Chapter 6

The positions of husband and wife were now reversed. It was Reuben who sulked and gloomed, looking at the baby askance, while Naomi moved in a daydream of peace and rapture and desire satisfied. She was too happy to care much about her husband's disappointment. She would never have believed it if anyone had told her in the first weeks of her marriage that she could have a joy and not mind if he did not share it, a child and not fret if he did not love it. But now her child sufficed her, or rather she had learned the lesson of wives, to suffice herself, and could love and rejoice without a comrade.

She had forgotten the Arabellas and Mariannas of the Keepsake, and the baby was called Fanny after Naomi's own mother, whom she dimly remembered. Fanny became the centre of Naomi's life; she was not as healthy as the other children, and her little pains and illnesses were all so many cords drawing her closer to her mother's heart. Though she required twice as much attention as the boys, Naomi never fretted or grew weary, as she had sometimes done in the service of the other little ones—on the contrary, she bloomed into a new beauty, and recovered the youthfulness she had begun to lose.

Strange to say, Harry, who had paid little attention to the earlier babies, seemed drawn to this one. He would hang round Naomi when she had her in her lap, and sometimes gingerly put out a hand and stroke the child's limbs. Naomi could not bear that he should touch her; but he amused Fanny, so she tolerated him. He had fallen into the habit of many half-witted[Pg 92] people and occasionally made strange faces, which though repulsive to everyone else, filled Fanny with hilarious delight. Indeed they were the first thing she "noticed."

"Oh, the pretty baby! save the pretty baby!"—Harry would mutter and shriek, and he would wander about the house crying—"Save the pretty baby!" till Naomi declared that he gave her the shivers.

"Keep him out of the way, can't you, Backfield?" she said to her husband.

In Reuben's eyes Naomi was just as irritating and ridiculous as Harry. She made foolish clothes for Fanny, quite unfit for a child in her position—muslins and ribbon bows, little knitted shoes, which she was forever pulling off to kiss the baby's feet. She would seat her on some high big chair in which she lolled with grotesque importance, and would kneel before her and call her "Miss Fanny."

"There, Miss Fanny—see what a grand baby you are. Soon all the boys will be courting you—see if they don't. You shall always wear silk and muslins and sit on cushions, and you will always love your mother, won't you, dear little miss?"

Reuben was revolted—also a little hurt. It seemed to him that Naomi was neglecting the boys he was so proud of. Albert was nearly four years old, a fine sturdy child, worth a dozen puling Fannys, and Robert and Pete were vigorous crawlers and adventurers, who ought to rejoice any mother's heart. Richard was still in an uninteresting stage—but, hem it all! he was a boy.

Nearly as bad as her indifference to the children she had already borne, was her indifference to the child she was about to bear. She was expecting her confinement in the spring, but she did not seem to take the slightest interest in it or the slightest care of herself. Again and again she would start up from the sofa where she had[Pg 93] lain down by his orders, because she heard Fanny crying upstairs. She risked injuring herself by continually carrying her about or by stooping over her as she rolled on the floor.

Reuben often spoke to her severely, but with no result. There was a time when he could never chide her without her crying, but now she hardly seemed to care.

As the autumn wore on Fanny became more and more ailing and Naomi more and more preoccupied. There were doctor's visits to be paid for, and on one or two occasions Naomi had sent for him unnecessarily. It maddened Reuben to think that he was not master of his own household, but though he could always enforce obedience in person, he was compelled continually to be out of doors, even sometimes away from the farm, and he could not control what went on in his absence.

Odiam was passing through anxious times. The expected and dreaded had happened—the Corn Laws had been repealed, and cursing farmers grubbed up their wheatfields, hoping no more from grain. 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. Peel was a traitor; he had betrayed the staunch grain-growing Tories who had inconvenienced themselves with muddy rides to vote for his supporters. For a year or so Reuben hated the Conservatives, and would not vote at all at the next election.

He had trouble, too, with his new grass. One of his Jersey cows suddenly died, and it turned out that it[Pg 94] had eaten some poisonous plant which had insinuated itself into the pasture. It was as if Boarzell fought treacherously—with stabbings in the dark as well as blastings in the open. The night the Jersey died, Reuben sat with his head buried in his arms on the kitchen table, while Naomi carried her Miss Fanny about the room, and told her about the beautiful silk gowns she would wear when she grew up.