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diff --git a/old/56298-0.txt b/old/56298-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 0d73ae6..0000000 --- a/old/56298-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11452 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Four Roads, by Sheila Kaye-Smith - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: The Four Roads - - -Author: Sheila Kaye-Smith - - - -Release Date: January 3, 2018 [eBook #56298] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOUR ROADS*** - - -E-text prepared by ellinora, Brian Wilsden, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made -available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/fourroads00kaye - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). - - - - - -THE FOUR ROADS - -by - -SHEILA KAYE-SMITH - -Author of “Sussex Gorse,” “The Challenge to Sirius,” etc. - - - - - - -[Illustration] - -New York -George H. Doran Company - -Copyright, 1921, -By George H. Doran Company - -Printed in the United States of America - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - PART I - TOM 9 - - PART II - JERRY 66 - - PART III - THYRZA 115 - - PART IV - IVY 153 - - PART V - NELL 211 - - PART VI - BABY 241 - - PART VII - MR. SUMPTION 264 - - - - -THE FOUR ROADS - - - - -THE FOUR ROADS - -PART I: TOM - - -1 - -Four roads in Sussex mark out a patch of country that from the -wooded, sea-viewing hills behind Dallington slips down over fields -and ponds and spinneys to the marshes of Hailsham and Horse Eye. The -North Road, slatting the heights with its pale, hard streak, runs -from far Rye to further Lewes, a road of adventures and distances, -passing Woods Corner and Three Cups Corner, Punnetts Town and Cade -Street, till it joins the London Road at Cross-in-Hand. The South -Road borders the marsh, sometimes dry on the shelving ground above -it, sometimes soggy on the marsh level, or perhaps sheeted with the -overflow of the Hurst Haven. It comes from Senlac and Hastings, and -after skirting the flats, crosses the River Cuckmere, and runs tamely -into Lewes, where all roads meet. The East Road is short and shaggy, -running through many woods, from the North Road, which it joins at -Woods Corner, to the throws at Boreham Street. Along this road is a -string of farms—Cowlease, and Padgham, and Slivericks, mangy holdings -for the most part, with copses running wild and fields of thistles, -doors agape and walls atumble, and gable-ends stooping towards -the ponds. The West Road is grass-grown, and in July St. John’s -wort and rest-harrow straggle in the ruts and make the dust smell -sickly-sweet. It forks from the North Road at Punnetts Town, and runs -through Rushlake Green and the Foul Mile to Hailsham in the south. - -In the swale of the day, towards Easter-time, the Reverend Mr. -Sumption was walking along the North Road from Dallington to Woods -Corner. Dallington is the mother-parish of the country bounded by -the Four Roads, though there is also a church at Brownbread Street, -in charge of a curate. Mr. Sumption had no truck with either Rector -or curate, for he was a minister of the Particular Baptists, who had -a Bethel in Sunday Street, as the lane was called which linked the -East Road with one that trailed in and out of farms and woods to -the throws at Bucksteep Manor. Not that the sect of the Particular -Baptists flourished in the parish of Dallington, but the Bethel being -midway between the church and the chapel, a fair congregation could -be raked in on wet Sundays from the middle district, where doctrine, -like most things in that land of farms, was swung by the weather. - -The Reverend Mr. Sumption was a big, handsome man of forty-five, and -wore a semi-clerical suit of greenish-black, with a shabby hat and -a dirty collar. His face was brown, darkening round the jaw with a -beard that wanted the razor twice a day, but did not get it. His eyes -were dark and sunk deep in his head, gleaming like deep ditch-water -under eyebrows as smooth and black as broom-pods. His teeth were very -white, and his hair was grey and curly like a fleece. - -As he walked he muttered to himself, and from time to time cracked -the joints of his fingers with a loud rapping sound. These two -habits helped form the local opinion that he was “queer,” an opinion -bolstered by more evidence than is usual in such cases. Women -standing in their cottage doors noticed him twice halt and stoop—once -to pick up a beetle which was laboriously crawling from ditch to -ditch, another time to pick up a swede dropped from some farm-cart. -He carefully put the beetle on the opposite bank—“Near squashed you, -my dear, I did. But He Who created the creeping things upon the -earth has preserved you from the boot of man.” The swede he dusted -and crammed in his pocket. It was known throughout the hamlets—the -“Streets” and “Greens”—of Dallington Parish that the minister was as -poor as he was unblushing about his poverty. - -The evening was very still. Eddies and swells of golden, watery light -drifted over the hills round Dallington. In the north the sharp, -wooded hill where Brightling stood was like a golden cone, and the -kiln-shaped obelisk by Lobden’s House which marked the highest point -of South-east Sussex was also burnished to rare metal. The scent of -water, stagnant on fallen leaves, crept from the little woods where -the primroses and windflowers smothered old stumps in their pale -froth, or spattered with milky stars the young moss of the year. At -Woods Corner the smoke of a turf fire was rising from the inn, and -there was a smell of beer, too, as the minister passed the door, -and turned down the East Road towards Slivericks. The fire and the -beer both tempted him, for there was neither at the Horselunges, the -tumble-down old cottage where he lodged in Sunday Street. But the -former he looked on as an unmanly weakness, the latter as a snare of -the devil, so he swung on, humming a metrical psalm. - -About a hundred yards below Woods Corner, just where the road, washed -stony by the rains, runs under the webbing of Slivericks oaks, he -turned into a field, across which a footpath led a pale stripe -towards Sunday Street. From the top of the field he could look down -over the whole sweep of country within the Four Roads, to the marshes -and the sea, or rather the saffron and purple mists where the marshes -and the sea lay together in enchantment. The yellow light wavered up -to him from the sunset, over the woods of Forges and Harebeating; -there was a sob of wind from Stilliands Tower, and a gleam of -half-hidden ponds in the spinneys by Puddledock. Mr. Sumption stood -still and listened. - -The air was full of sunset sounds—the lowing of cows came up with -a mingled cuckoo’s cry, there was a tinkle of water behind him -in the ditch, and the soft swish of wind in the trees and in the -hedge, nodding ashes and sallows and oaks to and fro against the -light-filled sky. On the wind was a mutter and pulse, a throb which -seemed to be in it yet not of it, like the beating of a great heart, -strangely remote from all the gleam and softness of spring sunset, -pale fluttering cuckoo-flowers, and leaf-sweet pools of rain. A -blackbird called from the copse by Cowlease Farm, and his song was -as the voice of sunset and April and pooled rain ... still the great -distant heart throbbed on, its dim beats pulsing on the wind, aching -on the sunset, over the fields of peaceful England dropping asleep in -April. - -The Reverend Mr. Sumption cracked his fingers loudly once or twice: - -“You hear ’em pretty plain to-night ... the guns in France.” - - -2 - -He walked slowly on towards the stile, then stopped again and pulled -a letter out of his pocket. It was a dirty letter, written on cheap -note-paper with a smudged in indelible pencil. - - “Dear Father,” it ran, “I reckon you’ll be wild when you get - this. I have left the Fackory and have enlisted in the R. Sussex - Regement. I could not stand that dirty tyke of Hubbard our forman - any more. So I’ve gone, for I’m sick of this, and there’s no fear - of my being fetched back, as I’m not satisfackory nor skilled in - particular, and should have been fetched out anyhow all in good - time, I reckon. So don’t go taking on about this, but please send - me some fags, and I should like some chockolate, and get some of - those kokernut buns at the shop with the crinkly paper round. - It is a week since I did it, but I have been to the Y.M.C.A., - and bought some Cherry-blossom boot-pollish and a packet of - Players, and have no more money, and they said on a board ‘Write - home to-night.’ Well, dear Father, I hope you will not take this - too badly. Some good may come of it, for I am a soldier now and - going to fight the Germans. Good-bye and don’t forget to send the - things I said. - - “Your loving son, - - “JERRY. - - “(467572 Pvte. Sumption, 9th Co. 18th Bn. R. Suss. Rejiment.)” - -The minister crushed the letter back into the pocket already bulging -with the swede. “O Lord,” he groaned, “why doth it please Thee to -afflict Thy servant again? I reckon I’ve stood a lot on account -of that boy, and there seems no end to it. He’s the prodigal son -that never comes home, he’s the lost sheep that never gets into the -fold, and yet he’s my child and the woman from Ihornden’s....” His -mutterings died down, for he heard footsteps behind him. - -A young man was crossing the field from Slivericks, a sturdy, stocky -fellow, about five-and-a-half feet high, with leggings and corduroy -riding-breeches, and a black coat which was a little too small for -him and as he drew near sent out an odour of moth-killer—evidently -some young farmer, unaccountably Sundified on a week-day evening. - -“Hullo, Tom,” said the minister. - -“Hullo, Mus’ Sumption.” - -The boy stood aside for the older man to cross the stile. His head -hung a little over the unaccustomed stiffness of his collar, and his -eyes seemed full of rather painful thought. Mr. Sumption fumbled -in his pockets, drew out the letter, the swede, a pencil without -a point, a Testament, a squashed mass of chickweed, a tract, and -finally a broken-backed cigarette, which he handed to Tom. - -“Bad news, I reckon?” - -Tom nodded. - -“They woan’t let me off. I wur afeard they wouldn’t. You see, there’s -faather and the boys left, and I couldn’t explain as how faather had -bad habits. You can’t bite back lik that on your own kin.” - -“No, you can’t,” and Mr. Sumption carefully smoothed a dirty scrap -of paper as he put it back in his pocket. “By the way, my boy’s just -joined up. I heard from him this morning. He’s in the Eighteenth -Sussex—I shouldn’t wonder if you found yourselves together.” - -“Lord, Mus’ Sumption! You doan’t tell me as he’s left the factory?” - -“Reckon he has. Thought he’d like to fight for his King and country. -He was always a plucked ’un, and he couldn’t bear to see the lads -going to the front without him.” - -There was a gleam in the minister’s eyes, and he cracked his fingers -loudly. - -“I’m proud of him—I’m proud of my boy. He’s done a fine thing, for of -course he need never have gone. He’s been three years in munitions -now, and him only twenty. He went up to Erith when he was a mere lad, -no call for him to go, and now he’s joined up as a soldier when there -was no call for him to go, neither.” - -Tom looked impressed. - -“Maybe I ought to be feeling lik he does, but truth to tell it maakes -me heavy-hearted to be leaving the farm just now.” - -“The Lord will provide.” - -“I’m none so sure o’ that, wud faather and his habits, and the boys -so young and wild, and the girls wud their hearts in other things, -and mother, poor soul, so unsensible.” - -“Well, what does the farm matter? Beware lest it become Naboth’s -vineyard unto you. Is this a time to buy cattle and vineyards and -olive-yards? This is the day which the Prophet said should burn like -an oven, and the proud, even the wicked, be as stubble. What’s your -wretched farm? Think of the farms round Ypers and Dixmood, think of -the farms round Rheims and Arrass—Stop!” and he seized Tom’s arm in -his hard, restless fingers—“Listen to those guns over in France. -Perhaps every thud you hear means the end of a little farm.” - -Tom stood dejectedly beside him, the broken-backed cigarette, for -which the minister had unfortunately been unable to provide a light, -hanging drearily from his teeth. The soft mutter and thud pulsed -on. The sun was slowly foundering behind the woods of Bird-in-Eye, -sending up great shafts and spines of flowery light into the sky -which was now green as a meadow after rain. - -“This war queers me,” he said, and his voice, low and thick as it -was, like any Sussex countryman’s, yet was enough to drown the -beating of that alien heart. “I doan’t understand it. I can’t git the -hang od it nohow.” - -“A lot of it queers me,” said Mr. Sumption, “and I reckon that in -many ways we’re all as godless as the Hun. It’s not only the Germans -that shall burn like stubble—it’s us. The oven’s prepared for us as -well as for them.” - -They were walking together down steep fields, the ground dreamy with -grey light, while before them, beyond the sea, burned the great oven -of the sunset, full of horns of flame. - -“I’m thinking of the farm,” continued Tom, his mind sticking to -its first idea. “I’m willing enough to go and fight for the farms -in France and Belgium, but seems to me a Sussex farm’s worth two -furrin’ ones. Worge aun’t a fine place, but it’s done well since I -wur old enough to help faather—help him wud my head as well as my -arms, I mean. Faather’s an unaccountable clever chap—you should just -about hear him talk at the pub, and the books he’s read you’d never -believe. But he’s got ways wot aun’t good for farming, and he needs -somebody there to see as things doan’t slide when he can’t look after -them himself.” - -“Can’t your brother Harry do anything? He must be nearly sixteen.” - -“Harry’s unaccountable wild-like. He’s more lik to git us into -trouble than help us at all.” - -“Maybe your father will pull-to a bit when you’re gone and he sees -things depend on him.” - -“Maybe he will, and maybe he woan’t. But you doan’t understand, Mus’ -Sumption. You doan’t know wot it feels like to be took away from -your work to help along a war as you didn’t ask for and don’t see -the hang of. Maybe you’d think different of the war if you had to -fight in it, but being a minister of religion you aun’t ever likely -to have to join up. I’m ready to go and do my share in putting chaps -into the oven, as you say, but it’s no use or sense your telling -me as it doan’t matter about the farm, for matter it does, and I’m -unaccountable vrothered wud it all.” - -He grunted, and spat out the fag. Mr. Sumption, taking offence at -once, waved his arms like a black windmill. - -“Ho! I don’t understand, don’t I? with my only son just gone for a -soldier. D’you think you care for your dirty farm more than I care -for my Jerry. D’you think I wouldn’t rather a hundred times go myself -than that he should go? O Lord, that this boy should mock me! You’ll -be safe enough, young Tom. You’ve only the Germans to fear, but my -lad has to fear his own countrymen too. The army was not made for -gipsy-women’s sons. My poor Jerry! ... there in the ranks like a colt -in harness. He’ll be sorry he’s done it to-morrow, and then they’ll -kill him.... Oh, hold your tongue, Tom Beatup! Here we are in Sunday -Street.” - - -3 - -Sunday Street was the lane that linked up Pont’s Green on the -East Road with Bucksteep Manor at Four Throws. From the southern -distance it looked like the street of a town, oddly flung across -the hill—a streak of red houses, with the squat steeples of oasts, -an illusion of shops and spires, crumbling on near approach into a -few tumble-down cottages and the oasts of Egypt Farm. From the north -you saw the chimneys first, high above the roofs like rabbits’ ears -above their heads; then you tumbled suddenly upon the hamlet: the -Bethel, the Horselunges, the shop, the inn whose sign was the Rifle -Volunteer, the forge, the pond, the two farms—Worge and Egypt—with -their cottages, and the farmstead of Little Worge sidling away -towards Pont’s Green. - -To-night it was fogged in the grey smoke of its own wood fires, with -here and there on its windows the lemon green of the sky. It smelled -faintly of wood-smoke, sweet mud and standing rain, of rot in lathes -and tiles. The Horselunges, the cottage where the minister lodged, -was the first house in the village after the forge. It stood opposite -the Bethel, a brick, eighteenth-century building with big gaunt -windows staring blindly over the fields to Puddledock. The Bethel had -been built in Georgian days when the Particular Baptists flourished -in greater numbers round Sunday Street, and a saint of theirs had -built it to “the glory of God and in memory of my dear wife Susannah -Odlarne, saved by Grace. For Many are called but Few are chosen.” - -Mr. Sumption and Tom had walked the last of their way in silence. But -the minister’s anger had fizzled out as quickly as it had kindled, -and at the door of the forge he held out his hand very kindly to the -boy. - -“Well, good-night to you, lad. I must look in and see Bourner here -for a minute or two. I hope your mother won’t be much distressed at -your news.” - -“Reckon she will, but it can’t be helped.... Funny, you doan’t hear -the guns down here.” - -“No more you do, but they’re going it just the same—knocking away -little farms.” - -Tom nodded with a wry smile and walked off. The minister turned into -the forge. - -Mr. Sumption could never pass the forge, and the glow and roar of -sparks from its chimney would call him over many a field, from -Galleybird or Harebeating, or even from the doors of sick people—if -they were not very sick. He was a blacksmith’s son. - -His father had worked the smithy at the cross-roads by Bethersden in -Kent, and Ezra Sumption had grown up in the smell of hoof-parings -and the ring of smitten iron. His sketchy education finished, he had -taken his place beside his father at the anvil—he had held the meek -tasselled hoofs of the farm-horses, he had worked the great bellows -that sent the flames roaring up the chimney like Judgment Day, he had -swung the heavy smith’s hammer with an arm that in a few years grew -lustier than his dad’s, and in time had come to cast as good iron and -clap it on as surely as any smith in Kent. - -But during his adolescence strange things had grown with his bulk and -girth. Lonely and Bible-bred, he came to work strange dreams into the -roaring furnace and clanging iron. In those sheeting, belching flames -he came to see the presage of that day which should burn like an -oven, the burning fiery furnace of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, -through which only those could walk unsinged who had with them the -Son of God. When he swung the hammer above his head he swung God’s -judgment down on the molten iron, shaping out of its fiery torment a -form of use. When the horse clumped out of the smithy with the new -iron on his hoofs, he felt that there went a soul saved, a child of -God passed through fire into service. - -He became “queer.” He spoke his thoughts, and in time preached them -to the men who brought their horses to be shod. His father jeered at -him, his mother was afraid, but the minister of a neighbouring chapel -took him up. He thought he had found a rustic saint. He invited young -Sumption to his house, taught him, and encouraged him to enter the -ministry. The parents were flattered by the pastor’s notice, and he -found little difficulty in persuading them to let their boy leave -the forge and train as a minister of the Particular Baptists. - -Rather bewildered and scared at the new life before him, young Ezra -Sumption, comely, burly, shock-headed, brown-skinned as a mushroom in -a wet field, passed into a training college of the sect, and emerged -a full-blown pastor, with black clothes on his unwieldy limbs and -a tongue for ever struggling with the niceties of English speech. -He was a great disappointment to his benefactor, for the smith in -him had triumphantly survived all genteel training and theological -examinations; he was to all intents the same boy who had heard -voices in the fire and had preached to the carters. His manners and -conversation had slightly improved, and his imaginings had been given -a dose of dogma, but his rough uncouthness, his “queerness” remained -as before. He was an utter failure as assistant pastor in a chapel -at Dover—the congregation was shocked by the violence and vulgarity -of his forge-born similes, his Judgment Day appeals, all the spate -and fume of the old Doomsday doctrines which were fast dying out of -Nonconformity. He pined for the country, and seemed unable to conform -to town habits. On his holidays he went back to the forge and helped -his father with the shoeing as if he had never worn a black coat. It -was on one of these holidays that he finally damned himself. - -In a cottage at Ihornden where he had gone to visit a sick woman he -met a gipsy girl of the Rossarmescroes or Hearns. Her people had -given up their wandering life, and settled down in the neighbourhood, -where they owned several cottages. Nevertheless, to marry her, -as Sumption did soon after their third meeting, was his pastoral -suicide. He took her with him to Dover, where they were both -miserable for a few months. Then he had to give up his post. They -returned to the forge at Bethersden, where Sumption would have liked -to become a blacksmith again, if it had not been for the continual -restless yearning of the Word within him, that drop of the divine -which had somehow mixed with his clay, and made him drunken. - -At the close of the year Meridian Sumption died at the birth of her -child. They had been ideally happy in their short married life, in -spite of the cage-bars of circumstances and the drivings of the Word -which divided them as in the beginning it had divided the waters from -the earth. After her death he became “queerer” than ever. He roamed -from village to village, preaching to farmers, gipsies, labourers, -tinkers, all who would hear him and some who would not—leaving his -child in his mother’s care. - -Six years later the death of his father and mother made it necessary -that he should take the boy—named grotesquely Jeremiah Meridian, as -if to show his double origin in religion and vagabondage. At the -same time his first patron, the minister of Bethersden, offered to -recommend him for the pastorate of the Particular Baptist Chapel at -Sunday Street near Dallington. His conscience had long grieved over -the vagaries of his blacksmith saint, and in this empty pastorate he -saw a way of settling both. Sumption had acquired a certain fame as -a preacher among the ’dens of Kent, candidates for the Particular -Ministry were not so many as they used to be, and the pastorate of -Sunday Street, with its dwindling, bumpkin congregation, country -loneliness, and small revenues, was hard to fill. After various -difficulties, the new minister arrived with his black-eyed, swarthy -child. He had grown tired of his wanderings, and had conceived an -erratic, arbitrary affection for this pledge of gipsy love. He looked -forward to a settled country life and to preaching the Word in his -own Bethel. - -The villagers, for the most part, liked him. His manners offended -them, and as they were mostly Church-people they seldom came to his -chapel except on wet Sundays, when it meant too much dirt and trouble -to go to hear old Mr. Foxe at Dallington or young Mr. Poullett-Smith -at Brownbread Street. But from the first he was as one of themselves, -treated with no respect and much kindness. He was seldom invited to -sick-beds or to officiate at funerals or marriages, but he never -lacked an invitation to a Harvest Supper or Farmers’ Club Dinner. For -his sake the neighbourhood tolerated the villainies of his Jerry, a -throw-back to the poaching, roving, thieving Rossarmescroes. None -the less, they were glad when at the outbreak of war he went to work -in a munition factory, first in London, then, through a series of -not very creditable wanderings, to Erith. Only the minister grieved, -for he loved Jerry as he had loved no human thing since his mother -died in the little apple-smelling room above the smithy. He was not -always kind to the boy, and the arm which had wielded the hammer -so lustily had on one or two shocking occasions nearly broken the -bones he loved. But he had for his son a half-spiritual, half-animal -affection, and the villagers pitied him when the boy went, though -they were glad to see him go. - -“Mus’ Sumption wur more blacksmith nor he wur minister,” they said -when any local enthusiasm for him prevailed; and it was true that in -his loneliness and anxiety he would often find comfort in the forge -at Sunday Street, where he could sit and watch Bourner the smith -swing his hammer, or even sometimes himself, with coat thrown off and -shirt-sleeves rolled back over arms long and hairy as a gorilla’s, -smite the hot iron or scrape the patient hoof, while his face grew -red as copper in the firelight and the sweat ran over it and his -shaggy chest. - -To-night, when Jerry had wounded him afresh, he turned to his -unfailing refuge. His pain was not the mere dread of death or -maiming of the lad—it was something more sinister, more intangible. -“The army is not for the gipsy woman’s son.” He feared for Jerry in -that organised system of rank and order and command. He would have -preferred him in the workshop even if the relative danger of the two -places had been reversed. Jerry was less likely to be smashed by a -German shell than by the system in which he had enrolled himself. -He would break his head against its discipline, hang himself in its -rules.... His dread for Jerry under martial law was the dread his -Meridian’s ancestors would have felt for her under a roof. It was a -fear based more on instinct than on reason, therefore all the more -bruising to the instinctive passion of fatherhood. It was well that -he had this refuge of iron and anvil, of hammer and hoof, this small -comforting similitude of the day which should burn as an oven.... -Bourner the smith did not talk to him much. He made a few technical -remarks, and winked at his mate when Mr. Sumption boasted of Jerry’s -valour in joining the army. But gradually the tired, careworn look -on the minister’s face died away, his eyes ceased to smoulder and -roll; in the thick stuffy atmosphere, strong with the smell of hoofs -and the ammoniacal smell of hide and horses, grey with smoke and -noisy with the roar of flames and the ring of iron, he was going -back in peace to his father’s house, to the smithy at the throws by -Bethersden, before the burdens of divine and human love had come down -upon him. - - -4 - -After his companion had left him, Tom Beatup walked quickly down the -lane, past the Horselunges and the Rifle Volunteer, to where Worge -gate hung crooked across Worge drive, paintless and smeared with dew. -Here he stopped a minute, and looked at the huddle of the farm. It -was one black shape against the yellow of the sky, and the cones of -its oasts and the spires of its poplars seemed part of its block, so -that it looked grotesque and horned. He hesitated, rubbed his hand -along the top of the gate and licked the dew off his fingers, then -turned and walked eastward. - -Beyond Egypt Farm and the cottages of Worge, just before the willow -pond that marked the end of the street, stood the shop, where Thyrza -Honey was “licensed to sell tobacco.” It was in darkness now, except -for a faint creep of light under the door. Had Thyrza “shut up”? -No—the handle turned, the little bell gave its buzzing ring, and the -warm light ran out for a moment into the darkling lane—with a smell -of tea and tobacco, sweets and sawdust, scrubbed floor and rotting -beams, the smell that was to Tom the same refuge as the smell of the -forge was to Mr. Sumption. - -The shop was empty, but he could see a shadow moving to and fro -across the little window at the back—a ridiculous little window, -about a foot square, yet as gay with its lace curtains and pink -ribbons as the drawing-room bow of a Brighton lodging-house. The next -minute a face was pressed against it, then withdrawn, and the door at -the back of the shop opened. - -“Good evenun, Mus’ Tom.” - -“Good evenun, Mrs. Honey.” - -She moved slowly to her place behind the counter. All her movements -were slow, which women sometimes found irritating, but never men, -who were always either consciously or unconsciously aware of a kind -of drawling beauty in her gait. She was fair, with hair like fluffy, -sun-bleached grass. Her skin was like that of an apricot, soft and -thick, of a deep creamy yellow, with soft dabs of colour on her wide -cheek-bones. - -“A packet of woodbines, please,” said Tom. - -She reached them from the shelf behind her. - -“Have you got any bull’s-eyes?” - -“Yes—three-ha’pence an ounce.” - -“They’ve got dearer.” - -“And they’ll get dearer still, I reckon.” - -“Give me three penn’orth, please.” - -She took them out of a glass bottle at her elbow. - -“Got any monster telephones?” - -“I dunno—I’m afeard we’re sold out.” - -Thyrza always spoke of herself in a business capacity as “we.” - -“Could you maake up two penn’orth? Harry and Zacky are unaccountable -fond of them.” - -“You’re a kind brother—buying sweeties for all the family. I reckon -the bull’s-eyes are fur your sisters.” - -“Reckon they are. No use giving monster telephones to girls—they -can’t be eaten dentical.” - -This was obvious when Thyrza finally unearthed the telephones in an -old case under the ginger-beer box. They were long, black coiling -strings of liquorice, requiring sleight of hand, combined with a -certain amount of unfastidiousness, for their consumption. Tom was -disappointed that Thyrza had found them so soon. He stood by the -counter, fingering his purchases and wishing his money was not all -gone. - -“I hear you’ve bin up at the Tribunal,” said Thyrza, coming to the -rescue. - -“Yes—they woan’t let me off.” - -“You’re sorry, I reckon.” - -“Unaccountable. I doan’t know wot ull become of the farm.” - -Thyrza sighed sympathetically, having nothing to say in the way of -comfort. - -“They said as how I wurn’t really indispensable, faather being -able-bodied and having two lads besides me, and two ‘hands’”—he -laughed bitterly. “I’d like to show ’em the ‘hands’—two scarecrows, -you might say.” - -“It’s a sad world,” remarked Thyrza comfortably. - -Mrs. Honey was a widow, but never had more than a sentimental sigh -for her husband who had made her miserable, and then suddenly rather -proud—on that last day of October when the Royal Sussex had held the -road to Sussex against the fury of the Prussian Guard, and Sam Honey -died to save the home he had made so unhappy while he lived. He had -died bravely and she was proud of him, but he had lived meanly and -she could not regret him. - -“Wot sort of a soldier d’you think I’ll make, Mrs. Honey?” - -“A good one, surelye”—and she showed him teeth like curd. - -“I’m naun so sure, though. I’m a farmer bred, and the life ull be -middling strange to me.” - -“Maybe you’ll lik it. Sam liked it fine. There was no end o’ fun to -be had, he said, and foakes all giving you chocolate and woodbines, -just as if you wur the king.” - -“Will you send me a postcard now and agaun, Mrs. Honey?” - -“Reckon I will.” - -There was silence for a minute or two in the shop. The oil lamp -swung, moving the shadows over the ceiling where the beams sagged -with the weight of Thyrza’s little bedroom. A clock in the back room -ticked loudly. Tom was still leaning across the counter, looking -at Thyrza. They both felt rather awkward, as they often felt in -each other’s company. Thyrza wondered when Tom was going. She -liked him—liked him unaccountable—but her bit of supper was on the -fire in the next room, there was some mending to be done, and many -other odds and ends of feminine business before it was time to set -the mouse-traps, put the milk-jug on the doorstep, and go to bed. -Besides, she knew he ought to be going back to Worge to tell his -family the news which should have been theirs before he brought it to -her. - -“I reckon your mother ull be wondering how you’ve fared this -afternoon. Has your father gone home and told her?” - -“I left faather at Woods Corner.” - -“She’ll be worriting about him too, then.” - -“Maybe I should ought to go home and tell them.” - -He straightened himself with a sigh. He must leave his refuge of tea -and soap and candles, the peace of Thyrza Honey’s slow movements and -thick, sweet voice. She was sorry for him. - -“You’ll look in again, Mus’ Tom?” - -“Surelye.” - -“Maybe you’ll bring your sister Ivy round for a cup of tea before you -go. Ull you be going soon?” - -“In a fortnight.... Good evenun, Mrs. Honey.” - -“Good evenun, Mus’ Tom.” - -Again the bell gave its buzzing ring, as he opened the door and went -out. - - -5 - -Tom’s heart had sunk rather low before he came to Worge. He was -always dissatisfied with himself after seeing Thryza. He never seemed -able to find anything to say, just because she was the person he -liked most in the world to talk to. He felt that he must be very -different from the other men who came to see her—for men liked -Thyrza—who could make even the buying of a penn’orth of sweets an -occasion for artful sally and interesting conversation. That reminded -him that he had left all his purchases on the counter. What an -unaccountable fool he was! However, he would not go back for them. -They must wait till to-morrow. Still, he wished he hadn’t left them. -Thyrza would think him silly, and besides he had wanted to give those -sweets to his brothers and sisters. He nearly always brought them -something when he went into the town. - -They were all at supper in the kitchen—he could hear their voices. He -wondered if his father had come back yet. He had not, for the first -question that greeted his entrance was: - -“Whur’s your faather, Tom?” - -“I left him at Woods Corner. I’d have thought he’d bin home by now.” - -“Then you thought silly. ’T’aun’t likely as he’ll come home till they -close. You should have stopped along of un.” - -“I thought I’d better git back home and tell you the news.” - -“And wot’s that? Have they let you off?” - -“Not they. A fortnight’s final.” - -Mrs. Beatup began to cry. She was a large, stout woman with masses of -rough grey hair, and a broad, rather childish face, which now looked -more like a child’s than ever as it wrinkled up for crying. - -“Now, mother, doan’t you taake on,” said Ivy, the eldest girl, -getting up and putting her arm round her. - -“It’s a shaame, a hemmed shaame,” sobbed the woman. “No woander as -faather’s stopped at Woods Corner. To take our eldest boy as is the -prop and stay of the whole of us!” - -“He aun’t no such thing,” said Ivy, who was a strapping girl—rather -like her mother, except that her round face ended in a sharp chin, -which gave her an unexpected air of shrewdness. The second girl, -Nell, was helping her brother to his supper of pork and cabbage. - -“No one can say he’s indispensable,” she remarked in rather a pretty, -half-educated voice—she was pupil teacher in her second year at the -school in Brownbread Street. “There’s Harry just on sixteen, and -there’s Juglery and Elphick, and no one can say father isn’t a strong -man and able to look after the farm.” - -“Your faather’s no use. Tom, did you tell them as your faather had -bad habits?” - -“No, I didn’t,” said Tom sulkily, shovelling in the cabbage with his -knife. - -“Then you wur a fool. You know as your faather aun’t himself three -nights out of five, and yet you go and say naun about it. How are -they to know if you doan’t tell them?” - -“I wurn’t going to tell all the big folk round Senlac as my faather -drinks.” - -“Hush, Tom! I never said as you wur to say that—but you might have -let ’em know, careful like, as he aun’t always able to look after the -farm as well as you might think.” - -“It ud have done no good. Drunkenness aun’t a reason for exemption, -as they say. Besides, I’d middling little to do in the matter. -Faather was applying fur me, and he did all the talking—an -unaccountable lot of it, too. I wurn’t took because there wurn’t -enough said against it, I promise you. But seemingly before a farm -chap like me gits off, he’s got to have a certifickit from the War -Agricultural Committee, and they read a letter saying as they’d -recommended one to be given, but the Executive Committee or summat -hadn’t fallen in wud it. So there’s no use crying, mother, for go I -must, and it’ll be none the easier for you making all this vrother.” - -He was cross because he was unhappy. - -“Will you be in the Royal Sussex, Tom—along of Mus’ Dixon and Mus’ -Archie?” asked Zacky, the youngest boy. - -“I dunno.” - -“When ull you be leaving?” - -“In a fortnight, I’ve told you.” - -“I hear as how Bill Putland ull be going soon,” said Mrs. Beatup. -“He’d be company like fur you, Tom.” - -“Bill!—he’s too unaccountable fine and grand fur me. He thinks no end -of himself being Mus’ Lamb’s chuvver. But I’ll tell you who’s joined -the Sussex, though, and that’s Jerry Sumption. I met Mus’ Sumption, -this evenun, and he toald me.” - -“You doan’t mean to say as Jerry’s left the fackory?” - -“Yes. He went and enlisted—minister says he’s unaccountable proud of -him.” - -There was a crackle of laughter round the table. - -“Well, we all of us know, and I reckon minister knows as we -know, that if Jerry had bin any sort of use at the munititions -they wouldn’t have let him join up. It’s a law that if you maake -munititions you doan’t have to join up.” - -“Oh, Jerry’s bin never no good at naun. He’s jest a roving gipsy dog.” - -Mrs. Beatup turned suddenly to Ivy: - -“Did you know aught of this?” - -“Not I!” said Ivy carelessly. “Jerry hasn’t written to me fur more’n -a month. Maybe this is why.” - -“I’m justabout sorry fur Mus’ Sumption,” said Tom, whom his supper -had put in better humour. “He has a feeling as Jerry ull come to no -good in the army.” - -“No more he will, nor nowhere, I’m thinking,” said Mrs. Beatup. -“Doan’t you never have naun to do wud him, Tom. I doan’t want my -children to git the splash of that gipsy muck——” And she threw -another half-defiant, half-furtive look at Ivy. - -“Where’s Harry?” asked Tom. - -“Out ratting,” Zacky informed him. - -“Well, he woan’t find any supper’s bin kept fur him, that’s all,” -said Mrs. Beatup, rising and pushing back her chair. “Nell, put the -plaates on the tray and maake yourself useful fur wunst.” - -A flush crept over Nell’s pale, pretty face, from her neck to the -roots of her reddish hair. She gingerly picked up two of the smelly, -greasy plates, then quickly put them down again. - -“There’s faather.” - -“Where?” Mrs. Beatup listened. - -“I heard the gate—and there goes the side door.” - -The next minute a heavy, uncertain footstep was heard in the passage, -then a bump as if someone had lurched into the wall. The family stood -stock-still and waited. - -“Maybe he’ll hurt himself in the dark,” said Mrs. Beatup, “now -policeman woan’t let us have the light at the passage bend.” - -“No, he’s all right. There he is scrabbling at the door.” - -There was the sound of fingers groping and scratching. Then the door -opened and the farmer of Worge came in, his hat a little on one side, -a lock of hair falling over his red forehead, and the whole of his -waistcoat undone. He stood, supporting himself against the doorpost, -and glared at the family. - -“Your supper’s still hot, Ned,” said Mrs. Beatup -hesitatingly—“leastways, the gals have eaten all the taters, but I -can hot you up....” She began to whimper as the bleared grey eyes -slowly rolled towards her. - -“Be quiet, Mother,” said Ivy. - -Mus’ Beatup, slowly and carefully, made his way towards a -broken-springed armchair beside the fire. He then sat down by the -simple process of falling into it backwards; then he stretched out a -foot that seemed made of clay and manure—— - -“Taake off my boots, Missus.” - - -6 - -It was quite dark before Tom was able to slip out to see to one or -two odd jobs that wanted doing in the barns. He felt himself obliged -to stay in the kitchen while his father was there, for though there -had not been more than a few occasions when surliness had blazed into -assault, he knew that it was always just possible that his father -might become violent, especially as his mother always went the worst -way—with tears, reproaches, arguments and lamentations. What would -happen when he was no longer at hand to watch over her he did not -like to think. It was all part of the load of anxiety and love which -was settling down on him. - -If he had been a free man he would probably have felt quite ready -for the change ahead of him. Though his imagination had scarcely -taken hold of the war, and though the harrow and the plough, with the -thick sucking earth on his boots, and the drip of rain or stew of -sunshine on waiting fields, had absorbed most of the boyish spirit -of adventure which might have sent him questing out of stuffier -circumstances—though his was the country heart, which is the last -heart for warfare—in spite of all, he might have gone gaily to the -new life, with its wider reach and freedom, if he had not known that -his departure meant the crumbling of that little corner of England -which was his, which his arm had built and his back supported. - -He knew that Worge leaned on him, for he felt the weight of it even -in his dreams. It was four years now since he had put his shoulder -against it; he was only just twenty, but he knew that if four years -ago he had not made up his mind to save the farm, his father would -have drunk, and the rest of the family muddled, the place into the -auction market, and the Beatups would now be scattered into towns -or soaking their humble-pie in beer on smallholdings. He had done -nothing very wonderful. The place was small and no more wanted a -giant to hold it up than a giant to knock it down. He had merely -worked while others slacked, thought while others slept, remembered -while others forgot. But, without any thrill of pride or adventure, -he knew that he had tided Worge through its bad hour, and that the -same little upheld it now. He was the real farmer, though he had -to be careful not to let his headship be seen. His father had not -explained things clearly to the tribunal—explaining things clearly -was not a quality of Tom’s either—he had been far too anxious to -preserve his own importance, which might have suffered had he said, -“My son runs the farm while I’m drinking at the pub.” - -The others were not even as much good as his father. In the -intervals of drinking, which in spite of Mrs. Beatup’s three-in-five -calculation were often quite respectable, he was both hard-working -and resourceful, though of late his brain had grown spongier and -threatened a final rot. But the rest of the family had no upstanding -moments. Ivy was strong and comparatively willing, but Tom did not -believe in girls as farm-hands and never thought of Ivy even milking -the cows. She and her mother looked after the chickens and did the -housework, that was all. Nell was out all day and busy working in the -evenings for her examination; Zacky was still at school, and Harry -was a rover—the comrade of other farmers’ younger sons in ratting and -sparrow-hunting, in visiting fairs, in trespassing for birds’ eggs, -or sometimes solitary in strange obedience to the call of distant -wood or village green. Yet Harry was Tom’s one hope—a last, forlorn -one. - -Tom was waiting for him now. He wanted to speak to his young brother -alone, not in the dim lath-smelling bedroom where Zacky would be -a third. Harry did not generally stop out late, though he had -occasionally roamed all night—hunger and fear of a beating (another -of Tom’s quasi-paternal tasks) usually brought him home just in time -to satisfy one and escape the other. - -Tom looked into the cowshed—one of the cows had shown ailing signs -that day, but she seemed well enough now, with her large head lolling -against the stall, her eyes soft and untroubled in the brown glow of -his lantern. He would not see the calf which had caused him so much -half-proud anxiety; he wondered what would become of them both if it -should be born on one of Father’s “bad nights.” Then he went into the -stable, where the three farm-horses—the sorrel, the brown, and the -bay—stood stamping and chumbling, with the cold miasmic air like a -mist above the straw. Then he went back into the yard—saw that the -hen-house door was fast, that old Nimrod the watch-dog had his bone -and his water and a good length of chain. It was very cold, there -was a faint smell of rime on the motionless air, and the stars were -like spluttering candles in the frost-black sky. These April days -and nights were unaccountable tricky, he told himself. That noon the -very heart of the manure-heap had melted in the sun, and now it was -hardening again—his boot hardly sank into the stuff as he trod it -with his heel. Some of it ought to be carted to-morrow and put round -the apple-trees.... - -Harry was very late. He would go into the corn-chamber and do some -accounts. He was clumsy with his figures, and they kept him there -twisting and scratching his head till nearly ten o’clock, when he -heard a footfall, would-be stealthy, on the stones. - -He rose quickly and ran round the yard to the backdoor just as a -shadow melted up against it. - -“Here—you!” cried Tom surlily, for he was tired and muddled with -his sums—“doan’t you think to go slithering in quiet lik that, you -good-fur-naun.” - -“I’ll come in when I like,” grumbled Harry. “You aun’t maaster here.” - -“Well, I’m the bigger chap, anyways, so mind your manners. Where’ve -you bin?” - -“Only down to Puddledock.” - -“Puddledock aun’t sich a valiant plaace as you shud spend half a day -there. You’ve bin up to no good, I reckon. A fine chap you’ll be to -mind Worge when I’m gone.” - -“You’re going, then?” - -Harry’s voice was anxious, for he was fond of Tom, though he resented -his interference with his liberties. - -“Yes—I’m going ... join up in a fortnight. Come in, Harry; I want to -spik to you.” - -“I want my supper.” - -“You’ll have your supper, though you doan’t desarve it, you -spannelling beggar. I’ll come and sit along of you; we must talk -business, you and I.” - -“About Worge?” - -“Yes.” - -They were in the kitchen now, dark except for some gleeds of fire. -The rest of the family had gone to bed, but the broken supper was -still on the table—the hacked, hardening loaf, and the remains of -the bacon and cabbage under floating scabs of grease. Tom lit the -lamp and Harry sat down, hungry and uncritical. The two boys were -curiously alike, short and sturdy, with broad sunburnt faces, grey -eyes, big mouths, and small, defiant noses. Harry’s coat was covered -with clay all down one side, and the sleeve was torn—Tom was too -heavy-hearted for more scolding, just noted drearily a new item of -expenditure. The younger brother saw the elder’s cast-down looks: - -“I’m unaccountable sorry, Tom,” he said sheepishly. - -“Cos of wot? Cos I’m going or cos you aun’t worth your bed and keep?” - -“Cos of both.” - -“Well, there’s naun to do about one, but a sight to do about t’other. -Harry, you’ll have to mind Worge when I’m agone.” - -“Wot can I do?” - -“You can work instead of roaming, and you can see to things -when faather’s bad—see as there aun’t naun foolish done or jobs -disremembered. Elphick and Juglery have only half a head between -them. Before I go I’ll tell you all I’ve had in my head about the hay -in Bucksteep field, and the oats agaunst the Street and them fuggles -down by the Sunk. And you’ll have to kip it all in your head saum -as I’ve kipped it in mine, and see as things come out straight by -harvest. D’you understand?” - -“Yes, Tom.” - -“And there’s Maudie’s calf due next month, and a brood of them -Orpingtons, and I’d meant to buy a boar at Lewes Fair and kip him -for service. You’ll never have the sense to do it. You mun stop -your ratting and your roving, or Worge ull be at the auctioneer’s. -Faather’s a valiant clever chap when he’s sober, and book-larned too, -but the men are two old turnup-heads, and Zacky’s scarce more’n a -child, and the gals are gals—so it’s up to you, Harry, as they say, -to kip the plaace going.” - -Harry groaned—— - -“Why wudn’t they let you stay?” - -“Because they didn’t see no sense in kipping an a man on farm-work -when there wur plenty about to do his job. They doan’t understand -how things are, and when you coame to think of it, it’s a shaum as I -can’t go wud a free heart.” - -“Do you want to go?” - -“I dunno. I aun’t got the chance of knowing, wud all this vrothering -me. But I’d go easier if I cud think the plaace wouldn’t fall to -pieces as soon as I left it, and that if I’m killed....” - -He stopped. Strangely enough, he had never thought of being killed -till now. - - -7 - -Tom’s calling-up papers did not arrive till a few days later. It was -a showery morning, with a flooding blue sky, smeethed and streaked -with low floats of cloud. The rain was cracking on the little green -panes of the kitchen window, and the spatter of the drops, with -the soft humming song of the kitchen fire, was in Tom’s ears as he -studied the sheet which entitled one horse, one bicycle, one mule, -one (asterisked) private soldier to travel cost-free to Lewes. He -opened his mouth to say, “My calling-up papers have come,” but said -nothing, just sat with his mouth open. The shower rattled and the -fire hummed, then a sudden spill of sunshine came from the dripping -edge of a cloud into the room, making the drops on the pane like -golden beads, and lighting up the breakfast table, so that the -mangled loaf and the dirty cups became almost as wonderful as the -shining faces round them. - -Mus’ Beatup was himself this morning—they still called it “himself,” -though of late his real self had seemed more and more removed from -the lusty headacheless man who sat among them to-day, more and more -closely coiled with that abject thing of sickness and violence which -came lurching down the fields at dusk from the Rifle Volunteer. He -was studying his share of the post—an invitation to an auction at -Rushlake Green, where Galleybird Farm was up for sale with all its -live and dead stock. Mrs. Beatup had never had a letter in her life, -nor apparently wanted one. She always exclaimed at the post, and -wondered why Ivy should have all those postcards. In her young days -no one sent postcards to girls. If a chap wanted you for wife he hung -around the gate, if he did not want you for wife he took no manner -of notice of you. A dozen chaps could not want Ivy for wife—her with -as many freckles as a foxglove, and all blowsy too, and sunburnt as -a stack—and yet there were nearly a dozen postcards strewn round her -plate this morning. Some were field postcards, whizz-bangs, from -Sussex chaps in France, some were stamped with the red triangle of -the Y.M.C.A., some were views of furrin Midland places where Sussex -chaps were in training, and some were funny ones that made Ivy -throw herself back in her chair, and show her big, white, friendly -teeth, and laugh “Ha! ha!” till the others said, “Let’s see, Ivy,” -and the picture of the Soldier come home on leave to find twins, or -the donkey chewing the Highlander’s kilt, or the Kaiser hiding in a -barrel from “_Ach Gott! die_ Royal Sussex!” would be passed round the -table. To-day one of the pictures of the gentleman with twins—it was -a popular one in the Sussex, and Ivy had two this morning—was from -Jerry Sumption. - -“Says he’s fed up,” said Ivy. “He reckons I knew about his joining. -How was I to know? He’s at Waterheel Camp; and he’s met Sid Viner and -young Kadwell. They kip those boys far enough from home.” - -“And a good thing too,” said Mrs. Beatup. “We doan’t want Minister’s -gipsy spannelling round.” - -“Spik for yourself, mother—there aun’t a lad at Waterheel as I -wuldn’t have here if I cud git him.” - -“You’ll come to no good,” grumbled her father, and pretty Nell, with -her anæmic flush, shrugged away from her sister’s sprawling elbow. -She herself had had only one postcard, which she slipped hastily into -the front of her blouse—unlike Ivy, who left hers scattered over the -table even when the family had risen from their meal. There was not -much in the postcard to justify such preferential treatment, for it -ran—“There will be a meeting of the Sunday-school teachers to-morrow -in church at 5.30. H. Poullett-Smith.” - -Nell began to collect her books for school. She carefully dusted -the crumbs from her skirt, smoothed her pretty marigold hair before -the bit of mirror by the fireplace, put on her hat and jacket, and -was gone. The rest of the family began to disperse. Zacky had to go -to school too, but his going was an unwilling, complicated matter -compared with Nell’s. His mother had to find his cap, his sister -to mend his bootlace, his father to cuff his head, and finally his -brother Tom to set him marching with a kick in his rear. - -Ivy tied on a sacking apron and began to slop soapsuds on the floor -of the outer kitchen, Mrs. Beatup set out on a quest—which experience -told would last the morning—after a plate of potatoes she could have -sworn she had set in the larder overnight. Mus’ Beatup went off to -his fields with Harry at his tail, and calling to Tom— - -“Have you bin over to Egypt about them roots?” - -“No—I’m going this mornun.” - -“Then you can tell Putland as it’s taake or leave—he pays my price or -he doan’t have my wurzels.” - -“Yes, Father.” - -Tom went off very quietly, fingering the summons in his pocket. How -many times now would he go on these errands to Egypt, Cowlease, -Slivericks and other farms? His father would have to go, or if unfit, -then Harry would be sent—Harry who would sell you a cart of swedes -for tuppence or exchange a prize pig for a ferret. That was an -unaccountable queer little bit of paper in his pocket. He could tear -it in two, but it could also do the same for him, and in any conflict -it must come out winner. It was, as it were, a finger of that -invisible hand which was being thrust down through the clouds to grab -Tom and other little people. The huge, unseen, unlimited, unmerciful -force of a kingdom’s power lay behind it, and Tom’s single body and -soul must obey without hope of escape the great Manhood that demanded -them both, as a potter demands clay and scoops up the helpless earth -to bake in his oven.... - -All this in a more or less rag-and-tag state was passing through -his mind as he walked down the drive of Worge, with Speedwell -a-bloom between the ruts, and came to the Inn whose painted sign -was a volunteer of Queen Victoria’s day. It was an old house, with -a huge windward sprawl of roof, but had not been licensed more than -sixty years. Tom disliked it as a temptation which Providence had -tactlessly dumped at their door. If Mus’ Beatup had had to walk to -the Crown at Woods Corner or the George at Brownbread Street he would -have been more continuously the smart, upstanding man he was this -morning. - -Egypt Farm was just across the road. It was smaller than Worge, but -also brighter and more prosperous-looking. There was new white paint -round the windows and on the cowls of the oasts, and the little patch -of garden by the door was trim, with hyacinths a-blowing and early -roses spotting the trellis with their first buds. - -“Mornun, Tom,” called Mrs. Putland cheerily. She was putting a suet -pudding into the oven, with the kitchen door wide open, and saw him -as he crossed the yard. - -“Mornun, ma’am. Is the maaster at home?” - -“Maaster’s over at Satanstown buying a calf. Can I give him your -message?” - -“Faather says as it’s taake it or leave it about them roots.” - -“Then I reckon he’ll taake it. He never wur the man to higgle-haggle, -and the roots is good roots.” - -“Justabout valiant—I never got a tidier crop out of Podder’s field.” - -Mrs. Putland had come to the door and stood looking at him, with her -arms akimbo. She was a small, trim woman, buttoned and sleeked, and -somehow the expression of her face was the same as the expression -of the house—the clean, kindly, enquiring look of Egypt with its -white-framed staring windows and smooth, ruddy tiles. - -“It’ll be unaccountable sad fur your faather to lose you. You’ve bin -the prop-stick of Worge this five year.” - -“Can’t be helped. I’ve got to go. Had my calling-up paapers this -mornun.” - -“That’s queer. So did Bill. Reckon you’ll go together.” - -“Didn’t Bill try fur exemption, then?” - -“No—Mus’ Lamb wouldn’t have it. Besides, there wurn’t no reason as he -should stay. We’ve done wudout him here since he went to the Manor, -and Mus’ Lamb ull kip his plaace fur him till he comes back.” - -Tom envied Bill his free heart. - -“I’ll give him a call,” continued Bill’s mother. “He aun’t due up at -the Manor fur an hour yit, and he wur saying only last night as he -never sees you now.” - -A few minutes later Bill answered his mother’s call, and sauntered -round the corner of the house, his hands in his pockets, his -chauffeur’s cap a little on one side. He had a handsome, -fresh-coloured face, strangely cheeky for a country boy’s, and Tom -always felt rather ill at ease in his presence, a little awed by the -fact that though his hands might sometimes be brown and greasy with -motor-oil, his body was of a well-washed whiteness unknown at Worge. - -“Hullo, Bill.” - -“Hullo, Tom.” - -There had never been a very deep friendship between them; Bill was -inclined to be patronising, and Tom both to resent it and to envy -him. But to-day a new, mysterious bond was linking them. In the -pocket of Bill’s neat livery there was a paper exactly like that in -Tom’s manure-slopped corduroys. - -“I hear you’ve bin called up, Bill.” - -“Yes—in a fortnight, they say.” - -“I’m going too—in a fortnight.” - -“Pleased?” - -“No. I’m unaccountable vrothered at leaving the farm. Wot d’you feel -about it?” - -“Oh, me?—I’m not sorry. They’ll keep my place open for me at the -Manor, and I shall like getting a hit at Kayser Bill. Besides, the -gals think twice as much of you if you’re in uniform.” - -This was a new complexion on the case, and Tom’s thoughts wandered -down to the shop. - -“I shall like being along of Mus’ Archie, too—he told me I could be -along of him. We’re all eighteenth Sussex hereabouts. I reckon you’ll -be in with us.” - -“I dunno.” - -Tom’s brows were crinkled, for he was thinking hard. He was chewing -the fact that for a free man there might be something rather pleasant -in soldiering. This happy, conceited, self-confident little chauffeur -was teaching him that the soldier’s lot was not entirely dark. -“Called up”—“taken”—“fetched along”—those were the words of his -conscript’s vocabulary. But now for the first time he saw something -beyond them, a voluntary endeavour beyond the conscript’s obedience, -a corporate enthusiasm beyond his lonely unwillingness. “We’re all -eighteenth Sussex hereabouts....” - - -8 - -April was May before Tom’s weeks of grace had run. The field hollows -were white with drifts of hawthorn, and the pale purplish haze of the -cuckoo-flower had given place to the buttercups’ dabble of gold. The -papery-white of the wild cherry had gone from the woods, which were -green now, thick, and full of the nutty smell of leaves. The ditches -were milky with fennel, and on the high meadows by Thunders Hill the -broom and the gorse clumped their yellows together, making the hill a -flaming cone to those who saw it from the marshes of Horse Eye. - -The farmers of Dallington watched their hayfields rust. There was -little corn in that country bounded by the Four Roads, so as the sun -climbed higher noon by noon, the neighbourhood grew gipsy-brown—the -straw-coloured feathers of the grass veiled a glowing heart of -clover, and above them opened the white ox-eyes and pools of -sorrel.... - -Tom Beatup watched ripen the fields whose harvest he would not see. -There were some twenty acres of hay at Worge, and two fields in which -the green corn was his hope and dread. The crop was promising on the -whole—a bit sedge-leaved perhaps, but firm in its seed. There were -the hops, too, in the low fields by Puddledock, where Forges Wood -shut off the north-east wind. He trundled the insect-sprayer round -the bines, and afterwards loved the smell of his green, sticky hands. - -He would have been rightly offended if anyone had told him that his -chief pangs of parting were for the farm. None the less, there was -a lingering wistfulness in his last dealings with it which was not -in his intercourse with his family. He loved his mother, he admired -his father, he felt for his brothers and sisters an elder brother’s -half-anxious, half-contemptuous fondness; but in his last services -for Worge, whether in field or barn, there was something almost -sacramental. His duties were rites—he was the unconscious priest of -that tumble-down altar before which the manure smoked as incense and -on which the burnt-offering of his boyhood lay. - -He had, too, a hunger for the fields, not only the fields of Worge, -but for all those within the Four Roads—which he did not see as -roads leading to adventure, but as boundaries fencing home. When his -tasks allowed he would roam in the webbing of tracks that the farms -have spun between the lanes—he would go to Starnash or Oxbottom -Town, watch the lightless sky grow purple over Muddles Green, and -the big stars begin to spark it as the moon hung like a red lamp -above Mystole Wood. High on the zenith the sky would be rainy green, -and he would watch it deepen to purple round the crimson moon, all -unconscious of its beauty, loving it only because it hung above -this clay in which his feet were stuck, because from it came the -brightness which waked the homely things he had put in the earth to -sleep.... - -Sometimes he would be disturbed by another quest, and would beat -slowly up and down on the road outside the shop, longing to go in -and yet strangely reluctant. He felt all tied-up and dumb. He could -not tell Thyrza Honey what he felt at leaving her any more than -he could have told Starnash or Thunders Hill—than he could have -told the little brother who lay against him on cold nights—or the -dreamy-eyed cows he milked—or even the grinning, whining watch-dog -who muddied him with his love. He was dumb, as all these were dumb. -He felt unaccountable vrothered at having to leave them all, and that -was the utmost he could say; and yet he knew that in Thyrza’s case, -at any rate, it was not enough. A man with a better tongue than he -would have gone into that shop, and shut himself into the light and -tea-smelling warmth, instead of pacing up and down under the cold -stars. - - -9 - -On the last day of all he plucked up courage. He could not go without -saying good-bye, and he had always brought her the big things of his -life—from his buying of a horse-rake to the news of the Tribunal’s -decision—though each time he had wrapped his need in some penny -purchase of tobacco or sweets. - -The little bell buzzed and ting’d. The shop was empty and rather -dark, for a grey starless dusk was on the fields after a rainy day. -The wind rattled the door he had shut behind him, and moaned round -the little leaded window banked up with penny toys and tins of fruit. -It had a long sighing sweep over the fields from Bird-in-Eye, and -just across the road was a willow pond, from which it seemed to -drink sadness. Over the banks of papered tins and paint-slopped toys -he could see the grey bending backs of the willows, and the steely -ruffle of the pond under the wind. His throat grew tight with a word -that was stuck in it—“Good-bye.” - -The door of the back room opened, and there was a leap of firelight -and the song of a kettle before it shut. - -“Evenun, Mus’ Tom,” said Mrs. Honey. - -“Evenun,” said Tom. “A packet of Player’s, please.” - -Thyrza put it on the counter. “Any sweeties?” - -“Yes. I’ll taake a quarter of bull’s-eyes and four-penn’orth of -telephones. I woan’t leave them behind me this time”—and Tom grinned -sheepishly. - -“Your brothers and sisters ull miss you,” said Thyrza, poking with a -knife at the sticky wedge of the bull’s-eyes. - -“Not more’n I’ll miss them and the whole plaace.” - -“I reckon it’s sad to say good-bye.” - -“Unaccountable sad.” - -Her eyes were fixed on him very tenderly. She was sorry for Tom -Beatup—had always been a little sorry for him—she could not quite -tell why. - -“It’ll be a long time before I see you again, Thyrza.” - -“Maybe not—you may git leave and come to see us.” - -He shook his head——“Not yet awhile.” - -His parcels lay before him, but she did not expect him to go. He was -leaning across the counter, staring at her with big, solemn eyes, -and she knew that she liked his face, broad and ruddy as a September -moon, that she liked the whole sturdy set of him. - -“Stay and have a bit of supper wud me, Tom.” It was quite -unconsciously that they had become Tom and Thyrza to each other. - -The colour burned into his cheeks, but he shook his head. - -“No, thank you kindly. I’ve got to git back hoame. I’ve a dunnamany -things to do this last evenun.” - -“Then come on your fust leave.” - -“Reckon I will——Oh, Thryza!” - -His hunger had outrun his shyness. He was trembling. She had lifted -her hand to smooth back the soft fuzz of her hair, which in the dusk -had become the colour of hay in starlight, and as she dropped her -hand, he caught it, and held it, then kissed it. It was warm and wide -and soft and rather sticky. - -“Oh, Tommy——” - -“D’you mind, Thyrza?” - -“I?—Lord, no, dear.” - -He was still holding her hand across the counter, and now he slowly -pulled her towards him. Her darling face was coming closer to him out -of the shadows; he could smell her hair.... - -Buzz—Ting. - -Their hands dropped and they started upright, both looking utterly -foolish. The Reverend Henry Poullett-Smith sniffed an air of -constraint as he entered. - -“Good evening, Mrs. Honey. I came to leave this—er—notice about the -Empire Day performance at the schools. Perhaps you’ll be so kind as -to show it in the window, and—er—come yourself.” - -“Thank you, sir. I’ll put it here by the tinned salmon. That’s what -gets looked at most.” - -“Thank you, Mrs. Honey. Hullo, Beatup—I didn’t see you in this dim -light.” - -“I’ll be gitting the lamp,” said Thyrza. - -Tom swept his parcels off the counter into his pockets, and muttered -something about “hoame.” - -“This is your last day, isn’t it?” asked the curate. - -“Yessir. Off to-morrow.” - -“Sorry?” - -“Middling sorry, for some reasons.” - -“But it will be a big experience for you.” - -The curate was young, and sometimes vaguely hankered after that -adventure in which no priests but those of godless France might -share. It was hard to see it being wasted on a pudding-headed chap -like Beatup. - -Tom only grunted his reply to this challenge. He was angry with -the parson for having come into the shop, discreet as had been his -entry. He did not think of waiting till he had gone, for somehow no -one, especially a man, ever left Thyrza’s shop in a hurry, as if -the tranquil dawdle of the shopkeeper communicated itself to her -customers, making them lounge and linger long after their purchases -were made. - -“Good-bye, Mrs. Honey.” - -“Good-bye, Tom.” - -“Good-bye, and good luck,” said the curate, shaking hands. - -The bell buzzed again, and Tom was out in the throb and shudder of -the wind, while Thyrza lit the lamp in the house behind him. - - -10 - -When he reached home he found all the family at supper, except Harry, -who after a fortnight’s doubtful virtue had, on his brother’s last -night at home, escapaded off with two young Sindens from Little -Worge. Mrs. Beatup was inclined to be tearful about it. “Wot we’ll -do when you’re agone, Tom, Lord only knows.” Of late she had taken -to treating Tom’s departure as a voluntary, not to say capricious, -act, and her frequent lamentations were gabbled with reproach, -vague hints that if he had liked he could have prevented the -catastrophe—precisely how, she never told him. - -Mus’ Beatup was not drunk. Only a negative statement could describe -him, for neither was he sober. An alcoholic Laodicean, neither hot -nor cold, he lolled over the head of the table, and argued with -Nell, the pupil-teacher, on the utter futility of the Church of -England, or, indeed, any sort of Church. It was characteristic of -Nell that she would argue with her father, drunk or sober. She had -championed her causes against a far less responsible adversary than -she had before her to-day. Her cheeks were pink with refutation, -and her little sighs and exclamations and chipped beginnings of -phrases popped like corks round Mus’ Beatup’s droning eloquence—that -eloquence which so filled Tom with admiration and made him boast of -his father’s book-learning among the farms. - -“It’s as plain as the nose on your face, and has all bin proved over -and over again as there wuren’t no such persons as Adam and Eve. -There’s a chap called Darwin’s proved as we’re the offsprings of -monkeys, and a chap called Bradlaugh ’s proved as we all come out of -stuff called prottoplasm—so where are your Adam and Eve, I’d lik to -know?” - -“But, father, as if it mattered. The Church....” - -“The Church is there to prove as the world was maade in six days, -when it’s bin proved over and over again as it hasn’t.” - -“The Church is there for no such thing—it’s——” - -“I tell you it’s bin proved as it’s there for that very purpose.” - -“Who’s proved it?” - -“Darwin and Huxley and Bradlaugh, and a lot more clever chaps.” - -“But they lived years ago, and it’s——” - -“Not so many years ago as your Adam and Eve, and yet you go and -believe in them....” - -“I don’t. Not in the sense....” - -“When it’s bin proved as there never wur no Adam and Eve. The fust -people wur monkeys, descended from prottoplasm, and then caum the -missing lynx and then caum us. I tell you it’s all bin proved over -and over again, and parson chaps and silly gals aun’t likely to prove -anything different.” - -Tom listened respectfully, if rather grudgingly, to this learned -conversation. He wanted to talk to his father about one or two -matters concerning the farm, but knew there would be no chance for -him to-night. He kept up at intervals a grunting intercourse with his -mother, who wanted every other minute to know where he’d been and -where Harry had got to, and what in the Lord’s name they were to do -without him. Into the bargain, he ate a hearty supper, for though he -was in love and rather miserable, he was also a healthy young animal, -sharp-set after a day in the open air. - -At last the theological argument ended, not because it was any nearer -solution or had indeed moved at all from its first premises, but -because the end of supper dispersed the combatants, Nell to her work, -and Mus’ Beatup, ignominiously, to the kitchen sink. Having relieved -his stomach of its load of bad beer and half-masticated food, he -went grumbling upstairs to bed, wondering what we were all coming to -nowadays, and why nobody stopped the war. - -Mrs. Beatup reckoned, with a sigh, that she had better go to bed too, -as Maaster didn’t like it if she disturbed him later. So she lit her -candle, and went slowly creaking upstairs, leaving Ivy to clear away -the supper. Just where the stairs bent, she suddenly stood still, as -if a thought had struck her. - -“Tom,” she called. - -He was cleaning his boots in the outer kitchen, but when he heard her -he ran up to where she stood, thick against her monstrous shadow in -the angle of the stairs. - -“It’s queer as you never think of kissing your mother.” - -He had not kissed her for weeks, but now, suddenly troubled, he did -so. - -“I’m sorry, mother.” - -“And so you may be—on your last night, too.” - -He stood looking at her sheepishly. - -“Well, git down to your business. I mustn’t linger, or Maaster ull be -gitting into bed in his boots.” - -He went downstairs, feeling suddenly smartingly sorry for his mother -as she waddled upwards to this drunkard’s bed. He saw that her lot -was a hard one. - - -11 - -The passage was in darkness, and Tom did not see, but felt, the side -door swing open, with a damp drench of wind from the yard. There was -a grey mist in the passage. The next minute a white stick-like thing -flew out of it, suddenly like the wind, and then bumped into Tom, -with the unexpected contact of warm flesh against his hands, and -“Oo-er,” in Harry’s voice. - -“Harry....” - -“Oh, that’s you, Tom? Lemme git up and fetch some cloathes.” - -“But where’s those as you went out in?” - -“I dunno. I’ll tell you afterwards, but I’m coald, and I want my -supper.” - -The slow, facile anger of his type went tingling into Tom’s speech -and hands. - -“Supper! I’m hemmed if you git so much as a bite. Tell me this wunst -where you left your cloathes or I’ll knock your head off, surelye.” - -He laid violent hands on Harry, who was, however, far too slippery -to hold. He was free in a minute and dashed into the outer kitchen, -slamming the door after him. - -When Tom came in he was sitting tailor-fashion on the table, gnawing -the top of a cottage loaf. The elder brother could not help laughing -at him, he looked such a queer goblin creature. - -“Doan’t be vrothered, Tom,” whined Harry, taking advantage of his -relenting—“it’s your last night at home.” - -Tom winced—they were always throwing it at him, his “last night.” - -“Lucky fur you as it is—and unlucky fur me—and unlucky fur Worge if -this is the way you’re going on when I’m a-gone. Where’ve you bin?” - -“Only over to Bucksteep, Tom.” - -“But wot have you done wud your clothes?” - -“Mus’ Archie’s got ’em.” - -“Wot d’you mean? Spik the truth.” - -“It’s Bible truth. Willie and Peter Sinden and Bob Pix and me thought -as how we’d bathe by moonlight in Bucksteep pond, and Mus’ Archie’s -hoame on leave, and he wur walking wud his young woman in the -paddock, and he sawed us, and took all our cloathes whiles we wur in -the water. He thought as how he’d got us then, and that we couldn’t -git away wudout our cloathes. But he’s found he’s wrong, fur we -climbed up the far bank into Throws Wood, and ran hoame.” - -“You mean to tell me as you’ve come in your skin all the way from -Bucksteep?” - -Harry nodded, and laughed at some Puckish memory. - -“Well, all I wonder is as you wurn’t took and put in gaol—you would -have been if policeman had met you—and you’ll catch your death of -cold.” - -He pulled off his coat and most ungently bundled Harry into it. Then -another idea struck him. He groaned, and scratched his head. - -“I must write to Mus’ Archie this wunst.” - -“Why, Tom?” - -“To git your clothes back. We can’t afford to lose a good suit of -clothes.” - -He turned wearily to the cupboard, and took out a penny ink-bottle, a -pen, and some cheap writing-paper. - -“Tom—he’ll know it wur me if you write.” - -“I can’t help that—we must git your clothes back.” - -“But they were only old cloathes.” - -“Adone-do, Harry. We can’t afford to lose so much as an old shirt. -Oh, you’re vrothering me to madness wud your doings.” - -He began to scrawl in his slow, round hand. He was no letter-writer, -and found it difficult to put his request into words. He also wanted -to plead for Harry, to explain a little of his own hard case, and ask -that the matter might be allowed to stop at the scare and scolding -Harry had received, for “I am joining up to-morrow, and it is very -hard to leave them all like this, from your obedient servant Thomas -Beatup.” - -Harry watched him, bobbing over the sheet, every now and then passing -his tongue over his lips in the agony of composition. Then suddenly -he slid towards him across the table and put his arm round his neck. - -Tom shook him off. - -“Git away.” - -“I’m sorry I’m such a hemmed curse to you, Tom.” - -“You’re a hemmed curse indeed. I ask you to be a man in my plaace, -and you’re no more than a tedious liddle child.” - -A sudden sense of the hopelessness of it all came over him—the net in -which he struggled, in which he was being dragged away from those he -could help and love. He dropped his head in his hands. Harry stood -for a moment awestruck beside him, a grotesque figure with Tom’s coat -hanging over his bare thighs. Then he turned and crept away to bed. - -The clock struck nine, and Tom lifted his head. He was utterly weary, -but he knew that if he did not take his letter over to Bucksteep -to-night he would not have time in the morning. There was no good -leaving it to other hands to deliver, for he felt that his mother -would resent its humble tone, and perhaps send instead an angry -demand which, by rousing Mus’ Archie’s rage, might end by landing -Harry before the Senlac Bench. So he put on his father’s driving -coat, which hung in the passage and smelt of manure and stale -spirits, and let himself out into the soft, throbbing darkness, lit -only by a few dim stars of the Plough. - - -12 - -Bucksteep Manor was the smaller kind of country-house, smuggled away -from the cross-roads in a larch plantation, with a tennis lawn at the -back, and a more open view swinging over a copsed valley to Rushlake -Green. It had once been a farmhouse, but a wing had been added in -modern style, and inside, the low raftering had been swept away, -so that when Tom stood in the dimly-lighted hall, which had once -been the kitchen, he could look up to a ceiling dizzily high to his -sag-roofed experience. - -The Lambs were the aristocracy of Dallington, a neighbourhood -strikingly empty of “society” in the country-house sense. They had -themselves been yeoman farmers a couple of generations back, and the -present squire still interested himself shamefacedly in Bucksteep’s -hundred acres. The Beatups had but little truck with the Manor; -precarious yeomen, no rents or dues demanded intercourse, and Mus’ -Beatup had often been heard to say that some folks were no better -than other folks, for all their airs and acres. - -Tom had given his letter to a rustling parlourmaid, and stood -meekly waiting for an answer, his large bovine eyes blinking with -sleepiness. From an adjoining room came the throaty music of a -gramophone, playing: - - “When we wind up the Watch on the Rhine - Everything will be Potsdam fine....” - -There was girls’ laughter, too—probably Miss Marian Lamb and Mus’ -Archie’s intended—and every now and then he heard Mrs. Lamb’s voice -go rocketing up. He did not feel envious of all this jollity, neither -did it grate upon him; he just stood and waited under the shaded -lamps of the hall, and had nearly fallen asleep on his legs when -suddenly the door opened, with a flood of light and noise, and shut -again behind Mus’ Archie. - -“Good evening, Beatup. Sorry to have kept you waiting. I couldn’t -make this out at first—had no idea your young brother was one of the -culprits to-night, or I shouldn’t have played that trick on ’em.” - -“It doan’t matter, sir. Harry desarved it. It’s only as we can’t -afford to lose the clothes.” - -“No, no, of course not. Come with me and pick his out of the pile, -and you can take them home.” - -“Thank you, Mus’ Archie.” - -He followed young Lamb into a little gun-room opening on the hall, -and was able to pick out Harry’s rather bobtail toilet from a muddle -of Sinden and Pix raiment. - -“That’s all, is it? Wan’t anything to wrap ’em in?” - -“No, sir, it aun’t worth it. Thank you kindly for letting me have the -things.” - -“There was never any question of you not having them. I’ve no right -to keep ’em. So you’re joining up to-morrow?” - -He was in uniform, but without his belt. Somehow to Tom he seemed a -burlier, browner man than the young squire whom before the war he -used to see out hunting, or shooting, or driving girls in his car. - -“Yes, I’m joining up, as they say.” - -“You don’t seem over-pleased about it.” - -“I aun’t, particular.” - -“Well, I’m not going to tell you it’s the grandest job on earth, and -that all the chaps out there are having the time of their lives. It -wouldn’t be true, though I expect the Tribunal told you so.” - -“Yessir; they said as if they were only ten years younger they’d all -be in it.” - -“Of course they did. Well, I’ve been out there, and I’ve seen.... But -never mind; you’ll find that out for yourself, Beatup. However, I’ll -say this much—it isn’t a nice job, or a grand job, or even a good -job; but it’s a job that’s got to be done, and when it’s done we’ll -like to think that Sussex chaps helped do it.” - -Tom’s heart warmed a little towards Mus’ Archie. He was making him -feel as he had felt when Bill Putland said, “We’re all eighteenth -Sussex hereabouts.” - -“It aun’t the going as un vrother me, if it wurn’t fur leaving -Worge. I’m fretted as the plaace ull land at the auctioneer’s if I’m -long away. You see, I’ve always done most of the work, in my head -as well as wud my hands. Faather, he aun’t a healthy man, and the -others aun’t much help nuther. There’s only Harry lik to be any use, -and he’s such an unaccountable limb of wickedness—for ever at his -tricks—to-night’s only one of them.” - -“Perhaps he’ll pull himself together and work for Worge when he sees -you’ve gone to fight for it.” - -This was new light on the matter for Tom. Hitherto he had always -thought of himself as deserting Worge in its hour of need—it had -never occurred to him that his going was the going of a champion, not -of a traitor. - -“Maybe it’s as you say, Mus’ Archie. Leastways, we’ll hope so.” - -They were in the hall again now, and the gramophone was singing in -its spooky voice. “You called me Baby Doll a year ago.” Tom slowly -turned the handle of the front door, sidling out on to the step. - -“Thank you for the clothes, Mus’ Archie. I’ll try and talk some sense -into Harry before I go.” - -“Good night, Beatup, and good luck to you. I expect I’ll see some -more of you in the near future. All the chaps round here seem to -be drafted into the eighteenth. Bill Putland will be in our little -crowd, and Jerry Sumption—there’ll be quite a Dallington set at -Waterheel.” - -“I hope I’ll be with you, Mus’ Archie.” - -“I hope you will, Beatup. Good night.” - -“Good night, sir.” - -The door shut, and he was out in the drive, where the larches swung -against the moon. - -Archie Lamb went back into the drawing-room, and put a new record on -the gramophone. - -“Queer chap, Beatup,” he said to his mother. “I don’t know how he’ll -shape. He looks strong and steady, but I should say about as smart as -a mangold-wurzel.” - - -13 - -Tom swung along the dim road, where the shadows ran before him. The -new-risen moon looked over the hedge, an amber disc just past the -full, swimming against the wind from Satanstown. In the heart of the -wind seemed still to beat the pulse of those far-off guns, the ghost -of their day-long thunder. Over and over in his mind Tom turned his -new thought—that he was going to fight for Worge. - -In a quarter of an hour he had come to Sunday Street. He could see -the moonlight lying like frost on the southward slope of the roofs, -and the windows of the Bethel were ghostly with it, as they stared -away to the marshes. The Bethel alone seemed awake in the little -huddle of sleeping cottages—it had a strange look of watchfulness -and waiting, its gaunt Georgian windows never had that comfortable -blinking air of the cottage lattices.... Tom did not like the Bethel -at night. - -He looked across the road to the Horselunges, where Mr. Sumption -lived. A crack of light showed under the blind of the minister’s -room, and Tom’s heart gave a little thump of self-reproach, for he -had not till then thought of saying good-bye to him. He had not seen -much of Mr. Sumption lately, and had been too much absorbed in his -own concerns to think of him, but now he made up his mind to call -and say good-bye; it was past ten o’clock and he was very tired and -sleepy, nevertheless he walked up to the door of the Horselunges and -knocked. - -Mrs. Hubble was in bed, as the hour demanded, so the door was opened -by her lodger. - -“Hello, Tom. Anything the matter? Do they want me at Worge?” - -Mr. Sumption was always childishly eager for some demand on his -pastoral ministrations, a demand which was seldom made, as he had -a disruptive bedside manner and the funds of his chapel did not -admit of the doles which made sick Dallington people endure the -consolations of the Church. - -“No, thank you, they doan’t. I’ve just come to say good-bye.” - -The minister’s forehead clouded— - -“Oh, you’ve remembered me at last, have you? Thought it just as well -not to forget old friends before you go off to make new ones. Come -in.” - -Tom, who had expected this greeting, followed Mr. Sumption upstairs -into the room which he called his study, but which had few points of -difference from any cottage living-room in Sunday Street. There was -a frayed carpet with a lot of dirt trodden into it, and a sun-sucked -wall-paper adhering as closely as possible to walls complicate of -beams and bulges. A solitary book-shelf supported _Jessica’s First -Prayer_, _Edwin’s Trial or The Little Christian Witness_, and kindred -works, cheek-by-jowl with _Burton’s Four Last Things_ and a cage of -white mice. There was another cage hanging in the window, containing -a broken-winged thrush which the pastor, after the failure of many -anathemas, had bought from one of those mysterious gangs of small -boys which prowl round villages. An old, old cat sat before the empty -grate, too decrepit to make more than one attempt a day on the thrush -or the mice, and now purring wheezily in the intervals of scratching -a cankered ear. - -On the table was a wild, unwieldy parcel, from whose bursting sides -the contents were already beginning to ooze forth. - -“I’m packing a parcel for Jerry,” said the minister. “I’d just -finished when you knocked.” - -“It looks as if it was coming undone,” said Tom. - -“So it does”—and Mr. Sumption glanced deprecatingly at his -handiwork. “If only I had some sealing-wax ... but the shop’s shut.” - -“It’ll be open to-morrow,” said Tom, and pictured Thyrza pulling up -the blind and dusting the salmon-tins in the window ... long after he -had gone to catch the early train from Hailsham. - -“Well, to-morrow’s time enough, as I can’t post it before then. It ud -be a pity for anything to get lost. There’s three shillings’ worth of -things in that parcel.” - -“Have you had any more letters from Jerry?” - -“Yes, I had one yesterday”—no need to tell Tom there had been no -others—“He wants chocolate and cigarettes, and I put in a tin of -cocoa besides, and some little squares to make soup of. He’ll be -unaccountable pleased.” - -“How’s he gitting on?” - -“Valiant. He likes being along of the other lads. The only thing that -worrits him is your sister.” - -“My sister?” - -“Yes, your sister Ivy. Seemingly she never answered a postcard he -wrote her ten days back, and you knows he’s unaccountable set on Ivy.” - -“It aun’t no use, Mus’ Sumption. Ivy’s got no thought for him, I’m -certain sure, and he’s only wasting time over her.” - -The minister’s comely face darkened, and he cracked his fingers once -or twice. - -“It’s a pity, a lamentable pity. That boy of mine’s crazy on Ivy -Beatup. Are you sure she doesn’t care about him, Tom?” - -“Well, who knows wot a gal thinks? I can only put two and two -together. But seemingly if she’d cared she’d have answered his -postcard.” - -“Could you put in a word for him?” - -Young Beatup shook his head— - -“I woan’t meddle. If Ivy doan’t care I can’t maake her, and I reckon -mother’s unaccountable set against it too.” - -He had said the wrong thing. Mr. Sumption’s eyes became like burning -pits. He swung his hands up and cracked them like a pistol. - -“Set against it, is she? Set against my Jerry? Maybe he isn’t good -enough for her—a clergyman’s son for a farmer’s daughter.” - -“I never said naun of that,” mumbled Tom uneasily, remembering his -mother’s reference to “gipsy muck.” - -“It’s I as might be set against it,” continued the minister. “I tell -you that boy’s been bred and cut above your sister. I never sent him -to a board school along of farmers’ children—I taught him myself, -everything I learned at college. He’d know as much I do if he hadn’t -forgotten it. Yet I’m not proud; I know the boy wants your sister Ivy -and ull do something silly if he can’t get her, so when he writes to -me, ‘Where’s Ivy? Find out why she didn’t answer my postcard, and -tell her I’ll go mad if she doesn’t take some notice of me’—why, -then, I do my best—and get told my son’s not good enough for your -father’s daughter.” - -“I never told you any such thing,” said Tom doggedly, “but I woan’t -spik to Ivy. She knows her own business best. If I were you I’d tell -Jerry straight as no good ull come of his going after her. She doan’t -want him—I’m certain sure of that.” - -The pastor’s wrath had died down into something more piteous. - -“I daresay you’re right, Tom, and maybe I did wrong to speak like -that. After all, I was only a blacksmith till the Lord called me -away.... I pray that He may not require my boasting of me.” - -“Well, I’m unaccountable sorry about Ivy being lik that, but I -thought it better to spik plain.” - -Mr. Sumption sat down rather heavily at the table. - -“O Lord, how shall I tell Jerry? If I tell him he’ll do something -wild, sure as he’s Jerry Sumption.” - -“Doan’t tell him. He’ll find out for himself soon enough.” - -Mr. Sumption groaned. - -“Tom Beatup,” he said slowly, “I reckon you think I’m a faithless, -unprofitable steward so to set my heart on human flesh and blood. But -you’ll understand a bit of what I feel ... some day, when you’re the -father of a son.” - - -14 - -The pale morning ray came slanting over the sky from Harebeating -towards the last stars. Slowly the trees and hedges loomed out -against the trembling yellow pools of the dawn. Colours woke in the -fields, soft hazy greens, and blues and greys that ran together like -smoke ... ponds began to gleam among the spinneys, discs of mirrored -sky, that from lustreless white became glassy yellow, then kindled -from glass to fire, then smouldered from fire to rust. - -Tom saw the window square light up and frame the familiar picture -of a life’s mornings—the oasthouse, the lombardy poplar topping the -barn, the little patch of distant fields seen between the oast and -the jutting farmhouse gable. The bed was pulled up close to the -window, to allow of the door being opened, and he could lie on his -side and look straight out at the loved common things which perhaps -he might never see just so again. - -It all looked very quiet, and rather cold, and the early sunless -light gave it a peculiar lifelessness, as if it was something -painted, or cut in cardboard. Even Tom was conscious of its cold, -dreamlike quality; he always said that “the yard looked corpsy -at break o’ day.” Then the distant view of little fields suddenly -swam into golden light, as a long finger of sunlight stroked the -barn-roofs, then stabbed in at the window, throwing a shaft of -dancing golden motes across the room. Tom rose, climbed out of bed -over Zacky, and in about three square feet of floor space shaved and -dressed. Then he went downstairs, unlocked the house door and stole -out to his last morning’s work. - -No one was about; it was not till more than an hour later that the -two antique farm-hands, Elphick and Juglery, came up from Worge -Cottages. By that time Tom had milked the cows, mixed the chicken -food, and driven the horses down to Forges field. He gave the two -unskilled labourers their orders for the day as if he expected to be -there to see them carried out. By that time Ivy was hunting for eggs, -and Mrs. Beatup was struggling with the kitchen fire, while Mus’ -Beatup, in practical, unlearned mood, had gone to the Sunk field to -inspect the ewes. - -As Ivy came out of the hen-house and crossed the yard, cheery, -healthy, blowsy, with eggs in a bowl, Tom had a sudden thought of -giving her Mr. Sumption’s message. But he held his tongue. He had -meant what he said when he told the minister he was not going to -meddle. He had long been convinced of the fact that his sister knew -her own business; besides, Jerry ... that lousy gipsy chap.... Pastor -might say he was getting on valiant, but all Dallington knew that he -had been given seven days C.B. within a week of his joining. - -So, with nothing for Ivy but a nod, Tom went in to breakfast. Time -was short, but the breakfast was still in a rudimentary state. Mrs. -Beatup fought with the kitchen fire among whorls of smoke, while -Nell, coughing pathetically, laid the table. Harry in a fit of -brotherly love was cleaning Tom’s best boots ready for his journey -to Lewes—no one ever went to Lewes in any but Sunday clothes. - -“Oh, is that you, Tom? I hope as you aun’t in a hurry. This fire’s -bewitched. Nell, give your brother a cut off the loaf. You’d better -git started, Tom, or you’ll lose your train.” - -So Tom’s last breakfast at Worge was eaten in confusion and mess, -the family dropping in one by one for cuts off the loaf or helpings -of cold bacon spotted with large blisters of grease. Last of all the -breakfast arrived, in the shape of the tea-pot, and a special boiled -egg for Tom. He was not able to do more than gulp down the egg and -scald himself with the tea. Then it was time to go. He had already -tied up a few little things in a handkerchief—a razor, a piece of -soap, an old frosted Christmas card which for some obscure reason he -treasured—so there was nothing to do but to say good-bye and beat it -for Hailsham, a good seven miles. - -Mus’ Beatup put down his tea-cup and looked solemn. - -“Well, good-bye, my lad. I reckon you’ve got to go. Everyone’s off -to fight now, seemingly, so I suppose you must do wot others do. Not -that I think so much of this war as some folks seem to—it’s bin going -on nigh two years now, and I can’t see as we’re any of us a penny the -better off. Howsumdever....” - -“He’s going to stop it,” said Nell, her face pink. - -“Ho, is he? Well, I’ve no objection. Maybe I’ll write you a letter, -Tom, when Maudie calves.” - -“I’d be much obliged if you would, faather, and tell me how the wheat -does this year, and them new oats by the Street.” - -“Good-bye, Tom,” said Harry. “I shall miss you unaccountable.” - -“And I’ll miss you, too,” said Zacky, “but there’ll be more room in -the bed.” - -Tom kissed them sheepishly all round, then walked out of the door -without a word. - -He was in the yard, when he heard footsteps creaking after him, and -turned round to see his mother. - -“Wait a bit, Tom,” she panted; “I’ll go wud you to the geate.” - -He was surprised, but it did not strike him to say so. They walked -down the drive together almost in silence, the boy hanging his head. -Mrs. Beatup sniffed and choked repeatedly. - -“Doan’t go near those Germans, Tom,” she said, when they came to a -standstill. “If you do, you’ll be killed for certain sure.” - -“I’ll go where I’m put, surelye,” said Tom gloomily. - -“Well, be careful, that’s all. Kip well behind the other lads, and -doan’t go popping your head over walls or meddling wud cannons. And -kip your feet dry, Tom, and doan’t git into temptation.” - -“I promise, mother,” he mumbled against her neck, and they kissed -each other many times before she let him go. - -The Rifle Volunteer looked down from his sign, where he stood in the -grey uniform and mutton-chop whiskers of an earlier dispensation, -and stared at the stocky, shambling little figure that trudged its -unwilling way to sacrifice—past Worge Cottages, stewing in the -sunshine like pippins, past Egypt Farm (which Bill Putland would -leave later and more conveniently in his father’s dog-cart), past the -shop, with a glance half shy, half beseeching, at the drawn blinds, -past the willow pond, out of Sunday Street, into the long yellow road -that led to the unsought, undesired adventure. - - - - -PART II: JERRY - - -1 - -Mrs. Beatup’s tears ran down her face as she hurried back up the -drive, but she wiped them vigorously away with her apron, and had -nothing but her red eyes to show when she entered the kitchen. -Everyone had gone, except Ivy and Nell. The former had not finished -her hearty breakfast, the latter was packing her books for school, -and some sort of a wrangle was going on between them. Mrs. Beatup -heard Nell call Ivy “vulgar” just as she came into the room. Ivy -laughed, truly a vulgar performance with her mouth full. - -“Now, you two gals, doan’t you start quarrelling just when you -brother’s a-gone; maybe fur ever.” - -“We aun’t quarrelling,” said Ivy. “I’ve told her she’s sweet on -parson, that’s all.” - -“All!” sniffed Nell. “Maybe you think it’s nothing to have your -vulgar mind making out my—my friendship with Mr. Poullett-Smith’s the -same as yours with—with—anyone that ull let you make sheep’s eyes at -him.” - -“Nell!” cried her mother. “For shaum!” - -“Well, I don’t care”—the younger girl’s anger had been roused by many -coarse flicks—“everyone talks about Ivy’s goings-on.” - -“I doan’t care if they do,” said Ivy cavernously in her tea-cup. -“Reckon it’s cos they’re jealous of me gitting the boys.” - -“Well, Ivy,” said Mrs. Beatup, “I doan’t hold wud your goings-on, -nuther; but anyway you’re useful.” - -“I’m earning money, though,” said Nell; “at least I shall be when my -third year’s up.” - -“And how soon ull that be, I’d lik to know? There you go, out all -day, when you might be helping us at home, and not a penny to show -fur it.” - -“Mother, I’ve told you again and again—why won’t you understand?