Chapter 9

Reuben was going through a new experience. For the first time in his life he had fallen under the dominion of a personality. From his boyhood he had been enslaved by an idea, but people, in anything except their relation to that idea, had never influenced him. Now for the first time he had a life outside Boarzell, an interest, a set of thoughts, which were not only apart from Boarzell but antagonistic to it.

Hitherto he had always considered the opposite of his ambition to be the absence of it. Either one lived to subdue the hostile earth, or one lived with no object at all. It was a new experience to find someone whose life was full of hopes, ideals, and ambitions, all utterly[Pg 217] unconnected with a farm, and it was even more strange than new that he should care to talk about them. Not that he ever found himself being tempted from his own—the most vital part of his relations with Alice Jury lay in their warfare. He fought her as he fought Boarzell, though without that sense of a waiting treachery which tinctured his battles with the Moor; their intercourse was full of conflict, of fiery, sacred hostilities. They travelled on different roads, and knew that they could never walk together, yet each wanted to count the other's milestones.

Sometimes Reuben would ask himself if he was in love with her, but as the physical element which he had always and alone called love was absent, he came to the conclusion that he was not. If he had thought he loved her he would have avoided her, but there was no danger in this parliament of their minds. Her attitude towards life, though it obsessed him, no more convinced him than his convinced her. They would rail and wrangle together by the hour.

"Life is worth while," said Alice, "in itself, not because of what it gives you."

"I agree with you there," said Reuben, "it's not wot life gives that's good, it's wot you t?ake out of it."

"I don't see that. Suppose that because I liked that girl's face in the picture I tore it out and kept it for myself, I should only spoil the picture—the piece I'd torn out wouldn't be any good to me away from the rest."

"I can't foller you," said Reuben gruffly.

"Now don't pretend to be stupid—don't pretend you can't understand anything but turnips."

"And d?an't pretend you can't understand naun but picturs. A good solid turnup in real life is worth a dozen pretty gals in picturs."

"That's right—have the courage of your earthiness. But don't try to make me think that when you look out[Pg 218] of the window at Boarzell, you don't see the sky beyond it."

"And d?an't you try and make out as when you're looking at the sky you d?an't see Boarzell standing in between."

"I don't try and make it out. I see your point of view, but it's only 'in between' me—and you—and something greater."

"Rubbidge!" said Reuben.

He always came away from these wrangles with a feeling as if he had been standing on his head. He was not used to mental scoutings and reconnoitrings. Also, he felt sometimes that Alice was laughing at him, which irritated him, not so much because she mocked as because he could never be really sure whether she mocked or not. Her laughter seemed to come from the remotest, most exalted part of her. The gulfs between their points of view never gaped so wide as when she laughed.