Chapter 14Naomi looked across at Reuben without speaking. Her lips, a pale coral-pink, were parted, showing two tiny teeth. She was not the type he favouredshe was too soft and bloodlessbut he could not help feeling flattered by the frank admiration he saw in her eyes. He knew that this last year of wind and sun and healthy work had narrowed the gulf between him and Beautiful Harry. He was as hard as iron and as brown as a nut, and there was a warm red glowing through the swarthiness of his cheeks like the bloom on a russet pear.Speeches were made from time to time, but were lost in the general hubbub. One of the local butchers had delivered over his entire stock of entrails, skin and hoof cuttings, and old blood-puddings to the Radical cause, and Conservative Speakers were soon a sight to behold. When Reuben stood up his voice was drowned in shouts of "Ben the Gorilla! Stop the dirty animal!" while a bleeding sheep's head caught him full on the chest. Too proud to take his dismissal from the mob, he spoke unheard for five minutes, at the end of which he was silenced by half a brick, which hit his temple and stunned him sufficiently for Ditch and MacDonald to pull him away.She smiled with that same bitter compassion, and stroked his head with her feeble hand.Rose had begun to question her attitude towards her husband. She had hitherto never doubted for a moment that she loved himof course she loved him! But now she asked herself"If I love him, how is it that our most tender moments have never meant so much to me as that second kiss of Handshut's?" None of Reuben's kisses stood out in her memory as that kiss,[Pg 287] he had never made the thrill of life go through her, he had never filled her heart to bursting with joy so infinite that it was sorrow, and sorrow so exquisite that it was joy. She would observe Reuben, and she would see himold. He was fifty-four, and his hair was grey; there were crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes, and straight lines between his brows, where he had furrowed them as the pitiless sun beat down upon his face. There were other lines too, seamed and scored by hard struggles. He was strong as an ox, but she told herself he was beginning to move a bit stiffly. He had exposed himself so ruthlessly to the wet and cold that his joints had become rheumatic. It was nothing very much, but he liked to have her rub them occasionally, and up till then she had liked it too. Now she suddenly saw something dreary and preposterous in ithere she was married to a man thirty years older than herself, his chattel, his slave. She did not really love himhow could she, with all those years between them? She was fond of him, that was alland he was getting older, and horribly cantankerous; and she was youngoh, God! she had never known till then how young.
