The next day Caro, haggard after another night made sleepless by her charges, knocked at his door. He had not come down to breakfast, and at eight o'clock the postman had brought a letter.
But the cottage was shut. With its red-rotting roof between two tall chimneys it looked exactly like a rabbit's head between its ears; the windows were blind, though it was past seven o'clock, and though Reuben knocked at the door loudly, there was no one to be seen. He prowled once or twice round the house, fumbling handles and window-latches, but there was no way of getting in. He listened, but he could not hear a sound. He pictured Rose and Handshut in each other's arms, laughing at him in his wretchedness and their blissand all the time he wanted the woman's blood more than the man's.Their attitude, at first constrained, soon became more cordial than either would have thought possible in earlier days. Richard made no tactless references to his brothers and sisters, and admired and praised everything, even the pigsties that had used to make him sick. They went out into the fields and inspected the late lambs, Richard showing that he had lost every trace of shepherd-lore that had ever been his. His remarks on shearing gave Reuben a very bad opinion of the English Bar; however, they parted in a riot of mutual civility, and Richard asked his father to dine with him at the Mermaid in a couple of days.Besides, David and William had come to a dangerous age, they were beginning to form opinions and ideas of[Pg 398] their own, they were beginning to choose their own friends and pastimes. But what Reuben distrusted most was their affection for each other, it was more fundamental to his anxieties than any outside independence. From childhood they had been inseparable, but in past years he had put this down to the common interests of their play, for there were few boys of their own age on the neighbouring farms. But now they were grown up the devotion persistedthey still did everything together, work or play. Reuben knew that they had secrets from him, their union gave him a sense of isolation. They were fond of him, but he was not to them what they were to each other, and his remoteness seemed to grow with the years.
Director
"We've lost each other," said Reuben"good-bye."Outside the great fatigueless machine of steel and iron sang on"Urrr-umUrrr-umUrrr-um."His ambition flared up like a damped furnace, and he suddenly saw himself a coward ever to have thought of rest. Boarzell was more to him than any woman in the world. For the sake of one weak woman he was not going to sacrifice all his hopes and dreams and enterprises, the great love of his life.