Sheila Kaye-Smith

“ The truth was that Reuben had now become desperate. He could not give in to Rose. If he sacrificed his farm to her in the smallest degree he ran the risk of ruin. He was torn in two by the most powerful forces of his life. On one side stood Odiam, trembling on the verge of catastrophe, needing every effort, every sacrifice of his, every drop of his sweat, every drop of his blood. On the other stood Rose, the dearest human thing, who demanded that for her sake he should forget his farm and the hopes bound up in it. ”

“ Reuben faced his adversity with set teeth and a dogged countenance. He had not been farming thirty odd years to be beaten casually by the weather. Scorching heat and blighting cold, the still blanker doom of the trickling, pouring rain—the wind that seeded his corn, and beat down his hay, and flung his hop-bines together in muddled heaps—the pests that Nature breeds by the ten million out of her own putrefyings and misbegettings—all things in life from the lowest maggot to the fiercest storm—he was out to fight them. In challenging Boarzell he had challenged them all. ”

“ She found herself beginning to haunt the places where she would be likely to meet him—the edge of the horse-pond or the Glotten brook, the door of the huge, desolate cow-stable, where six cheap Suffolks emphasised the empty stalls. Reuben did not seem to take any notice of her, he had relieved his feelings by dismissing Handshut, and his farm had swallowed him up again. Rose felt defiant and forlorn. Both her husband and her lover seemed to avoid her. She would lean against the great wooden posts of the door, in the listless weary attitude of a woman's despair. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had grown sharper in his dealings with the land, he knew how to take it at a disadvantage, snatch out a few roots. Every inch of the farm was now at work, for every blade of grass now counted. He had even dug up the garden, casting aside rose-bushes, sweet-peas, and dahlias for dull rows of drum-head cabbages, potatoes, kale, and beans. And manure ... there was manure everywhere, lying under the very parlour windows, sending up its effluvium on the foggy winter air till it crept into even the close-shut bedroom, making Naomi conscious of Reuben in her dreams. ”

“ Reuben was glad to escape into his farm work. The atmosphere of sickness was like a cloud, which grew blacker and blacker the nearer one came to its heart. Its heart was that little room in the gable, where he spent those wretched nights, disturbed by Harry's moaning. Out of doors, in the yard or the cowshed or the stable, he breathed a cleaner atmosphere. The heaviness, the vague remorse, grew lighter. And strange to say, out on Boarzell, which was the cause of his trouble, they grew lightest of all. ”

“ There, at the post, quivering with a pain he scarcely felt, Reuben swore that he would tame and conquer Boarzell. The rage, the fight, the degradation, the hatred of the last twelve hours should not be in vain. In some way, as yet unplanned, Boarzell should one day be his—not only the fifty acres the commissioners had tweaked from his father, but the whole of it, even that mocking, nodding crest of firs. He would subdue it; it should bear grain as meekly as the most fruitful field; it should feed fat cattle; it should make the name of Odiam great, the greatest in Sussex. ”

“ She was not to be one of those women for whom motherhood is a little song of baby shoes and blue sashes, and games and kisses and rockings to sleep. Hers was altogether a sterner business, her part in a battle—it was motherhood for a definite purpose, man and woman taking a leaf out of nature's book, playing her game to their own advantage, using her methods only to crush her at last. In a word it was epic—and the one drawback was that Naomi had never been meant for an epic part in life. ”

“ Reuben was sorry for this—his brother annoyed him. Harry grew more irritating with old age. He still played his fiddle, though he had now forgotten every semblance of a tune, and if it were taken away from him by some desperate person he would raise such an outcry that it would soon be restored as a lesser evil. He hardly ever spoke to anyone, but muttered to himself. "Salvation's got me!" he would croak, for his mind had been inexplicably stamped by Pete's outrage, and he forgot all about that perpetual wedding which had puzzled him for so many years. ”

“ Supper was a quiet meal. Old Jury and his invalid wife sat at each end of the table, while Alice did most of the helping and waiting. They seemed a sorry three to Reuben, pale, washed out, and weakly, their eyes bright as birds' with the factitious light of their enthusiasms for things that did not matter. They ate without much appetite, picking daintily at their food, their knives never in their mouths. Reuben found himself despising them as he despised the Bardons.
Rose did not talk much, but she ate heartily—she must be as healthy as she looked. ”

“ If Caro preferred a common sailor and loose living to the dignity and usefulness of her position at Odiam, he was not going to interfere. Besides, she had disgraced his farm, and he would never forgive that.
It struck him that his relations with women had been singularly unfortunate. Caro, Tilly, Rose, Alice, had all been failures—indeed he had come to look back on Naomi as his only success. Women were all the same, without ambition, without self-respect, ready to lick the boots of the first person who stroked them and was silly enough not to see through their wiles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The light trembled and pearled, and in a swift last clearness she saw the great Moor rolling up against the sky, purple with heather, golden with gorse, all strength and life. It seemed to mock her savagely—"I live—you die. You die—I live." It was this hateful land which had killed her, to which she had been sacrificed, and now it seemed to flaunt its beauty and life and vigour before her dying eyes. "I live—you die. You die—I live."
Yes, she was dying—and she hoped that she would die [Pg 119] before Reuben came back. ”

“ It was cruel that she should never have been allowed to know a man, never allowed to enjoy herself or have her fling. Even the sons of the neighbouring farmers had been kept away from her—by her father, greedy for her work. Tilly, by a lucky chance, had found a man, but lucky chances never came to Caro. She saw herself living out her life as a household drudge, dying an old maid, all coarsened by uncongenial work, all starved of love, all sick of, yet still hungry for, life. ”