—I’m -being given lessons in exchange for those I give myself, and——” - -“Lessons! A girl turned seventeen! I call it lamentable. I’d a-done -wud my schooling at twelve.” - -“But you know I have to pass an exam....” - -“I doan’t see no ‘have’ in it. Better kip at hoame and help me wud the -cooking. Out all day and bring home no money! I doan’t call that——” - -“Well, I’m off,” said Ivy, getting up and wiping her mouth. “You two -are lik a couple of barndoor cocks, walking round and round each -other. I’ve summat better to do—I’ve the passage to scrub”—and she -took her sacking apron off the nail. - -“Where’s Zacky?” asked Mrs. Beatup. “Has he started for school?” - -“Yes, he’s gone wud the Sindens.” - -“And Harry?” - -Ivy laughed. “Oh, Harry’s along of faather, in the Sunk -field—unaccountable good and hard-working to-day, because Tom’s -a-gone; seemingly, he’d sooner please him now he aun’t here to see -than when he was here fretting his heart out over Harry’s lazy bones.” - -“Well, I’m glad as someone remembers my poor boy’s gone, and is lik -to be killed.” - -Mrs. Beatup’s tears burst out afresh, but Ivy comforted her with a -kiss and a clap and a few cheery words, and soon had her interested -in the various bootstains on the passage-floor. “Cow-dung, that’s -faather; and horse-dung, that’s Tom; and sheep-dung, that’s Juglery; -and that miry clay’s jest Zacky spannelling....” - - -2 - -Nell put on her hat and coat and started for school. A neat, shabby -little figure, with her town hat pulled down over her soft hair, she -walked quickly between dust-powdered hedges to Brownbread Street, -panting a little, because she was anæmic, and also because she was -still a trifle indignant. Nell did not view life and the War as her -family viewed them. Her different education had made them not quite -such matters of bread-and-cheese. She alone at Worge had felt the -humiliation—as distinct from the inconvenience—of Tom’s conscription. -She had always despised him because he did not volunteer during the -early stages of the War, and when the Conscription Act came into -force she despised him still more for his appeal to the Tribunal. -She felt that she could never think proudly of him, knowing -how unwillingly he had gone, knowing that he cared for nothing -except leaving Worge, that he never thought of the great cause of -righteousness he was to fight for, or understood the mighty issues of -his unwilling warfare. - -The rest of the family were all of a block. To her mother the War was -merely a matter of prices and scarcities, to her father it was drink -restrictions and the closing of public-houses, to Ivy it was picture -postcards and boys in khaki, to Harry the unwilling performance -of tasks which would otherwise have been done by more efficient -hands, to Zacky the obscure manœuvres of a gang of small boys -whose imaginations had been touched by militarism. To Nell alone -belonged the fret and anxiety of the times, the shock of bad news, -the struggle of ineffectual small labours to win her a place in the -great woe. - -To-day she was early for school, as she had meant to be, for at -the church she stopped and sat down in the porch. St. Wilfred’s, -Brownbread Street, was only a chapel-of-ease under the mother church -of Dallington. It was new-built of sandstone, an unfortunate symbol -of that Rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. The -interior, glimpsed through the open door, was dim and mediæval, the -first effect due to the deep tones of the stained-glass windows, -where the saints wore robes of crimson and sapphire and passional -violet, and the latter to the several dark oil paintings, and the -thick gilt tracery of the screen, through which the altar showed -richly coloured, with one winking red light before it. - -The curate-in-charge of Brownbread Street was of mediæval tendencies, -and did his best, both in service and sermon, to transport his -congregation from the woodbine-age to the age of pilgrimages and -monasteries, with the result that, with unmediæval licence, they -sought illicit and heretical refreshment in Georgian Bethels and -Victorian Tabernacles, where they could sing good Moody and Sankey -tunes, instead of treacherous Gregorians and wobbling Plainsong. - -But Nell loved the low, soft, creeping tones of Gregory’s mode, loved -the dimness, the mystery, the faint echo of Sarum ... and if in her -love was a personal element which she denied, the church was not less -a refuge from the coarse frustrations of her everyday life, such as -the Forge was to Mr. Sumption and the Shop had been to Tom. - -To-day the priest was at the altar, saying the Last Gospel. Nell -could just see him from where she sat. He would be out in a couple -of minutes. She watched him glide off into the shadows, then she -rose and walked down to the little wicket-gate, where the path from -the porch met the path from the vestry. There was more colour in her -cheeks than usual. - -Now and then she looked anxiously across the road at the schoolhouse -clock, where the large hand was creeping swiftly towards the hour. -From the clock her eyes slewed round to the vestry door. At last the -handle shook, and out came Mr. Poullett-Smith, walking hurriedly, -with his cassock flapping round his legs. He did not seem to see Nell -till he had nearly walked into her. - -“Oh—er—good morning, Miss Beatup. I beg your pardon.” - -“Good morning, Mr. Poullett-Smith. I—I wanted to tell you I’m so -sorry I haven’t finished that book you lent me. I’m afraid I’ve kept -it a terrible time.” - -Her words came with a rush, blurred faintly in the last of a Sussex -accent, and her eyes were fixed on his face with an almost childish -eagerness which he could scarcely fail to notice. - -“Oh, please don’t trouble. Keep the book as long as you like—the -_Sermons of St. Gregory_, isn’t it?” - -“Yes—I think they’re wonderful,” breathed Nell, hoping he would never -know how difficult she found them to understand. - -“They are indeed, and so stimulating.” - -The Rev. Henry Poullett-Smith was a tall man, with a long nose, a -slight stoop, and a waxy brownish skin that made him look like one of -his own altar candles. As he spoke to Nell, he kept on glancing up -the street, and when a girl on a bicycle came round the corner, he -moved a few steps out into the road and took off his hat. - -“Good morning, Miss Lamb.” - -Marian Lamb, who was in Red Cross uniform, jumped off her bicycle and -shook hands with him before she shook hands with Nell Beatup. - -“On your way to the hospital, I see.” - -“Yes. I’m on morning duty this week.” - -“Do you prefer that to the afternoons?” - -“Not in summer. I do in winter, though.” - -Nell felt ignored and insulted. She made no effort to join in this -sprightly dialogue. There was something in the curate’s manner -towards the other girl which seemed to stab her through with a sense -of her inferiority, with memories of the coarse, muddling life of -Worge to which she belonged. It was not that he showed more courtesy, -but he seemed to show more freedom ... he was more at his ease with -one of his own class. - -Her cheeks burned. Of course she was not his equal. He might talk to -her and lend her books, but he did it only out of kindness; probably -looked upon it as a superior form of parish relief—doled the books as -he doled blankets.... She shrugged away, and the movement made him at -once turn to her with a remark: - -“Have you been over the hospital, Miss Beatup?” - -“No—I’ve never had time ... and I must hurry off now. Good morning!” - -Even as she spoke she noticed that her voice was thick and drawly, -unlike Miss Lamb’s sharp, clear tones. She gripped her satchel and -hurried across the road to the schoolhouse. - - -3 - -During the next few days the most remarkable sight at Worge was -Harry’s industriousness. For nearly a week he rose at five, fed the -pigs and helped with the milking, and during the whole day he was -available for carting, digging, dunging, or anything else he had -formerly fled from. He helped Elphick spray the young fuggles down -by Forges and the Sunk Field, he took a cartload of roots over to -Three Cups Corner, he groomed the horses and plaited their manes, he -compelled Zacky with threats of personal violence to spend Saturday -afternoon scaring birds from the gooseberries, instead of, with six -other little boys, carrying out an enveloping movement on Punnetts -Town, with three-ha’pence to spend on sweets in the captured citadel. -On the occasion of Mus’ Beatup’s next lapse, he stalled the cows and -doctored the mare, and also, with much foresight, took off and hid -his father’s boots, which prevented both his going to bed in them and -his throwing them at his wife. - -It would have been well if this virtuous state could have lasted -till the hay harvest. This was early, for there was a spell of heat -in May, and the fields were soon parched. The air was full of the -smell of ripe hayseed, of the baking glumes of the oats, of the hot, -sickly stew of elderflower and meadowsweet. Along the Four Roads -eddies of dust flew from under the wheels and caked the grass and -fennel-heads beside the way, and in the ruts of the little lanes -the bennet and rest-barrow sprouted, with the thick-stalked sprawly -pignut, and ragged robin. Unfortunately, all this scent and heat -made Harry remember a wood over by Cade Street, where he had once -lain and watched the moon rise rusty beyond Lobden’s House. It was -unfortunate that he had such a memory, for it had more than once -been his undoing. Somewhere under Harry’s skin, mixed with the -sluggish currents of his country blood, was a strain of poetry and -imagination. He cared nothing for books, nothing for beauty, nothing -for music (except, perhaps, when they sang “Diadem” in the Bethel at -dusk), and yet every now and then something would pull him from the -earth he toiled on—a thing he was unaware of three weeks out of the -four, seeing only the sods cleaving together—something would call -him from meadow-hills that swept up their broomy cones to the sky, -an adventure would call from the Four Roads, a longing would call -from the moon ... and off he would go to Stunts Green, to Starnash, -Oxbottom’s Town, or Burnt Kitchen—just as, after a sober week, Mus’ -Beatup would go off to the Rifle Volunteer. - -His promise to Tom had made him resist the cruder temptations of -ratting Sindens or bird’s-nesting Kadwells; but now it seemed to pull -the other way. His brother was the only person he was in any degree -afraid of, and he was safe at Waterheel, no longer his father’s -vicar, waiting with barnyard discipline for the truant’s return. - -So Harry went off to that wood at Cade Street, and spent the night -there, in a hollow tree, watching the big yellow stars shuddering -above the ash-boughs like candles in the wind, and sleeping with his -head in a soft mush of last year’s leaves, that sent him back with -his cheeks all smeary, and his hair caked with leaf-mast. - -That was the day of the haycutting, when Mus’ Beatup and Juglery -and Elphick sweated with bent backs in the field. Worge possessed a -horse-rake, but the cutting had all to be done by hand, and the men’s -backs ached and scorched in the sun, and their sweat dropped on their -scythes. This labour, as was only natural, started in Mus’ Beatup a -fearful thirst, and that night was “one of his bad nights”—one of -the worst, in fact, for he threw the candlestick at his wife as well -as his boots, and would not let her come to bed, so that she had to -sleep with Ivy and Nell. - -Harry felt rather ashamed, and tried hard to atone the next day by -working himself sick. Mrs. Beatup and Ivy helped too, since haymaking -was the one kind of field work which the women did not feel it -derogatory to perform. Ivy was a whacking girl, nearly as good as a -man; but Mus’ Beatup would never have dreamed of asking her to help -fill Tom’s empty place. If town girls thought so little of themselves -as to enrol for farm work, that was no concern of his, but he was -hemmed if he’d have his wife and daughter meddling with anything -beyond the fowl-house, and as for employing other women whose dignity -mattered less to him—and, apparently, to themselves—he’d sooner Worge -went to the auctioneer’s, just to teach the government a lesson. - - -4 - -So Worge muddled through its haymaking, and then the shearing; and -Harry was sometimes idle and sometimes industrious, and Mus’ Beatup -was sometimes drunk and sometimes sober. The oats in the Street Field -and the field at the back of the Rifle Volunteer were slowly parching -to the colour of dust, though thick green shadows rippled in them, -and told how far off still the harvest was. They were spring-sown -potato-oats, chosen by Tom on account of their vigorous constitution, -though otherwise not very well suited to the clays of Sunday Street. -He had manured them at their sowing with rape-cake, nursed their -first sproutings, and now in every letter enquired after their -progress. “Keep an eye on them, dear father, for the Lord’s sake, and -do not let them stand after they’re ripe, or they will shed there -seeds for certain sure, being potatos.” - -Tom had been some weeks now at Waterheel in the Midlands, a private -in the Sussex Regiment, with an elaborate and mystifying address, -which his family found the greatest difficulty in cramming into the -envelope. They did not write to him as often as he wrote to them, in -spite of the fact that they were six to one. But then they were not -far from home, dreaming of the old fields, longing for the old faces. - -On the whole though, Tom was happy enough. He found his new life -strange, but not totally uncongenial. A comfortable want of -imagination made it possible for him to put Worge out of mind, now -that it was also out of sight, and he was among lads of his own age, -old acquaintances some of them—Kadwell of Stilliands Tower, and two -Viners from Satanstown, Bill Putland, Jerry Sumption. There was Mus’ -Archie, too, with a nod and a kind word now and then to intensify -that “feeling of Sussex chaps” which was not quite such an uncommon -one now; and there was Mus’ Dixon, Mus’ Archie’s elder brother, who -had lived in London and written for the papers before the War, and -now used his sword to cut the leaves of books—so his orderly said—yet -was a brave man none the less, and a good officer, though he hated -the life as much as his brother loved it. - -The family at Worge were surprised to find that Tom’s best pal was -Bill Putland. In Sunday Street he had had very little to do with -the Squire’s cheeky chauffeur, and there had always been a gnawing -rivalry between Egypt and Worge. But now that they had joined up -together, and been drafted into the same company, sharing the same -awkwardness and fumblings, a friendship sprang up between them, and -thrived in the atmosphere of their common life. Putland was a much -smarter recruit than Beatup, but this did not cause ill-feeling, -for Bill did much to help Tom, passing on to him the tips he picked -up so much more quickly than his friend, with the result that Tom -got through the mangold-wurzel stage sooner than Mus’ Archie had -expected. Tom on his side was humbly conscious of Bill’s superiority. -“He’s been bred up different from us,” he wrote home to Worge. “You -can see that by the way he talks and everything, and he’s a sharper -chap than me by a long chalk. But he’s unaccountable good-hearted, -and he helps me with my leathers after he’s done his own, for he’s a -sight quicker than me.” - -Tom more often asked for news than he gave it. After all, life -at Waterheel Camp did not consist of much besides drills and -route-marchings, with relaxations at the Y.M.C.A. hut, and occasional -visits to the town. No one at Worge would care to hear the daily -doings of such a life, and still less were they likely to understand -it. He was uneasily conscious of what his father would say about -these things at the Rifle Volunteer. “Took my boy away from his -honest work, and all they do is to keep him forming fours and -traipsing about the country and playing dominoes at the Y.M.C.A. -That’s wot the Governmunt spends our money on,” etc., etc. And Tom -was now soldier enough to resent any criticism of the Army from -outside it. - -In other quarters though, it appeared he was not so reticent. After -a while his family discovered that Thyrza Honey was hearing from him -pretty regularly. Moreover, one day Mrs. Beatup, buying candles, -found Thyrza wearing a regimental button mounted as a brooch, and was -told it was a gift from Tom. - -“He’s sweet on her,” said Ivy, when the news was told. - -“Him—he’s just a bit of a boy,” said his mother. - -“The Army maakes men unaccountable sudden.” - -“Well, anyway, she’s four years older than he is, and wot he can see -in her is more’n I can say.” - -“She’s got a bit o’ money though,” said Mus’ Beatup. “I shan’t put a -spoke in his wheel if he wants to marry her.” - -“Him marry! Wot are you thinking of, Ned? He’s only a bit of a boy, -as I’ve told you. Besides, she aun’t got no looks; she’s just a plain -dump of a woman, and a boy liks a pretty faace.” - -“Mrs. Honey’s middling pretty,” said Ivy, “with colour and teeth and -all.” - -“You’ve got queer notions of pretty. Why, only yesterday Mrs. Sinden -wur saying to me as she can’t think wot Sam Honey ever saw in Thyrza -Shearne. And you can’t git naun out of her, she’s slow as a cow, and -she looks at you lik a cow chewing the cud....” - -Nell broke in— - -“You’re all taking it for granted that Mrs. Honey would have Tom if -she was given the chance. Maybe he’d be quite safe even if he asked -her.” - -“Nonsense, my girl,” cried Mus’ Beatup. “A woman ud taake any man as -wur fool enough to ask her; if a woman’s unwed you may reckon she’s -never been asked.” - -Ivy laughed loudly at this, and Nell turned crimson. - -“Women aren’t going quite so cheap as you think.” - -“Oh, aun’t they!—when it’s bin proved as there’s twice as many of ’em -as there’s men. I tell you, when there’s a glut of turnips, the price -goes down.” - -“There aren’t twice as many women as men. Miss Goldsack was saying -only the other day that——” - -“And I tell you it’s bin proved as there are, and when the War’s -over there’ll be more still, and they’ll be going about weeping and -hollering and praying to the men to taake them.” - -“They won’t. They’ll have something better to do. This War’s teaching -women to work, and——” - -“Work! I wudn’t give a mouldy onion fur women’s work....” - -And so on, and so on. - - -5 - -Thyrza herself was a little surprised to hear so often from Tom, -and the brooch was a piece of daring she had never expected. It is -true that from time to time she sent him presents of chocolate and -cigarettes, but his letters were much more than an acknowledgment -of these. They were not love-letters, but Thyrza knew that they -contained more confidences than those he sent to Worge—she was -familiar with all the common round of his day, from rêveille to -lights-out. He told her about the men he liked and those he didn’t, -about his drills and fatigues, about his food and Cookie’s queer -notions of a stew—Thyrza knew what was an “army biscuit,” a “choky,” -a “gor’ blimey,” and the number of stripes worn respectively by “God -Almighty,” “swank” and “goat.” Scarcely a week passed without one of -those thin yellowish envelopes, with the red triangle in the corner, -slipping under the shop door—addressed in smeary, indelible pencil, -and smelling of woodbines. - -She noticed a growing assurance in his style—partly due, perhaps, to -the friendliness of her replies, partly, no doubt, to the growing -manhood in him. She had always looked on Tom as a kind, slow chap, -with very little to say for himself, and not too much thinking going -on either, but with an unaccountable good heart. Now she realised -that the Army was smartening him up, giving him confidence, enlarging -his ideas. Thyrza was only a countrywoman herself, born within ten -miles of where she lived now, but she did not fail to notice or to -respect this growth in Tom. “He’s gitting new ideas in his head, and -he’s waking up a bit. I shan’t lik him the less for being readier wud -his tongue, surelye.” - -One of the new ideas which got into Tom’s head at Waterheel was -the desirability—indeed, the urgency—of having a “girl.” All the -chaps had girls—Bill Putland wrote to Polly Sinden at Little Worge, -though he had taken very little notice of her while he was at home; -Jerry Sumption wrote half-threatening, half-appealing scrawls to Ivy -Beatup; Kadwell and Viner had sweethearts at the Foul Mile and the -Trulilows—every evening at the Y.M.C.A. a hundred indelible pencils -travelled to and fro from tongue to paper in the service of that -god who campaigns with the god of war, and occasionally snatches -his victories. There was also the need to receive letters—a need -which Tom had never felt before, but now ached in his breast, when -at post-time he saw other men walk away tearing envelopes, while -he stood empty-handed. Thyrza wrote more often and more fully than -his mother, and he would answer quickly, to make her write again. -So closer and closer between them was drawn that link of smudged -envelopes and ruled note-paper, with their formalities of “Your -letter received quite safe,” and “Hoping this finds you well, as it -leaves me at present”—till the chain was forged which should bind -them for ever. - -Thyrza pondered this in her heart. She was used to much indefinite -courtship, most of it just before lamp-time in her own little shop, -with the prelude of a “penn’orth of bull’s-eyes for the children” or -“a packet of Player’s, please.” She had also been definitely courted -once or twice in her short widowhood—by Bourner of the Forge, a -widower with five sturdy children, and Hearsfield of Mystole. She was -a type of girl who, while appealing little to her fellow-women, who -“never cud see naun in Thyrza Honey,” yet had a definite attraction -for men, by reason of that same softness and slowness for which her -own sex despised her. She had no particular wish to marry again, -and at the same time no particular objection. Her first marriage -had not been so happy as to make her anxious to repeat it, but it -had also lacked those elements of degradation which make a woman -shrink from trusting herself a second time to a master. There was too -much business and too much gossip in her life for her to feel her -loneliness as a widow, and yet she sometimes craved for the little -child which had died at birth two years ago—she “cud do wud a child,” -she sometimes said. - -Tom Beatup attracted her strongly. He was much her own type—slow, -ruminative and patient as the beasts he tended—yet she saw him as -a being altogether more helpless than herself, one less able to -think and plan, one whom she could “manage” tenderly. He was not so -practical as she, and more in need of affection, of which he got -less. Thyrza sometimes pictured his round dark head upon her breast, -her arm about him, holding him there in the crook of it, both lover -and child.... - -From the material point of view, the match was not a good one; but -Thyrza was comfortably off, and her miniature trade was brisk. They -were both too unsophisticated to make a barrier of her little stock -of worldly goods—he had his pay, so his independence would not -suffer, and she would have a separation allowance into the bargain. -He was a slow wooer, and the tides of his boldness had never risen -again to the level of that sticky kiss he had given her hand as she -served the bull’s-eyes—but she was sure of him, and, being Thyrza, -“slow as a cow,” had no objection to waiting. - - -6 - -Another woman in Sunday Street was being courted from the Waterheel -Y.M.C.A., but she did not fill her part as comfortably as Thyrza. Not -that Ivy Beatup had much real concern for Jerry Sumption’s passion, -beating against her indifference as a wave beats and breaks against -a rock. Her chief trouble was that Jerry now threw out hints of an -approaching leave, and though she had no objection to his mingling -rage and tenderness on paper, she disliked the thought of having to -confront them mingled in his gipsy face. - -The minister’s son was one of Ivy’s mistakes—she made mistakes -occasionally, as she would herself acknowledge with a good-humoured -grin. But they were never very serious. And, as the saying is, she -knew how to take care of herself. Unfortunately, Jerry had given her -more than ordinary trouble. After some years of standoffishness and -suspicion—for Mrs. Beatup had never liked her children to play with -the gipsy woman’s son—Ivy and Jerry had somehow been thrown together -during his last holiday from Erith, and she had good-naturedly -allowed him to kiss her and take her to Senlac Fair, as she would -have allowed any decent lad on leave. It was unlucky that what had -been to her no more than a bit of fun should be for Jerry the tinder -to set his body and soul alight. Ivy, more buxom than beautiful, -and, with her apple-face and her barley-straw hair, typical of those -gaujos his mother’s people had always distrusted, somehow became his -earth and sky. He loved her, and went after her as the tide after the -moon. - -Ivy tried to detach him by the various means known to her experience. -For a long time she ignored his letters and postcards. Then when -these continued to pour upon her, she sent a cold, careless reply, -which had the contrary effect of making his furnace seven times -hotter; so that her next letter was warmed unconsciously by the flame -of his, and she saw that instead of having shaken him off, she had -gone a step further in his company. - -No doubt the best thing to do was to tell him to his face that she -would not have him. He would not be the first chap she had told -this, but Ivy had an unaccountable shrinking from repeating the -process with Jerry. There was in him a subtle essence, a mystifying -quality—perhaps it was no more than the power of a sharper life and -death—which made him different from the other lads she knew, and -struck terror into her country soul. He was the first man she had -been ever so little afraid of. Ivy had the least imagination of all -the Beatups. That spark which sent Nell to the church, and Harry to -the woods, which made Tom feel more than roots and clay in the earth -on which he trod, and Zacky sometimes almost think himself a British -army corps, even that little spark had never flickered up in Ivy’s -honest heart. Her world was made of things she could taste and see -and hear and smell and handle, and very good things she found them. -She resented the presence in her life of something which responded to -none of these tests. Jerry’s love for her was “queer,” just as Jerry -himself was “queer,” and Ivy did not like “queer” things. - -When the long-dreaded leave came at last, it took her by surprise. -She had not heard from Jerry for a week, and one morning, having run -to the pillar-box at the throws, with some letters for her soldier -friends, on her return she met Mr. Sumption, waving his arms and -cracking his joints and shouting to her even from beyond earshot, -that Jerry was coming home that evening. - -“A letter came this morning. Maybe you’ve got one too?” - -Ivy shook her head, and Mr. Sumption tried to disguise his pleasure -at being the only one to hear. - -“He’s a good boy, Jerry—never forgets his father. But he wants to -see you though, Ivy. Maybe you’d come and have supper with us this -evening?” - -“I’m unaccountable sorry, but I’m going up to Senlac town.” - -“That’s a pity. Perhaps you’ll come another day?” - -“If I’ve time, Mus’ Sumption—but I’m justabout vrothered these days -wud the harvesters here. Thank you kindly though, all the same.” - -She had been sidling away as she spoke, and now walked off with -a brisk “Good mornun.” She was sorry to have to disappoint Mr. -Sumption, whom she liked and pitied; but there was no good letting -him think she had any use for Jerry. - -Before going home she ran down the drive to Little Worge, and told -Polly Sinden she was at all costs and risks to come with her to -Senlac that evening. - -For the rest of the day she was less her cheery, placid self than -usual, and the evening in Senlac town was not the treat it might -have been. All the time she was haunted by a sense of Jerry’s -nearness—perhaps he had come as far as Lewes by now, perhaps he was -already in Sunday Street, perhaps in Senlac itself. What a fool she -had been to tell Mr. Sumption where she was going! Her heart was -troubled—another of those “queer” aspects of the situation which -she so disliked. Generally when she wanted to get rid of a boy, -she did not have feelings like these. All through the soft August -twilight, when she and Polly Sinden, in the clumsy finery of country -girls, strolled arm-in-arm up and down the Upper Lake and the Lower -Lake—those two lakes of blood which an old, old war had made, giving -the town its bloody name—and even afterwards, when having by arts -known to themselves acquired two soldiers, they sat in the picture -palace with a khaki arm round each tumbled muslin waist, even then -the terror lingered, haunting, tearing, elusive as a dead leaf -on the wind. Ivy looked nervously into the shadows of the little -picture-hall, thinking she saw Jerry’s face, angry and swarthy, with -eyes like the Forge at night.... Suppose he had come after her to -Senlac ... he certainly would if he was home in time. Then came a -picture of a girl who was “done in” by her lover. Ivy could stand it -no more, and rising to her feet, plunged out over the people’s knees. - -“That plaace is lik an oven,” she said to the Anzac corporal who -followed her out.... “No, thank you. I’ll go home wud Polly.” - -Polly was a little annoyed that Ivy should have broken up the -party so soon; but it certainly was very hot—both the girls’ faces -were spotted with sweat and their gowns were sticking to their -shoulders. Besides, it would be as well not to get too thick with -this Australian chap now Bill Putland was writing so regularly.... -Miss Sinden and Miss Beatup dismissed their escort, and, after the -proper number of “Good-by-ees,” shouted across longer and longer -darkness-muffled distances, they trudged off homewards on the North -Trade. - -When Ivy reached the farm, she was told that Jerry Sumption had -called about eight o’clock—on his way from the station, without even -going first to leave his kit-bag at the Horselunges—and that Mrs. -Beatup had had an unaccountable to-do to git shut of him. - - -7 - -Having made up her mind that a meeting was inevitable, Ivy made no -more efforts to avoid one. By her absence on his first visit she had -clearly shown Jerry how matters stood, and if he was fool enough to -come again.... - -He was, of course. Ivy, unromantically on her knees at her usual -business of scrubbing the kitchen boards, felt no annoyance at being -so discovered, made no hasty grabs at her rolled-up sleeves, or at -the loosening knob of her hair. She would not have done so for a more -favoured lover, for none of her courtships had been of the kind that -encourages neatness and daintiness in a woman, that leads to curlings -and powderings. She knew that men liked her for her youth and health -and bigness, for her cheeriness and strength, and as all these -things were natural to her she had no need to trouble herself with -fakes. - -“Hullo, Jerry,” she said, without looking up, and sending a swirl of -soapy water round his boots. - -“Hullo, Ivy. Why weren’t you in when I came last night?” - -“Because I’d gone into Senlac wud Polly Sinden, as your father ud -have told you, if you’d done wot you should ought and gone to him -fust.” - -“You’d no call to go into Senlac—not on the first night of my leave.” - -“Your leave doan’t matter to me.” - -“Ivy....” - -He caught her wrist as she was dipping the scrubbing-brush in the -bucket, and she was forced to meet his eyes at last. She had tried to -avoid this, staring at her soapsuds, for Jerry’s eyes were “queer.” -“Leave hold of me, Jerry.” - -“Not till you stand up and look at me. I can’t speak to you on all -fours like this.” - -Ivy stood up, rather wondering at Jerry’s power to make her do so. -He was a small fellow, but not of the stubby built of Tom or Harry -Beatup. On the contrary, he was lightly made as a dancing-master, -his hands and feet were small but very strong, his face was small -and brown, lit by two large sloe-black eyes, with lashes long and -curly as a child’s. His hair was curly too, in spite of its military -cropping. He was a most slovenly-looking soldier, with tunic stained -and buttons dim, and puttees looping grotesquely round his slim, -graceful legs. - -“If the M.P.’s git hold of you ...” began Ivy jeeringly. - -“There ain’t any M.P.’s hereabouts. I’m on my leave, and you’re -starting to spoil it already.” - -“Wot have I got to do wud your leave? You’re maaking some sort gurt -big mistaake, Jerry Sumption.” - -“Maybe you’ve forgotten that day at Senlac Fair?” - -“And if I have, wot matter? It meant naun. You aun’t the fust lad -that’s kissed me, nor the last, nuther.” - -It hurt her to have to speak so plainly, but Jerry Sumption must be -put right at once on one or two important matters he seemed to have -misunderstood. She saw his face go pale under its sunburn and she -felt sorry for him. None the less, she stuck to her harshness. - -“I likked you well enough, and I lik you still; but if you think as I -meant more’n I did or said, you’re unaccountable mistaaken.” - -“Ivy—come out of doors with me. I can’t speak to you in here. When my -heart’s full I want the wind blowing round me.” - -She shook her head. “No, Jerry; we’ll stay where we are, surelye. -You’re hedge-born, but I’m house-born, and I lik four walls around -me when I’m vrothered. Now, lad, doan’t that show you as we two cud -never mate?” - -“So, I’m vrothering you, am I?” - -“Unaccountable.” - -“Reckon I didn’t vrother you when I clipped you in the lane by the -stack of Slivericks.” - -“Doan’t ’ee....” - -His strange power over her was coming back. Looking into his eyes she -seemed to see strange secrets of woods, memories of roads and stars, -and a light that was like the light of a burning wood, such as she -had once seen, licking up from the west, burning the little farm and -the barns. She was frightened of Jerry, just as she was frightened -of Dallington churchyard at night, or that field-corner by Padgham, -where strange lights are sometimes seen. Yet it was a fear which -instead of making her run, made her stumble and droop towards him, -seeking refuge from terror in its source.... - -He pushed her away. - -“Reckon you’ll be kissing another lad to-night.” - -She felt flustered and miserable. - -“You’re a lamentable trial to me, Jerry.” - -“Why? ’Cos I’ve kissed you? It’s nothing. I’ll be kissing another -girl to-night.” - -“You’re a valiant feller.” - -“Ain’t I? You think the world of me, Ivy Beatup.” - -“Do I? That’s news. Now doan’t start it all over again. I hear mother -coming.” - -Mrs. Beatup’s step creaked outside, and Jerry scowled at the door. -The next moment he was astride the window-sill, a queer furtive look -in his eyes. - -“You aun’t going out lik that, surelye! I’m ashamed of you. Stay and -spik to mother like a Christian.” - -But he had swung his leg over, and slid into the yard. She heard him -run off, with padding footsteps like a beast. - - -8 - -The next day was Sunday. A thick yellow haze swam over the fields, -and there was a faint autumnal scent in the hedges, mixed of leaves -and earth. The grain-fields still smelt of summer, with the baking -glumes and the white, cracked ground. Only a few had been cut—the -winter sowings at Egypt and Bucksteep; the Volunteer Field and the -Street Field at Worge still carried their crops, chaffy and nutty, -preyed on by conies. They should have been cut last week, but Mus’ -Beatup had not been himself on Friday and Saturday, and Juglery had a -bad leg, and Harry had gone to Hailsham Fair. - -Towards eleven o’clock church and chapel goers began to dribble down -the lane to Brownbread Street, while a few strayed into the Bethel, -which looked a little less gaunt with its door open to the sunshine -and old Grandfather Hubble sitting in it with the collecting-plate -on his knees. The congregation was small, but bigger than the -Particular Baptist sect in Sunday Street. There were actually only -two received members—old Hubble and his daughter-in-law; the rest -were either members of other denominations who had quarrelled with -their respective chapels, or else felt disinclined for the trudge -into Brownbread Street. Bourner came because the minister had once -been a blacksmith, and the farmer of Puddledock came because he had -once cured a stallion of his that had lockjaw. - -Jerry Sumption came because he hoped Ivy Beatup would be there. It -was a vain hope, for on fine Sundays the family at Worge always went -to church—except, of course, Mus’ Beatup, whose scientific readings -had taught him the folly of all churches, and Mrs. Beatup, who stayed -at home to cook the dinner. However, Mr. Sumption had encouraged, if -indeed he had not inspired, the illusion which landed Jerry in one -of the big back pews of the Bethel, a pew like a dusty box, smelling -of wood-rot. He knew that if he had been more candid Jerry would -have padded off over the fields to Brownbread Street and drunk in -pernicious heresies of Infant Baptism and Universal Redemption, while -he stared at his sweetheart’s profile ruddy in the sunshine which -glowed on her through some painted saint. So he concealed the fact -that the Beatups were “Church,” weather permitting, and allowed Jerry -to think he would have Ivy to grin and blink at during the sermon, as -on his last visit, when the rain was tinkling in the chapel gutters. - -Finding himself sold, Jerry was inclined to sulk. Luckily he did -not suspect his father, or he would have got up and walked out. The -service was nearly half finished before he gave up hope; that is to -say, the sermon had begun, and the congregation had subsided into its -various compartments, so that anyone coming in would have seen no one -but Mr. Sumption, like a big crow in his Sunday blacks, shouting from -the pulpit at two rows of coffin-like pews. Jerry opened the door -of his, so that he could look out of the chapel door, which stood -open, and see the dull blue sky above the fields of Puddledock, and -in the foreground the neglected churchyard of the Bethel, with the -tombstones leaning this way and that. - -A heavy sickness of heart fell on him, sitting there in the -rot-smelling pew, with his arms folded over his chest and his -shoulders shrugged to his ears. He felt caught in his love for Ivy -Beatup like an animal in a trap, frantic, struggling, wounding -himself with his struggles. If she did not want him, why wouldn’t she -let him go?... Lord! he would never forget her that day at Senlac -Fair, with her cheeks red as the pimpernel and her eyes like the big -twilight stars, and her hair blowing about them as they kissed.... -If she had not meant it, why had she done it? If she had not wanted -his heart, why had she taken it and bruised it so? He did not please -her. Why? He had pleased other girls; and now he was in uniform ... -that ought to please her. He remembered how she had made him jealous -when she spoke of her soldier friends. Well, now he was a soldier -too—leading a damned life partly for her sake ... that ought to -please her. - -In the Bethel yard rank weeds were growing, clumping round the -tombstones, thickening the grass with their fat stalks and wide -milk-bleeding leaves. They were hot in the sun, and the smell of them -crept into the Bethel and found its place in the miasma of wood-rot -and Sunday clothes and plaster and stale lamp-oil ... the smell of -pignut stewing in the sun, of the burdock and the thick fog-weed, -the plantain, the nettle, the dandelion. The chapel weeds seemed to -give Jerry an answer to his question. He did not please Ivy because -he was the gipsy-woman’s son, no less a weed because he grew in a -chapel yard. The hedge-born could not please the house-born, as she -had said—though for that matter he had been born in a bed like any -Christian, in that little room above the Forge at Bethersden, which -he could dimly remember, with its view down three cross-roads. - -He clenched his small hard fists, and stared scowling out towards the -sun-swamped fields of the horizon. He would punish Ivy Beatup for her -cruelty, for having trodden on the chapel weed. He would make her -suffer—if he could, for she was tough and lusty as an oak. He found -himself hating her for her sturdy cheerfulness—for the shape of her -face, with the hard, round cheeks and pointed chin—for her lips which -were warm when her heart was cold.... - -A loud thump on the pulpit woke him out of his thoughts. His father -had noticed his abstraction for some time, and chose this way of -rousing him. From his vantage he could see into all the separate -cells of his congregation, and if he noticed anyone nodding or -mooning or reading his Bible for solace, he made haste to recall him -to a proper sense of his surroundings. He now stopped in the middle -of an eschatological trump and glared at Jerry with his bright, -tragic eyes. He had a habit of drastic personal dealings with his -flock, to which, perhaps, its small size was due. Certainly Ades of -Cowlease had never entered the Bethel door since Mr. Sumption had -“thumped” at him, and one or two others had been driven away in a -like manner. To-day everyone, even those whose heads did not pop -out of their pews like Jim-Crows, guessed that the minister had -“thumped” at Jerry, for the minister’s Jerry seldom came through a -service without being thumped at—luckily he did not much mind it. -“W’oa—old ’un,” he mumbled to himself, as he met his father’s stare, -and soon luckily came the hymn: “They shall gather by the river,” -which Jerry sang most tunefully, in a loud, sweet, not quite human -voice, forgetting all those sad thoughts of the chapel weed.... - -But he remembered them when he was walking across to the Horselunges -with his father. - -“Father, if I can’t get Ivy Beatup, I’ll kill myself.” - -“For shame, you ungodly boy—to speak so light of losing your -salvation!” - -“Would I lose my salvation if I killed myself?” - -“Reckon you would. Satan would get you at once.” - -“I’ll kill her, then. Satan can have her and welcome.” - -“It’s you he’d have if you killed her.” - -“Then he’s got me both ways?” - -“Reckon he has, you sinful good-for-nothing, dreaming in sermon-time. -Have done, do, with your idle talk, or Satan will get me too, and -make me give you a kick behind.” - - -9 - -Jerry’s leave was not a happy or a peaceful one—no more for his -father and Ivy Beatup than for himself. Every day he was over at -Worge—Ivy had never met anyone so undetachable. She hated herself, -too, for some temporary capitulations. Jerry had a way of making her -faint-hearted, so that she would be betrayed into a kiss, or even a -visit to the Pictures, with an entwined walk home under the stars. -She wished that some other boy—some young Pix or Viner or Kadwell—was -home on leave, then she might have escaped to him from Jerry. Not -that she really doubted herself—she had made up her mind that she did -not want him and that she would not have him; this still held good, -and her momentary lapses deceived neither her nor him. He no longer -wooed her ardently—contrariwise, he was stiff and sulky, sullen and -rough when he kissed her. He knew that there was no chance for him, -that his only prey could be the present moment, which he snatched and -despised. - -Mr. Sumption, after one or two abortive attempts at persuading Ivy -to take his boy, tried to detach Jerry from the vain quest which was -spoiling these precious days. - -“There’s many another girl that would have you, Jerry—and a better -match, too, for a clergyman’s son.” - -“I know there is—and I’ve had ’em—and thrown ’em away again. She’s -the only one I’ve ever wanted for keeps.” - -When he heard this, Mr. Sumption felt as if his heart would break. - -At last came the end of Jerry’s leave. It was starless dusk, with -clouds swagging on the thundery wind. Pools and spills of white light -came from the west, making the fields look ghostly in the dripping -swale. At Worge a scent of withering corn-stalks came from the fields -where the crops had been cut at last, and as Jerry stood in the -doorway the first dead leaves of the year fell on his shoulders. - -“Come out with me, Ivy. It’s for the last time, and I hate your -kitchen with the ceiling on my head, and your mother spannelling -round.” - -Ivy was in a good humour. The joy of freedom was already upon her—she -felt confident, and knew that there would be no lapses this evening. -So she put a shawl over her head and went out with him. They passed -through the yard and the orchard into the grass-fields by Forges Wood. - -The field was tangled and soggy, full of coarse, sour grass. In -the dip of it, by the wood’s edge, toadstools spread dim tents, or -squashed invisibly underfoot, as the twilight drank up all colours -save white and grey. - -“I’ve trod on a filthy toadstool, and my foot’s all over scum,” said -Ivy, rubbing her shoe in the grass. “Let’s git through the hëadge, -Jerry, into the dry stubble.” - -“This is a better place to say good-bye.” - -“We’ll say good-bye in the house. Now, none of your nonsense, Jerry -Sumption”—as he put his arm round her waist. - -“But it’s my last evening.” - -“Well, I’ve come for a walk. Wot more d’you want? I’m naun for -cuddling, if that’s wot you’re after. I’ll give you a kiss, full -and fair, when we say good-bye in the house, but there’s to be no -lovering under hëadges.” - -“You’ve been unkind all along. You’ve spoilt my leave.” - -“That’s your own fault, surelye. I’ve bin straight wud you.” - -He laughed bitterly. Then his laugh broke into a gipsy whine. - -“Ivy, are you sure—quite sure you’ll never love me?” - -“Quite sure—as I’ve told you a dunnamany times.” - -“But I don’t mean now ... some day ... Ivy?” - -In the dusk his face showed white as the toadstools at her feet, but -she stood firm, for his sake as well as her own. - -“It’s no use talking about ‘some day’—I tell you it’s never.” - -“Never!—and you’ve let me hold you and kiss you....” - -“Only now and then—saum as I’d let any nice lad.” - -His eyes blazed. - -“You little bitch!” - -“Mind your words, my boy—and leave hoald of my arm, and come into the -next field, or I’ll git hoame.” - -But he did not move, and his grip on her arm tightened. - -“I want you. I reckon you don’t know what that means when I say I -want you, or you wouldn’t be so damn cruel. Ivy, I can’t leave you -like this. I can’t go back to camp knowing I’m just nothing to you. -You must give me some sort of hope. It’s not fair to have led me on——” - -“I never led you on——” - -Her limbs were shaking. An unaccountable terror had seized her—a -terror of him, with his hot, gripping hand and blazing eyes, of the -field so dim and sour, its grass scummy with the spilth of trampled -toadstools, of the wood close by with its spindled ashes and clumping -oaks.... - -“Let me go!” she cried suddenly, in a weak frightened voice. - -For answer he pulled her into his arms, and held her with her breast -bruised against his. - -“I shan’t let you go—I’ll never let you go. Come into the wood, Ivy. -Don’t be afraid ... I love you.... Come into the wood—there’s nothing -to be afraid of. I wouldn’t hurt you for worlds.” - -He tried to pick her up and carry her, but she struggled desperately -and broke free. - -“This has justabout finished it all, Jerry Sumption. You’re a -beast—I’ll never let you come nigh me agaun. You’ve a-done for -yourself. I’ve bin good to you and straight wud you, and I’d have -gone on being friends; but now I’ve a-done wud you for good.” - -Her voice broke with rage, and she turned to run home. But he grabbed -her again, and this time she could not escape. He was a small man, -and she was a big whacking girl; but madness was in him, and his arms -were like iron clamps. - -“You shan’t get shut of me like that. I tell you I mean to have you -... and wot’s more I’ll make you have me. I’ll break your pride—I’ll -make you want to have me, ask me to take you.” - -Ivy screamed. - -“Scream away. No one ull hear. I’ve got you, and I’m damned if I let -you go till I please.... To-morrow you’ll be on your knees, begging -me to take you and save you.” - -He clapped his hand over her mouth, and forced back her head, kissing -her strained and aching neck till she screamed with pain as well as -with fright. Her cries were stilled under his palm, her head swam, -her strength was leaving her ... she was down on one knee ... then -suddenly, she could never remember how, she was free, and running, -running as she had never run before, her breath sobbing in her -throat—across the field of the toadstools and sour grass, away from -the shadow of Forges Wood, in the orchard, to see the gable of Worge -rising against the pewter—grey of the clouds that hid the moon. - -At the orchard edge she had the sense to stop and tidy herself. -There was no longer any fear of pursuit—if indeed she had ever been -pursued. She had dropped her shawl in the field, her blouse was torn -open at the neck, her hair was down on her shoulders, and her face -all blotched with excitement and tears. Also, a new experience, she -was trembling from head to foot, and her shaking hands could scarcely -fasten her blouse and twist up her hair. - -“You beast!” she sobbed, as she fumbled; “you beast! You dirty gipsy!” - -Then an unaccountable longing seized her for her mother—she longed -to throw her arms round her mother’s neck and cry upon her shoulder. -With a little plaintive moan she started off again for the house, but -by the time she reached the doorstep the craving had passed. - - -10 - -For half an hour after Ivy left him, Jerry lay on his face in -Forges Wood, motionless save every now and then for a quiver of his -shoulders. Over him the boughs of the ash-trees cracked and sighed, -under him the trodden leaves rustled creepingly. He felt them cold -and moist against his cheek, with the clammy mould of nettles, weeds -that were trampled and dead. His heart in him was dead—cold, heavy -and sodden as a piece of rain-soaked earth. The fire in him was -out—it had driven him mad and died. By his short madness, scarcely -five minutes long, he had lost Ivy for ever. She was gone as the -summer was gone from the woods, but, unlike the summer, she would -never come back. A sour, eternal autumn lay before him, sour as the -grass and toadstools of Forges Field, eternal as the blind, creeping -force from which toadstools are spawned into fields and poor men’s -hearts. - -At last he rose to his feet, and stumbled off, plunging into the -thickets of Forges Wood, through the ash-plats and the oak-scrub. -Scarcely realising what he was doing, he forced his way out of the -wood, through its hedge of brambled wattles, into the lane. The -pewterish sky hung low over the hedges, and in its dull glimmer he -could see the road under his feet. He soon clambered out of the lane, -pushing through the hedge into the fields of Padgham. To eastward -lay the thick, black woods of Furnacefield, and the cry of an owl -came out of them, plaintively. - -Jerry wandered in the fields till dawn, his heart cold and heavy as -a clod, though now and then little crawls of misery went into it, -like a live thing creeping into the earth. He had lost Ivy for ever -... his own madness—which was gone—had taken her from him ... she was -gone, as the summer was gone from the woods.... - -He came nearly as far south as Hazard’s Green, but mostly roamed in -his own tracks, prowling the barns of Burntkitchen. Then, when a -thin, greenish light shone like mould on the pewtered sky, a sudden -childish craving came to him, the same that had come to Ivy in the -orchard. As she had wanted her mother in her fright and misery, so he -wanted his father, and ran home. - - -11 - -A light was burning at the Horselunges, but the cold lamp of dawn -shone on Jerry as he stood fumbling in the doorway, then, finding the -door unlocked, crept in. A footstep creaked in his father’s room, and -the next minute the door was flung open and the minister stood at the -top of the stairs, blocked against the light, looming, monstrous, -like a huge black Satan. - -“Where’ve you been?” - -“In the woods.” - -Jerry’s teeth were chattering as his father took him by the arm and -pulled him into the room. A fire was burning on the hearth, with the -old, old cat purring squeakily before it, while the broken-winged -thrush, which Mr. Sumption had forgotten to cover up for the night, -hopped to and fro, twittering its best effort at a song. - -“Oh, may the Lord forgive you, you scamp,” groaned the minister, as -Jerry fell crumpled on the sofa. His boots and uniform were caked -with leaf-mould and clay, his hair was full of leaves and mud and his -face was streaked with dirty wet. - -“Are you hungry?” - -“No.” - -There was a pot of something on the fire, but it was just as well -that Jerry was not hungry, for it had been burnt to a cinder long ago. - -“I’ve been sitting up for you all night,” said Mr. Sumption. “When -you didn’t come in, I went over to Worge, and Ivy said you’d been out -with her, but had gone off by yourself, she didn’t know where. She’s -a kind girl, and told me not to worry.” - -“Father—I’ve lost her for ever.” - -It was the first time he had said the words aloud, and their -wretchedness swept over him, breaking his spirit, so that he began to -cry. - -“I’ve lost her ... I was mad ... and she’s gone.” - -Mr. Sumption stood staring at the small, slight figure on the sofa, -lying with its dirty face turned away, its back showing him the split -tunic of a soldier of the King. His bowels yearned towards the son of -the woman from Ihornden, and his rage switched violently from Jerry -to the cause of his grief. - -“Drat the girl! Drat the slut! What is she after, despising her -betters? She’s led you on—she’s played with you. Don’t trouble about -her, Jerry, my boy. She isn’t worth it.” - -“I love her,” gasped Jerry—“and I’ve lost her. It’s my own fault. I -went mad. I frightened her.... Father, I’m a beast—I reckon Satan’s -got me.” - -Mr. Sumption patted his shoulder. - -“I reckon Satan’s got me,” moaned the boy—“or why did I go wild like -that?” - -“Satan can’t hurt the elect.” - -“What’s that to me? I reckon I’m none of your elect. I’m just a poor -boy who’s done for himself.” - -Mr. Sumption dropped on his knees beside him, and began to pray. - -“O Lord, Thou hast given me a sore trial in this son of mine, and now -terrible doubts are in my soul as to whether he is one of the elect -for whom Jesus died. O Lord, he’s my flesh and bone, and the flesh -and bone of my dear wife who’s dead, and yet it looks as if Satan had -got him. O Lord, save my son from the lion and my darling from the -power of the dog, from the dreadful day that shall burn like an oven, -and the furnace of pitch and tow....” - -“Father, have done, do—you give me the creeps.” - -“I’m praying for your soul, ungrateful child.” - -“Let my soul be—I’m tired to death.” - -Indeed a grey shade of utter weariness had crept into his skin, so -that his face looked ghastly in the morning twilight fighting round -the lamp. Mr. Sumption, who had stood up, knelt down again, and took -off Jerry’s boots. - -“Have a sleep then, my laddie—there on the sofy. It’s scarce worth -going to bed. Besides, you’d have to clean yourself first.” - -“You won’t leave me, father—you’ll stay along of me?” - -“I’ll stay along of you and pray quiet.” - -Jerry gave a grunt, and drew up his knees to his chin, like some -animal rolling itself for sleep. Mr. Sumption knelt beside him and -continued his prayer: - -“O Lord, Thou hast a son, and doesn’t Thou know what I feel about -this wretched boy of mine? Lord, give me a token that he is not -predestined to everlasting death; save him from the snares of hell, -in which he seems tangled like a bird in the snare of the fowler....” - -“Oh, father, do pray cheerful,” groaned Jerry. - -But praying cheerful was quite beyond the poor father’s powers, never -remarkable in this direction at the best of times. All he could do -was to sing, “Let Christian faith and hope dispel the fears of guilt -and woe,” till Jerry had fallen asleep. - - -12 - -Three hours later he woke, to find Mrs. Hubble’s big wooden wash-tub -in front of the fire. - -“Up you get,” said the Reverend Mr. Sumption, “and into that bath, -and I’ll take your clothes down to be cleaned and mended before you -go to the station.” - -“I’m not going to the station.” - -“You’re going there two hours from now, or you won’t be in Waterheel -to-night.” - -“I don’t want to be in Waterheel ever again.” - -But Mr. Sumption was not having any nonsense. A large hairy paw like -a gorilla’s shot out and swung Jerry by the collar on to the floor. -“Now strip, you ungodly good-for-nothing, and I’ll send you out -looking like a clergyman’s son.” - -Jerry, groaning and moaning to himself, got into the bath, while -Mr. Sumption took his dirty bundle of clothes down to Mrs. Hubble’s -kitchen, where a long and noisy argument followed on her abilities to -make bricks without straw, as she called his request to make his son -look decent. He returned to the study to find Jerry less stiff in the -joints, but growing every minute more defiant and miserable as the -steaming water cleared the fogs of sleep from his brain. - -“I’m not going back to camp. I’d die if I was to go there—with Ivy -lost. It was bad enough when I had her to think of and all——But now -... I’d justabout break my heart.” - -“Maybe after a time you can write to her again——” - -“I can’t, I tell you. You don’t understand. I’ve lost her for ever. I -frightened her—I made her scream.” - -“You’re a beast,” said his father. - -“Reckon I am, and reckon you’re treating me like one.” - -“If you stay behind, they’ll nab you for an absentee.” - -“I don’t care if they do. I’d sooner be locked up, than a soldier any -more.” - -“For shame, boy!” - -“Well, how’d you like to be a soldier?—sworn at all day by bloody -sergeants, and always fatigue and C.B. I’m fed up, I tell you, and -I’m not going back.” - -“You’ll go back, if I have to pull you all the way by the ears.” - -“You’re the cruellest father I ever heard of.” - -Mr. Sumption lost his temper, and cuffed Jerry’s head as he sat in -the tub. Luckily the boy’s defiance had been only the false flare of -damp spirits, and instead of receiving the blow with an explosion -of anger, he was merely cowed by it. Whereat Mr. Sumption’s heart -melted, and he saw the piteousness of this poor little soldier, whose -heart was black with some evil beyond his help. - -The rest of the time passed amicably, till Mrs. Hubble, with many -contemptuous sniffs, brought up Jerry’s uniform brushed and mended, -and after he was dressed he did not look so bad, especially as the -bath had had the humiliating result of making his skin look several -shades lighter. - -Breakfast followed, and afterwards he and his father set out for -Senlac Station, taking the longer North Road by Woods Corner and -Darwell Hole, instead of that shorter, more dangerous, way past the -gate of Worge. It was a morning of clear, golden distances, with -pillars and towers and arches of cloud moving solemnly before the -wind across a borage-blue sky. Drops of dew fell from the trees -on the backs of the two men, and the air was full of the smell of -earth and wet leaves, and that faint mocking smell of spring which -sometimes comes in autumn. - -As they tramped along the North Road, away from the Obelisk by -Lobden’s House, which allows a Dallington man to see his village for -miles after he has left it, Mr. Sumption spoke very patiently and -kindly to his son. - -“Keep good and straight,” he said, “for you’re a good woman’s son, -and some day you’ll find a woman whom you’ll love as I loved your -mother. May she be to you all that your mother was to me, and may you -keep her longer. But don’t go running after strange women, or think -to forget love in wantonness. One day, if you trust the Lord, you’ll -meet a girl that has been worth keeping good for, that you’ll find -lovelier than Ivy Beatup, and ull think herself honoured to marry a -clergyman’s son.” - -“Clergyman’s son ...” murmured Jerry, in tones that made Mr. Sumption -swoop round on him with uplifted hand, to see a look on his face that -made him thrust it back into his pocket. - -His eyes were still full of his mysterious trouble, but he did not -speak of it so much. He just plodded on beside his father like a calf -to slaughter, and at last they came to Senlac Town, with the houses -like barley-stacks in the sunshine. They were early, and had half an -hour to wait at the station. A train had just come in, and as they -crossed the bridge they suddenly met Tom Beatup. - -“Tom!” cried the minister, cracking his joints with delight. “Who’d -have thought to meet you! I’d no idea you were coming home.” - -“Nor had I till yesterday—seven days’ leave before I go to France. I -sent off a telegram, but I reckon it was too late for them to get it -last night. Hullo, Jerry! Enjoyed yourself?” - -“Unaccountable,” said Jerry with a leer. - -“Wait for me, Tom,” said Mr. Sumption, “and we’ll walk home together. -I shan’t be more than twenty minutes or so.” - -“I’m justabout sorry, but I must git off this wunst. Reckon I’ll see -you again soon.” - -“Come round to the Horselunges one evening.” - -“I will, surelye”—and Tom was off, whistling “Sussex by the Sea.” - -It seemed to Mr. Sumption that he looked a bigger, older man than the -Tom Beatup of five months ago. He seemed to have grown and filled -out, he had lost his yokel shuffle, and his uniform was smart and -neat. The minister glanced down at Jerry, who stood beside him, -small, untidy, cowed and furtive. Jerry undoubtedly did not look his -best in uniform—it seemed to exaggerate the worst of those gipsy -characteristics which he had inherited from the Rossarmescroes -or Hearns. Now, in civvies he used not to look so bad—he was a -well-made, graceful little chap.... - -“Jerry,” said Mr. Sumption, “why can’t you look like Tom Beatup?” - -“I reckon it’s because I’m Jerry Sumption—the clergyman’s son.” - -And again there was that look on his face which prevented retaliation. - - -13 - -In the old days it used to take Tom a good couple of hours to walk -from Senlac to Sunday Street—but then, he had generally been behind -a drove of lazy tups or heifers, or silly scattering sheep. To-day -he swung smartly along, scarcely feeling the weight of his kit-bag, -whistling as he walked. It was good to feel the soft thick fanning -of the Sussex air, so different from the keen Derbyshire wind, with -its smell of bilberries and slaty earth; to see the old places along -the North Trade—Whitelands, Park Gate, Burntkitchen, and then, when -he came to the throws, that wide sudden view of the country bounded -by the Four Roads, swamped in hazy sunshine, with the trickle of -lanes and the twist of the rough, blotched hedges, and the pale -patches of the stubble, and the low clouds sailing over it from -Cross-in-Hand. He walked through Brownbread Street, empty save for -the waggon-team that drowsed outside the George, silent save for the -hum of children’s voices in the school. Then he came to Pont’s Green, -where the lane to Sunday Street meets the East Road. The hops were -being picked in the low sheltered fields by Slivericks Wood, and the -smoke of the drying furnace streamed out of the cowl of the oasthouse -at the throws, while all the air seemed heavy with the sweet, sleepy -scent of stripping bines. - -He had meant, traitorously, to call at the shop before he went home; -but just as he came to the willow-pond, a small dusty figure ran out -of the hedge, and seized him round the waist. - -“Hullo, Tom!” - -“Hullo, Zacky! Wot are you doing here?” - -“I haven’t bin to school—I couldn’t go when I heard you wur coming. -Mother got your telegram this mornun, and she wur sure it wur to say -as you wur killed.” - -“Was she pleased when she found it wasn’t?” - -“Unaccountable. But she’d nigh cried her eyes out first, and told Ivy -and Nell as something tarr’ble had happened to you, afore they found -as she’d never opened the telegram.” - -“I’ll write a letter next time,” said Tom; “but I never knew for -sure till yesterday that I’d be gitting leave so soon.” - -He did not scold Zacky for having stayed away from school. It was a -relief not to have to exercise quasi-paternal authority any more, but -just to take the truant’s hand and walk with him to Worge Gate—where -Mus’ Beatup was standing with his gun, having seen Tom in the -distance from Podder’s Field, where the conies are, while Mrs. Beatup -was running down the drive from the house, her apron blowing before -her like a sail. - -“Here you are, my boy,” said Mus’ Beatup sententiously, clapping him -on the shoulder. “Come to see how we’re gitting on now you’ve left -us. The oald farm’s standing yit—the oald farm’s standing yit.” - -“And looks valiant,” said Tom, grinning, and kissing his mother. - -“Not so valiant as it ud look if there wurn’t no war on.” - -“Maybe—that cud be said of most of us.” - -“Not of you, Tom,” said Mrs. Beatup. “I never saw you look praaperer -than to-day.” - -“Oh, I’m in splendid heart—eat till I’m fit to bust.” - -“You wear your cap like Bill Putland,” said Zacky. “It maakes you -look different-like.” - -Tom’s cap indeed had a rakish tilt over one ear, though he did not -profess to imitate Bill Putland’s jauntiness. - -“Maybe old Bill ull git a bit of leave in a week or two. I see Jerry -Sumption’s gone back to-day. I met him and minister at the station.” - -Mrs. Beatup gave a snort. - -“And unaccountable glad I am to see the last of Gipsy Jerry; he’s -justabout plagued Ivy to death all the time he’s bin here. She says -she’s shut of him, and I hope to goodness she means it.” - -“Jerry shud never have gone fur a soldier,” said Tom. “He’s got no -praaper ideas of things, and is fur ever gitting in trouble. Come, -mother, let’s be walking up to the house and put my bag in the -bedroom.” - -“Wot’s in your bag?” asked Zacky. - -“Soap, razor, slacks, and one or two liddle bits of things,” said -Tom, grinning down at him in proud consciousness of two pounds of -Derby rock—to such magnificence had his sweetmeat buying risen from -his old penn-’orths of bull’s-eyes. - -They walked up to the house, and greetings came with Ivy hanging -out the clothes, and Harry toiling over the corn accounts in -shame-faced arrears. Then his bag was unpacked, and presents given to -everybody—sweetstuff to Zacky and Harry, a good knife to his father, -and to his mother a wonderful handkerchief case with the arms of the -Royal Sussex worked in lurid silks; there was a needlebook of the -same sort for Nell, when she should come home from school; and for -Ivy there was a mother-o’-pearl brooch, and, which she liked even -better, messages from a dozen Sussex chaps at Waterheel. - -Then as the family went back to its business, Tom, who for the first -time in his life had none, slipped out of the house, and jogged -quietly down the drive towards the village. There would be just time -before dinner to call at the shop. - -The blind was down, for the sunshine was streaming in at the little -leaded window, threatening the perils of dissolution to the sugar -mice (made before the sugar scarcity, indeed, it must be confessed, -before the War) and of fermentation to the tinned crab. Tom’s hand -may have shaken a little as he pulled down the latch, but except for -that his manner was stout, very different from his sheepish entrances -of months ago. - -Buzz ... ting ... Thyrza looked up from the packing-case she was -breaking open behind the counter. The next moment she gave a little -cry. She had just been thinking of Tom at Waterheel, wondering if -it was his dinner-time yet, and what Cookie had put in the stew; and -then she had lifted her eyes to see his broad, sunburnt face smiling -at her from the door, with his hair curling under his khaki cap, and -his sturdy figure looking at once stronger and slimmer in its uniform. - -“Tom!” she gasped, and held out her hand across the counter—hoping.... - -But he had gone beyond the timid daring of those days. Before she -knew what was happening, he had marched boldly round behind the -counter and taken her in his arms. - - -14 - -Tom’s family gave a poor reception to his news that this was “last -leave” before going to France. - -“I knew as that there telegram meant something tar’ble,” wailed Mrs. -Beatup. “It wurn’t fur naun I cried, Nell, though you did despise me.” - -“I didn’t despise you,” said Nell; “you’re very unjust, mother.” - -“Unjust, am I?—wud my boy going out to be slaughtered like a pig.” - -“I aun’t going to be slaughtered, mother—not if I know it. It’s I -who’ll do the slaughtering.” - -“You who’d go swummy at wringing a cockerel’s neck.... Reckon a -German ull taake some killing—want more’n a twist and a pull.” - -“He’ll want no more’n I’ve got to give him. Now, doan’t you taake on -so, mother—there’s naun to vrother about. Maybe I woan’t be off so -soon after all—it’s only an idea that’s going round. And if I do go, -I aun’t afeard. I’ve a feeling as no harm ull come to me.” - -“And I’ve a feeling as it will. Howsumdever ... I mun think as I’ve -got four children left ... and a hoame ... and a husband”—remembering -her blessings one by one. - -Mus’ Beatup was inclined to be contemptuous. - -“Wot fur are they sending you out now? You’ve bin training scarce -five month.” - -“Many of the boys git less.” - -“Maybe they do, wud Governmunt being wot it is. As if anyone wud know -cudn’t see as it taakes ten year to maake a looker.” - -“Reckon things have to go quicker in the Army than on a farm. If we -all took ten years to git ready, the Bosches ud have us middling -soon.” - -“They’d taake ten years, too, and it ud all go much better.” - -“At that raate we’d never have done, surelye.” - -“And wot maakes you think as we’ll ever have done, as things are?... -Go forrard five mile in a year, and it’ll be two hundred years afore -we git to the Kayser’s royal palace. You see ’em all fighting around -a farm as it wur the Tower of Lunnon—their objective, they call it. -If Worge wur an objective it ud taake the Germans fifteen month to -git into it, and we’d taake another fifteen month to git ’em out; and -then they’d git in agaun, and it ud go on lik that till the plaace -wur in shards. I tell you this aun’t a hurrying sort of war, and ull -be won by them wot lives longest.” - -Tom was impressed. “Seemingly you know more about it than I do.” - -“I read the paapers, and reckon I do a bit of thinking as well.” - -“Reckon you do. Howsumdever, it’s my plaace to fight and not to -think—I leave that to men lik you.” - -In spite of his respect for Mus’ Beatup as a military tactician, he -was a bit disgusted with him as a farmer. A searching of the farm -accounts and an examination of the shame-faced Harry revealed a -state of affairs even more depressing than he had looked for. The -harvest had been mismanaged, the oats having been allowed to stand -too long, and a quantity of seed had been lost. The blight had got -into the hops owing to insufficient spraying, and two sheep had -died of bronchitis. Tom was at first inclined to be angry. Harry -acknowledged having played truant on one or two important occasions, -though he insisted, whiningly, that he had worked “lik ten black -slaves” for most of the summer. If he had always been on the spot, -the aberrations of Mus’ Beatup and the laziness and pigheadedness of -Elphick and Juglery might have been counteracted to a certain degree. -Tom would have liked to have beaten Harry, just to teach him the -disadvantages of ratting in harvest-time, but he was now oddly loath -to exercise the old compulsory tyrannies. He saw, too, the pathos -of Harry’s youth, forced to play watch-dog to middle-aged vice and -ancient inefficiency. - -So, instead of being angry, he was just patient. He went out a good -deal during his leave, and the family whispered, “Thyrza Honey”; -but in the afternoons and soft evenings, when all the fields were -rusty in the harvest moon, he would walk with Harry over the farm, -and point out to him the work that would have soon to be done in the -way of sowings and diggings, with never a word of reproach for the -pitiable deeds of the summer. - -“It aun’t too late to try fur a catch crop or two—harrow some clover -on the Volunteer stubble, and if you sow early and late red, and late -white, you’ll git cuttings right on into June. I wudn’t have potato -oats agaun fur the Street field—their rootses git too thick fur -clays, and they shed seed unaccountable if you leave them standing a -day over their due. Try Sandy oat this fall—and Flemish oat is good -in clays, I’ve heard tell. And the two-acre shud go into potash next -year—wurzels or swedes, or maybe potatoes.” - -“I’ll never kip all this in my head, Tom.” - -“You’ll justabout have to, sonny. I tell you this farm’s your job, -saum as mine’s soldiering. I’m going to fight fur Worge, and you’ve -got to back me up and see as Worge is kept going fur me to fight fur.” - -“I’ll do my best, surelye—but you must write, Tom, and maake me mind -it all. Write and say, ‘This week you must drill the two-acre’—or -‘To-morrow’s the day to start thinning,’ or ‘Maake a strong furrer -this frost,’ so’s I shan’t disremember the lot.” - -“I’ll send you a postcard at whiles, to kip you up to it; but I -shan’t be here to see how things are going, so you’ll have to trust -to your own gumption. And doan’t go agaunst faather when he’s sober, -fur he’s a clever chap and knows wot he’s doing; but when he’s tight -doan’t let him meddle, for he’s unaccountable contrary and ud pot a -harvest just to spite the Government. As fur Juglery and Elphick, -they’ve got no more sense nor roots, so doan’t you ever be asking wot -to do of them.” - -Harry was impressed by all this counsel. But perhaps its real -weight lay in Tom’s new glamour, his khaki uniform, his occasional -jauntiness, his military slang and tales of camp life. He had always -been fond of his brother and liked him for a good fellow; but now -he went a step further, and admired him. There was something about -this quiet, neat, efficient young soldier, which had been lacking -in good-natured old Tom, with his dirty skin and sloppy corduroys. -Without quite understanding what it was, or how it had come there, -Harry was both sensible and envious of it. He felt that he would like -to be a soldier too, wear khaki, carry mysterious tools, and have -before him a dim, glorious adventure called France. But since these -things were not to be, a kind of rudimentary hero-worship led him to -make plans for “carrying on” at home. He would not disappoint this -soldier brother, who had exalted his work on the farm by speaking of -it as part of the adventure on which he was so much more glamorously -engaged. He had never seen it in that light before—for that matter, -neither had Tom. But now he would try to do his share—back Tom up, as -he had said. Harry’s nature was more ardent than his brother’s, more -romantic in its clay-thickened way, and on this ardour and romance -Tom had unconsciously built. There was now a chance of his memory -calling louder than Senlac Fair or the wood by Cade Street. - - -15 - -Tom did not tell his family about Thyrza Honey till the morning he -left Sunday Street. He knew they were curious, but he felt that he -would rather face their curiosity than their comments. They were sure -to be pleased at the news from a material standpoint, but against -that he had to balance the fact that the women—except, perhaps, -Ivy—did not like Thyrza, and that his mother still looked upon him -as a little boy, too young to think of marrying. He had looked upon -himself in that light six months ago—it was queer how much older he -felt now. Surely it did not make you all that much older to have the -sergeant howling at you, or to sleep with fifty men in a hut, or to -eat stew out of a dixey.... Yet, the fact remained, that in April he -had felt a boy and in September he felt a man; and, more—he was a -man; for Thyrza had accepted him as her lover, and had promised to -let him fulfil his manhood as her husband. - -At present he was content with the first stage. Each day held a new -wonder. Yet he did nothing more wonderful than sit with her in -the little room behind the shop—the sanctuary into which he had so -often peeped in the old days, wondering what Thyrza thought and did -there in the humming firelight, with her kettle and her cat and her -account-books in which all the little traffic of the shop was entered -with sucked pencil and puckered brows. - -He would sit by her and hold her hand, so large and soft and firm, -turning it over and over in his own, kissing it back and palm. Her -manner was a little motherly, for she was touched by the fact that -she was the first woman he had ever held or kissed, while her own -experience was deep and bitter. She was older than he was too, and, -as she thought, sharper at the uptake, though certainly he had -improved in this of late. She would hold him in her arms, with his -head against her breast, held between her heart and her elbow, as she -had for a few short minutes held the little baby who died.... She -never asked herself why she loved him so much better than the big, -strong, hairy Bourner, or than Hearsfield, whose hands were white -as a gentleman’s; all she knew was that she loved him, and that she -pitied him for the fond no-reason that he loved her and through her -was learning his first lessons in woman and love. - -Then before he went home she would make him tea, or supper perhaps, -and herself gain new sweet experience in ministering to the material -wants of the man whose spirit she held. No meal prepared for Honey -had been like this, and they would sit over it cosily together, all -the more conscious of their union when the little buzzing bell of the -shop divided them, and Tom, new privileged, would sit in the back -room listening to Thyrza serving Putlands or Sindens or Bourners or -Hubbles, and getting rid of them as quickly as she could—which, it -must be confessed, was not very quick, for she was far too soft and -kind to turn anyone out who seemed to want to stay. Then the bell -which had divided them would bring them together again as it rang -behind the departing shopper, and Thyrza would come back to the lover -waiting for her in the red twilight beside the singing fire. - -They did not go out together till the last evening. Then he came to -tea and stayed to supper, and in the interval they went into the lane -just as the dusk came stealing up the sky. Thyrza had objected at -first. - -“We closed early yesterday, and folk ull be vexed if they find us -shut this evenun too.” - -“Folk be hemmed! This is my last evenun, and I’m going to taake you -where we can’t hear that tedious liddle bell of yourn.” - -“Doan’t miscall my bell, fur it rings when you come to see me. In the -old days when it rang, I used to say to myself, ‘Is that Tom?’ and -look through the winder, hoping....” - -“Thyrza, did you love me then?” - -“Reckon I did. But I doan’t know as I ever thought much about it, fur -I maade sure as at the raate you wur going it ud be a dunnamany years -afore you started courting praaperly.” - -“I’m glad I didn’t wait, surelye. Oh, liddle creature, you can’t know -wot this week’s bin to me. I’ll go out to France feeling ... feeling -... I can’t tell you wot I feel, but it’s as if I wur leaving part -of myself behind, and that the part I left behind wur helping and -backing up the part out there ... it sounds unaccountable silly when -I say it, but it’s wot I’ve got in my heart.” - -They were in the big pasture meadow near Little Worge, sitting by the -willow-pond which lay cupped against the lane. It was the first and -the last landmark in Sunday Street—the thick scummed water with the -grey trees dipping their leaves in its stillness. To-day a soft wind -rustled in them, blowing from the west, and scarcely louder than the -wind throbbed the distant guns, the beating of that racked far-off -heart whose terrible secrets Tom was soon to know. Thyrza shuffled -against his side as they sat on the grass. - -“Oh, Tom—hear the guns? It’s tar’ble to think of you out there.” - -“I’ll come back, surelye.” - -“Do you feel as if you will?” - -“Surelye—since I’ve left half myself behind.” - -Her arms stole round him, and the beating of that far-away heart was -drowned in the beating of his under her cheek. - -A pale cowslip light was in the sky, creeping over the fields, -putting yellower tints into Thyrza’s butter skin and a web of gold -over her ashen hair. Gradually it seemed to flower in the dusk till -all the field was lit up ... the mounds and molehills with hollows -scooped darkly against the light, the pond like thick yellow glass, -the willows like drooping flame. The picture became graven on Tom’s -heart—the grey sky blooming with light and shedding it down on the -field of the mounds and molehills, the pond, the willows, and the -woman drowsing in his arms—so that when later in France he thought -of England, he thought of it only as that willow-pond at the opening -of Sunday Street, and Thyrza Honey lying heavy and warm and sweet -against his breast. - -“Hold me close, Tom, dearie—hold me close, so’s I doan’t hear the -war. Aun’t it queer how our hearts beat louder than the guns!...” - - - - -PART III: THYRZA - - -1 - -That autumn and winter there was a lot of talk in the papers -about food. Wedged into news of the Ancre and Beaumont Hamel, the -crumpling-up of Roumania under von Mackensen, and President Wilson’s -Peace Note, came paragraphs and letters and articles on food and -the ways of economising and producing it. The latter most troubled -Harry, as he thought of the modest spring-sowings of Worge. If it was -indeed true that the German U-boats were threatening the country’s -wheat supply, might it not be as well to reclaim the old tillage of -the Sunk Field or even break up grass-land in the high meadows by -Bucksteep? - -Harry did not often read the papers, getting all his news from the -_Daily Express_ poster which Mrs. Honey displayed outside the shop -when the papers arrived at noon; but when paper-restrictions brought -posters to an end, he went skimming through Mus’ Beatup’s _Sussex -News_, and one day skimming was changed to plodding by a very solid -article on wheat-production and the present needs. - -In many ways it was a revelation to Harry. Though he had been -a farm-boy all his life it had never struck him till then that -grain-growing was of any importance to the nation, or imagined that -the Worge harvests mattered outside Worge. The fields, the stock had -been to him all so many means of livelihood, and the only motive -of himself and his fellow-workers the negative one of keeping -Worge from the auctioneer’s. If he ever realised his part in the -great adventure, it was only when he saw his duty to keep the place -together for Tom to fight for. This was his newest and highest -motive, and when he refused the call of distant woods, broke with the -Brownbread rat-and-sparrow club, and paid no more than a business -visit to Senlac Fair, it was so that Tom’s sacrifice should not be in -vain. But here was a chap making out that a farmer was very nearly -as important as a soldier, and that it was on the wheat-fields of -England as well as on the battlefields of France that the war would -be won.... - -After this, Harry always read the food-supply news, and pondered -it. Was it indeed true that the war which was being waged with such -gallantry and fortitude abroad might be lost at home? For the first -time he had a personal interest in the struggle, apart from the -interest he felt through Tom. Hitherto the war had meant nothing to -him, because he had thought he meant nothing to the war—he was too -young to be a soldier, probably always would be, since everyone said -that peace would come next year. All he had had of warfare was the -distant throb and grumble of guns a hundred miles away—not even a -prowling Taube or lost Zeppelin had visited the country within the -Four Roads. First the lighting order, then the liquor control, then -the Conscription Act—only thus and indirectly had the war touched -him, requiring of him merely a passive part. But now he saw that he -also might take his active share, and the realisation set fire to his -clay. - -The winter was a bad one—bitterly cold, with thick green ice on the -ponds, and a skimming of hard snow on the fields, where the soil -was like iron. The marshes of Horse Eye were sheeted with a frozen -overflow, and the wind that rasped and whiffled from the east, -stung the skin like wire, and piercing the cracks of barns, made -the stalled cattle shiver and stamp. There was little work on the -farm, though Harry had done his best to fulfil Tom’s injunctions, and -had carted his manure and turned a strong furrow to the frost. The -lambing had been got through somehow—but two ewes and three or four -lambs had died, as they would never have done if Tom had been there. -At every turn Harry was faced by his own inexperience, and learned -only at the price of many disappointments and much humiliation. - -But he was the type which failure only makes dogged, and his -unsuccessful winter helped his new sense of the country’s need -in making him plan daringly for the spring. He resolved that his -apprenticeship should not last beyond the winter—it was his own fault -that it had lasted so long—and in March he would get to business, and -start his scheming for doubling the grain acreage of the farm. - -There were several acres of old tillage to be reclaimed, and Harry -was young and daring and amateurish enough to contemplate also -breaking up grass-land. He would of course have to consult his father -first. Mus’ Beatup had spent a sorry winter, “kipping the coald -out” at the Rifle Volunteer. The slackness of farm work, the cold -and discomfort of the weather, the growing unpalatableness of his -meals, all combined for worse results than usual, and by the time -of the keen wintry spring there was no denying that a good slice of -both his physical and mental vigour had been eaten away. However, he -was still the nominal head of the farm, and must be consulted—Tom -would have had it so. Unfortunately, Harry chose the wrong day. Mus’ -Beatup was sober, but suffering from an internal chill as a result of -having lain for an hour in the frozen slush a couple of nights ago, -before Nimrod the watch-dog found him and brought Harry out with his -frantic barks. To-day he sat by the fire, shuddering and muttering to -himself, drinking a cup of hot cocoa and swearing at his wife because -there was no sugar in it. - -“I can’t git none,” wailed Mrs. Beatup. “I tried at the Shop, and -Nell tried in Brownbread Street, and Ivy’s tried in Dallington, and -Harry asked when he wur over at Senlac market....” - -“And have you tried Rushlake Green and Punnetts Town and Three Cups -Corner and Heathfield and Hellinglye and Hailsham? You try a bit -further afore you dare to give me this stuff.” - -“But there aun’t none in the whole country—so I’ve heard tell.” - -“Maybe. Reckon Govunmunt’s got it all, saum as they’ve got all the -beer and the spirits. They’ve got pounds and pounds of it, those -there Cabinick Ministers, and eat it for breakfast and dinner and -tea. I tell you I’m dog-sick of this war, and I’m hemmed if I move -another step to help a Govunmunt as taakes fust our beer and then our -boys, and then our sugar”—and Mus’ Beatup spat dramatically into the -fire, as if it were Whitehall. - -The moment was not propitious, but Harry had to consider the weather, -which showed possibilities that must be made use of at once. Mus’ -Beatup listened wearily to his suggestions. - -“Oh, it’s more wheat as they want, is it? They’re going to take -that next.... Reclaim the oald tillage? Wot did we let it go fallow -fur, if it wurn’t cos it dudn’t pay the labour?... Break up the -grass-land? You’ll be asking to plough the kitchen floor next.” - -“If we doan’t do summat, I reckon we’ll be maade to.” - -“Reckon we will—saum as we wur maade to give up Tom. And they say -this country’s fighting Prussian tyranny.” - -“Well, faather, if we doan’t grow more corn we’ll lose the war. I wur -reading in the paapers as all our corn and wheat used to come from -furrin parts, but now, wud ships wanted to carry soldiers and them -hemmed U-boats spannelling around....” - -“You talk lik the _Sussex News_. Wot d’you want to go vrothering -about them things fur? You do your work and doan’t go roving.” - -“Faather, I aun’t bin roving all this winter.” - -“No, you aun’t—that’s a good lad, fur sartain sure.” - -“And if you let me do this job, I promise I’ll stick to it and pull -it through.” - -“You might as well chuck your money into the pond as spend it on -grain-growing nowadays.” - -“Not wud all these new arrangements the Govunmunt’s maade ... -guaranteed prices and all. Oh, faather, let me try as I said. I want -to do my bit saum as Tom.” - -“Seemingly your bit’s to land Worge at the auctioneer’s. Howsumdever, -do wot you lik—I’m ill and helpless and oald. I can’t stop you. Now -adone do wud all this vrotherification of a poor sick man, and ask -mother to let me have a spoonful of syrup in this nasty muck.” - - -2 - -So on Harry, sixteen years old, with little or no experience, and a -bad character to live down, fell the task of bringing Worge into line -with a national endeavour. It was strange how his earthy imagination -had taken fire at the new idea, and a curious justification of the -Press. A sense of patriotism had wakened in him, as it had not -wakened in Tom after nearly a twelve-month’s service. Tom was no -longer indifferent or unwilling, but his enthusiasm scarcely went -beyond the regiment—the feeling of “Sussex chaps”—the idea of -fighting for Worge, or, at the most abstract, “having a whack at -Kayser Bill.” - -He had been in France about three months now. He had not been sent -over as soon as he expected, but in November there had been a big -draft from the 18th Sussex, including Tom and Jerry and Bill, also -Mus’ Archie—Mus’ Dixon, who had been badly gassed on the Somme, -stayed behind in charge of “School,” and rumour said that he would -not be sent out again. So far Tom seemed to have had a far duller -time abroad than in England; he had not so much as seen a German; and -his letters home were chiefly about mud. The family jealously hinted -that his letters to Thyrza Honey were more entertaining. However, he -kept his promise to Harry, and sent him councillor postcards now and -again. The last had consisted of just one word—“spuds!” - -That was the spring when potatoes were being sold at sixpence a pound -in Eastbourne and Hastings, and such inducements were held out to -growers, that instead of the usual modest half-acre, Harry intended -to make potatoes part of his new scheme. The two-acre was in potash -this year, also the home field, and Harry decided to break up the -pasture-land next the orchard. Some of the space would have to be -used for roots—swedes and wurzels—but there would be a spud-growing -such as Worge had never seen in its history. - -Then there was the more ticklish problem of the grain, and what kinds -to sow. Harry took Tom’s advice and decided on Sandy oats for the -Street field and the field next the Volunteer. In the home field he -would grow awned wheat—and red spring wheat on the reclaimed tillage -of the Sunk Field. - -Then came the problem of which grass-lands to break up. If only Tom -had been there to advise him! He dare not ask his father, in case -he should withdraw his first permission. Breaking up grass-land is -heresy to an orthodox farmer, and it was quite possible that Mus’ -Beatup would change his mind when it came to the crisis. For this -reason Harry said no more about it, and planned craftily to start -work on one of his father’s “bad days,” when he would not be likely -to interfere. Left without counsel, he decided to break up the -rest of the Sunk Field, also Forges Field, and an old pasture at -the Bucksteep end of the farm. These were wretched soils and would -have to be heavily manured; but none of the soils round Worge was -really good, and some decent grass must be left for the cows and -ewes. Manures were scarce and dear, owing to the war, but Harry -thought he could make shift with the farmyard dung, supplemented by -a little night-soil, and a ton of waste from the gypsum mines near -Robertsbridge. - -All this cost him more thinking than he had ever done in his life. -Once or twice he lay awake from bed-time till dawn, adding up -figures, working out ways and means, and making plans for settling -any opposition, drunk or sober, from Mus’ Beatup. His responsibility -was enormous, but he was at bottom too simple-minded to feel the -full weight of it, and his enthusiasm flamed as clear as ever. By -crabbed and common means—even the smudgy columns of a provincial -newspaper—the vision had come to a country boy’s heart, and -found there a divine, undeveloped quality of imagination, and an -undisciplined power of enterprise. These two, which had hitherto -united to keep him from his work, were now forged together in the -heat of the new idea. But for the first he would never have heard the -call, and the second alone made it possible that he should obey it. - - -3 - -Harry could not help laughing at the faces of Juglery and Elphick -when he told them he meant to plough the Sunk Field. - -“Brëak up grass, Mus’ Harry!” - -“Surelye! They’re asking farmers all over the country to grow more -wheat.” - -“Does Maaster know as you mean to plough the Sunk?” - -“Reckon he does. I cud never do it wudout he let me.” - -“Well,” said old Juglery, “I’ve bin on farm-work man and boy these -dunnamany year, and I’ve only bruk up grass two times, and no good -come of it, nuther. Wunst it wur fur oald Mus’ Backfield up at Odiam, -him wot caum to nighe a hundred year, and then took a fit last -fall and died of joy when he heard as wheat wur ninety shillings a -quarter. T’other wur pore young Mus’ Pix of the Trulilows, and he -bruk up a valiant pasture, and the oats caum up crawling about like -pease, and each had a gurt squlgy root lik a pertater. I says to him, -being young and joking like in those days, ‘You’re unaccountable -lucky,’ says I, ‘to grow pease and pertaters on the same stalk,’ but -he took it to heart, and went and shot himself in the oast. So you -see as boath the yeomen I bruk up grass fur died, one o’ joy and -t’other o’ sorrow.” - -“Well, I shan’t die of nuther, and we’ll have the plough out Thursday -if the weather hoalds.” - -The men were getting used to being ordered about by Harry. Mus’ -Beatup’s chill had gone off in a twisting bout of rheumatism, which -returned every now and then with damp weather. He spent, therefore, -a good deal of time in the house, with sometimes a hobble as far -as the Rifle Volunteer, appearing only in the dry, frosty weather -when little could be done with harrow or plough. However, when -neighbouring farmers began to remark on the enterprise of Worge, he -was careful to take the credit to himself—indeed he almost fancied -that it was his own doing, for Harry, who could have done nothing -without his authority, was careful to consult him on every occasion, -and it was Mus’ Beatup who ordered the grain and checked the -accounts, with many groans and dismal foretellings. - -Those were good days for Harry, behind his plough. Under the soft -grey spring sky, rifted and stroked by wandering primrose lights, -through the damp air that smelled of living mould, over the brown -earth that rolled and sprayed like a wave from the driving coulter, -he toiled sweating in the raw March cold. The smell of earth, the -smell of his own sweat, the smell of the sweat of his horses hung -thick over the plough, but every now and then soft damp puffs of air -would blow into the miasma the fragrance of grass and primrose buds, -of sticky, red, uncurling leaves, and the new moss in the woods. The -share gleamed against the dun, and the brown twigs of the copses drew -their spindled tracery against a sky which was the paler colour of -earth—sometimes a shower would fall, slanting along the hedges, the -thick drops tasting on Harry’s lips of the unfulfilled spring. - -His work made him very tired. After all, he was barely seventeen, and -though sturdy had only just begun to use his strength. The work of -the farm was much increased by the new plan, yet it was impossible -to bring extra hands to it, except occasionally by the conscription -of Zacky. Harry milked and ploughed and scattered and dug, rising in -the foggy blue darkness of the morning, and often sitting up late -over calculations and accounts. Elphick and Juglery gave a pottering, -rheumatic service, Mus’ Beatup could only be irregularly relied -upon. So in time Harry learned what it was to doze off out of sheer -weariness over his supper, or fall across the bed asleep before he -had pulled his trousers off. But strangely enough, he found the life -no hardship. Before the first thrill of enterprise had passed he was -beginning to like the work for its own sake. There was a new keen -pleasure in the wearing of his muscles, almost a physical luxury -in his fatigue, and the lying with spread limbs before the fire of -evenings. His life seemed good and full—everything was worth while, -eating or sleeping or toiling or resting. For the earth sometimes -makes of her servants lovers. - -He was far too busy during his working hours and weary during -his leisure to find much temptation in his old errant pleasures. -Willie Sinden appealed in vain to a grimy, sweaty Harry asleep -for an hour before the fire at night—he was too unaccountable -wearied to vrother about ratting or Willie’s new ferret; and he -went to Senlac and Heathfield and Hailsham Fairs to sell beasts, -not to drink ginger-beer or pot into the German Kaiser’s mouth in -the shooting-gallery. Even the distant woods had ceased to call, -for Harry was now tasting their adventure in his daily work. The -chocolate furrows of the Sunk Field were part of that same wonder -which had teased him in the fluttering hazels of Molash Spinney or -the wind in the gorse-thickets of Thunders Hill. The far-off village -green of Bird-in-Eye was not more full of spells than the new-sown -acres by Forges Wood. By his toil, and because he toiled as a man, -from the spark of imagination within him, and not as a beast from the -grind of circumstances without, he had brought the distant adventure -home. - - -4 - -In February Tom’s letters became more rousing. The 18th Sussex took -part in the big advance on the Ancre, and though Tom himself did -not do anything very exciting, he was no longer in the humiliating -position of having never seen a German. His descriptions of battle -were rather fumbling—“Then we had some tea and a chap got in from the -Glosters who had his tunick torn something terrible.”