Chapter 2The next year came the great unionist collapse. The Government which had bumped perilously through the South African war, went on the rocks of an indignant peacewrecked by Tariff Reform with the complication of Chinese Labour and the Education Bill. Once more Reuben took prominent part in a general election. The circumstances were alteredno one threw dead cats at him at meetings, though the common labouring men had a way of asking questions which they had not had in '65.
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At nights he slept upstairs in one of the attics, which always smelt of apples, because it was next to the loft where the apples were stored. He was happy there, in spite of some dark hours when the deadlock of his married life kept him awake. He wondered if there was a woman in the world who could share his ambitions for Odiam. He expected not, for women were an ambitionless race. If Naomi had had a single spark of zeal for the great enterprise in which he and she were engaged, she would not now be lying exhausted by her share in it. He had honoured her by asking her to join him in this splendid undertaking, and all she had done had been to prove that she had no fight in her.It was still early in the afternoon when Reuben set out homewards, but he had a long way to go, and felt tired and bruised. The constable had given him an apple, but as soon as he had munched up its sweetness, life became once more grey. The resolve which for a few minutes had been like a flame warming and lighting his heart, had now somehow become just an ordinary fact of life, as drearily a part of his being as his teeth or his stomach. One day he would own Boarzell Moor, subdue it, and make himself greatbut meantime his legs dragged and his back was sore."Send away Blackman!oh, Ben, he's bin with us fifteen year.""Then you come along; I'll take you, and we'll have some fun.""My land," murmured old Reuben, drinking in the breeze of it. "My landmore to me than Alice." Then with a sudden fierceness: