Pete made an able and keen lieutenant, but the other boys were still disappointing. It is true that Benjamin worked well and was often smart enough, but he had a roving disposition, which was more dangerous than Albert's, since it led him invariably down to the muddy Rother banks at Rye, where the great ships stood in the water, filling the air with good smells of fish and tar. Jemmy would loaf for hours round the capstans and building-stocks, and the piles of muddy rope that smelled of ooze, and he would talk to the sailormen and fishermen about voyages to the Azores and the Cape or to the wild seas south of the Horn, and would come home prating of sails and smoke-stacks, charts and logs,[Pg 148] and other vain things that had nothing to do with Odiam. Reuben remembered that the boy's mother came of a family of ship-builders and sailormen, and he would tremble for Jemmy's allegiance, and punish his truancies twice as severely as Albert's.Whether Reuben would have succeeded or not is uncertain, for he was never put to the proof. The next day Albert was feverish and delirious, and the doctor had to be sent for. He cheerfully gave the eldest Backfield three months to livehis lungs were in a dreadful state, one completely gone, the other partly so. He[Pg 364] had caught a chill, too, walking in the dark and cold. There could be no thought of moving him.
ONE:"Furniture?" said Rose, brisking up; "why from what you said I thought there was nothing. I could do with some furniture. I want a bedstead with brass knobs.""I tell you I'm sorry for nothing."
ONE:There was also another depressing factor. As he felt his end approaching Albert began to develop a conscience[Pg 366] and remorse. He said he had wasted his life, and as time wore on and he became weaker he passed from the general to the particular. The memory of certain sins tormented him, and he used Pete as his confessor.
THREE:Reuben himself was still able for a great deal of work. Though over sixty, he still had much of the vigour, as he had all the straightness, of his youth. Work had not bent him and crippled him, as it had crippled Beatup, his junior by several years. The furnace of his pride and resolution seemed to have dried the damps steamed up by the earth from her revengeful wounds, so that rheumatismthe plague of the labourer on the soilhad done no worse for him than shooting pains in the winter with a slight thickening of his joints.
"I am afraid not,many thanks to you; John Byles is not thought enough of in this baronyno, it is more likely Holgrave's wife, if she has any children, will have the nursing.""I'm coming to help you, Reuben. You'll never tackle them rootsesit ?un't everything you can do surelye!"The irritated foreman replaced the flaggon on the table but swore he would have no more jesting. "Poor Beauchamp," continued he, "is gonethe cleverest man among yeno whiningno qualms about him, when a shilling was to be earned by swallowing a pill or sending a traveller before his time to the other world! How unlucky, he had not postponed his flight for another week; this witch would then be disposed of and the sheriff satisfied. Poor Jack, poor Jack! where shall we find a substitutebut a substitute must be had if it were he of the cloven foot himself! This news has made me thirsty," continued he, raising the pitcher to his lips, "but remember, no jesting.""And that dagger too, surly knave," said the smith. "How dare ye come here armed. Go to, thou art a knave!"
