Chapter 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[Pg 138] 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 w?an'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 f?ather, it didn't t?ake 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 w?an't have it, I tell you, I w?an't have it. Lord! when I wur your age, I wur running the whole of this farm alone—every str?ak of work, I did it. I didn't go wasting time over my meals, and writing rubbidge fur low-down Gladstone p?apers. Now d?an'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[Pg 139] 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[Pg 140] 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 pr?aperness 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."