Chapter 4

Towards the end of August, Reuben asked Rose to marry him.

The request was not so much the outcome of passion as might have been imagined from the form it took. It was true that he was deeply enamoured of her, but it was also true that for three months he had endured the intoxication of her presence without definitely, or even indefinitely, claiming her for his own. He had held himself back till he had thoroughly weighed and pondered her in relation to his schemes—he was not going to renounce Alice for a wife who would be herself a drawback in another way.

However, though he had never deceived himself that Rose's sympathetic tendernesses meant any real sharing of his ambition, he was soon convinced that to marry her[Pg 253] would be materially to help himself in the battle which was now dragging a little on his side. He wanted ready money—her settlements would provide that; and her heirship of Lardner held out dazzling hopes for the future. He wanted children—where could he find a healthier mother? He wanted to raise the dignity of Odiam, and could hardly have thought of a better means than marriage with the niece of one of the wealthiest and most important farmers in the parish. To crown all, he gave himself an adorable woman, young, lovely, tender, and gay. This consideration could not have dragged him contrary to his ambition, but combined with it, it could give to an otherwise very practical and material plan all the heats of passion and the glories of romance.

The only disappointment was Rose's reception of his offer. At first she was unaffectedly surprised. She had looked upon the whole affair as a flirtation, of which she had had several, and had never expected it to take such a serious turn.

Even when she had recovered from her surprise, she refused to give him an answer. He became suddenly alarmed lest she thought him too old, and pressing her for her reasons, found that the real matter was that she did not want to sacrifice her freedom.

"Wot do you mean, sweetheart? D?an't you love me?"

"Of course I love you—but it doesn't follow I want to belong to you. Can't we go on as we are?"

"You queer me, Rose. How can we go on as we are?—it's like walking on a road that never leads nowhere."

"Well, that's very nice—I don't always want to go somewhere every time I take a walk, I much prefer just wandering."

"I d?an't."

"Because you're so practical and business-like, and I'm afraid you'd try and make me practical and business-like too. That's why I said I wanted to be free."
 
"You shall be free, Rose—I promise you. You shall do wotsumdever you please."

"Absolutely 'wotsumdever'?"

"Yes—wudin reason, of course."

"Ah, that's it. Your reason mightn't be my reason."

"You wudn't find me unreasonable, dear."

"Well, I shall have to think it over."

She thought it over for two months, during which Reuben suffered all the torments of his lot. She soon came to realise and appreciate her powers; she dangled hopes and fears with equal zest before his eyes, she used his anxieties to stoke the furnaces of his passion, till she had betrayed him into blazes and explosions which he looked on afterwards with uneasy shame.

Once in sick amazement at himself he took refuge at Cheat Land, and sat for an hour in Alice Jury's kitchen, watching her sew. But the springs of his confidence were dried, he could not tell Alice what he felt about Rose. She knew, of course. All the neighbourhood knew he was in love with Rose Lardner, and watched the progress of his courtship with covert smiles.

Rose used often to come to Odiam, where she was at first rather shy of Reuben's children, all of whom were older than herself. In time, however, she outgrew her shyness, and became of an exceedingly mad and romping disposition. She ran about the house like a wild thing, she dropped blackberries into Caro's cream, she tickled Pete's neck with wisps of hay, she danced in the yard with Jemmy. Reuben grew desperate—he felt the hopelessness of capturing this baby who played games with his children; and yet Rose was in some ways so much older than they—she loved to say risky things in front of the innocent Caro, and howled with laughter when she could not understand—she loved to prod and baffle the two boys, who in this respect were nearly as inexperienced as their sister. Then, on the walk home with Reuben, over Boarzell, she would retail these feats[Pg 255] of hers with gusto, she would invite his kisses, sting up his passion—she tormented him with her extraordinary combinations of childishness and experience, shyness and abandonment, innocence and corruption.

In time the state of his own mind reduced Reuben to silence about his longings. He somehow lost the power of picturing himself married to this turbulent, bewildering creature, half-woman, half-child. He clung to her in silent kisses; leading her home over Boarzell, he would suddenly turn and smother her in his arms, while his breast heaved with griefs and sighings he had not known in the earlier weeks of his courtship.

Rose noticed this difference, and it piqued her. She began to miss his continual protestations. Sometimes she tried to stir them up again, but her bafflings had reacted on herself; she handled him clumsily, he was too mazed to respond to her flicks. Then she became sulky, irritable, slightly tyrannous—even stinting her kisses.

One night early in October he was taking her home. They had crossed Boarzell, and were walking through the lanes that tangle the valley north of Udimore. She walked with her arm conventionally resting on his, her profile demure in the starlight. He felt tired, not in his body, but in his mind—somehow life seemed very aimless and gloomy; he despised himself because he craved for her arms, for her light thoughtless sympathy.

"Why d?an't you speak to me, Rose?"

"I was thinking."

"Wot about?"

"Oh, clothes and things."

He stopped suddenly in their walk, as he had often done, and seized her in his arms, swinging her off her feet, burying his face in her wraps to kiss her neck. She kicked and fought him like a wild cat, and at last he dropped her.

"Why w?an't you let me kiss you?"
 
"Because I won't."

She walked quickly, almost running, and he had to stride to keep up with her.

"You're justabout cruel," he said furiously.

"And so are you."

"Wot have I done?"

"You've changed your mind about wanting to marry me."

He stared at her with his mouth open.

"Rose...."

"Well, don't gape at me. You know you have."

"I justabout haven't. It's you——"

"It isn't me. I only asked for a little time to think it over, and then you go and cool off."

"I—cool off! My dear, I dudn't ever. I never understood—you're such a tedious liddle wild thing."

"Well, do you want to marry me?"

"Rose!"

"And you'll let me do as I like?"

"Rose, marry me."

"Very well—I will. But it's funny I should want to."

Then suddenly her expression changed. Her eyes half closed, her lips parted, and she held out her arms to him with a laugh like a sob.