Chapter 11

For the next two or three days the boy was desperate. His manhood was in a trap. He thought of a dozen plans for breaking free, but whichever way he turned the steel jaws seemed to close on him. What could he do? He was not strong and ruthless like his father, or he might have broken his way out; he was not clever like Richard, or he might have contrived it. Money, money—that was what lay at the bottom of his helplessness. Even if he had a very little he could take Bessie away and marry her, and then they could both find work together on a farm. But he had not a penny. He tried to borrow some of Pete, but Pete showed him his empty pockets:

"If you'd asked me after the Fair, lad, I might have been able to let you have a shillun or two. But this time o' year, I'm as poor as you are."

Meantime Bessie knew nothing of the darkness in her lover's life. She was working away sturdily and patiently at Eggs Hole, looking forward to meeting him[Pg 152] on practice night, and going with him to the Fair a week later.

Saturday came, the day which had always been Robert's Sabbath, with a glimpse into Paradise. He toiled miserably with the horses, Reuben's stern eye upon him, while hatred rose and bubbled in his heart. What right had his father to treat him so?—to make a prisoner and a slave of him? He vowed to himself he would break free; but how?—how?... A chink of pence in Reuben's pocket seemed like a mocking answer.

In the evening the taskmaster disappeared, to gloat over his wheatfields. Robert knew he would not be back till supper-time; only Albert was working with him in the stable, and he felt that he could persuade his brother to hold his tongue if he disappeared for an hour or two.

"I want to go into Peasmarsh," he said to Albert; "if F?ather comes and asks where I am, you can always tell him I've gone over to Grandturzel about that colt, can't you now?"

"Reckon I can," said Albert good-naturedly, knowing that some day he might want his brother to do the same for him.

So Robert put on his Sunday coat as usual and tramped away to the village. The only drawback was that from the high wheatfield Reuben distinctly saw him go.

He reached the clerk's house a little while after the practice had started, and stood for a moment gazing in at the window. A terrible homesickness rose in his heart. Must he really be cut off from all these delights? There they stood, the boys and girls, his friends, singing "Disposer Supreme" till the rafters rang. Perhaps after to-night he would never sing with them again. Then his eyes fell on Bessie, and the hunger drove him in.

He took his place beside her, but he could not fix his mind on what they sang. In the intervals between the[Pg 153] anthems he was able to pour out instalments of his tragedy. Bessie was very brave, she lifted her eyes to his, and would not let them falter, but he felt her little coarse fingers trembling in his hand.

"I d?an't know what I'm to do, my dear," he mumbled; "I think the best thing 'ud be fur me to git work on a farm somewheres away from here, and then maybe in time I cud put a liddle bit of money by, and you cud join me."

"Oh, d?an't leave me, Robert."

For the first time the courage dimmed in her eyes.

"Wot else am I to do?" he exclaimed wretchedly; "'t?un't even as if I cud go on seeing you here. Oh, Bessie! I can't even t?ake you to the Fair on Thursday!"

"Wot does a liddle thing lik that count when it's all so miserable?"
"Disposer Supreme,
And judge of the earth,
Who choosest for thine
The weak and the poor...."

The anthem crashed gaily into their sorrow, and grasping the hymn-sheet they sang together.

"W?an't you be never coming here no more?" whispered Bessie in the next pause.

"Depends on if my f?ather catches me or not."

He drank in the heat and stuffiness of the little room as a man might drink water in a desert, not knowing when the next well should be. He loved it, even to the smoke-stains on the sagging rafters, to the faint smell of onions that pervaded it all.
"All honour and praise,
Dominion and might,
To God, Three in One,
Eternally be,
Who round us hath shed
His own marvellous light,
And called us from darkness
His glory to see."
 
Young Ralph Bardon had come into the room, and stood by the door while the last verse was being sung. He was there to give an invitation from his father, for every year the Squire provided the choristers with a mild debauch at Flightshot. Robert had been to several of these, and they glittered in his memory—the laughter and games, the merry fooling, the grand supper table gay with candles. What a joke it had been when someone had given the salt to Rosie Hubble instead of the sugar to eat with her apple pie, and when some other wag had pulled away Ern Ticehurst's chair from under him....

"Thank you, sir—thank you kindly."

The invitation had been given, and the choristers were crowding towards the door. Robert followed them mechanically. It was raining hard.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear," said Bessie, "I never brought my cloak."

"You must put on my coat."

He began taking it off when he heard someone beside them say:

"I have a great-coat here."

Robert turned round and faced Bardon, whose eyes rested approvingly on the gleaming froth of Bessie's hair.

"I'm driving home in my gig with a rug and hood," continued the young man, "so I've no need of a great-coat as well."

Robert opened his mouth to refuse. He was offended by the way the Squire looked at Bessie. But on second thoughts he realised that this was no reason for depriving her of a wrap; his own coat was too short to be much good. After all he could see that the acquaintance went no further.

Bessie had, however, already taken the matter out of his hands by saying—"Thank you kindly, sir."

"You see, this is my very best gown," she confided[Pg 155] to Robert outside the house, "and I d?an't know wot I shud do if anything happened to it."

"Well, you're not to t?ake that coat back to Flightshot yourself. Give it to me when we come to Eggs Hole, and I'll see that he has it."

"Very well, dear," she answered meekly.

They did not speak much on that walk home. Their minds seemed dank and washed out as the night. Their wet fingers gripped and twined ... what was the use of speaking? Everything seemed hopeless—no way to turn, no plans to make, no friends to look to.

It was quite dark when they reached Eggs Hole, and parted after kisses no longer as shy as they used to be.

On arriving at Odiam, Robert was seized by his father and flogged within an inch of his life.