Chapter 2

Supper was a quiet meal. Old Jury and his invalid wife sat at each end of the table, while Alice did most of the helping and waiting. They seemed a sorry three to Reuben, pale, washed out, and weakly, their eyes bright as birds' with the factitious light of their enthusiasms for things that did not matter. They ate without much appetite, picking daintily at their food, their knives never in their mouths. Reuben found himself despising them as he despised the Bardons.

Rose did not talk much, but she ate heartily—she must be as healthy as she looked. Once or twice during the meal Reuben caught himself staring at her lips—they were extraordinarily red, and at the end of the meal the juice of her pudding had stained them purple.

She said that she must leave directly after supper. Alice fetched her hat, which was not the kind that Reuben had ever seen on country girls, being of the fashionable pork-pie shape. All her clothes were obviously town-made; she wore a blue stuff dress, tight-fitting round her bust and shoulders, full and flounced in the skirt—afterwards he heard that Rose had spent some years with relations in London before coming to live at Starvecrow.

He gave her his arm, said good-bye to Alice in the doorway, and went through the little garden where flowers crowded out vegetables in a very unbusiness-like way, into the lane which wound past Cheat Land and round the hanger of Boarzell, to the farms of the Brede Valley.

Rose, a little to his surprise, began to chatter volubly. She talked very much like a child, with na?ve comments, about simple things. She asked trivial questions, and screamed with delight when some dusk-blinded bird flew against her breast and dashed down heavily into[Pg 247] the ruts. She exclaimed at the crimson moon which rose behind the hedge like a hot penny—she laughed at the slightest provocation; and yet all the while he was conscious of an underlayer of shrewdness, he had an extraordinary conviction of experience.

Besides, while she laughed and babbled like a child, her eyes continually rose towards his with a woman's calculated boldness. They spoke something quite different from her lips—the combination was maddening; and those lips, too, in their rare silences, were so unlike the words they uttered that he scarcely knew whether he wanted most to silence them completely or never let them be silent.

"I don't like Alice Jury," she prattled, "she says just the opposite of what you say. She never lets herself agree with anyone. She's a contradictious female."

Then suddenly she was silent—and Reuben kissed her.

He crooked his arm round her and held her close to him, standing there in the lane. Her lips slowly parted under his, then suddenly she threw her head back in a kind of ecstasy, giving him the white expanse of her neck, which he kissed, giddy with a soft fragrance that rose from her clothes, reminding him a little of clover.

She was so obviously and na?vely delighted, that when he drew himself up, his idea of her was again one of extreme childishness. And yet it was evident that she was used to kisses, and that he had kissed her at her own unspoken invitation.

They walked on down the lane. Rose's chatter had ceased, and a complete silence dropped between the hedges. The moon had risen higher, and the western hazels were bloomed with light. The moon was no longer crimson in the dark sky, but had burnt down to copper, casting a copper glow into the mists, staining all the blues that melted into one another along the hills. Only the middle of the lane was black—like a well. Reuben[Pg 248] and Rose could see each other's faces in a kind of rusty glimmer, but their feet stumbled in the darkness, and her hand lay clutching and heavy on his arm.

At last they came to Castweasel—three old cottages and a ruined one, leaning together in a hollow like mushrooms. Beside the ruined cottage a tree-trunk was lying, and Rose suddenly stretched herself with a little sigh.

"I'm tired—let's sit down and rest a bit."

They sat down on the log, and she immediately crept close to him like a child. He put his arm round her, and once again she thrilled him with her own delight—she stole her arms round his neck, holding his head in the crook of her elbows, and laughed with her mouth against his. Then her hands crept into his hair, and rumpled it, while she whispered like a child finding some new virtue in its toy—"How thick! how thick!" At last she drew his head down to her breast, holding it there with both hands while she dipped her kisses on his eyes....

Reuben was in ecstasy by this time. It was years since he had caressed a woman, except casually, for he considered that women interfered with his work. Rose's eagerness could not cheapen her, for it was so childlike, and she continued to give him that sense of deep experience which robbed her attitude of insipidity. Her delight in his kisses was somehow made sweeter to him by the conviction that she could compare them with other men's.

She began to laugh—she became gay and mettlesome. Her whole nature seemed changed, and he found it hard to think of her as the beautiful yet rather lumpish girl who had sat in the silence of a good appetite at the Cheat Land supper-table. Behind them the ruin of the old cottage sent out bitter-sweet scents of decay—its crumbling plaster and rotting lath perfumed the night. Fragrances strove in the air—the scent of Rose's clothes,[Pg 249] and of her big curls tumbling on his shoulder, the scent of still water, of dew-drenched leaves, and damp, teeming soil—sweet vagabond scents of bluebells, puffed on sudden breezes....

Reuben was growing drunken with it all—he strained Rose to him; she was part of the night. Just as her scents mingled with its scents, so he and she both mingled with the hush of the lightless, sorrowless fields, the blots of trees, the woods that whispered voicelessly.... Above the hedges, stars winked and flashed, dancing in the crystalline air. Right overhead the Sign of Cancer jigged to its image in Castweasel Pool. Reuben looked up, and through a gate he saw Boarzell rearing like a shaggy beast towards him. He suddenly became more aware of Boarzell than of anything in the night, than of the flowers or the water or the stars, or even Rose, drowsing against his shoulder with parted lips. Boarzell filled the night. The breeze became suddenly laden with scents of it—the faint bitterness of its dew-drenched turf where the bracken-crosiers were beginning to uncurl, of its noon-smelling gorse, of its heather-tangle, half budding, half dead, of its fir-needles and its fir-cones, rotting and sprouting. All seemed to blend together into a strong, heady, ammoniacal smell ... the great beast of Boarzell dominated the night, pawed Reuben, roared over him, made him suddenly mad, clutching Rose till she cried out with pain, kissing her till she broke free, and stood before him pale and dishevelled, with anger in her eyes.

He sprang to his feet, the mood had passed—the beast of Boarzell had ceased to worry him.

"I'm sorry," he said sheepishly.

"And well you may be," said Rose, "you've torn my gown."

They walked on down the lane; she pouted and swung her hat. Reuben, anxious to propitiate, picked primroses under the hedge and gave them to her.
 
She looked pleased at once, and began to eat them.

"Wot," said Reuben, "you eat flowers?"

"Yes," she answered, "I love eating primroses—pick me some more."

So for the rest of the walk to Starvecrow, he picked primroses, and she nibbled them with her white teeth, which were small and even, except for the two canines, which were pointed like a little animal's.