“ The light perfumes of April softened the cold, clear air—the scent of sprouting leaves in the woods, and of primroses in the grass, while the anemones frothed scentless against the hedges. Pete was about half a mile from the village when he heard the sound of angry voices round a bend in the lane, pricked by little screams from a woman. Expecting a fight he hurried up eagerly, and was just in time to see one of the grandest upper cuts in his life. ”

“ These tricks were never unkind, for David and William were the most benevolent little boys. They saw life through a golden mist, it smelt of milk and apples, it was full of soft lowings and bleatings and cheepings, of gentle noses to stroke and little downy things to hold. For the first time since it became Reuben's, Odiam made children happy. The farm which had been a galley and a prison to those before them, was an enchanted land of adventure to these two. ”

“ He saw only the freak of a treacherous nature, turning from him to men younger and more compliant than himself. Jealousy, from a fit, became a habit. He grew restless and miserable—he would run in suddenly from his work to see what his wife was doing, he would cross-examine Caro, he would even ask Pete to keep an eye on her. Sometimes he thought of dismissing Handshut, but the lad was an excellent drover, and Reuben had bursts of sanity in which he saw the foolishness of such a sacrifice. ”

“ The Squire soon arrived. Reuben had him shown into the parlour, and insisted on seeing him alone.
"You finish your tea," he said to George, "and bring some more, Maudie, for these gentlemen," nodding kindly to the two young men, who stared at him as if they thought he had taken leave of his senses.
In the parlour, Sir Eustace greeted him with mingled nervousness and irritation.
"Well, Backfield, I'm sorry about this young scapegrace of mine. But boys will be boys, you know, and we'll make it all right about that cow. I promise you it won't happen again." ”

“ 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 [Pg 121] 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. ”

“ Reuben was bitterly disappointed, the whole future of Odiam was bound up with grain, the most honourable and—in the long run—most profitable of a farm's concerns. In his dreams he had seen wind-rippled waves of wheat rolling up to Boarzell's very crest, he had seen the threshed corn filling his barn, or rumbling to Iden Mill. Now the cheap abundant foreign grain would fight his home-sown harvests. He would have to depend for revenue on milk and hops, and grow wheat only as an expensive decoration. ”

“ Well, would Robert have stolen money, or Albert disgraced your name, to get free, if you and your farm hadn't made them slaves? If you hadn't been a heartless slave-driver would George have died the other night alone on the Moor?—or would Richard have taken advantage of a neighbour's charity to escape from you? Don't you see that your ambition has driven you to make slaves of your children? ”

“ Caro, Pete, Jemmy, and hideous, mumbling Harry—he surveyed the four of them with contemptuous scowls. Pete was the only one who was worth anything—Caro and Jemmy would turn against him if they had the slightest chance and forsake him with the rest. As for Harry, he was a grotesque, an image, a hideous fum—"Reuben himself as he really was." He! He!
The weeks wore on and it dawned on him that he must pull himself together for a fresh campaign. He must have more warriors—he could not fight Boarzell with only traitors and hirelings. He must marry again. ”

“ She looked forward to her position as mistress of Odiam, and stocked her linen cupboard. As for Reuben, her attitude towards him had changed at once with surrender. If he no longer terrified, also he no longer thrilled. She had grown fond of him, peacefully and domestically so, in a way she could never have been fond of Harry. She loved to feel his strong arm round her, his shoulder under her head, she loved to nestle close up to him and feel his warmth. His kisses were very different from Harry's, more lingering, more passionate, but, paradoxically, they thrilled her less. ”

“ He would have to spend twenty-six pounds a year, just when he was saving so desperately to buy more land and fatten what he already had. And in addition he would have to pay for Harry's keep. Not only must he engage a man to do his work, but he would have to support in absolute idleness Harry himself. He was quite unfit for farm work, he would be nothing but an expense and an incubus.
In those dark furious hours, Reuben would wish his brother had died. It was not as if life could be sweet to him. ”

“ They met on the further side of the fir clump, on the edge of Grandturzel's inclosure. Here Tilly would sit under a gorse-bush with her sewing, while young Realf lay along the grass at her feet. They did not talk much, for Tilly was busy, and generally had her mouth full of pins; but Realf's manhood worshipped her as she sat there, her delicious head bowed, and stains of sunshine, with sprinkled gorse-petals, in her hair. He loved her little determined chin, and the sweet smudge of freckles on her nose. Love filled their simplest actions, kindled their simplest words ”

“ Barnaby meant Babylonish Rye—"fell unheard on ears attuned to sweet domestic sounds. Ambition could not stir him from the repose of his family circle. Like a patriarch of old, he sat in peace under his vine and his fig-tree...."
Reuben stood motionless at the graveside, erect, like a soldier at attention. People in the crowd, who wearied of the dead man's virtues, whispered about the eldest son.
"Surelye!—he's a purty feller, is young Ben. To-day he looks nearly as valiant as Harry."
"He's a stouter man than his brother." ”

“ Somehow out there was a wider life, a life which took no reck of sickness or horror or self-reproach. The wind which stung his face and roughed his hair, the sun which tanned his nape as he bent to his work, the smell of the earth after rain, the mists that brewed in the hollows at dusk, and at dawn slunk like spirits up to the clouds ... they were all part of something too great to take count of human pain—so much greater than he that in it he could forget his trouble, and find ease and hope and purpose—even though he was fighting it. ”