part did

Pete and Caro. They sat and gulped down their food in silence. Even Harry seemed to realise the general unrest. He would not sit at table, but wandered aimlessly up and down the room, murmuring, as was now his habit in times of domestic upheaval, "Another wedding--deary me! We're always having weddings in this house."

Then the baby began to howl because it was hungry. Rose had nursed it herself, and its wants had not occurred to the unhappy Caro or her father. There was delay and confusion while a bottle was fetched and milk prepared, and then--to crown all--cow's milk upset it, and it was sick. But Reuben escaped this final tragedy--he had left the room after a few mouthfuls, and gone to Handshut's cottage.

He could not restrain himself any longer. He must see Rose, and vent on her all the miserable rage with which his heart was seething. He longed to strike her--he longed to beat her, for the wanton that she was. And he longed to clasp her in his arms and weep on her breast and caress her, for the woman that she was.

But the cottage was shut. With its red-rotting roof between two tall chimneys it looked exactly like a rabbit's head between its ears; the windows were blind, though it was past seven o'clock, and though Reuben knocked at the door loudly, there was no one to be seen. He prowled once or twice round the house, fumbling handles and window-latches, but there was no way of getting in. He listened, but he could not hear a sound. He pictured Rose and Handshut in each other's arms, laughing at him in his wretchedness and their bliss--and all the time he wanted the woman's blood more than the man's.

At last he wandered desperately away, treading the furrows of his new ground on Boarzell, reckless that he trod the young seed harrowed into them. In that black moment even his winter crops were nothing to him. He saw, thought of, realised only one thing--and that was Rose, the false, the gay, the wanton, and the beautiful--oh the beautiful!--laughing at him from another man's arms. He could see her laughing, see just how her lips parted, just how her teeth shone--those little teeth, so regular except for the pointed canines--just how the dimples came at the corners of her mouth, those dear little hollows which he had dug with his kisses....

He ground his heel into the soft harrowed earth, and it cast up its smell into his nostrils unheeded. But the day of Boarzell was coming--its rival had been cleared out of the field, and the great hump with its knob of firs seemed to be lying in wait, till the man had pulled himself out of the pit of a false woman's love and given himself back to it, the strong, the faithful enemy.

About an hour later Reuben was down again at Handshut's cottage, but this time a change had worked itself. The door hung wide open--and the place was empty. He went through the two miserable little rooms, but there was no one, and nowhere for anybody to hide. The remains of a meal of bread and tea were on the table, and a fire of sticks was dying on the hearth. The lovers had flown--to laugh at him from a safe distance.

All the rest of the day he prowled aimlessly about his land. His men were afraid, for it was the first time they had seen him spend a day without work. He touched neither spade nor pitchfork, he gave no orders, just wandered restlessly about the fields and barns. He ate no supper, but locked himself into his room, while the baby's thin wail rose through the beams of the kitchen ceiling, and little David cried fractiously for "mother."

The next day Caro, haggard after another night made sleepless by her charges, knocked at his door. He had not come down to breakfast, and at eight o'clock the postman had brought a letter.

"It's from Rose," said Caro timidly.

"To me?"

"No, to me."

"Read it."

Caro read it. Rose was in London, but left that day for Liverpool. Handshut had saved a little money, and they were going to Canada. "I don't ask Ben to forgive me, for I know he never will."

"She's right there," said Reuben grimly.

Caro stood before him, creasing the letter nervously. Her father's wrath broke upon her, for want of his proper victim.

"Git out, can't yer--wot are you dawdling here for? You women are all the same--you'd be as bad as her if you cud only git a man."

Caro shrank from the jibe as if from a blow, and Reuben laughed brutally. He had made one woman suffer anyway.

§ 23.

Of course the neighbourhood gloated; and the rustic convention was set aside in Rose's favour, and all the shame of her elopement heaped on Reuben.

"No wäonder as she cudn't stick to him--hard, queer chap as he be."

"And thirty year older nor she, besides."

"Young Handshut wur a präaper lad, and valiant. I äun't surprised as she'd rather have un wudout a penny than old Ben wud all his gold."

"And he äun't got much o' that now, nuther. They say as he'll be bust by next fall."

Heads were shaken in triumphant commiseration, and the stones which according to all decent tradition should have been flung at Rose, hurtled round her husband instead.

