ONE:At Flightshot the Squire viewed Odiam's recovery with some uneasiness. It would be a good thing for him if he could sell more land to old Backfield, but at the same time his conscience was restless about it. Backfield was a rapacious old hound, who forced the last ounce of work out of his labourers, and the last ounce of money out of his tenants. He was a hard master and a hard landlord, and ought not to be encouraged. All the same, Bardon did not see how he was to avoid encouraging him. If Backfield applied for the land it would be suicidal folly to refuse to sell it. He was in desperate straits for money. He had appealed to Anne, who had money of her own, but Anne's reply had been frigid. She wrote:On the other hand, her devotion to Reuben grew more and more absorbing and submissive. Her type was obviously the tyrant-loving, the more primitive kind, which worships the strong of the tribe and recoils instinctively from the weak. Where many a woman, perhaps rougher and harder than she, would have flung all the love and sweetness of her nature upon the blasted Harry, she turned instead to the strong, stalwart Reuben, who tyrannised over her and treated her with less and less consideration ... and this after twenty years of happy married life, during which she had idled and been waited on, and learned a hundred dainty ways.
