"You mean that if we let you adopt Sidney, you'll mäake Odiam his when you're gone?"
"I döan't say for sartain—if he turns out a präaper lad and is a comfort to me and loves this pläace as none of my own children have ever loved it——"
But Tilly interrupted him. Putting her arm round the terrified boy's shoulders, she led him through the door.
"Thanks, fäather, but if you offered to give us to-day every penny you've got, I'd let you have no child of mine. Maybe we'll be poor and miserable and have to work hard, but he wöan't be one-half so wretched wud us as he'd be wud you. D'you think I disremember my own childhood and the way you mäade us suffer? You're an old man, but you're hearty—you might live to a hundred—and I'd justabout die of sorrow if I thought any child of mine wur living wud you and being mäade as miserable as you mäade us. I'd rather see my boy dead than at Odiam."
§ 4.
There was a big outcry in Peasmarsh against Backfield's treatment of the Realfs. Not a farmer in the district would have kept on a hand who had burnt nearly the whole farm to ashes through bad stacking, but this fact did little to modify the general criticism. A dozen excuses were found for Realf's "accident," as it came to be called—"and old Ben cud have afforded to lose a stack or two, surelye."
Reuben was indifferent to the popular voice. The Realfs cleared out bag and baggage the following month. No one knew their destination, but it was believed they were to separate. Afterwards it transpired that Realf had been given work on a farm near Lurgashall, while Tilly became housekeeper to a clergyman, taking with her the boy she would rather have seen dead than at Odiam. Nothing was heard of the daughters, and local rumour had it that they went on the streets; but this pleasing idea was shattered a year or two later by young Alce, the publican's son, coming back from a visit to Chichester and saying he had found both the girls in service in a Canon's house, doing well, and one engaged to marry the butler.
Reuben did not trouble about the Realfs. Tilly had been no daughter of his from the day she married; it was a pity he had ever revoked his wrath and allowed himself to be on speaking terms with her and her family; if he had turned them out of Grandturzel straight away there would have been none of this absurd fuss—also he would not have lost a good crop of hay. But he comforted himself with the thought that his magnanimity had put about a thousand pounds into his pocket, so he could afford to ignore the cold shoulder which was turned to him wherever he went. And the hay was insured.
He gave up going to the Cocks. It had fallen off terribly those last five years, he told Maude the dairy-woman, his only confidant nowadays. The beer had deteriorated, and there was a girl behind the counter all painted and curled like a Jezebubble, and rolling her eyes at you like this.... If any woman thought a man of his experience was to be caught, she was unaccountable mistaken (this doubtless for Maude's benefit, that she might build no false hopes on the invitation to bring her sewing into the kitchen of an evening). Then the fellows in the bar never talked about stocks and crops and such like, but about race-horses and football and tomfooleries of that sort, wot had all come in through the poor being educated and put above themselves. Moreover, there was a gramophone playing trash like "I wouldn't leave my little wooden hut for you"—and the tale of Reuben's grievances ended in expectoration.
All the same he was lonely. Maude was a good woman, but she wasn't his equal. He wanted to speak to someone of his own class, who used to be his friend in days gone by. Then suddenly he thought of Alice Jury. He had promised to go and see her at Rye, but had never done so. He remembered how long ago she had used to comfort him when he felt low-spirited and neglected by his fellows. Perhaps she would do the same for him now. He did not know her address, but the new people at Cheat Land would doubtless be able to give it to him, and perhaps Alice would help him through these trying times as she had helped him through earlier ones.