Chapter 4

There was a big outcry in Peasmarsh against Backfield's treatment of the Realfs. Not a farmer in the district would have kept on a hand who had burnt nearly the whole farm to ashes through bad stacking, but this fact did little to modify the general criticism. A dozen excuses were found for Realf's "accident," as it came to be called—"and old Ben cud have afforded to lose a stack or two, surelye."

Reuben was indifferent to the popular voice. The Realfs cleared out bag and baggage the following month. No one knew their destination, but it was believed they were to separate. Afterwards it transpired that Realf had been given work on a farm near Lurgashall, while Tilly became housekeeper to a clergyman, taking with her the boy she would rather have seen dead than at Odiam. Nothing was heard of the daughters, and local rumour had it that they went on the streets; but this pleasing idea was shattered a year or two later by young Alce, the publican's son, coming back from a visit to Chichester and saying he had found both the girls in service in a Canon's house, doing well, and one engaged to marry the butler.

Reuben did not trouble about the Realfs. Tilly had been no daughter of his from the day she married; it was a pity he had ever revoked his wrath and allowed himself to be on speaking terms with her and her family; if he had turned them out of Grandturzel straight away there would have been none of this absurd fuss—also he would not have lost a good crop of hay. But he comforted himself with the thought that his magnanimity had put about a thousand pounds into his pocket, so he could afford to ignore the cold shoulder which[Pg 443] was turned to him wherever he went. And the hay was insured.

He gave up going to the Cocks. It had fallen off terribly those last five years, he told Maude the dairy-woman, his only confidant nowadays. The beer had deteriorated, and there was a girl behind the counter all painted and curled like a Jezebubble, and rolling her eyes at you like this.... If any woman thought a man of his experience was to be caught, she was unaccountable mistaken (this doubtless for Maude's benefit, that she might build no false hopes on the invitation to bring her sewing into the kitchen of an evening). Then the fellows in the bar never talked about stocks and crops and such like, but about race-horses and football and tomfooleries of that sort, wot had all come in through the poor being educated and put above themselves. Moreover, there was a gramophone playing trash like "I wouldn't leave my little wooden hut for you"—and the tale of Reuben's grievances ended in expectoration.

All the same he was lonely. Maude was a good woman, but she wasn't his equal. He wanted to speak to someone of his own class, who used to be his friend in days gone by. Then suddenly he thought of Alice Jury. He had promised to go and see her at Rye, but had never done so. He remembered how long ago she had used to comfort him when he felt low-spirited and neglected by his fellows. Perhaps she would do the same for him now. He did not know her address, but the new people at Cheat Land would doubtless be able to give it to him, and perhaps Alice would help him through these trying times as she had helped him through earlier ones.

A few days later he drove off in his trap to Rye. Though he had scarcely thought of her for ten years, he was now all aflame with the idea of meeting her. She would be pleased to see him, too. Perhaps their long-buried emotions would revive, and as old people they[Pg 444] would enjoy a friendship which would be sweeter than the love they had promised themselves in more ardent days.

Alice lived in lodgings by the Ypres Tower. The little crinkled cottage looked out over the marshes towards Camber and the masts of ships. Reuben was shown into a room which reminded him of Cheat Land long ago, for there were books arranged on shelves, and curtains of dull red linen quaintly embroidered. There was a big embroidery frame on the table, and over it was stretched a gorgeous altar-cloth all woven with gold and violet tissue.

He was inspecting these things when Alice came in. Her hair was quite white now, and she stooped a little, but it seemed to Reuben as if her eyes were still as lively as ever. Something strange suddenly flooded up in his heart and he held out both hands.

"Alice ..." he said.

"Good afternoon," she replied, putting one hand in his, and withdrawing it almost immediately.

"I—I—?un't you pleased to see me?"

"I thought you'd forgotten all about me, certainly."

She offered him a chair, and he sat down. Her coldness seemed to drive back the tides that had suddenly flooded his lips, and slowly too they began to ebb from his heart. Whom had he come to see?—the only woman he had ever loved, whose love he had hoped to catch again in these his latter days, and hold transmuted into tender friendship, till he went back to his earth? Not so, it seemed—but an old woman who had once been a girl, with whom he had nothing in common, and from whom he had travelled so far that they could scarcely hear each other's voices across the country that divided them. Alice broke the silence by offering him some tea.

"Thanks, but I d?an't t?ake tea—I've never held wud it."
 
"How are you, Reuben? I've heard a lot about you, but nothing from you yourself. Is it true that you've sent away your daughter and her family from Grandturzel?"

