But Reuben did it because he was not going to be beaten in any respect by his land. He was not going to accept defeat in the slightest instance. So he blew up the stumps, tidied the ground, and spread manure—and more manure—and yet more manure.
Manure was his great idea at that moment. He had carefully tilled and turned the soil, and he fed it with manure as one crams chickens. It was of poor quality marl, mostly lime on the high ground, with a larger proportion of clay beside the ditch. Reuben's plan was to fatten it well before he sowed his seed. Complaints of his night-soil came all the way from Grandturzel; Vennal, humorously inclined, sent him a bag of rotten fish; on the rare occasions his work allowed him to meet other farmers at the Cocks, his talk was all of lime, guano, and rape-cake, with digressions on the possibilities of seaweed. He was manure mad.
The neighbours despised and mistrusted his enthusiasm. There he was, thinking of nothing but his land, when Harry, his only brother, lay worse than dying. But Reuben often thought of Harry.
One thing he noticed, and that was that the housework was always done for him by his mother as if there were no sickness to fill her time. Always when he came home of an evening, his supper was waiting for him, hot and savoury. He breakfasted whenever he had a mind, and there were slices of cold pie or dabs of bread and meat for him to take out and eat as he worked—he had no time to come home to dinner now. Really his mother was tumbling to things wonderfully well—she looked a little tired sometimes, it is true, and the lines of her face were growing thinner, but she was saving him seven shillings a month and the girl's food; and all that money and food was feeding the hungry earth.
Naomi helped her with the nursing, and also a little about the house. She had refused to go home to Rye, though Harry did not seem to recognise her.
"For sometimes," she said, "I think he does."
§ 10.
Towards the middle of February a change took place in Harry. At first it was little more than a faint creep of life, putting a little glow in his cheeks, a little warmth in his blood. Then the wounds which had been healing so slowly began to heal quickly, his appetite returned, and he slept long and sweetly at nights.
Mrs. Backfield's hope rekindled, but the doctor soon damped it down. This sudden recrudescence of physical health was a bad sign, for there was no corresponding revival of intellect, and now the prostration of the body could no longer account for the aberration of the mind. It was unlikely that Harry would ever recover his wits—the injuries to his skull, either with or without the shock of his blindness, had definitely affected his brain. The strong, clear will, the gay spirits, the quick understanding, the tender sensibilities which had made him so bright and lovable a being, were gone—how much of shreds and scraps they had left behind them to build up the semblance of a man, did not yet appear.