But every farm round Boarzell looked the same, for Boarzell Fair emptied the neighbourhood as completely as a pilgrimage would empty a Breton hamlet--only the beasts and unwilling house-keepers were left behind.

Though it was not yet ten o'clock the Fair was crowded. A shout greeted Harry's appearance with his fiddle, for it was never too early to dance. Blind Harry climbed on his tub, flourished his bow with many horrible smiles--for he loved his treats of popularity and attention--and started the new tune "My Decided Decision," which Caro and Tilly had taught him the day before. Albert immediately caught a pretty girl by the waist, and spun round with her on the grass while Pete vanished into the sparring-booth, his shoulders already out of his coat. Mrs. Backfield led off Caro and Tilly, looking sidelong at the dancers, to the more staid entertainment of the stalls. Jemmy and George ran straight to the merry-go-round, which now worked by steam, and hooted shrilly as it swung. Robert and Richard stood with their arms folded, watching the dancing with very different expressions on their faces.

At last Robert decided to lead out Emily Ditch, thinking that it might lull his father's suspicions if he had any. As a matter of fact the son Reuben watched most closely was Albert. He looked upon Robert's affair as settled, for the present at any rate, and credited him--perhaps rightly--with so poor a cunning that an occasional glance would serve; whereas Albert's oiled hair, stiff shirt-front, and clean white handkerchief roused all his fears and carefulness together.

After the dance, which did not last long, as poor Robert trod so heavily on his partner's feet that she soon begged him to stop, they strolled off round the Fair. Robert thought that if he made it a custom to roam among the booths his father would not notice his final disappearance so quickly. Lord! he was getting a hemmed crafty fellow. All the boys were allowed a shilling or two to spend at the Fair, so Robert treated Emily to a ride on the merry-go-round and five sea-sick minutes in the swings. Then he took Mrs. Button--Realf's married daughter, who had come over from Hove, to see the Panorama and a new attraction in the shape of a fat lady, which struck him as disgusting, but made her laugh tremendously.

He clung to Mrs. Button for most of the morning and afternoon, for he felt that she drove away suspicion, and at the same time had not the disadvantage of Emily Ditch, who had once or twice alarmed him by affectionately squeezing his hand. He did not take her to the fighting booth, as public opinion had shut that to ladies during the years that had passed since Reuben had sat with Naomi in the heat and sawdust--but she stood behind him in the shooting gallery, whilst he impartially scored bulls in the mouths of Disraeli, Gladstone, and the Emperor of France.

"Let's go and dance now," she said as he pocketed his bag of nuts.

Robert wondered anxiously what time it was; already a faint blear of red was creeping into the cold, twinkling afternoon. The moon rose at a quarter to five--when he saw it come up into the sky out of Iden Wood he must go to Meridiana's tent. He led Mrs. Button to where the dancers jigged to Harry's unending tune. Reuben stood on the outskirts, among the spectators, watching with a stern eye Albert snatch kisses off a Winchelsea girl's brown neck as he swung her round. Luckily for Robert his brother was behaving outrageously--his misdeeds were as usual flagrant; just at that moment he pulled down his partner's hair, and they whirled about together, laughing in the coarse mesh that blinded them both. Reuben's mouth was a hard, straight line, and his eyes like steel. He scarcely noticed Robert and Mrs. Button hopping about together, and he did not see when half an hour later the boy stole away alone.

Robert felt warm and glowing--he had enjoyed that dance, and wished he could have danced with Bessie. Perhaps he would dance with her some day.... Behind him, the creak of Harry's fiddle sounded plaintively, with every now and then a hoot from the merry-go-round. The dusk was falling quickly. Yellow flares sprang up from the stalls, casting a strange web of light and darkness over the Fair. Gideon Teazel looked like some carved Colossus as he stood by the roundabout, his great beard glowing on his breast like flames ... behind, in the smeeth of twilight, with the wriggling flare of the lamps, the lump of dancers did not seem to dance, but to writhe like some monster on the green, sending out tentacles, shooting up spines, emitting strange grunts and squalls--and at the back of it all the jig, jig, jig of Harry's tune.