"Yes—after they burnt the pl?ace down to the ground."

"And where are they now?"

"I dunno."

Alice said nothing, and Reuben fired up a little:

"I daresay you think badly of me, lik everyone else. But if a man m?ade a bonfire of your new stacks, I reckon you wouldn't say 'thank'ee,' and raise his wages."

Another pause—then Alice said:

"How are you getting on with Boarzell? I hear that most of it's yours now."

"All except the Fair-pl?ace—and I mean to have that in a year or two, surelye."

This time it was she that kindled:

"You talk as if you'd all your life before you—and you must be nearly eighty-five."

"I d?an't feel old—at least not often. I still feel young enough to have a whack at the Fair-pl?ace."

"So you haven't changed your idea of happiness?"

"How d'you mean?"

"Your idea of happiness always was getting something you wanted. Well, lately I've discovered my idea of happiness, and that's—wanting nothing."

"Then you have got wot you want," said Reuben cruelly.

"I don't think you understand."

"My old f?ather used to say—'I want nothing that I haven't got, and so I've got nothing that I d?an't want, surelye.'"

"It's all part of the same idea, only of course he had many more things than I have. I'm a poor woman, and[Pg 446] lonely, and getting old. But"—and a ring of exaltation came into her voice, and the light of it into her eyes—"I want nothing."

"I wish you'd talk plain. If you never want anything, then you ?un't pr?aperly alive. So you ?un't happy—because you're dead."

"You don't understand me. It's not because I'm dead and sluggish that I don't want anything, but because I've had fight enough in me to triumph over my desires. So now everything's mine."

"Fust you say as how you're happy because you've got nothing, and now you say as everything's yourn. How am I to know wot you mean?"

"Well, compare my case with yours. You've got everything you want, and yet in reality you've got nothing."

"That's nonsense, Alice." He spoke more gently, for he had come to the conclusion that sorrow and loneliness had affected her wits.

"It isn't. You've got what you set out to get—Boarzell Moor, and success for Odiam; but in getting it you have lost everything that makes life worth while—wife, children, friends, and—and—love. You're like the man in the Bible who rebuilt Jericho, and laid the foundations in his firstborn, and set up the gates in his youngest son."

"There you go, Alice! lik the rest of them—no more understanding than anyone else. Can't you see that it's bin worth while?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, that it's worth losing all those things that I may get the one big thing I want. D?an't you see that Boarzell and Odiam are worth more to me than wife or family or than you, Alice. Come to that, you've got none o' them things either, and you haven't a farm to m?ake up fur it. So even if I wur sorry fur wot I'm not sorry fur, I'm still happier than you."
 
"No you aren't—because you want a thing, and I want nothing."

"I've got a thing, my girl, and you've got nothing."

They had both risen and faced each other, anger in their eyes. But their antagonism had lost that vital quality which had once made it the salt of their friendship.

"You d?an't understand me," said Reuben—"I'd better go."

"You don't understand me," said Alice—"you can't."

"We've lost each other," said Reuben—"good-bye."

Alice smiled rather bitterly, and had a moment of vision.

"The fact is that we can't forgive each other—for being happy in different ways."

"I tell you I'm sorry for nothing."

"Nor I."

So they parted.

Reuben drove back slowly through the October afternoon. A transparent brede of mist lay over the fields, occasionally torn by sunlight. Everything was very quiet—sounds of labour stole across the valley from distant farms, and the barking of a dog at Stonelink seemed close at hand. Now and then the old man muttered to himself: "We d?an't understand each other—we d?an't forgive each other—we've lost each other. We've lost each other."

He knew now that Alice was lost. The whole of Boarzell lay between them. He had thought that she would be always there, but now he saw that between him and her lay the dividing wilderness of his success. She was the offering and the reward of failure—and he had triumphed over failure as over everything else.

He drove through Peasmarsh and turned into the Totease lane. The fields on both sides of it were his now. He sniffed delightedly the savour of their sun-baked earth, of the crumpling leaves in their hedges,[Pg 448] of the roots, round and portly, that they nourished in their soil—and the west wind brought him the scent of the gorse on Boarzell, very faintly, for now only the thickets of the top were left.

Almost the whole south was filled by the great lumpish mass of the Moor, no longer tawny and hummocky, but lined with hedges and scored with furrows, here and there a spread of pasture, with the dotted sheep. A mellow corn-coloured light rippled over it from the west, and the sheep bleated to each other across the meadows that had once been wastes....

"My land," murmured old Reuben, drinking in the breeze of it. "My land—more to me than Alice." Then with a sudden fierceness:

"I'm shut of her!"