Sussex Gorse: The Story of a Fight

by Sheila Kaye-Smith

He sat down by the open window, leaning his elbow on the sill. The night was as soft as honey, and dark as a bowl of wine. The stars were scattered and dim, the moon had dipped into a belt of fogs, the fields were bloomed with darkness and sleep. The ridge of Boarzell was just visible under the Dog Star—the lump of firs stood motionless, for the wind had dropped, and not even a whisper from the orchard proclaimed its sleeping place.

Reuben's eyes swept the dim outlines of his farm—the yard, the barns, the oasts, the fields beyond, up to where his boundaries scarred the waste. It was all blurred and blanketed in the darkness, but his mind could see it in every detail. He saw the cow-stable empty except for the six cheap Suffolks which just supplied his household and one or two gentry with milk; he saw doors split and unhinged that he could not afford to mend, gaping roofs that he could not afford to retile, while the martins stole his thatch for their autumn broods; he saw his oat-harvest mostly straw, his hop-harvest gathered at a loss, his hay spoiled with sorrel; he saw himself short of labour, one man turned off, another run away; and he saw all the flints and shards and lime of Boarzell breaking his plough, choking his winter wheat, while on the lower ground runnels of clay made his corn sedgy, and everywhere the tough, wiry fibres of the gorse drank all the little there was of goodness out of the ground and scattered it from its blossoms in useless fragrance.

This was what his forty years of struggle had brought him to. He saw himself in the midst of a huge ambitious ruin. He had failed, his hopes were blighted—what could he expect to pull out of this wreck. It would be far better and wiser if he gave up the dreary uncertain battle, and took the sure rest at hand. If he sold some of the more fruitful part of his land he would be able to divorce Rose, then he could marry Alice and live with her a quiet, shorn, unambitious life. No one would buy the new ground on Boarzell, but he could easily sell the low fields by the Glotten brook; that would leave him with twenty or thirty acres of fairly good land round the farm, and all his useless encroachments on Boarzell which he would allow to relapse into their former state. He would have enough to live upon, to support his children and his delicate wife—he would be able to take no risks and make no ventures, but he would be comfortable.

His old father's words came back to him—"I've no ambitions, so I'm a happy man. I döan't want nothing I haven't got, so I haven't got nothing I döan't want." Perhaps his father had been right. After all, what had he, Reuben, got by being ambitious? Comfort, peace, home-life, wife, children, were all so many bitter words to him, and his great plans themselves had crumbled into failure—he had lost everything to gain nothing.

Far better give up the struggle while there was the chance of an honourable retreat. He realised that he was at the turning point—a step further along his old course and he would lose Alice, a step along the road she pointed, and he would lose Boarzell. After all he had not won Boarzell, most likely never would win it—if he persisted on his old ways they would probably only lead him to ruin, and later there might be no Alice to turn to. If he renounced her now, he would be definitely pledging himself to Boarzell and all his soaring, tottering schemes—he would not be able to "come back" a second time.

If he lost Alice now he might be losing her for a dream, a bubble, a will-o'-the-wisp. Surely he would be wise to pull what he could out of the wreck, take her, and forget all else. Only a fool would turn away from her now, and press forward. In the old days it had been different, he had been successful then—now he was a failure, and saw his chance to fail honourably. Better take it before it was too late.

His mind painted him a picture it had never dared paint before—the comfortable red house basking in sunshine, with a garden full of flowers, a cow or two at pasture in the meadow, the little hop-field his only tilth—his dear frail wife sitting in the porch, his children playing at her feet or reading at her knee—perhaps they were hers too, perhaps they were not. He saw himself contented, growing stout, wanting nothing he hadn't got, so having nothing he didn't want ... he was leaning over her chair, and gazing away into the southern distance where Boarzell lay against the sky, all patched with heather and thorns, all golden with gorse, unirrigated, uncultivated, without furrow or fence....

... A shudder passed through Reuben, a long shudder of his flesh, for in at the open window had drifted the scent of the gorse on Boarzell. It came on no wind, the night was windless as before. It just seemed to creep to him over the fields, to hang on the air like a reproach. It was the scent of peaches and apricots, of sunshine caught and distilled. He leaned forward out of the window, and thought he could see the glimmer of the gorse-clumps under the stars.

The edge of Boarzell was outlined black against the faintly paler sky—he traced it from the woods in which it rose, up to its crest of firs, then down into the woods again. Once more it lay between him and the soft desires of his weakness; as long ago at Cheat Land, it called him back to his allegiance like a love forsaken. In the black quiet it lay hullish like some beast—but it was more than a beast to-night. It was like the gorse on its heights, delicate perfume as well as murderous fibre, sweetness as well as ferocity. The scent, impregnating the motionless air, seemed to remind him that Boarzell was his love as well as his enemy—more, far more to him than Alice.

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.