Far away at Cheat Land, Alice Jury watched them fallAlice Jury five years older than when she had struggled with Boarzell for Reuben before he married Rose. Her parents thought he had treated her badly, even though they did not know of the evening when she had humbled herself to plead for her happiness and his. She remembered that moment uneasilyit hurt her pride. But she could not regret having used her most desperate effort to win him, and she felt sure that he had understood her motive and realised that it was for him as well as for her that she had spoken.
THREE:Suddenly a light kindled in the little house. Bessie slipped from him, and ran up the pathway into the dark gape of the door."'To the lady who lives in the Grange by the water,
"Wot have you come fur?""But, Master Calverley," said Black Jack, as the former abruptly rose to depart, "is my intelligence worth nothing, setting aside the actual loss I have sustained by sitting for four hours spending my money in this room, when I ought to have been fishing about for jobs?"The family at Flightshot consisted now of the Squire, who had nothing against him except his obstinacy, his lady, and his son who was just of age and "the most tedious young rascal" Reuben had ever had to deal with. He drove a motor-car with hideous din up and down the Peasmarsh lanes, and once Odiam had had[Pg 433] the pleasure of lending three horses to pull it home from the Forstal. But his worst crimes were in the hunting field; he had no respect for roots or winter grain or hedges or young spinneys. Twice Reuben had written to his father, through Maude the scribe, and he vowed openly that if ever he caught him at it he'd take a stick to him.His headache had passed off, and he felt a man again; so he sought the woman. She lived in a small old house wedged tight between two new ones; her window was dark, and her threshold silent, though he knocked again and again. He walked up and down once or twice in front of the cottage whistling "Ropes and Rum"perhaps she had gone to do some shopping; he saw himself sitting down to a feast of pickled herrings in her kitchen.The man he addressed consented, and their steps were soon lost in the distance.He was now twenty-seven, looking in some ways strangely older, in others far younger, than his age. The boy in him had not had much chance of surviving adolescence. Life had come down too hard on him. A grim struggle does not nourish youth, and mentally Reuben was ten or twelve years ahead of twenty-seven. His splendid health and strength, however, had maintained a physical boyishness, expressing itself in zeal and high spirits, a keen appetite, a boundless capacity for work, an undaunted enterprise. He was always hungry, he fell asleep directly his head touched the pillow, and slept like a child beside the tossing and wakeful Naomi.That evening he and his son had their first conflict. Pete announced that he had made arrangements with Ades for Albert's funeral, and Reuben announced with equal conviction that he was hemmed if Ades had any truck in it wotsumdever. Albert should be buried according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, he wasn't going to have any salvation sung over his grave. Pete, on the other hand, stuck to his point, and alarmed Reuben with more religious phraseology.
