Chapter 10

Reuben's constant visits to Cheat Land were soon noticed at Odiam, and every advantage was taken of them. A period of licence set in. Richard read Anne Bardon's Homer quite openly by the kitchen fire, Caro dropped tears over East Lynne in the dairy, and Jemmy spent long tarry hours at Rye, coming home with a rank chew in his mouth, and sailors' oaths to salt his work on the farm.

Tilly had private affairs of her own which occasionally led her out on Boarzell of an afternoon. She always took her sewing, for she dared not be behindhand with it. Strangely enough, in spite of Jemmy's and Tilly's truancies, the work was somehow got through as usual, for shortcomings would have been found out and punished on the master's return—or worse still, he might have stayed at home. For the first time a certain [Pg 219]freemasonry was established between the brothers and sisters. Hitherto their rebellion had been too secret even for confederacy, but now some of the crushing weight was lifted, and they could combine—all except Peter, who was too much Reuben's man for them to trust him; luckily he was rather stupid. So Peter did not see and no one else took any notice if Caro read and wept over sentimental novels, or Jemmy brought home harbour mud on his shoes, or George, who was delicate and epileptic, slept away an hour under a haystack, or Richard pondered the Iliad, or Tilly ran out on the Moor—even though she went to meet Realf of Grandturzel.

They met on the further side of the fir clump, on the edge of Grandturzel's inclosure. Here Tilly would sit under a gorse-bush with her sewing, while young Realf lay along the grass at her feet. They did not talk much, for Tilly was busy, and generally had her mouth full of pins; but Realf's manhood worshipped her as she sat there, her delicious head bowed, and stains of sunshine, with sprinkled gorse-petals, in her hair. He loved her little determined chin, and the sweet smudge of freckles on her nose. Love filled their simplest actions, kindled their simplest words; it dreamed in their eyes and laughed on their lips; its silences linked them closer than the most passionate embraces.

Both unconsciously dreaded the time when they should demand more of each other—when the occasional enlacing of their hands would no longer be enough to open Paradise, when from sweet looking and longing they would have to pass into the bitterness of action. Tilly, though essentially practical and determined, was enjoying her first visit to faery, and also inherited her mother's gift of languor. She basked in those hours of sun and bees. She, like her father, was passing for the first time into a life outside the dominion of the farm—but,[Pg 220] whereas he fought it, and sought it only to fight it, she submitted to it as to a caress.

She cared nothing for Odiam; it was no thought of disloyalty to it and her father, of breaking from her service, which made her mark time in dreams. As the weeks went by she felt more and more the hatefulness of the yoke. She now had a standard of comparison by which to judge Reuben and Odiam. She saw herself and her brothers and her sister more and more as victims. Other farmers' children were not slaves. Other farms did not hang like sucking incubuses on boys' and girls' backs, draining all the youth and joy and sport out of them.

It made her blood boil to think of Robert and Albert in their exile. Robert had now been released from gaol, and had been sent by a charitable society to Australia. Reuben had refused to move a hand to help him. As for Albert, a few months ago a piteous letter had arrived, begging for money. He had, through Mr. Hedges, found work on a small Radical paper which soon came to grief, and since then had been practically starving, having had no success as a freelance. A friend of his wanted to start a weekly review—Tory this time, for Albert's politics were subservient to occasion—and only required funds. Did Reuben feel prepared to make an investment? Thus poor Albert cloaked and trimmed his begging.

Of course Reuben had refused to help him, and Tilly had been unable to get any money out of Pete. Her heart bled for her brothers, and at the same time she could not help envying their freedom, though one enjoyed it as a beggar and the other as a felon.