Chapter 10

In the spring of '99 old Jury died over at Cheat Land. His wife had died a year or two earlier—Reuben had meant to go over and see Alice, but the untimely calving of a new Alderney had put the idea entirely out of his head. On this occasion, however, he attended the funeral, with the other farmers of the district, and at[Pg 408] the churchyard gate had a few words with Alice before she went home.

She was a middle-aged woman now, but her eyes were as bright as ever, which made her look strangely young. Her hair had turned very prettily grey, she was fatter in the face, and on the whole looked well and happy, in spite of her father's death. She told him she was going to live at Rye—she had a tiny income, derived from Jury's life insurance, and she meant to do art needlework for an ecclesiastical firm. Reuben experienced a vague sense of annoyance—not that he wanted her to be unhappy, but he felt that she had no right to happiness, going out into the world, poor and alone, her parents dead, her life's love missed....

That summer the country was shaken by rumours of war, Reuben; having more leisure on his hands, spent it in the study of his daily paper. He could now read simple sentences, and considered himself quite an educated man. When war at last broke out in South Africa he was delighted. It was the best of all possible wars, organised by the best of all possible Governments, under the best of all possible ministers. Chamberlain became his hero—not that he understood or sympathised with his Imperialism, but he admired him for his attitude towards the small nations. He hated all talk about preserving the weak—such was not nature's way, the way of farms; there the weakest always went to the wall, and he could not see why different methods should obtain in the world at large. If Reuben had been a politician he would have kept alive no sick man of Europe, protected no down-trodden Balkan States. One of the chief reasons why he wanted to see the Boers wiped out was because they had muddled their colonisation, failed to establish themselves, or to make of the arid veldt what he had made of Boarzell.

"They're no good, them Boers," he announced at the Cocks; "there they've bin fur years and years, and[Pg 409] they say as how that Transvaal's lik a desert. They've got mizzling liddle farms such as I wudn't give sixpence for—and all that gurt veldt's lik the palm of my hand, naun growing. They d?an't deserve to have a country."

He expressed himself so eloquently in this fashion that the member for the Rye division of Sussex—the borough had been disenfranchised in '85—asked him to speak at a recruiting meeting at the Court Hall. Unluckily Reuben's views on recruiting were peculiar.

"Now's your chance," he announced to the assembled yokels; "corn prices is going up, and every man who wants to do well by himself had better grub his pastures and sow grain. Suppose we wur ever to fight the French—who are looking justabout as ugly at us now as they did in Boney's time—think wot it 'ud be if we had grain-stocks in the country, and cud settle our own prices. My advice to the men of Rye is the same as wot I gave in this very hall thirty-five years ago—sow grain, and grain, and more grain."

The member, the colonel of the volunteers, and others present, pointed out to Reuben afterwards that the situation was military, not agricultural; but it was characteristic of him to see all situations from the agricultural point of view. His old ideas of an agricultural combine, which had fallen miserably to pieces in '65, now revived in all their strength. He saw East Sussex as a country of organised corn-growing, Odiam at the head. His rather eclectic newspaper reading had impressed him with the idea that England was on the verge of war with one or two European Powers, notably the French, whose ribald gloatings over British disasters stirred up all the fury of the man who had been born within range of the Napoleonic wars and bred on tales of Boney and his atrocities.

He was dismayed by the lack of local enthusiasm. He dug up one or two of his own pastures and planted wheat; he even sacrificed ten acres of his precious hops,[Pg 410] but nobody seemed inclined to follow his example. The neighbourhood was ornately patriotic, flags flew from the oast-houses at Socknersh, union Jacks washed to delicate pastel shades by the chastening rain—while the Standard misleadingly proclaimed that the Royal Family was in residence at Burntbarns. On Odiam the boys sang:
"Goodbye, Dolly, I must leave you
Though it breaks my heart to go—
Something tells me I am wanted
At the Front to drive away the foe."

Some of them in fact did go. Others remained, and sang:
"Good-bye, my Bluebell, farewell to you,
One last long look into your eyes of blue—
'Mid camp-fires gleaming, 'mid shot and shell,
I will be dreaming of my own Bluebell."