Chapter 8

The last piece of land had been exceptionally tough even for Boarzell. It was a high strip, running right across the Moor from the edge of the twenty-acre piece acquired in '67, over the high-road, to the borders of Doozes. The soil was amazingly various—it started in[Pg 267] the low grounds almost as clay, with runnels of red water in the irrigation ditches, then passing through a stratum of marl it became limish, grey and brittle, powdering under the spade. Reuben's ploughs tore over it, turning up earth of almost every consistency and colour, till the new ground looked like a smeared palette. Towards Doozes it became clay again, and here oats would grow, sedge-leaved and tulip-rooted, with puffy awns. On the crest was rubble, poor stuff where even the heather seemed to fight for existence.

Reuben struggled untiringly—he tried manure as in his first enterprising days, and a horrible stink of guano told traffic on the road it was passing through Odiam territory. Spades and ploughshares and harrows scored and pulped the earth. Sometimes with breaking back and aching head, the sweat streaming over his skin, he would lift himself stiffly from the plough-handles, and shake his fist at the desert round him. He had never had such a tussle before, and put it down to the fact that he was now for the first time on the high ground, on the hard and sterile scab of the marl, where it seemed as if only gorse would grow. He felt as if now for the first time he was fighting against odds, his earlier struggles were tame compared with this.

Often in the evenings, when the exhausting work of the day was done, he would wander out on the Moor, seeking as usual rest on the field of his labours. The tuft of firs would grow black and featureless against the dimming sky, and stars would hang pale lamps above the fog, which smoked round Boarzell, veiling the fields, till it seemed as if he stood alone on some desert island, in the midst of a shoreless sea. All sounds would be muffled, lights and shadows would blur, and he would be alone with the fir-clump and the stars and the strong smells of his land.

He would wait there till the dew hung in pearls on his clothes and hair, and the damp chills of the night were[Pg 268] in his bones. Then he would creep down from the Moor, and go back into the warmth and love of the house—yet with this difference now, that he never quite forgot.

He would wake during the night after cruel dreams of Boarzell stripped of its tilth, relapsed into wildness; for a few agonised moments he would wonder if the dream were true, and if he had not indeed failed. Sometimes he had to get out of bed and steal to the window, to reassure himself with the sight of his diggings and fencings. Then a horrible thought would attack him, that though he had not yet actually failed, he was bound to fail soon, that his task was too much for him, and only one end possible. He would creep back into bed, and lie awake till dawn and the restarting of the wheel.

One comfort was that these evil summers had blighted Grandturzel too. Realf's fruit and grain had both done badly, and he had been unfortunate with his cows, two of which had died of garget. It was now that the characters of the two rivals were contrasted. Realf submitted at once to adversity, cut down his expenses, and practically withdrew from the fight. Ambitious and enterprising when times were good, he was not the man to be still ambitious and enterprising when they were bad. The greatness of his farm was not so much to him as the comfort of his family. He now had a little son, and was anxious that neither he nor Tilly should suffer from bad speculations. He despised Reuben for putting Odiam before his wife and children, and defying adversity at the expense of his household.

"He'll do fur himself," he said to Tilly, as he watched her bath the baby before the fire, "and where'll his old farm be then?"

"He's more likely to do fur someone else," said Tilly, who knew her father.

"Wot about this gal he's married?"

"I'm sorry fur her."
 
"But she d?an't look as if she wanted it, surelye. I never see anything so smart and well-set-up as she wur in church last Sunday."

"Still, I'm sorry fur her—I'm sorry fur any woman as he takes up with. Now, Henry, you can't kiss baby while I'm bathing him."

It sometimes grieved Tilly that she could not do more for her brothers and sister. Pete did not want her help, being quite happy in his work on the farm. But Jemmy and Caro hated their bondage, and she wished she could set them free. Reuben had sternly forbidden his children to have anything to do with the recreant sister, but they occasionally met on the road, or on the footpath across Boarzell. Once Caro had stolen a visit to Grandturzel, and held the baby in her arms, and watched her sister put him to bed; but she was far too frightened of Reuben to come again.

On Reuben's marriage Tilly had hoped that Rose might do something for Caro, and indeed the girl had lately seemed to have a few more treats and pleasures in her life; but from what she had heard and from what she saw, the younger sister was afraid that Rose's good offices were not likely to make for Caro's ultimate happiness. Then comfortable little Tilly would sigh in the midst of her own, and wish that everyone could have what she had been given.

Benjamin occasionally stole afternoons in Rye—if he was discovered there would be furious scenes with Reuben, but he had learned cunning, and also, being of a sporting nature, was willing to take risks. Some friends of his were building a ship down at the Camber. Week by week he watched her grow, watched the good timber fill in her ribs, watched her decks spread themselves, watched her masts rise, and at last smelt the good smell of her tarring. She was a three-masted schooner, and her first voyage was to be to the Canaries. Her builders drank many a toast with Backfield's[Pg 270] truant son, who gladly risked his father's blows to be with them in their work and hearty boozing. He forgot the farmyard smells he hated in the shipyard smells he loved, and his slavery in oaths and rum—with buckets of tar and coils of rope, and rousing chanties and stories of strange ships.

Next spring the news came to Odiam that Benjamin had run away to sea.