Further on, in the secrecy of the tents and caravans, the dusk became full of cowering shapes, sometimes slipping and sliding about apart, sometimes blotted together ... there were whispers, rustlings, strugglings, low cries of "döan't" and "adone do!"--the sound of kisses ... kisses ... they followed Robert all the way to Meridiana's tent, where, standing in the brazier glow, and flushed besides with crimson of her own, stood Bessie.

Their eyes met over the flames, then Robert remembered the need for keeping up appearances, and said he wanted his fortune told. He could scarcely wait while Meridiana muttered about a fair young lady and a heap of money coming to him in a year or two. Bessie slipped round the brazier and stood beside him, their hands impudently locked, each finger of the boy's clinging round a finger of the girl's.

Meridiana's low sing-song continued:

"It's a gorgeous time I see before you, dear; riches and a carriage and servants in livery, and a beautiful wife decked over with jewels and gold as bright as her hair--success and a fair name, honour and a ripe old age--and remember the poor gipsy woman, won't you, darling?"

But he had already forgotten her. He stood with his arm round Bessie, stooping under the canvas roof, half choking in the brazier reek, while his lips came closer and closer to her face....

"Hir me duval!" said Meridiana to herself, "but they've forgotten the poor person's child."

She saw them go out of the tent, still linked and in their dream, then watched their dark shapes stoop against the sky.

They clung together panting and trembling, for she was really his at last, and he was hers. Before them lay the darkness, but they would go into it hand in hand. She was his, and he was hers.

At last they dropped their arms and stood apart. The dusk was full of rustlings, flittings, scuttlings, kisses....

"God bless you, gorgeous lady and gentleman," cried Meridiana shrilly from the tent--"the dukkerin dukk tells me that you shall always wear satin and velvet, and have honour wherever you go."

Then suddenly a heavy hand fell on Robert's shoulder, and a voice said:

"Robert Backfield, I arrest you on the charge of stealing a pocket-book containing bonds and money from Squire Ralph Bardon of Flightshot."

§ 15.

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.

§ 16.

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.

§ 17.

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:

"Conservatives, 'tis all serene-- MacDonald for ever! Long live the Queen!"

or:

"The people of Rye now they all seem to say That MacDonald's the man who will carry the sway, Triumphant he'll drive old MacKinnon away-- For MacDonald's the man for the people!"

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.

§ 18.

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"

"Sing ye who will of Love, or War, or Wine, Of mantling Cups, Bright Eyes, or deeds of Might-- A theme unsung by other harps is mine-- I sing a Gate--a novel subject quite.

O Tolls! ye do afflict us all--a bore! E'en when by Law imposed on evil slight! Who has not loaded ye with curses sore When in this Coat of Proof enveloped tight?

Therefore to what is Law I say 'content'-- But for a Private Man to raise a toll, To stop the public, tax them, circumvent, Moves me to passion I can scarce control, Makes boil the rushing blood and thrills my very soul."

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:

"If you'd know what the Colonel is, pray travel over The Sluice at Scott's Float--and then drive on to Dover-- You'll find yourself quickly brought up by a Gate Where a Toll they will charge at no moderate rate.

Oh why is a Gate stuck across at this Spot? Is the Colonel so poor or so grasping--or what? 'Tis that he may gain some more hundreds this way in, To swell out the purse where his Thousands are laying.

Awake, oh, for shame, ye electors of Rye! Let the banner of freedom float gaily on high, Throw your bonds to the winds, ye Electors--for know That he who'd be free must himself strike the Blow."

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.

§ 19.

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:

"Who fill their pockets at Scott's Float, And on their private Toll-gate doat, While o'er our hard-earned pence they gloat? The Tories."

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:

"Who fill their pockets at Scott's Float, And on their private Toll-gate doat, While o'er our hard-earned pence they gloat? The Tories."

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!"

§ 20.

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:

"If you'd know what the Colonel is, pray travel over The Sluice at Scott's Float--and then drive on to Dover-- You'll find yourself quickly brought up by a Gate...."

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.

§ 21.

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.

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