Chapter 4

That summer Naomi realised that she was going to have another child. She was sorry, for her maternal instincts were satisfied for the present, and she had begun to value her new-returned health. It would be hard to have to go back to bondage again.

However, there was no help for it. Reuben was overjoyed, and once more she slipped under his tyranny. This time she found it irksome, his watchfulness was a nuisance, his anxiety was absurd. However, she did not complain. She was too timid, and too fond of him.

"I hope it'll be a girl this time," she said one afternoon, when according to custom she was walking along Totease Lane, his arm under hers.

"A girl—— Oh, no! I want another boy."

"But we've got a boy, Reuben. It would be nice to have a girl now."

"Why, liddle creature?"

"Oh, I justabout love baby girls. They're so sweet—and all their dresses and that.... Besides we don't want two boys."

To her surprise Reuben stopped in the road, and burst out laughing.

"Two boys!—not want two boys!—Why, we want ten boys! if I cud have twenty, I shudn't grumble."

"What nonsense you're talking, Backfield," said Naomi primly.

"I ?un't talking nonsense, I'm talking sound sense. How am I to run the farm wudout boys? I want boys to help me work all that land. I'm going to have the whole of Boarzell, as I've told you a dunnamany times, and I'll want men wud me on it. So d?an't you go talking o' girls. Wot use are girls?—none! They just spannel about, and then go off and get married."

"But a girl 'ud be useful in the house—she could help mother when she's older."

"No, thankee. However hard she works she ?un't worth half a boy. You give me ten boys, missus, and then I d?an't mind you having a girl or so to please yourself."

Naomi was disgusted. Reuben had once or twice offended her by his coarseness, but she could never get used to it.

"Oh, how can you speak to me so!" she gulped.

"Now, you silly liddle thing, wot are you crying for? Mayn't I have a joke?"

"But you're so vulgar!"

Reuben looked a little blank. None of the details of his great desire had hitherto struck him as vulgar.

"Vulgar, am I?" he said ruefully. "No matter, child, we w?an't go quarrelling. Come, dry your dear eyes, and maybe to-morrow I'll drive you over to Rye to see the market."

Naomi obediently dried her eyes, but it was rather hard to keep them from getting wet again. For in her heart she knew that it was not the vulgarity of Reuben's joke which had upset her, but a certain horrible convincingness about it. It was not so merely a joke as he would have her think.

During the days that followed her attitude towards him changed subtly, almost subconsciously. A strange fear of him came over her. Would he insist on her bearing child after child to help him realise his great ambition? It was ridiculous, she knew, and probably due to her state of health, but sometimes she found herself thinking of him not so much as a man as a thing; she saw in him no longer the loving if tyrannical husband, but a law, a force, to which she and everyone else must bow. She even noticed a kind of likeness between him and Boarzell—swart, strong, cruel, full of an irrepressible life.