—“We come into -a French village full of apple-trees and the walls were down so as -you saw into the houses, and in one house there was a pot of ferns on -the table.” He also confessed, in reply to a message from Zacky, that -though he had seen several Germans, “with faces like roots,” he had -not, to his knowledge, killed one. - -Mus’ Beatup thought it necessary to improve on his son’s letters at -the pub. - -“Tom’s having valiant times,” he would say to the bar of the Rifle -Volunteer or of the Crown at Woods Corner. “He killed a German -officer wud his bayunite and took his machine-gun. Mus’ Archie Lamb -is unaccountable proud of him, and says he’s sure to be a lieutenant -of the Sussex before long. He’s a good lad is my lad, and it’s a -tedious shaum as he was tuk away from his praaper personal wark and -maade a soldier of. There’s none of my folk bin soldiers up till -now—it’s yeomen we’re born and we doan’t taake wages.... When’s he -think the war ull stop?—Well, it might be any time, if the Govunmunt -doan’t starve us all fust.” - -Sometimes Thyrza Honey brought Tom’s letters up to read to the family -at Worge. She was rather shy of her future relations-in-law, who made -no special effort to be agreeable to her. Mrs. Beatup persisted in -looking on her as a designing woman who had forcibly captured the -innocent Tom, Nell was too clever for her, and the males were grumpy -and sidling. Only Ivy seemed to like her, but Ivy was on bad terms -with her family at present, as ever since young Kadwell on leave had -forsaken his sweetheart of the Foul Mile for her robuster charms, -and the deserted one had turned up in rage and dishevelment to make -a personal protest at Worge, the Beatups had chosen to resent her -“goings on.” They also threw Jerry Sumption in her teeth and vaguely -accused her of “things.” Now no young man ever came to Worge without -her parents lamenting that they had a light daughter, and rows were -frequent and undignified. So Ivy’s liking was no recommendation -of Thyrza, who in consequence was suspected of goings on herself. -However, she would not give up her visits, for she knew Tom liked her -to pay them, and often—rather tactlessly—sent messages to his family -through her. - -Thyrza knew more about the British front and the Battle of the Ancre -than did the Beatups. Not that Tom could be eloquent even to her, -but her imagination, warmed by love, was quicker to piece together -the fragments and fill in the gaps. Also he told her things that he -would not have told the others. It was she who heard the details of -the great occasion on which he first actually and personally killed a -German. - -“I was sentry, and you always feel as the place is full of Boshes, -and you think you see them and it isn’t them. Then one night after -moon-up I thought I saw a Bosh over against the enemy wire, and I -said to myself as he wasn’t a Bosh really, though my hair was all -standing up on my head. Then he moved and I let fly with my rifle as -I’ve done umpty times at nothing, and then he was still and I saw him -hanging on the wire. Reckon he was dead, but I went on putting round -after round into him I felt so queer—not scared only kind of enjoying -it like as if you were shooting at the Fair, only I knew as I was -killing something and it made me happy. But afterwards I got very -cold and sick.” - -“He never tells us how he feels about things,” complained Mrs. -Beatup. “It’s never more’n ‘I had my dinner’ to us.” - -“Reckon he doan’t git much time for writing letters. He knows as wot -he tells me gits passed on to you.” - -“Well, I’ll never say naun agaunst you, Thyrza Honey, but I must -point out as he knew us afore he knew you. He’s unaccountable young -to be shut of his mother, and it ud be praaperer if his messages wur -to you through us.” - -Mrs. Beatup’s voice was hoarse with dignity, and Thyrza hung her head. - -“I’m the last as ud ever want to taake him away from his mother,” she -murmured—and ten days later Mrs. Beatup got a thick smudgy letter on -which Tom had spent hours of ink and sweat in obedience to Thyrza’s -command. - - -5 - -About a fortnight later an impudent-looking little girl with a -big mouth came wobbling up Worge drive on a bicycle, and from a -wallet extracted a telegram which she handed to Zacky, who sat on -the doorstep peeling a stick. Zacky ran with it to his mother, who -refused to open it. - -“I’ll have no truck with telegrams—they’re bad things. Fetch your -faather.” - -Zacky ran off in great excitement, and soon Mus’ Beatup came -lumbering in, very red after planting potatoes. - -“Wot’s all this, mother?—another of those hemmed telegrams?” - -“Yes, and I reckon Tom’s killed this time.” - -“Can’t be—we only got a letter last night.” - -“Ivy says they taake four days to come over. He may have bin killed -this mornun—got a shell in his stomach lik Viner’s poor young boy.” - -“Maybe it’s to say he’s coming hoame,” said Zacky. - -“Shurrup!” growled his father. - -He tore the envelope, with a queer twitching of the corners of his -mouth. - -“He aun’t killed,” he said shakily—“only wounded.” - -A moan came from the mother’s parted lips, and she closed her eyes. - -“Maybe it’s naun very tar’ble,” continued the father. “They said -‘serious’ in Mus’ Viner’s telegram; here it’s only—‘regret to inform -you that Private Beatup has been wounded in action.’” - -“Will they let me go to him?” - -“Aun’t likely—he’s over in France.” - -Mrs. Beatup did not cry, but all the colour went from her face and -her lips were strangely blue. Then suddenly her head fell over the -back of the chair. - -“Zacky!” shouted Mus’ Beatup—“fetch the whisky bottle that’s in the -pocket of my oald coat behind the door.” - -He put his arm round his wife, and lifted her head to his shoulder, -while Zacky ran off with piercing howls. These were fortunately -louder than those of the poor duck whose neck Ivy was wringing -outside the stable. She rushed in, all bloody from her victim, and -in a few moments had laid her mother on the floor, unfastened her -dingy remains of stays, and dabbled her forehead with water, while -Mus’ Beatup, relieved of his stewardship, stumped about, groaning, -and drank the whisky himself. In the midst of it all the big-mouthed -little girl, forgotten in the drive, started beating on the door -and demanding “if there was an answer, please.” Zacky was sent to -dismiss her and vented his grief on the messenger of woe by putting -out his tongue at her till she was out of sight—a salute which she -returned with all the increased opportunities that nature had given -her. - -Mrs. Beatup soon recovered. - -“I caum over all swummy like ... this is the first time I’ve swounded -since Zacky wur born ... I reckon this is sharper than childbirth.” - -The tears came at last, and she sobbed against Ivy’s bosom. - -“Doan’t go vrothering, mother. I tell you it’s naun tar’ble. They -said ‘seriously’ when poor Sid Viner wur wounded to death, and Ted -Podgam in Gallipoli. Maybe they’ll send him hoame soon.” - -“I want to go to him.... He’s got a hole in him.... Why do they kip -his mother from him when he’s sick? When he had measles he never let -go my hand one whole day, and he said, ‘Stay wud me, mother—I feel -tedious bad.’ Maybe he’s saying it now.” - -“And maybe he aun’t. Maybe he’s setting up in bed eating chicken and -drinking wine, wud no more’n a piece off his big toe.” - -She took out a dirty handkerchief and wiped her mother’s eyes. Then -she said: - -“I maun go and tell Thyrza Honey.” - - -6 - -But the fates had decided to honour Tom’s mother above his sweetheart -in that it was she alone who bore the full grief of his wounding. -On her way to the shop, Ivy met Thyrza engaged in something as near -a run as her plump person was capable of, and waving in her hand a -letter. It was a pencil-scrawl written in hospital at Boulogne, -telling Thyrza not to vrother, because he was doing valiant. He had -got a Blighty one and hoped to be sent home soon. It was nothing -serious, only a bit of shrap in his foot. “Didn’t I tell mother as it -was no more’n a piece off his big toe?” cried Ivy triumphantly. - -The letter had been Thyrza’s first news of Tom’s wound, and all the -anxiety and yearning she felt were swallowed up in the joy of his -coming home. A few days later she had a telegram from him, telling of -his arrival in hospital at Eastbourne, and by this time Mrs. Beatup -had recovered sufficiently to resent the fact that it had been sent -to Thyrza and not to her. - -Everyone was glad that Tom was at Eastbourne, as it could be reached -from Sunday Street in a few hours by carrier’s cart and train. The -very next morning Mrs. Beatup and Mrs. Honey set out together, the -latter with a basket of eggs and flowers, and her pockets bulging -with Player’s cigarettes, the former nursing a weighty dough-cake, -beloved of Tom in ancient times, and so baked that she fondly hoped -he would never notice the nearly total absence of sugar and plums. -Thyrza looked very unlike herself in a close-fitting blue jersey and -knitted cap; Mrs. Beatup wore what she called her Sunday cape, which -is to say the cape she would have worn on Sundays if she had ever -had the leisure to go out, likewise her Sunday bonnet (similarly -conditioned), made of black straw and bearing a good crop of wheat. - -The two women went by carrier’s cart to Hailsham, where they took -the train, arriving at Eastbourne soon after one. They went first to -a creamery, where they rather hesitatingly ordered poached eggs and -a pot of tea. The eggs were stale and the tea had not that “body” -which their custom required. Mrs. Beatup began to wonder what Tom was -getting to eat—if this was what you got when you paid for it, what -did you get when you didn’t pay for it? she’d like to know. - -She was a little relieved at the sight of Tom, looking much fatter -and browner and better in hospital than she had ever seen him outside -it. He looked happy, too, with his broad face all grins to see them, -his mother and sweetheart. And since he looked so brown and well and -happy, she wondered why it was that she wanted so much to cry. - -Thyrza did not want to cry. She held Tom’s hand, and laughed, and -was quite talkative, for her. She made him tell her over and over -again how he had been wounded, and how they had taken him to the base -hospital and then to Boulogne, and then in a hospital ship all signed -with the cross to Blighty. Mrs. Beatup made up her mind that next -time she would come alone. - -And so she did—much to the surprise of her family, who had hitherto -found her full of qualms and fears even at the thought of a visit to -Senlac. - -“I mun have my boy to myself whiles I’ve got the chance,” she said. - -“Well,” remarked Ivy tactlessly, “I reckon he’d sooner have you -separate—he’ll be wanting Thyrza aloan a bit.” - -“Will he, miss? That aun’t why I’m going different days. We aun’t all -lik you wud your kissings and loverings. I wish to goodness you’d git -married and have done.” - -“And taake some poor boy away from his mother,” mocked Ivy. “I -wouldn’t be so cruel.” - -Her mother made a swoop at her with her open hand, but Ivy dodged, -and ran off, laughing good-naturedly. - -None of the other Beatups ever went to see Tom at Eastbourne. The -journey was too expensive, and they were sure to have him home on -leave before long. Mrs. Beatup went about twice a week, with various -messages from the rest of the family muddled up in her head. She -would sit beside him, holding his hand, strangely delicate with -sickness, between her own hard, cracked, work-weary ones, wishing -that they could find more to say to each other, and at the same time -cherishing those numbered moments when she could have him to herself. -Thyrza went oftener, shutting up shop with a recklessness that would -have ruined a less personal business. Tom’s only other visitor was -the Reverend Mr. Sumption. - -He came one afternoon to inquire about Jerry, but Tom could not tell -him much. Jerry kept away from him, and the little that Beatup knew -of his doings he was anxious to conceal from his father. - -“Maybe now he’s out there he’ll get on better,” he suggested. - -“Better? He’s always done well,” said Mr. Sumption loftily. “He’ll -have to do unaccountable well if he does better. Don’t think, Tom, -that I came to you because I doubted my son, but he was never much of -a letter-writer, and now, being busy and all....” - -That night Tom lay awake an hour or so, thinking of parents. It was -queer how they stuck to their children. His mother, now, coming all -this way to see him, though she was nervous of the journey and had -very little money to spend on it.... Mr. Sumption, too, standing -up for that lousy tyke of a Jerry.... Would he ever feel like this -for one of his own flesh—not only when that one lay helpless and -dependent on him, but had gone out from him and chosen his own path? -“Even as a father pitieth his children ...” so the Bible said, and -seemingly there was no bound or end to that pity. Perhaps one day he -would feel it in his own heart (the curve of Thyrza’s arms made him -think of a cradle). He remembered what Mr. Sumption had said to him -long ago, the night before he joined up—“You’ll understand a bit of -what I feel ... some day when you’re the father of a son.” - - -7 - -Perhaps it was the inactivity of the days that made Tom lie awake so -much at night. He generally had an hour or two to wait for sleep, and -it seemed as if in those hours his thoughts jumped and raced in a -way they never did by daylight. It was in those hours that he formed -his resolution to marry Thyrza before he went back to France. When -he left hospital he would probably have a fortnight or so at home, -and they could be married at once by licence. Then, he felt, with a -sudden swallowing in his throat, he would have had his little bit of -life, even if Fritz cut it short before he could see those arms he -loved become the cradle he had dreamed them. - -The future meant even less to him now than the past. An almighty -present ruled the world in those days, for it was all that a man -could call his own. Lord! if that crump had dropped a few yards -nearer, he might have lost the chances he was grabbing now. He -wondered how a year ago he could ever have dreamed and dawdled over -his love for Thyrza, put off its declaration to a vague and distant -time which might never be. It was queer how he had counted on the -future then, made plans for doing things “sometime.” The last year -had taught him how close that sometime stood to Never. Not that Tom -felt any forebodings. Indeed, he had the optimistic fatalism of most -soldiers. He was safe until a shell came along with his number on, -and then—well, many better chaps’ numbers had been up before his. -Meantime, it was his business to seize the present hour and all it -contained, nor, when he planted, think of gathering, nor in the -seed-time dream of harvest. - -He never doubted Thyrza’s readiness, and was a little surprised -when she mentioned things like “gitting some cloathes,” and “having -the house done.” Experience had not yet taught her to mistrust the -future—for her to-morrow always came, and must be decently prepared -for. However, when she saw how desperately Tom was set on marriage, -she brushed aside the scruples of habit with a heroism they both of -them failed to see. - -“I’ll marry you soon as you come hoame, dear, and then we can have a -bit of honeymoon.” - -“We’ll go away. I’ll take you to Hastings, maybe—we’ll git a room -there.” - -“Oh, Tom! Lik a grand couple! We mun’t go chucking the money away.” - -“We woan’t chuck it all away, but we’ll chuck a fair-sized bit. I -doan’t git much chance of spending out there.” - -She looked at him tenderly. - -“To think as I ever thought you wur slower nor me!” - -“I wur a gurt owl,” said Tom. “Lord! if I’d a-gone West, and never so -much as kissed you....” - -“But you did kiss me, dear—in the shop, the evenun afore you went -away.” - -“Twur only your hand, and I wur all quaaking like a calf.” - -Thyrza sighed. - -“It wur a lovely kiss.” - -The Beatups were naturally indignant at Tom’s decision. To them it -savoured of undue haste, if not of indecency. Courtships in Sunday -Street usually lasted from two to ten years. Indeed, Maudie Speldrum -had been wooed for fifteen years before she took matters into her own -hands and proposed to Bert Pix. Tom had not been engaged to Thyrza -six months. What did they want to get married for? And what was Tom -but a lad?—a mere child in his mother’s eyes—a calf that Mrs. Honey -was leading to market, all ignorant (as she could not be) of what -lay ahead. In Sunday Street, marriage was the end—the end of love, -the end of youth—and mixed with Mrs. Beatup’s jealousy of the other -woman and suspicion of her motives, was the desire to keep her son a -little longer in the frisky meadows of his boyhood before he was led -to those lean pastures she knew so well. - - -8 - -About the middle of March, Tom was moved to a convalescent hospital -at Polegate, and a fortnight later sent home. Worge gave him a big -hail, and the whole family, including Thyrza, sat down to a supper -which was supposed to outshine the best efforts of hospital. That -supper was not only a welcome but a farewell. When he had eaten two -more in the muddle of his kin, he would eat a third in quiet, alone -with Thyrza. The few necessary preparations for his marriage had been -made, and the room was booked in Hastings for the third day from now. -His happiness made him dreamy, and also tender towards those he was -to leave, for though he had not realised his mother’s jealousy of -his sweetheart, he vaguely understood that it would hurt her to lose -him, as lose him she must when he went to this other woman’s arms. -So he held her hand under the table oftener and longer than he held -Thyrza’s, and kissed her good night without being asked. - -The next day Harry took him to see the spring sowings. They were -finished now, and the chocolate acres lay moist and furrowed in a -muffle of misty April sunshine. Harry, more thickset and sinewy than -of old, tramped a little behind his brother, as a workman after an -inspector, with sidelong glance at Tom’s brown, stubborn profile, -anxious to see if praise or delight could be read there. - -Tom was indeed delighted with the fruits of Harry’s industry, -swelling in soft, scored curves from Worge’s southern boundaries at -Forges Wood to the northern limits of the Street. But he was also -aghast. - -“You’ll never have the labour to kip and reap this—and you’ve bruk up -grass!” - -“I can manage valiant till harvest, and then I’ll git extra hands. -As for the grass, ’twur only an old-fool’s idea that it mun never be -ploughed.” - -“And I reckon ’tis a young-fool’s idea to plough it,” said Tom -rebukingly. - -“The newspaaper said as grass-lands mun be bruk up now, to maake more -acres.” - -“And wot does the paaper know about it?” - -“A lot, seemingly.” - -“It aun’t lik to know more than men as have worked on the ground all -their lives, and their faathers before ’em. Any farmer ull tell you -as it’s hemmed risky to plough grass.” - -“The paaper never said as it wurn’t risky, but it said as farmers -must taake some risks these times, and git good crops fur the -country, and help on the War.” - -“Doan’t you go vrothering about the War, youngster. It aun’t no -concern of yourn—and I reckon it woan’t help us Sussex boys much if -our farms go to the auctioneer’s while we’re away.” - -“Worge woan’t go to the auctioneer’s. You spik lik faather wud his -faint heart. And a lot of good it’ll do if you chaps beat the Germans -out there and we have to maake peace ’cos we’re starving wud hunger -at home.” - -“There’ll be no starving—you taake it from me. We’ll have ’em across -the Rhine in another six months, so ‘kip the home-fires burning till -the lads’ returning, and doan’t go mucking up the farm fur the saake -of a lot of silly stuff you read in the paapers.” - -But Harry stuck doggedly to his idea— - -“I mun try, Tom—and I’ll never git the plaace sold up, fur we’re -spending naun extra save fur the seed and a bit of manure. I go -unaccountable wary, and do most of the wark myself, wud faather to -help me on his good days, and Juglery and Elphick stuck on jobs -as they can’t do no harm at. It’ll do Worge naun but good in the -end—wheat’s at eighty shilling a quarter, and guaranteed—and anyhow, -I tell you, I mun try.” - -Tom was impressed. - -“Well, Harry, I woan’t say you aun’t a good lad. But it maakes me -unaccountable narvous. Here have I bin toiling and sweating this five -year jest to kip the farm together, and now you go busting out all -round and saying it ull win the War. Wot if we chaps out there doan’t -win, t’aun’t likely as you will. Howsumdever....” - - -9 - -Tom’s marriage was on the Thursday of Easter week. All the morning a -soft teeming fog lay over the fields, drawing out scents of growth -and warmth and life. Worge lay in the midst of it like the ghost of a -farm, a dim grey shadow on the whiteness, and the voices of her men -came muffled, as in dreams. Towards noon the sunshine had begun to -eat away the mist—it grew yellower, streakier, and at last began to -scatter, rolling up the fields in solemn clouds, balling and pilling -itself against the hedges, melting into the April green of the woods; -and then suddenly it was gone—sucked up into the sky, sucked down -into the earth, living only in a few drops in the cups of violets. - -The Bethel stared away across the fields to Puddledock. For some -time its roof, with the chipped Georgian pediment, had risen above -the mist. Then the grim windows had come out to stare, and then the -tombstones that grew round its feet, leaning and tottering among the -chapel weed. - -Tom and Thyrza were to be married at the Bethel. This had caused -some surprise in the neighbourhood, as the Beatups had always -been “Church”; but friendship and convenience had led to the -decision—friendship for the Reverend Mr. Sumption, because Tom knew -him better than Mr. Poullett-Smith, and was sorry for him on account -of Jerry, convenience because the chapel was close at hand, and the -makers of the wedding breakfast would have time to run across and -witness the ceremony, which they could not have done had it taken -place at Brownbread Street, two miles away. - -The only one to whom these reasons seemed inadequate was Nell. To -her the proceeding was not only heretical but mean—her affection -for the Church had always been led by taste rather than belief, and -her attitude, which she had considered (under instruction) as that -of an orthodox Anglican, was in reality that of an Italian peasant, -who looks upon his church as his drawing-room, a place of brightness -to which he can go for refuge from the drabness of every day. Her -opposition to the chapel marriage was based on an emotion similar -to what she would have felt for the party who, with the chance of -eating and drinking out of delicate china in the drawing-room, chose -to devour their food out of broken pots in the scullery. She did not -acknowledge this, any more than she acknowledged the motive which fed -uneasily on Mr. Poullett-Smith’s inevitable disgust; she talked to -Tom about his duty as a Baptized Churchman, and was both surprised -and grieved to find that the War seemed to have destroyed what -little sense of this he had ever had. - -“I tell you as it’s all different out there. There aun’t no church -and chapel saum as there is here. You stick to church on Church -Parade down at the base, but when you’re up in the firing line, -there’s a queer kind of religion going around. You hear chaps praying -as if they wur swearing and swearing as if they wur praying, and in -the Y.M. plaace they have sort of holy sing-songs wud priests and -ministers all mixed up; and I’ve heard a Catholic priest read the -English funeral over one of us, and I’ve seen a rosary on a dead -Baptist’s neck. Church and chapel may be all very good for civvies, -but you can’t go vrothering about such things when you’re a soldier.” - -Nell was hurt and frightened by these sayings. She had an idea that -any danger or suffering would only make a man cling closer to the -Sanctuary. It was terrible to think that at the first earthquake -Peter’s Rock cracked to its foundations. A defiant loyalty inspired -her, and at first she made up her mind not to go to the wedding, but -she could not resist the temptation of asking Mr. Poullett-Smith’s -advice, and he thought she had better attend, and pray for the -backsliders. He also earnestly bade her distrust any appearance of -cracks in Peter’s Rock, and she went away comforted, with shining -eyes and burning cheeks, and her church standing firmer than ever on -the rock which was neither Peter nor Christ, but her love for a very -ordinary young man. - -So all the Beatups went to the Bethel, leaving Worge locked up and -the yard in charge of Elphick. Mrs. Beatup wore her Sunday bonnet, -the wheat-crop having been superseded, contrary to all the laws of -rotation, by one of small green grapes. Both Ivy and Nell had new -gowns, Ivy looking squeezed and unnatural in a sky-blue cloth, which -together with a pair of straight-fronted corsets, she had bought at -a Hastings dress agency—Nell pretty and demure in a grey coat and -skirt, and one of those small towny-looking hats which seemed to -find their way to her head alone in all Dallington. Mus’ Beatup, -with Harry and Zacky, smelled strongly of hair-oil and moth-killer, -and Harry had nearly scrubbed his skin off in his efforts to get -out of it the earth of his new furrows. He was considered too young -to be Tom’s best man, and the office had been at the last moment -unexpectedly filled by Bill Putland. Bill, now a sergeant, was home -on seven days’ leave, looking very brown and smart, and Polly Sinden, -who, not having been invited with her parents to the breakfast, had -vowed she would waste no time going to the chapel, suddenly changed -her mind and appeared in her most ceremonial hat. - -The chapel was packed with Sindens, Bourners, Putlands, Hubbles, -Viners, Kadwells, Pixes. Mrs. Lamb of Bucksteep was there, with -Miss Marian, but as she had not thought it necessary to put on the -elegant clothes in which she was seen gliding into church on Sundays, -her presence was regarded as an affront rather than an honour; Mrs. -Beatup would have dressed herself in her best for any Bucksteep -wedding, and thought that the squire’s wife might have done the same -for her. Also, she came in very late, and her entrance was mistaken -for that of the bride by many folk, who shot up out of the pew-boxes, -only to be disappointed by the sight of Mrs. Lamb’s faded, powdered -features behind a spotted veil, and Miss Marian swinging along after -her with a tread like a policeman. “I reckon my feet are smaller than -hers,” thought Nell, “for all that I’m only a farmer’s daughter.” - -Then Mr. Sumption came out of the vestry, and stood under the pulpit -to wait for the bride. He looked more like a figure of cursing than -of blessing—black as a rook, with his thick curly hair falling into -his eyes, yet not quite hiding the furrows which the plough of care -had dragged across his forehead. There was a rustle and a flutter and -a turning of heads, as Thyrza came up the aisle on the arm of the -bachelor cousin who was giving her away. She wore a grey gown like -a March cloud, and carried a bunch of flowers, and the congregation -whispered when they saw that she had sleeked her feathery hair with -water, so that it lay smooth behind her ears, which were round and -pink like those of mice. “It didn’t look like Thyrza,” everyone -said—and perhaps that was why Tom was so loutishly nervous, and -nearly broke Bill Putland’s heart with his fumblings and stutterings. - -Thyrza was nervous too, her head drooped like an over-blown rose upon -its stalk, and Mr. Sumption’s manner was not of the kind that soothes -and reassures. He shouted at the bride and bridegroom, and “thumped -at” various members of the congregation who whispered or (later in -the proceedings) yawned. He was not often asked to officiate at -weddings, and had apparently decided to make the most of this one, -for he wound up with an address to the married pair so lengthy and -apocalyptic that Mrs. Beatup became anxious as to the fate of a -pudding she had left to “cook itself,” and rising noisily in her pew -creaked out through a silence weighted with doom. “And whosoever -hath not a wedding garment,” the minister shouted after her, “shall -be cast into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing -of teeth”—for which Mrs. Beatup never forgave him, as she had spent -nearly three shillings on retrimming her bonnet, “and if her cape -wurn’t good enough fur him, she reckoned he’d never seen a better on -the gipsy-woman’s back.” - -The service came to an end at last, and the congregation pushed -after the bride to see her get into the cab drawn by a pair of -seedy greys, which would take her the few yards from the chapel to -the farm. The breakfast was to be at Worge, for Thyrza had no kin -besides the bachelor cousin, and it was considered more fitting -that her husband’s family should undertake the social and domestic -duties of the occasion. The feast was spread in the kitchen, which -had been decorated with flags, lent for the afternoon from the -club-room of the Rifle Volunteer. The unsugared wedding-cake was a -terrible humiliation to Mrs. Beatup, who felt sure that, in spite -of her repeated explanations, everyone would put it down to poverty -and meanness instead of to the tyranny of “Govunmunt.” However, she -had restored the balance of her self-respect by providing wine (at -eighteen-pence the bottle). - -There was much laughter and good-humour and the wit proper to -weddings as the guests squeezed themselves round the table. Even Mr. -Sumption’s five-minute grace, in which he approvingly mentioned more -than one dish on the table, but added to his score with Mrs. Beatup -by referring to the wine as poison and “the forerunner of thirst in -hell,” was only a temporary blight. The bride and bridegroom alone -looked subdued, their sleek heads drooping together, their hands -nervously crumbling their food—also Ivy, who was heard to say in a -hoarse whisper to Nell, “If I can’t go somewheres and taake my stays -off I shall bust.” However, in time she forgot her constriction in -flirting with Thyrza’s bachelor cousin, who had pale blue eyes, -bulging out as if in vain effort to catch sight of a receding chin, -and was exempt by reason of ruptured hernia from military service. - -The usual healths were drunk, and the sight of other people -drinking—for he himself would take only water—seemed to intoxicate -Mr. Sumption, and he forgot the cares that had made his black hair -as ashes on his head—his sleepless anxiety for Jerry, and the crying -in him of that day which shall burn the stubble—and became merry -as a corn-fed colt, laughing with all his big white teeth, and -paying iron-shod compliments to Thyrza and Ivy and Nell, and even -Mrs. Beatup, who maintained, however, an impressive indifference. -Bill Putland made the principal speech of the afternoon, and looked -so smart and handsome, with his hair in a soaring quiff and a -trench-ring on each hand, that Ivy might have plotted to substitute -his arm for Ern Honey’s round her waist, if she had not been too -experienced to fail to realise that he was about the only man in -Dallington she could not win with her floppy charms. - -In the end all was cheerful incoherence, and just as the sunshine was -losing its heat on the yard-stones, the bride and bridegroom rose to -go away. A trap from the Volunteer would drive them to the station, -and they climbed into it through a flying rainbow of confetti, which -stuck in Thyrza’s loosening hair, and spotted her dim gown with -colours. - -Amidst cheering and laughter the old horse lurched off, and soon -Thyrza’s grey and Tom’s dun were blurred together in the distance, -which was already staining with purple as the air thickened towards -the twilight. The guests turned back into the house, or scattered -over fields and footpaths. Ivy rushed upstairs to take off her stays, -and Bill Putland swaggered home between his parents, with a flower -in his button-hole and plans in his heart for an evening at Little -Worge. The Reverend Mr. Sumption went off with Bourner to the smithy. -The blacksmith had a shoeing and clipping to do, and the minister -would sit and watch him in the red, hoof-smelling warmth, and lend -an experienced hand if occasion needed. Mus’ Beatup, his tongue all -sour with the Australian wine, took advantage of the general flit -to creep along the hedge to the Rifle Volunteer, there to wait for -the magic stroke of six and unlocking of his paradise. Mrs. Beatup -was the last to leave the doorstep. She thought she could hear the -old horse clopping on the East Road, and when her eyes no longer -helped her to follow her son, she used her ears. She remembered that -earlier occasion when she had gone with him to the end of the drive -and kissed him there. He had wanted her then; he did not want her -now—his good-bye kiss had been kind yet perfunctory. Another woman -had him—a woman who had never suffered pain or discomfort or anxiety -or privation for his sake. Yet her jealousy had unexpectedly died. -Somehow, to-day, all that she had suffered for Tom when she bore -him, nursed him, reared him and bred him, seemed a sufficient reward -in itself. Her sufferings had made him what he was, and this other -woman took only what she, his mother, had made. “She never went -heavy wud him, nor bore him in pain, nor lay awaake at night wud his -screeching, nor thought as he’d die when he cut his teeth, nor went -all skeered when he took the fever.... So thur aun’t no sense in -vrothering. Reckon he’ll always be more mine nor hers, even if I am -never to set eyes on him agaun.” - - -10 - -Tom and Thyrza came back from Hastings in a few days. They talked as -if they had been away for weeks, and indeed it had seemed weeks to -them—not that any moment had faltered or dragged, but each had held -the delight of hours, and each hour had been a day of new wonder. -Perhaps the dazzle was brightest for Tom—Thyrza could remember an -earlier honeymoon, which had held no presage of darkness to follow, -and she slipped back pretty easily into the old habit of having a man -about her; but for Tom even the traces of her here and there in the -room, her hat thrown down, her petticoat trailing over a chair, the -dim scent of clover that hung on her pillow, making her bed like a -field, all joined to bind him with her enchantment, to drug him with -an ecstasy which had its sweet foundation in the commonplace. - -When they came back to Sunday Street the honeymoon did not end. -Contrariwise, it seemed to wax fuller in the freedom of the old ways. -Even sweeter than the sense of passionate holiday was the taking -up of a common life together, the daily sharing of food and work -and rest, the doing of things he had done a hundred times before, -but never like this. Thyrza’s little cottage had been hung with new -curtains, and some unknown hand—which afterwards unexpectedly proved -to be Nell’s—had filled it with flowers on the evening of their -return. Bunches of primroses, violets and bluebells stuffed the vases -in bedroom and parlour, and the soft fugitive scent of April banks -mixed with the scent of lath and plaster which haunts old cottages, -and the more spicy, powdery smells of the shop. - -The days were warm and drowsy, and the fields lay in a muffle of -sunshine, their distances all blurred with heat. Round every farm -the orchards rolled in pink-stained clouds of bloom, and the young -wheat was green as a rainy sunset. The wind that brought the mutter -of the guns, brought also the bleating of lambs from the pastures; -scents seemed to hang and brood on the air, or drift slowly from the -woods—scents of standing water and budding thorn, of hazel leaves hot -in the sun, and soft mixed fragrances of gorse and fern, of cows, of -baking earth, of currant bushes in cottage gardens.... - -Towards evening Tom and Thyrza usually closed the shop, and came -out—either for a stroll up to Worge to see his family, or for some -more adventurous excursion to Brownbread Street, or Furnacefield, -or up to the North Road and the straggle of old Dallington. They -had one or two quite long walks, for a new enterprise had kindled -in them both, and for the first time there was mystery and allure -in some shaky signpost at the throws, or a little lane creeping off -secretly. One day they walked as far as Brightling, past the obelisk, -through the shuttling dimness of Pipers Wood and up Twelve Oaks Hill -by strange farms to the sudden clump of Brightling among the trees. -They went into the churchyard where the yews spread shadows nearly -as dark as their own blackness and strange white peacocks perched on -the tombstones, with shrill, unnatural cries. There was also a huge -cone-shaped object, built of damp stones and thickly grown with moss, -and Thyrza unaccountably took fright at this, and the peacocks, and -the shadows and the trees, and walked for most of the way home with -her head under Tom’s coat. - -He did not often think of when this time should end, of the day that -crept nearer and nearer to him over drowsing twilights and magical, -green sunrises. He knew that a month hence all this delight would -be a memory, that between him and the spurge-thickening fields of -May would lie all the life of ugly adventure into which fate had -pitched him—and Thyrza would come to him only on scraps of paper, in -puffs of scent, in fugitive dreams, in a passing light in some other -girl’s eyes.... But he was too simple and too happy to let thoughts -of the future spoil the present, besides, his habit of disregarding -the future now stood his friend. He would not see the clover in -bloom, but saw it in the green—deep, rippling, gleaming, like the -sea—he would miss the hay, but now he could see the buttercups under -the moon, so yellow that they seemed to paint the sky and turn the -moon to honey; Thyrza might in a month’s time be a memory, belong to -phantasy, but now she was a woman solid and close, his woman, the -maker of his home, the maker of himself anew.... Once his mother had -borne him, and now it seemed as if this woman had borne him again, -into a new experience, a new happiness, a new wonder—so perfect -and complete that sometimes he almost felt as if it did not matter -whether he held it for ever or for a day. - - -11 - -On his last evening, he went up to Worge to say good-bye. He felt -already as if he did not belong to the place. Harry’s drastic -dealings with the tilth seemed to have taken the fields away -from him—he no longer felt even a distant guardianship of those -brown-ribbed acres which had been green when he worked on them. He -felt, too, with a sense of estrangement, the dirt and litter of the -house, the muddling business which at six o’clock had Ivy swilling -out the scullery and Mrs. Beatup still struggling with the washing. -Thyrza never did a stroke of housework after dinner, and yet her -morning’s tasks were never hurried; she never had Ivy’s flushed, red -face and tousled hair, or Mrs. Beatup’s forehead shiny with sweat. - -His family were conscious of this—conscious that he now had a -standard of comparison by which to measure their short-comings, and -it made them sulkily suspicious in their attitude. He was already the -alien—the bird that has left the nest, the puppy that has grown up -and gone a-hunting on his own. But this sense of estrangement only -seemed to make his parting sadder, for he vaguely felt as if he had -left them before he need, had already divided himself from them by an -earlier good-bye, of which this was only the echo and the ghost. - -Mrs. Beatup enquired politely after Thyrza, and sent Ivy out to fetch -in the others. Zacky climbed on Tom’s knee and asked him to send him -home a German helmet, and Harry—whose heart was really very warm and -loving towards Tom—stood shyly behind his chair and could not speak a -word. Mus’ Beatup gave Tom an account of the Battle of the Ancre, but -failed to create the usual respectful impression. - -“You see, faather, I was out there, and I know that it happened -different. St. Quentin aun’t anywhere near the Rhine.” - -“There’s more’n one St. Quentin, saum as there’s more’n one -Mockbeggar, and more’n one Iden Green. How do you know as there’s no -St. Quentin on the Rhine? You’ve never bin there, and you’ll never be -there, nuther.” - -“I reckon I’ll be there before I’m many months older.” - -“You woan’t,” said Mus’ Beatup solemnly, “it’s more likely as the -Germans ull be crossing the River Cuckmere than as you’ll ever be -crossing the River Rhine. Now, be quiet, Nell, and a-done do, fur I -tell you it’s bin proved as we’ll never git to the River Rhine, so -where’s the sense of going on wud the war, I’d like to know?” - -“To prevent the Germans crossing the River Cuckmere,” snapped Nell. - -“Oh, doan’t go talking such tar’ble stuff,” moaned Mrs. Beatup. “If -the Germans caum here I’d die of fits.” - -“They woan’t come here,” said her husband, “and we’ll never git -there, so wot’s the sense of all this vrother, and giving up our lads -and ploughing up our grass and going short of beer, all to end where -we started? If this war had bin a-going to do us any good, it ud -a-done it before now, surelye; but it’s a lousy, tedious, lamentaable -war, and the sooner we git shut of it the better.” - -“Well, I must be going,” said Tom, standing up. He felt rather angry -with his father, who, he thought, talked like a “conscientious -objector,” and was prostrating his mighty intellect to base uses. -“But maybe the beer has addled him—he’s had a regular souse this -winter, by his looks.” - -He said good-bye to the family, refusing his mother’s invitation to -stay to supper, as he had promised to take Thyrza for a walk that -evening. However, he asked her to come with him to the door, as there -was something he wanted to say to her alone. - -Mrs. Beatup felt pleased at this mark of confidence, but all Tom had -to say as he kissed her on the threshold was— - -“Mother, if anything wur to happen to me ... out there, you know ... -you’d be good to Thyrza?” - -“Oh, Tom—you aun’t expecting aught?” - -“I hope not, surelye—but how am I to know?” - -Her face wrinkled for crying. - -“You didn’t use to spik lik that....” - -“Come, mother—be sensible. There aun’t no sense spikking different, -things being wot they are. I dudn’t use to be married ... it’s being -married that maakes a chap think of wot might happen.” - -“You’d want me to taake Thyrza to live here?...” - -“Reckon I wouldn’t. She’ll have her liddle bit of money, thank God, -and maybe a pension besides. It aun’t money as I’m thinking of—it’s -just—it’s just as she’ll break her heart.” - -“And I’ll break mine, too, I reckon.” - -Tom groaned. - -“You’re a valiant help to me, mother. I ask you a thing to maake me a -bit easier, and all you do is to vrother me the more.” - -“Doan’t you go abusing your mother, Tom—wud your last breath. If -Thyrza’s heart gits broke I’ll give her a bit of mine to mend it -with—but no good ever caum of talking of such things.” - -“I woan’t talk of them no more. Only, it had to be done—you see, -mother, there might be a little ’un as well as Thyrza....” - -“Oh, Tom, a liddle baby fur you!” - -He blushed—“There aun’t no knowing, and I’d be easier if....” - -“Oh, but I’d justabout love a liddle grandchild. You need never fret -over that, Tom. I’d give my days to a liddle young un of yourn.” - -He kissed her, and they parted in love. - - -12 - -He hurried back to Thyrza, and they shut up the shop, and went out to -the field by the willow pond. A green, still dusk lay over the fields -and sky; no stars were out yet, but the chalky moon hung low over -the woods of Burntkitchen. The distant guns were silent, only the -bleating of lambs came from the Trulilows, and every now and then a -burst of liquid, trilling, sucking melody from a blackbird among the -willows. - -“Hark to the bird,” said Thyrza. - -“Maybe he’s got a nest full of liddle ’uns.” - -“And a liddle wife as can’t sing—funny how hen-birds never sing, Tom.” - -“Thyrza, I wish as I cud maake a home fur you, dear.” - -“Wotever maakes you think of that? The birds’ nest? Reckon I’ve got a -dentical liddle home.” - -“But it’s wot you’ve always lived in. I never built it for you.” - -“Doan’t you go fretting over that. I’d be lonesome wudout the shop, -Tom—I doan’t think as I’ll ever want to be wudout the shop. And we’ve -bin so happy there together. It’s saum as if you’d built it fur me, -since you’ve maade it wot it never was before.” - -He drew her close to him, sleek, soft, heavy, like a little cat, and -leaned his cheek against her hair. - -“Reckon I’ll always think of you in it.... I’ll see you setting up in -the mornun wud your eyes all blinky and your hair streaming down—and -I’ll see you putting on the kettle and dusting the shop, and maybe -having a bit of talk over the counter wud a luckier chap than me. -And all the day through I’ll see you, and in the swale you’ll be -putting your head out for a blow of air, and there’ll be the lamp in -the window behind you ... and then you’ll lie asleep, and the room -ull be all moony and grey, and your liddle hand ull lie out on the -blanket—so, and your breath ull come lik the scent out of the grass -... and when you turn your body it’ll be lik the grass moving in the -wind—and I woan’t be there to see or hear or touch or smell you.” - -His arm tightened round her breast, and she leaned against him as if -she would fuse her body into his, share its travels, hardships and -dangers. The stars were creeping slowly into the sky, dim and rayless -in the thick Spring night, which had put a purple haze into the -zenith, and made the great moon glow like a copper pan. The fields -were blooming with a soft yellow—the waters of the pond had a faint -gleam on their stagnation, and the willows were like smoke with a -fire in its heart, their boughs pouring down in misty grey towards -the water, with points and sparks of light here and there, as the -radiance danced among their leaves. - -The swell of the field against the eastern constellations was broken -by the gable of the shop, rising over the hedge and pointing to the -sign of the Ram. Tom’s England—the England he would carry in his -heart—had widened to take in that little humped roof of moss-grown -tiles. It held not only the willow pond and the woman beside it, -but the home where together they had eaten the bread and drunk the -cup of common things. It was not perhaps a very lofty conception of -fatherland—not even so high as Harry’s conception of a country saved -by his plough. Tom’s country was only a little field-corner that held -his wife and his home, but as he sat there under the stars, he felt -in his vague, humble way, that it was a country a man would choose to -fight for, and for which perhaps he would not be unwilling to die. - - - - -PART IV: IVY - - -1 - -Towards June the country bounded by the Four Roads woke to a certain -liveliness. A big camp had sprung up on the outskirts of Hailsham, on -the ridge above Horse Eye, and the excitement spread to Brownbread -Street, Sunday Street, Bodle Street, Pont’s Green, Rushlake Green, -and other Streets and Greens—and cottage gardens were a-swing with -lines of khaki shirts, “soldiers’ washing,” taken in with high -delight at an army’s big spending. - -The girls of the neighbourhood began to take new sweethearts with -startling quickness. They came, these strangers from the North, -leaving their girls behind them, and the girls of the South had lost -their men to camps in France and Midland towns. No doubt some kept -faith with the absent, but the spirit of the days mistrusted space -as it mistrusted time, and the wisdom of love took no more account -of happiness a hundred miles away than of happiness a hundred months -ahead. There were wooings and matings and partings, all played out in -the few spare hours of a soldier’s day, in the few spare miles of his -roaming, under the thundery thick sky of a Sussex summer, when heat -and drench play their alternate havoc with the earth. - -In those days Ivy Beatup lifted up her head. She had had a dull time -since Kadwell and Viner and Pix went out to France. Thyrza’s cousin -had turned out miserable prey—he had actually proposed himself as her -husband to her father and mother, bringing forward most satisfactory -evidence of a more than satisfactory income, derived from Honey’s -Suitall Stores in Seaford. Thus the strain between Ivy and her family -was increased, and her presence at home became a burden of reproach. -They could not see why she refused to bestow her splendid healthy -womanhood on this poor creature, why she would rather scrub floors -and gut fowls than sit with folded hands in his parlour—that she had -“taken him on” merely to kill time, and that it wasn’t her fault if -he chose to treat her seriously and make a fool of himself. - -“You’ll die an old maid,” said her mother. “You’ll go to the bad,” -said her father, and Ivy, who had no intention of doing either, felt -angry and sore, and longed to justify herself by a new love-affair -more gloriously conducted. - -When the soldiers came to Hailsham, she saw her chance, and resolved -to make the most of it. She persuaded Harry to take her into the town -on market-day, and also found that she preferred the “pictures” there -to those at Senlac. Polly Sinden refused to abet her—Bill Putland -had given her distinct encouragement on his last leave, and Polly -decided that in future discreet behaviour would become her best. So -she refused to prowl of an evening with Ivy, either in Hailsham or -Senlac, and Ivy—since no girl prowls alone—had to take up with Jen -Hollowbone of the Foul Mile, the same whom Bob Kadwell had jilted, -but who, soothed by time and a new sweetheart, had generously -forgiven her rival, especially as Bob had once again transferred his -affections, and was now no more Ivy’s than Jen’s. - -The two girls went into Hailsham on market-days, and strolled that -way of evenings, winning the South Road by Stilliands Tower and -Puddledock, through the little lanes and farm-tracks that were now -all thick with June grass, and smelled of hayseed and fennel. With -grass and goose-foot sticking to their skirts, and their hair -spattered with the fallen blossoms of elderflower, they would come -out on the South Road, where the dust swept through the twilight -before the wind. Warm and flushed, with laughing eyes, and arms -entwined, and slow proud movements of their bodies, the girls would -stroll past the camp gates, leaning clumsily together and giggling. -The men would come pouring out after the day’s routine, seeking what -diversion they could find in lane or market-town. It was in this way -that Ivy met Corporal Seagrim of the Northumberland Fusiliers. - -He was a tall, dark giant, well past thirty, with a becoming grizzle -in his hair, over the temples. His face was brown as a cob-nut, and -his speech so rough and uncouth in the northern way that at first Ivy -could hardly understand him. They met in the market-place. He had a -companion who paired with Jen—an under-sized little miner, with a -pale face and red lips, but good enough for Jen, since she already -had a boy in France. Of course Ivy had several boys—but they were -no more than good comrades, the interchangers of cheery postcards -on service and cheery kisses on leave. If she had had a boy like -Jen’s, she would have been more faithful to him than Jen was, but she -was free to do as she liked with Seagrim—free when they met in the -market-place, that is to say, for by the time they said good-bye at -Four Wents under the stars, she was free no longer. - -They had gone to the “pictures,” but soon the moving screen had -become a dazzle to Ivy, the red darkness an enchantment, the tinkling -music an intoxication. Seagrim’s huge brown hand lay heavily on hers, -and her limbs shook as she leaned against his shoulder, almost in -silence, since they found it hard to understand each other’s speech. -The man thrilled and confused her as no other had done—whether it -was his riper age, or his almost perfect physical beauty, or some -strange animal force that thrilled his silence and slow clumsy -movements, she did not seek to tell. Self-knowledge was beyond -her—all she knew was that she could never give him the careless -chum-like affection she had given her boys, that between them there -never would be those light hearty kisses which she had so often taken -and bestowed. She felt herself languid, troubled, full of a dim -glamour that brought both delight and pain. The music, the red glow -all seemed part of her sensation, though before she used scarcely -to notice them, except to hail a popular tune or an opportunity for -caresses. - -When the show ended, the soldiers offered to walk with the girls as -far as Four Wents, where the Puddledock lane joins the South Road. -Jen and the miner walked on ahead, she holding stiffly by his arm, in -a manner suitable to one demi-affianced elsewhere. Ivy and Seagrim -followed. They did not speak; his arm was about her, and every now -and then he would stop and pull her to him, dragging her up against -him in silent passion, taking from her lips kiss after kiss. The -aching passionate night looked down on them from the sky where the -great stars jigged like flames, was close to them in the hedges where -the scented night-wind fluttered, and the dim froth of chervil and -bennet swam against the hazels. For the first time Ivy seemed to feel -a hushed yet powerful life in the country which till then she had -scarcely heeded more than the music and red lamps of the show. Now -the scents that puffed out of the grass made her senses swim, the -soft sough of the wind over the fields, the distant cry of an owl in -Tillighe Wood, made her heart ache with a longing that was half its -own consummation, made her lean in a drowse of ecstasy and languor -against Seagrim’s beating heart, as he held her in the crook of his -arm, close to his side. - -At the Wents the parting came, with a loud ring of laughter from Jen, -and a “pleased to ha’ met yo’” from the miner. But Ivy clung to her -man, her eyes blurred with tears, her throat husky and parched with -love as she murmured against his thick brown neck— - -“I’ll be seeing you agaun?...” - -“Aye, and yo’ will, li’l lass, li’l loove” ... he swore, and -straightway made tryst. - -When he was gone the night still seemed full of him—his strength and -his beauty and his wonder. - - -2 - -Ivy was in love. The glamour had transmuted her country stuff as -surely as it transmutes more delicate substance. The spring rain -falls on the thick-stalked hogweed as on the spurred columbine, and -the divine poetry of Love had given to her, as to a more tender -nature, its unfailing gift of a new heaven and a new earth. - -Her whole being seemed gathered up into Seagrim, into a strange -happiness which had its roots in pain. For the first time pain -and happiness were united in one emotion; when she was away from -him, pain was the strong partner, when with him, then happiness -prevailed—and yet not always, for sometimes in his presence her heart -swooned within her, and her face would grow pale under his kisses and -a moan stifle in her throat, and also, sometimes, when he was away, a -strange ecstasy would seize her, and all her world would shine, and -her common things of slops and guts and mire become beautiful, and -the very thought of his being dazzle all the earth.... - -She never told him of this, indeed she herself scarcely realised it. -She felt in her thoughts a soft confusion, a happy bewilderment, -a sweet ache, and everything was changed and everyone spoke with -a new voice—the very kitchen boards were not the same since she -met Seagrim, and her family had queer new powers of delighting -and grieving her. “I must be in love,” she said to herself, and -straightway bought her man a pound of the best tobacco at the Shop. - -She was very good to him. Her hearty, generous nature found relief -in spending itself upon him. She seldom came to the meeting-place -without some present of tobacco or food—she did him a dozen little -services, mended his clothes, marked his handkerchiefs, polished his -buttons and his boots. Strangely spiritual as the depths of her love -might be, its expression was entirely practical and animal. To serve -him and caress him was her only way of revealing those dim marvels -that swam at the back of her mind. - -The man himself was bewitched. Her generosity touched him, and it -would be a strange fellow indeed who would not love to hold her -to him, sweet and tumbled like an over-blown flower, and take the -softness of her parted lips and sturdy neck. Ivy was like the month -in which he wooed her—July, thick, drowsy, blooming, ripe, lacking -the subtlety of spring and the dignity of autumn, but more satisfying -to the common man who prefers enjoyment to promise or memory. - -They met most evenings, he walking eastward, she westward, to Four -Wents; there, where the tall stile stands between two shocks of -fennel, they would lean together in the first charm of tryst, the -dusk thickening round them, hazing road and fields and barns and -bushes, their own faces swimming up out of it to each other’s eyes, -like reflections in a pond—hers round and flushed under her tousled -hair, like a poppy in a barley-field, his brown and predatory with -its hawk-like nose and piercing eye under the grizzled curls. Then -the dusk would smudge them into each other and they would become one -in the swale.... - -He led her up and down the little rutted lanes, under a violet sky -where the stars were red and the moon was a golden horn. The thick -fanning of the July air brought scents of hayseed and flowering bean, -the miasmic perfume of meadowsweet, the nutty smell of ripening -corn, and the drugged sweetness of hopfields. All round them would -hang the great tender silence of night, the passionate stillness of -the earth under the moon, and their poor broken words only seemed a -part of that silence.... “My loove, my li’l lass.” ... “I love you -unaccountable, Willie.” ... “Coom closer, my dear.” ... The wind -rustled over the orchards of Soul Street, and the horns of the moon -were red, and the sky thick and dark as a grape, when they came back -to the tall stile at the throws, and parted there with caresses which -love made groping and vows which love choked to whispers. - -On Sundays they met more ceremonially, pacing up and down the road -at Sunday Street, from the shop to the Rifle Volunteer—which was the -parade-ground of those girls of the parish who had sweethearts. Here -Jen Hollowbone showed her Ted and Polly Sinden her Bill, and Ivy -Beatup showed her Willie, walking proudly on his arm, smiling with -all her teeth at the girls whose sweethearts were away and at the -girls who had no sweethearts at all. - -She even brought him to Worge once or twice, but her family did not -like him. This was partly because they were still the champions of -the rejected Ern Honey, and partly because they resented his gruff -manner, and harsh, rumbling speech. He did not shine in company—he -was for ever boasting the superiority of Northumberland ways over -those of Sussex, and even told Mus’ Beatup that he “spake like a -fule” on American Intervention. He horrified Nell by drinking out -of his saucer—a depth below any of the family’s most degrading -collapses—and offended Harry and Zacky by taking no notice of them -or interest in the farm. Indeed the only being at Worge he seemed -to care about—not excepting Ivy, whom he almost ignored on these -occasions—was Nimrod, the old retriever; to him alone he would smile -and be friendly, hugging the old black head against his tunic, and -patting and slapping Nim’s sides till he became demoralised by this -unaccustomed fondling and frisked about with muddy paws—which was -all put down to Seagrim for unrighteousness in his account with Mrs. -Beatup. - -“Wot d’you want wud un, Ivy?” she asked once—“a gurt dark tedious -chap lik that, wud never a good word for a soul—not even yourself, he -doan’t sim to have—and a furriner too.” - -“He aun’t a furriner.” - -“He aun’t from these parts, like some I cud naum. You’re a fool if -you say no to a valiant chap lik Ernie Honey and taake up wud a black -unfriendly feller as no one here knows naun about.” - -“Well, he doan’t have to have his inside tied up wud a truss lik a -parcel of hay, caase it falls out.” - -“You hoald your rude tongue. Wot right have you to know aught of Ern -Honey’s inside? And better a inside lik a parcel of hay than a heart -lik a barnyard stone. He’s a hard-hearted man, your sojer—cares for -naun saave a pore heathen dog wot he brings spannelling into the -kitchen.” - -“He cares for me.” - -“It doan’t sim lik it wud his ‘Eh, lass?—eh, lass?’ whensumdever you -spik. Reckon you maake yourself cheap as rotten straw when you git so -stuck on him.” - -“Who said I wur stuck on him?—he aun’t the fust I’ve kept company -with.” - -“No, he aun’t. You’re parish talk wud your goings on. You’ll die an -oald maid in the wark’us, and bring us to shaum—and Harry ull bring -us to auction, and Tom ull be killed by a German, and bring us to -death in sorrow. All my children have turned agaunst me now I’m old,” -and Mrs. Beatup began to cry into her apron. - -Ivy’s big arms were round her at once.... - - -3 - -Relations between Ivy and Nell had always been a little uneasy. -Ivy was tolerant and good-humoured, but could not always hide the -contempt which she felt for Nell’s refinements, while Nell, though -she did not despise Ivy, hated her coarseness—particularly since she -could never see it through her own eyes alone, but through others to -which it must appear even grosser than to herself. - -One evening Nell came in from school, and as she took off her hat -before the bit of glass on the kitchen wall, could see the reflection -of Ivy munching her tea, which she had started late, after a day’s -washing. Her sleeves were still rolled up, showing her strong arms, -white as milk to the elbow, then brown as a rye-bread crust. Her -meadow-green dress was unbuttoned, as if to give her big breast play, -and her neck was thick and white, its modelling shown by bluish -shadows. “She’s a whacker!” thought Nell angrily to herself, then -suddenly turned round and said— - -“Jerry Sumption’s here.” - -“Lork!” said Ivy, biting off a crust. - -“I met him,” continued Nell, “and he knows you’re going with -Seagrim.” - -“Well, wot if he does?” - -“It might be awkward for you. He seemed very much upset about it.” - -“Wot fur dud you go and tell un?” - -Nell sniffed. - -“I didn’t tell him. But your love-making isn’t exactly private.” - -“No need fur it to be.” - -“I don’t know—it might be better for you as well as for us if the -whole parish didn’t know so much about your affairs.” - -“And I reckon you think as no one knows about yourn?” - -Nell flushed— - -“Leave my affairs alone. I’ve none for you to meddle with.” - -“Oh, no—you aun’t sweet on Parson—not you, and nobody knows you go -after un!” - -“Adone-do wud your vulgar talk,” cried Nell furiously, forgetting in -her anger to clip and trim her blurry Sussex speech. “I’ve warned you -about young Sumption, and it aun’t my fault if you have trouble.” - -“There woan’t be no trouble. I’ve naun to do wud Jerry nor he wud -me—I got shut of him a year agone.” - -All the same, she was not so easy as her words made out. It was evil -luck which had brought Jerry Sumption back at just this time. He was -bound to be a pest anyhow, though perhaps if his jealousy had not -been roused he might have had enough sense to keep away. Now he would -most likely come and make a scene. Even though she would not be his -girl, he could never bear to see her another man’s; he might even try -to make mischief between her and Seagrim—be hemmed to the gipsy! At -all events he would be sure to come and kick up trouble. - -She was partly right. Jerry came, but he did not make a scene. He -turned up the next morning, looking strangely dapper and subdued. -Ivy interviewed him in the outer kitchen, where she was blackleading -the fireplace. It spoke much for the sincerity of his passion that -he had hardly ever seen his charmer in a presentable state—she was -always either scrubbing the floor, or cooking the dinner, or washing -the clothes, or cleaning the hearth. To-day there was a big smudge -of black across her cheek, and her hair was tumbling over ears and -forehead, from which she occasionally swept it back with a smutty -hand. - -Contrariwise, Jerry was neat and dressed out as she had never seen -him. His puttees were carefully wound, his buttons were polished, his -tunic was brushed, his hair was sleek with water. He stood looking at -her in his furtive gipsy way, which somehow suggested a cast in his -fine eyes which were perfect enough. - -“Ivy....” - -She had decided that he should be the first to speak, and had let the -silence drag on for two full minutes. - -“Well?” - -“I’ve come—I’ve come to ask you to forgive me.” - -“I’ll forgive you sure enough, Jerry Sumption—but I aun’t going wud -you no more, if that’s wot you mean.” - -“You’ve taken up with another fellow.” - -“That’s no concern of yourn.” - -“But tell me if it’s truth or lie?” - -“It’s truth.” - -“And you love him?” - -“Maybe I do.” - -Jerry’s face went the colour of cheese. - -“Then you’ll never come with me again, I reckon.” - -“I justabout woan’t”—Ivy sat up on her heels and looked straight into -his dodging eyes—“I’ll forgive you all, but I’ll give you naun—d’you -maake that out? I cud never have loved you, and you’ve shown me plain -as mud as you aun’t the kind of chap a girl can go with for fun. If -you’re wise you’ll kip awaay—we can’t be friends. So you go and find -some other girl as ull do better fur you than I shud ever.” - -“If there hadn’t been this chap——” - -“It ud have bin the saum. I’m not your sort, my lad, for all you -think.” - -“Will this other chap marry you?” - -“I’ll tell naun about un. He’s no consarn of yourn, as I’ve said a -dunnamany times.” - -“Ivy, when I was in France, I thought to myself—‘Maybe if I’m sober -and keep straight, she’ll have me back.’” - -“I’m middling glad you thought it, Jerry, fur it wur a good thought. -You’ll lose naun by kipping straight and sober, so you go on wud it, -my lad.” - -“I don’t care, if I can’t get you.” - -“That’s unsensible talk. I’m not the only girl that’s going—thur’s -many better.” - -“Reckon there is—reckon I’ll get one for every day of the week. No -need to tell me girls are cheap—I only thought I’d like one that -wasn’t, for a change.” - -“Doan’t you talk so bitter.” - -“I talk as I feel. You’ve settled with this chap, Ivy?” - -“I’ve told you a dunnamany times. Wot maakes you so thick?” - -He did not answer, but turned away, and walked out of the room with a -stealthy, humble step, like a beaten dog. Ivy’s heart smote her—she -could not let him go without a kind word. - -“Jerry!” she called after him. But he did not turn back—and then, -unaccountably, she felt frightened. - - -4 - -It was odd that Jerry’s cowed retreat should have caused her more -fear than his swaggering aggression—nevertheless, all that day she -could not get rid of her uneasiness, and with the arbitrariness -of superstition linked the evening’s catastrophe with the earlier -foreboding. - -She had run down to the Shop, to buy some washing soda, and have a -chat with Thyrza, and on her return was met in the passage by Nell, -who looked at her hard and said— - -“There’s someone come to see you—a Mrs. Seagrim.” - -Ivy’s heart jumped. She wished that there had not been quite such -a wind to blow about her hair, and that she had had time to mend -the hole in her skirt that morning. If Willie’s mother had come to -inspect his choice ... howsumdever, he had often spoken of his mother -as a kind soul. - -But the woman in the kitchen with Mrs. Beatup was only a few years -older than Ivy—a tall, slim creature, with reddish hair, and a -beautiful pale face. She was dressed like a lady, too, in a neat coat -and skirt, with gloves and cloth-topped boots. Ivy felt the blood -drain from her heart, and yet she had anticipated Mrs. Beatup with no -definite thought when the latter said— - -“Ivy, this is Corporal Seagrim’s wife.” - -“Pleased to meet you,” Ivy heard someone say, and it must have been -herself, for the next moment she was shaking hands with Mrs. Seagrim. - -There was a moment’s pause, during which the two women stared at Ivy, -then the corporal’s wife remarked, with a North-country accent that -came startlingly from her elegance, that it was gey dirty weather. - -“Thicking up fur thunder, I reckon,” said Mrs. Beatup. - -“Yo get it gey thick and saft down here, A’m thinking.” - -“Unaccountable,” said Mrs. Beatup, and squinted nervously at Ivy. - -Ivy’s wits had at first been blown to the four winds, and she sat -during this conversation with her mouth open, but gradually resolve -began to form in her sickened heart; she felt her brain and body -stiffen—she would fight.... - -“A chose a bad week t’coom Sooth,” started Mrs. Seagrim, “but -’twas all the choice A had—A hae t’roon my man’s business now he’s -sojering. Yo’ mither tells me, Miss Beatup, as nane here knaws he’s -marrit. But marrit he is, and has twa bonny bairns.” - -“I know,” said Ivy—“he toald me.” - -“He toald you!” broke in Mrs. Beatup. “You said naun to me about it.” - -“I disremember. He wur only here the twice.” - -Mrs. Seagrim looked at her curiously. - -“Weel, maist folk didn’t sim t’knaw. A took a room in Hailsham toon, -and the gude woman said as how t’Corporal had allus passed for a -bachelor man, and was coorting a lass up t’next village.” - -“Maybe she thinks he wur a-courting me,” snapped Ivy, “but he dud -naun of the like. He toald me he was married the fust day I set eyes -on un.” - -“Weel, that was on’y reet. So many of those marrit sojer chaps go -and deceive puir lasses. A hear there’s been a mort of trouble and -wickedness done that way.” - -“Maybe,” said Ivy—“women are gurt owls, most of them.” - -“And,” continued Mrs. Seagrim, “it’s only reet and kind of the wives -of such men to go and tell any poor body as is like to be deceived by -them.” - -“That’s true enough. But your trouble’s thrown away on me. I knew all -about un from the fust.” - -“Weel, A’ve done ma duty ony way,” and Mrs. Seagrim rose, extending -a gloved hand, “and A’m reet glad as Seagrim was straight with yo’, -when he seems to have passed as single with everyone else.” - -“It must be a tar’ble trial to have a man lik that,” said Ivy. -“He’ll cost you a dunnamany shilluns and pounds if you’ve got to go -trapesing after him everywheres, to tell folk he’s wed.” - -Mrs. Seagrim smiled. - -When Ivy had shown her out of the front-door, she would have liked to -escape to her bedroom, but Mrs. Beatup filled the passage. - -“Ivy—you might have toald me. I maade sure as he’d deceived you.” - -“And I tell you he dudn’t. He toald me he wur wed, and about his -childer, and that dress-up hop-pole of a wife of his’n.” - -“And you went walking out wud a married man, for all the Street to -see!” - -“Why not? There wur no harm done.” - -“No harm! I tell you it wurn’t simly.” - -“He’d no friends in these parts, and a man liks a woman he can talk -to.” - -“He’d got his wife, surelye.” - -“Not hereabouts. He wur middling sick wud lonesomeness.” - -Mrs. Beatup sniffed. - -“Well, you can justabout git shut of him now. Your faather and me -woan’t have you walking out wud a married man. So maake up your mind -to that.” - -Ivy muttered something surly and thick—the tears were already in her -throat, and pushing past her mother, she ran upstairs. - -Once alone, her feelings overcame her, and she threw herself upon the -bed, sobbing with grief and rage. Seagrim had deceived her, had meant -to deceive her—that was quite plain. Though he had never definitely -spoken of marriage, he had quite definitely posed to her as a single -man. She gathered from Mrs. Seagrim that he made a habit of these -escapades. Lord! what a fool she had been—and yet, why should she -have doubted him whom she loved so utterly? - -Her hair, matted into her eyes, was soaked with tears, as she rolled -her head to and fro on the pillow, thinking of the man she had loved, -loved still, and yet hated and despised. He had played her false—she -was unable to get over this fact, as a more sophisticated nature -might have done. Her confidence, her devotion, her passion, he had -paid with treachery and lies. She had not fought her battle with Mrs. -Seagrim in his defence—at least not principally—she had fought it -to save herself from humiliation in the eyes of this woman, of her -mother, and of Sunday Street. - -Yet she cried to him out of the deep—“Oh, Willie, Willie....” She -thought of him in his strength and grizzled beauty—she remembered -particularly his neck and his hands. “Oh, Willie, Willie....” She had -loved him as she had loved no other man. No other man had filled the -day and the night and brought the stars to earth for her and made -earth a shining heaven. Her love was crude and physical, but it is -one of the paradoxes of love that the greater its materialism the -greater its spiritual power, that passion can open a mystic paradise -to which romance and affection have not the key. Ivy had seen the -heavens open to this clumsy soldier of hers—to this man who had -tricked her, bubbled her, brought her to shame. - -She wondered if he knew of his wife’s visit—perhaps he was with her -now. Did he love her?... and those two youngsters up in the North—a -moan dragged from her lips. His wife was dressed like a lady, but she -talked queer, though maybe they all talked like that up North. Had -she believed Ivy when she said she had always known Seagrim was a -married man? Had her mother believed her? Would Sunday Street believe -her? - -She sat up on the bed, and pushed the damp hair back from her eyes. -She would face them out, anyhow. No one should point at her in -scorn—or at Seagrim, either, even though she could never trust him or -love him again. She would give the lie to all who mocked or pitied. -No one should pry into her aching heart. Ivy Beatup wasn’t the one -to be poor-deared or serve-her-righted. She crossed the room, and -plunged her face into the basin, slopping her tear-stained cheeks -with cold water. Then she brushed back and twisted up her hair, -smoother her gown, and went downstairs with no traces of her grief -save an unnatural tidiness. - - -5 - -Ivy held her bold front for the rest of that week. Her secret portion -of sorrow and craving she kept hid. Her floors were scrubbed and her -pans scoured no worse for lack of that glory which makes like the -silver wings of a dove those that have lien among the pots.... She -still had strength to cling to the empty days, to serve through the -meaningless routine that had once been a joyous rite. - -Everyone had heard about Seagrim now, and had also heard that Ivy -Beatup had not been deceived, but had known about his wife from the -first. Some believed her, accounting for her silence by the fact that -her family would have interfered had they known she was walking out -with a married man. These for the most part called Ivy Beatup a bad -lot, though her sister-in-law Thyrza stood up for her, declaring -Ivy’s friendship with the Corporal could only have been innocent and -respectable—but of course Thyrza was now allied with the Beatups, -and would be anxious for their good name. A large proportion of the -street, however, did not believe Ivy’s version of the story—they -would have her tricked, deluded—betrayed, they hinted—and found an -even greater delight in pity than in blame. - -All joined in wondering what she would do the following Sunday. She -would not have the face to parade the man as usual. Perhaps Mrs. -Seagrim was still at Hailsham—perhaps, even if she was not, the -Corporal would not dare show his face after what had happened or, if -he did, surely the girl would not be so brazen as to trot him out now -that she knew all the parish knew she was a bad lot—or a poor victim. - -However, when Sunday came, Ivy appeared in her best blue dress, and -on Seagrim’s arm, as if nothing had happened. Her eyes were perhaps -a little over-bright with defiance, her cheeks a little over-red for -even such a full-blown peony as her face, but her manner was assured, -if not very dignified, and her grins as many-toothed as on less -doubtful occasions. - -To tell the truth, Ivy had not meant to offer such a public challenge -to a local opinion. She had made up her mind that Seagrim would not -appear at all, or in a very subdued condition. However, on Friday she -had a letter of the usual loving kind, excusing his absence during -the week on the score of extra duty and asking her to meet him at -Worge gate next Sunday morning—“with her boy’s fondest love” and a -row of kisses. - -Ivy’s teeth bit deep into her lip as she read this letter. He was -still deceiving her, though now, thank the Lord, he was also -deceived himself. He did not know his wife had been to see her, -and doubtless Mrs. Seagrim had now gone back to “the business”—a -corn-chandler’s in Alnwick. Ivy wondered why she had kept her own -counsel, but no doubt the “dressed-up hop-pole” knew best how to deal -with her man. If she betrayed her plot it might have led to friction -between an affectionate husband and wife, and she probably felt that -she had “settled” Ivy. - -The girl’s blood ran thick with humiliation—both the man and the -woman had shamed her. Doubtless they loved each other well, though -he, with a man’s greediness, had wanted another woman in her absence. -He could never have meant to marry Ivy—his intentions must always -have been vague or dishonourable. As for the wife, having spent -some of the cash left over from her clothes, in running down South -to look after him, she had no doubt been satisfied with warning Ivy -and coaxing her husband, and had then gone back to her flourishing -shop. True that this letter hardly pointed to the success of her -tactics, but Ivy knew too much about men to attach great importance -to it—Seagrim was just the sort of man who would have a girl wherever -he went, and yet always keep the first place in his heart for the -woman who had also his name. She, Ivy, was probably only a secondary -attachment to fill the place of the other, and no doubt in that -other’s absence; he would make every effort to keep her—but she was a -stop-gap, an interlude, to him who had been her all, and filled the -spare moments of one who had filled her life. - -She forced herself to bite down on this bitter truth, and swallowed -it—and it gave her strength for the course she meant to take. - -She found Seagrim leaning against Worge gate, sucking the knob of his -swagger stick, and gazing at her with shining long-lashed eyes of -grey. For a moment the sight of him there, his greeting, the husky -tones love put into his voice, his sunburnt, hawk-like strength, all -combined to make her falter. But she was made of too solid stuff -to forget his callous deception of her, which he still maintained, -drawing her arm through his with a few glib lies about extra duty and -the sergeant. Contempt for him stabbed her heart and eyes, and for a -few moments she could neither look at him nor speak. - -They went to their usual parade ground, marching to and fro between -the Bethel and the Shop, and Ivy’s confidence revived with her -defiance of public opinion. “They’ll see I doan’t care naun fur wot -they think,” she said to herself, and met boldly the outraged eyes of -Bourners and Sindens and Putlands. It was a hot day, and there was -a smell of dust in the air, which felt heavy and thick. The sun was -dripping on Sunday Street, making the red roofs swim and dazzle in -a yellow haze; the leaves of the big oaks by the forge drooped with -dust, and the Bethel’s stare was hot and angry, as if its lidless -eyes ached in the glow. - -Ivy decided that she might now end her ordeal of the burning -ploughshare. She had strutted up and down a dozen times in front of -her neighbours, defying their gossip, their blame and their pity. -“I done it—now I can git shut of un,” and her gaze of mixed pain -and contempt wandered up to his brown face as he walked beside her, -talking unheard in his booming Northumberland voice. - -“It’s middling hot in the Street—let’s git into the Spinney.” - -He kindled at once—it would be good to sit with her on trampled hazel -leaves, to lie with their faces close and the green spurge waving -round their heads in a filter of sunlight. Usually these suggestions -came from him, by the rules of courting, but he loved her for the -boldness which could break all rule even as it lacked all craft. He -slid his hand along her arm, and pressed it, with joy at the quiver -she gave. - -The Twelve Pound spinney stood about thirty yards back from the -Street, behind the Bethel, and was reached by a little path and a -stile opposite the Horselunges. As they passed the inn, Ivy saw Mrs. -Breathing opening the door and the shutters for the Sunday’s short -traffic, and at the same time saw ahead of her a dusty khaki figure -ambling towards the sign with the particular padding unsoldierly -tread of Jerry Sumption. - -“He’s on the drink, now’s he knows as he can’t git me,” she -thought—“the bad gipsy.” Then a feeling of regret and hopelessness -came over her. Here were two men whose love she had muddled—one who -had hurt her and one whom she had hurt. Was love all hurting and -sorrow? For the first time the careless game of a girl’s years became -almost a sinister thing. Her hand dragged at Seagrim’s arm, as if -unconsciously and despite herself her body appealed to the man her -soul despised ... then she lifted her eyes, and looked into Jerry’s -as he passed, trotting by with hanging head and queer look, like a -mad dog ... yes, love was a tar’ble game. - -The black, still shadows of Twelve Pound Wood swallowed her and -Seagrim out of the glare. The clop of hoofs and bowl of wheels on -the Street came as from a great way off, and the hum of poised and -darting insects, thick among the foxgloves, seemed to shut them into -a little teeming world of buzz and pollen-dust and sun-trickled -green. Seagrim stood still, and his arm slid from the crook of Ivy’s -across her back, drawing her close. But with a sudden twisting -movement she set herself free, standing before him in the path, with -the tall foxgloves round her, flushed and freckled like her face, -and behind her the pale cloud of the bennet heads like melting smoke. - -“Kip clear of me, Willie Seagrim—I’ll have no truck wud you. I’ve met -your wife.” - -The man, slow of speech, gaped at her without a word. - -“Yes. She caum round to our plaace three days agone, and shamed me -before my mother. But I said I knew as you wur married, and to-day I -walked out wud you to show the foalkses here I aun’t bin fooled. Now -I’ve shown ’em, you can go. I’m shut of you.” - -“Ivy—yo’re telling me that my Bess——” - -“Yes—your Bess, wud gloves and buttoned boots and——” She checked -herself. “Yes, she caum, and tried to put me to shaum. But I druv her -off, surelye; and now I’m shut of you, fur a hemmed chap wot fooled -me wud a lie.” - -“But A no harmed yo’——” - -“Harmed me!”