Chapter 4

The little boys grew big and went to school. This time it was not to the dame's school in the village, for that had collapsed before the new board-school which had risen to madden Reuben's eyes with the spectacle of an educated populace. They went to Rye Grammar School and learned Latin and Greek like gentlemen. There was something new in Reuben's attitude towards these boys, for his indulgence had deeper roots than expediency. Sometimes of an evening he would go to the bottom of the Totease lane, where it joins the Peasmarsh road, and wait there for his sons' return. They would see him afar off, and run to meet him, and they would all three walk home together, arm-in-arm perhaps.

He would have been exceedingly indignant if in bygone days anyone had ever hinted that he did not[Pg 389] love the sons and daughters whom he had beaten, kicked out of doors, frustrated, suppressed, or driven to calamity. All the same, he acknowledged that there was a difference between his feelings towards Rose's children and Naomi's. Though Naomi was the wife more pleasant to remember, Rose's were the children he loved best. They had not grown up in the least like her, and he was glad of that, for he would have hated to confront again her careless, lovely face, or the provoking little teeth of her smile; they were Backfields, dark of hair and swarthy of skin, David with grey eyes, William with brown.

When he saw them running along the lane from school, or tramping the fields together—they were always together—or helping with the hops or the hay, his heart would stir with a warm, unwonted sense of fatherhood, not just the proud paternal impulse which had visited him when he held his new-born babies in his arms, but something belonging more to the future than the present, to the days when they should carry on Odiam after his death. For the first time he had sons whom he looked upon not merely as labourers to help him in his work, but as men created in his own image to inherit that work and reap its fruits when he was gone.

He was pleased to see their evident love of the farm. They begged him not to keep them too long at school, for they wanted to come home and work on Odiam. So he took David away when he was sixteen, and William when he was fifteen the next year.

Meantime it seemed as if in spite of his absorption in his new family he was not to be entirely cut off from the old. In the summer of '87, just after the Jubilee, he had a letter from Richard, announcing that he and his wife were coming for a week or so to Rye. Reuben had not heard of Richard for some years, and had not seen him since he left Odiam—he had been asked to the wedding, but had refused to go. Now Richard expressed[Pg 390] the hope that he would soon see his father. His was a nature that mellows and softens in prosperity, and though he had not forgotten the miseries of his youth, he was too happy to let them stand between him and Reuben now that they were only memories.

Anne was not so disposed to forgive—she had her brother's score as well as her husband's to settle, and concealed from no one that she thought her father-in-law a brutal and conscienceless old slave-driver whose success was a slur on the methods of Providence. She refused to accompany Richard on his first visit to Odiam, but spent the afternoon at Flightshot, while he tramped with Reuben over the land that had once been so hateful to him.

Reuben, though he would not have confessed it, was much taken with his son's appearance. Richard looked taller, which was probably because he held himself better, more proudly erect; his face seemed also subtly changed; he had almost a legal profile, due partly no doubt to a gold-rimmed pince-nez. He looked astonishingly clean-shaven, he wore good clothes, and his hands were slim and white, not a trace of uncongenial work remaining. He had quite lost his Sussex accent, and Reuben vaguely felt that he was a credit to him.

Their attitude, at first constrained, soon became more cordial than either would have thought possible in earlier days. Richard made no tactless references to his brothers and sisters, and admired and praised everything, even the pigsties that had used to make him sick. They went out into the fields and inspected the late lambs, Richard showing that he had lost every trace of shepherd-lore that had ever been his. His remarks on shearing gave Reuben a very bad opinion of the English Bar; however, they parted in a riot of mutual civility, and Richard asked his father to dine with him at the Mermaid in a couple of days.

Anne was furious when she heard of the invitation.
 
"You know I don't want to meet your father—and I'm sure he'll disgrace us."

"He's more likely to amuse us," said Richard; "he's a character, and I shall enjoy studying him for the first time from an unbiassed view-point."

"It won't be unbiassed if he disgraces us."

However, Reuben did not disgrace them. On the contrary, more than one admiring glance drifted to the Backfields' table, and remarks were overheard about "that picturesque old man." Reuben had dressed himself with care in a suit of dark grey cloth and the flowered waistcoat he had bought when he married Rose. His collar was so high and stiff that he could hardly get his chin over it, his hair was brushed and oiled till its grey thickness shone like the sides of a man-o'-war, and his hands looked quite clean by artificial light.

Richard had invited his young half-brothers too, for they had been at school when he visited Odiam. They struck him as quite ordinary-looking boys, dressed in modern reach-me-downs, and only partially inheriting their father's good looks. As for them, they were cowed and abashed past all words. It seemed incredible that this resplendent being in the white shirt-front and gold-rimmed eye-glasses was their brother, and the lady with the hooked nose and the diamonds their sister-in-law. They scarcely ventured to speak, and were appalled by the knives and forks and glasses that lay between them and their dinner.

