"I never looked upon Rose as my rival—I always knew my real rival was your farm, and though now Rose is out of the way, that still stands between us."
Reuben was silent. He sat leaning forward in his chair, holding Alice's hand. Then he abruptly rose to his feet.
"Well, I must be going. It's done me good, our talk. Not that you've said anything particular comforting, but then you never did. It's good anyway to sit wud a woman wot's not lik a fat stroked cat—not a thin kicked one, nuther," he added viciously, remembering Caro. "You're lik a liddle tit-bird, Alice. I love you. But I'm not sorry I didn't marry you, for you'd have busted me same as Rose, only in a different way."
"Most likely."
She laughed again. He stooped forward and kissed her forehead, and the laugh died on her lips.
§ 25.
The rest of that day Reuben was a little happier. He felt comforted and stimulated, life was not so leaden. In the evening he worked a little in the hop-gardens. They were almost cleared now, and the smoke of the drying furnaces was streaming through the cowls of the oasts, shedding into the dusk a drowsy, malt-sweetened perfume. When the moon hung like a yellow splinter above Iden Wood, the pickers went home, and Reuben turned in to his supper, which for the first time since Rose's flight he ate with hearty pleasure.
He could not tell exactly what it was that had invigorated him, and jerked him out of his despair. It would seem as if Alice's presence alone had tonic qualities. Perhaps the secret lay in her unchangeableness. He had gone back to her after an absence of five years, and found her just the same, still loving him, still fighting him, the old Alice. Everything else had changed—his farm which in the former days had been the thriving envy of the countryside was now little better than a ruin, his home life had been turned inside out, but in the woman over at Cheat Land nothing had altered, love and strength and faithfulness still flourished in her. It was as if a man stumbling in darkness should suddenly hear a loved, familiar voice say "Here I am." The situation summed itself up in three words—She was there; and his heart added—"for me to take if I choose."
In spite of his revived spirits he could not sleep, but he went up early to his room, for he wanted to think. During the evening the idea had gained on him that he could still have Alice if he wanted her, and with the idea had grown the sensation that he wanted her with all his heart.
His return had been complete. All that she had ever had and lost of empire had re-established itself during that hour at Cheat Land. He wanted her as he had wanted her before he met Rose, but with a renewed intensity, for he was no longer mystified by his desire. He no longer asked himself how he could possibly love "a liddle stick of a woman like her," for he saw how utterly love-worthy she was and had always been. For the first time he saw as his, if only he would take it, a great woman's faithful love. This love of Alice Jury's had nothing akin to Naomi's poor little fluttering passion, or to Rose's fascination, half appetite, half game. Someone loved him truly, strongly, purely, deeply, with a fire that could be extinguished only by death or—he realised in a dim way—her own will. The question was, should he pay the price this love demanded, take it to himself at the cost of the ambitions that had fed his life for forty years?