—she gasped. - -“Dom that Bess for a meddlesome fule. Oh, she’s gey canny, that Bess. -But Ivy, li’l Ivy, yo’ll no cast me off for that?” - -“Why shud I kip you?—you’ve bin a-fooling me. You maade as you wur a -free man, and all the while you wur married. I—I loved you.” - -“And yo’ kin lo’ me still....” He sought to take her, but she pushed -him off. - -“Reckon I can’t. Reckon as I’ll never disremember all the lies you’ve -said. And you spuk of loving me ... knowing all the whiles.... Oh, -you sought to undo me! Reckon I’m jest a gurt trusting owl, but it -wur middling cruel of you to trick me so.” - -“Ivy—by God A sweer——” - -“Be hemmed to your silly swears. I’ll never believe you more.” - -“But yo’ll no cast me off fur a wumman up North....” - -“I don’t care where she be. She’s yourn—and you hid her from me. If -you’d toald me straight, maybe I—but ...” - -“Yo’ na speered of me. Why should A have spoken?” - -“You did spik—you spuk as a free man.” - -“A was a fule—yo’ made me mad for you.” - -His eye was darkening, and the corners of his mouth had an angry -twist. - -“You toald me as extra duty kept you away last week,” continued Ivy, -“and it wurn’t—it wur your wife. Reckon you love her and I’m only a -girl fur your spare days. You’d kip me on fur that.” - -“A’ll keep yo’ on for naething. If yo’ don’t like me, yo’ can go.” - -“It’s you who can go. I’m shut of you from this day forrard. You git -back to Hailsham this wunst and never come here shaming me more.” - -“Yo’ll be shamed if I go. Better for yo’ if I stay.” - -“If you stay you’ll shaum me furder, fur you’ll shaurn me wud my own -heart. Git you gone, Willie Seagrim, and find a bigger fool than me.” - -He shrugged his shoulders, and her heart sickened with jealousy, -knowing that her loss to him could not be so serious as his to her, -since he had his beautiful pale Bess, with her red hair and stooping -back, whom all the time he had loved more than he loved Ivy, because -she was his children’s mother and had rights which he respected. He -would soon forget Ivy; perhaps he would find another girl to solace -his spare hours, but anyhow he would forget her. The thought almost -made her hold him back, cling to him, and seek to wrest him from the -other woman with her self-confident possession. But she was withheld -by her sense of outrage, and by a queer pride she had always had in -herself, a rustic straightness which had gone with her through all -her many amours. To surrender now could only mean disgrace, since -she felt that in some odd way it meant surrender to Bess as well as -to Bess’s master. If she became Seagrim’s woman, which she must be -now, or nothing, Bess would somehow triumph, and triumph more utterly -than if she threw him off with scorn. Besides, he had fooled her and -lied to her; he was not worth having—let him go, though her heart -bled, and her bowels ached, as she watched him march off away from -her, shaking his shoulders in jaunty swagger, the sunlight gleaming -on his grizzled hair, the curls she had loved to pull. She could have -called him back, and he would have come, but her lips were shut and -her throat was dry. He vanished round a bend of the path, and all -that was left of him was a crunching footstep, heavy on last year’s -leaves. Then that too was gone, and with a little moan Ivy slid down -among the foxgloves and bennets, and sobbed with her forehead against -the earth. - - -6 - -After a little while she pulled herself up and wiped her eyes. Her -head ached and Twelve Pound Wood was blurry with her tears. The sun -struck down upon her back, baking, aching, mocking her with the thick -yellow light in which the flies danced and the pollen hung. She -wanted to creep into the shade. - -But she must go home and save her face. It was dinner-time, and she -must join her family with her old bravery, or they would suspect her -humiliation. She rose to her feet, smoothed her dress, dusted off the -bennet flowers and goose-foot burrs and the rub of pollen from the -foxgloves, pushed back the straggling hair under her hat, wiped her -eyes again, and hoped the stains and blotches of her weeping would -fade before she came to Worge. Then she set out for the opening of -the wood. A man’s shadow lay across it, though she could not see -him as he stood behind an ash-stump. Her breathing became shallow, -and her heart thudded.... He had come back, to find her in her -weakness—he was waiting for her.... No, it was not he, this smaller -man, crouched like a fox against the stump. - -“Jerry,” she cried, as she turned the elbow of the path, and met him -face to face. - -He was drunk; his eyes showed it with their gleam of bleared stars, -his flushed cheeks and dark swelled veins, his hair hanging in a -fringe over his brow, his mouth both fierce and loose.... He lurched -towards her, and she just managed to brush past him, tumbling -ungracefully over the hurdle that shut off the wood. He must have -just come, for he had missed Seagrim—he might have stumbled over her -as she lay and cried among the grasses. - -She did not fall as she jumped the hurdle, but her ankle turned, -making her stagger, and by the time she could right herself, Jerry -stood before her, blocking the way to the Street. Then she saw for -the first time that he had a hammer in his hand. Ivy gave a loud -scream, and darted sideways, scrambling through the hedge into Twelve -Pound field. Jerry was after her, without a word, no longer the -furtive, padding animal she had despised, but the armed and terrible -beast of prey that would kill and devour the foolhardy huntress who -had roused him. She staggered up the field, too breathless to cry, -but he drew even with her in a few strides, and grabbed her by the -arm. - -“Stop, Ivy, and say your prayers. I’m going to kill you.” - -She could not speak, for her throat was dried up. Jerry’s eyes were -more of a threat than his word. They were on fire—his skin was on -fire—liquor and madness had set him alight; and in his hand was a -hammer to hammer out her brains. She could neither cry to his mercy -nor appeal to his reason—her physical powers were failing her, and -both mercy and reason in him had been burnt up. - -He gave her a violent push, and she fell on her knees. - -“That’s right. Say your prayers. I’m a clergyman’s son, and you -shan’t die without asking pardon for your sins. I saw you go into the -wood with him, as you wouldn’t with me.... I’ll kill you quick, you -shan’t have any pain.... I loved you once, I reckon.” - -He swung up the hammer, but he was too drunk to take aim, and the -action woke her out of the trance of fear into which he had plunged -her. She felt something graze bruisingly down her hip—then she was -scrambling on her feet again, rushing for the hedge. - -The hedge of Twelve Pound field is a thick hedge of wattles and -thorn. Ivy, too mad to look for a gap, tried to force her way through -it. Her head and arms stuck, and she heard Jerry running. Then at -last loud screams broke from her—scream after scream, as he seized -her by the feet and pulled her backwards through the brambles, -leaving shreds of blue gown and yellow hair on every twig. He pulled -her out, and flung her rolling on the grass; then the hammer swung -again.... - -But the field was full of shoutings and voices, of feet trampling -round her head. Then two hands came under her armpits, dragging her -up, and she saw her father. She saw her brother Harry, looking very -green and scared, and last of all Jerry plunging in the lock of two -huge arms, which gripped him powerless and belonged to the Reverend -Mr. Sumption. - -“Take her away,” said the minister. “I’ll keep hold of the boy.” - -“I wouldn’t have hurt her,” moaned Jerry. “I’m a clergyman’s son—I’d -have killed her without any pain.” - -“Come hoame, Ivy,” said Mus’ Beatup, and began to lead her away. - -“Is it dinner-time?” asked Ivy stupidly. - -Harry gave a nervous guffaw. - -“I’ll be round and see you, neighbour,” said Sumption, “soon as I’ve -got this poor boy safe.” - -“‘Pore boy’ indeed!” grunted Mus’ Beatup. “‘Pore boy’ as ud have -bin murdering my daughter if Harry and I hadn’t had the sperrit to -break your valiant Sabbath in the Street field. Look at his gurt big -murdery hammer.” - -“He would not have used it—for the Angel of the Lord led me to him, -and it was the Angel of the Lord who saved both him and the girl, -despite your Sabbath-breaking.” - -“Then the Angel of the Lord can saave him another wunst—when I have -him brung up for murdering. Come along, do, Harry.” - -Jerry was silent now, nor was he struggling. He looked suddenly very -ill, and as Ivy stumbled blindly down the field on her father’s arm, -she had a memory of his drawn white face lolling sideways on the -minister’s shoulder. - - -7 - -Two-edged disgrace struck at Ivy both at home and in the village—for -the double reason of Jerry’s assault and Seagrim’s parade. The -latter was almost the wickedest in the Beatups’ eyes, for it had the -most witnesses—the former had no witnesses but themselves and Mr. -Sumption, though when Mus’ Beatup led Ivy home, Mus’ Putland was -already climbing the stile and Mus’ Bourner running out of his door. -It could be hushed up, muffled and smoothed, whereas the whole Street -had seen Ivy in her flaunt of wedded Seagrim—“A bad ’un,” “a hussy” -she would be called from Harebeating to Puddledock. - -“’Tis sent for a judgment on you,” said Mrs. Beatup. “If you hadn’t -gone traipsing and strutting wud that soldier, I reckon as gipsy -Jerry had never gone after you wud his hammer.” - -“I wurn’t a-going to show ’em as I minded their clack,” sobbed Ivy -against the kitchen table—“I said as ‘I’ll taake him out this wunst, -just to show ’em I aun’t bin fooled, and then I’ll git shut of un.’ -And I dud, surelye.” - -“And a valiant fool you’re looking now, my girl—run after and -murdered, or would have bin, if your father hadn’t a-gone weeding the -oats and heard your screeching. Reckon as half the Street heard it at -their dinners. We’ll have the law of Minister and his gipsy.” - -So they would have done, had it not been brought home to them that -“the law” would hoist them into that publicity they wanted to avoid. -If Jerry were tried for attempted murder, all the disgraceful story -of Ivy and Seagrim would be spread abroad, not only throughout Sunday -Street and Brownbread Street and the other hamlets of Dallington, -but away north and south and east and west, to Eastbourne, Hastings, -Seaford, Brighton, Grinstead, and everywhere the _Sussex News_ was -read. - -So the Beatups agreed to forego their revenge on condition that the -Rev. Mr. Sumption took Jerry away for the few days remaining of his -leave, and did not have him back at the Horselunges on any future -occasion. - -“You can’t hurt my boy without hurting your girl,” he told them, “so -best let it alone and keep ’em apart. I’m sorry for what’s happened, -and maybe Jerry is, and maybe he’s not. I reckon Satan’s got him.” - -“Reckon he has,” said Mrs. Beatup spitefully, “and reckon when Satan -gits childern it’s cos faathers and mothers have opened the door. -’Tis a valiant thing fur a Christian minister not to know how to -breed up his own young boy. But the shoemaker’s wife goes the worst -shod, as they say, and reckon hell’s all spannelled up wud parsons’ -children.” - -“Reckon you don’t know how to speak to a clergyman”—and the Rev. Mr. -Sumption turned haughtily from the wife to the husband, who was, -however, big with an attack on Sunday observance, and no discussion -could go forward till he had been delivered of it. - -In the end the matter was settled, and the parting was fairly -friendly. The Beatups had a queer affection for their pastor mingled -with their disrespect, and admired his muscle if they despised -his ministrations. The proceedings ended in an adjournment to the -stables, where Mr. Sumption gave sound and professional advice on a -sick mare. - - -8 - -Poor Ivy felt as if she could never hold up her head again. The very -efforts she had made to avoid contempt had resulted in bringing it -down on her in double measure. Garbled stories of her misadventure -ran about the Street. It was said that she had been walking out -with two men at once, that Seagrim had jilted her because of Jerry -and Jerry tried to do her in because of Seagrim. There were other -stories, too, some more creditable, and some less—and they all found -their way to Worge, where they provoked the anger of her father, the -querulousness of her mother, the shrinking contempt of Nell, and the -loutish sniggers of Harry and Zacky. - -Ivy was not a sensitive soul, but the Beatup attitude was warranted -to pierce the thickest skin. The family could not let the matter -drop, and kept it up even after those outside had let it fall in -to amiable “disremembering.” Ivy’s exuberant correspondence with -the forces, her amorous past, her scandalous future, all became -subjects of condemnation. Her people did not mean to be unkind, but -they nagged and scolded. Perhaps the balking of their revenge on -Jerry Sumption made them specially unmerciful towards Ivy—she had -to face the torrent of the diverted stream. She had disgraced them -as, apparently, none of Mus’ Beatup’s muddled carouses or gin-logged -collapses had done. The fine, if beer-blown flower of the Beatups had -been hopelessly picked to pieces by her wantonness and indiscretion. -Nell was perhaps the most really vindictive of the lot (for Mus’ -Beatup was easy-going and Mrs. Beatup loved her daughter through all -her reproaches), because she saw in Ivy’s disgrace another danger to -her hopes. She had enough odds against her in her poor little reedy -romance without all the spilth of Ivy’s bursting thick amours to come -tumbling over it, choking out its life. Ivy’s village friends turned -against her too, for Polly Sinden was still trying to live up to Bill -Putland, and Jen Hollowbone of the Foul Mile remembered the theft of -Kadwell and taunted “Sarve her right.” Thyrza, her sister-in-law, was -still friendly, but though Ivy liked Thyrza, there had never been any -real confidence or comradeship between them—the elder girl was too -quiet, too settled, and had always been lacking in that indefinite -quality which makes a woman popular with her own sex. Ivy did not -respond to Thyrza’s few tentative efforts, made, she suspected, out -of pity, and a sense of duty to Tom. Besides, her trouble had soured -for the time even her own sweet honest heart, and the sight of Thyrza -secure of a man’s love and an even more wonderful hope, smote her -with an unbearable sense of her own failure and loneliness. - -For the worst of all that Ivy had to bear was her love for Seagrim, -still alive, though wounded and outraged. Her old gay interest in -young men, her comradeships and correspondences, had faded out and -could occupy her no more. Her heart was full of a mixed dread and -hope of meeting him again. Sometimes when the purple chaffy evenings -drew down over the fields, and the smell of ripening grain and -ripening hops made sweet sick perfume on the drowsy air, an ache -which was almost madness would drive her out into the lanes, seeking -him by the tall stile at Four Wents, where he would never come -again. The fiery horn of the moon, the jigging candles of the stars, -would glow out of the grape-coloured sky as she went home through a -fog of tears, slipping and stumbling in the ruts, dreaming of his -step beside her and his arm about her and his bulk all black in the -dimness of the lane.... Then suddenly she would hate him for all he -had made her suffer, for all the lies he had told her and all the -truths, for the kisses he had given her and the tears that he had -cost her—and the hate would hurt more than love, choke her and burn -her, make her throw herself sobbing and gasping into bed, where the -hunch of Nell’s cold shoulder and the polar stars that hung in the -window joined in preaching the same lesson of loneliness. - -Then one day she made up her mind quite suddenly to bear it no -longer. “If you have much more of this you’ll go crazy,” she said to -herself, “—so git shut of it, Ivy Beatup.” - - -9 - -Ivy’s disappearance was not found out till late in the evening. In -spite of the dejection and heartache of the last week, her failure to -appear at supper with a healthy appetite was an alarming sign. It was -now remembered that no one seemed to have seen her all the evening. -Mrs. Beatup burst into tears. - -“She’s chucked herself into the pond, for sartain-sure. You’ve bin so -rough wud her, Maaster—you’ve bruk her heart, surelye.” - -“I rough wud a girl as has disgraced us all! I’ve took no notice of -her a dunnamany days.” - -“That’s why, I reckon. You’ve bruk her heart. Git along, Harry, and -drag the pond, and doan’t sit staring at me lik a fowl wud gapes.” - -“Maybe she’s only gone into Senlac to see the pictures.” - -“And maybe she’s only run away wud that lousy furrin soldier of hern.” - -“I tell you she’s drownded. I feel it in my boans. She’s floating on -the water lik a dead cat. Go out and see, Harry! Go out and see!” - -Zacky began to howl. - -“Adone, do, mother!” cried Harry. “You’re the one fur the miserables. -Reckon Ivy’s only out enjoying herself.” - -“I’d go myself,” sobbed Mrs. Beatup, “but my oald legs feel that -swummy. Oh, I can see her floating, all swelled up!” - -During this scene Nell had slipped out of the room. She was now back -in the doorway, saying icily— - -“You needn’t worry. Ivy’s taken all her clothes with her.” - -The family took a little time to get the drift of her words. - -“All her clothes!” murmured Mrs. Beatup faintly. - -“Yes—in the pilgrim-basket, so you may be sure she hasn’t drowned -herself.” - -“She’s gone away wud that dirty soldier!” cried Mus’ Beatup. “That -justabout proves it.” - -“It doan’t,” said his wife. “Ivy’s an honest girl.” - -“An honest girl as walks out wud a married man fur all the Street to -see, and then goes and gits half murdered by a gipsy!” - -“A clergyman’s son,” corrected Mrs. Beatup. “And it wurn’t her fault, -nuther. Our Ivy may be a bit flighty, but she’s pure as the morning’s -milk.” - -“Whur’s she gone, then? She’d nowheres to go. You doan’t know the -warld as I do, and I tell you she’s gone wud un, and be hemmed to -her. We’re all disgraced and ull never hoald up our heads agaun.” - -“I woan’t believe it.” - -“You’re an obstinate oald wife—I tell you it’ll be proved to-morrer.” - -“How?” - -“I’ll go to the camp myself and find out. If Seagrim’s gone too, then -it’s proved.” - -The family went to bed convinced, except for Mrs. Beatup—who kept up -a mulish belief in her daughter’s honesty—that Ivy had run away with -Seagrim. - -The next morning Mus’ Beatup set out for Hailsham to make enquiries. -But he had not been fitted by nature for a diplomatic visit to a -military camp—all he did was to fall foul of various sentries and -nearly get arrested. In the end he found himself back in the road, -with nothing gained except perhaps the fact that he was not in the -guard-room. He felt as if the whole British Army were in league -against him, the accomplice of one Corporal in his crimes, and was -scanning the scenery for a public-house when he heard the sound of -marching feet, and a file came tramping up the road, commanded by -Seagrim himself. - -Mus’ Beatup straddled across his way. - -“Who are you? Stand clear!” cried the Corporal, while the file -marched stiffly onwards. - -“Whur’s my daughter?” - -“Stand clear—or A’ll have you put under arrest.” - -“I want my daughter—Ivy Beatup.” - -“Halt!” cried Seagrim to the file, which had now marched a discreet -distance ahead. “A don’t knaw owt of your daughter. A’ve not clapped -eyes on her sine Sunday week.” - -“She’s run away.” - -“A don’t knaw owt.” - -“You don’t know where she is?” - -“A don’t knaw owt. Quick march!” and off went he and his file in a -cloud of dust, leaving Mus’ Beatup furious and confounded. - -“He’s a militaryist,” he mumbled, “a hemmed militaryist—treating me -as if I wur pigs’ dirt. That’s wot we’re coming to, I reckon, wot -Govunmunt’s brung us to—militaryists and the pigs’ dirt they spannell -on. Ho! there’ll be a revolution soon”—and he floundered up the road -towards Hailsham where the sign of the Red Lion hung across the way. - - -10 - -Jerry Sumption knew nothing of Ivy’s disappearance, for the morning -after that fatal Sunday his father had taken him off to Brighton, and -from Brighton he had gone back to France. In fact his whole notion -of the affair was hazy—inflamed by one or two unaccustomed glasses -of bad whisky and the memory of Ivy on Seagrim’s arm, he had rushed -and stumbled through what seemed to him now a wild nightmare of -phantasmagoria from which he had waked into aching and disgrace. - -He was sullen company during those few days at Brighton. Mr. Sumption -had chosen Brighton because it was at a safe, and also not too -expensive, distance from Sunday Street. Moreover, he hoped it would -provide some distraction for Jerry. The financial problem had been -great, but he had solved it by drawing out the whole of his savings. -He took a poor little lodging at the back of the town, from which he -and Jerry travelled down daily by ’bus and tram to the diversions of -the sea-front. - -It was not a quite successful holiday, which was indeed hardly to -be expected. Mr. Sumption brought preachment to bear on Jerry’s -sullenness—he did not understand what a hazy impression the -catastrophe had made, and that to him, though not to Ivy, the scene -by Twelve Pound spinney mattered less than that earlier scene in -Forges Field. Also Mr. Sumption’s ideas of amusement were not the -same as his son’s. He decided to risk the Lord’s displeasure and -visit a Picture Palace for Jerry’s sake, but was so scandalised by -what he saw that he insisted on leaving after half an hour’s distress. - -“Surely it is the house of Satan with those red lights,” he exclaimed -with sundry cracks and tosses. - -“What’s the matter with red lights? You get ’em in a forge.” - -“But a forge is the place of honest toil—and a kinema’s but a place -of gaping and idleness and worse: three hundred folks got together to -see lovers kissing, which is a private matter.” - -Jerry laughed bitterly. - -“Three hundred folk gaping at an ungodly picture, who might be saving -their souls. I tell you, boy, there ull come a red day, that ull burn -redder than any forge or picture-house, and all the ungodly gazers -shall be pitched into it like weeds into the oven, and only the -saints escape—with the singeing of their garments.” - -“Oh, Father, do speak cheerful. I’m that down-hearted.” - -“Reckon you are, my poor lad—and the Lord rebuke me if I add to your -burden. This looks a godly sort of a pastry-cook’s. Let’s go in and -get some tea.” - -The next day was the last of Jerry’s leave, and the one that he and -his father spent most happily together. Mr. Sumption’s ideas of -entertainment seemed quite hopeless to Jerry, but during those last -hours he felt drawn closer to the being who he knew was the only -friend he had. They spent the morning on the pier, listening to the -band, and in the afternoon went by the motor-bus to Rottingdean—a -trip so surprisingly expensive that there was no money left to pay -for their tea, and while the other excursionists sat down to long -tables, they had to wander upon the down, whence they watched the -feasters, Jerry like a forlorn sparrow and Mr. Sumption like a hungry -crow, till it was time to go home. - -But all the while the minister could see his son growing more -dependent on him, and in his heart he thanked the Lord. His delight -at having won that much poor show of affection blinded him a little -to the pathos of the outlaw clinging to his only prop, before he -was flung to troubles and dangers which he realised in helpless -foreboding. The chapel weed clung to the chapel stone before it was -rudely torn up and thrown out to the burning. - -Their final parting was abusive, owing to Mr. Sumption’s having left -Jerry’s dinner of sandwiches behind at their rooms, but the father -would always have a thankful memory of that evening when Jerry had -been simple and grateful and rather childish, and had listened to his -good advice, and had not interrupted with his cry for cheerfulness -the stream of Calvinistic warning. - -They had sat by the big ugly window of their room, looking out at the -first dim stars pricking the sky above Kemp Town. Jerry’s eyes were -full of a mysterious trouble as they pondered the new serenity of his -father’s face. - -“Father,” he said suddenly, “you’ll watch and pray that Satan don’t -get me.” - -“Satan can’t hurt the elect.” - -“But maybe I’m not one of the elect. Didn’t seem like it on Sunday, -did it?” - -“That was the Lord’s trial sent to us both—He delivered you unto -Satan for a while that you might find His ways.” - -“Reckon His ways are not for my finding.” - -“I will pray for you, my dear.” - -“Father, you promise, you swear, as you’ll never let me go? I -sometimes feel as if there was only you standing betwixt me and hell. -Reckon you’re the only soul in all the world that cares about me.” - - -11 - -By the time Mus’ Beatup had groped his stumbling way from Hailsham -to Sunday Street, the anxieties of Worge about Ivy were at an end. A -letter had come during the morning and was flapped in his face. He -was not sober enough to read it, nor yet too drunk to have it read to -him. - - “8 Bozzum Square, - “Hastings. - - “Dear Mother,—I hope this finds you well as it leaves me at - present. I got fed up as the boys say and came here. Do you - remember Ellen Apps and her folk lived at the Fowl Mile up the - Hollowbones. She is here working on the trams, I heard from Jen, - so thought I go and ask her. She says I will get a job in a day - or 2 with my strong physic, so do not worry about me, I am with - Ellen and hope to start work next week. Having no more to say, I - will now draw to a close. Fondest love from - - “Your loving daughter, IVY.” - -“I toald you as she’d never gone wud Seagrim!” cried Mrs. Beatup. - -“Umph,” grunted her husband—“but she’s gone on the trams, which is -next bad to it. Now if she’d gone maaking munititions....” - -“Trams is better than munititions.” - -“No it aun’t. Fine ladies and duchesses maake munititions, but I -never saw a duchess driving a tram.” - -“Ivy ull never drive a tram—she’d be killed, surelye.” - -“Best thing she cud do for herself now she’s disgraced us all—a -darter of mine on the trams, a good yeoman’s darter on the trams ... -’tis shameful.” - -“But ’tis honest, Maaster—better nor if she’d run away wud a man.” - -“Maybe—but ’tis shameful honest. I’m shut of her!” - -“Oh, Ned!—our girl!” - -“Your girl!” - -“You cruel, unnatural faather!” - -“Adone do, and taake off my boots.” - -The matter ended temporarily in sniffs and grunts, but when Mus’ -Beatup woke out of the sleep which followed the removal of his boots, -he reviewed it more auspiciously. After all, working on the trams was -better than working in the fields—suppose Ivy had gone and offered -her robust services to some neighbouring farmer, to some twopenny -smallholder perhaps, then the yeoman name of Beatup would have indeed -been trampled into the earth. Now trams were town work, trams were -war work, trams were engineering. In time “my darter on the trams” -began to sound nearly as well as “my son at the front.” - -So a letter was written in which Ivy’s choice was deplored, though -not condemned. She was invited to come home, or if obstinate on that -point, to turn her attention to the more aristocratic “munititions,” -but if it must be trams, then trams it should be unreproached. - -Ivy wrote back in a few days, saying that she had “joined up” and -enclosing a photograph of herself in uniform. She would soon be -earning thirty shillings a week, and had taken a room of her own in -Bozzum Square. Her family had now quite forgiven her, especially -as they found the neighbourhood inclined to applaud rather than to -despise Beatup’s daughter on the trams. Her mother would have liked -her home, but Ivy was quite firm about sticking to her job. “I’m best -away from the Street as things are, and I’ll send you five shillings -a week home, and you can get a girl with that and what you save from -my keep.” But it would have taken two girls to make a real substitute -for Ivy. - -Mrs. Beatup, besides the gap in her motherly feelings, missed her -terribly about the house. Her sturdy willingness to scrub or clean, -her cheery indifference to the little indelicacies of emptying -slops or gutting chickens, her unfailing good-humour and bubbling -vitality, the rough, tender comfort she gave in hours of sorrow, -all made Ivy of a special, irreplaceable value in her mother’s -working-day. Nell refused to give up her “teachering,” and spoke -obstinately of indentures, and other irrelevant puzzles. Anyhow her -squeamishness—she even washed the dishes with a wrinkled nose—and -the delicacy of her small soft hands would make her pretty useless -in hen-house or kitchen. Mrs. Beatup began to talk of Ivy as much -as she thought of her, and soon her family came to find her more of -a nuisance now she was away than she had been at home in her most -disruptive moments. - -However, her forgiveness was complete, and the reconciliation was -celebrated by a solemn ride in “Ivy’s tram” by all the Beatups. It -was during the summer holidays, so Nell was able to go—Mrs. Beatup -wore her Dionysian bonnet, and her husband his best Sunday blacks, -Harry and Zacky were scrubbed and collared into oafishness, the house -was shut up and left in charge of Elphick and Juglery, as it had -never been since Tom’s wedding. - -“Ivy’s tram” was on the line from the Albert Memorial to Ore, and -ground its way through dreadful suburbs up Mount Pleasant, past the -decayed “residences” of Hastings’ prime, slabbed with stucco and -bulging with bow-windows, now all grimed and peeled and darkened, -chopped into lodgings and sliced into flats, not the ghost of -prosperity but its rotting corpse. - -The tram ground and screamed and swished on the rails, and Ivy, -rosy-faced under her tramwayman’s cap—with its peak over the curl -that hid her ear—came forcing her way up the inside for fares, taking -from each Beatup its separate penny. She looked exuberantly well, and -quite happy again; she also smelled strongly of tram-oil, and Nell’s -little nose wrinkled even more than when she had smelt of soapsuds -and milk. She had a cheery word for each one of her family, who in -their turn sat abashed, holding their tickets stiffly between finger -and thumb, their eyes slewed on Ivy as she took other passengers’ -fares, answered their questions, trundled them out, bundled them in, -pulled the bell, ran up to the roof, changed the sign, and flung a -little good-humoured chaff at Bill the motorman when they reached the -terminus. - -She had no time off till late that evening, so when the family had -ridden in state to Ore, they rode back again to the Memorial. The -parting was a little spoiled by the crowd which was waiting to board -the tram and reduced Mrs. Beatup’s farewell embrace into something -grabbing and unseemly. - -“Good-by, mother dear, and doan’t you vrother. I’m valiant here.... -Full inside, ma’am, and no standing allowed on the platform.... Now, -Nell, take care of mother and hold her arm—she’s gitting scattery—and -adone, do, mother, for there’s too many fares on the top, and I’m -hemmed if I haven’t bitten a grape out of your bonnet.” - - -12 - -It was night before the dislocations of train and trap brought -the Beatups back to Worge. A big yellow moon was swinging high, -scattering a honey-coloured dust of light on the fields and copses -and little lanes. The farms, hushed and shut, lay dark against -their grain-fields drooping with harvest—in some fields the corn -was already cut and shocked, each tasselled cone standing in the -moonlight beside the black pool of its shadow. - -The Beatups were silent—owing perhaps to their congestion in the -trap. Nell was tired, and leaned against her mother. Life seemed a -very sordid trip, in spite of the honey-coloured moon, which swung so -high, the type of unfulfilled desire. Mrs. Beatup was thinking of Ivy -and wondering if the soles of her boots were thick enough; and Zacky, -wedged between them, planned a big hunt for conkers the next day. On -the front seat, Mus’ Beatup sucked at his pipe and schemed a dash for -the Rifle Volunteer before closing time. “If the War goes on much -longer, there’ll be no more beer, so I mun git wot’s to be had. It’s -those Russians, and be hemmed to them; reckon they’ll maake peace -and never care if the War goes on a dunnamany year. It’s the sort of -thing you’d expect of chaps wot went teetotal by Act of Parliament.” - -Harry drove the old gelding, and as the trap lurched from farm to -farm he marked those which had cut their grain, and which had not. -They had reaped the Penny field at Cowlease, and the old bottoms of -Slivericks stood shocked beside the stream. Egypt Farm, with late -hardy sowings, had not started—Worge started to-morrow. - -That visit to Hastings had been a holiday before the solemn business -of the year. For a long time he had planned his reaping—trudging the -fields each day, fingering the awns, rubbing the straw. He must not -cut too early or too late. Last year the oats had stood till they -shed their seed, this year they must be caught in just the right -moment of wind and sun. - -On the whole the crops promised well. The old grounds of the -Volunteer and the Street field had borne splendidly—the ploughed -grass-lands not so well, except for Forges field, which, for some -obscure reason, had brought forth a rich yield from its sour furrows. -On the whole the wheat promised better than the oats, which in spite -of the varieties he had chosen had thickened in the clays, and grown -unwieldy with sedge leaves and tulip roots. - -The problem of harvesting had worried him for a long time, for Mus’ -Beatup absolutely refused to buy a steam reaper-and-binder; he wurn’t -going to take no risks in war-time, and Harry must make what shift -he could with the old horse machine, which had trundled slowly round -the few acres of earlier Worge harvests, and must even trundle round -the width of this new venture. In vain Harry pointed out the labour -needed for binding—he must get help, that was all; the family would -turn to, as it always did in harvest time. The absence of Ivy was -a hard blow—for she practically did the work of a man—but he found -an unexpected substitute in the curate, who with the other country -clergy had been episcopally urged to lend a hand in harvest time. Mr. -Poullett-Smith had watched young Beatup’s effort with an approval -which condoned his wobblings between Church and chapel, and felt, -moreover, that his help might send a balance down on the Church -side. He was a little scandalised to find soon after that Harry had -also drawn in the Rev. Mr. Sumption—the curate’s offer put it into -his head; besides, it was just the sort of thing one asked of Mr. -Sumption—it seemed far more his job than preaching or praying. - -The other helpers would just be the family, this time including Nell, -for where her parson went she could go also, in spite of stained -and welted hands. Elphick and Juglery could do about one man’s work -between them, and there was a boy over school age on the loose in the -village, who was hired for ten shillings and his meals. - -Harry had written to Tom and told him of his maturing plans, but -either his marriage had breached him from Worge, or the fact that -the disciple had gone so much further than his master had made his -anxious ardour cool away. His latest communication had been a field -postcard, which, as he had forgotten to put a cross against any of -its various items, presented a bewildering and conflicting mass of -information, which Harry flipped into the coals with a wry smile. - -However, he was able to stand alone, for he dared the chances of his -new deeds. Oafish as he looked in his Sunday suit and gasper collar, -the adventure of harvest was upon him as he jolted the old trap home -under the moon. “Behold, the fields stand white to harvest” ... the -words drifted like a cloud over his brain. These fields that he -had prepared, that his plough had torn and his harrow broken, were -fields of battle like the fields in France. On them he had fought, -for the same reason as Tom fought the Germans, all the treacheries -and assaults of nature, her raiding winds, her storming rains, her -undermining rottenness in the soil, her blasting of thunder and -choking of heat. - -“Reckon to-morrow’s our Big Push,” he said to his father, rather -proud of the metaphor, and was careful that the old horse did not -hurry stablewards too quickly, lest they should be home before the -closing of the Rifle Volunteer, and lose a soldier thereby. - - -13 - -The next day broke out of a dandelion sky above Harebeating, but -before the first pale colours had filtered into the white of the -east, Harry was on his legs, pottering in the yard. All the little -odds of farm-work must be done early, to leave him free for the day’s -great doings. He anxiously snuffed the raw air—could its moisture, -distilled in the globes that hung on thatch and ricks, be the warning -of a day’s rain? The barometer stood high, but, like other Sussex -farmers, he had learned to distrust his barometer, knowing the sudden -tricks of turning winds, the local rains drunk out of the marshes, -the chopping of the Channel tides. He disliked the flamy look of the -sky, the glassiness of its reflection in the ponds ... he thought -he felt a puff from the south-west. “O Lord,” he prayed, kneeling -down behind the cowhouse door, “doan’t let it rain till we’ve got -our harvest in. If faather loses money this fall, he’ll never let me -breake up grass agaun. Please, Lord, kip it fine, wud a short east -wind, and doan’t let anyone stay away or faather go to the Volunteer -till we’ve adone. For Christ’s sake. Amen.” - -Feeling soothed and reassured, he went in to breakfast. - -The family was of mixed and uncertain mood. Mrs. Beatup was -“vrothering” about what she could give the clergymen for dinner—“not -as I care two oald straws about Mus’ Sumption, but Mus’ Smith he mun -be guv summat gentlemanly to put inside.” Zacky was crossly scheming -how best to carry through the conker plan which Harry had rather -threateningly forbidden. Nell was in a nervous flutter, her colour -coming and going, her little hands curling and twitching under the -table. Mus’ Beatup was given over to an orgie of pessimism, and -before breakfast was finished had traced Worge’s progress from a -blundered harvest to the auctioneer’s. - -“There’s too many fields gitting ripe together,” he said drearily. -“You shudn’t ought to have maade your sowings so close. Wot you want -now is a week’s fine weather on end, and all your wark done on a -wunst. You’ll never git it, surelye—the rain ull be on you before -it’s over. Reckon the Sunk Field ull have seeded itself before you’re -at it. You shud ought to have sown it later.” - -“It’s fine time to think of all that now.” - -“I’ve thought of it afore and agaun, but you’d never hearken. You -think you’ve got more know than your faather wot wur a yeoman afore -you wur born and never bruk up grass in his life.” - -“There’s Mus’ Sumption,” cried Mrs. Beatup, looking out of the -window. “He’s middling early—reckon he wants some breakfast.” - -She reckoned right. Mrs. Hubble of the Horselunges had refused to get -breakfast for her lodger at such an ungodly hour, and he had prowled -round fasting to the Beatups, eyeing their bacon and fried bread -through the window. - -“The labourer is worthy of his hire,” he remarked as he sat down -to the table, “and thou shalt not muzzle the ox which treadeth the -corn....” - -After breakfast they all went out to the Volunteer field, which -was to be cut first. Harry took charge of the reaper, with Zacky a -scowling protestant at the horse’s head, while the others turned to -the sickling and binding. Mr. Poullett-Smith had not arrived, having -first to read Mattins and eat his breakfast, but he came about an -hour after the start, a tall, bending, monkish figure, feeling just a -little daring in his shirt-sleeves. - -The meeting of the two parsons was friendliest on the Anglican side. -Mr. Poullett-Smith was a good example of the Church of England’s -vocation “to provide a resident gentleman for every parish”—besides, -he pitied Sumption. The fellow was so obviously misfitted by -his pastorate—a fanatical, ignorant Calvinism, blown about by -eschatological winds, was his whole equipment; otherwise, thought -the curate, he had neither dignity, knowledge nor education. He -would have been far happier had he been left a blacksmith, had his -half-crazy visions been allowed to burn themselves out like his forge -fires, instead of being stoked by mistaken patronage and inadequate -theological training. As things stood, he was absurd, even in no -worthier setting than a forgotten village Bethel—a mere caricature -of a minister, even in the pulpit of the Particular Baptists, an -old-fashioned and fanatical sect with their heads full of doomsday. -But here among the reapers he was splendid. His open shirt displayed -a neck strong and supple and plump as a boy’s—the grey homespun was -stuck with sweat to his shoulders, and the huge muscles of his back -showed under it in long ovoid lumps. His years had taken nothing -from his strength, merely added to his solidness and endurance. With -his shock of brindled curls, his comely brown skin, his teeth white -as barley-kernels, and eyes bright and deep as a hammer pond, and -all the splendour of his body from shoulder to heel, he was as fine -a specimen of a man as he was a poor specimen of a minister. Mr. -Poullett-Smith paid him the honour due to his body, while seeing no -honour due to his soul. - -Mr. Sumption felt his physical superiority to the willowy, -tallow-faced curate; indeed he had a double advantage over him, -for he felt a spiritual towering too. He despised his doctrines -of Universal Redemption and Sacramental Grace just as much as he -despised his lean white arms and delicate features. He gave his hand -a grip that made him wince—he could feel the bones cracking under the -pressure.... “He keeps his hands white that he may hold the Lord’s -body,” he thought to himself. - -The day was hot and misty. The blue sky glowed with a thick, soft -heat, and a yellowish haze blurred hedges and barns. Even the roofs -of Worge seemed far away, and the sounds of the neighbouring farms -were dim—but distant sounds came more clearly, a siren crooned on -the far-off sea, and the mutter of guns came like a tread over the -motionless air. Harry heard it as he drove the reaper, mingling with -the swish of sickles and the rub of bones. - -For greater quickness, he had split the field into two unequal -parts—the bigger one he was cutting with the reaper, the smaller was -being cut by hand. Mr. Sumption, Mus’ Beatup and Elphick reaped, -while Nell, the curate, Juglery and the boy from Prospect Cottages -bound the sheaves. The old horse went so slowly that the sickles -worked nearly as fast as the machine. After a time Harry gave up -his place to his father, who had been unfitted by illness and -intemperance for much strenuous work. - -At first there was some talking and joking among the harvesters, but -soon this wore to silence in the heat. Only from where Mr. Smith -and Nell stooped together over the reaped corn, gathering it into -sheaves, came murmurs of sound. Nell’s pale cheeks and lips were -flushed with her toil and stooping, and her eyes were bright with a -pleasure which toil cannot give. Her cotton dress, the colour of the -sky, set out the brightness of her hair, the colour of the corn. -Her graceful, ineffectual hands, too, pleased the curate, for they -were the only pair besides his in the field which were not coarse -and burnt, with stubbed, black nails. Moreover, her pleasure and -excitement at the day’s long promise made her more talkative than -usual, and to a better purpose. He found that he liked her pleasant, -blurry voice, which fled and fluttered over her words for fear that -she should drawl them. - -The sun climbed to the zenith, and the heat not only baked down from -the sky, but scorched up out of the ground. The dust of the earth -and of corn-stalks filled the air with a choking, chaffy thickness. -The smell of dust came from the road, and from farmyards the smell -of baking mud. The black oasts of Egypt across the way swam in a -cloud of heat, and the red oasts of Worge were smeared to shadows in -the steam of sunshine and dust. An aching of blue and yellow was in -the harvesters’ eyes, and their bodies seemed to melt and drip. The -reaper crawled even more slowly, with Mus’ Beatup sagging drowsily -over the reins, and Zacky drooping against old Tassell, whose flanks -ran with sweat, and from whose steaming hide came ammoniacal stable -smells, whiffing over the harvesters every time he passed. - -Mr. Poullett-Smith looked more than ever like a Sienese candle now -that his forehead and cheeks were dabbled with sweat, like wax that -had melted and run. He wiped his face periodically with a white -handkerchief, which annoyed Mr. Sumption, though it was a fact that -the curate had done excellent work, and made up in conscientious -energy what he lacked in muscle and experience. - -“Take off your waistcoat, or your sweat ull spoil the lining,” called -the minister, and Mr. Smith rather unexpectedly followed his advice, -having, as it happened, quite lost sight of the pastor in that huge -toiling figure, now almost bare of chest, with arms swinging like a -flail. He saw only a labourer more experienced and a man more manly -than himself, whose muscle he respected and whose commands he would -obey. - -From twelve o’clock onwards the problem for Harry had been to keep -Mus’ Beatup away from the Rifle Volunteer. The field being near the -Street, they could hear the pleasing jar of stopping wheels, the -slam of the taproom door, even the creak of the Volunteer sign. As -he swung out there over the Street, with his grey-green uniform and -obsolete rifle, he seemed to say, “In my day yeomen never worked at -noon, but came and drank good beer made of Sussex hops and talked of -how we’d beat the French.... Now there is no good beer, and hardly -any Sussex hops, and we talk of how we and the French together will -beat the Germans. But come, good yeomen, all the same.” - -Harry thought it advisable to detach Mus’ Beatup from the reaper, -which trundled him up under the eaves of the Volunteer’s huge -sprawling roof, so he suggested that old Juglery should take his -place for a while, and that Mus’ Beatup should help with the binding. -He also persuaded Mr. Sumption to give up his sickle and bind till -closing-time. He felt that if his father worked between the two -parsons he would not be so likely to scuffle an escape; for in spite -of his rationalist enlightenment, Mus’ Beatup’s attitude in the -presence of the clergy was very different from that which he took up -in their absence—and his contempt of their doctrine was liable to be -swallowed up in respect for their cloth. - -Dinner was brought out soon after noon by Mrs. Beatup and the girl, -a hard-breathing young person with a complexion like an over-ripe -plum. There was beer, and there was tea, and bread and cheese—Mrs. -Beatup’s idea of summat gentlemanly to put inside the clergyman -materialised in several crumbly sandwiches of tinned curried rabbit. -They all sat down under the hedge furthest from the Volunteer, and -were all rather silent, except Mr. Sumption, who had scarcely tired -himself with the morning’s work and thought this a good opportunity -to enter into an argument, or “hold a conference,” as he put it, with -Mr. Poullett-Smith on the doctrine of Efficacious Grace. Mr. Smith, -besides the reluctance of his Anglican breeding to discuss theology -with an outsider, and his feeling as a public-school man that it was -bad form to talk shop in mixed company, was far from theologically -minded. Though he would not have owned it for worlds, he was already -tired out. The continual stooping with the hot sun on his back had -made him feel sick and dizzy, and Mrs. Beatup’s curried sandwiches -had finished the work of the sun and roused definite symptoms of an -indelicate nature. He lay against the hedge, looking languid and -curiously human in his open shirt, his hair hanging a little over -his forehead. Nell sat on her heels, and her eyes played over him -tenderly, almost maternally. - -“Reckon you’re tired,” she said in a low, drawling voice that no one -else could hear. - -They did not go back to work till nearly two, and the danger for -Mus’ Beatup was over for the time. The afternoon was, as usual, more -tiring than the morning, for the earth, if not the sun, was hotter, -limbs were tired and stomachs were full. Harry mounted the curate -on the reaper, though he was not much of a success, as he failed to -realise the power of old Tassell’s habit, and did vigorous rein-work -at the corners, with the result that the old horse was thrown -completely off his bearings, and on one occasion nearly charged down -the hedge, on another knocked over Zacky, and once came wearily to a -standstill with all four feet in the uncut corn. - -Mr. Poullett-Smith decided that he preferred binding to reaping, and -was glad to find himself back beside Nell with her delicate ways—it -was wonderful, he thought, how far she was above her surroundings; he -had not noticed it before, for he had hardly ever seen her against -the background of Worge, but in the frame of church or school, where -her shining was not so bright. She was tired, he could see, but she -did not grow moist and blowsy like the rest—her pretty hair draggled -a bit, her mouth drooped rather sweetly, but exertion heightened her -anæmic tints, and there was a glow about her when she talked, in -spite of her fatigue. - -Suddenly, in the middle of the afternoon, she broke away from him, -and came back with a glass of water. - -“Is that for me?” he exclaimed, as she held it out. - -“Yes. I thought you must be getting thirsty.” - -“I am—but aren’t you thirsty, too?” - -“I had something to drink in the house—this is yours,” and she -watched him drink with an eager sweetness and humility in her eyes. - - -14 - -For the next two or three days the work went well. The Volunteer -Field was reaped, and then the Street Field; the Sunk and Forges -must be tackled before the fine weather came to an end, but the -low grounds by Bucksteep might be left to stand a little, being -sheltered, and not quite ready for harvest. Harry’s mixed gang of -helpers was a bigger success than he had dared hope. Mr. Sumption -was even better the second day than the first, having worked down -a stiffness which his big muscles had acquired from long disuse. -Even Mrs. Beatup was impressed, and gave him a fine breakfast every -morning. The other clergyman was not so useful, but he made up in -effort what he lacked in achievement, and by Friday was doing quite -a creditable day’s work. Nell was not, of course, much good, still, -she was better than nothing, and more energetic and good-humoured -than Harry had ever seen her. Zacky and the hired boy conspired in -laziness and evil-doing, and Harry was grateful when the Rev. Mr. -Sumption took it upon himself to knock their heads together. - -On Friday evening grey smears of cloud lay on a strange whiteness in -the west, and on Saturday the whole sky was smudged over with a pale -opacity, and the wind blew from the South. The labourers found relief -from the stewing, chaffy stillness of the last few days; but Harry -snuffed the air and looked wise. - -“The weather’s breaking up,” he said to his father in the -dinner-hour. “We’ll have to work on Sunday.” - -“Wud two passons!” cried Mus’ Beatup. “They’ll never coame. They’ll -be preaching tales about dead men.” - -“Reckon we must do wudout them. We durn’t leave the Sunk Field till -after the weather. Bucksteep can wait, surelye, but the Sunk must be -reaped before the rain.” - -Mus’ Beatup groaned—“That’s the wust of doing aught wud passons. -’Tis naun to them if it rains on Monday—all they care is that a -dunnamany hunderd years agone it rained forty days and forty nights -and drownded all the world saave Noah and his beasts. Bah!” and Mus’ -Beatup spat into the hedge. - -However, to their surprise, they found both the parsons ready to -work on Sunday. Mr. Poullett-Smith had no less authority than the -Archbishop of Canterbury—the Archbishop quoted Christ’s saying of the -ox in the pit, and gave like indulgence to all Churchmen. The Rev. -Mr. Sumption appeared with no such sanctions. - -“I’ve got no Randall Cantuar or Charles John Chichester to tell me I -may break the Lord’s commandments. Reckon the Assembly ull be against -me in this, and the Lord Himself ull be against me; but I’ll risk it. -For you’re a good lad, Harry Beatup, and I’m going to stand by you, -and if the Lord visits it on me I must bow to His will.” - -When service-time came he had the advantage, for he polished off -his bewildered congregation in only a little over half an hour, -whereas the curate was nearly two hours at Brownbread Street, with a -sung Eucharist. “I can say what I like and pray what I like,” said -Mr. Sumption. “I’m not tied down to a Roman Mass-book dressed-up -Protestant.” - -Mr. Smith heard him in silence. His respect for him as a man and -a labourer still outweighed his contempt for him as preacher and -theologian. Also he now felt that in matters of religion Mr. Sumption -was slightly crazed. He could handle a horse or a hammer or a sickle -with sureness and skill, and talk of them with sanity and knowledge, -but once let him mount his religious notions and he would ride to -the devil. Mr. Smith came to the conclusion that he was one of those -crack-brained people who believed that the war was the end of the -world, the Consummation of the Age foretold in Scripture, and that -soon Christ would come again in the clouds with great glory.—This -really was what Mr. Sumption believed, so Mr. Smith did not misjudge -him much. - -By noon on Sunday dark clouds were swagging up from the south-west, -with a screaming wind before them. The fog and dust of the last few -days had been followed by an unnatural clearness—each copse and -fields and pond and lane in the country of the Four Roads stood -sharply out, with inky tones in its colouring. The fields sweeping -down from Sunday Street to Horse Eye were shaded from indigo almost -to black, and on the marsh the slatting water-courses gleamed like -steel on the heavy teal-green of their levels. The sea was drawn -in a black line against a thick, unhealthy white sky, blotched and -straggled with grey. - -“It’ll rain before dusk,” said Harry. “It can’t hoald out much -longer.” - -“We’ll never git the field shocked, let alone brought in,” said -Mus’ Beatup. “Here we’ve bin five hour and not maade more’n a -beginning—it’s lamentaable. Reckon we might as well let the Germans -beat us—we cudn’t have wuss weather.” - -Harry set his teeth. - -“We’ll git it finished afore the rain.” - -“Afore your grandmother dies,” jeered Mus’ Beatup. “I’m off to the -Volunteer.” - -“And leave us.... Faather!” - -“I’m not a-going to stay here catching my death wud rheumatics, -working in the rain under my son’s orders. Reckon you’d sooner see me -dead than lose your hemmed oats—my hemmed oats I shud say—but I—” and -Mus’ Beatup swung up his chin haughtily—“have different feelings.” - -“Reckon you have, and you ought to be ashaumed of yourself!” cried -Harry thickly, then flushed in self rebuke, for on the whole he was a -respectful son. - -Mus’ Beatup sauntered away, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders -hunched to his ears—his usual attitude when he felt guilty but wanted -to look swaggering. Mr. Sumption and Mr. Poullett-Smith were both at -the further end of the field, and no opposition stood between him and -the Rifle Volunteer save the doubtful quality his wife might offer -from the kitchen window. Harry watched him with burning cheeks and a -full throat. “Reckon I’m lik to kip temperance all my days wud this,” -he mumbled bitterly. - -He then went down to the other workers, and told them that it was -going to rain and that they were a labourer short, as his father -was feeling ill and had gone indoors to rest, but that he hoped by -“tar’ble hard wark” to get the field cut before the storm. “If the -grain’s shocked, it’ll bear the rain, but if it’s left standing, the -rain ull beat down the straw, and all the seed ull fly. Juglery, -you taake the reaper—Norry Noakes, you git to Tassell’s head—Mus’ -Sumption and Elphick and I ull reap, and Mus’ Smith and Nell and -Zacky bind.... Now I reckon ’tis a fight ’twixt us and them gurt -clouds over Galleybird.” - -Elphick and Juglery were inclined to grumble at having their -dinner-hour cut short, and talked of judgments equally bestowed on -“them wot bruk the Sabbath” and “them wot bruk up grass.” But Mus’ -Sumption’s professional opinion was that the approaching storm was -not in the nature of a punitive expedition—“If the Lord had wanted to -spoil this harvest, He would have done it on Thursday or Friday; now -all He’ll get is the tail-end, and not that if I can help it.” - -He bent his huge back to the sickle, and worked for the next hour -without straightening. Mr. Poullett-Smith decided to forget the -Sunday-school he was supposed to catechise at three, and Nell to -forget the headache which would probably have sent her off the field -at the same hour. Norry Noakes and Zacky, seeing their deliverance -nigh, put more energy into that afternoon than they had put into all -four other days of harvest—Norry nearly dragged Tassell’s head off -his neck in his efforts to make him go faster. - -At about three o’clock, Mr. Sumption stood up and scanned the fields -under his hand like Elijah’s servant watching for rain. Then he gave -a shout that made everyone start and straighten their backs. - -“Lo! the Lord is on our side—behold more labourers for the harvest.” - -Two figures were coming down the field from Worge—Ivy Beatup and a -soldier. Ivy wore a pink cotton dress, belling out all round her with -the wind and flapping against the soldier’s legs. She also carried -unexpectedly a pink parasol. - -“Thought I’d come over and see you all!” she bawled as soon as she -was within earshot. “This is Sergeant Eric Staples from Canada.” - -... Canada! Then no doubt he knew a bit about harvesting. Harry went -forward to meet them. - -“Mother toald us you’d half the Sunk to reap before the weather,” -said Ivy, at closer range, “so I said we’d come and give you a hand, -surelye.” - -“We’ll be unaccountable glad to have you both—the rain’s blowing up -and we’re short of workers.” - -“I’m on it, as the boys say, and so’s the Sergeant, I reckon.” - -“Sure,” said Sergeant Staples, staring round him. - -“Mother’s gitting a valiant supper fur us when ’tis all a-done. She -says if you’ve bruk the Sabbath one way you may as well break it -another and maake a good job of it. Thyrza’s coming, and is bringing -all her tinned salmon. Wot do you think of my sunshade, Nell?—reckon -it’s unaccountable smart,” and Ivy threw it down into the stubble and -began rolling up her sleeves. - -“It’s middling kind of you,” said Harry politely to Sergeant Staples. - -“Only too glad—I’ve done a power of this work over in Sask. May I ask -what this little buggy is?”—and he pointed to the nodding erection of -old Juglery chaired above the reins that slacked on Tassell’s rump. - -“That’s the reaper, surelye.” - -The Canadian did not speak, but the puzzled look deepened on his face. - -“Maybe you’ll taake a sickle, being handy-like?” - -“Sure”—but when Harry gave him Mus’ Beatup’s discarded weapon he held -it at arm’s length and scratched his head. Then he slid up to Ivy— - -“Say, kid, I never heard before as in the old country they cut corn -with a pocket-knife.” - -However, he swung his tool handily, and with the two new workers, and -the extra energy of the old, the reaping went forward at a pace which -threatened the victory of those black clouds over Galleybird. - -The wind blew in droning gusts, swishing in the corn, and fiddling in -the boughs of Forges Wood. Dead leaves began to fly out of the wood, -the threat of autumn. The men’s shirts blew against their skins, and -the women’s skirts flew out; the colours of the field grew dim—the -corn was white, the wood and the hedges were grey—only the clothes of -the harvesters stood out in smudges of pink and blue. Then suddenly -rain began to squirt down out of a black smeary sky like charcoal—the -wind screamed, almost flattening the few last rods. No one spoke, for -no voice could be heard above the howling of the wind. Rabbits began -to pop out of the corn, but there were no hunting dogs, no shouting -groups from the cottages come out to see the fun. When the last -sickleful had been cut, and the reaper stood still, with old Juglery -asleep on the seat, the harvesters picked up their coats and pulled -down their sleeves without a word. - -They were wet through—the muscles of the men’s bodies showed through -their clinging shirts and the women were wringing their gowns. But -the Sunk Field was reaped and Harry’s harvest saved. He had won his -battle against his own ignorance, his father’s indifference, and the -earth’s treacheries. He had vindicated his daring, and he would -never know how small was the thing he had done—a few scrubby acres -sown and reaped, a few mean quarters of indifferent grain gathered -in—he would never hear Sergeant Staples say to Sergeant Speed of the -North-West Provinces that he had spent a slack afternoon cutting -mustard and cress with a pocket-knife. - -Food was waiting up at the farm, with Thyrza Beatup, who, for obvious -reasons now, had been unable to help with the harvest, but had done -her best by contributing her entire stock of tinned salmon to the -harvest-supper. The party began to move off, Mr. Poullett-Smith -wrapping his coat over Nell’s shoulders with hands that perhaps -strayed a little to touch her neck. Only Mr. Sumption was left, -standing upright and stockish on the rise of the field, a huge black -shape against the sky. - -“Come along, Mus’ Sumption,” called Ivy, “and git a nice tea-supper. -Thur’s tinned salmon and a caake.” - -Mr. Sumption’s voice came to them on the scream of the wind— - -“Shall I go without thanking the Lord of the Harvest for His mercies -in allowing us to gather in the fruits of the earth on the Sabbath -Day?” - -“He’s praying,” said Nell, with a shiver of disgust in her voice. - -The curate bit his lip. - -“He’s perfectly right,” he said, and going up to the minister, he -knelt down in the stubble. The others huddled in a sheepish group -by the gate. Mr. Sumption’s prayer was blown over their heads, -washed into the woods on the rain, but they could hear the groan -of his big voice in the wind, and here and there a word of his -familiar prayer-vocabulary.... “Lord ... day ... oven ... wicked ... -righteous ... Satan ... save ... forgive.... Amen.” - - - - -PART V: NELL - - -1 - -Autumn came, and gradually the farm-work slackened. The Bucksteep -acres were cut, not much the worse for the storm—the hops were -picked, and showed a fair crop of fuggles, though the goldings had -not done so well. Harry sowed catch crops of trifolium and Italian -rye grass, and started his autumn ploughings. Certain reactions -had seized him after the harvest, and he had gone off wandering in -the fields, away to villages where he had not strayed for months -except to market. But the lapse had been short, for the adventure of -Worge’s acres was not dead—his imagination had now its headquarters -and sanctuary in the fields where he worked; he had no need to seek -dreams and beauty far away, for they grew at his barndoor, and he -strawed them in the furrows with his grain. - -Tom’s dwindling zeal was reawakened by the account of the harvest -which Harry scrawled to France—“Nine quarters we got from the -Volunteer Field and five from the Sunk and six from Forges. Hops and -roots did middling. All the potash fields were valiant. Maybe next -year Father will buy a reaper-and-binder. The Reverend Mr. Sumption -was proper at the harvest.” His brother wrote back a letter of which -“Well done, young ’un” was the refrain. “Queer,” he wrote, “but -there’s a Forges Wood out here—they say the 5th Sussex named it and -it was called something French before. It is not like Forges, for it -is narrow like a dibble and the trees have no branches, being knocked -off by crumps and nothing grows there becos of the gas. There are -dead horses in it.” - -Tom had seen plenty of fighting that autumn in Paschendaele, but -was so far well and unhurt. He sent Thyrza home a bit of shell -which had knocked off his tin hat and “shocked him all of a swum.” -Everyone, he wrote, had laughed fit to bust at it—Thyrza thought that -they laughed at queer things in the trenches. She fretted a little -during those autumn days, for her hope was now almost a torment ... -suppose Tom should never see the child their love had made. Every -day in the paper there were long casualty lists, every day telegraph -boys and girls went peddling to happy homes and blasted them with a -slip of paper. They had knocked at doors in the country of the Four -Roads—the eldest Pix had been killed early in October; then there -had been the butcher’s son at Bodle Street, and the lawyer’s son at -Hailsham, and poor Mus’ Piper’s boy had lost both legs.... The world -looked suddenly very grey and treacherous to Thyrza; she dared not -hope, lest hope should betray her, and her few moments of peaceful -mother-happiness were riddled with doubts. Oh, if only God would let -her have Tom back somehow, no matter how maimed, how helpless, how -dependent on her.... Then she would suddenly react from her desire, -shrink back in horror at the thought of Tom wounded, his strong sweet -body all sick and disfigured.... “Better dead,” she would groan—and -yet, a dead father for her child.... She found war a very tar’ble -thing. - -During the earlier years she had, in company with most people in the -country of the Four Roads, passed lightly under its yoke. Even her -widowhood had not brought it down upon her—Sam had so often left -her, might so easily have come to grief in other ways. Except for -those who were actually and poignantly bereaved, the War made little -difference to a large multitude for whom it existed only in France -and in the newspapers. For a big section of England it did not begin -till 1916, for it was not till then that it actually set foot on -English soil. In 1916 the Conscription Act, the food scarcity, and -War Agricultural Committees dumped it down on the doorsteps of Sussex -folk who up till then had ignored it as a furrin business. Thyrza -had not thought about it much—she had read the newspapers, and given -little bits of help to war charities that appealed to her; but now -that it had taken the man she loved, it had taken her too. She was -tied with him to its chariot-wheels, one of the nameless victims of -the great woe. - -Her business, too, fretted her. She was not able for the exertions of -the times, and was worried by the difficulties of getting supplies. -To have no sweets for the little children who came in with their -pennies, no tea for the old men and women who wanted it to warm and -cheer their poor rheumatic bodies, no cheese and no bacon for the -young men who worked in the fields ... all this grieved her gentle -heart, and she brooded over it in a way she would not have done had -she been in her usual health. She grew pale and nervous, found she -had but little to say to lingering customers, sat huddled limply over -her fire, rising slowly and heavily when the buzz of the little bell -that used to be so gay forced her to exert herself and go to the door. - -In this state, Mrs. Beatup took pity on her, and forgot the tacit -warfare of the mother on the wife. If Thyrza was going to give a -child to Tom, she was also going to give a grandchild to Tom’s -mother. She often waddled down to the shop with good advice, or asked -Thyrza up for an evening at Worge, and developed a new and unexpected -optimism for her comfort. - -“Reckon if Tom’s alive he’ll stick alive to the end—if he’d bin going -to be killed he’d have bin killed afore now. Besides, he always wur -the chap fur luck. I remember how when he wur a liddle feller he -slid into the pond, and we all thought he’d be drownded, but Juglery -pulled him out, and his faather hided him nigh out of his skin. So -doan’t you vrother, my dear, but kip in good heart fur the saake of -the liddle ’un wot’s coming. Tom ull live to see un, I can promise -you. He sims unaccountable young to have a baby, but reckon he’d be -younger still to die.” - - -2 - -If that autumn was cruel to Thyrza in its torture of waxing hope it -was crueller still to Nell in its torture of hope’s dying. For a week -after the harvest she had lived in flowery fields of memory, pied -with all bright colours. When she shut her eyes she could see his -face bending close to hers over the shocked corn, his thin delicate -hands moving among the straw, sliding close enough to hers for an -accidental touch ... she could feel them brush her neck as he helped -her into his coat at the day’s end of prayer and storm.... - -For a week her heart drowsed in its own sweetness. Nell was happy, -she grew gentler and kinder. She was no longer an ineffective little -rebel, full of disgusts and grumbles—a delicious languor was upon -her, a bright dimness which veiled all the jags and uglinesses of her -life. During this week she did not see Mr. Poullett-Smith, but her -mind rested sweetly in his memory. Perhaps the physical fatigue of -the harvest, mixed with the natural inertia of her anæmic condition, -both had a share in bringing about a certain passivity, or perhaps -it was the change of her love from scourge to comfort which put -an end to all her old restless efforts to see him, her making of -opportunities, her fretting glances from the schoolhouse window, her -nervous strayings to church. Anyhow she did not see him till Sunday, -when her glorious castle fell. - -He came into Sunday-school as usual, with a benedictory smile. Her -memories of him in his open shirt, with his face all red and shining -and his hair caked with sweat on his forehead, made her feel a little -shocked to see him again in his long black cassock, above which his -face showed waxy and white. Perhaps a touch of sunburn lingered, -but the black of his priestly garment wiped it out. Who would have -thought, said Nell to herself, that this day a week ago he had been -toiling as a farmhand, with bare arms and throat, all baked and burnt -and dirty and sweaty...? - -He greeted the superintendent, and talked for a few moments at her -desk; then he came down among the teachers and their classes. Nell -wore a white blouse and a big white hat like an ox-eyed daisy. Her -book slid from her knee to the floor, and there was a scuffle among -her children as Freddie Gurr from Hazard’s Green dropped the worm -he had been nursing for comfort through the chills of his mediæval -Sunday; but she did not hear as she half rose for her greeting, then -sank back, as in the level, indifferent tones in which he had said -“Good morning, Miss Sinden—good morning, Miss Pix,” he said “Good -morning, Miss Beatup,” and passed on to “Good morning, Miss Viner.” - -Nell’s heart constricted with pain. She told herself that she was a -fool to be so sensitive, that it was not likely Mr. Poullett-Smith -would greet her publicly in the manner of their harvest friendship. -But she could get no comfort from her self-rebuke, for deep -in herself she knew that she was wise. Doubtless there was no -importance to be attached to the coldness of her friend’s greeting. -Nevertheless, he had that morning, silently and symbolically, -declared the gulf between them. In the cornfield, working as her -comrade, he had stood for a short while on her level—for the first -time her efforts to attract him had been without handicap. But now -the handicap was restored—he was the Priest-in-Charge of Brownbread -Street, and she was the daughter of a drunken farmer. If for a few -hours she had charmed him out of his eminent sense of fitness, the -charm was over now. What had this dignified, cassocked ecclesiastic -to do with her, a poor little nobody? His friendliness during their -common toil had been a mere passing emotion; probably she had -exaggerated it—even the little her memory held must be halved, and -that poor remainder cancelled out by the probability that he had -forgotten it. - -As a matter of fact the curate had not forgotten it, but the -attraction had not been robust enough to survive the loss of its -surroundings. He saw that he had been unwise and rather unkind in -yielding so easily to a mere temporary prepossession. His more solid -affections had long been engaged elsewhere, and he spent some hours -of real self-reproach for having ever so briefly faltered. He might -have put ideas into the girl’s head—they had certainly been in his -own. However, he reflected, there was not time to have done much -harm, and he would set matters straight at once. So for the next -month his behaviour to Nell was unflaggingly cold and polite, and at -the end of it all the parish was told of his engagement to Marian -Lamb. - - -3 - -There were days of desolation for Nell Beatup that November. Her -disappointment gripped her as a black frost grips the fields; she -felt powerless, bound, and sterile. Even the last month, when bit by -bit her happy memories were destroyed, when she learned that all her -hopes were built on an exaggeration, a mistake, even that month of -slow disillusion had been better than this black month of despair. -In October a few crumpled leaves had reddened the trees, a few pale -draggled flowers had sweetened the garden, a bird had sometimes -perched on the gable end and sung before he flew away. But now the -fields were black and the woods were dun, the lanes were a poach of -mud, and the smell of mud hung above field-gates and barns—a clammy -mist rose from the ponds, making the air substantial with the taste -of water ... tears ... they seemed to hang in the rainy clouds, to -dribble from the trodden earth, and, mixed with the dead summer’s -dust, they made a grey slimy mud that sobbed and sucked under her -feet on her daily trudge to school. - -The killing of her hope was no mercy. Even that sick thing had been -better than this emptiness, this death. Hope had sustained her for -years, for years she had had nothing more robust to feed on than her -pale infatuation for a man who seldom gave her crumbs. She had become -skilled in hoping, long practice made her an experienced artificer -of hope, able to build a palace out of a few broken bricks. She had -never known any other love than this ghost of one, so there had never -been a chance of its dying of comparison. She had no intimate girl -friends, and Ivy’s full-blooded affairs struck her only with the -grossness of their quality, giving her own by contrast a refinement -and poetry that made it doubly precious. - -Then had come the wonderland of those harvest days, when hope -had almost passed into confidence, when all the wonderful things -of love she had never learned yet—glamour, pride, perfection, -satisfaction—had shown her their burning shapes. But it had all been -false, a mirage of that same hope’s sick intensity, an overreaching -of the artificer’s skill; and now her tears had turned to mud the -golden dust of harvest, and all her dreams were dead—and stuck to her -still, clogging and fouling, like this mud of Slivericks Lane on her -boots. - -Luckily, her day-long absence made it possible for her to hide -her wretchedness from her family. At school her listlessness was -commented on—a listlessness alternating with an increased nerviness -and a tendency to cry when found fault with—but as Nell had always -been a little languid and a little hysterical, these exaggerations of -her natural state were put down to her health, and the schoolmistress -persuaded her to take a patent medicine containing iron. Her love -affair had been conducted on such delicate lines that only a few had -noticed it, and no one except Ivy had given it any importance. Ivy -was intensely sorry for her sister, and on one Sunday’s visit dared -to probe her state. But Nell was like a poor little cat caught by -the tail, and could only scratch and spit, so Ivy good-naturedly -gave up the effort. She was quite her old self again, judging by the -“pals” she brought over to Worge on her Sundays off—Motorman Hodder -and Motorman Davis, and Sergeant Staples, and Private La Haye, and -Corporal Bunch of the Moose Jaws, and other Canadians quartered at -Hastings, who sat in the kitchen, saying, “Sure” and “Yep” and “Nope.” - -“Reckon it’s kill or cure wud you,” said Mrs. Beatup, and no one knew -precisely what she meant. - -Nell thought her worst moment would be when she delivered to Mr. -Poullett-Smith the pretty little speech she had been making up ever -since she heard of his engagement. It was fairly bad, for Marian Lamb -was with him and had already assumed a galliard air of proprietorship. - -“Thank you so much, Miss Beatup—it’s awfully kind of you. Yes, I’m -awfully happy, and”—coyly—“I hope Harry is too. But we mustn’t stop -any more—Harry has still the remains of his cold. _Do_ turn up your -collar, you naughty boy.” - -Nell walked away rigid with contempt. “She’s silly and she’s -vulgar—she’s vulgarer than I, for all I’m only a farmer’s daughter. -‘Naughty boy!’—how common! She’s worse than Ivy.” - -Miss Marian gave up her Red Cross work, and was seen going for long -walks with her Harry, and accompanying him on his parish rounds. She -was a big, ungainly, soapily clean female, with a certain uncouth -girlishness which did not endear her to the curate’s flock. Nell -could not imagine what he “saw in her”—she certainly did not read the -_Sermons of St. Gregory_. She wondered if he had loved her long—the -parish said “years,” but that he had been unable to propose (1) till -an expected legacy arrived, (2) till Miss Marian was sure she could -get nobody else. At all events, he must have been in love with her -during those days of Nell’s mirage—it was another bitter realisation -for her to swallow, another choking mouthful of humble-pie. - -The poor little teacher crept about forlornly. She had not officially -given up her Sunday-school class, but she seized flimsy pretexts to -keep away; she even sometimes stayed away from church—then would -force herself to go thrice of a Sunday, in case her absence should -be put down to its true cause. She dodged the curate and Marian in -the lanes, but she seemed to run into them at every corner—they -always seemed to be going by the schoolhouse window. One evening, as -she passed Mr. Smith’s cottage by the church, she saw the firelight -leaping in his uncurtained study, and two dark figures stooping -together against the glow. She stopped and stared in, like a beggar -watching a feast; the table was laid for tea, and there were his -books and his pictures, all ruddy in the firelight, the flickering, -shuttled walls of the little room in which she had never set foot—his -home. Marian was there; she would pour out his tea and hand him his -cup. She would say, “Eat some more, dear; you’ve had a tiring day.” -Then she would make him lie back in his armchair and put his feet to -the fire, and she would curl up at his feet and read him the _Sermons -of St. Gregory_.... No, she wouldn’t do anything like this. Nell -laughed—that woman was Nell, not Marian. She was putting herself -where she wanted to be, in the other’s place. Marian would say, -“Don’t eat all the cake, naughty boy.” And then she would go and sit -on his knee. Ugh!... And Nell, who would have done so differently, -stood outside in the November dusk, with tears and rain on her face, -and little cold, red hands clenched in impotent longing. - - -4 - -At the end of November the bells rang for the advance at Cambrai—old -Dallington tower rocked with its chimes, and even the little tin -clapper at Brownbread Street tinkled away for an hour or more. Mr. -Poullett-Smith and his organist spent half a dozen evenings trying to -make a dodging choir face a Solemn Te Deum approved by the Gregorian -Society. Unluckily, the singers who would have easily blustered -through Stainer in F or Martin in C, grew hang-dog and discouraged -in the knots of Tones and Mediations, so that by the time the Te -Deum was ready, Bourlon Wood had been evacuated by the British and -the victory of Cambrai became something perilously near a fiasco. -Fortunately the capture of Jerusalem soon afterwards saved the Te -Deum from being wasted. - -These alternating victories and disasters were very bad for Mus’ -Beatup, for he celebrated them all in the same way at the Rifle -Volunteer. The only difference was that from some obscure sport of -habit he celebrated a victory in gin and a defeat in whisky. He was -very bad after both aspects of Cambrai, and Jerusalem brought him to -ruin. - -Soon after nine there was a loud knocking at the back door, rousing -all the Beatups who had fallen asleep in the kitchen. Nell was asleep -because she always seemed to be tired and drowsy now, Mrs. Beatup was -asleep because she reckoned she wouldn’t have much of a night with -Maaster, Zacky and Harry were asleep on the floor in front of the -fire, curled up together like puppies—Zacky because it was long past -the time he ought to have been in bed, Harry because he had had a -hard day ploughing the clays. There was great confusion and rubbing -of eyes, and the knock was repeated. - -“Go and see who it is, Nell,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Harry, I dreamt as -we wur being bombed by Zepperlians like the folk at Pett.” - -“I dreamt of naun—I’m going to sleep agaun.” - -He dropped his head back against Zacky—and just at that moment Nell -reappeared in the doorway, with a terrified face. - -“Mother—it’s father; he’s been hurt....” - -“Hurt!—you mean killed....” - -“I don’t—I mean hurt. There’s a man with him, helping him in.” - -“I’m a-going,” and Mrs. Beatup seized the lamp and waddled out, -followed by her scared and sleepy offspring. - -In the passage a big soldier was propping up a Mus’ Beatup who looked -as if he was stuffed with sawdust. - -“He’s had a bit of a fall,” said the soldier as he staggered under -his burden. “I was seeing him home like, and he slipped in the yard.” - -“I reckon every boan in his body’s bruk,” said Mrs. Beatup—“that’s -how he looks, surelye. Let him sit down, poor soul.” - -Mus’ Beatup slid through the soldier’s arms to a sitting posture on -the floor. Harry pushed forward and offered to help carry him into -the kitchen. - -“Someone ud better go fur a doctor,” said the escort. “I don’t like -the look of him.” - -Mrs. Beatup held the lamp to her husband’s face, and Harry at -the same time recognised the soldier as the eldest Kadwell from -Stilliands Tower—not he who had loved and ridden away from Jen -Hollowbone, but another brother in the Engineers. Mus’ Beatup’s eyes -were open and dazed, his mouth was open and dribbling, and his limbs -were dangling forlornly. When they tried to pick him up, they found -that his right leg was broken. - -“Zacky—run up to Dallington and fetch Dr. Styles this wunst,” ordered -Harry. “Tell him it’s a broken leg—he’ll have to bring summat to mend -it with.” - -Zacky ran off agog, and Nell, who had been through a first-aid course -in the early days of her rivalry with Marian Lamb, forced herself to -swallow her repulsion of the drunken, stricken figure on the passage -floor, and come forward with advice. - -“He ought to be put to bed at once ... he might collapse.” - -“He’s collapsed,” said Mrs. Beatup in the indifferent voice of shock. - -“But he must be kept warm—I’ll heat a brick in the oven. Harry, you -and Mr.——” - -“—Kadwell,” put in the soldier, with a bold look into Nell’s eyes. - -“Mr. Kadwell—please carry him up to bed. Can you manage him up the -stairs?” - -“Reckon we’ll have to,” said Harry. “Stand clear, mother.... Got his -shoulders, Mus’ Kadwell?