Thenceforward the whole character of the election was changed. The Poor Man's Loaf was forgotten as completely as the wheat-tax which should make the farmer rich. Six-pound householders became as uninteresting as anybody else who had not a vote. Nobody cared a damn whether the poor were educated at the nation's expense or not. The conflict raged blindly, furiously, degradingly round the Scott's Float toll-gate.
"Because you gave those things up of your free willthey were made to give them up by force. You've no right to starve and deny other people as you have to starve and deny yourself."For the next few months Odiam was in a transitional state. It was gradually being divested of its old comfortable ways, and clad in new garments of endeavour. Gradually the life grew harder, and gradually the tense thought, the knife-edged ambition at the back of all the changes, came forward and asserted themselves openly.
ONE:"Yes, in a cunning, brutish sort of waylike a gorilla when he's set his heart on a particular cocoanut. Boarzell's his cocoanut, and he's done some smart things to get itand in one way at least he's above the gorilla, for he can enslave other people of superior intelligence to sweat under his orders for what they care nothing about."
The group huddled back a few yards. The little flame writhed along towards the stump. There was silence. Reuben stood a little way in front of the others, leaning forward with eager, parted lips.When he was half-way upstairs he heard his mother call him, asking him if he would like her to bathe his shoulders. But he refused her almost roughly, and bounded up to the attic under the crinkled eaves, which was his own, his sanctuaryhis land."She's an angel "he lifted his eyes, and his mouth became almost worshipful"she's an angel, who's raised me out of hell. I shall never be able to repay her, but she doesn't expect it. All she wants is my success."Chapter 17Thus the days dragged on wretchedly for everyone except Rose, and in time they grew wretched for her too. She began to tire of the cracklings of the flame she had kindled, of Reuben's continued distrust and suspicion, of Caro's goggle-eyed disapproval, of Peter's spying contempt. The time of her lying-in drew nearer, she had to give up her gay doings, and felt frightened and alone. Everyone was against her, everyone disapproved of her. She began to wish that she had not found her love for Handshut to be an illusion, to wish that the kiss beside the Glotten brook had been in reality what she had dreamed it.... After all, is it not better to embrace the god and die than to go through the unhappy days in darkness?