BOOK IV TREACHERIES Chapter 1

Reuben's domestic catastrophes might be summed up in the statement that he had lost two farm hands. It is true that Albert had never been much good—if he had his father would probably not have turned him away—but he had been better than nothing, and now Reuben would have to hire a substitute. One would be enough, for Jemmy and George were now able to do a man's full work each. So another hand was engaged for Odiam—Piper, a melancholy, lean-jowled cowman from Moor's Cottage.

The family was forbidden to speak of the absent sons. No one ever wrote to Robert in Lewes gaol or to Albert living on London's cruel tender-mercies. The shame of them was to be starved by silence. Soon most of the children had forgotten them, and they lived solely in Tilly's unhappy thoughts or Richard's angry ones, or in certain bitter memories of their father's, sternly fought.

Reuben had learnt his first lesson from experience. Quietly but decidedly he altered his conduct. He no longer made the slightest appeal to his family's enterprise or ambition, he no longer interrupted his chidings with those pathetic calls to their enthusiasm which had mystified or irritated them in times past. On the other hand he was twice as hard, twice as fierce, twice as ruthless and masterful as he had ever been.
 
Old Mrs. Backfield was getting very decrepit. She could not walk without a stick, and her knotted hands were of little use either in the kitchen or the dairy. Reuben was anxious to avoid engaging anyone to help her, yet the developments of her sphere made such help most necessary. Odiam now supplied most of the neighbouring gentry with milk, butter, and eggs; the poultry-yard had grown enormously since it had been a mere by-way of Mrs. Backfield's labours, and she and the girls also had charge of the young calves and pigs, which needed constant attention, and meant a great deal of hard work. Besides this, there was all the housework to do, sweeping, dusting, cooking, baking, and mending and washing for the males.

It occurred to Reuben that Harry might be of some use to the women. Since he had given up fiddling he was entirely on the wrong side of Odiam's accounts; it would do much to justify his existence if he could help a little in the house and thus save engaging extra labour.

Unfortunately Harry's ideas of work were fantastic, and he was, besides, hindered by his blindness. Any use he could be put to was more than balanced by the number of things he broke. His madness had of late developed both a terrible and an irritating side. He was sometimes consumed by the idea that the house was burning, and had on one or two occasions scared the family by jumping out of bed in the middle of the night and running about the passages shouting—"The house is afire! the house is afire! Oh, God save us all!" After he had done this once or twice, young Piper was made to sleep in his room, but even so he was often visited by his terrors during the day, and would interrupt work or meals with shrieks of—"The house is afire! Oh, wot shall we do! The house is afire, and the children are burning."

Another habit of his, less alarming, but far more annoying, was to repeat some chance word or sentence[Pg 194] over and over again for hours. If his mother said "Take these plates into the kitchen, Harry," he would spend the rest of the day murmuring, "Take these plates into the kitchen, Harry," till those about him were driven nearly as mad as he.

It was soon found that he hindered rather than helped the work, so Reuben had to cast about for fresh plans. He felt utterly ruthless now, and was resolved to make his daughters manage the house alone. He redistributed the labour, and by handing over the poultry, calves, and pigs to Beatup, and taking some of his work upon his own shoulders, made it physically possible for Caro and Tilly to run the house and dairy with the feeble help of old Mrs. Backfield. He told them that he could not afford to engage a woman, and that they must do without her—making no appeal to their interest or ambition as he might have done six months ago.

Caro and Tilly did not rebel. Somehow or other their young backs did not break under the load of household toil, nor, more strangely, did their young hearts, in the loneliness of their hard, uncared-for lives.

Tilly was now nearly eighteen. She had always been like her mother, but as she grew older the likeness became more and more pronounced, till sometimes it seemed to Reuben as if it were Naomi herself with her milky skin and fleeting rose-bloom who sat at his table and moved about his house. The only difference lay in a certain prominence of the chin which gave her an air of decision that Naomi had lacked. Not that Tilly was ever anything but docile, but occasionally Reuben felt that some time or other she might take her stand—a fear which had never troubled him with Naomi.

Caro was not like her sister; she was of larger build, yet thinner, and much darker, inheriting her father's swarthy skin and thick black hair. She did not give Reuben the same anxiety as Tilly—she was heavy and coltish, and, he felt, would not appeal to men. But[Pg 195] Tilly, especially when the summer heats had melted together the little freckles over her nose, struck his masculine eye in a way that made him half proud, half fearful.

No young men ever visited Odiam. The young Ditches, the young Vennals, or Coalbrans, or Ginners, who had business to transact with Backfield, did so only at a safe distance. Reuben could not as yet afford to lose his housemaids. Some day, he told himself, he would see that the girls married to the honour of his farm, but at present he could not do without them.

They did not murmur, for they had known no different life. They had never, like other girls, wandered with bevies of young people through the lanes at dusk, or felt in the twilight a man's hand grope for theirs. They had not had suitors to visit them on Sundays, to sit very stiff and straight in the parlour, and pass decorous remarks about the weather all the while their eyes were eating up a little figure from toe to hair.

Nevertheless when they worked side by side in the kitchen or dairy, skimming milk, churning butter, watching puddings bubble and steam, or when they made Reuben's great bed together, they had queer, half-shy, half-intimate talks—in which their heads came very close and their voices sank very low, and an eavesdropper might have often caught the word "lover," uttered mysteriously and sometimes with an odd little sigh.