—I’ll taake his legs.” - -They had a dead weight to carry to the upper floor, but Harry, though -short, was a strong, stuggy little chap, and Steve Kadwell was -enormous. He stood four inches over six foot and was proportionately -hullish of girth. He was a handsome man, too—as he passed Nell, she -noticed his brawny neck and great rolling quiff of fair, curly hair; -she also noticed that he looked at her in a way no other man had -done. The lamplight fell becomingly on her pretty scared face, and -suggested with soft orange lights and melting shadows the curves of -her little breast. At first she was pleased by his frank admiration, -then something in it made her feel ashamed, and she drew back angrily -into the shadow. - - -5 - -Nell had to stop away from school till the end of the term, for Mrs. -Beatup could not possibly nurse her husband without help; indeed, -Nell’s help was often not enough. A broken leg in itself was serious -damage for a man of Mus’ Beatup’s age and habits, and into the -bargain his alcoholic deprivations brought on an attack of delirium -tremens about the fifth day of his illness. For this both Nell and -her mother were inadequate—Nell was sickened and terrified by this -horrible travesty of a human being that shook the springs in her -father’s bed, and Mrs. Beatup made him worse by trying to argue with -him and taking as a personal affront his assertions as to the maggoty -condition of the pillows. Harry had to spend two days away from the -fields in the combined office of nurse and policeman, and on one -occasion when even his strength was not enough to keep Mus’ Beatup -in bed, Kadwell of Stilliands Tower prolonged an evening’s call of -enquiry till the next morning. - -Young Kadwell often called to enquire, and made himself useful in -various ways. He was on a fortnight’s sick-leave, after an outbreak -of his old wound. He had been sniped during some patrol work at Loos -in 1915, and though once more fit for service had been kept in -England ever since. At present he was quartered at Eastbourne, but -expected soon to be sent back to France. - -At first Nell was too harassed and miserable to realise that his -visits were largely on her account. Moreover, she was sexually very -humble—she had loved so long without return that she had never -learned to look for advances. But Kadwell had no reason to hide his -feelings, nor any skill if he had had reason, so in time Nell was -bound to become aware of them. The discovery did not give her any -great pleasure—the faint pride she occasionally felt at his notice -was always dangerously on the edge of disgust. She was sensitive -throughout her being to his coarseness—which at the same time had -curious, intermittent powers of attraction—and there was something -in his bold, appraising look which struck her with shame; with his -tastes, thoughts and appetites she had nothing in common. She avoided -him as much as she could, feeling guilty because of the faint thrills -which occasionally mixed with her dislike. - -It was a sad year’s ending. Her confinement in the house dragged down -even further her health and spirits, her father’s sick-bed filled her -with wretchedness and shame. It seemed to preach to her the lesson -of what she really was, in spite of all her dreams. How had she ever -dared to plot for the greatness of the curate’s love? Who was she to -mate with a priest, a scholar, a gentleman? The sordid grind of her -day, shut up in the muddle of Worge, her hours in that sag-roofed, -stuffy bedroom, nursing her father through the trivialities and -degradations of an illness brought on and intensified by drink—and -then the crowning irony of an occasional “parish visit” from her -loved one, his polite enquiries, his parsonic sympathy—all seemed to -shout at her that she was nothing but a common girl, not only of -humble but of shameful heritage, an obscure, half-educated nobody, -who was now bearing the punishment of her presumptuous hopes. - -She gave up her Sunday-school class, making her father’s illness an -excuse; she also gave up going to church. This was partly due to -lack of time, partly to a dread of the empty shell. She told herself -bitterly that her religion had never been real—it had only been part -of the mirage—she might as well give up the pretence of it. Besides, -she could not bear to look any more on the background of her vanished -dreams, the soft colours and lights against which they had glowed, to -hear the sighing tones which had set them to music in her heart. - -One Sunday evening, when she had gone out to stretch her cramped -legs, she heard the sound of singing come from the Bethel. She had -never been inside except for Tom’s marriage, but now in a sudden -softening of her heart she thought she would go in. She opened the -door, and slid into an empty pew—of which there was a big choice. Mr. -Sumption stood swaying and heating time in the pulpit, while before -him his mean congregation of Bourners and Hubbles sang— - - “Let Christian faith and hope dispel - The signs of guilt and woe” ... - -The air was heavy with the smell of lamp oil and Sunday clothes -and the rot of the plaster walls. Nell sat, a little timid, in the -corner of her pew. The scene was strange and grotesque to her, yet -rather kindly. She thought Mr. Sumption looked ill and worn. She was -shocked at his haggard smile, at the unhealthy smouldering of his -eyes.... All Sunday Street knew that he was in trouble again about -Jerry, who had not written for two months; but the village had come -to look upon it as Mr. Sumption’s natural state to be in trouble -about his son, and Nell felt there must be something worse than usual -to account for his altered looks. Her own sadness made her soft and -gentle towards him, and she watched him with pitying eyes. - -The service ended, and Mr. Sumption came down to the chapel door, -where he waited to shake hands with his departing congregation. Nell, -with her ignorance of chapel ritual, had not expected this, and was a -little flustered by it. Now he must inevitably know of her presence, -which she had not meant. But there was no help for it, so she held -out her hand in her gentle, well-bred manner as she passed him in the -doorway. He gave a start of surprise. - -“I never expected to see you here,” he said. - -“I was passing ... and I thought the music sounded pretty ... so I -came in,” faltered Nell. - -“Yes—the music’s pretty,” he said absently, and she thought his voice -sounded hoarse as if from a recent cold. Then her eyes met his, and -each seemed to read the other’s pain. Drawn together by a mystic -community of suffering, they stood for a moment in silence, still -holding hands. She felt his grip tighten on hers, and her throat -suddenly swelled with tears. They blinded her as she went out into -the dusk. - - -6 - -Shortly before Christmas Mrs. Beatup decided that Steve Kadwell -had “intentions.” He was now back at Eastbourne, but came over to -Worge every Sunday, and after little more than half an hour beside a -crushed and plaintive Mus’ Beatup would sit in the kitchen till it -was time to go home. - -“Never shows the end of his nose to ’em at Stilliands Tower,” said -Mrs. Beatup. “Reckon thur’s someone here he liks better.” - -“Do you mean me?” asked Nell wearily. - -“Well, I doan’t mean _me_—and I doan’t mean that trug-faaced lump -of an Ellen, so I reckon it’s you. You needn’t look so black at me, -Nell—thur’s no harm in a maid getting wed. I’d bin wed a year at your -age, surelye, and three month gone wud my fust child—the one that -never opened his eyes on day.” - -“Did father always drink?” - -“Always a bit more or less—naun very lamentable—just here a little -and there a little, as the Bible says. He’s got wuss this last few -year. It’s that hemmed war.” - -“You and father aren’t a very good advertisement for marriage.” - -Mrs. Beatup was huffed. - -“I dunno wot you want—here we are three years past our silver -wedding, and five strong children still alive. It aun’t the fault of -his marriage he’s bruk his leg—he might have done it single, and you -cud say the saum of his drinking too.” - -Further argument was prevented by the arrival of Steve Kadwell -on his Sunday visit. Nell, who had been a little excited by her -mother’s remarks, received him with more friendliness than usual. -Certainly he was a very personable man—better-looking even than Ivy’s -Corporal Seagrim, and younger. The grip of his huge hand gave her an -extraordinary sense of well-being and self-confidence, and the flush -which always came while his eyes appraised her was this time half -pleasurable. She fidgeted a good deal while he was upstairs. - -His conversational powers were not great, and she suffered a reaction -of boredom during tea, which she and her mother had ready for him -when he came down. He ate enormously and not very elegantly, though -he was not entirely a bumpkin—for he had spent an occasional leave -in London, “having a good time,” he told her with a wink. He talked -a good deal about himself and various men in his platoon, whose -dull doings and sayings he related in detail. Nell lost her new -friendliness, and as soon as tea was over went out to feed the -chickens and shut them up for the night. - -She went into the barn to mix the feed. The sun had just set and -there was a reddish dusk, through which she groped for the binns. -She was kneading a paste with middlings, bran and barley-meal, when -she heard a footstep on the frosty stones of the yard, and the next -minute the barn grew quite dark as a man blocked the doorway. - -“Your mother said I cud come and help you.” - -Nell felt somehow a little frightened. - -“I’m all right.” - -“Reckon you are”—he came into the barn. “You’re fine,” and he stooped -down to her, she felt his breath fanning her neck. Her hands ceased -to move in the paste, and suddenly she began to tremble. - -She tried to save herself with a small, faltering remark about the -chicken-food—“Reckon soon we’ll have to do without the meal.” - -He did not answer, but stooped closer still, so that she could smell -him, his virile smell of hair and leather and tobacco. Then she -suddenly snatched her hands out of the trug, all clogged and sticky -with paste and meal, and tried to push him away. - -“Don’t ... don’t....” - -“Nellie—you’re not afraid of me?” - -“Please let me go”—for his arms were round her now. - -“Not now I’ve got you, little kid.... I’m justabout going to keep you -till I know what you’re made of.” - -He laughed, and her struggling passed suddenly into weakness. - -Then his mouth pressed down on hers, and Nell, who had till that -moment known nothing but the bodiless spirit of love, suddenly met -him in the power of his fierce body. The contact seemed to break her. -She lay back helpless in Kadwell’s arms, unable to stir or resist -till he let her go, and he did not let her go till he seemed to have -drawn all the life out of her in a long kiss—all the hoard of fire -and sweetness which she had kept long years for another man he drew -out of her with his lips and took for his own. - -Then he released her, and she fell back against the binns, gasping a -little, and crying, while her eyes strained to him through the dusk. -She seemed unable to move, and he pointed to the bowl of chicken-food -on the floor, saying, “Pick up that trug and come out.” - -She did as he told her, and went out meekly at his heels. - - -7 - -Kadwell looked on Nell as a conquered kingdom. She herself was not -so sure, for after he had gone home that night, her flagging powers -revived, and she had a week in which to recruit her forces. During -that week she passed through moments of sick revulsion from him, in -which his strength and roughness disgusted her. But when he came -again, she found herself powerless as she had been before. - -He had strong allies. Nell was lonely, friendless, humbled to the -dust; she was at the same time reacting from her former intellectual -and ecclesiastical influences. His love helped restore her -self-respect and his outstretched arms were rightly placed to catch -her as the pendulum swung her away from her old tastes and glories. -Nell found herself for the first time the interesting member of the -family—at least in her mother’s eyes. She was the courted, the -beloved—even if hand in hand with love came strange tyrannies—and her -sudden change to exaltation from degradation turned her head a little. - -Sometimes there were hours when she saw clearly, saw that Kadwell was -impossible as her mate, that they had nothing in common, that not -even his passion was really acceptable to her.... He was a coarse -brute, who would always trample on her tastes and wishes and ignore -her mind and soul—and in these hours she knew that it was her mind -and soul which counted most, in spite of the newly-awakened body. She -was not really of a passionate nature, only a little drugged. She was -doping herself with Steve so that she might forget the anguish and -humiliation of the past autumn. - -But this clearness did not last long, and it was always fogged in -the same way—by a sense of her own unworthiness. She told herself -that she was wicked to despise Steve, who was much better than she in -his different way. He might be uneducated, coarse, and self-willed, -but he was strong and brave and resolute, all the things that she -was not—“And I say unto you, despise not one of these little ones, -for their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in -heaven.” ... - -Then she would remember his wound, which he had got fighting for her -and England over at Loos, and in the depths of that self-contempt -which was so often with her now, alternating with her moods of -self-confidence, she acknowledged that she had done nothing for the -War. Though she had always prided herself on being more patriotic -than the rest of her family, she had done far less than they—less -than Tom, who had gone to fight, even if ignorant and unwilling; less -than Harry, who had boldly flung down his challenge to the earth and -taken up arms against her for his country’s sake; less than Ivy, -who was cheerfully and competently filling a man’s place and doing a -man’s work; less than her mother, who had borne these children for -her country’s need; less even than her father, who paid rates and -taxes and cultivated the ground. The fact that they were all, except -perhaps Harry, more or less unconscious of their service, only made -her reproach greater. She of her knowledge had done nothing, and they -of their ignorance had done much. Who was she to despise them or -Kadwell? Should she not take this chance to do the little she could -by bringing comfort and happiness into a soldier’s life? She knew all -the difference that Thyrza had made to Tom—let her do the same for -Steve, humbly, simply, conscious of her failure up till now. - -Early in the New Year Bill Putland suddenly came home on leave, -and still more suddenly married a bewildered and delighted Polly -Sinden. They had not even been definitely engaged; she had not known -he was coming home till she got his telegram, fixing not only the -date of his arrival but the date of the wedding. They were married -at Brownbread Street, by an elderly clergyman who was taking the -curate’s place during his honeymoon—Mr. Poullett-Smith had been -married up at Dallington, and the joyful clash of his wedding chimes -came to Nell as she sat with Steve in the sun-slatted murk of the -Dutch barn, and made her more than usually submissive to his caresses. - -Ivy, delighted at her friend’s good luck, forgave a long coldness, -and came to Polly’s marriage. She brought with her Sergeant Staples, -and after the ceremony took him to Worge for tea. - -Mrs. Beatup had not been to the wedding, for Thyrza’s illness had -begun, and her mother-in-law had spent most of the afternoon down at -the Shop. - -“Oh, she’s doing valiant,” she said in answer to their enquiries, -“but ’tis unaccountable hard on a girl to be wudout her husband at -such a time....” - -“Where’s Nell?” asked Ivy. - -“Up wud her father, surelye. He’s bin easier to-day, but he’s a -tedious cross oald man these times. You’d never think the pacerfist -and objectious conscience he’s got lying in bed and reading the -paapers and wanting things to eat and drink as he can’t git—reckon -he’d stop the War to-morrow for a bit of cheese.” - -“Kadwell bin here any more?” - -“Reckon he never misses—it’ll be Nell’s turn next after Polly. You’d -best maake haste, Ivy Beatup, or at the raate we’re going, you’ll be -the only oald maid left in the parish.” - -“Ha! ha!” laughed Ivy, with her mouth full of bread. - -“But Nell ull be a fool if she marries him,” she added seriously. “He -aun’t her kind. I know him, and he’s a bit of a swine, I reckon.” - -“Reckon he’s a valiant, stout chap, and Nell ull be a fool if she -says no.” - -Ivy did not argue the matter, but before she went away she made an -opportunity to speak to her sister alone. - -“Nell, you haven’t promised Steve Kadwell?” - -Nell did not answer for a moment—she looked dazed. Then she said -slowly: - -“Yes—I promised him on Sunday.” - -“Then write and tell him you’ve changed your mind.” - -“Why?” - -“Because you’re a fool. You know quite well he aun’t the chap for -you—you, wud all your liddle dentical ways!” - -The tears came into Nell’s eyes. - -“I love him.” - -Ivy stared critically at her. She seemed to have altered. - -“Have you told mother?” - -“No.” - -“When are you going to be married?” - -“I dunno—we haven’t talked about it yet.” - -“Well, doan’t be in a hurry—give him a good think over.” - -She had no time to say more, and realised that there was not much -more to be said. Nell seemed dazed and foolish, like a pilgrim lost -in a strange land. - - -8 - -Sunday Street was dazzled by its multitude of marriages. There had -been Tom Beatup’s, not a year ago, then the curate’s, and Polly -Sinden’s, on the top of each other in January, and now, in February, -Nell Beatup’s. The last was a surprise; who would have thought, -asked the village, that Nell would be married before Ivy? One or two -mothers improved their daughters’ minds with the moral of demure, -gentle Nell’s marrying before her sister with her loud, friendly -ways. There was some jealousy, too, for Kadwell, heir of Stilliands -Tower, was considered a good match, though a certain amount of -suspicion attached locally to his morals, due to his having once -spent a leave in Paris. - -Nell’s wedding was a shorn affair. Her father was, of course, unable -to come and give her away, and she had to go up the aisle on the arm -of a shuffling and miserable Harry, to be finally disposed of by Mrs. -Beatup, who was full of doubts as to the legality of a marriage thus -officiated. Ivy could not get another day off, so had been obliged to -content herself with sending Nell a silver-plated cruet and a rather -tactless message to “come to her if ever she felt things going a -bit wrong.” Thyrza was not present, either. She had mended slowly, -in spite of the joy of her little son, and felt unequal to the fag -and excitement of a wedding, either socially or ecclesiastically. -The gaps were completed by the absence of Mr. Poullett-Smith, who -was still away on his honeymoon. He was expected back next week, and -it was considered locally that Nell and Kadwell would have shown a -more becoming spirit if they had waited for his ministrations. No one -guessed that it was just this chance of being married in the curate’s -absence which had finally dropped the balance, and made Nell give way -to her lover’s entreaties and make him happy at once. - -After the ceremony there was a breakfast at Worge, and that too -was shorn. There had been no Ivy to help Mrs. Beatup with the -cooking, and trug-faced Ellen had burnt the cake, which was not only -sugarless, as Tom’s had been, but without peel or plums. “Might as -well eat bread and call it caake,” said Mrs. Beatup drearily. “They -both taaste lik calf-meal.” - -There was no butter, as butter did not pay at its present price, and -was no longer made at Worge. Some greenish margarine had been Ellen’s -reward for standing two hours outside the grocer’s in Senlac, but -the cake had swallowed it all up, and wanted more, judging by its -splintering behaviour under the teeth. To balance these scarcities -there was tinned salmon and tinned crab and tinned lobster—also two -bottles of wine, left over from Tom’s wedding, and watered to make -them go further. - -“This is wot you might call a War wedding,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Nell, -I’m unaccountable glad you got married in church—if it had bin a -chapel marriage on the top of this”—and she waved her hand over the -table—“I’d never quite feel as you wur praaperly wed.” - -As a further counterblast to irregularity she had insisted on -Nell’s being married in white satin, with a stiff white veil -like a meat-safe bound over her hair with a wreath of artificial -orange-blossom. She looked very pretty, with a becoming flush in the -thick pallor of her skin. Her eyes were bright and restless, and she -breathed quickly, so that her little pearl-and-turquoise locket, -“the gift of the bridegroom,” heaved under her transparencies—she -was too shrinking and modest to have her gown cut low—like a shallop -on a wave. She scarcely spoke during the meal, but sat twisting her -wedding-ring and staring at her husband—following each movement with -her eyes, apparently unable to look away from him. - -The meal was not lively; it lacked Ivy’s good-humour, Mus’ Beatup’s -talkativeness, Bill Putland’s wit, Mr. Sumption’s big laugh and -childish enjoyment of his food. The party consisted only of the two -families—Beatups and Kadwells. Old Mus’ Kadwell droned about the War, -and the “drore” in which he prophesied it would end, Mrs. Kadwell -compared with Mrs. Beatup a day’s adventures in search of meat, -Lizzie Kadwell tried to flirt with Harry, who was overwhelmed with -shame and annoyance at her efforts, and Sim Kadwell, who had been -best man, gave wearying details of the Indispensable’s Progress from -tribunal to tribunal. - -Steve Kadwell could get only a week-end’s leave, so the honeymoon -would be short, and afterwards Nell would come back to Worge, and -live there as before, except for her “teachering,” which her husband -had made her give up, so that she might be at hand when he wanted -her, free to go with him on any unexpected leave. He would have -longer leave given him soon, he promised her, and they would go to -London and have a valiant time. On this occasion they were going no -further that Brighton, but they would stay at a fine hotel and have -late dinner and a fire in their bedroom. - -Nell drove away with her hand limp and rather cold in Kadwell’s big -fondling clasp. The pale February sun slanted to Worge’s roof from -the west, and a clammy, mould-flavoured mist hung over the hedges, -like the winter ghost of those fogs which had webbed the farm with -dusty gold in harvest-time. Nell looked back at the old house and the -fields behind it—since she was leaving home only for two days, it was -queer to feel that she was leaving it for ever. - - -9 - -It was raining and foggy when she came back. Thick white muffles of -cloud drifted up the fields, and hung between the hedges, catching -and choking all sound. Rain fell noiselessly, almost invisibly, -apparent only in an occasional whorl, in the dripping eaves of the -stacks, the shining roofs of the barns, and the whiteness of the -beaded grass. Nell came from Hailsham station in a cab—her husband -had told her to do so, giving her paper money for the fare. He -certainly was princely in his ideas of spending, and there were loud -and envious exclamations at Worge when, instead of the soaked and -huddled figure expected, Nell appeared bone-dry, without even her -umbrella unfurled. - -“A cab from Hailsham!” cried Mrs. Beatup. “Reckon you’ve got a good -husband.” - -“And did you have the fire in your bedroom?” asked Zacky. - -“Yes,” said Nell. “A shilling every night.” - -She kissed her mother and brothers, and Ivy, who was over for the day -and now came out of the kitchen, with a bear’s hug for her sister. - -“You’ve got a new hat!” she exclaimed. - -“Yes; Steve saw it in a shop in Brighton and bought it for me.” - -“Lork!” cried Mrs. Beatup. - -“But it aun’t your usual style,” said Ivy; “you most-ways wear ’em -more quiet-like. I’ve seen many of that sort of hat come on the tram, -and it’s generally what the boys call a tart.” - -Nell flushed and looked away. - -“We’ve got Thyrza here,” said Mrs. Beatup. “She came up this morning -afore the rain started, and we’re kipping her till it’s a done—fust -time she’s bin out, and I’m justabout fritted lest she taakes cold.” - -“Has she got the baby with her?” - -“Surelye.... Here’s Nell, Thyrza, come up in a cab from the station, -and her husband’s guv her a new hat.” - -Thyrza’s eyes opened big in wonder. She sat by the fire, with her -child in her arms; she was pale, but seemed plump and healthy, and -her eyes had an eager, yearning look which was new to them. Nell -kissed her and the baby, and sat down by the hearth with a little -shiver. - -“I’ll git you some hot tea in a minnut,” said her mother, “and then -I’ll tell you a surprise about Ivy.” - -“Adone do, mother—you’ve half toald her now.” - -“I haven’t—I only said it wur a surprise, which I reckon it aun’t -much of, since you’ve near married three men in the last twelvemonth.” - -Ivy groaned—“Reckon your tongue’s lik a bruk wurzel-cutter—slipping -all over the plaace. Well, Nell, you know it now—but guess who he is.” - -This was more difficult, as there were at least half a dozen possible -claimants, and Nell restored the secret to a little of its lost glory -by guessing wrong several times. - -“It’s Eric Staples,” said Ivy at last, “and we’re going out to -Canada soon as ever he gits his discharge, which woan’t be long now. -He wur wounded and gassed at Vimy, but he’s a stout feller still, and -has got a liddle farm in Saskatchewan wot me and him ull kip the two -of us. He says I’m the woman born for a colonial’s wife.” - -“Reckon you are,” said her mother fondly, “but I wish you cud have -got a husband wot took you to hotels and guv you cab-rides and fine -hats like Nell.” - -“I aun’t the girl fur hotels and cabs—reckon I’m only the girl for -washing the pots and scrubbing the floor, and lucky that’s the girl -Eric wants. I’d never do wud Nell’s life—she’s a lady...” and she -squeezed her sister’s hand. - -Nell gave a faint squeeze in response. She was touched by Ivy’s -affection, at the same time it made her feel a little cold, for she -guessed the reason; Ivy was only saying without words, “I’m standing -by you, Nell—you’ve done a stupid thing, and nobody knows it but you -and I. Howsumdever you can always come wud any trouble to old Ivy.” - -Tea was now on the table, with the remains of the wedding-cake. Mus’ -Beatup was asleep upstairs, so it was arranged that later on Nell -should take him up his tea and pay him her dutiful greetings. Harry -and Zacky came in very grubby after handling roots. Harry was now a -pitiless tyrant who drove and slaved his brother out of school hours, -making him dig and rake and cart and dung; for the unthinkable thing -of a year ago had happened, and the War was dragging on towards -Harry’s eighteenth birthday, threatening to move his battle front -from the furrows and ditches of Sussex to the blasted fields of -France. - -Thyrza had a letter from Tom, which she read to the company, every -now and then stopping to hum over some passage which for obviously -pleasant reasons could not be read out loud. - -“To think he’s never seen his baby,” she murmured, bending towards -her crooked arm. - -“To think of Tom ever having a baby to see,” said Mrs. Beatup—“and -you’d know he wur Tom’s by his flat nose.” - -“Wot have you settled to call him?” asked Ivy. “Is it still Thomas -Edward?” - -“No, it’s to be Thomas William, fur Bill Putland has promised to -stand godfather.” - -“I doan’t lik William as much as Edward. Wot maade you change, -Thyrza?” - -“Tom wants him called after his best pal, surelye.” - -“And after the Kayser, too—William’s the Kayser’s naum.” - -Thyrza looked shocked. - -“You’ll have to call him Bill fur short.” - -“That ud sound more like the Kayser than ever—I always call the -Kayser Bill.” - -“Then call him Willie.” - -“That’s the young Kayser, and Tom when he fixed William said as he -must never shorten it to Willie, ’cos there’s a kind of shell called -Little Willie, and he says as if, when peace comes and he gits hoame, -fulks wur to say, ‘Here comes Little Willie,’ he’d chuck himself down -in the lane and start digging himself in—Ha! ha!” and Thyrza laughed -at the joke, and tickled the baby to make it laugh too, which it -didn’t. - -“Reckon he’s too young to laugh,” said Mrs. Beatup. - -“He aun’t too young to cry.” - -“We’re none of us too young fur that, nor too oald, nuther.” - -Thyrza sighed gently— - -“I’m unaccountable set on Tom’s coming fur the christening—and -Passon’s been wanting to christen him; he asked me at the churching. -I thought maybe Tom cud git leave to see his baby christened, but -seemingly he can’t.” - -“They’re unaccountable short wud leave,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Steve -couldn’t git more’n three days to git married in.” - -“But reckon he’ll git some more later, woan’t he, Nell?” - -Nell started—during the little womanly talk her mind had gone off on -questionings of its own. - -“Leave? Yes. He’s sure to get a week before he goes out to France.” - -“You’re unaccountable lucky. Reckon he’ll taake you to another hotel -and buy you another hat.” - -“And send you home in another cab.” - -“I’ll go up and have a look at father,” said Nell. - -There was silence in the kitchen for a little while after she went. -Harry and Zacky had gone back to their digging, and Ivy and Mrs. -Beatup sat squatting against Thyrza’s lap, where the baby lay more -helpless than a day-old kitten. - -“Nell’s middling quiet,” said her mother at last. - -“She’s sad at having said good-bye to Steve,” sighed Thyrza. - -“I doan’t waonder as she’s vrothered,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Courted, -cried, and married, all in a huddle lik that. Ivy, I hope as this -ull be a lesson to you, and you’ll bide your banns praaperly and buy -your bits of things in more’n one day’s shopping. Pore Nell, she sims -all swummy and of a daze, and I doan’t woander, nuther, wud all the -hurriment thur’s bin. Reckon she scarce knows yit if she’s maid or -wife.” - -“Reckon she does,” said Ivy. - - - - -PART VI: BABY - - -1 - -Tom did not come home till March, and the baby had been christened -before he arrived, Thyrza having proved too soft to resist -ecclesiastical pressure. But her husband was not so disappointed as -she had feared. Indeed, Tom’s whole attitude towards the miracle she -had wrought in his absence puzzled her a little. - -She had met him at the cottage door with the baby in her arms, and -after their first greeting he had said: - -“Put the baby down, Thyrza. I can’t kiss you praaperly.” Then, with -his face hidden in her neck, had murmured: “It’s my wife I want.” - -“But aun’t you justabout pleased wud your boy, dear?” she asked him -later, when they were having tea and eggs in a cosy blur of firelight -and sunshine. - -“Reckon I am. But babies are unaccountable ugly; and as fur hoalding -him, I’d sooner nuss a dud shell.” - -“He aun’t ugly, Tom; everyone says he’s a justabout lovely child—and -weighs near fourteen pounds, which is valiant fur a boy of his -months.” - -“Maybe—I know naun of babies. But you, Thyrza ... reckon you’re -justabout the waonder of the world to me.” - -Her eyes filled with tears as she felt his hand groping for hers on -her knees under the table. - -“Reckon you’re just another baby,” she said tenderly. “And I’m the -mother of you both.” - - -2 - -But Tom learned to be father as well as husband in the days that -followed—perhaps it was the joys of his husbandhood which woke -the fatherhood in him. It did not quicken in a blinding flash, as -motherhood had come to Thyrza when her baby was first laid in her -arms, but grew and throve in his daily contact with the little bit of -helplessness and hope which he and Thyrza had made between them. It -seemed to develop out of and be part of his love for her, and in time -it seemed to have a tender, mellowing effect on that love, making -it less anxious and passionate, more selfless, more sweet, more -friendly.... - -Those days were different from the days they had spent together after -their marriage. They never went for long walks now, but stopped -in their little garden at the back of the cottage, where crocuses -splashed the grass with purple and egg-yellow, and celandines crept -in under the hedge from the fields of Egypt Farm. Here in the warm -spring sunshine Thyrza would sit, rocking the baby’s cradle with her -foot, while she talked to Tom in her sweet, drawly voice, of the -little trades and doings of the past year. Every now and then the -shop-bell would ring through the cottage, and she would go off to -serve and gossip, leaving baby in his father’s care.... “And doan’t -you dance him, Tom, or he’ll be sick.” For Tom was bolder now, and -took perilous liberties with young William, just as now, in his third -year of soldiering, he had begun to take them with the dud to which -he had compared him.... “Reckon he’ll start fizzing a bit before he -goes off.” - -In the evenings, when the child was asleep in the cradle beside their -bed, they would go across the road to the willow-pond, and sit or -stroll there in the March dusk. Those were wonderful days of spring, -a March which was almost May, with sweet slumberous winds, so thick -and hazy that the grumble of the unceasing guns was lost in them, -and the War’s heart-beat never broke the meadow’s stillness. Soft -primrose fogs trailed over Horse Eye Marshes under the rising stars, -and away beyond them on the sea a siren crooned, like the voice of -the twilight and the deep.... When the sky was dark round the big -stars, and Orion’s sword hung above Molash Woods, they would go in -to their supper in the lamplight, to the tender, intimate talk of -their evening hours, and then up, with big reeling shadows moving -before them on beam and plaster in the candlelight, to the dim -spring-smelling room where their baby slept, and where Thyrza would -sleep with her hair spread on the pillow like a bed of celandines, -and Tom with his brown, war-calloused hand in the soft clasp of hers, -and his head in the hollow of her breast. - -Tom, of course, paid many visits to his family at Worge. He found -Mus’ Beatup an invalid in the kitchen, his leg propped on a chair -before him. Owing to his constitution it had mended slowly, but four -months of forced soberness had worked a wonderful result in toning up -his whole body, so that in spite of his illness his eye was brighter, -his hand steadier and his voice clearer than at any time in Tom’s -memory. Unfortunately, the boredom and privations of his state had -only increased that “objectiousness” of disposition which Mrs. Beatup -had deplored, and Tom had to sit and listen to long harangues, in -which the War, the Christian Religion, God, Govunmunt, Monogamy, and -War Agricultural Committees were toppled together in a common ruin. -Nell no longer argued with him, his flicks and cuts had no power to -wound, and he soon gave up trying to stir her into the little furies -which had led to so many rousing arguments. It was queer how she -had changed.... Her chief arguments were with her mother, who seemed -to think that the ceremony of marriage was bound automatically to -create an abstract love of housekeeping in the female breast. She was -astonished to find that Nell had now no greater love for making beds -and washing dishes than in the days of her spinsterhood. - -“I never heard of a married woman as cudn’t maake a sago pudden,” she -said to Tom. - -“She’d maake it fur her husband quick enough,” said Tom with a grin. - -“Well, Steve’s here most Sundays, and she’s never maade him naun but -a ginger-cake, and she used to maake that before she wur wed.” - -“Wait till she’s got a liddle home of her own ... that’ll be all the -difference, woan’t it, Nell?” - -Nell smiled faintly. - -“Would you believe it, Tom?” said Mrs. Beatup, “but when we want a -suet pudden now we’ve got to git it off a meat-card.” - -“We’ve heard out there as all you civvies wur on rations—and Mus’ -Archie one day he got the platoon for a bit of _parlez-voo_ and toald -us as how you wurn’t starved, as so many chaps had letters from their -wives, saying as they cud git naun to eat.” - -“Not starved! That’s valiant. And wot does Mus’ Archie know about it? -Seemingly you doan’t know wot war is out there wud all your tea and -your butter and your meat. Reckon there’ll never be peace as long as -soldiering’s the only job you can git fed at.” - -“Well, you’ve guv me an unaccountable good tea fur a starving family. -And now I’ll be off and see Harry about the farm.” - -Worge was in the midst of its spring sowings, and Harry spent -his long days in the fields whose harvest he would not see. The -Volunteer field was in potash now, dug for potatoes, and there were -six more acres of potatoes over by the Sunk. - -“They say as how a hunderd acres of potatoes ull feed four hunderd -people fur a year,” he said to Tom—“and yit thur’s always summat -unaccountable mean about a spud.” - -Tom laughed. “You’ve done valiant, Harry.” Now that his brother’s -adventure had justified itself, he had abandoned a good deal of his -croaking attitude. Besides, if things really were getting scarce at -home ... he wouldn’t like to think of Thyrza and the baby.... - -“I’ve done my best,” said Harry moodily, “but it’s over now. Reckon -I’ll be called up in two months’ time.” - -“Who’d have thought it!—you eighteen!—and the liddle skinny limb of -wickedness you wur when I went away. I’d never have believed it, if -you’d toald me that in two year you’d have maade more of Worge than I -in five.” - -“Father wants me to appeal; but it ud never do, I reckon. You cudn’t -git off, so I’m not lik to.” - -“And it wouldn’t be praaper, nuther,” said Tom, rather huffily. “You -wud a brother in the Sussex! Farming’s all very well, Harry, but -soldiering’s better. I didn’t think it myself at one time, but now I -know different. A farm’s hemmed liddle use if Kayser Bill gits his -perishing plaace in the sun. Besides, the praaper job fur a praaper -Sussex chap is along of other Sussex chaps, fighting fur their farms. -That’s whur I’d lik my old brother to be, and whur he’d like to be -himself, I reckon.” - -“I shudn’t,” said Harry, “any more than you did at fust.” - -“I aun’t maaking out as I enjoy it—so you needn’t jump at me lik -that. The chap who tells you he enjoys it out thur, reckon he taakes -you fur a middling thick ’un, or he’s middling thick himself. But wot -I say is, that it’s the praaper plaace fur a Sussex chap to be. Ask -me wot I enjoy, and I’ll tell you”—and Tom jerked his pipe-stem over -the ribbed hump of the field towards the cottages of Sunday Street, -stewing like apples in the sunshine. “My fancy’s a liddle hoame of -my own, and a wife and child in it, and my own bit of ground outside -the door; and when we’ve wound up the watch on the Rhine, reckon I’ll -be justabout glad to taake my coat off and sit in the sun and see my -liddle ’un playing raound—and be shut of all that tedious hell wot’s -over thur, Harry, acrost Horse Eye and the Channel, if folks at home -only knew it—which seemingly they doan’t ... and I’m middling glad -they doan’t, surelye.” - -Harry was impressed, and a little ashamed. - -“Never think as I aun’t willing, Tom. I’m willing enough, though I’d -grown so unaccountable set on the new ploughs. Howsumdever, I’ve got -things started like, and Zacky, maybe, when I’m gone, he’ll pull to -and carry on, saum as I did; and father, he’s twice the head he had -afore he bruk his leg and cudn’t git his drink. Seemingly, they’ll do -valiant wudout me, and I ... well, I’ve come to love these fields so -middling dear that if one day I find I’ve got to die fur them, reckon -I shudn’t ought to mind much.” - - -3 - -“I must go and see Mus’ Sumption,” said Tom to Thyrza. He said it -several times before he went, for the days swam in a golden fog over -his home, shutting him into enchanted ground. It was hard to break -out of it even to go to Worge, and he found himself shelving the -thought of leaving for two hours of worse company the little garden -where the daffodils followed the crocuses, the shop all stuffy with -the smell of tea and candles, the bluish-whiteness of the little -sag-roofed rooms, and his wife and child, who were not so much -figures in the frame of it all as an essence, a sunshine soaking -through it.... However, Thyrza kept him to his word. - -“I’m tedious sorry fur Mus’ Sumption—he looks that worn and wild. -Maybe you cud give him news of Jerry.” - -“No good news.” - -“Well, go up and have a chat wud the pore soul. Reckon he’ll be -mighty glad to see you, and you’re sure to think of summat comforting -to say.” - -So Tom went, one evening after tea. He found the minister in his -faded threadbare room at the Horselunges, writing the letter which -every week he dropped into the post-box at Brownbread Street, and -generally heard no more of. The evening sun poured angrily on his -stooped grey head, and made the room warm and stuffy without the -expense of a fire. The old, old cat sat sulkily before the empty -grate, and the white mice tapped with little pink hands on the glass -front of their cage. The thrush had been dead some months. - -“Hello, Tom. This is kind of you, lad,” and Mr. Sumption sprang up in -hearty welcome, shaking Tom by the hand, and actually tipping the cat -out of the armchair so that his visitor might be comfortably seated. - -Tom sat down and pulled out his pipe, and for some minutes they edged -and skated about on general topics. Then the minister asked suddenly— - -“And how did you leave Jerry?” - -“Valiant”—certainly Jeremiah Meridian Sumption was a hardy, healthy -little beggar. - -But Mr. Sumption was not deceived. - -“Valiant in body, maybe. But, Tom, I fear for his immortal soul.” - -Tom did not know wat to say. He had never before seen the minister -without his glorious pretence of faith in his son. - -“It’s strange,” continued Mr. Sumption, “but from his birth that boy -was seemingly marked out by Satan. Maybe it was the bad blood of the -Rossarmescroes or Hearns; his mother was the sweetest, loveliest soul -that ever slept under a bush; but there’s no denying that the Hearns’ -blood is bad blood—roving, thieving, lusting, Satanic blood—and he’s -got it in him, has my boy, more than he’s got the decent blood of my -fathers.” - -“Has he written to you lately?” - -“Oh, he writes now and again. He’s fond of me. But he doesn’t sound -happy. Then Bill Putland, when he came home to get married, he told -me——” - -There was silence, and Tom fidgeted. - -“He told me as Jerry had got hold of a French girl in one of the -towns—a bad lot, seemingly.” - -“He’ll get over it,” said Tom. “Reckon he can’t have much love fur -such a critter.” - -“You knew of it too, then?” - -“Oh, we’ve all heard. He got First Field Punishment on her account, -fur——” - -“Go on.” - -“Thur’s naun to say. I guess she’s bad all through. Some of these -girls, they’re bits of stuff as you might say, but they’d never -kip a man off his duty or git him into trouble on their account. -Howsumdever, the wuss she is the sooner he’s lik to git shut of her.” - -Mr. Sumption groaned. - -“If only he could have married your sister Ivy!” - -“Ivy aun’t to blame.” - -“No—she’s not. I mustn’t be unjust. She treated him fair and square -all through; he says it himself. But, Tom, it’s terrible to think -that one human creature’s got the power to give another to Satan, and -no blame attached to either.” - -“Maybe Jerry wur Satan’s before he wur Ivy’s,” said Tom sharply; then -felt ashamed as he met the minister’s eyes with their tortured glow. - -“Maybe you’re right. This is Satan’s hour. He’s got us all for a -season, and this War is his last kick before the Angel of the Lord -chains him down in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. -These are the days of which the Scripture saith, that unless the Lord -should shorten them for the Elect’s sake, no man could be saved.” - -“I guess we’ve nearly done the Lord’s job. The perishers are even -more fed up than us, which is putting it strong. Let ’em start this -Big Push of theirn as thur’s bin such a talk about. Doan’t you -vrother about Jerry, Mus’ Sumption—he’ll be shut of this girl before -long, and you’ll git him back here and wed him to a good soul as ull -do better fur him than Ivy.” - -Mr. Sumption shook his head. - -“This is the war which shall end the world.” - -“Reckon I aun’t going out there, away from my wife and child and -home, all among the whizz-bangs and the coal-boxes, and git all over -mud and lice, jest to help on the end of the world. This world’s good -enough fur me, and I hope it’ll go on a bit longer after peace is -signed, so as I’ll git a chance of enjoying it.” - -“And they shall reign with Him a thousand years.” - -Tom was a little weary of Mr. Sumption in this mood; however, he felt -sorry for him, and let him run on. - -“You must be blind indeed,” continued the minister, “if you don’t -see how the Scriptures have been fulfilled—nation against nation and -kingdom against kingdom, and the Holy City given back to the Jews, -and the sun turned to darkness with the clouds of poisoned gas, and -the moon to blood ... the blood of the poor souls that are killed in -moonlight air-raids....” - -Tom knocked out his pipe. - -“Then at last”—and the minister’s eye kindled and his whole sunburnt -face glowed with the mixed fires of hope and fanaticism—“the sign of -the Son of Man shall appear in the heavens, and He shall come again -in power and great glory. Even so, come, Lord Jesus—but come before -our hearts are all broken. What’s the use of chaining up the Dragon -in the Lake if he’s already devoured the world? Shorten these days, -for the Elect’s sake—save us from the burning, fiery furnace which is -making frizzle of our bones and cinders of our hearts.” - -He suddenly dropped his head between his hands. Tom felt a bit -upset. He had again and again heard all this in chapel, but it was -embarrassing and rather alarming to have it coming from the next -chair. - -“Reckon you mind this War more’n I do,” he remarked lamely. - -“Because to you it is just war—while to me it’s Judgment. This is the -day of which the Prophet spoke, the day that shall burn as an oven, -and our sons and daughters shall burn as tow.... Bless you, young -chap! there have been other wars—the country’s full of their dead -names ... there were two lakes of blood up at Senlac.... But this -war, it’s the End, it’s Doomsday. Now it shall be proved indeed that -Christ died for the Elect, for all save the Elect shall perish. Tom, -I have a terrible fear that I shall have to stand by and see my boy -perish.” - -“Oh, he’ll pull through right enough—give him his head and he’ll come -to his senses afore long.” - -“I’m afraid not.” Mr. Sumption rose and began walking up and down -the room, his hands clasped behind him. The dipping sun poured over -his burly figure, showing up in its beautiful merciless beam the -seediness of his coat and the worn hollows and graven lines of his -face. “I’m afraid not, Tom Beatup. I’m afraid I’ll have to stand by -and see my boy damned. I’ll stand among the sheep and see him among -the goats. There’s no good trying to job myself into thinking he’s -one of the Elect—he knows he isn’t, and I know it. Whereas I have -Assurance—I’ve had it a dunnamany years. Between us two there is a -great gulf fixed. I’ll have to dwell for ever in Mount Sion, in the -general assembly and church of the firstborn, and see him for ever -across the gulf, in hell.” - -“Then reckon you’ll be in hell yourself.” - -“It seems like it. But the ways of the Lord are past finding out.... -And I would willingly give my soul for Jerry’s—the soul the Lord has -damned from the womb....” - -Tom stood up. He felt he could not stand any more of this. - -“Seemingly your religion aun’t much of a comfort to you.... Well, I -must be going now.” - -“You’ll come again?” - -“Reckon I will, if you’re lonesome.” - -“And look here, Tom; you won’t say a word to other folk of what I’ve -spoken—about Jerry, I mean. It ud never do if the parish came to -think that he was getting into bad ways.” - -“I’ll say naun—trust me. Reckon Jerry’s middling lucky to have you -stick by him as you do.” - -“Jerry once said he sometimes felt as if there was only me between -him and hell. Seemingly I’m the only friend he’s got.” - -Tom felt very sorry for Mr. Sumption. He told Thyrza that he thought -he must be getting queer with his troubles, and Thyrza immediately -planned to take the baby to see him; and a day or two later they -asked him down to the shop for the afternoon, and had the pleasure -of seeing him momentarily forget his troubles in a good tea. “Reckon -the poor soul thinks a lot of his inside,” said Thyrza, “and doan’t -always git enough to fill it with.” - - -4 - -The last days of Tom’s fortnight seemed to rush by in spate; they -blew before the March wind like the dust. Thyrza hurried on her -little preparations for his departure—she was making him new shirts, -and with loving hands repairing all of his that was frayed and worn, -from his shirt to his soul.... For even Tom’s simple soul had been -touched by the blight of war, and there was a look at the back of -his eyes which came from things he never spoke of ... things he had -seen out there in the land of horrors, which the folk at home did not -realise—and he was unaccountable glad they did not. Thyrza’s love had -driven that look to the back of his eyes and those memories to the -back of his heart, though probably she would never be able to drive -either the look or the memories quite away. Such things were now the -lot of boys.... - -He still went occasionally to Worge, and sat with his father and -mother in the kitchen, or gave Harry a hand on the farm. He persuaded -Mus’ Beatup to engage a lad for cow and stable work, so that his -brother’s burden was made lighter. One day Ivy came over with -Sergeant Staples. The slow formalities of his discharge were crawling -on, and she hoped to be married and to sail for Canada before the -summer was out. It struck Tom that she had sweetened and sobered -since he saw her last. Rumours of her affair with Seagrim had reached -him, and he was glad to have her settled down. “Ricky’s a valiant -pal,” she said once, and the words struck the difference between her -love for him and the love she had had for Seagrim, and would have -explained, if anyone had cared for an explanation, the comparative -ease and quickness with which she had turned from one to the other. -Seagrim had never been a pal—he had been a spell, a marvel, a magic -that would never come back, a wonder which a woman’s heart must know -but can seldom keep. Ricky, with his red hair and grinning monkeyish -face, would never throw over Ivy’s world the glamour of those weeks -with Seagrim, he would never transfigure the earth or turn pots to -gold.... On the other hand, as Ivy said, he was better to jog along -with, and she was certainly born for the ardours and endurances of -a colonial’s wife—“So that’s settled and done with,” she thought to -herself with a contented sigh—“and I reckon I’m a middling lucky -girl. It’s queer how Nell and me have seemingly done just the -saum—lost our hearts to one man and then gone and married another. -But I kept my head and did it sensible, while she, reckon she lost -hers and did it unsensible. Poor Nell! ... but I told her straight as -Kadwell wur a swine.” - -Nell had left the farm about four days after Tom’s return. Her -husband had suddenly claimed her, and had fetched her away to spend -his last leave with him in London. He expected to go to France in -a week or two now. Tom did not dislike his new brother-in-law; -he thought him a “good feller,” and considered him wonderfully -forbearing with Nell when she cried on saying good-bye to her mother, -and went away with her pretty face all marbled and blotched with -tears. - -“I’ve got no patience wud girls wot taake on them silly maidenish -airs,” he said to Thyrza. “You never cried when you caum to me, -surelye.” - -“I’d no mother to say good-bye to. Some girls always cry when they -say good-bye to their mothers.” - -“Nell never used to be so set on mother in the oald times.” - -“But it’s different now—it always is,” said Thyrza wisely—“that’s -why some folks ud sooner have a darter than a son. When a son goes -marrying he turns away from his parents, but a girl, the more she -loves outside the more she loves at home.” - -Tom pondered her words, and found himself beginning to feel a little -guilty. - -“Maybe you’re right. I hope Will woan’t go and disremember us when he -weds.” - -“Reckon he will,” said Thyrza—“it’s only nature.” - -Tom went up to Worge every evening till the end of his leave. - - -5 - -The last evening came, and Tom’s good-byes. - -“Reckon it’s always ‘good-bye’ now,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Good-bye to -Ivy, good-bye to Nell, good-bye to Tom—sims as if, as if that ward ud -git lik my oald broom, wore out from overuse.” - -“Thur’d be no good-byes if thur hadn’t bin howdy-dos fust. So cheer -up, mother, and we’ll be saying howdy-do agaun before Michaelmas.” - -“And then good-bye. Oh, Tom, when ull this tedious war have done?” - -“When it’s finished. Doan’t you fret over that, mother—reckon that -aun’t your job.” - -“I wish it ud have done, though, before our hearts are broke.” - -Nell was expected home that evening, and Mrs. Beatup persuaded Tom to -wait for her. He spent the interval going over the farm with Harry, -and giving last advice, though it was astonishing how firm on his -legs his brother now stood. He also took his chance of a straight -talk with Zacky. - -“Reckon you’re growing up lik a young colt, and you’ll have to taake -your turn now—step into Harry’s plaace saum as he stepped into mine.” - -Zacky’s besetting sin was not a lust for adventure in woods -and distant fields; he moved in a more humdrum circle of -dereliction—marbles and conkers and worms and string. However, Tom -discovered that he had a passion for “taking things to pieces” and -hoped to inspire him to zeal over the new mechanical reaper which was -that year to be the wonder of Worge’s harvest. - -To everyone’s disappointment, Nell did not arrive in a cab. She -came on foot from Senlac station, leaving her box to follow by the -carrier. Mrs. Beatup felt that Tom had been cheated, on his last day -at home, of a fine spectacular entertainment, and was inclined to be -peevish with Nell on his account. - -“Reckon it wurn’t your husband who told you to walk six mile in the -dust.” - -“No—but it’s such a beautiful evening, and I felt I wanted the fresh -air after London.” - -She looked worn and fagged, as she sat down by the fire, spreading -out her pale hands to the flames to warm. - -Mrs. Beatup sniffed. - -“Reckon thur’s more air-raids than air in London,” said Tom—“Ha! ha!” -and they all laughed at the joke. - -“But they dudn’t have naun while Nell was there,” said Mrs. Beatup, -continuing her grumble. “Nell, how dud you lik the Strand Paliss -Hotel?” - -“Oh, pretty fair—it was very grand, but a great big barrack like that -makes my head turn round.” - -“How big was it?” asked Zacky. “As big as church?” - -“Bigger a dunnamany times,” said Mrs. Beatup. “I’ve seen the Hotel -Metropoil in Brighton, and reckon you cud git the whole street into -it.” - -“Did you have a fire in your bedroom?” - -“No—there were hot pipes.” - -“Hot pipes! How queer!—I shud feel as if I wur in a boiler.” - -“And there was hot and cold water laid on.” - -“Reckon you washed.” - -“I had a bath.” - -“In your room?” - -“No—in a bathroom.” - -“A real white bath in a bathroom!...” Mrs. Beatup was regaining -confidence in her daughter. “You’ll be gitting too grand fur us here. -They say as once you start taaking baths it’s like taaking drams, and -you can’t git shut of it. I’ll have to see if I can’t fix fur you to -have the wash-tub now and agaun.... Oh, you’ll find us plain folks -here.” - -Nell did not speak; she was stooping over the fire and her spread -hands shook a little. - -“Reckon she’s low,” said Mrs. Beatup in a hoarse whisper to Tom; -“she’s said good-bye to her man, and she’s vrothering lest he never -comes back. It’s always ‘good-bye’ fur her lik fur the rest of us.” - -“It’ll have to be ‘good-bye’ fur me now, mother. I must be gitting -hoame.” - -Mrs. Beatup stood up sorrowfully— - -“Oh, Tom, I’ve a feeling as you’ll never come back.” - -“You’ve always had that feeling, mother—and I’ve always come back, -surelye.” - -“But maybe I’m right this time. They say as the Germans ull maake a -gurt push this Spring, and I reckon they’re sure to kill you if they -can.” - -“Reckon they’ll have a try—and if my number’s up I mun go, and if it -aun’t, I mun stay. So thur’s no sense in vrothering.” - -“You spik very differunt, Tom, from when you wur a lad.” - -“I feel different, you can bet.” - -“And yit it’s scarce two year agone since you wur naun but a boy, and -now you’re naun of a boy that I can see—you’re a married man and the -father of a child.” - -“And whur’s the harm of it?—you needn’t look so glum.” - -He took her in his arms and kissed her. Then he kissed his father— - -“Good-bye, dad—you’ll be climbing fences afore I’m back, and—” in -a friendly whisper, “you kip away from that old Volunteer. See wot -gitting shut of the drink has maade you—you’re twice the man, fur -all your leg. You kip on wud it, faather. You’ve got a start like—it -ought to be easy now.” - -“Kip on wud wot, my lad?—wud my leg, or the drink, or doing wudout -the drink? You doan’t spik clear and expressly—reckon you’re gitting -just a brutal soldier.” - -“Maybe I am, Faather.” - -“And you’ll never come raound me to kip teetotal when I think of them -Russians—all got shut of drink the fust month of the war, and then -went and bust up and ruined us. It’s bin proved as the war ull go -on a dunnamany years on account of them valiant teetotallers. If we -British all turn teetotal too, reckon as the war ull last fur ever.” - -“Reckon you’ve got the brains!” said Tom, but not in quite the same -tone as he used to say it. - -He said good-bye to Harry and Zacky, and to Nell—with a pat on her -shoulder and a “Doan’t you fret, my dear—he’ll come back.” - -Mrs. Beatup went down with him to the end of the drive. She looked on -this as her privilege, and also had some hazy idea about giving him -good advice. All she could think of on the present occasion was to -“Kip sober and finish the war.” - -“Wish that being my faather’s son maade it as easy to do one as it -does to do t’other. Now doan’t you start crying, fur I tell you I’ll -be back before you scarce know I’m a-gone.” - -“It’s queer, Tom ... now, thur’s summat I want to know. Tell me—is a -wife better than a mother?” - -“Better—but different. Doan’t you fear, mother. I’ll always want you. -Maybe I went and disremembered you and faather a bit after I wur -married, but now I’ve a youngster of my own it just shows me a liddle -bit of wot you feel ... and I’m sorry.” - -He suddenly kissed her work-soiled, roughened hand, with its broken -nails and thick dull wedding-ring sunk into the gnarled finger. - -“That’s wot they do to ladies in France.” - - -6 - -She watched him walk off down the Street, stopping to light his pipe -where the oast of Egypt Farm made a lee against the racing wind. Then -she walked slowly and heavily back to the house, planning a little -consolation for herself in listening to Nell’s tale of wonders. - -But when she came to the kitchen she found that Nell had gone -upstairs—to wash, Mus’ Beatup told her. Moved by a spasm of -tenderness, she took the kettle from the fire and creaked off with it -to her daughter’s room. - -Knocking at bedroom doors was a refinement unknown at Worge. Mrs. -Beatup accordingly burst in, to find Nell sitting on the bed, -with her face hidden in her hands. She had taken off her gown, -and sat arrayed in a short silk petticoat and an under-bodice of -a transparency that made her mother gasp; over her shoulders was -nothing but two pale-blue ribbons, against which her arms showed -yellowish-white and plumper than they used to be. So astonished was -Mrs. Beatup at this display that she scarcely noticed the hidden face. - -“Nell, how fine! But you’ll catch your death—I wonder your husband -let you....” Her voice trailed off, for Nell had dropped her hands, -and her face was running with tears. - -“My poor liddle girl!”—the mother’s heart went out in pity. She -put the kettle on the floor, and going over to the bed, sat down -on it with a great creaking of springs, and put her arms round -her daughter—at first rather gingerly, for fear of spoiling so -much elegance, then straining them closer, as Nell, melted into an -abandonment of weakness, began to sob against her breast. - -“My poor liddle girl!... It’s unaccountable sad fur you. I know.... -I know.... But doan’t you vrother, chick—he’ll come back. I’ve a -feeling as he’ll come back.” - -A long shudder passed through Nell. Then suddenly she raised herself, -gripping her mother’s arms, while her eyes blazed through her tears. -“Oh, mother, mother ... don’t you see? ... it’s not that I’m afraid -he won’t come back ... it’s that I’m afraid he will.” - -She threw herself down upon the pillow, sobbing with the accumulated -misery, humiliation, rage and dread of weeks. Mrs. Beatup stared at -her, dumbfounded. - -“Nell—wot are you talking of? You doan’t want Steve to come back?” - -“No—I hate him. I—I ... if he comes back ... and takes me away to be -my husband for good, I—I’ll kill myself.” - -“Reckon you doan’t know what you’re saying. You loved him -unaccountable when you wur wed.” - -“I didn’t love him ... not truly. And he’s killed the little love I -had.” - -“But all the fine things he’s guv you....” - -“Doan’t talk about them. They’re just part of the horribleness.” - -“Then you’re telling me as you maade a mistake?” - -“Reckon I did. Reckon my only chance now is that he won’t come back.” - -She began to sob again, not tempestuously, but slowly and painfully, -gradually jerking to silence. A soft green twilight deepened in -the room, and the low gurgling calls of starlings trilled under -the eaves. The mother still sat on the bed-foot, staring at her -daughter, who now lay still, a pool of blue in the dusk with her silk -petticoat, her shoulders showing nacreous against the dead-white of -the pillow. Mrs. Beatup was stunned, her mind slowly adjusting itself -to the revelation that there was in war another tragedy besides the -tragedy of those who do not come back—and that is the tragedy of some -who do. - - -7 - -The dipping sun slanted over the fields from Stilliands Tower, and -made Tom Beatup’s khaki like a knight’s golden armour as he trudged -home. The sky was a spread pool of blue, full of light like water, -and moss-green in the east where it dipped towards the woods of -Senlac. Soft whorls of dust bowled down the lane before a fluttering, -racing wind, that smelled of primroses and rainy grass. - -Tom heaved a deep sigh of well-being as he stopped to light his pipe. -To-morrow he would have left these sun-swamped sorrowless fields -and be back in the country where the earth was torn and gutted as -if by an earthquake, all scabbed and leprous as if diseased with -the putrefaction of its million dead—where the air rocked with -crashes, roars, rumbles, whizzes, caterwaulings, and reeked with -flowing stenches of dead bodies, blood, and hideous chemicals—where -any thornbush might conceal a sight of horror to freeze heart and -eyeballs ... and yet he could put the dread of it out of his mind, -and smile contentedly, and blink his eyes in the sun. - -A few yards down the street his cottage showed its little misted -shape, while its windows shone like garnets in the western radiance, -and a tall column of wood-smoke rose behind it, blowing and bowing in -the adventurous wind, which brought him snatches of its perfume, with -the sweetness of wet banks and primroses and budding apple-boughs.... -He knew that in the shop door Thyrza stood with the baby in her arms; -she would be waiting for him there with the sunshine swimming over -her white apron and purple gown, making the downy fluff on little -Will’s head to shine yellow as a duckling’s feathers. The thought -of wife and child was not cankered by the dread that he might never -see them again. The parting when it came would be terrible—he might -break down over it, as he had broken down before—but he had all a -soldier’s solid fatalism and scorn of the future, and was, perhaps, -strengthened by the inarticulate knowledge that if he were to die -to-morrow he died a man complete. From the lumbering, unawakened lad -of two years ago he had come to a perfect manhood, to be a husband -and father, fulfilling himself in a simple, natural way, with a -quickness and richness which could never have been if the war had not -seized him and forced him out of his old groove into its adventurous -paths. If he died, the war would but have taken away what it had -given—a man; for through it he had in a short time fulfilled a long -time, and at twenty-two could die in the old age of a complete, -unspotted life. - -He passed under the sign of the Rifle Volunteer, straddling the road -in his green uniform, with his rifle and pot of beer—“Queer old -perisher,” thought Tom, looking up at him—“I shudn’t like to go over -the top in that rig.” - -The Rifle Volunteer creaked noisily on his sign, as if the soldier of -bygone years challenged the soldier of to-day. - -“I am the man armed for the War That Never Was, who marched and -drilled and camped to fight the French, who never came. And you are -the man unarmed for the War That Had To Be, who never drilled or -marched or camped to fight the Germans, who came and nearly drove you -off the earth.” - -“Reckon he’d have bin most use a hunderd mile away,” scoffed Tom. - -“I went of my free-will and you because you were fetched,” said the -Rifle Volunteer. “Two years ago I saw you walking down this road -under my patriotic legs, a wretched, drag-heel conscript.” - -“He never fought in any war that I know of,” thought Tom, “and yit I -reckon thur used to be wars in these parts in the oald days. Minister -says the country’s full of thur naums. I doan’t know naun, surelye.” - -The east wind blew from Senlac, sweet with the scent of the ash-trees -growing on the barrow where Saxon and Norman lay tumbled together in -the brotherhood of sleep. - -“Here—when a great whinny moor rolled down from Anderida to the -sea, and Pevens Isle and Horse Isle were green in the bight of the -bay, and the family of the Heastings had finished building their -ham by the coast—here used to be the Lake of Blood, where hearts -were drowned. A red tun stands on it now, and good folk come to it -on market-days. Thus shall it be with all wars—out of the red blood -the red town, and under the green barrows friend and foe, tumbled -together in the brotherhood of sleep.” - -The east wind like a Saxon ghost whistled against Tom’s neck. - -“We fought as you did once—we hated the Norman as you hate the -German, yet look how peacefully we sleep together.” - -“They must have been funny,” thought Tom, “those oald wars wud bows -and arrows.” - -“Harold! Harold!... Rollo! Rollo!” cried the ghosts on the east wind -from Senlac. - -“God save the Queen,” said the Rifle Volunteer. - - - - -PART VII: MR. SUMPTION - - -1 - -It was early in April. A soft fleck of clouds lay over the sky, so -thin, so rifted, that the sinking lights of afternoon bloomed their -hollows with cowslip. A misty warmth hung over the fields, drawing up -the perfume of violets and harrowed earth, of the soft clay-mud of -the lanes, not yet dry after a shower and with puddles lying in the -ruts like yellow milk. - -Sunday Street was in stillness, like a village in a dream. Thin -spines of wood-smoke rose from its chimneys, blue against the grey -dapple of the clouds. The chink of a hammer came from the Forge, -but so muffled, so rhythmic that it seemed part of the silence. The -watery atmosphere intensified that effect of dream and illusion which -the village had that evening. Through it the cottages and farms -showed with a watery clearness and at the same time a strange air of -distance and unreality. There was flooding light, yet no sunshine, -distinctness of every line in eaves and tiling, of every daffodil -and primrose in garden-borders, and yet that peculiar sense as of -something far away, intangible, a mirage painted on a cloud. It was -thus that the vision of his home might rise before the stretched, -abnormal sight of a dying man, a simulacrum, a fetch.... - -Thyrza Beatup sat beside the willow pond at the corner of the Street, -on the trunk of a fallen tree. In her arms she held her baby, asleep -in a shawl. She felt warm and content and rather sleepy. In her -pocket was Tom’s last letter from France, but she did not read it, -for she knew it by heart.... “I think of you always, you dear little -creature, you and baby—even when my mind is full of the things out -here, and this great battle which is seemingly the biggest there’s -ever been.” ... “How I wonder when I’ll get another leave. I reckon -baby ull have grown a bit and you’ll be just the same.” ... “I shut -my eyes and I can see your face; reckon I love you more every time I -think of you and I think of you day and night, so you can guess all -the love that makes.” ... Tender phrases floated in and out of her -mind, and then she smiled as she remembered a funny story Tom had -told her about a chap in the A.S.C.... - -She drew the baby closer into her arms, looking down at his little -sleeping face, which she thought was growing more and more like -Tom’s. She drooped her eye-lids and in the mist of her lashes half -seemed to see Tom’s face there in the crook of her elbow, where it -had so often been, turning towards her breast. Poor Tom! his head was -not so softly pillowed these nights ... and as suddenly she pictured -him lying on the bare, foul ground, his head on his haversack, his -cheeks unshaved, his body verminous, his limbs all aching with cold -and stiffness—he, her man, her darling, whom she would have had rest -so sweetly and so cleanly, with nothing but sweetness and comfort for -the body that she loved—then a sudden flame of rebellion blazed up in -her heart, and its simplicity was scarred with questions—Why was this -terrible War allowed to be? How was it that women could let their men -go to endure its horrors? Did anyone in England ever yet know what it -was these boys had to suffer? Oh, stop it, stop it! for the sake of -the boys out there, and for the boys who have still to go ... save at -least a few straight limbs, a few unbroken hearts. - -She clenched her hands, and little Will moaned against her -breast, and as she felt his little fists beating against her, the -hard mood softened, and she bent over him with soothing words and -caresses—words of comfort for herself as well as for her child. - -“Don’t cry, liddle Will—daddy ull come back—daddy’s thinking of us. -He’s out there so that you ull never have to go; he bears all that so -that you may never have to bear it.” - -A thick grape red had trickled into the west like a spill of wine. -The afternoon had suddenly crimsoned into the evening, and ruddy -lights came slanting over the fields, deepening, reddening, so that -the willows were like flames, and the willow pond was like a lake of -blood.... The night wind rose, and Thyrza shivered. - -“We mun be gitting hoame, surelye,” and she stood up, pulling the -shawl over the baby’s face. - -At the same time her heart was full of peace. The questioning mood -had passed, and had given place to one single deep assurance of her -husband’s love. Tom’s love seemed to go with her into the house, to -be with her as she bathed Will and put him to bed, to drive away her -brooding thoughts when, later on, she sat alone in the lamplight at -her supper. She sang to herself as she put away the supper, a silly -old song of Tom’s when he first joined up: - - “The bells of hell go ring-aling-aling - For you, but not for me; - For me the angels sing-aling-aling, - They’ve got the goods for me. - O Death, where is thy sting-aling-aling? - Where, grave, thy victory? - The bells of hell go ring-aling-aling - For you, but not for me.” - -Now that darkness had fallen, the clouds had rolled away from the big -stars blinking in the far-off peace. A soft, sweet-smelling cold was -in the house, the emanation of the damp mould of the garden, where -hyacinths bathed their purples and yellows in the white flood of -the moon—of the twinkling night air, cold and clear as water—of the -fields with their brown moist ribs and clumps of violets. - -Thyrza’s room was full of light, for the westering moon hung over -Starnash like a sickle, and the fields showed grey against their -hedges and the huddled woods. She undressed without a candle, so -bright was the moon-dazzle on her window, and after saying her -prayers climbed into bed, where little Will now lay in his father’s -place. Once more she tried to picture that his head was Tom’s, and -that her husband lay beside her, while Will slept in his cradle, as -he had slept when Tom was at home. But the illusion faltered—Will was -so small, and Tom was so big in spite of his stockiness, and took up -so much more room, making the mattress cant under him, whereas Will -lay on it as lightly as a kitten. However, she did not badly need the -comfort of make-believe, for her sense of Tom’s love was so real, so -intense, and so sweet, that it filled all the empty corners of her -heart, making her forget the empty corners of her bed. She lay with -one arm flung out towards the baby, the other curved against her -side, while her hair spread over the pillow like a bed of celandines, -and the moonlight drew in soft gleams and shadows the outlines of her -breast. - -She lay very still—nearly as still as Tom was lying in the light of -the same moon.... But not quite so still, for the stillness of the -living is never so perfect, so untroubled as the stillness of the -dead. - - -2 - -Worge knew nearly as soon as the Shop, for Nell, running down after -breakfast to buy tobacco for her father, found the blinds still -drawn. The door was unlocked, however, so she went in and called her -sister-in-law. There was no answer, and, vaguely alarmed, she went -upstairs, to find Thyrza sitting on the unmade bed, still wearing the -print wrapper she had slipped on when the shop-bell rang during her -dressing. - -“I must go and tell his mother,” she kept repeating, when Nell had -read the telegram, and had set about, with true female instinct, to -make her a cup of tea. - -“Don’t you worry over that, dear—I’ll tell her.” - -“Reckon he’d sooner I did.” - -“No—no; it would be such a strain for you. I’ll go when I’ve made -your tea.” - -At that moment little Will woke up, and cried for his breakfast—his -mother had forgotten him for the first time since he was born. Nell -welcomed the distraction, though her heart tightened as she saw -Thyrza’s arms sweep to the child, and quiver while she held him with -his little cool tear-dabbled cheek against her own so tearless and so -dry. Nell left her with the boy at her breast, a big yellow hank of -hair adrift upon her shoulder, and her eyes staring from under the -tangle, fixed, strangely dark, strangely bright, as if their grief -were both a shadow and an illumination. - -She herself ran back on her self-inflicted errand, all her being -merged into the one pain of knowing that in ten minutes she would -have turned a jogging peace to bitterness, and bankrupted her -mother’s life of its chief treasure. She saw herself as a flame -leaping from one burning house to set another light. - -Mrs. Beatup’s reception of the news held both the expected and the -unexpected. - -“I knew it,” she said stonily—“I felt it—I felt it in my boans. And -I toald him, too—I told him, poor soul, as he’d never come back, and -now he’ll never come, surelye.” Then she said suddenly—“I mun go to -her.” - -“Go to whom, mother dear?” - -“Thyrza. He’d want it ... and reckon she feels it even wuss than me.” - -Nothing could dissuade her, and off she went, to comfort the woman -with whom she had so long played tug-of-war for her son. - -Nell stayed behind in the dreary house, where it seemed as if things -slunk and crept. It was holiday-time, so Zacky was at home, sobbing -in a corner of the haystack, crying on and on monotonously till he -scarcely knew what he cried for, then suddenly charmed out of his -grief by a big rat that popped out of the straw and ran across his -legs. Elphick and Juglery mumbled and grumbled together in the barn, -and talked of the shame of a yeoman dying out of his bed, and cast -deprecating eyes on the indecency of Harry, dark against the sky on -the ribbed swell of the Street field, making his late sowings with -the new boy at his heels. Up and down the furrows went Harry, with -his head hung low, in his ears the mutter of the guns, so faint on -the windless April noon that he sometimes thought they were just the -sorrowful beating of his own heart—up and down, scattering seed into -the earth, leaving his token of life in the fields he loved before -he was himself taken up and cast, vital and insignificant as a seed, -into the furrows of Aceldama or the Field of Blood.... - -Mus’ Beatup sat crouched over the fire, the tears every now and then -welling up in his eyes, and sometimes overflowing on his cheeks, -whence he wiped them away with the back of his hand. “’Tis enough to -maake a man taake to drink,” he muttered to himself—“this is wot -drives men to drink, surelye.” Every now and then he looked up at the -clock. - -The clock struck twelve, and the Rifle Volunteer called over the -fields: - -“Come, farmer, and have a pot with me. You’ve lost a son in your -War—there were no sons lost in mine, but pots of beer are good for -joy or sorrow. Come and forget that boy for five minutes, how he -looked and what he said to you, forget this War through which good -yeomen die out of their beds, and drink with the Volunteer, who -drilled and marched and camped and did every other warlike thing save -fighting, and died between his sheets.” - -Mus’ Beatup groped for his stick. Then he shook his head rather -sadly. “The boy’s scarce cold in his grave. Reckon I mun wait a day -or two before I disremember his last words to me.” - -Mrs. Beatup did not come home till after supper, and went to bed -almost at once. She felt fagged and tottery, and there was a -shrivelled, fallen look about her face. When she was in bed, she -could not sleep, but lay watching the moon travel across the room, -lighting first the mirror, then the wall, then her own head, then -maaster’s, then climbing away up the chimney like a ghost. Every now -and then she fell into a little, light dose, so thridden with dreams -that it was scarcely sleeping. - -In these dreams Tom was always a child, in her arms, or at her feet, -or spannelling about after the manner of small boys with tops and -string. She did not dream of him as grown, and this was the basis of -her new agreement with Thyrza. Thyrza could never think of him as -a child, for she had never seen him younger than eighteen; all her -memories were concentrated in his few short years of manhood, and his -childhood belonged to his mother. So his mother and his wife divided -his memory up between them, and each thought she had the better part. - -Mrs. Beatup wondered if anyone—Bill Putland or Mus’ Archie—would -write and tell her about Tom’s end. So far she had no idea how he had -died, and her imagination crept tearfully round him, asking little -piteous questions of the darkness—Had he suffered much? Had he asked -for her? Had he wanted her?—Oh, reckon he had wanted her, and she -had not been there, she had not known that he was dying, she had -been pottering round after her household, cooking and washing up and -sweeping and dusting, and thinking of him as alive and well, while -all the time he was perhaps crying out for her in the mud of No Man’s -Land.... - -The tears rolled down her cheeks in the darkness that followed the -setting of the moon. Was it for this that she had borne him in hope -and anguish?—that he should die alone, away from her, like a dog, -in the mud?... She saw the mud, he had so often told her of it, -she saw it sucking and oozing round him like the mud outside the -cowhouse door; she saw the milky puddles ... she saw them grow dark -and streaked with blood. Then, just as her heart was breaking, she -pictured him in the bare clean ward of a hospital, as she had seen -him at Eastbourne, with a kind nurse to relieve his last pain and -take down his last little messages. Oh, someone was sure to write to -Tom’s mother and tell her how he had died, and perhaps send her a -message from him. - -The daylight crept into the room, stabbing like a finger under -the blind, and with it her restlessness increased. Then a pool of -sunshine gleamed at the side of the bed. She felt that she could not -lie any longer, so climbed out slowly from under the blankets. She -tried not to disturb her husband, but she was too unwieldy for a -noiseless rising, and she heard him turn over and mutter, asking her -what she meant by “waaking a man to his trouble”—then falling asleep -again. - -She went down to the kitchen, to find Harry, his eyes big and blurred -with sleep, just going to set about his business in the yard. Moved -by a quake of tenderness for this surviving son, she made him a cup -of cocoa, and insisted on his drinking it before he went out to work. -Then she did her own scrubbing with more care than usual—“Reckon we -must kip the farm up, now he’s agone.” Urged by the same thought she -went out to the Dutch barn and mixed the chicken food, then opened -the hen-houses, feeling in the warm nests for eggs. - -By now the sun was high, a big blazing pan slopping fire over the -roofs and into the ponds. The air was full of sounds—crowings, -cacklings, cluckings, the scurry of fowls, the stamping of horses, -and then the whining hiss of milk into zinc pails. Hoofs thudded -in the lane, the call of a girl came from a distant field, all the -country of the Four Roads was waking to life and work, faltering no -more than light and darkness because one of its sons had died for -the fields he used to plough. Wheels crunched in the drive, and then -came the postman’s knock. Mrs. Beatup put down her trug of meal, and -waddled off towards the house ... perhaps a letter had come about -Tom; it was rather early yet, still, perhaps it had come. - -But Harry had already been to the door, and shook his head when she -asked if there was anything for her. - -“Thur’s naun.” - -“Naun fur none of us?” - -“Only fur me.” - -She saw that he was carrying a long, official-looking envelope, and -that his hand was clenched round it, as if he held a knife. - -“Wot’s that?” - -“My calling-up paapers.” - - -3 - -Tom was not the only local casualty that week. Bourner heard of the -death of his eldest son, a youth who had somehow squeezed himself -out to the front at the age of seventeen; the baker at Bodle Street -lost his lad, Stacey Collbran of Satanstown had died of wounds, and -the late postman at Brownbread Street was reported missing. All these -had been struck down together on the ravaged hills round Wytschaete, -where the Eighteenth Sussex had for long hours held a trench which -the German guns had pounded to a furrow. In this furrow the body of -Tom Beatup lay with the bodies of other Sussex chaps, hostages to -shattered Flanders earth for the inviolate Sussex fields. - -Mrs. Beatup heard about it from Mus’ Archie, who wrote, as she -had expected, while Bill Putland wrote to Thyrza. Tom had been -shot through the head. His death must have been painless and -instantaneous, the Lieutenant told his mother. Then he went on to say -how much they had all liked Tom in the platoon, how popular he had -been with the men and how the officers had appreciated his unfailing -good-humour and reliableness. “All soldiers grumble, as you probably -know, but I never met one who grumbled less than Beatup; and you -could always depend on him to do what was wanted. We shall all miss -him more than I can say, but he died bravely in open battle, and we -all feel very proud of him.” - -“Proud”—that was the word they were all throwing at her now: Mus’ -Archie, the curate, even the minister. They said, “You must be very -proud of Tom,” just as if all the age-old instincts of her breed did -not generate a feeling of shame for one who died out of his bed. Good -yeomen died between their sheets, and her son had died out in the -mud, like a sheep or a dog—and yet she must be proud of him! - -Thyrza was proud—she said as much between her tears. She said that -Tom had died like a hero, fighting for his wife and his child. - -“He died for England,” said Mr. Poullett-Smith. - -“He died for Sunday Street,” said the Rev. Mr. Sumption. “I reckon -that as his eyestrings cracked he saw the corner by the Forge and the -oasts of Egypt Farm.” - -It appeared that Tom had died for a great many things, but in her -heart Mrs. Beatup guessed that it was really a very little thing that -he had died for— - -“Reckon all he saw then wur our faaces,” she said to herself. - -As there had been so many local deaths, both now and during the -winter, it struck the curate to hold a memorial service in the church -at Brownbread Street. He knew how the absence of a funeral, of any -possibility of paying mortuary honour to the loved ones, would add to -the grief of those left behind. So he hastily summoned a protesting -and bewildered choir to practise _Æterna Christi Munera_, and -announced a requiem for the following Friday. - -Mr. Sumption saw in this one more attempt of the church to “get the -pull over him,” and resolved to contest the advantage. He too would -have a memorial service, conducted on godly Calvinistic lines; there -should be no Popish prayers for the dead or vain confidence in their -eternal welfare, just a sober recollection before God and preparation -for judgment. - -It was perhaps a tacit confession of weakness that Mr. Sumption -did not offer this attraction as a rival to the Church service, -but planned to have it later in the same day, so that those with a -funeral appetite could attend both. Experience had taught him that -what he had to depend on was not so much his flock’s conviction as -their lack of conviction. The Particular Baptists in Sunday Street, -those, that is to say, who for conscience’ sake would never worship -outside the Bethel, would not fill two pews. He depended for the rest -of his congregation on the straying sheep of Ecclesia Anglicana, of -the Wesleyans, Primitive Methodists, Ebenezers, Bible Christians, -Congregationalists, and other sects that stuck tin roofs about the -parish fields. - -It occurred to him that perhaps now was his great chance to scatter -the rival shepherds, so made his preparations with elaborate care, -boldly facing the handicaps his conscience imposed by forbidding him -to use decorations, anthems, or instrumental music. He even had a -few handbills printed at his own expense, and canvassed a hopeful -popularity by rightly diagnosing the complaint of some sick ewes -belonging to Mus’ Putland. - - -4 - -On Thursday evening he sat in his room at the Horselunges, preparing -his sermon. Of course his sermons were not written, but he took -great pains with their preparation under heads and points. He felt -that this occasion demanded a special effort, and it was unfortunate -that he felt all muddled and crooked, his thoughts continually -springing away from their discipline of heads and racing off on queer -adventures, scarcely agreeable to Calvinistic theology. - -He thought of those dead boys, some of whom he knew well and others -whom he knew but slightly, and he pictured them made perfect by -suffering, buying themselves the Kingdom of Heaven by their blood. -He knew that his creed gave him no right to do so—Christ died for -the elect, and no man can squeeze his way into salvation by wounds -and blood. And yet these boys were crucified with Christ.... He saw -all the crosses of Flanders, a million graves.... Perhaps there was -a back way to the Kingdom, a path of pain and sacrifice by which -sinners won the gate.... - -He rebuked himself, and bent again to his work. The setting sun -poured in from the west, making the little room, with its faded, -peeling walls, and mangy furniture, a tub of swimming light. Mr. -Sumption had got down to his Fourthly when his thoughts went off -again, and this time after a boy who was not dead. It was a couple -of months since he had heard from Jerry, and the letter had been -unsatisfactory, though by this time he should have learned not to -expect so much from Jerry’s letters. He lifted his head from the -paper with a sigh, and, chin propped on hand, gazed out of the window -to where bars of heavy crimson cloud reefed the blue bay of light. He -remembered an evening nearly a year ago, when he and Jerry had sat by -the window of a poor lodging-house room in Kemp Town, and felt nearer -to each other than before in their lives.... - -“Reckon he can’t help it—reckon he’s just a vessel of wrath.” - -He bit his tongue as a cure for weakness, and for another ten minutes -bobbed and fumed over his notes. The sermon was not going well. He -had taken for his text: “Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: -for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand; a day of -darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, -as the morning spread upon the mountains.” He told the congregation -that their grief for the death of these young men was but part of the -universal woe, a spark of that furnace which should devour the world. -Melting together in Doomsday fires the Book of Revelation and the -Minor Prophets, he pointed out how the Scriptures had been fulfilled -... the Beast, the False Prophet, the Army from the North, the Star -called Wormwood, the Woman on Seven Hills, the Vision of Four Horns, -the Crowns of Joshua, the Flying Roll, all these were in the world -to-day, Signs in the rolling clouds of smoke that poured from the -burning fiery furnace, where only the Children of God could walk -unharmed. “And the Sign of the Son of Man shall be in the heavens....” - -Here it was that again his thoughts became treacherous to his theme. -Instead of the Sign of the Son of Man appearing in the heavens, he -seemed to see it rising out of the earth, the crosses on the million -graves of Flanders. Could it be that Christ was already come? ... -come in the brave and patient sufferings of boys, who died that the -world might live?... “It is expedient that one man should die for the -people.” He drove away the thought as a blasphemy, and stooped once -more to his paper, while his finger rubbed under the lines of his big -Bible beside him. - -“Sixthly: The Crowns of Joshua. Satan at his right hand. ‘The Lord -rebuke thee, O Satan.’ The promise of the Branch. The promise of the -Temple. But all must first be utterly destroyed. ‘I will utterly -consume all things, saith the Lord.’ Don’t think the War will end -before everything is destroyed. ‘That day is a day of wrath, a day -of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of -darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness.’ The -hope of the Elect. ‘I will bring the third part through fire.’ ...” - -There was the rattle and jar of crockery outside the door, and the -next minute Mrs. Hubble kicked it open, and brought in the minister’s -supper of bread and cocoa. She set it down, ruthlessly sweeping aside -his books and paper, and then took a telegram out of her apron pocket. - -“This has just come, and the girl’s waiting for an answer.” - -Telegrams came only on one errand in the country of the Four Roads, -and Mrs. Hubble felt sure that this was to announce either the -wounds or death of Jerry. It is true that he might be coming home on -leave, but in that case she reckoned he would never trouble to send -a telegram—he would just turn up, and give her his room to sweep and -his bed to make all on the minute. - -She narrowly watched the minister as he read it—if it brought bad -news she would like to be able to give the village a detailed account -of his reception of it. But he made no sign—only struck her for the -first time as looking rather stupid. It was queer that she had never -noticed before what a heavy, blunted kind of face he had. - -“Any answer?” - -He shook his head, and put the telegram face downwards on the tray. -Mrs. Hubble flounced out and banged the door. - -For some minutes after she had gone Mr. Sumption sat motionless, -his arm dangling at his sides, his eyes fixed rather vacantly on -the steam rising from the cocoa-jug. The sun had dipped behind the -meadow-hills of Bird-in-Eye, and only a few red, fiery rays glowed on -the ceiling. Mr. Sumption picked up the telegram and read it again. - -“Deeply regret to inform you that Private J. M. Sumption has died at -the front.” - -He felt weak, boneless, as if his joints had been smitten asunder. -Something hot and heavy seemed to press down his skull. He could not -think, and yet the inhibition was not a respite, but a torment. His -ears sang. Every now and then he tried pitifully to collect himself, -but failed. Jerry dead ... Jerry dead ... then suddenly his head -fell forward on his hands, and he began to cry, first weakly, then -stormily, noisily, his whole body shaking. - -The sobs stopped as suddenly as they had begun, but the -brain-pressure had been relieved, and he could now think a little. -He saw, as from a great way off, himself before the telegram came—he -saw that as he planned that memorial service, prepared that elegiac -sermon, there had run in his veins a fiery, subtle pride that he, at -least, was father of a living man. He had not seen it at the time, -but he saw it now—now that his pride had been trampled and he himself -was in the same abyss with the souls he was to comfort. He too was -father of the dead; Jerry was dead—at last and for ever beyond the -reach of his help, his efforts, even his prayers ... the son of the -woman from Ihornden. - -The room was almost in darkness now; fiery lights moved and shifted, -and by their glow he read the telegram over again, for at the bottom -of his heart was always a sick, insane thought that he must be -mistaken, that this blow could not have fallen, that Jerry must still -be somewhere alive and up to no good. But the message was there, and -now on this third reading, he noticed something peculiar about the -phrasing of it—“Private Sumption has died at the front.” Surely this -was not the usual form of announcement. He had seen several such -messages of woe, and they had read “killed in action” or “died of -wounds.” He had never seen one put exactly like this. - -However, it was not of any real importance. Jerry was dead; that was -the only vital, necessary fact. But he would write to Mus’ Archie for -particulars.... The lamp was on the table, and he lit it, pushing -aside the unused supper-tray and the littered sermon-paper. - - -5 - -He wrote on into the night. He found a certain crookedness in his -ideas which made him tear up several efforts—he once even found -himself writing to Jerry, a proceeding which struck him with peculiar -horror. The hours ticked on; the big constellations swung solemnly -across the uncurtained window (luckily Policeman was in bed, and -did not see the lozenge of gold lamplight that lay in Mrs. Hubble’s -backyard). Inside the room the cat prowled to and fro, miaowling to -be let out for a scamper on the barn-roofs—at last, he jumped on -the table and, upsetting the cocoa, lapped his fill and retired to -dignified repose. The mice tapped on the glass front of their cage -with little pink hands like anemones.... Mr. Sumption for once did -not notice his animals; he sat brooding over the table long after he -had finished writing. Then, as the sky was fading into light, and big -greyish-white clouds like mushrooms were banking towards the east, he -dropped asleep, his head fallen over the back of his chair, with the -mouth a little open, his arms hanging at his sides. - -The daylight fought with the lamplight, and as with a sudden crimson -rift it won the victory, Mr. Sumption woke—from dreams full of the -roaring of a forge and his own arm swung above his head, as in the -old days at Bethersden. He sat for a few moments rubbing his eyes, -feeling very stiff and cold. Then he realised that he was hungry. -The supper-tray was still before him, swimming in cocoa. He ate the -bread—dry, because the minister was one of those greedy souls who -devour their week’s ration of butter in the first three days, and -neither jam nor cheese was to be had in Sunday Street, even if he -could have afforded them. When he had eaten all the bread, he began -to feel thirsty. He longed for a cup of tea. Overhead in the attic -there was a trampling, which told him that Mrs. Hubble would soon -be down to boil the kettle. He hung about the stairhead till she -appeared—shouting back at her father-in-law, who would not get up, -and generally in a bad mood for her lodger’s service. - -However, to his surprise, she was quite obliging—he did not know what -his night had made of him. She hurried down to the kitchen to light -the fire, and bade him come too and warm himself. Mr. Sumption would -have preferred to be alone, but he was beginning to feel very cold, -and a kind of weakness was upon him, so he came and sat by her fire, -and drank gratefully the big, strong cup of tea she gave him. - -“You’ve had bad news of Mus’ Jerry, I reckon,” said Mrs. Hubble. - -Mr. Sumption nodded, and warmed his hands round the cup. He could not -bring himself to say that Jerry was dead. - -“This is a tar’ble war,” continued Mrs. Hubble, “and I reckon those -are best off wot are put out of it”—this was to find out what really -had happened to Jerry. “I often think,” she added piously, “of -the happy lot of the dead—no more trouble, no more pain, no more -worriting after absent friends, no more standing in queues. I often -think, minister, as it’s a pity we aun’t all dead.” - -“Maybe, maybe,” said Mr. Sumption. - -He rose and walked restlessly out of the kitchen. He both wanted -companionship and yet could not bear it. When would the day end—the -day that streamed and blew and shone over Jerry’s grave?... He was -going upstairs, when he heard a shuffle of paper behind him, and saw -that a letter had been pushed under the door. The post came early to -Sunday Street, and Mr. Sumption ran down again, full of an eager, -futile hope. The letter bore the familiar field postmark, and at -first he thought it was from Jerry, and that he was going to suffer -that rending, ecstatic agony of reading letters from the dead. But -as he picked it up he saw that the writing was not Jerry’s, but in a -hand he did not know. Whose could it be?—whosoever it was must be -writing about his son. He tore it open as he went up to his room, -and at the bottom of the folded paper saw, “Yours, with sincerest -sympathy, Archibald Lamb.” - -Of course, it was Mr. Archie—writing to Jerry’s father as he had -written to Tom’s mother. The minister had had very little to do -with the Squire, except on one occasion, when he had met him riding -home from a day’s hunting, on a badly-lamed horse, and had applied -a fomentation which Mr. Archie said had worked a wonderful cure. -Now there were two pages covered with his big, firm handwriting. -Mr. Sumption pulled them out of the envelope, and from between them -a grimy piece of paper fell to the ground, scrawled over with the -familiar smudge of indelible pencil. - -Mr. Sumption grabbed it, letting Mr. Archie’s letter fall in its -stead. As he began to read it, he wondered if it had been found on -Jerry’s body—it was certainly more smeary and stained than usual. -After he had read a little, he sat down in his chair. His hand shook, -and he stooped his head nearer and nearer to the writing as if his -sight were failing him. - - “DEAR FATHER, - - “By the time you get this I will be out of the way of troubling - you any more. I am in great trouble. Mr. Archie said perhaps not - tell you, but I said I would rather you knew. It is like this. I - kept away in —— last time we went up to the trenches, with a lady - friend, you may have heard of. Beatup says he told you. Well, I - am to be shot for it. I was court-martialled, and they said to be - shot. Dear Father, this will make you very sorry, but it cannot - be helped, and I am not worth it. I have been a very bad son to - you, and done many wicked things besides. Things always were - against me. Mr. Archie has been very kind, and so has the pardry - here. Mr. Archie is sitting with me to-night, and he says he will - stay all night, as I am feeling very much upset at this great - trouble. I am leaving you my ring made out of a piece of Zep - and my purse, only I am afraid there is no money in it. Please - remember me to Ivy Beatup, and say if it had not been for her I - should not be here now. I think that is all. - - “Ever your loving son, - - “JEREMIAH MERIDIAN SUMPTION. - - “P.S.