Chapter 11

At last the crisis came—through George, the youngest, least-considered son at Odiam. He had always been a weakling, as if Naomi had passed into his body her own[Pg 221] passionate distaste for life. Also, as is common with epileptic children, his intellect was not very bright. It had been the habit to spare him, even Reuben had done so within reason. But he should not really have worked at all, or only in strict moderation—certainly he should not have been sent out that October evening to dig up the bracken roots on the new land. Tilly expostulated—"Anyhow he didn't ought to work alone "—but Reuben was angry with the boy, whom he had caught loafing once or twice that day, and roughly packed him off.

He himself went over to Moor's Cottage about a load of trifolium, and returning in the darkness by Cheat Land was persuaded to stay to supper. That was one of the nights when he did not like Alice Jury—he sometimes went through the experience of disliking her, which was an adventure in itself, so wild and surprising was it, so bewildering to remember afterwards. She seemed a little colourless—she was generally so vivid that he noticed and resented all the more those times when her shoulders drooped against her chair, and her little face looked strangely wistful instead of eager. It seemed as if on these occasions Alice were actually pleading with him. She lost that antagonism which was the salt of their relations, instead of fighting she pleaded. Pleaded for what? He dared not ask that question, in case the answer should show him some strange new Canaan which was not his promised land. So he came away muttering—"only a liddle stick of a woman. I like gurt women—I like 'em rosy, I like 'em full-breasted.... She'd never do fur me."

He tramped home through the darkness. A storm was rising, shaking the fir-plumes of Boarzell against a scudding background of clouds and stars. The hedges whispered, the dead leaves rustled, the woods sighed. Every now and then a bellow would come from the Moor, as the sou'wester roared up in a gust, then a low sobbing followed it into silence.
 
On the doorstep Reuben was greeted by Tilly—where was George? He had not been in to supper.

"Have you looked in the new field?"

"Yes—Benjamin went round. But he ?un't there."

"Well, I d?an't know where he is."

"Reckon he's fallen down in a fit somewhere and died."

Tilly was not looking at all like Naomi to-night.

"Nonsense," said Reuben, resenting her manner.

"It ?un't nonsense. I always know when his fits are coming on because he's tired and can't work pr?aperly. He was like that to-day. And you—you drove him out."

Reuben had never been spoken to like this by his daughter. He turned on her angrily, then suddenly changed his mind. For the first time he really saw what a fine girl she was—all that Alice was not.

"We'll go and look for him," he said—"send out the boys."

All that night they hunted for George on Boarzell. It was pitch dark. Soon great layers of cloud were sagging over the stars, and Boarzell's firs were lost in the blackness behind them. Reuben, his sons, Beatup, Piper, Handshut, Boorman, fought the dark with lanterns as one might fight Behemoth with pin-pricks. They scattered over the Moor, searching the thorn-clumps and gorse-thickets. It was pretty certain that he was not on the new ground by Flightshot. Richard said openly that he did not believe in the fit and that George had run away, and—less openly—that it was a good job too. The other boys, however, did not think that he had enough sense to run away, and agreed that his condition all day had foretold an attack.

Reuben himself believed in the fit, and a real anxiety tortured him as he thrust his lantern into the gaping caverns of bushes. He had by his thoughtless and excessive zeal allowed Boarzell to rob him of another man. Of course, it did not follow that George was dead,[Pg 223] but unless they found him soon it was quite likely that he would not survive exposure on such a night. If so, Reuben had only himself to thank for it. He should have listened to his daughter, and either let George off his work or made him work near home. He did not pretend to himself that he loved this weakling son, or that his death would cause his fatherhood much grief, but he found himself with increasing definiteness brought up against the conviction that Boarzell was beating him, wringing its own out of him by slow, inexorable means, paying him back a hundredfold for every acre he took or furrow he planted.

He had become separated from the other searchers, and was alone on the west side of the Moor. The wind barked and howled, hurling itself upon him as he stood, beating his face with hail, which hissed into the dead tangles of the heather, while the stripped thorns yapped and rattled, and the bushes roared. So great was the tumult that he seemed to fall into it like a stone into a wave—it passed over him, round him, seemed even to pass under him, he was hardly conscious of the solid ground. The blackness was impenetrable, save where his lantern stained it with a yellow smudge. He shouted, but his voice perished in the din—it seemed as if his whole man, sight, voice, hearing, and sensation, was blurring into the storm, as if Boarzell had swamped him at last, made him merely one of its hundred voices, mocking the manhood which had tried so much against its earth.

The wind seemed to be laughing at him, as it bellowed up in gusts, struck him, sprayed him, roughed his hair out madly, smacked his cheeks, drove the rain into his skin, and then rumbled away with a hundred chatterings and sighings. It seemed to be telling him that as his breath was to this wind so was he himself to Boarzell. The wind was the voice of the Moor, and it told him that in fighting Boarzell, he did not fight the mere earth,[Pg 224] an agglomeration of lime and clay which he could trample and compel, but all the powers behind it. In arming himself against Boarzell he armed himself against the whole of nature's huge resources, the winds, the storms, the droughts, the early and the latter rain, the poisons in plants, and the death in stones, the lusts which spilling over from the beasts into the heart of man slay him from within himself. He had armed himself against all these, and once again the old words sang in his head—"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?"

He had shrunk into the rattling shelter of some thorn-bushes. They scraped their boughs like grotesque violins, and every other moment they would sweep down over him and shut him into a cavern of snapping twigs. He was soaked to the skin and his teeth chattered. He lay close to the earth, seeking shelter even from the skeleton heather which writhed woody stems all round him. He cursed. Must he spend the night here, lost and grovelling, to listen while Boarzell screeched its triumph over his cold, drenched body....

"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?

"His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.

"The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold; the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.

"He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.

"Sharp stones are under him...."

A crash of thunder and a spit of lightning tore open the sky, and for a moment Reuben saw the slope of the Moor livid in the flash, and the crest of firs standing[Pg 225] against the split and tumbling clouds. The air rang, screamed, hissed, rushed, and rumbled. Reuben, hardly knowing what he did, had sprung to his feet.

"I'll have wheat growing here in a twelvemonth!" he shouted.