Far away at Cheat Land, Alice Jury watched them fall--Alice Jury five years older than when she had struggled with Boarzell for Reuben before he married Rose. Her parents thought he had treated her badly, even though they did not know of the evening when she had humbled herself to plead for her happiness and his. She remembered that moment uneasily--it hurt her pride. But she could not regret having used her most desperate effort to win him, and she felt sure that he had understood her motive and realised that it was for him as well as for her that she had spoken.

Now, when she heard of his catastrophe, she wondered if he would come back. Did men come back?--and if they did, was she the type of woman they came back to? Perhaps she was too quick, too antagonistic. She told herself miserably that a softer woman could have saved Reuben, and yet, paradoxically, a softer woman would not have wished to do so.

She had seen very little of him or of Rose since their marriage. Rose and she had never been friends, and Reuben she knew was shy of her. He had been angry with her too, because she had not carried her aching heart on her sleeve. Outwardly she had worn no badge of sorrow--she was just as quick, just as combative, just as vivaciously intellectual as she had always been. Though she knew that she had lost him through these very characteristics, with which she had also attracted him, she made no effort to force herself into a different mould. She refused to regret anything, to be ashamed of anything, to change anything. If he came back he should find the same woman as he had left.

She felt that he would come--he would return to her in the reaction that swung him from Rose. But would she be able to keep him? She did not feel so sure of that--for that did not depend on her or on him, but on that mysterious force outside themselves with which they had both already struggled in vain.

§ 24.

Reuben scarcely knew what brought him to Cheat Land. It was about a week after the blow fell that he found himself treading the once familiar lane, lifting the latch of the garden gate, and knocking at the green house-door. Nothing had changed, except to fade a little and show some signs of wear and tear. Alice herself had not changed, nor had she faded, though her cheeks might have fallen in a trifle and a few lines traced themselves round her mouth.

"Welcome," she said, and laughed.

He took her hand, and forgot to be angry because she had laughed.

"Come in, and we'll have a talk. Father's out, and mother's upstairs."

She led the way into the queer little kitchen, which was also unchanged except for the fading of the curtains, and the introduction of one or two new books on the shelves. Alice pulled forward his old chair, and sat down opposite him on the settle. She wore one of her long wrapper-pinafores, this time of a warm clay-colour, which seemed to put a glow into her cheeks.

"Well, Alice," he said huskily.

"Well, Reuben, I'm glad to see you."

"You've heard?"

She nodded. Then she said gently:

"Poor Rose."

Reuben flushed.

"One o' my victims, eh?"

"Well, I knew you'd rather I said that than 'poor Reuben.'"

"Reckon I would. I remember as how you wur always trying to make out as my lazy good-fur-naun sons wur my victims, and as how I'd sacrificed them all to my farm; now I reckon you're trying to do the same wud Rose."

"Where is she?"

"I dunno. Somewheres between here and Canada. May she rot there lik a sheep on its back, and her man too. Now say 'poor Rose.'"

He turned on her almost fiercely, his lips curled back from his teeth in a sneer.

"If you speak like that I'll say 'poor Reuben.'"

"Well, say it--you wöan't be far wrong. Wot sort o' chap am I to have pride? My farm's ruined, my wife's run away, my children have left me--wot right have I to be proud?"

"Because, though all those things have happened, you're holding your head up still."

"But I äun't--yesterday I wur fair crying and sobbing in front of all the children. In the kitchen, it wur--after supper--I put down my head on the table, and----"

"Hush, I don't want to hear any more. I can guess what you must have suffered. I expect you miss Rose."

"I do--justabout."

"So should I in your place."

"She wur a beautiful woman, Alice."

Alice nodded.

"Oh, and her liddle dentical ways!"

Alice nodded again.

"You döan't mind me talking to you of her?"

"No, of course not."

"She wur the beautifullest I've known, and gay, and sweet, and a woman to love. But she deceived me. I married her expecting money, and there wur none--I married her fur her body, and she's given it to another."

"Well, you're not a hypocrite, anyway. You don't pretend you married her for any but the lowest motives."

"Wot should I have married her fur, then?"

"Some people marry for love."

"Love I--no. I've loved but one woman."

"Me!"

They had both said more than they intended, and suddenly realised it. Though the self-betrayal meant most to Alice, she was the first to recover a steady voice.

"But that does not matter now," she said calmly.

He leaned suddenly forward and took her hand.

"Alice."

Her hand lay in his, a very small thing, and her head bent towards it. She did not want him to see her cheeks flush and her eyes fill at this his first caress.

"Alice--how did you know?"

"I'm not a fool."

"I guessed too."

"Of course you did. I--I gave myself away. I pleaded with you."

He raised her hand slowly to his lips.