—The pardry says Jesus will forgive my sins. Thank you very - much, dear father, for those fags you sent. I am smoking one now.” - - -6 - -It was nearly half an hour later that Mr. Sumption picked up Archie -Lamb’s letter. It caught his eye at last as he stared at the floor, -and he picked it up and unfolded it. Perhaps it would give him a -grain of comfort. - -The lieutenant afterwards described it as the most sickening job -he had ever had in his life. The usual letter of condolence and -explanation, such as he had over and over again written to parents -and wives, became an easy task compared with this. Here he had to -deal not only with sorrow, but with disgrace. He could not write, as -he had so often written, “We are proud of him.” He could not refer -back with congratulations to a good record—Jerry had died as he had -lived, a bad soldier, a disgrace to the uniform he wore, and there -seemed very little that could be decently said about him. - -However, the innate kind-heartedness and good feeling of the young -officer pulled him successfully through an ordeal that would have -staggered many better wits. He began by explaining his reluctance, -and that he was writing only because Jerry wished it—though, perhaps, -it was better, after all, that his father should know the truth. -“As a matter of fact, it is not so dreadful as it sounds. Your son -is not to die so much as a punishment as a warning. The shooting of -deserters is chiefly a deterrent—and your son is dying so that other -men may be warned by his fate to stick to the ranks and do their duty -as soldiers; therefore you may say that, indirectly, he is dying for -his country. Moreover, his disappearance was not due to cowardice, -but to other reasons which you probably know of. I don’t know if -this mitigates it to you, it certainly does to me. Sumption is not a -coward. I have seen him in action, and I repeat that he is as plucky -as any one. - -“I am sitting with him now, and I want to make your mind easy about -the end. When I have finished writing this he will be given his -supper, food and a hot drink. Then he will go to sleep. He will be -roused just ten minutes before the time, and hurried off, still -half-asleep—he will never be quite awake. There will be no awful -apprehension and agony, such as I expect you imagine—please don’t -worry about that. - -“I have not been able to get him a padre of his own church, but a -very good Congregational man has been with him, and has, of course, -respected your convictions in every way. - -“Now before I end up, I want to say again that it isn’t really as bad -as it looks—the disgrace, I mean. Think of your son as having died so -that other men should take warning by him and not desert the ranks, -and therefore, in that sense he has died for his country.” - -Then Archie Lamb asked Mr. Sumption to write to him if there was -anything more he wanted to know, and said that he would forward -Jerry’s purse and ring at the first opportunity. After the signature -was added: “It is all over now, and happened as I told you. He was -still half asleep, and suffered practically nothing.” - - -7 - -For some minutes Mr. Sumption sat with his head buried in his hands. -Before his closed eyes he saw pass the last pitiful act of Jerry’s -tragedy. He saw him standing defiant and furtive—he would always -look defiant and furtive, even if half awake—with his back to the -wall ... then—cr-r-rack!—and he would fall down at the foot of it in -a crumpled heap, that perhaps still moved a little.... But he had -suffered nothing ... practically nothing.... - -Then he saw Jerry standing all his life with his back to a wall, -every man armed against him. He had but died as he had lived. Even -his own father had been against him, had misused and misunderstood -him. There had never been anyone to understand that mysterious, -troubled heart, anyone who could have understood it—except, perhaps, -Meridian Hearn, his mother—and that queer people of defiant furtive -ways, whose dark blood had run in his veins and been his ruin. -Meridian Hearn should not have married the _gaujo_ preacher from -Bethersden—she should have married one of her own race, and then her -child would have lived among those of like passions as he, and not -among strangers, who had mobbed him and pecked his eyes out, like -sparrows attacking a foreign bird. - -“Oh, Meridian, Meridian!—our boy’s dead....” - -There was the familiar clatter and kick outside the door, and Mrs. -Hubble came in with the breakfast tray. Her face was crimson and very -much excited, though she tried to work it into lines of woe; for -she had at last heard the news about Jerry, from Gwen Bourner, who -had heard it from Mrs. Bill Putland, who had had a letter from her -husband that morning. All Sunday Street now knew that Jerry Sumption -had been shot as a deserter, having given the 18th Sussex the slip on -the eve of the action in which Tom Beatup and Fred Bourner and Stacey -Collbran and other local boys had given up their limbs and lives—he -had gone to a French woman, and been found in a blouse and wooden -shoes. The platoon would not miss him much, Bill Putland said; but he -was unaccountable sorry for his father. - -So, to do her justice, was Mrs. Hubble. She had put an extra spoonful -of tea in his tea-pot, and had boiled him an egg, a luxury which was -not included in his boarding fees. Moreover, she gave him a pitying -glance, as she swept the litter of sermon-paper to one side. - -“Will you want me to tell people?” she asked him. - -“Tell people what?” His voice came throatily, like an old man’s. - -“Well, I reckon you woan’t be preaching to-night?” - -Something in her voice made him start up, and pull himself together. -He saw her squinting compassionately at him, with the corner of her -apron in readiness. - -“Preach!—Why do you ask that?” - -“I’ve heard about your loss. I reckon you woan’t be feeling in heart -for preaching.” - -He did not reply. - -“I cud easy stick up a notice on the chapel door,” she continued, -“and all the folkses hereabouts ud understand. They’d never expect -you to spik after wot’s happened.” - -“Woman!—what has happened?” - -He spoke so suddenly and so loudly, that Mrs. Hubble started, and -dropped the corner of her apron. - -“I—I ... well, we’ve all of us heard, Mus’ Sumption....” - -“Heard what?” - -“I—I.... Doan’t look at me like that, minister, for the Lord’s sake.” - -“Speak then. What have you all heard?” - -Mrs. Hubble was recovering from her alarm and beginning to resent his -manner. - -“Well, reckon we’ve heard wot you’ve heard—as your boy’s bin shot fur -deserting his regiment; and no one expects you to come and preach in -chapel after that.” - -A wave of burning crimson went over Mr. Sumption’s face, so that Mrs. -Hubble said afterwards she thought as he’d go off in a stroke. Then -he was suddenly white again, and speaking quietly, but in a voice -that somehow frightened her more than his shouting. - -“I shall certainly preach to-night. I will not have the service -cancelled. Tell everyone who asks you that I shall certainly preach.” - -“Very good, sir.” - -She edged towards the door. - -“Mrs. Hubble! Stop a moment. Say this, too. I am not ashamed of my -son. I reckon you all think I am ashamed of him, and you are putting -your heads together and clacking, and pitying me for it. But I am not -ashamed. He died for England. Mr. Archie himself says it. These are -his very words: Wait!”—for Mrs. Hubble was going to bolt. - -“I’m waiting, Mus’ Sumption.” - -“He says, ‘Think of your son as having died so that other men should -take warning by him and not desert the ranks, and, therefore, in that -sense he has died for his country.’ Do you understand?” - -“Yes, sir.” - -“Then you can go.” - -Mrs. Hubble fled. - - -8 - -All that morning heavy pacings over her head convinced Mrs. Hubble -that the minister was preparing a wonderful sermon. She generally -guessed the temper of his discourse by the weight and width of the -stumpings which preceded it. To-day she could hear him, as she -expressed it, all over the room ... he was kicking the fire-irons -... he had overturned his chair ... he had flung up the window and -banged it down again. Obviously something great was in process, and -at the same time she felt that Mr. Sumption was rather mad. It was -nothing short of indecent for him to preach to-night, after what had -happened—and the queer way he had spoken about Jerry, too.... - -By this time the whole of Sunday Street knew about Jerry. He -was discussed at breakfast-tables, in barns, on doorsteps, on -milking-stools. No one was surprised; indeed, most people seemed to -have foretold his bad end. “I said as he’d come to no good, that -gipsy’s brat.” “A valiant minister wot can’t breed up his own son.” -“Howsumdever, I’m middling sorry fur the poor chap; I’ll never -disremember how he saaved that cow of mine wot wur dying of garget.” -“And I’m hemmed, maaster, if he wurn’t better wud my lambing ewes -than my own looker, surelye.” - -On the whole, the news improved his chances of a congregation. It was -a better advertisement than the notice on the church door, or even -than his veterinary achievement at Egypt Farm. Some “wanted to see -how he took it,” others openly admired his pluck; all were stirred by -curiosity and also by compassion. During the years he had lived among -them he had grown dear to them and rather contemptible. They looked -down on him for his shabbiness, his poverty, his pastoral blundering, -his lack of education; but they liked him for his willingness, his -simplicity, his sturdy good looks, his strong muscles, his knowledge -of cattle and horses. - -All that morning people wavered up the street towards the -Horselunges, and looked at it, and at the Bethel. Sometimes they -gathered together in little groups, but always some way off. The -Bethel stared blindly over the roof of the Horselunges, as if it -ignored the misery huddled at its doors. No matter what might be the -private sorrows of its servant, he must come to-night and preach -within its walls those iron doctrines of Doomsday and Damnation in -whose honour it had been built and had stood staring over the fields -with the blind eyes of a corpse for a hundred years. - -Towards noon Thyrza Beatup came up the street, walking briskly, with -her weeds flapping behind her. It was the first time she had been out -since her widowing, and people stared at her from their doors as she -walked boldly up to Horselunges and knocked. - -“How is poor Mus’ Sumption?” she asked Mrs. Hubble. - -“Lamentaable, lamentaable,” said Mrs. Hubble, with eye and apron in -conjunction. - -“Well, please tell him as Mrs. Tom Beatup sends her kind remembrances -and sympathy, and she reckons she knows wot he feels, feeling the -saum herself.” - -“Very good, Mrs. Beatup.” - -“And you’ll be sure and give it all wot I said—about feeling the saum -myself?” - -“Oh, sartain.” - -Thyrza walked off. Her face was very white and wooden. Mrs. Hubble -stared after her. - -“Middling pretty as golden-haired women look in them weeds.... Feels -the saum as Mus’ Sumption, does she? That’s queer, seeing as Tom died -lik Onward Christian Soldiers, and Jerry lik a dog. Howsumdever, I -mun give her words ... maybe he’ll be fool enough to believe them.” - -The day was warm and misty, without much sun. The sky above the woods -was yellowish, like milk, and the air smelt of rain. But the rain did -not come till evening. Mr. Poullett-Smith’s congregation assembled -dry, and nobody’s black was spoiled on the way home. In spite of -this, the service was not thickly attended. The advertisement which -Jerry Sumption’s death had given the Bethel made those who had time -or inclination for only one church-going decide to put it off until -the evening. Only a few assembled to hear the curate pray that the -souls they commemorated—among which he was not afraid to include -Jerry—might be brought by Saint Michael, the standard-bearer, into -the holy light. - -On the other hand, the Bethel was crowded, and by this time it was -raining hard. The air was thick with the steaming of damp clothes. -The lamps shuddered and smoked in the draught of the rising wind, and -the big, blinded windows were running down with rain, as if they wept -for the destruction of the chapel weed.... - -Never had the Rev. Mr. Sumption such a congregation. Nearly the whole -of Sunday Street jostled in the pews. Instead of the meagre peppering -of heads, there were tight rows of them, like peas in pods. All the -Beatups were there, except Nell, who had stayed at home to look -after the house; even Mus’ Beatup had hobbled over on his stick. The -Putlands were there, and Mrs. Bill Putland, and the Sindens and the -Bourners and the Hubbles. Thyrza had come, with little Will asleep -in her arms—she sat near the back, in case she should have to take -him out. The Hollowbones had come from the Foul Mile and the Kadwells -from Stilliands Tower; there were Collbrans from Satanstown, Viners -from Puddledock, Ades from Bodle Street, and even stragglers from -Brownbread Street and Dallington. Most of them had never been in -the Bethel before, and it struck them as unaccountable mean, with -its smoking lamps and windows flapping with dingy blinds, its pews -that smelled of wood-rot, and its walls all peeled and scarred with -moisture and decay. - -There was a rustle and scrape as Mr. Sumption came in, through the -little door behind the pulpit. Then there was silence as he stood -looking down, apparently unmoved, on what must have been to him an -extraordinary sight—his church crowded, full to the doors, as he had -so often dreamed, but never seen. He looked pale and languid, and his -eyes were like smoky lanterns. His voice also seemed to have lost its -ring as he gave out the number of the psalm, and then in the prayer -which followed it. Moreover, though the congregation, being mostly -new, shuffled and kicked its heels disgracefully, he thumped at no -one. - -“Pore soul, he shudn’t ought to have tried it,” thought Thyrza to -herself in her corner. “He’ll never get through.” - -After the prayer, which was astonishingly nerveless for a prayer of -Mr. Sumption’s, came a hymn, during which the minister sat in the -pulpit, his hand over his face. Those in the front rows saw his jaws -work as if he was praying. People whispered behind their Bibles—“He’s -different, surelye—just lik a Church parson to-night.” “Reckon it’s -changed him—knocked all the beans out of him, as you might say.” -“Pore chap, he looks middling tired—reckon he finds this a tar’ble -job.” - -Then the singing stopped, and Mr. Sumption stood up, wearily turning -over the leaves of his big Bible. - -“Brethren, you will find my text in the Eleventh of John, the -fiftieth verse: ‘It is expedient that one man should die for the -people.’” - - -9 - -The sermon began with the unaccustomed flatness of the rest of the -service. Mr. Sumption’s voice had lost its resonance, his arms no -longer waved like windmill-sails, nor did his joints crack like -dried osiers. He made his points languidly on his fingers, instead -of thumping them out on the pulpit with his fist. The congregation -would have been disappointed if they had not known the reason for -this slackness; as things were, it was part of the spectacle. They -noticed, too, a certain bitterness that crept into his speech now and -then, as when he described the Chief Priests and Scribes plotting -together to take refuge behind the sacrifice of Christ. “It is -expedient for us ... that the whole nation perish not.” - -“Brethren, I see them nodding their ugly beards together, and saying: -‘Let this young man go and die for us. One man must die for the -people, and it shan’t be one of us, I reckon—we’re too important, -we can’t be spared. Let us send this young man to his death. It is -expedient that he should die for the nation.’” - -Then suddenly he stiffened his back, bringing his open Bible together -with a thud, while his voice rang out with the old clearness: - -“Reckon that was what you said among yourselves when you saw the -young men we’re thinking of to-night go up before the Tribunal, or -volunteer at the Recruiting Office. You said to yourselves, ‘That’s -right, that’s proper. It is expedient that these young men should go -and die for the people. I like to see a young man go to fight for his -country. I’m too old.... I’ve got a bad leg ... but I like to see the -young men go.’” - -For a moment he stood and glared at them, as in the old days, his -eyes like coals, his big teeth bared like a fighting dog’s. Then -once again his weariness dropped over him, his head hung, and his -sentences ran together, husky and indistinct. - -The congregation shuffled and coughed. The service required -peppermint-sucking to help it through, and owing to war conditions -no peppermints were forthcoming. Zacky Beatup made a rabbit out of -his handkerchief and slid it over the back of the pew at Lily Sinden. -Mus’ Beatup began to calculate the odds against the Bethel closing -before the Rifle Volunteer. Old Mus’ Hollowbone from the Foul Mile -crossed his legs and went to sleep, just as if he was sitting with -the Wesleyans. Then Maudie Sinden pulled a screw of paper out of -her pocket and extracted a piece of black gum—the very piece she -had taken out of her mouth on entering the chapel, knowing that no -sweet had ever been sucked there since Tommy Bourner was bidden “spue -forth that apple of Sodom” two years ago. Thyrza had never seen a -congregation so demoralised, but then she had never seen a minister -so dull, so drony, so lack-lustre, so lifeless. “He shudn’t ought to -have tried it, poor chap,” she murmured into the baby’s shawl. - -Then suddenly Mr. Sumption’s fist came down on his Bible. The pulpit -lamps shuddered, and rattled their glass shades, and the congregation -started into postures of attention, as the minister glared up and -down the rows of heads in the pod-like pews. - -“Reckon you’ve no heart for the Gospel to-day,” he said severely. -“Pray the Lord to change your hearts, as He changed my sermon. This -is not the sermon I had meant to preach to you, and if you don’t -like it, it is the Lord’s doing. I had for my text: ‘The day of the -Lord is at hand, as the morning spread upon the mountains.’ That was -my text, and I had meant to warn you all of the coming of that day, -as I have so often warned you. It is a day which shall burn like an -oven, and the strong man shall cry therein mightily; it is a day of -darkness and gloominess, of clouds and thick darkness. Then I was -going forward to show you how the Sign of the Son of Man shall be in -the heavens, and how He shall appear in clouds with great glory.... -But the Lord came then and smote me, and I lay as dead before Him, -like Moses in the Mount. And when I came to myself, I knew that the -Sign of the Son of Man is already with us here—not in heaven, but on -earth—rising up out of the earth ... over there in France—the crosses -of the million Christs you have crucified.” - -They were all listening now. He could see their craning, attentive -faces, and their kicks and coughs had died down into a rather -scandalised silence. - -“The million Christs you have crucified, all those boys you sent out -to die for the people. You sent them in millions to die for you and -for your little children, and their blood shall be on you and on your -children. Oh, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised—talking of Judgment -as if it was a great way off, and behold it is at your doors; and -the Christ Whom you look for has come suddenly to His temple—in the -suffering youth of this country—all countries—in these boys who -go out and suffer and die and bleed, cheerfully, patiently, like -sheep—that the whole nation perish not. - -“Think of the boys you have sent, the boys we’re specially -remembering here to-day. There was Tom Beatup—a good honest lad, -simple and clean as a little child. He went out to fight for you, but -I reckon you never woke up in your comfortable bed and said: ‘There’s -poor Tom Beatup, up to the loins in mud, and freezing with cold, and -maybe as empty as a rusty pail.’ The thought of him never spoiled -your night’s rest, and you never felt, ‘I’ve got to struggle tooth -and nail to be worth his sacrificing himself like that for an old -useless trug like me, and I’ll do my best to help my country at home -in any way as it can be done, so as the War ull be shortened and Tom -ull have a few nights less in the mud.’ That’s what you ought to have -said, but I reckon you didn’t say it. - -“There’s Stacey Collbran, too, who left a young sweetheart, and ull -never know the love of wedded life because you had to be died for. -Do you ever think of him when your Wife lies in your bosom, and say, -‘Reckon I’ll be good to my wife, since for my sake a poor chap never -had his’? - -“And there’s Fred Bourner, and Sid Viner, and Joe Kadwell, and Leslie -Ades—they all went out to die for you, and they died, and you come -here to remember them to-night; but in your hearts, which ought to -be breaking with reverence and gratitude, you’re just saying, ‘It’s -proper, it’s expedient that these men should die for the people, that -the whole nation perish not.’ - -“And there’s my boy....” - -The minister’s voice hung paused for a minute. He leaned over the -pulpit, his hands gripping the wood till their knuckles stood out -white from the coarse brown. His eyes travelled up and down the -pew-pods of staring heads, as if he expected to see contradiction or -mockery or surprise. But the Sunday Street face is not expressive, -and except for the utter stillness, Mr. Sumption might have been -reading the chapel accounts. - -“There’s my boy, Jerry Sumption; Maybe you thought I wouldn’t talk of -him to-night, that I’d be ashamed, that I’d never dare mention his -name along of your gallant boys. Besides, you say, What’s he got to -do with it? He never died for the people. But you thought wrong. I’m -not ashamed to speak his name along of Tom and Stace and Fred and -Sid and Joe, and he hasn’t got nothing to do with it, either. For I -tell you—_my boy died for_ _your boys_. He died as an example and -warning to them, to save them from a like fate, and if that isn’t -dying for them.... These are Mr. Archie Lamb’s very words: ‘Your son -is dying so that other men may be warned by his fate and stick to the -ranks and do their duty as soldiers; therefore, in that sense he has -died for his country.’ I reckon it seems a big thing to shoot a boy -just for going off to see his girl when the company’s marching; but -if it weren’t done then other boys ud stop away and the regiment go -to pieces. Mr. Archie and the other officers said, ‘It is expedient -that one man should die for the regiment, that the whole army perish -not.’... - -“No! I am not ashamed of my boy! If he was led astray at the last -moment by his evil, human passions, who shall judge him?—Not I, and -not you. He did not desert because he was a coward, because he funked -the battle before him. Listen again to Mr. Archie Lamb; he says, -‘Sumption is not a coward—I have seen him in action, and I repeat -that he is as plucky as any one.’ And he joined up as a volunteer, -too—he didn’t have to be fetched, he didn’t go before the Tribunal -and say he’d got a bad leg, or a bad arm, and his father couldn’t -run the business without him. He joined up out of free-will and love -of his country. The Army was no place for him, for his blood was the -blood of the Rossarmescroes or Hearns, which knows not obedience. -When he joined he risked his life not only at the hands of the enemy -but at the hands of his own countrymen, and it is his own countrymen -that have put him to death, ‘that the whole nation perish not.’ - -“I tell you, my boy died for your boys; my boy died for you, and you -shall not look down on his sacrifice. Over his grave is the Sign -of the Son of Man, Who gave His life as a ransom for many. To save -your boys from the possibility of a disgrace such as his my boy died -in shame. When they see the grave of Jerry Sumption they will say: -‘That is the grave of a man who died because he could not obey laws -or control passions, because he was not master of his own blood. -Therefore let us take heed by him and walk warily, and do our duty as -soldiers; and if we must die, not die as he died....’ So my son died -for your sons, and my son and your sons died for you; and I ask you: -‘Are you worth dying for?’” - -Again the minister was silent, staring down at the rows of wooden, -expressionless faces, now faintly a-sweat in the steam and heat of -the Bethel. Then suddenly he burst out at them, loudly, impatiently: - -“I’ll tell you the truth about yourselves; I’ll tell you if you’re -worth dying for. What has this War meant to you? What have you done -for this War? There’s just one answer to both questions. Nothing. -While men were fighting for their own and your existence, while -they were suffering horrors out there in France which you can’t -think of, and if you could think of could not speak of, you were -just muddling about there in your little ways, thinking of nothing -but crops and prices and the little silly inconveniences you had to -put up with. Ho! I reckon you never thought of the War, except when -you got some cheery letter from your boy, telling you he was having -the time of his life out there, or when the price of bread went up, -or you had to eat margarine instead of butter, or you couldn’t get -your Sunday joint. All that war meant to you was new orders about -lights, and tribunals taking your farm-hands, and prices going up -and food getting scarce, and the War Agricultural Committee leaving -Cultivation orders. And all the time you grumbled and groused, and -wrote out to your boys that you were dying of want, weakening their -hearts—they who wrote you kind and cheery letters out of the gates -of hell. You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You -little, little souls, that only bother about the little concerns of -your little parish in the middle of this great woe. The end of the -world is come, and you know it not; Christ is dying for you and you -heed Him not. Are you worth dying for? Are you worth living for? -No—you’re scarce worth preaching at.” - -By this time there were signs of animation among the pea-pods. The -peas rolled from side to side, and a faint rustle of indignation came -from them. - -“I know why you’re here to-night,” continued Mr. Sumption. “You’ve -come to gaze on me, to watch me in my trouble, to see how I take it. -You haven’t come to hear the Gospel—you yawned and wriggled all the -time I was preaching it. You haven’t come just to think of the dead -boys—you did that in church this morning. You’re here to gaze at me, -to see how I take it. Well, now you see how I take it. You see I’m -not ashamed. Why should I be ashamed of my son? He’s worth a bundle -of you—he’s died a better death than anyone in this church is likely -to die; and if he lived a vessel of wrath, at all events he was a -full vessel, not just a jug of emptiness. He lived like the wild man -he was born, and he died like a poor wild animal shot down. But I -am not ashamed of him. And though he died without baptism, without -conversion, without assurance, I cannot and I will not believe that -he is lost. Somewhere the love of God is holding him. The Lord tells -me that my fatherhood is only a poor mess of His; well, in that case, -I reckon He won’t cast out my lad. Willingly I’d bear his sins for -him, and so I reckon Christ will bear them even for the child of -wrath. Where I can love, He can love more, and since He died as a -felon, reckon He feels for my poor boy. He knows what it is to stand -with His back to the wall and see every man’s hand raised against -Him, and every man’s tongue stuck out. And because He knows, He -understands, and because He understands, He forgives. Amen.” - -The windows of the Bethel shook mournfully in the wind, and the rain -hissed down them, as if it shuddered and wept to hear such doctrine -within its walls. But the sounds were lost in the shuffle of the -rising congregation, standing up to sing the psalm. - - -10 - -That night the minister did not stand at the door to shake hands with -the departing congregation. Beatups, Putlands, Sindens, Hubbles, -Bourners, jostled their way unsaluted into the darkness, groping with -umbrellas, fumbling into cloaks. But even the rain could not prevent -an exchange of indignation. People formed themselves into clumps and -scurried together over the wet road. From every clump voices rose in -expostulation and resentment. - -“To think as I’d live to be insulted in church!” - -“Reckon he’d never dare say half that in a plaace whur folkses’ -tongues wurn’t tied to answer him.” - -“Maade out as we thought only of our insides,” said Mrs. Sinden. -“Seemingly he never thinks of his, when all the village knows he wur -trying the other day to make Mrs. Tom give him a tin of salmon fur -ninepence instead of one-and-three.” - -“And she did it, too,” said Mrs. Putland. - -“It’s twice,” said Mrs. Beatup, “as he called me stiff-necked and -uncircumcised, and I reckon I aun’t neither.” - -“And he said I wur lik an empty jug,” said Mus’ Beatup. - -“And his Jerry’s worth a bundle of us,” laughed Mus’ Sinden. - -“Wot vrothers me,” wheezed old Father-in-law Hubble, “is that to the -best of my hearing I heard him maake out as Christ died fur all.” - -“And why shudn’t he?” asked Mus’ Putland. - -“Because Mus’ Sumption’s paid seventy pound a year to teach as Christ -died for the Elect, and so he always has done till to-night.” - -“Well, seemingly thur wurn’t much Elect in gipsy Jerry, so he had -to change his mind about that. Reckon he had to git Jerry saaved -somehow.” - -“But he’d no call to chaange the Divine council—I’ve half a mind to -write to the Assembly about it.” - -“Wot sticks in my gizzard,” said Mus’ Bourner, “is that to hear him -you’d think as we’re all to blame for Jerry’s going wrong, while I -tell you it’s naun but his own mismanaging and bad breeding-up of the -boy. ‘Bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he -will not depart from it.’ That’s Bible, but it’s sense too. It’s all -very praaper for Minister to stick by the young boy now and say he -aun’t ashaumed of him, but if only he’d brought him up Christian and -not spoiled him, reckon he’d never have bin called upon to stand thur -and say it.” - -There were murmurs and assenting “Surelyes.” - -“He spoiled that boy summat tar’ble,” continued the smith. “Cudn’t -say No to him, and let him have his head justabout shocking. Then -maybe he’d git angry when the young chap had disgraced him, and hit -him about a bit. But thur aun’t no sense in that, nuther. Wot Jerry -wanted wur a firm, light hand and no whip—and Mus’ Sumption ud have -been the fust to see it if Jerry had bin a horse.” - -“Well, he’s got his punishment now,” said Mrs. Putland. “Poor soul, -my heart bleeds for him.” - -“Howsumdever, he’d no call to insult us,” said Mrs. Sinden, “and I -fur one ull never set foot agaun in that Bethel as long as I live.” - -Thyrza Beatup did not walk with the others. Her grief was still -too raw, and Mr. Sumption’s words about Tom had made her cry. She -carried Will under her cloak, walking quickly over the wet ruts, -home to the fire before which she would undress him and put him to -bed. Mr. Sumption’s sermon had not had the same effect on her as on -the others—for one thing, she thought of Tom more than of Jerry; for -another, her feeling towards the minister was of pure compassion. -Poor chap! how he must have suffered, how he must have hated all -those Who mourned honourably, who grieved for heroes and saints, such -as her Tom. What would she have felt, she wondered, if Tom had died -like Jerry?... - -She wished she could have seen Mr. Sumption after the service, and -asked him in to a bit of supper. Poor soul! one could always comfort -him through his inside. She was glad Tom had been to see him on his -last leave ... he had spoken very nicely of Tom. - -She came to the little house, all blurred into the darkness, with the -rain scudding before it. A pale, blue light hung under the clouds -from the hidden moon, and was faintly reflected in the gleaming wet -of the roadway. Thyrza fumbled for her key, and let herself into the -shop. The firelight leaped to meet her. As she turned to shut the -door, she saw a man go quickly past, head sloped, shoulders hunched -against the Wind. - - -11 - -Mr. Sumption felt he could not stay indoors—he could not bear the -thought of sitting long hours, harassed and lonely, in that shabby, -wind-thridden study of his, with the peeled wall-paper flapping in -the draught and the rain cracking on the windows. Besides, he would -have to face a personal encounter with Mrs. Hubble, and weather the -storm of her wrath at being “preached at”; more than once she had -thought fit to give him a piece of her mind when the sermon had -affronted her. The tongue of a scolding woman was an anti-climax he -dared not face, so he let himself out of the little door at the back -of the chapel, and, turning up his collar, marched away against the -rain. - -He had no exact idea where he was going. All he knew was that he -wanted to get away from Sunday Street, from the people who had come -to stare at him in his trouble. A lump of rage rose in his throat -and choked him, and tears of rage burned at the back of his eyes. He -saw the rows of stolid faces, the greased heads, the stupid bonnets. -There they had sat and wagged in judgment on him and his boy. There -they had sat, the people who were content to be suffered and died -for by the boys in Flanders, while they stayed at home and grumbled. -Well, thank the Lord he had told them what they were! Ho! he had -given it to them straight—he had made their ears burn! - -He walked on and on, cracking his joints with fury. He had turned -into the East Road at Pont’s Green, and was now hurrying southward, -head down, to meet the gale. There was something in the flogging and -whirling of the wind which stimulated him; he found relief in pushing -against the storm, in swallowing the rain that beat upon his lips -and trickled down his face. He would walk till he was tired, and -then he would find some sheltered place to go to sleep. Only through -exhaustion could he hope to find sleep to-night. It would be horrible -to lie and toss in stuffy sheets, while the darkness pressed down his -eyeballs and at last the dawn crept mocking round the window.... -It did not matter if he stopped out all night; he did not care what -people thought of him—he had burned his boats. - -The moon was still pale under the clouds, and the wet road gleamed -like pewter. The hedges roared, as the wind moved in them, and every -now and then he could hear the swish of a great tree, or the cracking -and crying of a wood. In the midst of all this tumult he felt very -lonely—if he passed a farm, with slats of lamplight under its blinds, -he felt more lonely still. But it was better than the loneliness of a -room, of the room to which someone he loved would never come again. -He had a sudden memory of Jerry as he had seen him, the morning after -the boy’s own night out of doors, sitting like a monkey in the big -wash-tub in front of the fire.... - -It must have been between two and three o’clock in the morning when -Mr. Sumption found the road leading past the gape of a big barn. By -this time his legs were aching with cold and wet, and his face felt -all raw with the sting of the rain. It would be good to take shelter -for a little while. Then he would go home, and brave Mrs. Hubble. -He would be back in his study when she brought in his breakfast. -Breakfast ... he rubbed his big hands together, he was already -beginning to feel hungry. But before he went home he must rest. -That weariness which had muffled him like a cloak in the chapel, -fumbling his movements and veiling his eyes, was dropping over him -now. He felt the weight of it in his limbs, and, worse still, in his -heart and brain. When he shut his eyes he saw nothing but rows of -heads, staring and wagging.... He went into the barn, and the sudden -stopping of the wind and rain made him feel dazed. Then a queer thing -happened—he pitched forward on his face into a pile of straw, not -giddy, not fainting, merely fast asleep. - - -12 - -For some hours he slept heavily in his pitched, huddled attitude, but -as the cloud of sleep lightened before waking, he had another dream -of the old forge at Bethersden, and of himself working there, in the -days before the “voices” came. He saw the great red glow of the forge -spread out over the cross-roads, fanning up the road to Horsmonden -and the road to Witsunden and the road to Castweasel. He saw the -smithy full of it, and himself and his father working in it, with -arms swung over the glowing iron—he heard the roar of the furnace -and the thump of the hammers; and a great fulness of peace was in -his heart. Dimly conscious in his dream of all that had passed since -those happy days, he felt a wonderful relief at being back in them, -and the sweetest doubt as to the reality of his later experiences.... -So it had been a dream, all his ministerial trouble and travail, his -brief snatch at love, his son’s birth in sorrow and life in defiance -and death in shame.... The hammers swung, and the forge roared, and -the light fanned up to the stars.... - -Then he woke, with the roar and thump still in his ears, for his head -hung down over the straw below the level of his body. All his limbs -were cramped, and he found it difficult to rise. The first despair of -waking was upon him, and he wished he could have died in his dream. -Bright sunshine was streaming into the barn, lighting up its dark old -corners where the cobwebs hung like lace. Framed in the big doorway -was a green hill freckled with primroses and cuckoo flowers, with -broom bushes budding against a thick blue sky that seemed to drip -with sunshine. - -He stumbled out into the stroke of the wind, now scarcely enough to -ripple the big rain puddles that lay blue and glimmering in the -road. He was in a part of the country he did not know, doubtless -beyond the frontiers of the Four Roads, in some by-lane behind -Rushlake Green. - -Though it was too late, he felt that even now he could not go back to -Sunday Street. He shrank from meeting human beings, especially those -who had sat before him in rows like pea-pods last night. Oh, those -heads! he would never forget them, how they had stared and rolled.... -He turned away from the road, and went up the rising ground behind -the barn. It was a spread of wild land, some common now in its spring -bloom of gorse and violets. He threw himself down upon the turf, and -for a few minutes lay motionless, with the sun gently steaming his -damp crumpled clothes. - -He longed to be back in his dream, back in the red glow of the -furnace, back at the old cross-roads in Kent. A sense of great -cruelty and injustice was upon him. Why had the Lord called him from -the work he loved, away to unknown cares and sorrows, to a life for -which he was not fitted? It even seemed to him that if only he had -been left a blacksmith this tragedy of Jerry would not have happened -... if Jerry had never been in the impossible, grotesque situation -of “a clergyman’s son.”... Why had the Lord sent voices, which never -came now, which, indeed, had not come since his marriage? Why had the -Lord raised up the minister at Tenterden, to send him to a training -college and try to make him what he never could be, a gentleman? He -was no minister—only a poor image of one, which everybody laughed -at. He had had qualms of doubts before this, but he had put them -from him; now he was too exhausted, too badly bruised and beaten, -to deceive himself any further. He was no minister of God—he -could hardly, after a twelve years’ pastorate, scrape together a -congregation; people went anywhere but to the Particular Baptists. -They never asked for his ministrations at sick-beds, they hardly ever -came to him to be married or buried, as if they doubted the efficacy -of these rites at his hands; he had not performed one baptism in the -last five years, and the only time his church has been full was when -they had all come to gaze on him, to see how he bore his trouble. On -the other hand, if a man had a sick sheep or an ailing cow, or if his -horse went lame or spoiled his knees, he called him in at once. That -ought to have shown him. He was not a minister but a farrier, and the -people of Sunday Street knew it, and treated him accordingly. - -He lay with his face hidden against the grass. It seemed as if his -life had stopped like a watch, leaving him, like a stopped watch, -still in being. Jerry, the centre and spring of his existence for -twenty years, was gone; his ministry was gone—he could not go back -after what had happened, and no brethren would call him elsewhere. -He could not stay on at Sunday Street or return to the forge at -Bethersden. Here he was, past middle age, without friends, without -kin, without livelihood, without resources of any kind. He saw -himself alone in a world burning and crashing to ruin, a world that -bristled with the crosses of martyred boys and was black with the -dead hopes of their fathers. - -A sob broke from him, but without tears. His being seemed dried up. -The horror of thick darkness was upon him, of this blasted world -rocking and staggering to the pit, of the flame which devoured all, -good and bad, elect and damned, wheat and weeds. Who could endure -to the end of this Judgment? Who hoped to be saved? All was burnt -up, dried, and blasted. The day of the Lord had come indeed and had -consumed him like a dry stick. - -“My soul is full of troubles and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. - -“I am counted with them that go down into the pit. - -“Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom Thou -rememberest no more. - -“Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. - -“Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast vexed me with thy waves. - -“Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off. - -“Lover and friend hast thou put from me, and mine acquaintance into -darkness.” - - -13 - -His hands clenched on the young grass, slowly dragging out bunches -of tender, growing things. He began to smell the sweetness of their -roots, of the soil that clung to them—moist, full of sap and growth, -of inevitable rebirth. These budding, springing things, growing out -of deadness into life and warmth, suddenly gave him a little piteous -thrill of joy, which broke into his despair like a trickle of rain -into dry sods. The earth seemed to hold a steadfast hope in her -stillness and strength, in her scent and moisture and green life -struggling out of death.... Those boys who had cast themselves down -on the earth to die, perhaps they had found this hope ... perhaps -disgraced Jerry slept with it. No man, no blood-lusty power, could -cheat them of it, for even bodies blown into a thousand pieces the -earth takes into her kind stillness and makes them whole in union -with herself. - -Even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the earth had not failed -him. No one could separate him from her or cheat him of his reward in -her. From her he had come and to her he would return, and in her he -would be one with those whom he had lost, his dead wife and his dead -son. There should be no disgrace there, nor torment, nor tears, nor -sighing; no parting, when all are united in the one element and the -children are asleep together on the mother’s breast.... - - -14 - -An hour later Mr. Sumption had left the green hill and was walking -towards a little hamlet that showed its gables at the bend of the -lane. Now that his grief was spent, drunk up by the earth like -a storm, he remembered that he was hungry, and set out to hunt -for food. There was an inn at the beginning of the street, a low -house slopped with yellow paint and swinging the sign of the Star -across the road. Mr. Sumption walked in and asked the landlady for -breakfast; then, upon her stare, changed his demand to dinner, -whereat she told him that the Star did not give dinners, and that -there was a war on. However, he managed at last to persuade her to -let him have some dry bread and tea, and a quarter of an hour later -he was making the best of them in a little green, sunless parlour, -rather pleasantly stuffy with the ghosts of bygone pipes and pots. - -The room was in the front of the house, and the shadow of the inn -lay across the road, licking the bottom of the walls of the houses -opposite. Above it they rose into a yellow glare of sunshine, and -their roofs were bitten against a heavy blue sky. From quite near -came the pleasant chink of iron, and craning his head he saw the -daubed colours of a smith and wheelwright on a door a little further -down the street. It comforted him to think that there should be a -smith so near him, and all through his meal he listened to the clink -and thud, with sometimes the clatter of new-shod hoofs in the road. - -When he had finished his dinner and paid his shilling he went out and -up beyond the shadow of the inn to the smith’s door. The name of the -hamlet was Lion’s Green, and he gathered he was some ten miles from -home, beyond Horeham and Mystole. It would not take him more than a -couple of hours to get back with his great stride, so there was time -for him to linger and put off the evil hour when he must confront -Mrs. Hubble and explain why he had been out all night. Meantime he -would go and watch the smith. - -There was no house opposite the forge, and the doorway was full of -sunshine, which streamed into the red glare of the furnace. Mr. -Sumption stood in the mixing light, a tall black figure, leaning -against the doorpost. He had smoothed his creased and grass-stained -clothes a little, and taken out the straws that had stuck in his -hair, but he always looked ill-shaved at the best of times, and -to-day his face was nearly swallowed up in his beard. The smith was -working single-hand, and had no time to stare at his visitor. He -wondered a little who he was, for though he wore black clothes like a -minister, he was in other respects more like a tramp. - -“Good afternoon,” said Mr. Sumption suddenly. - -“Good afternoon,” said the smith, hesitating whether he should add -“sir,” but deciding not to. - -“You seem pretty busy.” - -“Reckon I am—unaccountable busy. I’m aloan now—my man went last week. -Thought I wur saafe wud a man of forty-eight, but now they raise the -age limit to fifty, and off he goes into the Veterinary Corps.” - -“Shall I give you a hand?” - -The smith stared. - -“I’ve done a lot of smith’s work,” continued Mr. Sumption eagerly. -“There’s nothing I can’t do with hoof and iron.” - -The smith hesitated; then he saw the visitor’s arms as he took off -his coat and began to roll up his sleeves. - -“Well, maybe ... if you know aught ... there’s the liddle cob thur -wants a shoe.” - -A few men and boys were in the smithy, and they looked at each other -and whispered a little. They had never seen such swingeing, hairy -arms as Mr. Sumption’s. - -A smile was fighting its way across the stubble on the minister’s -face. He cracked his joints with satisfaction, and soon the little -cob was shod by as quick, as merciful, and as sure a hand as had ever -touched him. His owner looked surprised. - -“I’d never taake you fur a smith,” he remarked; “leastways, not wud -your coat on.” - -“I’m not a smith. I’m a Minister of the Gospel.” - -The men winked at each other and hid their mouths. Then one of them -asked suddenly: - -“Are you the Rev. Mr. Sumption from Sunday Street?” - -“Reckon I am. Do you know me?” - -“I doan’t know you, surelye; but we’ve all heard as the minister -of Sunday Street can shoe a horse wud any smith, and postwoman wur -saying this marnun as he’d gone off nobody knows whur, after telling -all his folk in a sermon as they’d started the War.” - -Mr. Sumption looked uncomfortable. - -“I only went for a bit of a tramp, and lost my way ... I’ve no call -to be home before sundown—so, if you’ve any use for me, master, I can -stop and give you a hand this afternoon.” - -The smith was willing enough, for he was hard-pressed, and the fame -of the Reverend Mr. Sumption had spread far beyond the country of -the Four Roads. The strength of his great arms, his resource, his -knowledge, his experience of all smithwork, made him an even more -valuable assistant than the man who had gone. There was a market -that day at Chiddingly, which meant more work than usual, including -several wheelwright’s jobs, which the smith performed himself, -leaving the horses to Mr. Sumption. The furnace roared as the bellows -gasped, and lit up all the sag-roofed forge, with the dark shapes -of men and horses standing round, and the minister holding down the -red-hot iron among the coals or beating it on the anvil, while his -sweating skin was shiny and crimson in the glow. - -It was like his dream of the forge at Bethersden—and he felt almost -happy. The glow of his body seemed to reach his heart and warm it, -and his head was no longer full of doubts like stones. He had found a -refuge here, as he had found it in old days in Mus’ Bourner’s forge -at Sunday Street—the heat, the roar, the flying sparks, the shaking -crimson light, the smell of sweat and hoofs and horse-hide, the -pleasant ache of labour in his limbs, were all part of the healing -which had begun when he rubbed his cheek against the wet soil on -the common. His religion had always taught him to look on his big -friendly body as his enemy, to subdue and thwart and ignore it. He -had not known till then how much it was his friend, and that there is -such a thing as the Redemption of the Body, the mystic act through -which the body saves and redeems the soul. - -He worked on till the sun grew pale, and a tremulous primrose light -crept over the fields of Lion’s Green, swamping the trees and hedges -and grazing cows. The afternoon was passing into the evening, and Mr. -Sumption knew he must start at once if he was to be home that day. - -“Well, I’m middling sorry to lose you,” said the smith. “A man lik -you’s wasted preaching the Gospel.” - -“Reckon I shan’t do much more of that,” said Mr. Sumption wryly. “I -can’t go back to my Bethel, after what’s happened.” - -“Well, if ever you feel you’d lik to turn blacksmith fur a change——” -the smith remarked, with a grin. - -“I shall go into the Army Veterinary Corps,” said Mr. Sumption. - -“Wot! Lik my man?” - -“Like the man I was meant to be. I agree with you, master—I’m wasted -preaching the Gospel. I’d be better as a veterinary ... I’ve been -thinking....” - - -15 - -There was a farmer driving as far as Adam’s Hole on the Hailsham -Road, and he offered Mr. Sumption a lift in his trap. The minister -had shod his little sorrel mare, and with her hoofs ringing on the -clinkered road they drove from Lion’s Green, away towards the east. -The dipping sun poured upon their backs, flooding the lane and -washing along their shadows ahead of them into the swale. The east -was still bright, and out of it crept the moon, frail and papery, -like the petal of a March flower. - -The little mare spanked quickly over the way on her new-shod hoofs. -Through Soul Street and Horeham Flat, by Badbrooks and Coarse Horn on -the lip of the Marsh rolled the trap, with the minister nearly silent -and the farmer talking about the War—till the oasts of Adam’s Hole -showed their red turrets against a wood, and, declining an invitation -to step in and hear half a dozen more good reasons why the Germans -would never get the Channel Ports, Mr. Sumption tramped off to where -the East Road swung into the flats. - -The sun was now low, and the sunk light touched the moon, so that -her smudged arc kindled and shone out of the cold dimness. Red and -yellow gleams wavered over the country of the Four Roads, sweeping -up the meadows towards Three Cups Corner, and lighting the woods -that blotched the chimneys of Brownbread Street. He saw Sunday -Street slitting the hill with a red gape, and the sheen of the ponds -by Puddledock, and the flare of gorse and broom on Magham Down. -There was a great clearness and cleanness in the watery air, so that -he could see the roofs of farmsteads far away and little cottages -standing alone like toadstools in the fields. Sounds came clearly, -too—there was a great clucking on all the farms, and the lowing of -cows; now and then the bark of a dog came sharply from a great way -off, sheep called their lambs in the meadows by Harebeating, and a -boy was singing reedily at Cowlease Farm.... - -It was all very still, very lovely, steeped through with the spirit -of peace—not even the beat of the guns could be heard to-night. These -were the fields for which the boys in France had died, the farms and -lanes they had sealed in the possession of their ancient peace by a -covenant signed in blood. As Mr. Sumption looked round him at the -country slowly sinking into the twilight, a little of its quiet crept -into his heart. These were the fields for which the boys had died. -They had not died for England—what did they know of England and the -British Empire? They had died for a little corner of ground which was -England to them, and the sprinkling of poor common folk who lived in -it. Before their dying eyes had risen not the vision of England’s -glory, but just these fields he looked on now, with the ponds, and -the woods, and the red roofs ... and the women and children and old -people who lived among them—the very same whom last night he had -scolded and cursed, told they were scarce worth preaching at. For the -first time he felt ashamed of that affair. He might not think them -worth preaching at, but other men, and better men, had found them -worth dying for. - -Then, as he walked on towards Pont’s Green, he saw these fields -as the eternal possession of the boys who had died—bought by their -blood. The country of the Four Roads was theirs for ever—they had -won it; and this was true not only of the honoured Tom but of the -dishonoured Jerry. For the first time he felt at rest about his son. -“Somewhere the love of God is holding him....” He could not picture -him in heaven, and he would not picture him in hell; but now he could -see him as part of the fields that he, in his indirect shameful way, -had died for. Surely his gipsy soul could find rest in their dawns -and twilights, in the infinite calm of their noons.... Jerry would be -near him at the pond side, in the meadow, in the smoke of the forge, -in the murmur and shade of the wood ... and the cool winds blowing -from the sea would wipe off his dishonour. - - -16 - -The lanes were empty for it was supper-time on the farms. A pale -green was washing the rim of the sky, and the starlight shook among -the ash-trees that trembled beside the road. Faint scents of hidden -primroses stole up from the banks with the vital sweetness of the -new-sown ploughlands. It was growing cold, and Mr. Sumption walked -briskly. When he came to Pont’s Green he thought he saw the back of -old Hubble tottering on ahead, so he slackened his pace a little, for -he hoped to get home without meeting any of his congregation. The -feeling of shame was growing, he felt as if he had despised Christ’s -little ones ... after all, who shall be found big enough to fit the -times? What man is built to the stature of Doomsday? - -He heard himself called as he entered the village, and turning his -head, saw Thyrza standing in the shop door, the last light gleaming -on her apron. - -“Mus’ Sumption!—is that you?” - -He thought of going on, pretending not to hear; but there was a -gentleness in Thyrza’s voice which touched him. He remembered the -message she had sent him yesterday morning. “She’s a kind soul,” he -thought, and stopped. - -“Oh, Mus’ Sumption—whur have you bin?” - -Her hand closed warmly on his, and her eyes travelled over him in -eagerness and pity. - -“I’ve been over to Lion’s Green,” said Mr. Sumption. “I couldn’t lie -quiet at the Horselunges last night. I reckon tongues are wagging a -bit.” - -“Reckon they are—but we’ll all be justabout glad to see you back. I -went up only this afternoon and asked Policeman if he cud do aught. -Come in to the fire—you look middling tired.” - -“I’ve been working at the smith’s over at Lion’s Green all the -afternoon,” said the minister proudly. - -“Surelye! Everyone knows wot a valiant smith you maake; but come -in and have a bite of supper. The fire’s bright and the kettle’s -boiling, and thur’s a bit of bacon in the pan.” - -Mr. Sumption’s mouth watered. He had had nothing that day except the -bread and tea provided at the inn, and it was not likely that Mrs. -Hubble would have much of a meal awaiting him. True, it was doubtful -morality to encroach on Thyrza’s bacon ration, but Thyrza herself -encouraged the lapse, pulling at his hand, and opening the shop door -behind her, so that his temptations might be reinforced by the smell -of cooking. - -“Come in, and you shall have the best rasher you ever ate in your -life—and eggs and hot tea and a bit of pudden and a fire to your -feet.” - -She led him through the shop, whence the bottles of sweets had -vanished long ago, and the empty spaces were filled with large -cardboard posters, displaying Thyrza’s licence to sell margarine, -and the Government list of prices—through into the little back room, -where the firelight covered the walls with nodding spindles, and -little Will lay in his cradle fast asleep. - -“I have him in here fur company like,” said Thyrza. “Reckon he sleeps -as well as in the bed, and it aun’t so lonesome fur me.” - -For the first time he heard her sorrow drag at her voice, and -noticed, as, manlike, he had not done before, her widow’s dress with -its white collar and cuffs. - -“God bless you, Mrs. Tom,” he said, and she turned quickly away from -him to the fire. - -For some minutes there was silence, broken only by the humming of -the kettle and the hiss of fat in the pan. Mr. Sumption lay back -in an armchair, more tired than he would care to own. The window -was uncurtained, and in the square of it he saw the big stars of -the Wain ... according to the lore both of the country of the Four -Roads and of his old home in Kent, this was the waggon in which the -souls of the dead rode over the sky, and that night he, in spite of -his theological training, and Thyrza, in spite of her Board School -education, both felt an echo of the old superstition in their hearts. -Did Tom and Jerry ride there past the window, aloft and at rest in -the great spaces, while those who loved them struggled on in the old -fret and the new loneliness? - -“I always kip the blind up till the last minnut,” said Thyrza at -the fire. “It aun’t so lonesome fur me. Howsumdever, I’ve company -to-night, and I mun git the lamp.” - -So the lamp was set on the table, and the blind came down and shut -out Tom and Jerry on their heavenly ride. Mr. Sumption pulled his -chair up to a big plate of eggs and bacon, with a cup of tea beside -it, and fell to after the shortest grace Thyrza had ever heard from -him. - -“Reckon I’m hungry, reckon I’m tired—and you, Mrs. Tom, are as the -widow of Zarephath, who ministered to Elijah in the dearth. May you -be rewarded and find your bacon ration as the widow’s cruse this -week.” - -He was beginning definitely to enjoy her company. Thyrza’s charm was -of the comfortable, pervasive kind that attracted all sorts of men in -every station. He found that he liked to listen to her soft, drawly -voice, to watch her slow, heavy movements, to gaze at her tranquil -face with the hair like flowering grass. She at once soothed and -stimulated him. She encouraged him to talk, and when the edge was off -his appetite, he did so, telling her a little of what had happened to -him the last night and day. - -“And what do you think I’ve learned by it all, Mrs. Tom? What do you -think my trouble’s taught me?” - -Thyrza shook her head. In her simple life trouble came and went -without any lesson but its patient bearing. - -“It’s taught me I’m a blacksmith, and no minister.” - -“Reckon you’re both,” said Thyrza. - -“No—I’m not—I’m just the smith. And to prove it to you, from this day -forward I shall not teach or preach another word.” - -“Wot! give up the Bethel!—not be minister here any more?” - -“Not here nor anywhere. I’m no minister—I’ve never been a minister.” - -“But——” - -“There’s no good arguing. My mind’s made up. I shall write to the -Assembly this very night.” - -“Oh——” - -“How shall I dare to teach and guide others, who could not even teach -and guide my own son? No, don’t interrupt me—the Lord has opened my -eyes, and I see myself as just a poor, plain, ignorant man. Reckon -I’m only the common blacksmith I was born and bred, and trying to -make myself different has led to nothing but pain and trouble, both -for me and for others. I ask you what good has my ministry ever done -a human soul?” - -“Oh, Mus’ Sumption, doan’t spik lik that,” said Thyrza, with the -tears in her eyes. “Reckon I’ll never disremember how beautiful you -talked of Tom last night ... and oh, the comfort it guv me to hear -you talk so!” - -“You’re a good soul, Missus—reckon there’s none I could speak to as -I’m speaking to you now. But you mustn’t think high of me—I spoke -ill last night; I was like Peter before the Lord let down the sheet -on him—calling His creatures common and unclean. I’ve failed as a -minister, and I’ve failed as a father—the only thing I haven’t failed -as is a blacksmith; thank the Lord I’ve still some credit left at -that.” - -He hid his face for a moment. Thyrza felt confused ... she scarcely -understood. - -“Then wot ull you do, Mus’ Sumption, if you mean to be minister no -more?” - -“Join the A.V.C.—Army Veterinary Corps. I see as plain as daylight -that’s my job.” - -“Wot! Go and fight?” - -“Reckon there won’t be much fighting for a chap of my age. But I’ll -be useful in my way. I hear they’re short of farriers and smiths. -Besides, they’re calling up all fit men under fifty, and I can’t -claim exemption as a minister, seeing I ain’t one; and reckon Mr. -Smith ull go now Randall Cantuar and Charles John Chichester have -said he may.... So I’m off to Lewes to-morrow, Mrs. Tom.” - -“We shall miss you unaccountable. Besides, it aun’t the life fur a -man lik you.” - -He laughed. “That’s just where you’re wrong—it’s the very proper -life for a man like me, it’s the life I should have been leading the -last thirty years. Howsoever, it’s not too late to mend, and reckon -I’ll be glad to have my part in the big job at last. Here’s thirty -years that I’ve been preaching the Day of the Lord, and now’s my -chance of helping that day through a bit.” - -He stood up and pushed back his chair. - -“Oh, doan’t be going yit, Mus’ Sumption.” - -“Reckon I must—I’ve all sorts of things to do. Don’t be sorry for -me—I’m doing the happiest thing I ever did as well as the best. I’ll -be doing the work I was born for, and I’ll be helping the world -through judgment, and I’ll be doing what I owe my boy—your boy—all -the boys that are dead.” - -Thyrza’s eyes filled with tears when he spoke of Tom. For a moment he -seemed to forget his surroundings, and to fancy himself back in the -pulpit he had renounced, for he held up his hand and his voice came -throatily: - -“Behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, -yea, and all that do wickedly shall be as stubble. But unto you that -fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His -wings. And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to their children, -and the heart of the children to their fathers.... Oh, Thyrza, the -world is sown over with young, brave lives, and it’s our job to see -that they are not as the seed scattered by the wayside, sown in vain. -Reckon we must water them with our tears and manure them with our -works, and so we shall quicken the harvest of Aceldama, when our -beloved shall rise again....” - -His voice strangled a little; then he continued in his ordinary -tones: - -“That’s why I’m joining up. I owe it to Jerry—to finish what he -began. By working hard, and submitting to orders, as he could never -do, poor soul, maybe I’ll be able to clear off the debt he owed. He -shall rise again in his father’s effort....” - -Thyrza was crying now. “And Tom?” she asked in her tears—“I want to -do summat for him, too, Mus’ Sumption. How shall Tom rise up agaun?” - -He pointed to the cradle at her feet: - -“There’s your Tom—risen again both for you and for his country. Take -him and be comforted.” - -She sank down on her knees beside the cradle, hiding her face under -the hood, and he turned and left her, stalking out through the shop -into the darkness. - -Crouching there in the firelight, with her baby held warm and heavy -against her breast, she heard his tread grow fainter and fainter, -till at last only an occasional throb of wind brought her the -footsteps of the lonely man upon the road. - - - - - * * * * * * - - - - -Transcriber’s note: - - ● Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors have been silently - corrected. - - ● Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOUR ROADS*** - - -******* This file should be named 56298-0.txt or 56298-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/6/2/9/56298 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at <a -href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> -<p>Title: The Four Roads</p> -<p>Author: Sheila Kaye-Smith</p> -<p>Release Date: January 3, 2018 [eBook #56298]</p> -<p>Language: English</p> -<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> -<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOUR ROADS***</p> -<p> </p> -<h4>E-text prepared by ellinora, Brian Wilsden,<br /> - and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> - (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> - from page images generously made available by<br /> - Internet Archive<br /> - (<a href="https://archive.org">https://archive.org</a>)</h4> -<p> </p> -<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> - <tr> - <td valign="top"> - Note: - </td> - <td> - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - <a href="https://archive.org/details/fourroads00kaye"> - https://archive.org/details/fourroads00kaye</a> - </td> - </tr> -</table> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<hr class="pg" /> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - - <div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Front Cover" /> - </div> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<div class="newpage"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - -<p class="half-title">THE FOUR ROADS<br /> -<span class="smaller">SHEILA KAYE-SMITH</span></p> -<hr class="full" /> -</div> -<div class="newpage"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> - -<h1>THE<br /> -FOUR ROADS</h1> - -<p class="center spaced space-above">BY</p> -<p class="center space-above">SHEILA KAYE-SMITH<br /> -<span class="smaller"><cite>Author of “Sussex Gorse,” “The Challenge -to Sirius,” etc.</cite></span></p> - -<div class="center spaced space-above"> -<div class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/i_003.jpg" alt="Decoration" /> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="center"><span class="small">NEW YORK</span><br /> -<span class="small">GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</span></p> - -<hr class="full" /> -</div> -<div class="newpage"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p> - -<p class="center">COPYRIGHT, 1921,<br /> -BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br /> -<br /> -<i>Printed in the United States of America</i><br /> -</p> - -<hr class="full" /> -</div> -<div class="newpage"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p> - -<p class="center large">CONTENTS</p> - -<table summary="Contents"> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> </td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr">PAGE</td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl">PART I</td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Tom</span></td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_9"></a>9</td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl">PART II</td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Jerry</span></td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_66"></a>66</td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl">PART III</td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Thyrza</span></td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_115"></a>115</td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl">PART IV</td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Ivy</span></td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_153"></a>153</td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl">PART V</td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Nell</span></td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_211"></a>211</td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl">PART VI</td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Baby</span></td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_241"></a>241</td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl">PART VII</td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Mr. Sumption</span></td> -<td class="tdr"> </td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_264"></a>264</td> -</tr> - -</table> - -<hr class="full" /> -</div> -<div class="newpage"> -<p><span class="pagenum">[7]</span></p> - -<div class="center xxlarge">THE FOUR ROADS</div> - -<hr class="full" /> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span></p> - -<div style="font-size:150%; text-align:center">THE FOUR ROADS</div> -<h2 style="page-break-before:avoid">PART I: TOM</h2> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap">FOUR roads in Sussex mark out a patch of country -that from the wooded, sea-viewing hills behind -Dallington slips down over fields and ponds -and spinneys to the marshes of Hailsham and Horse -Eye. The North Road, slatting the heights with its -pale, hard streak, runs from far Rye to further Lewes, -a road of adventures and distances, passing Woods -Corner and Three Cups Corner, Punnetts Town and -Cade Street, till it joins the London Road at Cross-in-Hand. -The South Road borders the marsh, sometimes -dry on the shelving ground above it, sometimes soggy -on the marsh level, or perhaps sheeted with the overflow -of the Hurst Haven. It comes from Senlac and -Hastings, and after skirting the flats, crosses the River -Cuckmere, and runs tamely into Lewes, where all roads -meet. The East Road is short and shaggy, running -through many woods, from the North Road, which -it joins at Woods Corner, to the throws at Boreham -Street. Along this road is a string of farms—Cowlease, -and Padgham, and Slivericks, mangy holdings -for the most part, with copses running wild and -fields of thistles, doors agape and walls atumble, and -gable-ends stooping towards the ponds. The West - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> - -Road is grass-grown, and in July St. John’s wort and -rest-harrow straggle in the ruts and make the dust -smell sickly-sweet. It forks from the North Road at -Punnetts Town, and runs through Rushlake Green and -the Foul Mile to Hailsham in the south.</p> - -<p>In the swale of the day, towards Easter-time, the -Reverend Mr. Sumption was walking along the North -Road from Dallington to Woods Corner. Dallington is -the mother-parish of the country bounded by the Four -Roads, though there is also a church at Brownbread -Street, in charge of a curate. Mr. Sumption had no -truck with either Rector or curate, for he was a minister -of the Particular Baptists, who had a Bethel in -Sunday Street, as the lane was called which linked the -East Road with one that trailed in and out of farms -and woods to the throws at Bucksteep Manor. Not -that the sect of the Particular Baptists flourished in the -parish of Dallington, but the Bethel being midway between -the church and the chapel, a fair congregation -could be raked in on wet Sundays from the middle -district, where doctrine, like most things in that land -of farms, was swung by the weather.</p> - -<p>The Reverend Mr. Sumption was a big, handsome -man of forty-five, and wore a semi-clerical suit of -greenish-black, with a shabby hat and a dirty collar. -His face was brown, darkening round the jaw with a -beard that wanted the razor twice a day, but did not -get it. His eyes were dark and sunk deep in his head, -gleaming like deep ditch-water under eyebrows as -smooth and black as broom-pods. His teeth were very -white, and his hair was grey and curly like a fleece.</p> - -<p>As he walked he muttered to himself, and from time -to time cracked the joints of his fingers with a loud -rapping sound. These two habits helped form the local -opinion that he was “queer,” an opinion bolstered by - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> - -more evidence than is usual in such cases. Women -standing in their cottage doors noticed him twice halt -and stoop—once to pick up a beetle which was laboriously -crawling from ditch to ditch, another time to pick -up a swede dropped from some farm-cart. He carefully put -the beetle on the opposite bank—“Near squashed you, -my dear, I did. But He Who created the creeping things -upon the earth has preserved you from the boot -of man.” The swede he dusted and crammed in his -pocket. It was known throughout the hamlets—the -“Streets” and “Greens”—of Dallington Parish that -the minister was as poor as he was unblushing about -his poverty.</p> - -<p>The evening was very still. Eddies and swells of -golden, watery light drifted over the hills round Dallington. -In the north the sharp, wooded hill where -Brightling stood was like a golden cone, and the kiln-shaped -obelisk by Lobden’s House which marked the -highest point of South-east Sussex was also burnished -to rare metal. The scent of water, stagnant on fallen -leaves, crept from the little woods where the primroses -and windflowers smothered old stumps in their pale -froth, or spattered with milky stars the young moss of -the year. At Woods Corner the smoke of a turf fire -was rising from the inn, and there was a smell of -beer, too, as the minister passed the door, and turned -down the East Road towards Slivericks. The fire and -the beer both tempted him, for there was neither at -the Horselunges, the tumble-down old cottage where -he lodged in Sunday Street. But the former he looked -on as an unmanly weakness, the latter as a snare of the -devil, so he swung on, humming a metrical psalm.</p> - -<p>About a hundred yards below Woods Corner, just -where the road, washed stony by the rains, runs under -the webbing of Slivericks oaks, he turned into a field, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> - -across which a footpath led a pale stripe towards Sunday -Street. From the top of the field he could look -down over the whole sweep of country within the Four -Roads, to the marshes and the sea, or rather the saffron -and purple mists where the marshes and the sea -lay together in enchantment. The yellow light wavered -up to him from the sunset, over the woods of Forges -and Harebeating; there was a sob of wind from Stilliands -Tower, and a gleam of half-hidden ponds in the -spinneys by Puddledock. Mr. Sumption stood still and -listened.</p> - -<p>The air was full of sunset sounds—the lowing of -cows came up with a mingled cuckoo’s cry, there was -a tinkle of water behind him in the ditch, and the soft -swish of wind in the trees and in the hedge, nodding -ashes and sallows and oaks to and fro against the light-filled -sky. On the wind was a mutter and pulse, a -throb which seemed to be in it yet not of it, like the -beating of a great heart, strangely remote from all the -gleam and softness of spring sunset, pale fluttering -cuckoo-flowers, and leaf-sweet pools of rain. A blackbird -called from the copse by Cowlease Farm, and his -song was as the voice of sunset and April and pooled -rain ... still the great distant heart throbbed on, its -dim beats pulsing on the wind, aching on the sunset, -over the fields of peaceful England dropping asleep in -April.</p> - -<p>The Reverend Mr. Sumption cracked his fingers -loudly once or twice:</p> - -<p>“You hear ’em pretty plain to-night ... the guns -in France.”</p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>He walked slowly on towards the stile, then stopped -again and pulled a letter out of his pocket. It was a - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> - -dirty letter, written on cheap note-paper with a -smudged in indelible pencil.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>“Dear Father,” it ran, “I reckon you’ll be wild when -you get this. I have left the Fackory and have enlisted -in the R. Sussex Regement. I could not stand -that dirty tyke of Hubbard our forman any more. So -I’ve gone, for I’m sick of this, and there’s no fear of -my being fetched back, as I’m not satisfackory nor -skilled in particular, and should have been fetched out -anyhow all in good time, I reckon. So don’t go taking on -about this, but please send me some fags, and I should -like some chockolate, and get some of those kokernut buns -at the shop with the crinkly paper round. It is a week -since I did it, but I have been to the Y.M.C.A., and -bought some Cherry-blossom boot-pollish and a packet -of Players, and have no more money, and they said on -a board ‘Write home to-night.’ Well, dear Father, I -hope you will not take this too badly. Some good may -come of it, for I am a soldier now and going to fight the -Germans. Good-bye and don’t forget to send the things -I said.</p> - -<p class="sig3"> -“Your loving son,</p> -<p class="sig2">“<span class="smcap">Jerry</span>.</p> -<p class="right">“(467572 Pvte. Sumption, 9th Co. 18th Bn. R. Suss. -Rejiment.)”</p> -</blockquote> - -<p>The minister crushed the letter back into the pocket -already bulging with the swede. “O Lord,” he groaned, -“why doth it please Thee to afflict Thy servant again? -I reckon I’ve stood a lot on account of that boy, and -there seems no end to it. He’s the prodigal son that -never comes home, he’s the lost sheep that never gets -into the fold, and yet he’s my child and the woman -from Ihornden’s....” His mutterings died down, for -he heard footsteps behind him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> - -<p>A young man was crossing the field from Slivericks, a -sturdy, stocky fellow, about five-and-a-half feet high, -with leggings and corduroy riding-breeches, and a black -coat which was a little too small for him and as he drew -near sent out an odour of moth-killer—evidently some -young farmer, unaccountably Sundified on a week-day -evening.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Tom,” said the minister.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Mus’ Sumption.”</p> - -<p>The boy stood aside for the older man to cross the -stile. His head hung a little over the unaccustomed -stiffness of his collar, and his eyes seemed full of rather -painful thought. Mr. Sumption fumbled in his pockets, -drew out the letter, the swede, a pencil without a point, -a Testament, a squashed mass of chickweed, a tract, and -finally a broken-backed cigarette, which he handed to -Tom.</p> - -<p>“Bad news, I reckon?”</p> - -<p>Tom nodded.</p> - -<p>“They woan’t let me off. I wur afeard they wouldn’t. -You see, there’s faather and the boys left, and I couldn’t -explain as how faather had bad habits. You can’t bite -back lik that on your own kin.”</p> - -<p>“No, you can’t,” and Mr. Sumption carefully -smoothed a dirty scrap of paper as he put it back in his -pocket. “By the way, my boy’s just joined up. I -heard from him this morning. He’s in the Eighteenth -Sussex—I shouldn’t wonder if you found yourselves -together.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Lord, Mus’ Sumption! You doan’t tell me as he’s -left the factory?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he has. Thought he’d like to fight for his -King and country. He was always a plucked ’un, and -he couldn’t bear to see the lads going to the front without -him.”</p> - -<p>There was a gleam in the minister’s eyes, and he -cracked his fingers loudly.</p> - -<p>“I’m proud of him—I’m proud of my boy. He’s done -a fine thing, for of course he need never have gone. He’s -been three years in munitions now, and him only twenty. -He went up to Erith when he was a mere lad, no call for -him to go, and now he’s joined up as a soldier when -there was no call for him to go, neither.”</p> - -<p>Tom looked impressed.</p> - -<p>“Maybe I ought to be feeling lik he does, but truth -to tell it maakes me heavy-hearted to be leaving the -farm just now.”</p> - -<p>“The Lord will provide.”</p> - -<p>“I’m none so sure o’ that, wud faather and his habits, -and the boys so young and wild, and the girls wud their -hearts in other things, and mother, poor soul, so unsensible.”</p> - -<p>“Well, what does the farm matter? Beware lest it -become Naboth’s vineyard unto you. Is this a time to -buy cattle and vineyards and olive-yards? This is the -day which the Prophet said should burn like an oven, and -the proud, even the wicked, be as stubble. What’s -your wretched farm? Think of the farms round Ypers -and Dixmood, think of the farms round Rheims and -Arrass—Stop!” and he seized Tom’s arm in his hard, -restless fingers—“Listen to those guns over in France. -Perhaps every thud you hear means the end of a little -farm.”</p> - -<p>Tom stood dejectedly beside him, the broken-backed -cigarette, for which the minister had unfortunately been -unable to provide a light, hanging drearily from his teeth. -The soft mutter and thud pulsed on. The sun was -slowly foundering behind the woods of Bird-in-Eye, -sending up great shafts and spines of flowery light into -the sky which was now green as a meadow after rain.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p> - -<p>“This war queers me,” he said, and his voice, low and -thick as it was, like any Sussex countryman’s, yet was -enough to drown the beating of that alien heart. “I doan’t -understand it. I can’t git the hang od it nohow.”</p> - -<p>“A lot of it queers me,” said Mr. Sumption, “and I -reckon that in many ways we’re all as godless as the -Hun. It’s not only the Germans that shall burn like -stubble—it’s us. The oven’s prepared for us as well as -for them.”</p> - -<p>They were walking together down steep fields, the -ground dreamy with grey light, while before them, beyond -the sea, burned the great oven of the sunset, full -of horns of flame.</p> - -<p>“I’m thinking of the farm,” continued Tom, his mind -sticking to its first idea. “I’m willing enough to go and -fight for the farms in France and Belgium, but seems -to me a Sussex farm’s worth two furrin’ ones. Worge -aun’t a fine place, but it’s done well since I wur old -enough to help faather—help him wud my head as well -as my arms, I mean. Faather’s an unaccountable clever -chap—you should just about hear him talk at the pub, -and the books he’s read you’d never believe. But he’s -got ways wot aun’t good for farming, and he needs somebody -there to see as things doan’t slide when he can’t -look after them himself.”</p> - -<p>“Can’t your brother Harry do anything? He must be -nearly sixteen.”</p> - -<p>“Harry’s unaccountable wild-like. He’s more lik to -git us into trouble than help us at all.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe your father will pull-to a bit when you’re -gone and he sees things depend on him.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Maybe he will, and maybe he woan’t. But you -doan’t understand, Mus’ Sumption. You doan’t know -wot it feels like to be took away from your work to help -along a war as you didn’t ask for and don’t see the hang -of. Maybe you’d think different of the war if you had -to fight in it, but being a minister of religion you aun’t -ever likely to have to join up. I’m ready to go and do -my share in putting chaps into the oven, as you say, -but it’s no use or sense your telling me as it doan’t -matter about the farm, for matter it does, and I’m unaccountable -vrothered wud it all.”</p> - -<p>He grunted, and spat out the fag. Mr. Sumption, -taking offence at once, waved his arms like a black -windmill.</p> - -<p>“Ho! I don’t understand, don’t I? with my only -son just gone for a soldier. D’you think you care for -your dirty farm more than I care for my Jerry. D’you -think I wouldn’t rather a hundred times go myself than -that he should go? O Lord, that this boy should mock -me! You’ll be safe enough, young Tom. You’ve only -the Germans to fear, but my lad has to fear his own -countrymen too. The army was not made for gipsy-women’s -sons. My poor Jerry! ... there in the ranks -like a colt in harness. He’ll be sorry he’s done it to-morrow, -and then they’ll kill him.... Oh, hold your -tongue, Tom Beatup! Here we are in Sunday Street.”</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Sunday Street was the lane that linked up Pont’s -Green on the East Road with Bucksteep Manor at Four -Throws. From the southern distance it looked like the -street of a town, oddly flung across the hill—a streak of -red houses, with the squat steeples of oasts, an illusion -of shops and spires, crumbling on near approach into a -few tumble-down cottages and the oasts of Egypt Farm. -From the north you saw the chimneys first, high above -the roofs like rabbits’ ears above their heads; then you -tumbled suddenly upon the hamlet: the Bethel, the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> - -Horselunges, the shop, the inn whose sign was the Rifle -Volunteer, the forge, the pond, the two farms—Worge -and Egypt—with their cottages, and the farmstead of -Little Worge sidling away towards Pont’s Green.</p> - -<p>To-night it was fogged in the grey smoke of its own -wood fires, with here and there on its windows the -lemon green of the sky. It smelled faintly of wood-smoke, -sweet mud and standing rain, of rot in lathes -and tiles. The Horselunges, the cottage where the -minister lodged, was the first house in the village after -the forge. It stood opposite the Bethel, a brick, eighteenth-century -building with big gaunt windows staring -blindly over the fields to Puddledock. The Bethel had -been built in Georgian days when the Particular Baptists -flourished in greater numbers round Sunday Street, -and a saint of theirs had built it to “the glory of God -and in memory of my dear wife Susannah Odlarne, -saved by Grace. For Many are called but Few are -chosen.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption and Tom had walked the last of their -way in silence. But the minister’s anger had fizzled -out as quickly as it had kindled, and at the door of the -forge he held out his hand very kindly to the boy.</p> - -<p>“Well, good-night to you, lad. I must look in and -see Bourner here for a minute or two. I hope your -mother won’t be much distressed at your news.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon she will, but it can’t be helped.... Funny, -you doan’t hear the guns down here.”</p> - -<p>“No more you do, but they’re going it just the same—knocking -away little farms.”</p> - -<p>Tom nodded with a wry smile and walked off. The -minister turned into the forge.</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption could never pass the forge, and the glow -and roar of sparks from its chimney would call him over -many a field, from Galleybird or Harebeating, or even - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> - -from the doors of sick people—if they were not very sick. -He was a blacksmith’s son.</p> - -<p>His father had worked the smithy at the cross-roads -by Bethersden in Kent, and Ezra Sumption had grown -up in the smell of hoof-parings and the ring of smitten -iron. His sketchy education finished, he had taken his -place beside his father at the anvil—he had held the -meek tasselled hoofs of the farm-horses, he had worked -the great bellows that sent the flames roaring up the -chimney like Judgment Day, he had swung the heavy -smith’s hammer with an arm that in a few years grew -lustier than his dad’s, and in time had come to cast as -good iron and clap it on as surely as any smith in Kent.</p> - -<p>But during his adolescence strange things had grown -with his bulk and girth. Lonely and Bible-bred, he -came to work strange dreams into the roaring furnace -and clanging iron. In those sheeting, belching flames -he came to see the presage of that day which should -burn like an oven, the burning fiery furnace of Shadrach, -Meshach and Abed-nego, through which only -those could walk unsinged who had with them the Son -of God. When he swung the hammer above his head -he swung God’s judgment down on the molten iron, -shaping out of its fiery torment a form of use. When the -horse clumped out of the smithy with the new iron on -his hoofs, he felt that there went a soul saved, a child of -God passed through fire into service.</p> - -<p>He became “queer.” He spoke his thoughts, and in -time preached them to the men who brought their horses -to be shod. His father jeered at him, his mother was -afraid, but the minister of a neighbouring chapel took -him up. He thought he had found a rustic saint. He -invited young Sumption to his house, taught him, and -encouraged him to enter the ministry. The parents were -flattered by the pastor’s notice, and he found little - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> - -difficulty in persuading them to let their boy leave the forge -and train as a minister of the Particular Baptists.</p> - -<p>Rather bewildered and scared at the new life before -him, young Ezra Sumption, comely, burly, shock-headed, -brown-skinned as a mushroom in a wet field, passed into -a training college of the sect, and emerged a full-blown -pastor, with black clothes on his unwieldy limbs and a -tongue for ever struggling with the niceties of English -speech. He was a great disappointment to his benefactor, -for the smith in him had triumphantly survived all genteel -training and theological examinations; he was to -all intents the same boy who had heard voices in the fire -and had preached to the carters. His manners and conversation -had slightly improved, and his imaginings had -been given a dose of dogma, but his rough uncouthness, -his “queerness” remained as before. He was an utter -failure as assistant pastor in a chapel at Dover—the congregation -was shocked by the violence and vulgarity of -his forge-born similes, his Judgment Day appeals, all the -spate and fume of the old Doomsday doctrines which -were fast dying out of Nonconformity. He pined for the -country, and seemed unable to conform to town habits. -On his holidays he went back to the forge and helped his -father with the shoeing as if he had never worn a black -coat. It was on one of these holidays that he finally -damned himself.</p> - -<p>In a cottage at Ihornden where he had gone to visit a -sick woman he met a gipsy girl of the Rossarmescroes or -Hearns. Her people had given up their wandering life, -and settled down in the neighbourhood, where they -owned several cottages. Nevertheless, to marry her, as -Sumption did soon after their third meeting, was his -pastoral suicide. He took her with him to Dover, where -they were both miserable for a few months. Then he -had to give up his post. They returned to the forge at - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> - -Bethersden, where Sumption would have liked to become -a blacksmith again, if it had not been for the continual -restless yearning of the Word within him, that -drop of the divine which had somehow mixed with his -clay, and made him drunken.</p> - -<p>At the close of the year Meridian Sumption died at -the birth of her child. They had been ideally happy in -their short married life, in spite of the cage-bars of circumstances -and the drivings of the Word which divided -them as in the beginning it had divided the waters from -the earth. After her death he became “queerer” than -ever. He roamed from village to village, preaching to -farmers, gipsies, labourers, tinkers, all who would hear -him and some who would not—leaving his child in his -mother’s care.