Reuben too was appalled by them, but would not for worlds have shown it. He attacked the knives and forks with such vigour that he did not get really involved in them till the joint, and as he refused no drink the waiter offered he soon had all his glasses harmlessly occupied. Nor was he at a loss for conversation. He was resolved that neither Richard nor Anne should ignore the greatness of his farm; if only he could stir[Pg 392] up a spark of home-sickness in his son's white-shirted breast, his triumph would be complete.

"I reckon I'm through wud my bad luck now—Odiam's doing valiant. I'm shut of all the lazy-bones, Grandturzel's beat, and I've naun to stand ag?unst me."

"What about Nature?" asked Richard, readjusting his pince-nez and thrusting forward his chin, whereby it was always known in court that he meant to "draw out" the witness.

"Nature!" snorted Reuben—"wot's Nature, I'd lik to know?"

"The last word on most subjects," said Richard.

"Well, is it? I reckon it ?un't the last word on your wife."

"I beg your pardon!"—Anne's chin came forward so like Richard's that one might gather he had borrowed the trick from her.

"Well, 'carding to Nature, ma'am, and saving your presence, you're forty-five year if you're a day. I remember the very 'casion you wur born. Well, if I may be so bold, you d?an't look past thirty. How's that? Just because you know some dodges worth two of Nature's, you've a way of gitting even wud her. Now if a lady can bust Nature at her dressing-t?able, I reckon I can bust her on my farm."

"This is most interesting," said Anne icily, raising her lorgnette and looking at Reuben as if he were a bad smell.

"He means to be complimentary," said Richard.

"Reckon I do!" cried Reuben genially, warmed by various liquors—"naun shall say I d?an't know a fine woman when I see one. And I reckon as me and my darter-in-law are out after the s?um thing—and that's the beating of Nature, wot you seem to set such a store by, Richard."

"Well, she'll have you both in the end, anyhow."
 
"She! no—she w?an't git me."

"She'll get you when you die."

"Oh, I d?an't count that—that's going to good earth."

"Perhaps she'll get you before then."

Reuben banged the table with his fist.

"I'm hemmed if she does. She'd have got me long ago if she'd ever been going to—when I wur young and my own hot blood wur lik to betray me. But I settled her then, and I'll settle her to the end of time. Mark my words, Richard my boy, there's always some way of gitting even wud her. Wot's nature?—nature's a thing; and a man's a—why he's a man, and he can always go one better than a thing. Nature m?akes potato-blight, so man m?akes Bordeaux spray; nature m?akes calf-husk, so man m?akes linseed oil; nature m?akes lice, so man m?akes lice-killer. Man's the better of nature all along, and I d?an't mind proving it."

Having thus delivered himself under the combined fire of the lorgnette and the pince-nez, Reuben poured himself out half a tumblerful of crème de menthe and drank the healths of them both with their children, whereat Anne rose quickly from the table and sought refuge in the drawing-room.

It was after ten o'clock when her father-in-law and his two silent boys climbed into their trap and started homewards over the clattering cobbles of Mermaid Street. In the trap the two silent boys found their tongues, and fell to discussing their brother Richard in awestruck voices. They whispered about his dinner, his wife, his hands, his eye-glasses, his voice, while old Dorrington picked his way up Playden Hill in the white starshine. Reuben heard them as if in a dream as he leaned forward over the reins, his eyes fixed on Capella, bright and cold above Bannister's Town. He had drunk more liberally and more variously than he had ever drunk in his life, but he carried his liquor well, and all[Pg 394] he was conscious of was a slight exaltation, a feeling of triumph, as if all these huddled woods, lightless farms, and cold winking stars were in some strange way his by conquest, the tokens of his honour. The wind lapped round him, baffing at his neck—it sighed in the woods, and rocked them gently towards the east. In the south Orion hung above Stonelink, with Sirius at the end of his sword ... the constellation of the Ram was high....

Then suddenly his sons' voices floated up to him in his dream.

"I wish I could be like Richard, Bill."

"So do I—but I reckon we never shall."

"Not if we stick to the farm. Did you notice that ring on his little finger?"

"Yes, quite a plain one, but it looked justabout fine."

"And he had a gold watch-chain across his waistcoat."

"I reckon he's done well fur himself by running away."

"Yes, if he'd stayed he'd never have married Miss Bardon and had his name in all the papers."

"We'll never do anything fur ourselves if we stay at Odiam."

"No—but we'll have to stay. F?ather will make us."

"He couldn't make Richard stay."

Reuben listened as if in a nightmare—the blood in his veins seemed to turn to ice. He could hardly believe his ears.

"Richard's made his fortune by quitting Odiam. 'Tis a good place, but he'd never have done half so valiant for himself if he'd stayed."

Reuben pulled himself together, and swinging round cuffed both speakers unaccustomedly.

"D?an't let me hear another word of that hemmed nonsense. If you think as Richard's bettered himself by running away from Odiam, you're unaccountable[Pg 395] mistaken. Wot's a dirty lawyer compared wud a farmer as farms three hundred acres, and owns 'em into the bargain? All my boys have busted and ruined them selves by running away—Richard's the only one that's done anything wotsumdever ... and if he's done well, there's one as has done better, and that's his f?ather wot stayed at home."