"I forgot you all the time I wur wud Rose," he remarked naively.

"You needn't tell me that."

"But now I--well, it's too late anyhow. I'm a married man, no matter that my wife's in Canada. Of course, I could git a divorce--but I wöan't."

"No--it would cost money."

"More than I could spare."

Alice laughed.

"I never looked upon Rose as my rival--I always knew my real rival was your farm, and though now Rose is out of the way, that still stands between us."

Reuben was silent. He sat leaning forward in his chair, holding Alice's hand. Then he abruptly rose to his feet.

"Well, I must be going. It's done me good, our talk. Not that you've said anything particular comforting, but then you never did. It's good anyway to sit wud a woman wot's not lik a fat stroked cat--not a thin kicked one, nuther," he added viciously, remembering Caro. "You're lik a liddle tit-bird, Alice. I love you. But I'm not sorry I didn't marry you, for you'd have busted me same as Rose, only in a different way."

"Most likely."

She laughed again. He stooped forward and kissed her forehead, and the laugh died on her lips.

§ 25.

The rest of that day Reuben was a little happier. He felt comforted and stimulated, life was not so leaden. In the evening he worked a little in the hop-gardens. They were almost cleared now, and the smoke of the drying furnaces was streaming through the cowls of the oasts, shedding into the dusk a drowsy, malt-sweetened perfume. When the moon hung like a yellow splinter above Iden Wood, the pickers went home, and Reuben turned in to his supper, which for the first time since Rose's flight he ate with hearty pleasure.

He could not tell exactly what it was that had invigorated him, and jerked him out of his despair. It would seem as if Alice's presence alone had tonic qualities. Perhaps the secret lay in her unchangeableness. He had gone back to her after an absence of five years, and found her just the same, still loving him, still fighting him, the old Alice. Everything else had changed--his farm which in the former days had been the thriving envy of the countryside was now little better than a ruin, his home life had been turned inside out, but in the woman over at Cheat Land nothing had altered, love and strength and faithfulness still flourished in her. It was as if a man stumbling in darkness should suddenly hear a loved, familiar voice say "Here I am." The situation summed itself up in three words--She was there; and his heart added--"for me to take if I choose."

In spite of his revived spirits he could not sleep, but he went up early to his room, for he wanted to think. During the evening the idea had gained on him that he could still have Alice if he wanted her, and with the idea had grown the sensation that he wanted her with all his heart.

His return had been complete. All that she had ever had and lost of empire had re-established itself during that hour at Cheat Land. He wanted her as he had wanted her before he met Rose, but with a renewed intensity, for he was no longer mystified by his desire. He no longer asked himself how he could possibly love "a liddle stick of a woman like her," for he saw how utterly love-worthy she was and had always been. For the first time he saw as his, if only he would take it, a great woman's faithful love. This love of Alice Jury's had nothing akin to Naomi's poor little fluttering passion, or to Rose's fascination, half appetite, half game. Someone loved him truly, strongly, purely, deeply, with a fire that could be extinguished only by death or--he realised in a dim way--her own will. The question was, should he pay the price this love demanded, take it to himself at the cost of the ambitions that had fed his life for forty years?

He sat down by the open window, leaning his elbow on the sill. The night was as soft as honey, and dark as a bowl of wine. The stars were scattered and dim, the moon had dipped into a belt of fogs, the fields were bloomed with darkness and sleep. The ridge of Boarzell was just visible under the Dog Star--the lump of firs stood motionless, for the wind had dropped, and not even a whisper from the orchard proclaimed its sleeping place.

Reuben's eyes swept the dim outlines of his farm--the yard, the barns, the oasts, the fields beyond, up to where his boundaries scarred the waste. It was all blurred and blanketed in the darkness, but his mind could see it in every detail. He saw the cow-stable empty except for the six cheap Suffolks which just supplied his household and one or two gentry with milk; he saw doors split and unhinged that he could not afford to mend, gaping roofs that he could not afford to retile, while the martins stole his thatch for their autumn broods; he saw his oat-harvest mostly straw, his hop-harvest gathered at a loss, his hay spoiled with sorrel; he saw himself short of labour, one man turned off, another run away; and he saw all the flints and shards and lime of Boarzell breaking his plough, choking his winter wheat, while on the lower ground runnels of clay made his corn sedgy, and everywhere the tough, wiry fibres of the gorse drank all the little there was of goodness out of the ground and scattered it from its blossoms in useless fragrance.