</p> - -<p>Six years later the death of his father and mother -made it necessary that he should take the boy—named -grotesquely Jeremiah Meridian, as if to show his double -origin in religion and vagabondage. At the same time -his first patron, the minister of Bethersden, offered to -recommend him for the pastorate of the Particular Baptist -Chapel at Sunday Street near Dallington. His conscience -had long grieved over the vagaries of his blacksmith -saint, and in this empty pastorate he saw a way of -settling both. Sumption had acquired a certain fame as -a preacher among the ’dens of Kent, candidates for the -Particular Ministry were not so many as they used to be, -and the pastorate of Sunday Street, with its dwindling, -bumpkin congregation, country loneliness, and small -revenues, was hard to fill. After various difficulties, the -new minister arrived with his black-eyed, swarthy child. -He had grown tired of his wanderings, and had conceived -an erratic, arbitrary affection for this pledge of -gipsy love. He looked forward to a settled country life -and to preaching the Word in his own Bethel.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p> - -<p>The villagers, for the most part, liked him. His -manners offended them, and as they were mostly Church-people -they seldom came to his chapel except on wet -Sundays, when it meant too much dirt and trouble to go -to hear old Mr. Foxe at Dallington or young Mr. Poullett-Smith -at Brownbread Street. But from the first he -was as one of themselves, treated with no respect and -much kindness. He was seldom invited to sick-beds or to -officiate at funerals or marriages, but he never lacked an -invitation to a Harvest Supper or Farmers’ Club Dinner. -For his sake the neighbourhood tolerated the villainies -of his Jerry, a throw-back to the poaching, roving, thieving -Rossarmescroes. None the less, they were glad when -at the outbreak of war he went to work in a munition -factory, first in London, then, through a series of not very -creditable wanderings, to Erith. Only the minister -grieved, for he loved Jerry as he had loved no human -thing since his mother died in the little apple-smelling -room above the smithy. He was not always kind to the -boy, and the arm which had wielded the hammer so -lustily had on one or two shocking occasions nearly -broken the bones he loved. But he had for his son a -half-spiritual, half-animal affection, and the villagers -pitied him when the boy went, though they were glad to -see him go.</p> - -<p>“Mus’ Sumption wur more blacksmith nor he wur -minister,” they said when any local enthusiasm for him -prevailed; and it was true that in his loneliness and -anxiety he would often find comfort in the forge at Sunday -Street, where he could sit and watch Bourner the -smith swing his hammer, or even sometimes himself, with -coat thrown off and shirt-sleeves rolled back over arms -long and hairy as a gorilla’s, smite the hot iron or scrape -the patient hoof, while his face grew red as copper in the -firelight and the sweat ran over it and his shaggy chest.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p> - -<p>To-night, when Jerry had wounded him afresh, he -turned to his unfailing refuge. His pain was not the -mere dread of death or maiming of the lad—it was something -more sinister, more intangible. “The army is not -for the gipsy woman’s son.” He feared for Jerry in that -organised system of rank and order and command. He -would have preferred him in the workshop even if the -relative danger of the two places had been reversed. -Jerry was less likely to be smashed by a German shell -than by the system in which he had enrolled himself. -He would break his head against its discipline, hang himself -in its rules.... His dread for Jerry under martial -law was the dread his Meridian’s ancestors would have -felt for her under a roof. It was a fear based more on -instinct than on reason, therefore all the more bruising -to the instinctive passion of fatherhood. It was well -that he had this refuge of iron and anvil, of hammer and -hoof, this small comforting similitude of the day which -should burn as an oven.... Bourner the smith did not -talk to him much. He made a few technical remarks, -and winked at his mate when Mr. Sumption boasted of -Jerry’s valour in joining the army. But gradually the -tired, careworn look on the minister’s face died away, -his eyes ceased to smoulder and roll; in the thick stuffy -atmosphere, strong with the smell of hoofs and the ammoniacal -smell of hide and horses, grey with smoke and -noisy with the roar of flames and the ring of iron, he was -going back in peace to his father’s house, to the smithy -at the throws by Bethersden, before the burdens of divine -and human love had come down upon him.</p> - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>After his companion had left him, Tom Beatup walked -quickly down the lane, past the Horselunges and the Rifle - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> - -Volunteer, to where Worge gate hung crooked across -Worge drive, paintless and smeared with dew. Here he -stopped a minute, and looked at the huddle of the farm. -It was one black shape against the yellow of the sky, and -the cones of its oasts and the spires of its poplars seemed -part of its block, so that it looked grotesque and horned. -He hesitated, rubbed his hand along the top of the gate -and licked the dew off his fingers, then turned and walked -eastward.</p> - -<p>Beyond Egypt Farm and the cottages of Worge, just -before the willow pond that marked the end of the street, -stood the shop, where Thyrza Honey was “licensed to -sell tobacco.” It was in darkness now, except for a faint -creep of light under the door. Had Thyrza “shut up”? -No—the handle turned, the little bell gave its buzzing -ring, and the warm light ran out for a moment into the -darkling lane—with a smell of tea and tobacco, sweets -and sawdust, scrubbed floor and rotting beams, the smell -that was to Tom the same refuge as the smell of the forge -was to Mr. Sumption.</p> - -<p>The shop was empty, but he could see a shadow moving -to and fro across the little window at the back—a -ridiculous little window, about a foot square, yet as gay -with its lace curtains and pink ribbons as the drawing-room -bow of a Brighton lodging-house. The next minute -a face was pressed against it, then withdrawn, and the -door at the back of the shop opened.</p> - -<p>“Good evenun, Mus’ Tom.”</p> - -<p>“Good evenun, Mrs. Honey.”</p> - -<p>She moved slowly to her place behind the counter. All -her movements were slow, which women sometimes found -irritating, but never men, who were always either consciously -or unconsciously aware of a kind of drawling -beauty in her gait. She was fair, with hair like fluffy, -sun-bleached grass. Her skin was like that of an apricot, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> - -soft and thick, of a deep creamy yellow, with soft dabs -of colour on her wide cheek-bones.</p> - -<p>“A packet of woodbines, please,” said Tom.</p> - -<p>She reached them from the shelf behind her.</p> - -<p>“Have you got any bull’s-eyes?”</p> - -<p>“Yes—three-ha’pence an ounce.”</p> - -<p>“They’ve got dearer.”</p> - -<p>“And they’ll get dearer still, I reckon.”</p> - -<p>“Give me three penn’orth, please.”</p> - -<p>She took them out of a glass bottle at her elbow.</p> - -<p>“Got any monster telephones?”</p> - -<p>“I dunno—I’m afeard we’re sold out.”</p> - -<p>Thyrza always spoke of herself in a business capacity -as “we.” - -“Could you maake up two penn’orth? Harry and -Zacky are unaccountable fond of them.”</p> - -<p>“You’re a kind brother—buying sweeties for all -the family. I reckon the bull’s-eyes are fur your -sisters.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon they are. No use giving monster telephones -to girls—they can’t be eaten dentical.”</p> - -<p>This was obvious when Thyrza finally unearthed the -telephones in an old case under the ginger-beer box. -They were long, black coiling strings of liquorice, requiring -sleight of hand, combined with a certain amount -of unfastidiousness, for their consumption. Tom was -disappointed that Thyrza had found them so soon. He -stood by the counter, fingering his purchases and wishing -his money was not all gone.</p> - -<p>“I hear you’ve bin up at the Tribunal,” said Thyrza, -coming to the rescue.</p> - -<p>“Yes—they woan’t let me off.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You’re sorry, I reckon.”</p> - -<p>“Unaccountable. I doan’t know wot ull become of -the farm.”</p> - -<p>Thyrza sighed sympathetically, having nothing to say -in the way of comfort.</p> - -<p>“They said as how I wurn’t really indispensable, -faather being able-bodied and having two lads besides -me, and two ‘hands’”—he laughed bitterly. “I’d like to -show ’em the ‘hands’—two scarecrows, you might say.”</p> - -<p>“It’s a sad world,” remarked Thyrza comfortably.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Honey was a widow, but never had more than a -sentimental sigh for her husband who had made her -miserable, and then suddenly rather proud—on that last -day of October when the Royal Sussex had held the road -to Sussex against the fury of the Prussian Guard, and -Sam Honey died to save the home he had made so unhappy -while he lived. He had died bravely and she was -proud of him, but he had lived meanly and she could not -regret him.</p> - -<p>“Wot sort of a soldier d’you think I’ll make, Mrs. -Honey?”</p> - -<p>“A good one, surelye”—and she showed him teeth -like curd.</p> - -<p>“I’m naun so sure, though. I’m a farmer bred, and -the life ull be middling strange to me.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe you’ll lik it. Sam liked it fine. There was -no end o’ fun to be had, he said, and foakes all giving you -chocolate and woodbines, just as if you wur the king.”</p> - -<p>“Will you send me a postcard now and agaun, Mrs. -Honey?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I will.”</p> - -<p>There was silence for a minute or two in the shop. -The oil lamp swung, moving the shadows over the ceiling -where the beams sagged with the weight of Thyrza’s -little bedroom. A clock in the back room ticked loudly. -Tom was still leaning across the counter, looking at -Thyrza. They both felt rather awkward, as they often -felt in each other’s company. Thyrza wondered when - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> - -Tom was going. She liked him—liked him unaccountable—but -her bit of supper was on the fire in the next -room, there was some mending to be done, and many -other odds and ends of feminine business before it was -time to set the mouse-traps, put the milk-jug on the -doorstep, and go to bed. Besides, she knew he ought to -be going back to Worge to tell his family the news which -should have been theirs before he brought it to her.</p> - -<p>“I reckon your mother ull be wondering how you’ve -fared this afternoon. Has your father gone home and -told her?”</p> - -<p>“I left faather at Woods Corner.”</p> - -<p>“She’ll be worriting about him too, then.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe I should ought to go home and tell them.”</p> - -<p>He straightened himself with a sigh. He must leave -his refuge of tea and soap and candles, the peace of -Thyrza Honey’s slow movements and thick, sweet voice. -She was sorry for him.</p> - -<p>“You’ll look in again, Mus’ Tom?”</p> - -<p>“Surelye.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe you’ll bring your sister Ivy round for a cup -of tea before you go. Ull you be going soon?”</p> - -<p>“In a fortnight.... Good evenun, Mrs. Honey.”</p> - -<p>“Good evenun, Mus’ Tom.”</p> - -<p>Again the bell gave its buzzing ring, as he opened the -door and went out.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>Tom’s heart had sunk rather low before he came to -Worge. He was always dissatisfied with himself after -seeing Thryza. He never seemed able to find anything -to say, just because she was the person he liked most in -the world to talk to. He felt that he must be very - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> - -different from the other men who came to see her—for -men liked Thyrza—who could make even the buying of -a penn’orth of sweets an occasion for artful sally and -interesting conversation. That reminded him that he -had left all his purchases on the counter. What an unaccountable -fool he was! However, he would not go -back for them. They must wait till to-morrow. Still, -he wished he hadn’t left them. Thyrza would think him -silly, and besides he had wanted to give those sweets to -his brothers and sisters. He nearly always brought -them something when he went into the town.</p> - -<p>They were all at supper in the kitchen—he could hear -their voices. He wondered if his father had come back -yet. He had not, for the first question that greeted his -entrance was:</p> - -<p>“Whur’s your faather, Tom?”</p> - -<p>“I left him at Woods Corner. I’d have thought he’d -bin home by now.”</p> - -<p>“Then you thought silly. ’T’aun’t likely as he’ll come -home till they close. You should have stopped along -of un.”</p> - -<p>“I thought I’d better git back home and tell you the -news.”</p> - -<p>“And wot’s that? Have they let you off?”</p> - -<p>“Not they. A fortnight’s final.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup began to cry. She was a large, stout -woman with masses of rough grey hair, and a broad, -rather childish face, which now looked more like a child’s -than ever as it wrinkled up for crying.</p> - -<p>“Now, mother, doan’t you taake on,” said Ivy, the -eldest girl, getting up and putting her arm round her.</p> - -<p>“It’s a shaame, a hemmed shaame,” sobbed the -woman. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> - -“No woander as faather’s stopped at Woods -Corner. To take our eldest boy as is the prop and stay -of the whole of us!”</p> - -<p>“He aun’t no such thing,” said Ivy, who was a strapping -girl—rather like her mother, except that her round -face ended in a sharp chin, which gave her an unexpected -air of shrewdness. The second girl, Nell, was -helping her brother to his supper of pork and cabbage.</p> - -<p>“No one can say he’s indispensable,” she remarked -in rather a pretty, half-educated voice—she was pupil -teacher in her second year at the school in Brownbread -Street. “There’s Harry just on sixteen, and there’s -Juglery and Elphick, and no one can say father isn’t a -strong man and able to look after the farm.”</p> - -<p>“Your faather’s no use. Tom, did you tell them as -your faather had bad habits?”</p> - -<p>“No, I didn’t,” said Tom sulkily, shovelling in the -cabbage with his knife.</p> - -<p>“Then you wur a fool. You know as your faather -aun’t himself three nights out of five, and yet you go -and say naun about it. How are they to know if you -doan’t tell them?”</p> - -<p>“I wurn’t going to tell all the big folk round Senlac as -my faather drinks.”</p> - -<p>“Hush, Tom! I never said as you wur to say that—but -you might have let ’em know, careful like, as he -aun’t always able to look after the farm as well as you -might think.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p> - -<p>“It ud have done no good. Drunkenness aun’t a reason -for exemption, as they say. Besides, I’d middling little -to do in the matter. Faather was applying fur me, and -he did all the talking—an unaccountable lot of it, too. I -wurn’t took because there wurn’t enough said against -it, I promise you. But seemingly before a farm chap -like me gits off, he’s got to have a certifickit from the -War Agricultural Committee, and they read a letter saying -as they’d recommended one to be given, but the -Executive Committee or summat hadn’t fallen in wud -it. So there’s no use crying, mother, for go I must, and -it’ll be none the easier for you making all this vrother.”</p> - -<p>He was cross because he was unhappy.</p> - -<p>“Will you be in the Royal Sussex, Tom—along of -Mus’ Dixon and Mus’ Archie?” asked Zacky, the youngest -boy.</p> - -<p>“I dunno.”</p> - -<p>“When ull you be leaving?”</p> - -<p>“In a fortnight, I’ve told you.”</p> - -<p>“I hear as how Bill Putland ull be going soon,” said -Mrs. Beatup. “He’d be company like fur you, Tom.”</p> - -<p>“Bill!—he’s too unaccountable fine and grand fur me. -He thinks no end of himself being Mus’ Lamb’s chuvver. -But I’ll tell you who’s joined the Sussex, though, and -that’s Jerry Sumption. I met Mus’ Sumption, this -evenun, and he toald me.”</p> - -<p>“You doan’t mean to say as Jerry’s left the fackory?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. He went and enlisted—minister says he’s unaccountable -proud of him.”</p> - -<p>There was a crackle of laughter round the table.</p> - -<p>“Well, we all of us know, and I reckon minister knows -as we know, that if Jerry had bin any sort of use at the -munititions they wouldn’t have let him join up. It’s a -law that if you maake munititions you doan’t have to -join up.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Jerry’s bin never no good at naun. He’s jest a -roving gipsy dog.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup turned suddenly to Ivy:</p> - -<p>“Did you know aught of this?”</p> - -<p>“Not I!” said Ivy carelessly. “Jerry hasn’t written -to me fur more’n a month. Maybe this is why.”</p> - -<p>“I’m justabout sorry fur Mus’ Sumption,” said Tom, -whom his supper had put in better humour. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> - -“He has a feeling as Jerry ull come to no good in the -army.”</p> - -<p>“No more he will, nor nowhere, I’m thinking,” said -Mrs. Beatup. “Doan’t you never have naun to do wud -him, Tom. I doan’t want my children to git the splash -of that gipsy muck——” And she threw another half-defiant, -half-furtive look at Ivy.</p> - -<p>“Where’s Harry?” asked Tom.</p> - -<p>“Out ratting,” Zacky informed him.</p> - -<p>“Well, he woan’t find any supper’s bin kept fur him, -that’s all,” said Mrs. Beatup, rising and pushing back -her chair. “Nell, put the plaates on the tray and maake -yourself useful fur wunst.”</p> - -<p>A flush crept over Nell’s pale, pretty face, from her -neck to the roots of her reddish hair. She gingerly -picked up two of the smelly, greasy plates, then quickly -put them down again.</p> - -<p>“There’s faather.”</p> - -<p>“Where?” Mrs. Beatup listened.</p> - -<p>“I heard the gate—and there goes the side door.”</p> - -<p>The next minute a heavy, uncertain footstep was -heard in the passage, then a bump as if someone had -lurched into the wall. The family stood stock-still and -waited.</p> - -<p>“Maybe he’ll hurt himself in the dark,” said Mrs. -Beatup, “now policeman woan’t let us have the light at -the passage bend.”</p> - -<p>“No, he’s all right. There he is scrabbling at the -door.”</p> - -<p>There was the sound of fingers groping and scratching. -Then the door opened and the farmer of Worge came in, -his hat a little on one side, a lock of hair falling over his -red forehead, and the whole of his waistcoat undone. -He stood, supporting himself against the doorpost, and -glared at the family.</p> - -<p>“Your supper’s still hot, Ned,” said Mrs. Beatup -hesitatingly—“leastways, the gals have eaten all the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> - -taters, but I can hot you up....” She began to whimper -as the bleared grey eyes slowly rolled towards her.</p> - -<p>“Be quiet, Mother,” said Ivy.</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup, slowly and carefully, made his way -towards a broken-springed armchair beside the fire. He then -sat down by the simple process of falling into it -backwards; then he stretched out a foot that seemed -made of clay and manure——</p> - -<p>“Taake off my boots, Missus.”</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>It was quite dark before Tom was able to slip out to -see to one or two odd jobs that wanted doing in the -barns. He felt himself obliged to stay in the kitchen -while his father was there, for though there had not been -more than a few occasions when surliness had blazed -into assault, he knew that it was always just possible -that his father might become violent, especially as his -mother always went the worst way—with tears, reproaches, -arguments and lamentations. What would -happen when he was no longer at hand to watch over her -he did not like to think. It was all part of the load of -anxiety and love which was settling down on him.</p> - -<p>If he had been a free man he would probably have -felt quite ready for the change ahead of him. Though -his imagination had scarcely taken hold of the war, and -though the harrow and the plough, with the thick sucking -earth on his boots, and the drip of rain or stew of -sunshine on waiting fields, had absorbed most of the -boyish spirit of adventure which might have sent him -questing out of stuffier circumstances—though his was -the country heart, which is the last heart for warfare—in -spite of all, he might have gone gaily to the new life, -with its wider reach and freedom, if he had not known - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> - -that his departure meant the crumbling of that little -corner of England which was his, which his arm had -built and his back supported.</p> - -<p>He knew that Worge leaned on him, for he felt the -weight of it even in his dreams. It was four years now -since he had put his shoulder against it; he was only -just twenty, but he knew that if four years ago he had -not made up his mind to save the farm, his father would -have drunk, and the rest of the family muddled, the -place into the auction market, and the Beatups would -now be scattered into towns or soaking their humble-pie -in beer on smallholdings. He had done nothing very -wonderful. The place was small and no more wanted a -giant to hold it up than a giant to knock it down. He -had merely worked while others slacked, thought while -others slept, remembered while others forgot. But, without -any thrill of pride or adventure, he knew that he had -tided Worge through its bad hour, and that the same -little upheld it now. He was the real farmer, though he -had to be careful not to let his headship be seen. His -father had not explained things clearly to the tribunal—explaining -things clearly was not a quality of Tom’s -either—he had been far too anxious to preserve his own -importance, which might have suffered had he said, “My -son runs the farm while I’m drinking at the pub.”</p> - -<p>The others were not even as much good as his father. -In the intervals of drinking, which in spite of Mrs. -Beatup’s three-in-five calculation were often quite respectable, -he was both hard-working and resourceful, -though of late his brain had grown spongier and threatened -a final rot. But the rest of the family had no upstanding -moments. Ivy was strong and comparatively -willing, but Tom did not believe in girls as farm-hands -and never thought of Ivy even milking the cows. She -and her mother looked after the chickens and did the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> - -housework, that was all. Nell was out all day and busy -working in the evenings for her examination; Zacky was -still at school, and Harry was a rover—the comrade of -other farmers’ younger sons in ratting and sparrow-hunting, -in visiting fairs, in trespassing for birds’ eggs, -or sometimes solitary in strange obedience to the call of -distant wood or village green. Yet Harry was Tom’s one -hope—a last, forlorn one.</p> - -<p>Tom was waiting for him now. He wanted to speak -to his young brother alone, not in the dim lath-smelling -bedroom where Zacky would be a third. Harry did not -generally stop out late, though he had occasionally -roamed all night—hunger and fear of a beating (another -of Tom’s quasi-paternal tasks) usually brought him home -just in time to satisfy one and escape the other.</p> - -<p>Tom looked into the cowshed—one of the cows had -shown ailing signs that day, but she seemed well enough -now, with her large head lolling against the stall, her -eyes soft and untroubled in the brown glow of his lantern. -He would not see the calf which had caused him so much -half-proud anxiety; he wondered what would become -of them both if it should be born on one of Father’s -“bad nights.” Then he went into the stable, where the -three farm-horses—the sorrel, the brown, and the bay—stood -stamping and chumbling, with the cold miasmic -air like a mist above the straw. Then he went back into -the yard—saw that the hen-house door was fast, that old -Nimrod the watch-dog had his bone and his water and a -good length of chain. It was very cold, there was a faint -smell of rime on the motionless air, and the stars were -like spluttering candles in the frost-black sky. These -April days and nights were unaccountable tricky, he told -himself. That noon the very heart of the manure-heap -had melted in the sun, and now it was hardening again—his -boot hardly sank into the stuff as he trod it with - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> - -his heel. Some of it ought to be carted to-morrow and -put round the apple-trees....</p> - -<p>Harry was very late. He would go into the corn-chamber -and do some accounts. He was clumsy with his -figures, and they kept him there twisting and scratching -his head till nearly ten o’clock, when he heard a footfall, -would-be stealthy, on the stones.</p> - -<p>He rose quickly and ran round the yard to the backdoor -just as a shadow melted up against it.</p> - -<p>“Here—you!” cried Tom surlily, for he was tired and -muddled with his sums—“doan’t you think to go slithering -in quiet lik that, you good-fur-naun.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll come in when I like,” grumbled Harry. “You -aun’t maaster here.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m the bigger chap, anyways, so mind your -manners. Where’ve you bin?”</p> - -<p>“Only down to Puddledock.”</p> - -<p>“Puddledock aun’t sich a valiant plaace as you shud -spend half a day there. You’ve bin up to no good, I -reckon. A fine chap you’ll be to mind Worge when I’m -gone.”</p> - -<p>“You’re going, then?”</p> - -<p>Harry’s voice was anxious, for he was fond of Tom, -though he resented his interference with his liberties.</p> - -<p>“Yes—I’m going ... join up in a fortnight. Come -in, Harry; I want to spik to you.”</p> - -<p>“I want my supper.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll have your supper, though you doan’t desarve -it, you spannelling beggar. I’ll come and sit along of -you; we must talk business, you and I.”</p> - -<p>“About Worge?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>They were in the kitchen now, dark except for some -gleeds of fire. The rest of the family had gone to bed, -but the broken supper was still on the table—the hacked, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> - -hardening loaf, and the remains of the bacon and cabbage -under floating scabs of grease. Tom lit the lamp -and Harry sat down, hungry and uncritical. The two -boys were curiously alike, short and sturdy, with broad -sunburnt faces, grey eyes, big mouths, and small, defiant -noses. Harry’s coat was covered with clay all down one -side, and the sleeve was torn—Tom was too heavy-hearted -for more scolding, just noted drearily a new item -of expenditure. The younger brother saw the elder’s -cast-down looks:</p> - -<p>“I’m unaccountable sorry, Tom,” he said sheepishly.</p> - -<p>“Cos of wot? Cos I’m going or cos you aun’t worth -your bed and keep?”</p> - -<p>“Cos of both.”</p> - -<p>“Well, there’s naun to do about one, but a sight to do -about t’other. Harry, you’ll have to mind Worge when -I’m agone.”</p> - -<p>“Wot can I do?”</p> - -<p>“You can work instead of roaming, and you can see -to things when faather’s bad—see as there aun’t naun -foolish done or jobs disremembered. Elphick and Juglery -have only half a head between them. Before I go -I’ll tell you all I’ve had in my head about the hay in -Bucksteep field, and the oats agaunst the Street and -them fuggles down by the Sunk. And you’ll have to -kip it all in your head saum as I’ve kipped it in mine, -and see as things come out straight by harvest. D’you -understand?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes, Tom.”</p> - -<p>“And there’s Maudie’s calf due next month, and a -brood of them Orpingtons, and I’d meant to buy a boar -at Lewes Fair and kip him for service. You’ll never -have the sense to do it. You mun stop your ratting and -your roving, or Worge ull be at the auctioneer’s. -Faather’s a valiant clever chap when he’s sober, and -book-larned too, but the men are two old turnup-heads, -and Zacky’s scarce more’n a child, and the gals are gals—so -it’s up to you, Harry, as they say, to kip the plaace -going.”</p> - -<p>Harry groaned——</p> - -<p>“Why wudn’t they let you stay?”</p> - -<p>“Because they didn’t see no sense in kipping an a -man on farm-work when there wur plenty about to do -his job. They doan’t understand how things are, and -when you coame to think of it, it’s a shaum as I can’t -go wud a free heart.”</p> - -<p>“Do you want to go?”</p> - -<p>“I dunno. I aun’t got the chance of knowing, wud -all this vrothering me. But I’d go easier if I cud think -the plaace wouldn’t fall to pieces as soon as I left it, and -that if I’m killed....”</p> - -<p>He stopped. Strangely enough, he had never thought -of being killed till now.</p> - - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>Tom’s calling-up papers did not arrive till a few days -later. It was a showery morning, with a flooding blue -sky, smeethed and streaked with low floats of cloud. -The rain was cracking on the little green panes of the -kitchen window, and the spatter of the drops, with the -soft humming song of the kitchen fire, was in Tom’s -ears as he studied the sheet which entitled one horse, -one bicycle, one mule, one (asterisked) private soldier -to travel cost-free to Lewes. He opened his mouth to -say, “My calling-up papers have come,” but said nothing, -just sat with his mouth open. The shower rattled -and the fire hummed, then a sudden spill of sunshine -came from the dripping edge of a cloud into the room, -making the drops on the pane like golden beads, and - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> - -lighting up the breakfast table, so that the mangled loaf and -the dirty cups became almost as wonderful as the shining -faces round them.</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup was himself this morning—they still -called it “himself,” though of late his real self had -seemed more and more removed from the lusty headacheless -man who sat among them to-day, more and -more closely coiled with that abject thing of sickness -and violence which came lurching down the fields at -dusk from the Rifle Volunteer. He was studying his -share of the post—an invitation to an auction at Rushlake -Green, where Galleybird Farm was up for sale with -all its live and dead stock. Mrs. Beatup had never had -a letter in her life, nor apparently wanted one. She -always exclaimed at the post, and wondered why Ivy -should have all those postcards. In her young days no -one sent postcards to girls. If a chap wanted you for -wife he hung around the gate, if he did not want you -for wife he took no manner of notice of you. A dozen -chaps could not want Ivy for wife—her with as many -freckles as a foxglove, and all blowsy too, and sunburnt -as a stack—and yet there were nearly a dozen postcards -strewn round her plate this morning. Some were field -postcards, whizz-bangs, from Sussex chaps in France, -some were stamped with the red triangle of the Y.M.C.A., -some were views of furrin Midland places where Sussex -chaps were in training, and some were funny ones that -made Ivy throw herself back in her chair, and show her -big, white, friendly teeth, and laugh “Ha! ha!” till the -others said, “Let’s see, Ivy,” and the picture of the -Soldier come home on leave to find twins, or the donkey -chewing the Highlander’s kilt, or the Kaiser hiding in a -barrel from “<i xml:lang="de" lang="de">Ach Gott! die</i> Royal Sussex!” would be -passed round the table. To-day one of the pictures of -the gentleman with twins—it was a popular one in the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> - -Sussex, and Ivy had two this morning—was from Jerry -Sumption.</p> - -<p>“Says he’s fed up,” said Ivy. “He reckons I knew -about his joining. How was I to know? He’s at Waterheel -Camp; and he’s met Sid Viner and young Kadwell. -They kip those boys far enough from home.”</p> - -<p>“And a good thing too,” said Mrs. Beatup. “We -doan’t want Minister’s gipsy spannelling round.”</p> - -<p>“Spik for yourself, mother—there aun’t a lad at -Waterheel as I wuldn’t have here if I cud git him.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll come to no good,” grumbled her father, and -pretty Nell, with her anæmic flush, shrugged away from -her sister’s sprawling elbow. She herself had had only -one postcard, which she slipped hastily into the front of -her blouse—unlike Ivy, who left hers scattered over the -table even when the family had risen from their meal. -There was not much in the postcard to justify such -preferential treatment, for it ran—“There will be a -meeting of the Sunday-school teachers to-morrow in -church at 5.30. H. Poullett-Smith.”</p> - -<p>Nell began to collect her books for school. She carefully -dusted the crumbs from her skirt, smoothed her -pretty marigold hair before the bit of mirror by the fireplace, -put on her hat and jacket, and was gone. The -rest of the family began to disperse. Zacky had to go to -school too, but his going was an unwilling, complicated -matter compared with Nell’s. His mother had to find -his cap, his sister to mend his bootlace, his father to cuff -his head, and finally his brother Tom to set him marching -with a kick in his rear.</p> - -<p>Ivy tied on a sacking apron and began to slop soapsuds -on the floor of the outer kitchen, Mrs. Beatup set -out on a quest—which experience told would last the -morning—after a plate of potatoes she could have sworn -she had set in the larder overnight. Mus’ Beatup went off - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> - -to his fields with Harry at his tail, and calling to Tom—</p> - -<p>“Have you bin over to Egypt about them roots?”</p> - -<p>“No—I’m going this mornun.”</p> - -<p>“Then you can tell Putland as it’s taake or leave—he -pays my price or he doan’t have my wurzels.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Father.”</p> - -<p>Tom went off very quietly, fingering the summons in -his pocket. How many times now would he go on these -errands to Egypt, Cowlease, Slivericks and other farms? -His father would have to go, or if unfit, then Harry -would be sent—Harry who would sell you a cart of -swedes for tuppence or exchange a prize pig for a ferret. -That was an unaccountable queer little bit of paper in -his pocket. He could tear it in two, but it could also -do the same for him, and in any conflict it must come -out winner. It was, as it were, a finger of that invisible -hand which was being thrust down through the -clouds to grab Tom and other little people. The huge, -unseen, unlimited, unmerciful force of a kingdom’s -power lay behind it, and Tom’s single body and soul -must obey without hope of escape the great Manhood -that demanded them both, as a potter demands clay -and scoops up the helpless earth to bake in his oven....</p> - -<p>All this in a more or less rag-and-tag state was passing -through his mind as he walked down the drive of Worge, -with Speedwell a-bloom between the ruts, and came to -the Inn whose painted sign was a volunteer of Queen -Victoria’s day. It was an old house, with a huge windward -sprawl of roof, but had not been licensed more than -sixty years. Tom disliked it as a temptation which -Providence had tactlessly dumped at their door. If -Mus’ Beatup had had to walk to the Crown at Woods -Corner or the George at Brownbread Street he would -have been more continuously the smart, upstanding man -he was this morning.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p> - -<p>Egypt Farm was just across the road. It was smaller -than Worge, but also brighter and more prosperous-looking. -There was new white paint round the windows -and on the cowls of the oasts, and the little patch of -garden by the door was trim, with hyacinths a-blowing -and early roses spotting the trellis with their first buds.</p> - -<p>“Mornun, Tom,” called Mrs. Putland cheerily. She -was putting a suet pudding into the oven, with the -kitchen door wide open, and saw him as he crossed the -yard.</p> - -<p>“Mornun, ma’am. Is the maaster at home?”</p> - -<p>“Maaster’s over at Satanstown buying a calf. Can -I give him your message?”</p> - -<p>“Faather says as it’s taake it or leave it about them -roots.”</p> - -<p>“Then I reckon he’ll taake it. He never wur the man -to higgle-haggle, and the roots is good roots.”</p> - -<p>“Justabout valiant—I never got a tidier crop out of -Podder’s field.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Putland had come to the door and stood looking -at him, with her arms akimbo. She was a small, trim -woman, buttoned and sleeked, and somehow the expression -of her face was the same as the expression of the -house—the clean, kindly, enquiring look of Egypt with -its white-framed staring windows and smooth, ruddy -tiles.</p> - -<p>“It’ll be unaccountable sad fur your faather to lose -you. You’ve bin the prop-stick of Worge this five year.”</p> - -<p>“Can’t be helped. I’ve got to go. Had my calling-up -paapers this mornun.”</p> - -<p>“That’s queer. So did Bill. Reckon you’ll go together.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Didn’t Bill try fur exemption, then?”</p> - -<p>“No—Mus’ Lamb wouldn’t have it. Besides, there -wurn’t no reason as he should stay. We’ve done wudout -him here since he went to the Manor, and Mus’ Lamb -ull kip his plaace fur him till he comes back.”</p> - -<p>Tom envied Bill his free heart.</p> - -<p>“I’ll give him a call,” continued Bill’s mother. “He -aun’t due up at the Manor fur an hour yit, and he wur -saying only last night as he never sees you now.”</p> - -<p>A few minutes later Bill answered his mother’s call, -and sauntered round the corner of the house, his hands -in his pockets, his chauffeur’s cap a little on one side. -He had a handsome, fresh-coloured face, strangely cheeky -for a country boy’s, and Tom always felt rather ill at -ease in his presence, a little awed by the fact that though -his hands might sometimes be brown and greasy with -motor-oil, his body was of a well-washed whiteness unknown -at Worge.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Bill.”</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Tom.”</p> - -<p>There had never been a very deep friendship between -them; Bill was inclined to be patronising, and Tom both -to resent it and to envy him. But to-day a new, mysterious -bond was linking them. In the pocket of Bill’s -neat livery there was a paper exactly like that in Tom’s -manure-slopped corduroys.</p> - -<p>“I hear you’ve bin called up, Bill.”</p> - -<p>“Yes—in a fortnight, they say.”</p> - -<p>“I’m going too—in a fortnight.”</p> - -<p>“Pleased?”</p> - -<p>“No. I’m unaccountable vrothered at leaving the -farm. Wot d’you feel about it?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, me?—I’m not sorry. They’ll keep my place open -for me at the Manor, and I shall like getting a hit at -Kayser Bill. Besides, the gals think twice as much of -you if you’re in uniform.”</p> - -<p>This was a new complexion on the case, and Tom’s -thoughts wandered down to the shop.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I shall like being along of Mus’ Archie, too—he told -me I could be along of him. We’re all eighteenth Sussex -hereabouts. I reckon you’ll be in with us.”</p> - -<p>“I dunno.”</p> - -<p>Tom’s brows were crinkled, for he was thinking hard. -He was chewing the fact that for a free man there might -be something rather pleasant in soldiering. This happy, -conceited, self-confident little chauffeur was teaching him -that the soldier’s lot was not entirely dark. “Called -up”—“taken”—“fetched along”—those were the words of -his conscript’s vocabulary. But now for the first time he -saw something beyond them, a voluntary endeavour beyond -the conscript’s obedience, a corporate enthusiasm -beyond his lonely unwillingness. “We’re all eighteenth -Sussex hereabouts....”</p> - - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>April was May before Tom’s weeks of grace had run. -The field hollows were white with drifts of hawthorn, -and the pale purplish haze of the cuckoo-flower had given -place to the buttercups’ dabble of gold. The papery-white -of the wild cherry had gone from the woods, which -were green now, thick, and full of the nutty smell of -leaves. The ditches were milky with fennel, and on the -high meadows by Thunders Hill the broom and the gorse -clumped their yellows together, making the hill a flaming -cone to those who saw it from the marshes of Horse Eye.</p> - -<p>The farmers of Dallington watched their hayfields -rust. There was little corn in that country bounded by -the Four Roads, so as the sun climbed higher noon by -noon, the neighbourhood grew gipsy-brown—the straw-coloured -feathers of the grass veiled a glowing heart of -clover, and above them opened the white ox-eyes and -pools of sorrel....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p> - -<p>Tom Beatup watched ripen the fields whose harvest -he would not see. There were some twenty acres of hay -at Worge, and two fields in which the green corn was his -hope and dread. The crop was promising on the whole—a -bit sedge-leaved perhaps, but firm in its seed. There -were the hops, too, in the low fields by Puddledock, where -Forges Wood shut off the north-east wind. He trundled -the insect-sprayer round the bines, and afterwards loved -the smell of his green, sticky hands.</p> - -<p>He would have been rightly offended if anyone had -told him that his chief pangs of parting were for the -farm. None the less, there was a lingering wistfulness in -his last dealings with it which was not in his intercourse -with his family. He loved his mother, he admired his -father, he felt for his brothers and sisters an elder -brother’s half-anxious, half-contemptuous fondness; but -in his last services for Worge, whether in field or barn, -there was something almost sacramental. His duties were -rites—he was the unconscious priest of that tumble-down -altar before which the manure smoked as incense and on -which the burnt-offering of his boyhood lay.</p> - -<p>He had, too, a hunger for the fields, not only the fields -of Worge, but for all those within the Four Roads—which -he did not see as roads leading to adventure, but -as boundaries fencing home. When his tasks allowed -he would roam in the webbing of tracks that the farms -have spun between the lanes—he would go to Starnash -or Oxbottom Town, watch the lightless sky grow purple -over Muddles Green, and the big stars begin to spark it -as the moon hung like a red lamp above Mystole Wood. -High on the zenith the sky would be rainy green, and he -would watch it deepen to purple round the crimson moon, -all unconscious of its beauty, loving it only because it -hung above this clay in which his feet were stuck, because - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> - -from it came the brightness which waked the -homely things he had put in the earth to sleep....</p> - -<p>Sometimes he would be disturbed by another quest, -and would beat slowly up and down on the road outside -the shop, longing to go in and yet strangely reluctant. -He felt all tied-up and dumb. He could not tell Thyrza -Honey what he felt at leaving her any more than he -could have told Starnash or Thunders Hill—than he -could have told the little brother who lay against him -on cold nights—or the dreamy-eyed cows he milked—or -even the grinning, whining watch-dog who muddied him -with his love. He was dumb, as all these were dumb. -He felt unaccountable vrothered at having to leave them -all, and that was the utmost he could say; and yet he -knew that in Thyrza’s case, at any rate, it was not -enough. A man with a better tongue than he would -have gone into that shop, and shut himself into the light -and tea-smelling warmth, instead of pacing up and down -under the cold stars.</p> - - -<h3>9</h3> - -<p>On the last day of all he plucked up courage. He -could not go without saying good-bye, and he had always -brought her the big things of his life—from his buying -of a horse-rake to the news of the Tribunal’s decision—though -each time he had wrapped his need in some penny -purchase of tobacco or sweets.</p> - -<p>The little bell buzzed and ting’d. The shop was empty -and rather dark, for a grey starless dusk was on the -fields after a rainy day. The wind rattled the door he -had shut behind him, and moaned round the little leaded -window banked up with penny toys and tins of fruit. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> - -It had a long sighing sweep over the fields from Bird-in-Eye,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">and just across the road was a willow pond, from</span><br /> -which it seemed to drink sadness. Over the banks of -papered tins and paint-slopped toys he could see the grey -bending backs of the willows, and the steely ruffle of the -pond under the wind. His throat grew tight with a word -that was stuck in it—“Good-bye.”</p> - -<p>The door of the back room opened, and there was a -leap of firelight and the song of a kettle before it shut.</p> - -<p>“Evenun, Mus’ Tom,” said Mrs. Honey.</p> - -<p>“Evenun,” said Tom. “A packet of Player’s, please.”</p> - -<p>Thyrza put it on the counter. “Any sweeties?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. I’ll taake a quarter of bull’s-eyes and four-penn’orth -of telephones. I woan’t leave them behind me -this time”—and Tom grinned sheepishly.</p> - -<p>“Your brothers and sisters ull miss you,” said Thyrza, -poking with a knife at the sticky wedge of the bull’s-eyes.</p> - -<p>“Not more’n I’ll miss them and the whole plaace.”</p> - -<p>“I reckon it’s sad to say good-bye.”</p> - -<p>“Unaccountable sad.”</p> - -<p>Her eyes were fixed on him very tenderly. She was -sorry for Tom Beatup—had always been a little sorry -for him—she could not quite tell why.</p> - -<p>“It’ll be a long time before I see you again, Thyrza.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe not—you may git leave and come to see us.”</p> - -<p>He shook his head——“Not yet awhile.”</p> - -<p>His parcels lay before him, but she did not expect him -to go. He was leaning across the counter, staring at her -with big, solemn eyes, and she knew that she liked his -face, broad and ruddy as a September moon, that she -liked the whole sturdy set of him.</p> - -<p>“Stay and have a bit of supper wud me, Tom.” It -was quite unconsciously that they had become Tom and -Thyrza to each other.</p> - -<p>The colour burned into his cheeks, but he shook his -head.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p> - -<p>“No, thank you kindly. I’ve got to git back -hoame. I’ve a dunnamany things to do this last -evenun.”</p> - -<p>“Then come on your fust leave.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I will——Oh, Thryza!”</p> - -<p>His hunger had outrun his shyness. He was trembling. -She had lifted her hand to smooth back the soft -fuzz of her hair, which in the dusk had become the -colour of hay in starlight, and as she dropped her hand, -he caught it, and held it, then kissed it. It was warm -and wide and soft and rather sticky.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Tommy——”</p> - -<p>“D’you mind, Thyrza?”</p> - -<p>“I?—Lord, no, dear.”</p> - -<p>He was still holding her hand across the counter, and -now he slowly pulled her towards him. Her darling face -was coming closer to him out of the shadows; he could -smell her hair....</p> - -<p>Buzz—Ting.</p> - -<p>Their hands dropped and they started upright, both -looking utterly foolish. The Reverend Henry Poullett-Smith -sniffed an air of constraint as he entered.</p> - -<p>“Good evening, Mrs. Honey. I came to leave this—er—notice -about the Empire Day performance at the -schools. Perhaps you’ll be so kind as to show it in the -window, and—er—come yourself.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you, sir. I’ll put it here by the tinned salmon. -That’s what gets looked at most.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you, Mrs. Honey. Hullo, Beatup—I didn’t -see you in this dim light.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll be gitting the lamp,” said Thyrza.</p> - -<p>Tom swept his parcels off the counter into his pockets, -and muttered something about “hoame.”</p> - -<p>“This is your last day, isn’t it?” asked the curate.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yessir. Off to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>“Sorry?”</p> - -<p>“Middling sorry, for some reasons.”</p> - -<p>“But it will be a big experience for you.”</p> - -<p>The curate was young, and sometimes vaguely -hankered after that adventure in which no priests but -those of godless France might share. It was hard to -see it being wasted on a pudding-headed chap like -Beatup.</p> - -<p>Tom only grunted his reply to this challenge. He was -angry with the parson for having come into the shop, -discreet as had been his entry. He did not think of -waiting till he had gone, for somehow no one, especially -a man, ever left Thyrza’s shop in a hurry, as if the -tranquil dawdle of the shopkeeper communicated itself -to her customers, making them lounge and linger long -after their purchases were made.</p> - -<p>“Good-bye, Mrs. Honey.”</p> - -<p>“Good-bye, Tom.”</p> - -<p>“Good-bye, and good luck,” said the curate, shaking -hands.</p> - -<p>The bell buzzed again, and Tom was out in the throb -and shudder of the wind, while Thyrza lit the lamp in -the house behind him.</p> - - -<h3>10</h3> - -<p>When he reached home he found all the family at -supper, except Harry, who after a fortnight’s doubtful -virtue had, on his brother’s last night at home, escapaded -off with two young Sindens from Little Worge. Mrs. -Beatup was inclined to be tearful about it. “Wot we’ll -do when you’re agone, Tom, Lord only knows.” Of late -she had taken to treating Tom’s departure as a voluntary, -not to say capricious, act, and her frequent lamentations -were gabbled with reproach, vague hints that if - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> - -he had liked he could have prevented the catastrophe—precisely -how, she never told him.</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup was not drunk. Only a negative statement -could describe him, for neither was he sober. An -alcoholic Laodicean, neither hot nor cold, he lolled over -the head of the table, and argued with Nell, the pupil-teacher, -on the utter futility of the Church of England, -or, indeed, any sort of Church. It was characteristic of -Nell that she would argue with her father, drunk or -sober. She had championed her causes against a far -less responsible adversary than she had before her to-day. -Her cheeks were pink with refutation, and her little -sighs and exclamations and chipped beginnings of phrases -popped like corks round Mus’ Beatup’s droning eloquence—that -eloquence which so filled Tom with admiration -and made him boast of his father’s book-learning among -the farms.</p> - -<p>“It’s as plain as the nose on your face, and has all bin -proved over and over again as there wuren’t no such -persons as Adam and Eve. There’s a chap called Darwin’s -proved as we’re the offsprings of monkeys, and a -chap called Bradlaugh ’s proved as we all come out of -stuff called prottoplasm—so where are your Adam and -Eve, I’d lik to know?”</p> - -<p>“But, father, as if it mattered. The Church....”</p> - -<p>“The Church is there to prove as the world was maade -in six days, when it’s bin proved over and over again -as it hasn’t.”</p> - -<p>“The Church is there for no such thing—it’s——”</p> - -<p>“I tell you it’s bin proved as it’s there for that very -purpose.”</p> - -<p>“Who’s proved it?”</p> - -<p>“Darwin and Huxley and Bradlaugh, and a lot more -clever chaps.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p> - -<p>“But they lived years ago, and it’s——”</p> - -<p>“Not so many years ago as your Adam and Eve, and -yet you go and believe in them....”</p> - -<p>“I don’t. Not in the sense....”</p> - -<p>“When it’s bin proved as there never wur no Adam -and Eve. The fust people wur monkeys, descended from -prottoplasm, and then caum the missing lynx and then -caum us. I tell you it’s all bin proved over and over -again, and parson chaps and silly gals aun’t likely to -prove anything different.”</p> - -<p>Tom listened respectfully, if rather grudgingly, to this -learned conversation. He wanted to talk to his father -about one or two matters concerning the farm, but knew -there would be no chance for him to-night. He kept up -at intervals a grunting intercourse with his mother, who -wanted every other minute to know where he’d been and -where Harry had got to, and what in the Lord’s name -they were to do without him. Into the bargain, he ate -a hearty supper, for though he was in love and rather -miserable, he was also a healthy young animal, sharp-set -after a day in the open air.</p> - -<p>At last the theological argument ended, not because it -was any nearer solution or had indeed moved at all -from its first premises, but because the end of supper -dispersed the combatants, Nell to her work, and Mus’ -Beatup, ignominiously, to the kitchen sink. Having relieved -his stomach of its load of bad beer and half-masticated -food, he went grumbling upstairs to bed, -wondering what we were all coming to nowadays, and -why nobody stopped the war.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup reckoned, with a sigh, that she had better -go to bed too, as Maaster didn’t like it if she disturbed -him later. So she lit her candle, and went slowly creaking -upstairs, leaving Ivy to clear away the supper. -Just where the stairs bent, she suddenly stood still, as -if a thought had struck her.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Tom,” she called.</p> - -<p>He was cleaning his boots in the outer kitchen, but -when he heard her he ran up to where she stood, thick -against her monstrous shadow in the angle of the stairs.</p> - -<p>“It’s queer as you never think of kissing your -mother.”</p> - -<p>He had not kissed her for weeks, but now, suddenly -troubled, he did so.</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry, mother.”</p> - -<p>“And so you may be—on your last night, too.”</p> - -<p>He stood looking at her sheepishly.</p> - -<p>“Well, git down to your business. I mustn’t linger, -or Maaster ull be gitting into bed in his boots.”</p> - -<p>He went downstairs, feeling suddenly smartingly sorry -for his mother as she waddled upwards to this drunkard’s -bed. He saw that her lot was a hard one.</p> - - -<h3>11</h3> - -<p>The passage was in darkness, and Tom did not see, but -felt, the side door swing open, with a damp drench of -wind from the yard. There was a grey mist in the -passage. The next minute a white stick-like thing flew -out of it, suddenly like the wind, and then bumped into -Tom, with the unexpected contact of warm flesh against -his hands, and “Oo-er,” in Harry’s voice.</p> - -<p>“Harry....”</p> - -<p>“Oh, that’s you, Tom? Lemme git up and fetch some -cloathes.”</p> - -<p>“But where’s those as you went out in?”</p> - -<p>“I dunno. I’ll tell you afterwards, but I’m coald, and -I want my supper.”</p> - -<p>The slow, facile anger of his type went tingling into -Tom’s speech and hands.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p> -<p>“Supper! I’m hemmed if you git so much as a bite. -Tell me this wunst where you left your cloathes or I’ll -knock your head off, surelye.”</p> - -<p>He laid violent hands on Harry, who was, however, -far too slippery to hold. He was free in a minute and -dashed into the outer kitchen, slamming the door after -him.</p> - -<p>When Tom came in he was sitting tailor-fashion on -the table, gnawing the top of a cottage loaf. The elder -brother could not help laughing at him, he looked such -a queer goblin creature.</p> - -<p>“Doan’t be vrothered, Tom,” whined Harry, taking -advantage of his relenting—“it’s your last night at -home.”</p> - -<p>Tom winced—they were always throwing it at him, -his “last night.”</p> - -<p>“Lucky fur you as it is—and unlucky fur me—and -unlucky fur Worge if this is the way you’re going on -when I’m a-gone. Where’ve you bin?”</p> - -<p>“Only over to Bucksteep, Tom.”</p> - -<p>“But wot have you done wud your clothes?”</p> - -<p>“Mus’ Archie’s got ’em.”</p> - -<p>“Wot d’you mean? Spik the truth.”</p> - -<p>“It’s Bible truth. Willie and Peter Sinden and Bob -Pix and me thought as how we’d bathe by moonlight in -Bucksteep pond, and Mus’ Archie’s hoame on leave, and -he wur walking wud his young woman in the paddock, -and he sawed us, and took all our cloathes whiles we wur -in the water. He thought as how he’d got us then, and -that we couldn’t git away wudout our cloathes. But -he’s found he’s wrong, fur we climbed up the far bank -into Throws Wood, and ran hoame.”</p> - -<p>“You mean to tell me as you’ve come in your skin all -the way from Bucksteep?”</p> - -<p>Harry nodded, and laughed at some Puckish memory.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, all I wonder is as you wurn’t took and put in -gaol—you would have been if policeman had met you—and -you’ll catch your death of cold.”</p> - -<p>He pulled off his coat and most ungently bundled -Harry into it. Then another idea struck him. He -groaned, and scratched his head.</p> - -<p>“I must write to Mus’ Archie this wunst.”</p> - -<p>“Why, Tom?”</p> - -<p>“To git your clothes back. We can’t afford to lose a -good suit of clothes.”</p> - -<p>He turned wearily to the cupboard, and took out a -penny ink-bottle, a pen, and some cheap writing-paper.</p> - -<p>“Tom—he’ll know it wur me if you write.”</p> - -<p>“I can’t help that—we must git your clothes back.”</p> - -<p>“But they were only old cloathes.”</p> - -<p>“Adone-do, Harry. We can’t afford to lose so much -as an old shirt. Oh, you’re vrothering me to madness -wud your doings.”</p> - -<p>He began to scrawl in his slow, round hand. He was -no letter-writer, and found it difficult to put his request -into words. He also wanted to plead for Harry, to -explain a little of his own hard case, and ask that the -matter might be allowed to stop at the scare and scolding -Harry had received, for “I am joining up to-morrow, -and it is very hard to leave them all like this, from your -obedient servant Thomas Beatup.”</p> - -<p>Harry watched him, bobbing over the sheet, every -now and then passing his tongue over his lips in the -agony of composition. Then suddenly he slid towards -him across the table and put his arm round his neck.</p> - -<p>Tom shook him off.</p> - -<p>“Git away.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I’m sorry I’m such a hemmed curse to you, Tom.”</p> - -<p>“You’re a hemmed curse indeed. I ask you to be a -man in my plaace, and you’re no more than a tedious -liddle child.”</p> - -<p>A sudden sense of the hopelessness of it all came over -him—the net in which he struggled, in which he was -being dragged away from those he could help and love. -He dropped his head in his hands. Harry stood for a -moment awestruck beside him, a grotesque figure with -Tom’s coat hanging over his bare thighs. Then he -turned and crept away to bed.</p> - -<p>The clock struck nine, and Tom lifted his head. He -was utterly weary, but he knew that if he did not take -his letter over to Bucksteep to-night he would not have -time in the morning. There was no good leaving it to -other hands to deliver, for he felt that his mother would -resent its humble tone, and perhaps send instead an angry -demand which, by rousing Mus’ Archie’s rage, might end -by landing Harry before the Senlac Bench. So he put on -his father’s driving coat, which hung in the passage and -smelt of manure and stale spirits, and let himself out into -the soft, throbbing darkness, lit only by a few dim stars -of the Plough.</p> - - -<h3>12</h3> - -<p>Bucksteep Manor was the smaller kind of country-house, -smuggled away from the cross-roads in a larch -plantation, with a tennis lawn at the back, and a more -open view swinging over a copsed valley to Rushlake -Green. It had once been a farmhouse, but a wing had -been added in modern style, and inside, the low raftering -had been swept away, so that when Tom stood in the -dimly-lighted hall, which had once been the kitchen, he -could look up to a ceiling dizzily high to his sag-roofed -experience.</p> - -<p>The Lambs were the aristocracy of Dallington, a -neighbourhood strikingly empty of “society” in the -country-house sense. They had themselves been yeoman - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> - -farmers a couple of generations back, and the present -squire still interested himself shamefacedly in Bucksteep’s -hundred acres. The Beatups had but little truck -with the Manor; precarious yeomen, no rents or dues -demanded intercourse, and Mus’ Beatup had often been -heard to say that some folks were no better than other -folks, for all their airs and acres.</p> - -<p>Tom had given his letter to a rustling parlourmaid, -and stood meekly waiting for an answer, his large bovine -eyes blinking with sleepiness. From an adjoining room -came the throaty music of a gramophone, playing:</p> - -<p> -“When we wind up the Watch on the Rhine<br /> -Everything will be Potsdam fine....”<br /> -</p> - -<p>There was girls’ laughter, too—probably Miss Marian -Lamb and Mus’ Archie’s intended—and every now and -then he heard Mrs. Lamb’s voice go rocketing up. He -did not feel envious of all this jollity, neither did it grate -upon him; he just stood and waited under the shaded -lamps of the hall, and had nearly fallen asleep on his -legs when suddenly the door opened, with a flood of -light and noise, and shut again behind Mus’ Archie.</p> - -<p>“Good evening, Beatup. Sorry to have kept you waiting. -I couldn’t make this out at first—had no idea your -young brother was one of the culprits to-night, or I -shouldn’t have played that trick on ’em.”</p> - -<p>“It doan’t matter, sir. Harry desarved it. It’s only -as we can’t afford to lose the clothes.”</p> - -<p>“No, no, of course not. Come with me and pick his -out of the pile, and you can take them home.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you, Mus’ Archie.”</p> - -<p>He followed young Lamb into a little gun-room opening -on the hall, and was able to pick out Harry’s rather -bobtail toilet from a muddle of Sinden and Pix raiment.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p> - -<p>“That’s all, is it? Wan’t anything to wrap ’em in?”</p> - -<p>“No, sir, it aun’t worth it. Thank you kindly for -letting me have the things.”</p> - -<p>“There was never any question of you not having -them. I’ve no right to keep ’em. So you’re joining -up to-morrow?”</p> - -<p>He was in uniform, but without his belt. Somehow to -Tom he seemed a burlier, browner man than the young -squire whom before the war he used to see out hunting, -or shooting, or driving girls in his car.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’m joining up, as they say.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t seem over-pleased about it.”</p> - -<p>“I aun’t, particular.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m not going to tell you it’s the grandest job on -earth, and that all the chaps out there are having the -time of their lives. It wouldn’t be true, though I expect -the Tribunal told you so.”</p> - -<p>“Yessir; they said as if they were only ten years -younger they’d all be in it.”</p> - -<p>“Of course they did. Well, I’ve been out there, and -I’ve seen.... But never mind; you’ll find that out for -yourself, Beatup. However, I’ll say this much—it isn’t -a nice job, or a grand job, or even a good job; but it’s a -job that’s got to be done, and when it’s done we’ll like -to think that Sussex chaps helped do it.”</p> - -<p>Tom’s heart warmed a little towards Mus’ Archie. -He was making him feel as he had felt when Bill Putland -said, “We’re all eighteenth Sussex hereabouts.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[</a></span></p> - -<p>“It aun’t the going as un vrother me, if it wurn’t fur -leaving Worge. I’m fretted as the plaace ull land at the -auctioneer’s if I’m long away. You see, I’ve always done -most of the work, in my head as well as wud my hands. -Faather, he aun’t a healthy man, and the others aun’t -much help nuther. There’s only Harry lik to be any use, -and he’s such an unaccountable limb of wickedness—for -ever at his tricks—to-night’s only one of them.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps he’ll pull himself together and work for -Worge when he sees you’ve gone to fight for it.”</p> - -<p>This was new light on the matter for Tom. Hitherto -he had always thought of himself as deserting Worge in -its hour of need—it had never occurred to him that his -going was the going of a champion, not of a traitor.</p> - -<p>“Maybe it’s as you say, Mus’ Archie. Leastways, -we’ll hope so.”</p> - -<p>They were in the hall again now, and the gramophone -was singing in its spooky voice. “You called me Baby -Doll a year ago.” Tom slowly turned the handle of the -front door, sidling out on to the step.</p> - -<p>“Thank you for the clothes, Mus’ Archie. I’ll try and -talk some sense into Harry before I go.”</p> - -<p>“Good night, Beatup, and good luck to you. I expect -I’ll see some more of you in the near future. All -the chaps round here seem to be drafted into the eighteenth. -Bill Putland will be in our little crowd, and -Jerry Sumption—there’ll be quite a Dallington set at -Waterheel.”</p> - -<p>“I hope I’ll be with you, Mus’ Archie.”</p> - -<p>“I hope you will, Beatup. Good night.”</p> - -<p>“Good night, sir.”</p> - -<p>The door shut, and he was out in the drive, where the -larches swung against the moon.</p> - -<p>Archie Lamb went back into the drawing-room, and -put a new record on the gramophone.</p> - -<p>“Queer chap, Beatup,” he said to his mother. “I don’t -know how he’ll shape. He looks strong and steady, but -I should say about as smart as a mangold-wurzel.”</p> - - -<h3>13</h3> - -<p>Tom swung along the dim road, where the shadows -ran before him. The new-risen moon looked over the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> - -hedge, an amber disc just past the full, swimming against -the wind from Satanstown. In the heart of the wind -seemed still to beat the pulse of those far-off guns, the -ghost of their day-long thunder. Over and over in his -mind Tom turned his new thought—that he was going to -fight for Worge.</p> - -<p>In a quarter of an hour he had come to Sunday Street. -He could see the moonlight lying like frost on the southward -slope of the roofs, and the windows of the Bethel -were ghostly with it, as they stared away to the marshes. -The Bethel alone seemed awake in the little huddle of -sleeping cottages—it had a strange look of watchfulness -and waiting, its gaunt Georgian windows never had that -comfortable blinking air of the cottage lattices.... -Tom did not like the Bethel at night.</p> - -<p>He looked across the road to the Horselunges, where -Mr. Sumption lived. A crack of light showed under the -blind of the minister’s room, and Tom’s heart gave a -little thump of self-reproach, for he had not till then -thought of saying good-bye to him. He had not seen -much of Mr. Sumption lately, and had been too much -absorbed in his own concerns to think of him, but now -he made up his mind to call and say good-bye; it was -past ten o’clock and he was very tired and sleepy, nevertheless -he walked up to the door of the Horselunges and -knocked.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Hubble was in bed, as the hour demanded, so the -door was opened by her lodger.</p> - -<p>“Hello, Tom. Anything the matter? Do they want -me at Worge?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption was always childishly eager for some -demand on his pastoral ministrations, a demand which -was seldom made, as he had a disruptive bedside manner -and the funds of his chapel did not admit of the doles - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> - -which made sick Dallington people endure the consolations -of the Church.</p> - -<p>“No, thank you, they doan’t. I’ve just come to say -good-bye.”</p> - -<p>The minister’s forehead clouded—</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’ve remembered me at last, have you? -Thought it just as well not to forget old friends before -you go off to make new ones. Come in.”</p> - -<p>Tom, who had expected this greeting, followed Mr. -Sumption upstairs into the room which he called his -study, but which had few points of difference from any -cottage living-room in Sunday Street. There was a -frayed carpet with a lot of dirt trodden into it, and a -sun-sucked wall-paper adhering as closely as possible to -walls complicate of beams and bulges. A solitary book-shelf -supported <cite>Jessica’s First Prayer</cite>, <cite>Edwin’s Trial or -The Little Christian Witness</cite>, and kindred works, cheek-by-jowl -with <cite>Burton’s Four Last Things</cite> and a cage of -white mice. There was another cage hanging in the -window, containing a broken-winged thrush which the -pastor, after the failure of many anathemas, had bought -from one of those mysterious gangs of small boys which -prowl round villages. An old, old cat sat before the -empty grate, too decrepit to make more than one attempt -a day on the thrush or the mice, and now purring wheezily -in the intervals of scratching a cankered ear.</p> - -<p>On the table was a wild, unwieldy parcel, from whose -bursting sides the contents were already beginning to -ooze forth.</p> - -<p>“I’m packing a parcel for Jerry,” said the minister. -“I’d just finished when you knocked.”</p> - -<p>“It looks as if it was coming undone,” said Tom.</p> - -<p>“So it does”—and Mr. Sumption glanced deprecatingly -at his handiwork. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> - -“If only I had some sealing-wax ... but the shop’s shut.”</p> - -<p>“It’ll be open to-morrow,” said Tom, and pictured -Thyrza pulling up the blind and dusting the salmon-tins -in the window ... long after he had gone to catch the -early train from Hailsham.</p> - -<p>“Well, to-morrow’s time enough, as I can’t post it -before then. It ud be a pity for anything to get -lost. There’s three shillings’ worth of things in that -parcel.”</p> - -<p>“Have you had any more letters from Jerry?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I had one yesterday”—no need to tell Tom -there had been no others—“He wants chocolate and -cigarettes, and I put in a tin of cocoa besides, and some -little squares to make soup of. He’ll be unaccountable -pleased.”</p> - -<p>“How’s he gitting on?”</p> - -<p>“Valiant. He likes being along of the other lads. -The only thing that worrits him is your sister.”</p> - -<p>“My sister?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, your sister Ivy. Seemingly she never answered -a postcard he wrote her ten days back, and you knows -he’s unaccountable set on Ivy.”</p> - -<p>“It aun’t no use, Mus’ Sumption. Ivy’s got no thought -for him, I’m certain sure, and he’s only wasting time over -her.”</p> - -<p>The minister’s comely face darkened, and he cracked -his fingers once or twice.</p> - -<p>“It’s a pity, a lamentable pity. That boy of mine’s -crazy on Ivy Beatup. Are you sure she doesn’t care -about him, Tom?”</p> - -<p>“Well, who knows wot a gal thinks? I can only put -two and two together. But seemingly if she’d cared -she’d have answered his postcard.”</p> - -<p>“Could you put in a word for him?”</p> - -<p>Young Beatup shook his head—</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I woan’t meddle. If Ivy doan’t care I can’t maake -her, and I reckon mother’s unaccountable set against it -too.”</p> - -<p>He had said the wrong thing. Mr. Sumption’s eyes -became like burning pits. He swung his hands up and -cracked them like a pistol.</p> - -<p>“Set against it, is she? Set against my Jerry? Maybe -he isn’t good enough for her—a clergyman’s son for a -farmer’s daughter.”</p> - -<p>“I never said naun of that,” mumbled Tom uneasily, -remembering his mother’s reference to “gipsy muck.”</p> - -<p>“It’s I as might be set against it,” continued the -minister. “I tell you that boy’s been bred and cut above -your sister. I never sent him to a board school along -of farmers’ children—I taught him myself, everything I -learned at college. He’d know as much I do if he -hadn’t forgotten it. Yet I’m not proud; I know the boy -wants your sister Ivy and ull do something silly if he -can’t get her, so when he writes to me, ‘Where’s Ivy? -Find out why she didn’t answer my postcard, and tell her -I’ll go mad if she doesn’t take some notice of me’—why, -then, I do my best—and get told my son’s not good -enough for your father’s daughter.”</p> - -<p>“I never told you any such thing,” said Tom doggedly, -“but I woan’t spik to Ivy. She knows her own -business best. If I were you I’d tell Jerry straight as -no good ull come of his going after her. She doan’t want -him—I’m certain sure of that.”</p> - -<p>The pastor’s wrath had died down into something -more piteous.</p> - -<p>“I daresay you’re right, Tom, and maybe I did wrong -to speak like that. After all, I was only a blacksmith till -the Lord called me away.... I pray that He may not -require my boasting of me.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, I’m unaccountable sorry about Ivy being lik -that, but I thought it better to spik plain.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption sat down rather heavily at the table.</p> - -<p>“O Lord, how shall I tell Jerry? If I tell him he’ll do -something wild, sure as he’s Jerry Sumption.”</p> - -<p>“Doan’t tell him. He’ll find out for himself soon -enough.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption groaned.</p> - -<p>“Tom Beatup,” he said slowly, “I reckon you think -I’m a faithless, unprofitable steward so to set my heart -on human flesh and blood. But you’ll understand a bit -of what I feel ... some day, when you’re the father -of a son.”</p> - - -<h3>14</h3> - -<p>The pale morning ray came slanting over the sky -from Harebeating towards the last stars. Slowly the -trees and hedges loomed out against the trembling yellow -pools of the dawn. Colours woke in the fields, soft hazy -greens, and blues and greys that ran together like smoke -... ponds began to gleam among the spinneys, discs -of mirrored sky, that from lustreless white became glassy -yellow, then kindled from glass to fire, then smouldered -from fire to rust.</p> - -<p>Tom saw the window square light up and frame the -familiar picture of a life’s mornings—the oasthouse, the -lombardy poplar topping the barn, the little patch of -distant fields seen between the oast and the jutting farmhouse -gable. The bed was pulled up close to the -window, to allow of the door being opened, and he could -lie on his side and look straight out at the loved common -things which perhaps he might never see just so again.</p> - -<p>It all looked very quiet, and rather cold, and the early -sunless light gave it a peculiar lifelessness, as if it was -something painted, or cut in cardboard. Even Tom was -conscious of its cold, dreamlike quality; he always said - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> - -that “the yard looked corpsy at break o’ day.” Then -the distant view of little fields suddenly swam into -golden light, as a long finger of sunlight stroked the barn-roofs, -then stabbed in at the window, throwing a shaft of -dancing golden motes across the room. Tom rose, -climbed out of bed over Zacky, and in about three square -feet of floor space shaved and dressed. Then he went -downstairs, unlocked the house door and stole out to his -last morning’s work.</p> - -<p>No one was about; it was not till more than an hour -later that the two antique farm-hands, Elphick and -Juglery, came up from Worge Cottages. By that time -Tom had milked the cows, mixed the chicken food, and -driven the horses down to Forges field. He gave the two -unskilled labourers their orders for the day as if he expected -to be there to see them carried out. By that -time Ivy was hunting for eggs, and Mrs. Beatup was -struggling with the kitchen fire, while Mus’ Beatup, in -practical, unlearned mood, had gone to the Sunk field to -inspect the ewes.</p> - -<p>As Ivy came out of the hen-house and crossed the -yard, cheery, healthy, blowsy, with eggs in a bowl, Tom -had a sudden thought of giving her Mr. Sumption’s -message. But he held his tongue. He had meant what -he said when he told the minister he was not going to -meddle. He had long been convinced of the fact that -his sister knew her own business; besides, Jerry ... -that lousy gipsy chap.... Pastor might say he was -getting on valiant, but all Dallington knew that he had -been given seven days C.B. within a week of his joining.</p> - -<p>So, with nothing for Ivy but a nod, Tom went in to -breakfast. Time was short, but the breakfast was still -in a rudimentary state. Mrs. Beatup fought with the -kitchen fire among whorls of smoke, while Nell, coughing -pathetically, laid the table. Harry in a fit of brotherly - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> - -love was cleaning Tom’s best boots ready for his journey -to Lewes—no one ever went to Lewes in any but Sunday -clothes.</p> - -<p>“Oh, is that you, Tom? I hope as you aun’t in a -hurry. This fire’s bewitched. Nell, give your brother -a cut off the loaf. You’d better git started, Tom, or -you’ll lose your train.”</p> - -<p>So Tom’s last breakfast at Worge was eaten in confusion -and mess, the family dropping in one by one for -cuts off the loaf or helpings of cold bacon spotted with -large blisters of grease. Last of all the breakfast arrived, -in the shape of the tea-pot, and a special boiled egg for -Tom. He was not able to do more than gulp down the -egg and scald himself with the tea. Then it was time to -go. He had already tied up a few little things in a -handkerchief—a razor, a piece of soap, an old frosted -Christmas card which for some obscure reason he treasured—so -there was nothing to do but to say good-bye -and beat it for Hailsham, a good seven miles.</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup put down his tea-cup and looked solemn.</p> - -<p>“Well, good-bye, my lad. I reckon you’ve got to go. -Everyone’s off to fight now, seemingly, so I suppose you -must do wot others do. Not that I think so much of -this war as some folks seem to—it’s bin going on nigh -two years now, and I can’t see as we’re any of us a penny -the better off. Howsumdever....”</p> - -<p>“He’s going to stop it,” said Nell, her face pink.</p> - -<p>“Ho, is he? Well, I’ve no objection. Maybe I’ll write -you a letter, Tom, when Maudie calves.”</p> - -<p>“I’d be much obliged if you would, faather, and tell -me how the wheat does this year, and them new oats by -the Street.”</p> - -<p>“Good-bye, Tom,” said Harry. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> - -“I shall miss you unaccountable.”</p> - -<p>“And I’ll miss you, too,” said Zacky, “but there’ll -be more room in the bed.”</p> - -<p>Tom kissed them sheepishly all round, then walked -out of the door without a word.</p> - -<p>He was in the yard, when he heard footsteps creaking -after him, and turned round to see his mother.</p> - -<p>“Wait a bit, Tom,” she panted; “I’ll go wud you to -the geate.”</p> - -<p>He was surprised, but it did not strike him to say so. -They walked down the drive together almost in silence, -the boy hanging his head. Mrs. Beatup sniffed and -choked repeatedly.</p> - -<p>“Doan’t go near those Germans, Tom,” she said, -when they came to a standstill. “If you do, you’ll be -killed for certain sure.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll go where I’m put, surelye,” said Tom gloomily.</p> - -<p>“Well, be careful, that’s all. Kip well behind the -other lads, and doan’t go popping your head over walls -or meddling wud cannons. And kip your feet dry, Tom, -and doan’t git into temptation.”</p> - -<p>“I promise, mother,” he mumbled against her neck, and -they kissed each other many times before she let him go.</p> - -<p>The Rifle Volunteer looked down from his sign, where -he stood in the grey uniform and mutton-chop whiskers -of an earlier dispensation, and stared at the stocky, -shambling little figure that trudged its unwilling way to -sacrifice—past Worge Cottages, stewing in the sunshine -like pippins, past Egypt Farm (which Bill Putland would -leave later and more conveniently in his father’s dog-cart), -past the shop, with a glance half shy, half beseeching, -at the drawn blinds, past the willow pond, out -of Sunday Street, into the long yellow road that led to -the unsought, undesired adventure.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PART II: JERRY</h2> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap">MRS. BEATUP’S tears ran down her face as she -hurried back up the drive, but she wiped them -vigorously away with her apron, and had nothing -but her red eyes to show when she entered the kitchen. -Everyone had gone, except Ivy and Nell. The former -had not finished her hearty breakfast, the latter was -packing her books for school, and some sort of a wrangle -was going on between them. Mrs. Beatup heard Nell -call Ivy “vulgar” just as she came into the room. Ivy -laughed, truly a vulgar performance with her mouth full.</p> - -<p>“Now, you two gals, doan’t you start quarrelling just -when you brother’s a-gone; maybe fur ever.”</p> - -<p>“We aun’t quarrelling,” said Ivy. “I’ve told her she’s -sweet on parson, that’s all.”</p> - -<p>“All!” sniffed Nell. “Maybe you think it’s nothing -to have your vulgar mind making out my—my friendship -with Mr. Poullett-Smith’s the same as yours with—with—anyone -that ull let you make sheep’s eyes at -him.”</p> - -<p>“Nell!” cried her mother. “For shaum!”</p> - -<p>“Well, I don’t care”—the younger girl’s anger had -been roused by many coarse flicks—“everyone talks about -Ivy’s goings-on.”</p> - -<p>“I doan’t care if they do,” said Ivy cavernously in -her tea-cup. “Reckon it’s cos they’re jealous of me -gitting the boys.”</p> - -<p>“Well, Ivy,” said Mrs. Beatup, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> - -“I doan’t hold wud your goings-on, nuther; but anyway -you’re useful.”</p> - -<p>“I’m earning money, though,” said Nell; “at least -I shall be when my third year’s up.”</p> - -<p>“And how soon ull that be, I’d lik to know? There -you go, out all day, when you might be helping us at -home, and not a penny to show fur it.”</p> - -<p>“Mother, I’ve told you again and again—why won’t -you understand?—I’m being given lessons in exchange -for those I give myself, and——”</p> - -<p>“Lessons! A girl turned seventeen! I call it lamentable. -I’d a-done wud my schooling at twelve.”</p> - -<p>“But you know I have to pass an exam....”</p> - -<p>“I doan’t see no ‘have’ in it. Better kip at hoame -and help me wud the cooking. Out all day and bring -home no money! I doan’t call that——”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m off,” said Ivy, getting up and wiping her -mouth. “You two are lik a couple of barndoor cocks, -walking round and round each other. I’ve summat -better to do—I’ve the passage to scrub”—and she took -her sacking apron off the nail.</p> - -<p>“Where’s Zacky?” asked Mrs. Beatup. “Has he -started for school?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, he’s gone wud the Sindens.”</p> - -<p>“And Harry?”</p> - -<p>Ivy laughed. “Oh, Harry’s along of faather, in the -Sunk field—unaccountable good and hard-working to-day, -because Tom’s a-gone; seemingly, he’d sooner please -him now he aun’t here to see than when he was here -fretting his heart out over Harry’s lazy bones.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m glad as someone remembers my poor boy’s -gone, and is lik to be killed.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup’s tears burst out afresh, but Ivy comforted -her with a kiss and a clap and a few cheery words, -and soon had her interested in the various bootstains - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> - -on the passage-floor. “Cow-dung, that’s faather; and -horse-dung, that’s Tom; and sheep-dung, that’s Juglery; -and that miry clay’s jest Zacky spannelling....”</p> - - -<p>2</p> - -<p>Nell put on her hat and coat and started for school. -A neat, shabby little figure, with her town hat pulled -down over her soft hair, she walked quickly between -dust-powdered hedges to Brownbread Street, panting a -little, because she was anæmic, and also because she was -still a trifle indignant. Nell did not view life and the -War as her family viewed them. Her different education -had made them not quite such matters of bread-and-cheese. -She alone at Worge had felt the humiliation—as -distinct from the inconvenience—of Tom’s conscription. -She had always despised him because he did not -volunteer during the early stages of the War, and when -the Conscription Act came into force she despised him -still more for his appeal to the Tribunal. She felt that -she could never think proudly of him, knowing how unwillingly -he had gone, knowing that he cared for nothing -except leaving Worge, that he never thought of the great -cause of righteousness he was to fight for, or understood -the mighty issues of his unwilling warfare.</p> - -<p>The rest of the family were all of a block. To her -mother the War was merely a matter of prices and scarcities, -to her father it was drink restrictions and the -closing of public-houses, to Ivy it was picture postcards -and boys in khaki, to Harry the unwilling performance -of tasks which would otherwise have been done by more -efficient hands, to Zacky the obscure manœuvres of a -gang of small boys whose imaginations had been touched -by militarism. To Nell alone belonged the fret and -anxiety of the times, the shock of bad news, the struggle - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> - -of ineffectual small labours to win her a place in the -great woe.</p> - -<p>To-day she was early for school, as she had meant to -be, for at the church she stopped and sat down in the -porch. St. Wilfred’s, Brownbread Street, was only a -chapel-of-ease under the mother church of Dallington. -It was new-built of sandstone, an unfortunate symbol of -that Rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. -The interior, glimpsed through the open door, was -dim and mediæval, the first effect due to the deep tones -of the stained-glass windows, where the saints wore robes -of crimson and sapphire and passional violet, and the -latter to the several dark oil paintings, and the thick gilt -tracery of the screen, through which the altar showed -richly coloured, with one winking red light before it.</p> - -<p>The curate-in-charge of Brownbread Street was of -mediæval tendencies, and did his best, both in service -and sermon, to transport his congregation from the woodbine-age -to the age of pilgrimages and monasteries, with -the result that, with unmediæval licence, they sought -illicit and heretical refreshment in Georgian Bethels and -Victorian Tabernacles, where they could sing good Moody -and Sankey tunes, instead of treacherous Gregorians and -wobbling Plainsong.</p> - -<p>But Nell loved the low, soft, creeping tones of -Gregory’s mode, loved the dimness, the mystery, the -faint echo of Sarum ... and if in her love was a -personal element which she denied, the church was not -less a refuge from the coarse frustrations of her everyday -life, such as the Forge was to Mr. Sumption and the -Shop had been to Tom.</p> - -<p>To-day the priest was at the altar, saying the Last -Gospel. Nell could just see him from where she sat. -He would be out in a couple of minutes. She watched -him glide off into the shadows, then she rose and walked - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> - -down to the little wicket-gate, where the path from the -porch met the path from the vestry. There was more -colour in her cheeks than usual.</p> - -<p>Now and then she looked anxiously across the road at -the schoolhouse clock, where the large hand was creeping -swiftly towards the hour. From the clock her eyes -slewed round to the vestry door. At last the handle -shook, and out came Mr. Poullett-Smith, walking hurriedly, -with his cassock flapping round his legs. He did -not seem to see Nell till he had nearly walked into her.</p> - -<p>“Oh—er—good morning, Miss Beatup. I beg your -pardon.”</p> - -<p>“Good morning, Mr. Poullett-Smith. I—I wanted to -tell you I’m so sorry I haven’t finished that book you -lent me. I’m afraid I’ve kept it a terrible time.”</p> - -<p>Her words came with a rush, blurred faintly in the -last of a Sussex accent, and her eyes were fixed on his -face with an almost childish eagerness which he could -scarcely fail to notice.</p> - -<p>“Oh, please don’t trouble. Keep the book as long as -you like—the <cite>Sermons of St. Gregory</cite>, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p>“Yes—I think they’re wonderful,” breathed Nell, -hoping he would never know how difficult she found them -to understand.</p> - -<p>“They are indeed, and so stimulating.”</p> - -<p>The Rev. Henry Poullett-Smith was a tall man, with -a long nose, a slight stoop, and a waxy brownish skin -that made him look like one of his own altar candles. -As he spoke to Nell, he kept on glancing up the street, -and when a girl on a bicycle came round the corner, he -moved a few steps out into the road and took off his hat.</p> - -<p>“Good morning, Miss Lamb.”</p> - -<p>Marian Lamb, who was in Red Cross uniform, jumped -off her bicycle and shook hands with him before she -shook hands with Nell Beatup.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p> - -<p>“On your way to the hospital, I see.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. I’m on morning duty this week.”</p> - -<p>“Do you prefer that to the afternoons?”</p> - -<p>“Not in summer. I do in winter, though.”</p> - -<p>Nell felt ignored and insulted. She made no effort to -join in this sprightly dialogue. There was something in -the curate’s manner towards the other girl which seemed -to stab her through with a sense of her inferiority, with -memories of the coarse, muddling life of Worge to which -she belonged. It was not that he showed more courtesy, -but he seemed to show more freedom ... he was more -at his ease with one of his own class.</p> - -<p>Her cheeks burned. Of course she was not his equal. -He might talk to her and lend her books, but he did it -only out of kindness; probably looked upon it as a -superior form of parish relief—doled the books as he -doled blankets.... She shrugged away, and the movement -made him at once turn to her with a remark:</p> - -<p>“Have you been over the hospital, Miss Beatup?”</p> - -<p>“No—I’ve never had time ... and I must hurry off -now. Good morning!”</p> - -<p>Even as she spoke she noticed that her voice was thick -and drawly, unlike Miss Lamb’s sharp, clear tones. She -gripped her satchel and hurried across the road to the -schoolhouse.</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>During the next few days the most remarkable sight -at Worge was Harry’s industriousness. For nearly a -week he rose at five, fed the pigs and helped with the -milking, and during the whole day he was available for -carting, digging, dunging, or anything else he had formerly -fled from. He helped Elphick spray the young -fuggles down by Forges and the Sunk Field, he took a -cartload of roots over to Three Cups Corner, he groomed - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> - -the horses and plaited their manes, he compelled Zacky -with threats of personal violence to spend Saturday afternoon -scaring birds from the gooseberries, instead of, with -six other little boys, carrying out an enveloping movement -on Punnetts Town, with three-ha’pence to spend on -sweets in the captured citadel. On the occasion of Mus’ -Beatup’s next lapse, he stalled the cows and doctored the -mare, and also, with much foresight, took off and hid his -father’s boots, which prevented both his going to bed in -them and his throwing them at his wife.</p> - -<p>It would have been well if this virtuous state could -have lasted till the hay harvest. This was early, for -there was a spell of heat in May, and the fields were soon -parched. The air was full of the smell of ripe hayseed, -of the baking glumes of the oats, of the hot, sickly stew -of elderflower and meadowsweet. Along the Four -Roads eddies of dust flew from under the wheels and -caked the grass and fennel-heads beside the way, and in -the ruts of the little lanes the bennet and rest-barrow -sprouted, with the thick-stalked sprawly pignut, and -ragged robin. Unfortunately, all this scent and heat made -Harry remember a wood over by Cade Street, where he -had once lain and watched the moon rise rusty beyond -Lobden’s House. It was unfortunate that he had such -a memory, for it had more than once been his undoing. -Somewhere under Harry’s skin, mixed with the sluggish -currents of his country blood, was a strain of poetry and -imagination. He cared nothing for books, nothing for -beauty, nothing for music (except, perhaps, when they -sang “Diadem” in the Bethel at dusk), and yet every -now and then something would pull him from the earth -he toiled on—a thing he was unaware of three weeks out -of the four, seeing only the sods cleaving together—something -would call him from meadow-hills that swept -up their broomy cones to the sky, an adventure would - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> - -call from the Four Roads, a longing would call from the -moon ... and off he would go to Stunts Green, to -Starnash, Oxbottom’s Town, or Burnt Kitchen—just as, -after a sober week, Mus’ Beatup would go off to the -Rifle Volunteer.