Soon afterwards a letter came from Albert, asking for money, but again Reuben forbade any notice to be taken of it. For one thing he could not afford to help anyone, for another he would not even in years of plenty have helped a renegade like Albert. His blood still boiled when he remembered the boy\'s share in his political humiliation. He had shamed his father and his father\'s farm. Let him rot!
So Albert\'s letter remained unanswered—Caro felt that Reuben was unjust. She had grown very critical of him lately, and a smarting dislike coloured her [Pg 337]judgments. After all, it was he who had driven everybody to whatever it was that had disgraced him. He was to blame for Robert\'s theft, for Albert\'s treachery, for Richard\'s base dependence on the Bardons, for George\'s death, for Benjamin\'s disappearance, for Tilly\'s marriage, for Rose\'s elopement—it was a heavy load, but Caro put the whole of it on Reuben\'s shoulders, and added, moreover, the tragedy of her own warped life. He was a tyrant, who sucked his children\'s blood, and cursed them when they succeeded in breaking free.
Caro had been much unhappier since Rose\'s flight. She had loved her in an erratic envious way, and Rose\'s gaiety and flutters of generosity had done much to brighten her humdrum life. Now she was left to her brooding. She felt lonely and friendless. Once or twice she went over to Grandturzel, but the visits were always difficult to manage, and somehow the sight of her sister\'s happiness made her sore without enlivening her.
It was only lately that her longing for love and freedom had become a torment. Up till a year or two ago her desires had been merely wistful. Now a restless hunger gnawed at her heart, setting her continually searching after change and brightness. She had come to hate her household duties and the care of the little boys. She wanted to dance—dance—dance—to dance at fairs and balls, to wear pretty clothes, and be admired and courted. Why should she not have these things? She was not so ugly as many girls who had them. It was cruel that she should never have been allowed to know a man, never allowed to enjoy herself or have her fling. Even the sons of the neighbouring farmers had been kept away from her—by her father, greedy for her work. Tilly, by a lucky chance, had found a man, but lucky chances never came to Caro. She saw herself living out her life as a household drudge, dying an old maid, all coarsened by uncongenial work, all starved of love, all sick of, yet still hungry for, life.
Sometimes she would be overwhelmed by self-pity, and would weep bitterly over whatever task she was doing at the time, so that her tears were quite a usual sauce to pies and puddings if only Reuben had known it.
The year passed, and the new year came, showing the farm still on the upward struggle, with everyone hard at work, and no one, except Reuben, enjoying it particularly. Luck again favoured Odiam—the lambing of that spring was the best for years, and as the days grew longer the furrows bloomed with tender green sproutings, and hopes of another good harvest ran high.
Caro watched the year bud and flower—May came and creamed the hedges with blossom and rusted the grass with the first heats. Then June whitened the fields with big moon-daisies and frothed the banks with chervil and fennel. The evenings were tender, languorous, steeped in the scent of hay. They hurt Caro with their sweetness, so that she scarcely dared lift her eyes to the purpling twilight sky, or breathe the wind that swept up heavy with hay and roses from the fields. July did nothing to heal her—its yellow, heat-throbbing dawns smote her with despair—its noons were a long-drawn ache, and when in the evening hay and dust and drooping chervil troubled the air with shreds and ghosts of scent, something almost akin to madness would twist her heart.
She felt as one whose memory calls and yet has nothing to remember, whose thoughts run to and fro and yet has nothing to think of, whose hopes pile themselves, and yet is hopeless, whose love cries out from the depths, and yet is loveless.
One evening at the beginning of August she wandered out of the kitchen for a breath of fresh air in the garden before going up to bed. Her head ached, and her cheeks burned from the fire. She did not know it, but the flush and fever made her nearly beautiful. She was[Pg 339] not a bad-looking woman, though a trifle too dark and heavy-featured, and now the glow on her cheeks and the restless brilliancy of her eyes had kindled her almost into loveliness.
She picked one or two roses that drooped untended against the fence, she held them to her breast, and the tears came into her eyes. It was nearly dark, and the lustreless cobalt sky held only one star—Aldebaran, red above Boarzell\'s firs. A puff of wind came from the west, and with it a snatch of song. Someone was singing on the Moor, and the far-away voice wove itself into the web of trouble and yearning that dimmed her heart.
She moved down to the gate and leaned over it, while her eyes roved the twilight unseeing. The voice on the Moor swelled clearer. It was a man\'s voice, low-pitched and musical:
"Farewell, farewell, you jolly young girls!
We\'re off to Rio Bay!"
She remembered that there had been a wedding at Gablehook. One of the farmer\'s girls had married a Rye fisherman, and this was probably a guest on his way home, a little the worse for drink.
"At Vera Cruz the days are fine—
Farewell to Jane and Caroline!"
The song with its hearty callousness broke strangely into the dusk and Caro\'s palpitating dreams. Something about it enticed and troubled her............