This was what his forty years of struggle had brought him to. He saw himself in the midst of a huge ambitious ruin. He had failed, his hopes were blighted--what could he expect to pull out of this wreck. It would be far better and wiser if he gave up the dreary uncertain battle, and took the sure rest at hand. If he sold some of the more fruitful part of his land he would be able to divorce Rose, then he could marry Alice and live with her a quiet, shorn, unambitious life. No one would buy the new ground on Boarzell, but he could easily sell the low fields by the Glotten brook; that would leave him with twenty or thirty acres of fairly good land round the farm, and all his useless encroachments on Boarzell which he would allow to relapse into their former state. He would have enough to live upon, to support his children and his delicate wife--he would be able to take no risks and make no ventures, but he would be comfortable.

His old father's words came back to him--"I've no ambitions, so I'm a happy man. I döan't want nothing I haven't got, so I haven't got nothing I döan't want." Perhaps his father had been right. After all, what had he, Reuben, got by being ambitious? Comfort, peace, home-life, wife, children, were all so many bitter words to him, and his great plans themselves had crumbled into failure--he had lost everything to gain nothing.

Far better give up the struggle while there was the chance of an honourable retreat. He realised that he was at the turning point--a step further along his old course and he would lose Alice, a step along the road she pointed, and he would lose Boarzell. After all he had not won Boarzell, most likely never would win it--if he persisted on his old ways they would probably only lead him to ruin, and later there might be no Alice to turn to. If he renounced her now, he would be definitely pledging himself to Boarzell and all his soaring, tottering schemes--he would not be able to "come back" a second time.

If he lost Alice now he might be losing her for a dream, a bubble, a will-o'-the-wisp. Surely he would be wise to pull what he could out of the wreck, take her, and forget all else. Only a fool would turn away from her now, and press forward. In the old days it had been different, he had been successful then--now he was a failure, and saw his chance to fail honourably. Better take it before it was too late.

His mind painted him a picture it had never dared paint before--the comfortable red house basking in sunshine, with a garden full of flowers, a cow or two at pasture in the meadow, the little hop-field his only tilth--his dear frail wife sitting in the porch, his children playing at her feet or reading at her knee--perhaps they were hers too, perhaps they were not. He saw himself contented, growing stout, wanting nothing he hadn't got, so having nothing he didn't want ... he was leaning over her chair, and gazing away into the southern distance where Boarzell lay against the sky, all patched with heather and thorns, all golden with gorse, unirrigated, uncultivated, without furrow or fence....

... A shudder passed through Reuben, a long shudder of his flesh, for in at the open window had drifted the scent of the gorse on Boarzell. It came on no wind, the night was windless as before. It just seemed to creep to him over the fields, to hang on the air like a reproach. It was the scent of peaches and apricots, of sunshine caught and distilled. He leaned forward out of the window, and thought he could see the glimmer of the gorse-clumps under the stars.

The edge of Boarzell was outlined black against the faintly paler sky--he traced it from the woods in which it rose, up to its crest of firs, then down into the woods again. Once more it lay between him and the soft desires of his weakness; as long ago at Cheat Land, it called him back to his allegiance like a love forsaken. In the black quiet it lay hullish like some beast--but it was more than a beast to-night. It was like the gorse on its heights, delicate perfume as well as murderous fibre, sweetness as well as ferocity. The scent, impregnating the motionless air, seemed to remind him that Boarzell was his love as well as his enemy--more, far more to him than Alice.

His ambition flared up like a damped furnace, and he suddenly saw himself a coward ever to have thought of rest. Boarzell was more to him than any woman in the world. For the sake of one weak woman he was not going to sacrifice all his hopes and dreams and enterprises, the great love of his life.

Boarzell, not Alice, should be his. He muttered the words aloud as he strained his eyes into the darkness, tracing the beloved outline. He despised himself for having wavered even in thought. Through blood and tears--others' and his own--he would wade to Boarzell, and conquer it at last. From that night all would be changed, the past should be thrust behind him, he would pull himself together, make himself a man. Alice must go where everything else had gone--mother, wife, children, friends, and love. Thank God! Boarzell was worth more to him than all these.

Leaning out of the window, he breathed in the scent of his slumbering land. His lips parted, his eyes brightened, the lines of care and age grew softer on his face. With his darling ambition, he seemed to recover his youth--once more he felt the blood glowing in his veins, while zeal and adventure throbbed together in his heart. He had conquered the softer mood, and banished the sweet unworthy, dreams for ever. Alice--who had nearly vanquished him--should go the way of all enemies.

_And the last enemy to be destroyed is Love._

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