THREE:Pete spent that evening with Ades, and Reuben's fireside slumbers were unrestful because he missed Pete's accustomed snore from the other end of the settle. The next morning his son did not appear, though there was plenty of work to be done in the hop-fields.[Pg 378] The young hops were now well above ground, and exposed to the perils of blight, so Reuben and Beatup were spraying them with insect-killer, badly in need of a third man to do the mixing.Oh, Boarzell, Boarzell!... his love, his dream, his promised land, lying there in the cold white hope of morning! No degenerate sons could rob him of his Moor, though they might leave him terribly alone on it. After all, better be alone with his ambition, than share it with their defiling thoughts, their sordid, humdrum, milk-and-water schemes. In future he would try no more to interest his children in Boarzell. He had tried to thrill Robert and Albert and Richard with his glorious enterprise, and they had all forsaken himone for love, one for fame, and one for some still unknown unworthiness. He would not trouble about the others;[Pg 191] they should serve him for no other reason but that he was a hard master. He had been hard with the three boys, but he had been exciting and confiding too. Now he would drop all that. He would cease to look for comradeship in his children, as years ago he had ceased to look for it in his wife. It would be enough if they were just slaves working under his whip. He had been a fool to expect sympathy.... Boarzell, looming blacker and blacker against the glowing pinks and purples of the sky, seemed to mock at sympathy and its cheap colours, seemed to bid him Be Hard, Be Strong, Be RemorselessBe Alone.
A human being is a part of a whole, called by the magic and know universe.