THREE:
THREE:No one spoke, but from Realf's yard came sounds of shouting, the uneasy lowing and stamping of cattle, and the neigh of terrified horses. The whole place was lit up by the glare of the fire, and soon Reuben could see Realf and his two men, Dunk and Juglery, with Mrs.[Pg 437] Realf, the girls, and young Sidney, passing buckets down from the pond and pouring them on the blazing stackswith no effect at all.
THREE:Naomi obediently dried her eyes, but it was rather hard to keep them from getting wet again. For in her heart she knew that it was not the vulgarity of Reuben's joke which had upset her, but a certain horrible convincingness about it. It was not so merely a joke as he would have her think.Since his father's death he had denied himself woman's company, after two years lived in the throb and sweetness of it. A warm and vigorous temperament, controlled by a strong will, had promised a successful libertinism, and more than once he had drunk the extasies of passion without those dregs which spoil it for the more weakly dissolute. But now, with that same fierce strength and relentless purpose which had driven him to do the work of two men, to live hard, and sleep rough, he renounced all the delights which were only just beginning. Henceforth, with his great ambition before him, there could be nothing but marriageprudent, solid, and constructive. His girl at the Forstal knew him no more, nor any of her kind. He had set himself to build a house, and for the sake of that house there was nothing, whether of his own or of others, that he could not tame, break down, and destroy.
TWO:In the afternoon he took life easy. If it was warm and fine he would sit out of doors, against the farmhouse wall, his old bones rejoicing in the sunshine, and his eager heart at the sight of Boarzell shimmering in the heatwhile sounds of labour woke him pleasantly from occasional dozes.