The story of Joe Dansay has nothing to do with us except so far as it affects Caro Backfield, so there will be no digression to explain why he and Albert Cock fought each other up and down Wish Ward till the police came running up and hauled them off to gaol. The next morning he came before the magistrate, and was fined ten shillings and costs or fourteen days. He was able to find the money, but it was not the fine which made him drag his footsteps and hang his head as he walked home, it was the sight of his victim of the night before leaving the court arm-in-arm with a certain pretty witness.Some of them in fact did go. Others remained, and sang:After the children were in bed she changed her dress, putting on the best she hada washing silk with pansies sewn over it, one of her wedding gowns. She frowned at it as she had frowned at the babies' dressesit was so old-fashioned, and worn in places. She suddenly found herself wishing that she loved Reuben so much as not to mind wearing old clothes for his sake. For the first time she could visualise such a state of affairs, for she had met the man for whom she would have worn rags. If only that man had been Reuben, her lawful husband, instead of another! "But I'll be true to him! I'll be true to him!" she murmured, and found comfort in the words till she realised that it was the first time that she had ever glimpsed the possibility of not being true.
ONE:It became now all the more necessary to smash Realf. He could no longer be content with keeping just ahead of him; he must establish a sort of two-power standard, and crush his rival to the earth. That was not a good summer for expansiona drought baked up the greater part of Sussex, and there was an insect plague in the hopsnevertheless, Reuben bought thirty-five acres of Boarzell, on the east slope, by the road. He was tormented by a fear that Realf would buy the land if he[Pg 235] did not, and, moreover, during May two boards had appeared advertising it as "an eligible building site"; which was possibly bluff, possibly unusual cunning on the part of Flightshot, made resourceful by its straits.
ONE: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.
TWO:It was like a muddled dreampeople seemed to have no reason for what they did or shouted; they just ebbed and flowed, jostled and jambed, ran hither and thither, sang and laughed and swore. Rose looked round her to see if she could recognise anyone; now and then a face glowed on her in the torch-light, then died away, once she thought she saw the back of a tradesman's daughter whom she knewbut her chief feeling was of[Pg 309] an utter isolation with her loved one, as if he and she stood alone on some sea-pounded island against which the tides of the world roared in vain.
TWO:Then suddenly an honour fell on Odiam. The War Office itself sent it a telegram. But the honour was taken sadly, for the telegram announced that Sergeant David Backfield had been killed in action at Laing's Nek.
THREE:The morning was just breaking; and the moon shone full and bright on the surrounding buildings, on the trees, on the tents that marked the lodgement of the leaders, and on the groups that lay tentless on the ground, buried in profound sleep. All within the boundary of the rude encampment were reposing in the confidence of power, without guard or centinel, save one, whose eye-lids closed not. Alone, in the corner of a tent, which stood in the centre of the encampment, sat Tyler, whom the moonbeams revealed, as they streamed through a rent in the canvass. His right hand clenched, and his elbow resting against the side of the tent, supported his head; and in his left he held a small gold crucifix, on which he was gazing, not with a countenance on which pity might be traced, but rather a look in which sorrow and despair seemed blended."Now's your chance," he announced to the assembled yokels; "corn prices is going up, and every man who wants to do well by himself had better grub his pastures and sow grain. Suppose we wur ever to fight the Frenchwho are looking justabout as ugly at us now as they did in Boney's timethink wot it 'ud be if we had grain-stocks in the country, and cud settle our own prices. My advice to the men of Rye is the same as wot I gave in this very hall thirty-five years agosow grain, and grain, and more grain."
THREE:"Come closer to the table, Mary Byles," said Sir Robert, addressing her in an authoritative, but yet in a familiar tone"come nearer; and with my Lord de Boteler's leave, I shall ask you a few questions." Mary curtsied, and rather hesitatingly approached the foot of the table.
