When he saw them running along the lane from school, or tramping the fields togetherthey were always togetheror helping with the hops or the hay, his heart would stir with a warm, unwonted sense of fatherhood, not just the proud paternal impulse which had visited him when he held his new-born babies in his arms, but something belonging more to the future than the present, to the days when they should carry on Odiam after his death. For the first time he had sons whom he looked upon not merely as labourers to help him in his work, but as men created in his own image to inherit that work and reap its fruits when he was gone.
"Read it."
ONE:Calverley had beheld the group as they entered the court, and instantly averting his eyes from the mother and son, he fixed them upon Margaret.His sons were now growing upAlbert was nearly eighteen, and Peter, though a year younger, looked a full-grown man, with his immense build and dark hairy skin. Pete was still the most satisfactory of Reuben's children, he had a huge and glad capacity for work, and took a real interest in Odiam's progress, though it was not his life, as it was his father's. It was strange, Reuben thought, that none of the other boys seemed to have a glimmer of enthusiasm. Though they had grown up under the shadow of Boarzell, and from their earliest childhood taken part in the struggle, they seemed still to think more about the ordinary things of young men's lives than the great victory before them. It was disappointing. Of course one expected it of girls, but Reuben's heart ached a little because the men children on whom he had set such hope and store cared[Pg 127] so little about what was life itself to him. It is true that Robert worked well, nearly as well as Pete, but that was only because he was of a docile, tractable nature. He did not share his father's dreamsBoarzell to him was only a piece of waste ground with some trees on it.
THREE:"And I hope to God they'll have the wit to follow the rest of us. I'd like to see that old slave-driver left quite alone. Heavens! I could have strangled him yesterdayI should have, if I hadn't had this to look forward to."
Towards the end of August, Reuben asked Rose to marry him.Tyler had turned away while Black Jack was speaking, but suddenly stopping, turned abruptly round, and looking full at himRose pattered up to him in the shabby white kid shoes that had been so trim and smart five years ago.He clung to Mrs. Button for most of the morning and afternoon, for he felt that she drove away suspicion, and at the same time had not the disadvantage of Emily Ditch, who had once or twice alarmed him by affectionately squeezing his hand. He did not take her to the fighting booth, as public opinion had shut that to ladies during the years that had passed since Reuben had sat with Naomi in the heat and sawdustbut she stood behind him in the shooting gallery, whilst he impartially scored bulls in the mouths of Disraeli, Gladstone, and the Emperor of France.