</p> - -<p>His promise to Tom had made him resist the cruder -temptations of ratting Sindens or bird’s-nesting Kadwells; -but now it seemed to pull the other way. His -brother was the only person he was in any degree afraid -of, and he was safe at Waterheel, no longer his father’s -vicar, waiting with barnyard discipline for the truant’s -return.</p> - -<p>So Harry went off to that wood at Cade Street, and -spent the night there, in a hollow tree, watching the big -yellow stars shuddering above the ash-boughs like -candles in the wind, and sleeping with his head in a soft -mush of last year’s leaves, that sent him back with his -cheeks all smeary, and his hair caked with leaf-mast.</p> - -<p>That was the day of the haycutting, when Mus’ Beatup -and Juglery and Elphick sweated with bent backs in the -field. Worge possessed a horse-rake, but the cutting had -all to be done by hand, and the men’s backs ached and -scorched in the sun, and their sweat dropped on their -scythes. This labour, as was only natural, started in -Mus’ Beatup a fearful thirst, and that night was “one -of his bad nights”—one of the worst, in fact, for he -threw the candlestick at his wife as well as his boots, -and would not let her come to bed, so that she had to -sleep with Ivy and Nell.</p> - -<p>Harry felt rather ashamed, and tried hard to atone the -next day by working himself sick. Mrs. Beatup and Ivy -helped too, since haymaking was the one kind of field -work which the women did not feel it derogatory to -perform. Ivy was a whacking girl, nearly as good as a - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> - -man; but Mus’ Beatup would never have dreamed of -asking her to help fill Tom’s empty place. If town girls -thought so little of themselves as to enrol for farm work, -that was no concern of his, but he was hemmed if he’d -have his wife and daughter meddling with anything beyond -the fowl-house, and as for employing other women -whose dignity mattered less to him—and, apparently, to -themselves—he’d sooner Worge went to the auctioneer’s, -just to teach the government a lesson.</p> - - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>So Worge muddled through its haymaking, and then -the shearing; and Harry was sometimes idle and sometimes -industrious, and Mus’ Beatup was sometimes drunk -and sometimes sober. The oats in the Street Field and -the field at the back of the Rifle Volunteer were slowly -parching to the colour of dust, though thick green -shadows rippled in them, and told how far off still the -harvest was. They were spring-sown potato-oats, chosen -by Tom on account of their vigorous constitution, though -otherwise not very well suited to the clays of Sunday -Street. He had manured them at their sowing with rape-cake, -nursed their first sproutings, and now in every letter -enquired after their progress. “Keep an eye on them, -dear father, for the Lord’s sake, and do not let them stand -after they’re ripe, or they will shed there seeds for certain -sure, being potatos.”</p> - -<p>Tom had been some weeks now at Waterheel in the -Midlands, a private in the Sussex Regiment, with an -elaborate and mystifying address, which his family found -the greatest difficulty in cramming into the envelope. -They did not write to him as often as he wrote to them, -in spite of the fact that they were six to one. But then -they were not far from home, dreaming of the old fields, -longing for the old faces.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p> - -<p>On the whole though, Tom was happy enough. He -found his new life strange, but not totally uncongenial. -A comfortable want of imagination made it possible for -him to put Worge out of mind, now that it was also out -of sight, and he was among lads of his own age, old -acquaintances some of them—Kadwell of Stilliands -Tower, and two Viners from Satanstown, Bill Putland, -Jerry Sumption. There was Mus’ Archie, too, with a -nod and a kind word now and then to intensify that -“feeling of Sussex chaps” which was not quite such an -uncommon one now; and there was Mus’ Dixon, Mus’ -Archie’s elder brother, who had lived in London and -written for the papers before the War, and now used his -sword to cut the leaves of books—so his orderly said—yet -was a brave man none the less, and a good officer, -though he hated the life as much as his brother -loved it.</p> - -<p>The family at Worge were surprised to find that Tom’s -best pal was Bill Putland. In Sunday Street he had had -very little to do with the Squire’s cheeky chauffeur, and -there had always been a gnawing rivalry between Egypt -and Worge. But now that they had joined up together, -and been drafted into the same company, sharing the -same awkwardness and fumblings, a friendship sprang -up between them, and thrived in the atmosphere of their -common life. Putland was a much smarter recruit than -Beatup, but this did not cause ill-feeling, for Bill did -much to help Tom, passing on to him the tips he picked -up so much more quickly than his friend, with the result -that Tom got through the mangold-wurzel stage sooner -than Mus’ Archie had expected. Tom on his side was -humbly conscious of Bill’s superiority. “He’s been bred -up different from us,” he wrote home to Worge. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> - -“You can see that by the way he talks and everything, and -he’s a sharper chap than me by a long chalk. But he’s -unaccountable good-hearted, and he helps me with my -leathers after he’s done his own, for he’s a sight quicker -than me.”</p> - -<p>Tom more often asked for news than he gave it. -After all, life at Waterheel Camp did not consist of much -besides drills and route-marchings, with relaxations at -the Y.M.C.A. hut, and occasional visits to the town. -No one at Worge would care to hear the daily doings of -such a life, and still less were they likely to understand -it. He was uneasily conscious of what his father would -say about these things at the Rifle Volunteer. “Took -my boy away from his honest work, and all they do is to -keep him forming fours and traipsing about the country -and playing dominoes at the Y.M.C.A. That’s wot the -Governmunt spends our money on,” etc., etc. And Tom -was now soldier enough to resent any criticism of the -Army from outside it.</p> - -<p>In other quarters though, it appeared he was not so -reticent. After a while his family discovered that Thyrza -Honey was hearing from him pretty regularly. Moreover, -one day Mrs. Beatup, buying candles, found Thyrza -wearing a regimental button mounted as a brooch, and -was told it was a gift from Tom.</p> - -<p>“He’s sweet on her,” said Ivy, when the news was -told.</p> - -<p>“Him—he’s just a bit of a boy,” said his mother.</p> - -<p>“The Army maakes men unaccountable sudden.”</p> - -<p>“Well, anyway, she’s four years older than he is, and -wot he can see in her is more’n I can say.”</p> - -<p>“She’s got a bit o’ money though,” said Mus’ Beatup. -“I shan’t put a spoke in his wheel if he wants to marry -her.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Him marry! Wot are you thinking of, Ned? He’s -only a bit of a boy, as I’ve told you. Besides, she aun’t -got no looks; she’s just a plain dump of a woman, and -a boy liks a pretty faace.”</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Honey’s middling pretty,” said Ivy, “with -colour and teeth and all.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve got queer notions of pretty. Why, only yesterday -Mrs. Sinden wur saying to me as she can’t think -wot Sam Honey ever saw in Thyrza Shearne. And you -can’t git naun out of her, she’s slow as a cow, and she -looks at you lik a cow chewing the cud....”</p> - -<p>Nell broke in—</p> - -<p>“You’re all taking it for granted that Mrs. Honey -would have Tom if she was given the chance. Maybe -he’d be quite safe even if he asked her.”</p> - -<p>“Nonsense, my girl,” cried Mus’ Beatup. “A woman -ud taake any man as wur fool enough to ask her; if a -woman’s unwed you may reckon she’s never been asked.”</p> - -<p>Ivy laughed loudly at this, and Nell turned crimson.</p> - -<p>“Women aren’t going quite so cheap as you think.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, aun’t they!—when it’s bin proved as there’s -twice as many of ’em as there’s men. I tell you, when -there’s a glut of turnips, the price goes down.”</p> - -<p>“There aren’t twice as many women as men. Miss -Goldsack was saying only the other day that——”</p> - -<p>“And I tell you it’s bin proved as there are, and when -the War’s over there’ll be more still, and they’ll be going -about weeping and hollering and praying to the men to -taake them.”</p> - -<p>“They won’t. They’ll have something better to do. -This War’s teaching women to work, and——”</p> - -<p>“Work! I wudn’t give a mouldy onion fur women’s -work....”</p> - -<p>And so on, and so on.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>Thyrza herself was a little surprised to hear so often -from Tom, and the brooch was a piece of daring she had -never expected. It is true that from time to time she - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> - -sent him presents of chocolate and cigarettes, but his -letters were much more than an acknowledgment of these. -They were not love-letters, but Thyrza knew that they -contained more confidences than those he sent to Worge—she -was familiar with all the common round of his -day, from rêveille to lights-out. He told her about the -men he liked and those he didn’t, about his drills and -fatigues, about his food and Cookie’s queer notions of a -stew—Thyrza knew what was an “army biscuit,” a -“choky,” a “gor’ blimey,” and the number of stripes -worn respectively by “God Almighty,” “swank” and -“goat.” Scarcely a week passed without one of those -thin yellowish envelopes, with the red triangle in the corner, -slipping under the shop door—addressed in smeary, -indelible pencil, and smelling of woodbines.</p> - -<p>She noticed a growing assurance in his style—partly -due, perhaps, to the friendliness of her replies, partly, -no doubt, to the growing manhood in him. She had -always looked on Tom as a kind, slow chap, with very -little to say for himself, and not too much thinking going -on either, but with an unaccountable good heart. Now -she realised that the Army was smartening him up, giving -him confidence, enlarging his ideas. Thyrza was only -a countrywoman herself, born within ten miles of where -she lived now, but she did not fail to notice or to respect -this growth in Tom. “He’s gitting new ideas in his -head, and he’s waking up a bit. I shan’t lik him the less -for being readier wud his tongue, surelye.”</p> - -<p>One of the new ideas which got into Tom’s head at -Waterheel was the desirability—indeed, the urgency—of -having a “girl.” All the chaps had girls—Bill Putland -wrote to Polly Sinden at Little Worge, though he -had taken very little notice of her while he was at home; -Jerry Sumption wrote half-threatening, half-appealing -scrawls to Ivy Beatup; Kadwell and Viner had sweethearts - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> - -at the Foul Mile and the Trulilows—every evening -at the Y.M.C.A. a hundred indelible pencils travelled -to and fro from tongue to paper in the service of that god -who campaigns with the god of war, and occasionally -snatches his victories. There was also the need to -receive letters—a need which Tom had never felt before, -but now ached in his breast, when at post-time he saw -other men walk away tearing envelopes, while he stood -empty-handed. Thyrza wrote more often and more fully -than his mother, and he would answer quickly, to make -her write again. So closer and closer between them was -drawn that link of smudged envelopes and ruled note-paper, -with their formalities of “Your letter received -quite safe,” and “Hoping this finds you well, as it leaves -me at present”—till the chain was forged which should -bind them for ever.</p> - -<p>Thyrza pondered this in her heart. She was used to -much indefinite courtship, most of it just before lamp-time -in her own little shop, with the prelude of a “penn’orth -of bull’s-eyes for the children” or “a packet of -Player’s, please.” She had also been definitely courted -once or twice in her short widowhood—by Bourner of -the Forge, a widower with five sturdy children, and -Hearsfield of Mystole. She was a type of girl who, while -appealing little to her fellow-women, who “never cud see -naun in Thyrza Honey,” yet had a definite attraction for -men, by reason of that same softness and slowness for -which her own sex despised her. She had no particular -wish to marry again, and at the same time no particular -objection. Her first marriage had not been so happy as -to make her anxious to repeat it, but it had also lacked -those elements of degradation which make a woman -shrink from trusting herself a second time to a master. -There was too much business and too much gossip in her -life for her to feel her loneliness as a widow, and yet she - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> - -sometimes craved for the little child which had died at -birth two years ago—she “cud do wud a child,” she sometimes -said.</p> - -<p>Tom Beatup attracted her strongly. He was much her -own type—slow, ruminative and patient as the beasts he -tended—yet she saw him as a being altogether more helpless -than herself, one less able to think and plan, one -whom she could “manage” tenderly. He was not so -practical as she, and more in need of affection, of which -he got less. Thyrza sometimes pictured his round dark -head upon her breast, her arm about him, holding him -there in the crook of it, both lover and child....</p> - -<p>From the material point of view, the match was not -a good one; but Thyrza was comfortably off, and her -miniature trade was brisk. They were both too unsophisticated -to make a barrier of her little stock of -worldly goods—he had his pay, so his independence -would not suffer, and she would have a separation -allowance into the bargain. He was a slow wooer, and -the tides of his boldness had never risen again to the -level of that sticky kiss he had given her hand as she -served the bull’s-eyes—but she was sure of him, and, -being Thyrza, “slow as a cow,” had no objection to -waiting.</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>Another woman in Sunday Street was being courted -from the Waterheel Y.M.C.A., but she did not fill her -part as comfortably as Thyrza. Not that Ivy Beatup -had much real concern for Jerry Sumption’s passion, -beating against her indifference as a wave beats and -breaks against a rock. Her chief trouble was that Jerry -now threw out hints of an approaching leave, and though -she had no objection to his mingling rage and tenderness - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> - -on paper, she disliked the thought of having to confront -them mingled in his gipsy face.</p> - -<p>The minister’s son was one of Ivy’s mistakes—she -made mistakes occasionally, as she would herself -acknowledge with a good-humoured grin. But they were -never very serious. And, as the saying is, she knew how -to take care of herself. Unfortunately, Jerry had given -her more than ordinary trouble. After some years of -standoffishness and suspicion—for Mrs. Beatup had -never liked her children to play with the gipsy woman’s -son—Ivy and Jerry had somehow been thrown together -during his last holiday from Erith, and she had good-naturedly -allowed him to kiss her and take her to Senlac -Fair, as she would have allowed any decent lad on leave. -It was unlucky that what had been to her no more than -a bit of fun should be for Jerry the tinder to set his body -and soul alight. Ivy, more buxom than beautiful, and, -with her apple-face and her barley-straw hair, typical of -those gaujos his mother’s people had always distrusted, -somehow became his earth and sky. He loved her, and -went after her as the tide after the moon.</p> - -<p>Ivy tried to detach him by the various means known -to her experience. For a long time she ignored his letters -and postcards. Then when these continued to pour upon -her, she sent a cold, careless reply, which had the contrary -effect of making his furnace seven times hotter; -so that her next letter was warmed unconsciously by -the flame of his, and she saw that instead of having -shaken him off, she had gone a step further in his -company.</p> - -<p>No doubt the best thing to do was to tell him to his -face that she would not have him. He would not be the -first chap she had told this, but Ivy had an unaccountable -shrinking from repeating the process with Jerry. -There was in him a subtle essence, a mystifying quality—perhaps -it was no more than the power of a sharper - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> - -life and death—which made him different from the other -lads she knew, and struck terror into her country soul. -He was the first man she had been ever so little afraid of. -Ivy had the least imagination of all the Beatups. That -spark which sent Nell to the church, and Harry to the -woods, which made Tom feel more than roots and clay -in the earth on which he trod, and Zacky sometimes -almost think himself a British army corps, even that -little spark had never flickered up in Ivy’s honest heart. -Her world was made of things she could taste and see -and hear and smell and handle, and very good things she -found them. She resented the presence in her life of -something which responded to none of these tests. -Jerry’s love for her was “queer,” just as Jerry himself -was “queer,” and Ivy did not like “queer” things.</p> - -<p>When the long-dreaded leave came at last, it took her -by surprise. She had not heard from Jerry for a week, -and one morning, having run to the pillar-box at the -throws, with some letters for her soldier friends, on her -return she met Mr. Sumption, waving his arms and -cracking his joints and shouting to her even from beyond -earshot, that Jerry was coming home that evening.</p> - -<p>“A letter came this morning. Maybe you’ve got one -too?”</p> - -<p>Ivy shook her head, and Mr. Sumption tried to disguise -his pleasure at being the only one to hear.</p> - -<p>“He’s a good boy, Jerry—never forgets his father. -But he wants to see you though, Ivy. Maybe you’d come -and have supper with us this evening?”</p> - -<p>“I’m unaccountable sorry, but I’m going up to Senlac -town.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p> - -<p>“That’s a pity. Perhaps you’ll come another day?”</p> - -<p>“If I’ve time, Mus’ Sumption—but I’m justabout -vrothered these days wud the harvesters here. Thank -you kindly though, all the same.”</p> - -<p>She had been sidling away as she spoke, and now -walked off with a brisk “Good mornun.” She was -sorry to have to disappoint Mr. Sumption, whom she -liked and pitied; but there was no good letting him -think she had any use for Jerry.</p> - -<p>Before going home she ran down the drive to Little -Worge, and told Polly Sinden she was at all costs and -risks to come with her to Senlac that evening.</p> - -<p>For the rest of the day she was less her cheery, placid -self than usual, and the evening in Senlac town was not -the treat it might have been. All the time she was -haunted by a sense of Jerry’s nearness—perhaps he had -come as far as Lewes by now, perhaps he was already in -Sunday Street, perhaps in Senlac itself. What a fool -she had been to tell Mr. Sumption where she was going! -Her heart was troubled—another of those “queer” -aspects of the situation which she so disliked. Generally -when she wanted to get rid of a boy, she did not have -feelings like these. All through the soft August twilight, -when she and Polly Sinden, in the clumsy finery of -country girls, strolled arm-in-arm up and down the -Upper Lake and the Lower Lake—those two lakes of -blood which an old, old war had made, giving the town -its bloody name—and even afterwards, when having by -arts known to themselves acquired two soldiers, they -sat in the picture palace with a khaki arm round each -tumbled muslin waist, even then the terror lingered, -haunting, tearing, elusive as a dead leaf on the wind. -Ivy looked nervously into the shadows of the little picture-hall, -thinking she saw Jerry’s face, angry and -swarthy, with eyes like the Forge at night.... Suppose -he had come after her to Senlac ... he certainly -would if he was home in time. Then came a picture of a -girl who was “done in” by her lover. Ivy could stand it -no more, and rising to her feet, plunged out over the -people’s knees.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p> - -<p>“That plaace is lik an oven,” she said to the Anzac -corporal who followed her out.... “No, thank you. -I’ll go home wud Polly.”</p> - -<p>Polly was a little annoyed that Ivy should have broken -up the party so soon; but it certainly was very hot—both -the girls’ faces were spotted with sweat and their -gowns were sticking to their shoulders. Besides, it would -be as well not to get too thick with this Australian chap -now Bill Putland was writing so regularly.... Miss -Sinden and Miss Beatup dismissed their escort, and, after -the proper number of “Good-by-ees,” shouted across -longer and longer darkness-muffled distances, they -trudged off homewards on the North Trade.</p> - -<p>When Ivy reached the farm, she was told that Jerry -Sumption had called about eight o’clock—on his way -from the station, without even going first to leave his -kit-bag at the Horselunges—and that Mrs. Beatup had -had an unaccountable to-do to git shut of him.</p> - - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>Having made up her mind that a meeting was inevitable, -Ivy made no more efforts to avoid one. By her -absence on his first visit she had clearly shown Jerry how -matters stood, and if he was fool enough to come -again....</p> - -<p>He was, of course. Ivy, unromantically on her knees -at her usual business of scrubbing the kitchen boards, -felt no annoyance at being so discovered, made no hasty -grabs at her rolled-up sleeves, or at the loosening knob -of her hair. She would not have done so for a more -favoured lover, for none of her courtships had been of -the kind that encourages neatness and daintiness in a -woman, that leads to curlings and powderings. She -knew that men liked her for her youth and health and - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> - -bigness, for her cheeriness and strength, and as all these -things were natural to her she had no need to trouble -herself with fakes.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Jerry,” she said, without looking up, and sending -a swirl of soapy water round his boots.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Ivy. Why weren’t you in when I came last -night?”</p> - -<p>“Because I’d gone into Senlac wud Polly Sinden, as -your father ud have told you, if you’d done wot you -should ought and gone to him fust.”</p> - -<p>“You’d no call to go into Senlac—not on the first night -of my leave.”</p> - -<p>“Your leave doan’t matter to me.”</p> - -<p>“Ivy....”</p> - -<p>He caught her wrist as she was dipping the scrubbing-brush -in the bucket, and she was forced to meet his eyes -at last. She had tried to avoid this, staring at her soapsuds, -for Jerry’s eyes were “queer.” -“Leave hold of me, Jerry.”</p> - -<p>“Not till you stand up and look at me. I can’t speak -to you on all fours like this.”</p> - -<p>Ivy stood up, rather wondering at Jerry’s power to -make her do so. He was a small fellow, but not of the -stubby built of Tom or Harry Beatup. On the contrary, -he was lightly made as a dancing-master, his hands and -feet were small but very strong, his face was small and -brown, lit by two large sloe-black eyes, with lashes long -and curly as a child’s. His hair was curly too, in spite -of its military cropping. He was a most slovenly-looking -soldier, with tunic stained and buttons dim, and puttees -looping grotesquely round his slim, graceful legs.</p> - -<p>“If the M.P.’s git hold of you ...” began Ivy -jeeringly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p> - -<p>“There ain’t any M.P.’s hereabouts. I’m on my leave, -and you’re starting to spoil it already.”</p> - -<p>“Wot have I got to do wud your leave? You’re -maaking some sort gurt big mistaake, Jerry Sumption.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe you’ve forgotten that day at Senlac Fair?”</p> - -<p>“And if I have, wot matter? It meant naun. You -aun’t the fust lad that’s kissed me, nor the last, nuther.”</p> - -<p>It hurt her to have to speak so plainly, but Jerry -Sumption must be put right at once on one or two important -matters he seemed to have misunderstood. She -saw his face go pale under its sunburn and she felt sorry -for him. None the less, she stuck to her harshness.</p> - -<p>“I likked you well enough, and I lik you still; but if -you think as I meant more’n I did or said, you’re unaccountable -mistaaken.”</p> - -<p>“Ivy—come out of doors with me. I can’t speak to -you in here. When my heart’s full I want the wind -blowing round me.”</p> - -<p>She shook her head. “No, Jerry; we’ll stay where -we are, surelye. You’re hedge-born, but I’m house-born, -and I lik four walls around me when I’m vrothered. -Now, lad, doan’t that show you as we two cud never -mate?”</p> - -<p>“So, I’m vrothering you, am I?”</p> - -<p>“Unaccountable.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I didn’t vrother you when I clipped you in -the lane by the stack of Slivericks.”</p> - -<p>“Doan’t ’ee....”</p> - -<p>His strange power over her was coming back. Looking -into his eyes she seemed to see strange secrets of -woods, memories of roads and stars, and a light that was -like the light of a burning wood, such as she had once -seen, licking up from the west, burning the little farm -and the barns. She was frightened of Jerry, just as she -was frightened of Dallington churchyard at night, or -that field-corner by Padgham, where strange lights are -sometimes seen. Yet it was a fear which instead of - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> - -making her run, made her stumble and droop towards -him, seeking refuge from terror in its source....</p> - -<p>He pushed her away.</p> - -<p>“Reckon you’ll be kissing another lad to-night.”</p> - -<p>She felt flustered and miserable.</p> - -<p>“You’re a lamentable trial to me, Jerry.”</p> - -<p>“Why? ’Cos I’ve kissed you? It’s nothing. I’ll be -kissing another girl to-night.”</p> - -<p>“You’re a valiant feller.”</p> - -<p>“Ain’t I? You think the world of me, Ivy Beatup.”</p> - -<p>“Do I? That’s news. Now doan’t start it all over -again. I hear mother coming.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup’s step creaked outside, and Jerry scowled -at the door. The next moment he was astride the -window-sill, a queer furtive look in his eyes.</p> - -<p>“You aun’t going out lik that, surelye! I’m ashamed -of you. Stay and spik to mother like a Christian.”</p> - -<p>But he had swung his leg over, and slid into the yard. -She heard him run off, with padding footsteps like a -beast.</p> - - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>The next day was Sunday. A thick yellow haze swam -over the fields, and there was a faint autumnal scent in -the hedges, mixed of leaves and earth. The grain-fields -still smelt of summer, with the baking glumes and the -white, cracked ground. Only a few had been cut—the -winter sowings at Egypt and Bucksteep; the Volunteer -Field and the Street Field at Worge still carried their -crops, chaffy and nutty, preyed on by conies. They -should have been cut last week, but Mus’ Beatup had -not been himself on Friday and Saturday, and Juglery -had a bad leg, and Harry had gone to Hailsham Fair.</p> - -<p>Towards eleven o’clock church and chapel goers began -to dribble down the lane to Brownbread Street, while a - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> - -few strayed into the Bethel, which looked a little less -gaunt with its door open to the sunshine and old Grandfather -Hubble sitting in it with the collecting-plate on -his knees. The congregation was small, but bigger than -the Particular Baptist sect in Sunday Street. There -were actually only two received members—old Hubble -and his daughter-in-law; the rest were either members -of other denominations who had quarrelled with their -respective chapels, or else felt disinclined for the trudge -into Brownbread Street. Bourner came because the minister -had once been a blacksmith, and the farmer of -Puddledock came because he had once cured a stallion -of his that had lockjaw.</p> - -<p>Jerry Sumption came because he hoped Ivy Beatup -would be there. It was a vain hope, for on fine Sundays -the family at Worge always went to church—except, -of course, Mus’ Beatup, whose scientific readings had -taught him the folly of all churches, and Mrs. Beatup, -who stayed at home to cook the dinner. However, -Mr. Sumption had encouraged, if indeed he had not inspired, -the illusion which landed Jerry in one of the big -back pews of the Bethel, a pew like a dusty box, smelling -of wood-rot. He knew that if he had been more candid -Jerry would have padded off over the fields to Brownbread -Street and drunk in pernicious heresies of Infant -Baptism and Universal Redemption, while he stared at -his sweetheart’s profile ruddy in the sunshine which -glowed on her through some painted saint. So he concealed -the fact that the Beatups were “Church,” weather -permitting, and allowed Jerry to think he would have Ivy -to grin and blink at during the sermon, as on his last -visit, when the rain was tinkling in the chapel gutters.</p> - -<p>Finding himself sold, Jerry was inclined to sulk. -Luckily he did not suspect his father, or he would have -got up and walked out. The service was nearly half - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> - -finished before he gave up hope; that is to say, the -sermon had begun, and the congregation had subsided -into its various compartments, so that anyone coming -in would have seen no one but Mr. Sumption, like a big -crow in his Sunday blacks, shouting from the pulpit at -two rows of coffin-like pews. Jerry opened the door of -his, so that he could look out of the chapel door, which -stood open, and see the dull blue sky above the fields of -Puddledock, and in the foreground the neglected churchyard -of the Bethel, with the tombstones leaning this way -and that.</p> - -<p>A heavy sickness of heart fell on him, sitting there in -the rot-smelling pew, with his arms folded over his chest -and his shoulders shrugged to his ears. He felt caught -in his love for Ivy Beatup like an animal in a trap, -frantic, struggling, wounding himself with his struggles. -If she did not want him, why wouldn’t she let him go?... -Lord! he would never forget her that day at Senlac -Fair, with her cheeks red as the pimpernel and her eyes -like the big twilight stars, and her hair blowing about -them as they kissed.... If she had not meant it, -why had she done it? If she had not wanted his heart, -why had she taken it and bruised it so? He did not -please her. Why? He had pleased other girls; and -now he was in uniform ... that ought to please her. -He remembered how she had made him jealous when -she spoke of her soldier friends. Well, now he was a -soldier too—leading a damned life partly for her sake -... that ought to please her.</p> - -<p>In the Bethel yard rank weeds were growing, clumping -round the tombstones, thickening the grass with -their fat stalks and wide milk-bleeding leaves. They -were hot in the sun, and the smell of them crept into the -Bethel and found its place in the miasma of wood-rot -and Sunday clothes and plaster and stale lamp-oil ... - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> - -the smell of pignut stewing in the sun, of the burdock -and the thick fog-weed, the plantain, the nettle, the -dandelion. The chapel weeds seemed to give Jerry an -answer to his question. He did not please Ivy because -he was the gipsy-woman’s son, no less a weed because -he grew in a chapel yard. The hedge-born could not -please the house-born, as she had said—though for that -matter he had been born in a bed like any Christian, -in that little room above the Forge at Bethersden, which -he could dimly remember, with its view down three cross-roads.</p> - -<p>He clenched his small hard fists, and stared scowling -out towards the sun-swamped fields of the horizon. He -would punish Ivy Beatup for her cruelty, for having -trodden on the chapel weed. He would make her suffer—if -he could, for she was tough and lusty as an oak. He -found himself hating her for her sturdy cheerfulness—for -the shape of her face, with the hard, round cheeks -and pointed chin—for her lips which were warm when -her heart was cold....</p> - -<p>A loud thump on the pulpit woke him out of his -thoughts. His father had noticed his abstraction for -some time, and chose this way of rousing him. From -his vantage he could see into all the separate cells of his -congregation, and if he noticed anyone nodding or mooning -or reading his Bible for solace, he made haste to recall -him to a proper sense of his surroundings. He now -stopped in the middle of an eschatological trump and -glared at Jerry with his bright, tragic eyes. He had a -habit of drastic personal dealings with his flock, to which, -perhaps, its small size was due. Certainly Ades of Cowlease -had never entered the Bethel door since Mr. Sumption -had “thumped” at him, and one or two others had -been driven away in a like manner. To-day everyone, -even those whose heads did not pop out of their - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> - -pews like Jim-Crows, guessed that the minister had -“thumped” at Jerry, for the minister’s Jerry seldom -came through a service without being thumped at—luckily -he did not much mind it. “W’oa—old ’un,” he -mumbled to himself, as he met his father’s stare, and -soon luckily came the hymn: “They shall gather by -the river,” which Jerry sang most tunefully, in a loud, -sweet, not quite human voice, forgetting all those sad -thoughts of the chapel weed....</p> - -<p>But he remembered them when he was walking across -to the Horselunges with his father.</p> - -<p>“Father, if I can’t get Ivy Beatup, I’ll kill myself.”</p> - -<p>“For shame, you ungodly boy—to speak so light of -losing your salvation!”</p> - -<p>“Would I lose my salvation if I killed myself?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you would. Satan would get you at once.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll kill her, then. Satan can have her and welcome.”</p> - -<p>“It’s you he’d have if you killed her.”</p> - -<p>“Then he’s got me both ways?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he has, you sinful good-for-nothing, dreaming -in sermon-time. Have done, do, with your idle talk, -or Satan will get me too, and make me give you a kick -behind.”</p> - - -<h3>9</h3> - -<p>Jerry’s leave was not a happy or a peaceful one—no -more for his father and Ivy Beatup than for himself. -Every day he was over at Worge—Ivy had never met -anyone so undetachable. She hated herself, too, for -some temporary capitulations. Jerry had a way of -making her faint-hearted, so that she would be betrayed -into a kiss, or even a visit to the Pictures, with an -entwined walk home under the stars. She wished that -some other boy—some young Pix or Viner or Kadwell—was -home on leave, then she might have escaped to him - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> - -from Jerry. Not that she really doubted herself—she -had made up her mind that she did not want him and -that she would not have him; this still held good, and -her momentary lapses deceived neither her nor him. He -no longer wooed her ardently—contrariwise, he was stiff -and sulky, sullen and rough when he kissed her. He -knew that there was no chance for him, that his only prey -could be the present moment, which he snatched and -despised.</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption, after one or two abortive attempts at -persuading Ivy to take his boy, tried to detach Jerry -from the vain quest which was spoiling these precious -days.</p> - -<p>“There’s many another girl that would have you, -Jerry—and a better match, too, for a clergyman’s son.”</p> - -<p>“I know there is—and I’ve had ’em—and thrown ’em -away again. She’s the only one I’ve ever wanted for -keeps.”</p> - -<p>When he heard this, Mr. Sumption felt as if his heart -would break.</p> - -<p>At last came the end of Jerry’s leave. It was starless -dusk, with clouds swagging on the thundery wind. Pools -and spills of white light came from the west, making the -fields look ghostly in the dripping swale. At Worge a -scent of withering corn-stalks came from the fields where -the crops had been cut at last, and as Jerry stood in the -doorway the first dead leaves of the year fell on his -shoulders.</p> - -<p>“Come out with me, Ivy. It’s for the last time, and -I hate your kitchen with the ceiling on my head, and -your mother spannelling round.”</p> - -<p>Ivy was in a good humour. The joy of freedom was -already upon her—she felt confident, and knew that -there would be no lapses this evening. So she put a -shawl over her head and went out with him. They - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> - -passed through the yard and the orchard into the grass-fields -by Forges Wood.</p> - -<p>The field was tangled and soggy, full of coarse, sour -grass. In the dip of it, by the wood’s edge, toadstools -spread dim tents, or squashed invisibly underfoot, as -the twilight drank up all colours save white and grey.</p> - -<p>“I’ve trod on a filthy toadstool, and my foot’s all -over scum,” said Ivy, rubbing her shoe in the grass. -“Let’s git through the hëadge, Jerry, into the dry -stubble.”</p> - -<p>“This is a better place to say good-bye.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll say good-bye in the house. Now, none of your -nonsense, Jerry Sumption”—as he put his arm round her -waist.</p> - -<p>“But it’s my last evening.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’ve come for a walk. Wot more d’you want? -I’m naun for cuddling, if that’s wot you’re after. I’ll -give you a kiss, full and fair, when we say good-bye in -the house, but there’s to be no lovering under hëadges.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve been unkind all along. You’ve spoilt my -leave.”</p> - -<p>“That’s your own fault, surelye. I’ve bin straight -wud you.”</p> - -<p>He laughed bitterly. Then his laugh broke into a gipsy -whine.</p> - -<p>“Ivy, are you sure—quite sure you’ll never love me?”</p> - -<p>“Quite sure—as I’ve told you a dunnamany times.”</p> - -<p>“But I don’t mean now ... some day ... Ivy?”</p> - -<p>In the dusk his face showed white as the toadstools at -her feet, but she stood firm, for his sake as well as her -own.</p> - -<p>“It’s no use talking about ‘some day’—I tell you -it’s never.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Never!—and you’ve let me hold you and kiss -you....”</p> - -<p>“Only now and then—saum as I’d let any nice lad.”</p> - -<p>His eyes blazed.</p> - -<p>“You little bitch!”</p> - -<p>“Mind your words, my boy—and leave hoald of my -arm, and come into the next field, or I’ll git hoame.”</p> - -<p>But he did not move, and his grip on her arm -tightened.</p> - -<p>“I want you. I reckon you don’t know what that -means when I say I want you, or you wouldn’t be so -damn cruel. Ivy, I can’t leave you like this. I can’t -go back to camp knowing I’m just nothing to you. You -must give me some sort of hope. It’s not fair to have -led me on——”</p> - -<p>“I never led you on——”</p> - -<p>Her limbs were shaking. An unaccountable terror had -seized her—a terror of him, with his hot, gripping hand -and blazing eyes, of the field so dim and sour, its grass -scummy with the spilth of trampled toadstools, of the -wood close by with its spindled ashes and clumping -oaks....</p> - -<p>“Let me go!” she cried suddenly, in a weak frightened -voice.</p> - -<p>For answer he pulled her into his arms, and held her -with her breast bruised against his.</p> - -<p>“I shan’t let you go—I’ll never let you go. Come -into the wood, Ivy. Don’t be afraid ... I love you.... -Come into the wood—there’s nothing to be afraid -of. I wouldn’t hurt you for worlds.”</p> - -<p>He tried to pick her up and carry her, but she struggled -desperately and broke free.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p> - -<p>“This has justabout finished it all, Jerry Sumption. -You’re a beast—I’ll never let you come nigh me agaun. -You’ve a-done for yourself. I’ve bin good to you and -straight wud you, and I’d have gone on being friends; -but now I’ve a-done wud you for good.”</p> - -<p>Her voice broke with rage, and she turned to run home. -But he grabbed her again, and this time she could not -escape. He was a small man, and she was a big whacking -girl; but madness was in him, and his arms were -like iron clamps.</p> - -<p>“You shan’t get shut of me like that. I tell you I -mean to have you ... and wot’s more I’ll make you -have me. I’ll break your pride—I’ll make you want to -have me, ask me to take you.”</p> - -<p>Ivy screamed.</p> - -<p>“Scream away. No one ull hear. I’ve got you, and -I’m damned if I let you go till I please.... To-morrow -you’ll be on your knees, begging me to take you and -save you.”</p> - -<p>He clapped his hand over her mouth, and forced back -her head, kissing her strained and aching neck till she -screamed with pain as well as with fright. Her cries -were stilled under his palm, her head swam, her strength -was leaving her ... she was down on one knee ... -then suddenly, she could never remember how, she was -free, and running, running as she had never run before, -her breath sobbing in her throat—across the field of the -toadstools and sour grass, away from the shadow of -Forges Wood, in the orchard, to see the gable of Worge -rising against the pewter—grey of the clouds that hid -the moon.</p> - -<p>At the orchard edge she had the sense to stop and tidy -herself. There was no longer any fear of pursuit—if -indeed she had ever been pursued. She had dropped -her shawl in the field, her blouse was torn open at the -neck, her hair was down on her shoulders, and her face -all blotched with excitement and tears. Also, a new -experience, she was trembling from head to foot, and her -shaking hands could scarcely fasten her blouse and twist -up her hair.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You beast!” she sobbed, as she fumbled; “you beast! -You dirty gipsy!”</p> - -<p>Then an unaccountable longing seized her for her -mother—she longed to throw her arms round her -mother’s neck and cry upon her shoulder. With a little -plaintive moan she started off again for the house, but -by the time she reached the doorstep the craving had -passed.</p> - - -<h3>10</h3> - -<p>For half an hour after Ivy left him, Jerry lay on his -face in Forges Wood, motionless save every now and -then for a quiver of his shoulders. Over him the boughs -of the ash-trees cracked and sighed, under him the -trodden leaves rustled creepingly. He felt them cold -and moist against his cheek, with the clammy mould of -nettles, weeds that were trampled and dead. His heart -in him was dead—cold, heavy and sodden as a piece of -rain-soaked earth. The fire in him was out—it had -driven him mad and died. By his short madness, -scarcely five minutes long, he had lost Ivy for ever. She -was gone as the summer was gone from the woods, but, -unlike the summer, she would never come back. A sour, -eternal autumn lay before him, sour as the grass and -toadstools of Forges Field, eternal as the blind, creeping -force from which toadstools are spawned into fields and -poor men’s hearts.</p> - -<p>At last he rose to his feet, and stumbled off, plunging -into the thickets of Forges Wood, through the ash-plats -and the oak-scrub. Scarcely realising what he was doing, -he forced his way out of the wood, through its hedge of -brambled wattles, into the lane. The pewterish sky hung -low over the hedges, and in its dull glimmer he could see -the road under his feet. He soon clambered out of the -lane, pushing through the hedge into the fields of Padgham. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> - -To eastward lay the thick, black woods of Furnacefield, -and the cry of an owl came out of them, plaintively.</p> - -<p>Jerry wandered in the fields till dawn, his heart cold -and heavy as a clod, though now and then little crawls -of misery went into it, like a live thing creeping into the -earth. He had lost Ivy for ever ... his own madness—which -was gone—had taken her from him ... she was -gone, as the summer was gone from the woods....</p> - -<p>He came nearly as far south as Hazard’s Green, but -mostly roamed in his own tracks, prowling the barns of -Burntkitchen. Then, when a thin, greenish light shone -like mould on the pewtered sky, a sudden childish craving -came to him, the same that had come to Ivy in the -orchard. As she had wanted her mother in her fright -and misery, so he wanted his father, and ran home.</p> - - -<h3>11</h3> - -<p>A light was burning at the Horselunges, but the cold -lamp of dawn shone on Jerry as he stood fumbling in -the doorway, then, finding the door unlocked, crept in. -A footstep creaked in his father’s room, and the next -minute the door was flung open and the minister stood -at the top of the stairs, blocked against the light, looming, -monstrous, like a huge black Satan.</p> - -<p>“Where’ve you been?”</p> - -<p>“In the woods.”</p> - -<p>Jerry’s teeth were chattering as his father took him -by the arm and pulled him into the room. A fire was -burning on the hearth, with the old, old cat purring -squeakily before it, while the broken-winged thrush, -which Mr. Sumption had forgotten to cover up for the -night, hopped to and fro, twittering its best effort at a -song.</p> - -<p>“Oh, may the Lord forgive you, you scamp,” groaned - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> - -the minister, as Jerry fell crumpled on the sofa. His -boots and uniform were caked with leaf-mould and clay, -his hair was full of leaves and mud and his face was -streaked with dirty wet.</p> - -<p>“Are you hungry?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>There was a pot of something on the fire, but it was -just as well that Jerry was not hungry, for it had been -burnt to a cinder long ago.</p> - -<p>“I’ve been sitting up for you all night,” said Mr. -Sumption. “When you didn’t come in, I went over to -Worge, and Ivy said you’d been out with her, but had -gone off by yourself, she didn’t know where. She’s a -kind girl, and told me not to worry.”</p> - -<p>“Father—I’ve lost her for ever.”</p> - -<p>It was the first time he had said the words aloud, and -their wretchedness swept over him, breaking his spirit, -so that he began to cry.</p> - -<p>“I’ve lost her ... I was mad ... and she’s gone.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption stood staring at the small, slight figure -on the sofa, lying with its dirty face turned away, its -back showing him the split tunic of a soldier of the King. -His bowels yearned towards the son of the woman from -Ihornden, and his rage switched violently from Jerry -to the cause of his grief.</p> - -<p>“Drat the girl! Drat the slut! What is she after, -despising her betters? She’s led you on—she’s played -with you. Don’t trouble about her, Jerry, my boy. She -isn’t worth it.”</p> - -<p>“I love her,” gasped Jerry—“and I’ve lost her. It’s -my own fault. I went mad. I frightened her.... -Father, I’m a beast—I reckon Satan’s got me.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption patted his shoulder.</p> - -<p>“I reckon Satan’s got me,” moaned the boy—“or why - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> - -did I go wild like that?”</p> - -<p>“Satan can’t hurt the elect.”</p> - -<p>“What’s that to me? I reckon I’m none of your elect. -I’m just a poor boy who’s done for himself.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption dropped on his knees beside him, and -began to pray.</p> - -<p>“O Lord, Thou hast given me a sore trial in this son -of mine, and now terrible doubts are in my soul as to -whether he is one of the elect for whom Jesus died. O -Lord, he’s my flesh and bone, and the flesh and bone of -my dear wife who’s dead, and yet it looks as if Satan -had got him. O Lord, save my son from the lion and -my darling from the power of the dog, from the dreadful -day that shall burn like an oven, and the furnace of pitch -and tow....”</p> - -<p>“Father, have done, do—you give me the creeps.”</p> - -<p>“I’m praying for your soul, ungrateful child.”</p> - -<p>“Let my soul be—I’m tired to death.”</p> - -<p>Indeed a grey shade of utter weariness had crept into -his skin, so that his face looked ghastly in the morning -twilight fighting round the lamp. Mr. Sumption, who -had stood up, knelt down again, and took off Jerry’s -boots.</p> - -<p>“Have a sleep then, my laddie—there on the sofy. -It’s scarce worth going to bed. Besides, you’d have to -clean yourself first.”</p> - -<p>“You won’t leave me, father—you’ll stay along of -me?”</p> - -<p>“I’ll stay along of you and pray quiet.”</p> - -<p>Jerry gave a grunt, and drew up his knees to his chin, -like some animal rolling itself for sleep. Mr. Sumption -knelt beside him and continued his prayer:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p> - -<p>“O Lord, Thou hast a son, and doesn’t Thou know -what I feel about this wretched boy of mine? Lord, -give me a token that he is not predestined to everlasting -death; save him from the snares of hell, in which he -seems tangled like a bird in the snare of the fowler....”</p> - -<p>“Oh, father, do pray cheerful,” groaned Jerry.</p> - -<p>But praying cheerful was quite beyond the poor -father’s powers, never remarkable in this direction at -the best of times. All he could do was to sing, “Let -Christian faith and hope dispel the fears of guilt and -woe,” till Jerry had fallen asleep.</p> - - -<h3>12</h3> - -<p>Three hours later he woke, to find Mrs. Hubble’s big -wooden wash-tub in front of the fire.</p> - -<p>“Up you get,” said the Reverend Mr. Sumption, “and -into that bath, and I’ll take your clothes down to be -cleaned and mended before you go to the station.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not going to the station.”</p> - -<p>“You’re going there two hours from now, or you -won’t be in Waterheel to-night.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to be in Waterheel ever again.”</p> - -<p>But Mr. Sumption was not having any nonsense. A -large hairy paw like a gorilla’s shot out and swung Jerry -by the collar on to the floor. “Now strip, you ungodly -good-for-nothing, and I’ll send you out looking like a -clergyman’s son.”</p> - -<p>Jerry, groaning and moaning to himself, got into the -bath, while Mr. Sumption took his dirty bundle of -clothes down to Mrs. Hubble’s kitchen, where a long and -noisy argument followed on her abilities to make bricks -without straw, as she called his request to make his son -look decent. He returned to the study to find Jerry less -stiff in the joints, but growing every minute more defiant -and miserable as the steaming water cleared the fogs of -sleep from his brain.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I’m not going back to camp. I’d die if I was to go -there—with Ivy lost. It was bad enough when I had -her to think of and all——But now ... I’d justabout -break my heart.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe after a time you can write to her again——”</p> - -<p>“I can’t, I tell you. You don’t understand. I’ve -lost her for ever. I frightened her—I made her scream.”</p> - -<p>“You’re a beast,” said his father.</p> - -<p>“Reckon I am, and reckon you’re treating me like one.”</p> - -<p>“If you stay behind, they’ll nab you for an absentee.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t care if they do. I’d sooner be locked up, -than a soldier any more.”</p> - -<p>“For shame, boy!”</p> - -<p>“Well, how’d you like to be a soldier?—sworn at all -day by bloody sergeants, and always fatigue and C.B. -I’m fed up, I tell you, and I’m not going back.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll go back, if I have to pull you all the way by -the ears.”</p> - -<p>“You’re the cruellest father I ever heard of.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption lost his temper, and cuffed Jerry’s head -as he sat in the tub. Luckily the boy’s defiance had been -only the false flare of damp spirits, and instead of receiving -the blow with an explosion of anger, he was merely -cowed by it. Whereat Mr. Sumption’s heart melted, -and he saw the piteousness of this poor little soldier, -whose heart was black with some evil beyond his -help.</p> - -<p>The rest of the time passed amicably, till Mrs. Hubble, -with many contemptuous sniffs, brought up Jerry’s uniform -brushed and mended, and after he was dressed he -did not look so bad, especially as the bath had had the -humiliating result of making his skin look several shades -lighter.</p> - -<p>Breakfast followed, and afterwards he and his father -set out for Senlac Station, taking the longer North Road -by Woods Corner and Darwell Hole, instead of that -shorter, more dangerous, way past the gate of Worge. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> - -It was a morning of clear, golden distances, with pillars -and towers and arches of cloud moving solemnly before -the wind across a borage-blue sky. Drops of dew fell -from the trees on the backs of the two men, and the air -was full of the smell of earth and wet leaves, and that -faint mocking smell of spring which sometimes comes -in autumn.</p> - -<p>As they tramped along the North Road, away from -the Obelisk by Lobden’s House, which allows a Dallington -man to see his village for miles after he has left it, -Mr. Sumption spoke very patiently and kindly to his son.</p> - -<p>“Keep good and straight,” he said, “for you’re a good -woman’s son, and some day you’ll find a woman whom -you’ll love as I loved your mother. May she be to you -all that your mother was to me, and may you keep her -longer. But don’t go running after strange women, or -think to forget love in wantonness. One day, if you trust -the Lord, you’ll meet a girl that has been worth keeping -good for, that you’ll find lovelier than Ivy Beatup, and -ull think herself honoured to marry a clergyman’s son.”</p> - -<p>“Clergyman’s son ...” murmured Jerry, in tones -that made Mr. Sumption swoop round on him with uplifted -hand, to see a look on his face that made him -thrust it back into his pocket.</p> - -<p>His eyes were still full of his mysterious trouble, but -he did not speak of it so much. He just plodded on -beside his father like a calf to slaughter, and at last they -came to Senlac Town, with the houses like barley-stacks -in the sunshine. They were early, and had half an hour -to wait at the station. A train had just come in, and as -they crossed the bridge they suddenly met Tom Beatup.</p> - -<p>“Tom!” cried the minister, cracking his joints with -delight. “Who’d have thought to meet you! I’d no -idea you were coming home.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Nor had I till yesterday—seven days’ leave before -I go to France. I sent off a telegram, but I reckon it -was too late for them to get it last night. Hullo, Jerry! -Enjoyed yourself?”</p> - -<p>“Unaccountable,” said Jerry with a leer.</p> - -<p>“Wait for me, Tom,” said Mr. Sumption, “and we’ll -walk home together. I shan’t be more than twenty -minutes or so.”</p> - -<p>“I’m justabout sorry, but I must git off this wunst. -Reckon I’ll see you again soon.”</p> - -<p>“Come round to the Horselunges one evening.”</p> - -<p>“I will, surelye”—and Tom was off, whistling -“Sussex by the Sea.”</p> - -<p>It seemed to Mr. Sumption that he looked a bigger, -older man than the Tom Beatup of five months ago. -He seemed to have grown and filled out, he had lost his -yokel shuffle, and his uniform was smart and neat. The -minister glanced down at Jerry, who stood beside him, -small, untidy, cowed and furtive. Jerry undoubtedly -did not look his best in uniform—it seemed to exaggerate -the worst of those gipsy characteristics which he had -inherited from the Rossarmescroes or Hearns. Now, -in civvies he used not to look so bad—he was a well-made, -graceful little chap....</p> - -<p>“Jerry,” said Mr. Sumption, “why can’t you look like -Tom Beatup?”</p> - -<p>“I reckon it’s because I’m Jerry Sumption—the clergyman’s -son.”</p> - -<p>And again there was that look on his face which prevented -retaliation.</p> - - -<h3>13</h3> - -<p>In the old days it used to take Tom a good couple of -hours to walk from Senlac to Sunday Street—but then, -he had generally been behind a drove of lazy tups or -heifers, or silly scattering sheep. To-day he swung -smartly along, scarcely feeling the weight of his kit-bag, -whistling as he walked. It was good to feel the soft thick - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> - -fanning of the Sussex air, so different from the keen -Derbyshire wind, with its smell of bilberries and slaty -earth; to see the old places along the North Trade—Whitelands, -Park Gate, Burntkitchen, and then, when he -came to the throws, that wide sudden view of the country -bounded by the Four Roads, swamped in hazy sunshine, -with the trickle of lanes and the twist of the rough, -blotched hedges, and the pale patches of the stubble, and -the low clouds sailing over it from Cross-in-Hand. He -walked through Brownbread Street, empty save for the -waggon-team that drowsed outside the George, silent save -for the hum of children’s voices in the school. Then he -came to Pont’s Green, where the lane to Sunday Street -meets the East Road. The hops were being picked in the -low sheltered fields by Slivericks Wood, and the smoke -of the drying furnace streamed out of the cowl of the -oasthouse at the throws, while all the air seemed heavy -with the sweet, sleepy scent of stripping bines.</p> - -<p>He had meant, traitorously, to call at the shop before -he went home; but just as he came to the willow-pond, -a small dusty figure ran out of the hedge, and seized him -round the waist.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Tom!”</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Zacky! Wot are you doing here?”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t bin to school—I couldn’t go when I heard -you wur coming. Mother got your telegram this mornun, -and she wur sure it wur to say as you wur killed.”</p> - -<p>“Was she pleased when she found it wasn’t?”</p> - -<p>“Unaccountable. But she’d nigh cried her eyes out -first, and told Ivy and Nell as something tarr’ble had -happened to you, afore they found as she’d never opened -the telegram.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll write a letter next time,” said Tom; “but I - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> - -never knew for sure till yesterday that I’d be gitting -leave so soon.”</p> - -<p>He did not scold Zacky for having stayed away from -school. It was a relief not to have to exercise quasi-paternal -authority any more, but just to take the truant’s -hand and walk with him to Worge Gate—where Mus’ -Beatup was standing with his gun, having seen Tom in -the distance from Podder’s Field, where the conies are, -while Mrs. Beatup was running down the drive from the -house, her apron blowing before her like a sail.</p> - -<p>“Here you are, my boy,” said Mus’ Beatup sententiously, -clapping him on the shoulder. “Come to see -how we’re gitting on now you’ve left us. The oald farm’s -standing yit—the oald farm’s standing yit.”</p> - -<p>“And looks valiant,” said Tom, grinning, and kissing -his mother.</p> - -<p>“Not so valiant as it ud look if there wurn’t no war -on.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe—that cud be said of most of us.”</p> - -<p>“Not of you, Tom,” said Mrs. Beatup. “I never saw -you look praaperer than to-day.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m in splendid heart—eat till I’m fit to bust.”</p> - -<p>“You wear your cap like Bill Putland,” said Zacky. -“It maakes you look different-like.”</p> - -<p>Tom’s cap indeed had a rakish tilt over one ear, -though he did not profess to imitate Bill Putland’s -jauntiness.</p> - -<p>“Maybe old Bill ull git a bit of leave in a week or two. -I see Jerry Sumption’s gone back to-day. I met him and -minister at the station.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup gave a snort.</p> - -<p>“And unaccountable glad I am to see the last of Gipsy -Jerry; he’s justabout plagued Ivy to death all the time -he’s bin here. She says she’s shut of him, and I hope to -goodness she means it.”</p> - -<p>“Jerry shud never have gone fur a soldier,” said Tom. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> - -“He’s got no praaper ideas of things, and is fur ever -gitting in trouble. Come, mother, let’s be walking up to -the house and put my bag in the bedroom.”</p> - -<p>“Wot’s in your bag?” asked Zacky.</p> - -<p>“Soap, razor, slacks, and one or two liddle bits of -things,” said Tom, grinning down at him in proud consciousness -of two pounds of Derby rock—to such magnificence -had his sweetmeat buying risen from his old penn-’orths -of bull’s-eyes.</p> - -<p>They walked up to the house, and greetings came with -Ivy hanging out the clothes, and Harry toiling over the -corn accounts in shame-faced arrears. Then his bag was -unpacked, and presents given to everybody—sweetstuff -to Zacky and Harry, a good knife to his father, and to -his mother a wonderful handkerchief case with the arms -of the Royal Sussex worked in lurid silks; there was a -needlebook of the same sort for Nell, when she should -come home from school; and for Ivy there was a mother-o’-pearl -brooch, and, which she liked even better, messages -from a dozen Sussex chaps at Waterheel.</p> - -<p>Then as the family went back to its business, Tom, -who for the first time in his life had none, slipped out of -the house, and jogged quietly down the drive towards -the village. There would be just time before dinner to -call at the shop.</p> - -<p>The blind was down, for the sunshine was streaming -in at the little leaded window, threatening the perils of -dissolution to the sugar mice (made before the sugar -scarcity, indeed, it must be confessed, before the War) -and of fermentation to the tinned crab. Tom’s hand may -have shaken a little as he pulled down the latch, but -except for that his manner was stout, very different from -his sheepish entrances of months ago.</p> - -<p>Buzz ... ting ... Thyrza looked up from the packing-case -she was breaking open behind the counter. The -next moment she gave a little cry. She had just been - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> - -thinking of Tom at Waterheel, wondering if it was his -dinner-time yet, and what Cookie had put in the stew; -and then she had lifted her eyes to see his broad, sunburnt -face smiling at her from the door, with his hair -curling under his khaki cap, and his sturdy figure looking -at once stronger and slimmer in its uniform.</p> - -<p>“Tom!” she gasped, and held out her hand across -the counter—hoping....</p> - -<p>But he had gone beyond the timid daring of those -days. Before she knew what was happening, he had -marched boldly round behind the counter and taken her -in his arms.</p> - - -<h3>14</h3> - -<p>Tom’s family gave a poor reception to his news that -this was “last leave” before going to France.</p> - -<p>“I knew as that there telegram meant something -tar’ble,” wailed Mrs. Beatup. “It wurn’t fur naun I -cried, Nell, though you did despise me.”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t despise you,” said Nell; “you’re very unjust, -mother.”</p> - -<p>“Unjust, am I?—wud my boy going out to be -slaughtered like a pig.”</p> - -<p>“I aun’t going to be slaughtered, mother—not if I -know it. It’s I who’ll do the slaughtering.”</p> - -<p>“You who’d go swummy at wringing a cockerel’s neck.... -Reckon a German ull taake some killing—want -more’n a twist and a pull.”</p> - -<p>“He’ll want no more’n I’ve got to give him. Now, -doan’t you taake on so, mother—there’s naun to vrother -about. Maybe I woan’t be off so soon after all—it’s only -an idea that’s going round. And if I do go, I aun’t -afeard. I’ve a feeling as no harm ull come to me.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p> - -<p>“And I’ve a feeling as it will. Howsumdever ... -I mun think as I’ve got four children left ... and a -hoame ... and a husband”—remembering her blessings -one by one.</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup was inclined to be contemptuous.</p> - -<p>“Wot fur are they sending you out now? You’ve -bin training scarce five month.”</p> - -<p>“Many of the boys git less.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe they do, wud Governmunt being wot it is. -As if anyone wud know cudn’t see as it taakes ten year -to maake a looker.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon things have to go quicker in the Army than -on a farm. If we all took ten years to git ready, the -Bosches ud have us middling soon.”</p> - -<p>“They’d taake ten years, too, and it ud all go much -better.”</p> - -<p>“At that raate we’d never have done, surelye.”</p> - -<p>“And wot maakes you think as we’ll ever have done, -as things are?... Go forrard five mile in a year, and -it’ll be two hundred years afore we git to the Kayser’s -royal palace. You see ’em all fighting around a farm -as it wur the Tower of Lunnon—their objective, they call -it. If Worge wur an objective it ud taake the Germans -fifteen month to git into it, and we’d taake another fifteen -month to git ’em out; and then they’d git in agaun, and -it ud go on lik that till the plaace wur in shards. I tell -you this aun’t a hurrying sort of war, and ull be won by -them wot lives longest.”</p> - -<p>Tom was impressed. “Seemingly you know more -about it than I do.”</p> - -<p>“I read the paapers, and reckon I do a bit of thinking -as well.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you do. Howsumdever, it’s my plaace to -fight and not to think—I leave that to men lik you.”</p> - -<p>In spite of his respect for Mus’ Beatup as a military -tactician, he was a bit disgusted with him as a farmer. -A searching of the farm accounts and an examination - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> - -of the shame-faced Harry revealed a state of affairs even -more depressing than he had looked for. The harvest -had been mismanaged, the oats having been allowed to -stand too long, and a quantity of seed had been lost. -The blight had got into the hops owing to insufficient -spraying, and two sheep had died of bronchitis. Tom -was at first inclined to be angry. Harry acknowledged -having played truant on one or two important occasions, -though he insisted, whiningly, that he had worked “lik -ten black slaves” for most of the summer. If he had -always been on the spot, the aberrations of Mus’ Beatup -and the laziness and pigheadedness of Elphick and Juglery -might have been counteracted to a certain degree. -Tom would have liked to have beaten Harry, just to teach -him the disadvantages of ratting in harvest-time, but he -was now oddly loath to exercise the old compulsory -tyrannies. He saw, too, the pathos of Harry’s youth, -forced to play watch-dog to middle-aged vice and ancient -inefficiency.</p> - -<p>So, instead of being angry, he was just patient. He -went out a good deal during his leave, and the family -whispered, “Thyrza Honey”; but in the afternoons and -soft evenings, when all the fields were rusty in the harvest -moon, he would walk with Harry over the farm, and -point out to him the work that would have soon to be -done in the way of sowings and diggings, with never a -word of reproach for the pitiable deeds of the summer.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p> - -<p>“It aun’t too late to try fur a catch crop or two—harrow -some clover on the Volunteer stubble, and if you -sow early and late red, and late white, you’ll git cuttings -right on into June. I wudn’t have potato oats agaun fur -the Street field—their rootses git too thick fur clays, -and they shed seed unaccountable if you leave them standing -a day over their due. Try Sandy oat this fall—and -Flemish oat is good in clays, I’ve heard tell. And the -two-acre shud go into potash next year—wurzels or -swedes, or maybe potatoes.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll never kip all this in my head, Tom.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll justabout have to, sonny. I tell you this -farm’s your job, saum as mine’s soldiering. I’m going -to fight fur Worge, and you’ve got to back me up and -see as Worge is kept going fur me to fight fur.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll do my best, surelye—but you must write, Tom, -and maake me mind it all. Write and say, ‘This week -you must drill the two-acre’—or ‘To-morrow’s the day -to start thinning,’ or ‘Maake a strong furrer this frost,’ -so’s I shan’t disremember the lot.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll send you a postcard at whiles, to kip you up to it; -but I shan’t be here to see how things are going, so you’ll -have to trust to your own gumption. And doan’t go -agaunst faather when he’s sober, fur he’s a clever chap -and knows wot he’s doing; but when he’s tight doan’t -let him meddle, for he’s unaccountable contrary and ud -pot a harvest just to spite the Government. As fur -Juglery and Elphick, they’ve got no more sense nor roots, -so doan’t you ever be asking wot to do of them.”</p> - -<p>Harry was impressed by all this counsel. But perhaps -its real weight lay in Tom’s new glamour, his khaki uniform, -his occasional jauntiness, his military slang and -tales of camp life. He had always been fond of his -brother and liked him for a good fellow; but now he -went a step further, and admired him. There was something -about this quiet, neat, efficient young soldier, -which had been lacking in good-natured old Tom, with -his dirty skin and sloppy corduroys. Without quite -understanding what it was, or how it had come there, -Harry was both sensible and envious of it. He felt that -he would like to be a soldier too, wear khaki, carry -mysterious tools, and have before him a dim, glorious -adventure called France. But since these things were - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> - -not to be, a kind of rudimentary hero-worship led him -to make plans for “carrying on” at home. He would -not disappoint this soldier brother, who had exalted his -work on the farm by speaking of it as part of the adventure -on which he was so much more glamorously -engaged. He had never seen it in that light before—for -that matter, neither had Tom. But now he would try -to do his share—back Tom up, as he had said. Harry’s -nature was more ardent than his brother’s, more -romantic in its clay-thickened way, and on this ardour -and romance Tom had unconsciously built. There was -now a chance of his memory calling louder than Senlac -Fair or the wood by Cade Street.</p> - - -<h3>15</h3> - -<p>Tom did not tell his family about Thyrza Honey till -the morning he left Sunday Street. He knew they were -curious, but he felt that he would rather face their -curiosity than their comments. They were sure to be -pleased at the news from a material standpoint, but -against that he had to balance the fact that the women—except, -perhaps, Ivy—did not like Thyrza, and that his -mother still looked upon him as a little boy, too young to -think of marrying. He had looked upon himself in that -light six months ago—it was queer how much older he -felt now. Surely it did not make you all that much older -to have the sergeant howling at you, or to sleep with fifty -men in a hut, or to eat stew out of a dixey.... Yet, the -fact remained, that in April he had felt a boy and in September -he felt a man; and, more—he was a man; for -Thyrza had accepted him as her lover, and had promised -to let him fulfil his manhood as her husband.</p> - -<p>At present he was content with the first stage. Each -day held a new wonder. Yet he did nothing more - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> - -wonderful than sit with her in the little room behind the -shop—the sanctuary into which he had so often peeped -in the old days, wondering what Thyrza thought and did -there in the humming firelight, with her kettle and her -cat and her account-books in which all the little traffic -of the shop was entered with sucked pencil and puckered -brows.</p> - -<p>He would sit by her and hold her hand, so large and -soft and firm, turning it over and over in his own, kissing -it back and palm. Her manner was a little motherly, for -she was touched by the fact that she was the first woman -he had ever held or kissed, while her own experience was -deep and bitter. She was older than he was too, and, as -she thought, sharper at the uptake, though certainly he -had improved in this of late. She would hold him in her -arms, with his head against her breast, held between her -heart and her elbow, as she had for a few short minutes -held the little baby who died.... She never asked herself -why she loved him so much better than the big, -strong, hairy Bourner, or than Hearsfield, whose hands -were white as a gentleman’s; all she knew was that she -loved him, and that she pitied him for the fond no-reason -that he loved her and through her was learning his first -lessons in woman and love.</p> - -<p>Then before he went home she would make him tea, -or supper perhaps, and herself gain new sweet experience -in ministering to the material wants of the man whose -spirit she held. No meal prepared for Honey had been -like this, and they would sit over it cosily together, all -the more conscious of their union when the little buzzing -bell of the shop divided them, and Tom, new privileged, -would sit in the back room listening to Thyrza serving -Putlands or Sindens or Bourners or Hubbles, and getting -rid of them as quickly as she could—which, it must be -confessed, was not very quick, for she was far too soft - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> - -and kind to turn anyone out who seemed to want to stay. -Then the bell which had divided them would bring them -together again as it rang behind the departing shopper, -and Thyrza would come back to the lover waiting for her -in the red twilight beside the singing fire.</p> - -<p>They did not go out together till the last evening. -Then he came to tea and stayed to supper, and in the -interval they went into the lane just as the dusk came -stealing up the sky. Thyrza had objected at first.</p> - -<p>“We closed early yesterday, and folk ull be vexed if -they find us shut this evenun too.”</p> - -<p>“Folk be hemmed! This is my last evenun, and I’m -going to taake you where we can’t hear that tedious -liddle bell of yourn.”</p> - -<p>“Doan’t miscall my bell, fur it rings when you come -to see me. In the old days when it rang, I used to say -to myself, ’Is that Tom?’ and look through the winder, -hoping....”</p> - -<p>“Thyrza, did you love me then?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I did. But I doan’t know as I ever thought -much about it, fur I maade sure as at the raate you wur -going it ud be a dunnamany years afore you started -courting praaperly.”</p> - -<p>“I’m glad I didn’t wait, surelye. Oh, liddle creature, -you can’t know wot this week’s bin to me. I’ll go out to -France feeling ... feeling ... I can’t tell you wot I -feel, but it’s as if I wur leaving part of myself behind, -and that the part I left behind wur helping and backing -up the part out there ... it sounds unaccountable silly -when I say it, but it’s wot I’ve got in my heart.”</p> - -<p>They were in the big pasture meadow near Little -Worge, sitting by the willow-pond which lay cupped -against the lane. It was the first and the last landmark -in Sunday Street—the thick scummed water with the -grey trees dipping their leaves in its stillness. To-day a - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> - -soft wind rustled in them, blowing from the west, and -scarcely louder than the wind throbbed the distant guns, -the beating of that racked far-off heart whose terrible -secrets Tom was soon to know. Thyrza shuffled against -his side as they sat on the grass.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Tom—hear the guns? It’s tar’ble to think of -you out there.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll come back, surelye.”</p> - -<p>“Do you feel as if you will?”</p> - -<p>“Surelye—since I’ve left half myself behind.”</p> - -<p>Her arms stole round him, and the beating of that far-away -heart was drowned in the beating of his under her -cheek.</p> - -<p>A pale cowslip light was in the sky, creeping over the -fields, putting yellower tints into Thyrza’s butter skin -and a web of gold over her ashen hair. Gradually it -seemed to flower in the dusk till all the field was lit up -... the mounds and molehills with hollows scooped -darkly against the light, the pond like thick yellow glass, -the willows like drooping flame. The picture became -graven on Tom’s heart—the grey sky blooming with light -and shedding it down on the field of the mounds and -molehills, the pond, the willows, and the woman drowsing -in his arms—so that when later in France he thought -of England, he thought of it only as that willow-pond -at the opening of Sunday Street, and Thyrza Honey -lying heavy and warm and sweet against his breast.</p> - -<p>“Hold me close, Tom, dearie—hold me close, so’s I -doan’t hear the war. Aun’t it queer how our hearts beat -louder than the guns!...”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PART III: THYRZA</h2> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap">THAT -autumn and winter there was a lot of talk -in the papers about food. Wedged into news of -the Ancre and Beaumont Hamel, the crumpling-up -of Roumania under von Mackensen, and President -Wilson’s Peace Note, came paragraphs and letters and -articles on food and the ways of economising and producing -it. The latter most troubled Harry, as he thought -of the modest spring-sowings of Worge. If it was indeed -true that the German U-boats were threatening the country’s -wheat supply, might it not be as well to reclaim the -old tillage of the Sunk Field or even break up grass-land -in the high meadows by Bucksteep?</p> - -<p>Harry did not often read the papers, getting all his -news from the <cite>Daily Express</cite> poster which Mrs. Honey -displayed outside the shop when the papers arrived at -noon; but when paper-restrictions brought posters to an -end, he went skimming through Mus’ Beatup’s <cite>Sussex -News</cite>, and one day skimming was changed to plodding -by a very solid article on wheat-production and the present -needs.</p> - -<p>In many ways it was a revelation to Harry. Though -he had been a farm-boy all his life it had never struck -him till then that grain-growing was of any importance -to the nation, or imagined that the Worge harvests mattered -outside Worge. The fields, the stock had been to -him all so many means of livelihood, and the only motive -of himself and his fellow-workers the negative one of - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> - -keeping Worge from the auctioneer’s. If he ever realised -his part in the great adventure, it was only when he saw -his duty to keep the place together for Tom to fight for. -This was his newest and highest motive, and when he -refused the call of distant woods, broke with the Brownbread -rat-and-sparrow club, and paid no more than a -business visit to Senlac Fair, it was so that Tom’s sacrifice -should not be in vain. But here was a chap making out -that a farmer was very nearly as important as a soldier, -and that it was on the wheat-fields of England as well as -on the battlefields of France that the war would be -won....</p> - -<p>After this, Harry always read the food-supply news, -and pondered it. Was it indeed true that the war which -was being waged with such gallantry and fortitude -abroad might be lost at home? For the first time he had -a personal interest in the struggle, apart from the interest -he felt through Tom. Hitherto the war had meant -nothing to him, because he had thought he meant nothing -to the war—he was too young to be a soldier, probably -always would be, since everyone said that peace would -come next year. All he had had of warfare was the -distant throb and grumble of guns a hundred miles away—not -even a prowling Taube or lost Zeppelin had visited -the country within the Four Roads. First the lighting -order, then the liquor control, then the Conscription Act—only -thus and indirectly had the war touched him, -requiring of him merely a passive part. But now he saw -that he also might take his active share, and the realisation -set fire to his clay.</p> - -<p>The winter was a bad one—bitterly cold, with thick -green ice on the ponds, and a skimming of hard snow -on the fields, where the soil was like iron. The marshes -of Horse Eye were sheeted with a frozen overflow, and -the wind that rasped and whiffled from the east, stung - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> - -the skin like wire, and piercing the cracks of barns, -made the stalled cattle shiver and stamp. There was -little work on the farm, though Harry had done his best -to fulfil Tom’s injunctions, and had carted his manure -and turned a strong furrow to the frost. The lambing -had been got through somehow—but two ewes and three -or four lambs had died, as they would never have done -if Tom had been there. At every turn Harry was faced -by his own inexperience, and learned only at the price of -many disappointments and much humiliation.</p> - -<p>But he was the type which failure only makes dogged, -and his unsuccessful winter helped his new sense of the -country’s need in making him plan daringly for the -spring. He resolved that his apprenticeship should not -last beyond the winter—it was his own fault that it had -lasted so long—and in March he would get to business, -and start his scheming for doubling the grain acreage of -the farm.</p> - -<p>There were several acres of old tillage to be reclaimed, -and Harry was young and daring and amateurish enough -to contemplate also breaking up grass-land. He would -of course have to consult his father first. Mus’ Beatup -had spent a sorry winter, “kipping the coald out” at the -Rifle Volunteer. The slackness of farm work, the cold -and discomfort of the weather, the growing unpalatableness -of his meals, all combined for worse results than -usual, and by the time of the keen wintry spring there -was no denying that a good slice of both his physical and -mental vigour had been eaten away. However, he was -still the nominal head of the farm, and must be consulted—Tom -would have had it so. Unfortunately, Harry -chose the wrong day. Mus’ Beatup was sober, but suffering -from an internal chill as a result of having lain for -an hour in the frozen slush a couple of nights ago, before -Nimrod the watch-dog found him and brought Harry out - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> - -with his frantic barks. To-day he sat by the fire, shuddering -and muttering to himself, drinking a cup of hot -cocoa and swearing at his wife because there was no -sugar in it.</p> - -<p>“I can’t git none,” wailed Mrs. Beatup. “I tried at -the Shop, and Nell tried in Brownbread Street, and Ivy’s -tried in Dallington, and Harry asked when he wur over -at Senlac market....”</p> - -<p>“And have you tried Rushlake Green and Punnetts -Town and Three Cups Corner and Heathfield and Hellinglye -and Hailsham? You try a bit further afore you -dare to give me this stuff.”</p> - -<p>“But there aun’t none in the whole country—so I’ve -heard tell.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe. Reckon Govunmunt’s got it all, saum as -they’ve got all the beer and the spirits. They’ve got -pounds and pounds of it, those there Cabinick Ministers, -and eat it for breakfast and dinner and tea. I tell you -I’m dog-sick of this war, and I’m hemmed if I move -another step to help a Govunmunt as taakes fust our -beer and then our boys, and then our sugar”—and Mus’ -Beatup spat dramatically into the fire, as if it were -Whitehall.</p> - -<p>The moment was not propitious, but Harry had to -consider the weather, which showed possibilities that -must be made use of at once. Mus’ Beatup listened -wearily to his suggestions.</p> - -<p>“Oh, it’s more wheat as they want, is it? They’re -going to take that next.... Reclaim the oald tillage? -Wot did we let it go fallow fur, if it wurn’t cos it dudn’t -pay the labour?... Break up the grass-land? You’ll -be asking to plough the kitchen floor next.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p> - -<p>“If we doan’t do summat, I reckon we’ll be maade to.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon we will—saum as we wur maade to give up -Tom. And they say this country’s fighting Prussian -tyranny.”</p> - -<p>“Well, faather, if we doan’t grow more corn we’ll -lose the war. I wur reading in the paapers as all our -corn and wheat used to come from furrin parts, but now, -wud ships wanted to carry soldiers and them hemmed -U-boats spannelling around....”</p> - -<p>“You talk lik the <cite>Sussex News</cite>. Wot d’you want to -go vrothering about them things fur? You do your work -and doan’t go roving.”</p> - -<p>“Faather, I aun’t bin roving all this winter.”</p> - -<p>“No, you aun’t—that’s a good lad, fur sartain -sure.”</p> - -<p>“And if you let me do this job, I promise I’ll stick to -it and pull it through.”</p> - -<p>“You might as well chuck your money into the pond -as spend it on grain-growing nowadays.”</p> - -<p>“Not wud all these new arrangements the Govunmunt’s -maade ... guaranteed prices and all. Oh, -faather, let me try as I said. I want to do my bit saum -as Tom.”</p> - -<p>“Seemingly your bit’s to land Worge at the auctioneer’s. -Howsumdever, do wot you lik—I’m ill and -helpless and oald. I can’t stop you. Now adone do -wud all this vrotherification of a poor sick man, and -ask mother to let me have a spoonful of syrup in this -nasty muck.”</p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>So on Harry, sixteen years old, with little or no -experience, and a bad character to live down, fell the -task of bringing Worge into line with a national endeavour. -It was strange how his earthy imagination had -taken fire at the new idea, and a curious justification of -the Press. A sense of patriotism had wakened in him, -as it had not wakened in Tom after nearly a twelve-month’s -service. Tom was no longer indifferent or unwilling, -but his enthusiasm scarcely went beyond the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> - -regiment—the feeling of “Sussex chaps”—the idea of fighting -for Worge, or, at the most abstract, “having a whack -at Kayser Bill.”</p> - -<p>He had been in France about three months now. He -had not been sent over as soon as he expected, but in -November there had been a big draft from the 18th -Sussex, including Tom and Jerry and Bill, also Mus’ -Archie—Mus’ Dixon, who had been badly gassed on the -Somme, stayed behind in charge of “School,” and -rumour said that he would not be sent out again. So -far Tom seemed to have had a far duller time abroad -than in England; he had not so much as seen a German; -and his letters home were chiefly about mud. The -family jealously hinted that his letters to Thyrza Honey -were more entertaining. However, he kept his promise -to Harry, and sent him councillor postcards now and -again. The last had consisted of just one word—“spuds!”</p> - -<p>That was the spring when potatoes were being sold at -sixpence a pound in Eastbourne and Hastings, and such -inducements were held out to growers, that instead of -the usual modest half-acre, Harry intended to make potatoes -part of his new scheme. The two-acre was in -potash this year, also the home field, and Harry decided -to break up the pasture-land next the orchard. Some -of the space would have to be used for roots—swedes -and wurzels—but there would be a spud-growing such -as Worge had never seen in its history.</p> - -<p>Then there was the more ticklish problem of the -grain, and what kinds to sow. Harry took Tom’s advice -and decided on Sandy oats for the Street field and the -field next the Volunteer. In the home field he would -grow awned wheat—and red spring wheat on the reclaimed -tillage of the Sunk Field.</p> - -<p>Then came the problem of which grass-lands to break - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> - -up. If only Tom had been there to advise him! He -dare not ask his father, in case he should withdraw his -first permission. Breaking up grass-land is heresy to an -orthodox farmer, and it was quite possible that Mus’ -Beatup would change his mind when it came to the crisis. -For this reason Harry said no more about it, and planned -craftily to start work on one of his father’s “bad days,” -when he would not be likely to interfere. Left without -counsel, he decided to break up the rest of the Sunk Field, -also Forges Field, and an old pasture at the Bucksteep -end of the farm. These were wretched soils and would -have to be heavily manured; but none of the soils round -Worge was really good, and some decent grass must be -left for the cows and ewes. Manures were scarce and -dear, owing to the war, but Harry thought he could make -shift with the farmyard dung, supplemented by a little -night-soil, and a ton of waste from the gypsum mines -near Robertsbridge.</p> - -<p>All this cost him more thinking than he had ever done -in his life. Once or twice he lay awake from bed-time -till dawn, adding up figures, working out ways and -means, and making plans for settling any opposition, -drunk or sober, from Mus’ Beatup. His responsibility -was enormous, but he was at bottom too simple-minded -to feel the full weight of it, and his enthusiasm flamed -as clear as ever. By crabbed and common means—even -the smudgy columns of a provincial newspaper—the -vision had come to a country boy’s heart, and found -there a divine, undeveloped quality of imagination, and -an undisciplined power of enterprise. These two, which -had hitherto united to keep him from his work, were now -forged together in the heat of the new idea. But for the -first he would never have heard the call, and the second -alone made it possible that he should obey it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Harry could not help laughing at the faces of Juglery -and Elphick when he told them he meant to plough the -Sunk Field.</p> - -<p>“Brëak up grass, Mus’ Harry!”</p> - -<p>“Surelye! They’re asking farmers all over the country -to grow more wheat.”</p> - -<p>“Does Maaster know as you mean to plough the -Sunk?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he does. I cud never do it wudout he let -me.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said old Juglery, “I’ve bin on farm-work man -and boy these dunnamany year, and I’ve only bruk up -grass two times, and no good come of it, nuther. Wunst -it wur fur oald Mus’ Backfield up at Odiam, him wot -caum to nighe a hundred year, and then took a fit last -fall and died of joy when he heard as wheat wur ninety -shillings a quarter. T’other wur pore young Mus’ Pix -of the Trulilows, and he bruk up a valiant pasture, and -the oats caum up crawling about like pease, and each had -a gurt squlgy root lik a pertater. I says to him, being -young and joking like in those days, ‘You’re unaccountable -lucky,’ says I, ‘to grow pease and pertaters on the -same stalk,’ but he took it to heart, and went and shot -himself in the oast. So you see as boath the yeomen I -bruk up grass fur died, one o’ joy and t’other o’ sorrow.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I shan’t die of nuther, and we’ll have the -plough out Thursday if the weather hoalds.”</p> - -<p>The men were getting used to being ordered about by -Harry. Mus’ Beatup’s chill had gone off in a twisting -bout of rheumatism, which returned every now and then -with damp weather. He spent, therefore, a good deal of -time in the house, with sometimes a hobble as far as the -Rifle Volunteer, appearing only in the dry, frosty weather - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> - -when little could be done with harrow or plough. However, -when neighbouring farmers began to remark on the -enterprise of Worge, he was careful to take the credit -to himself—indeed he almost fancied that it was his own -doing, for Harry, who could have done nothing without -his authority, was careful to consult him on every occasion, -and it was Mus’ Beatup who ordered the grain -and checked the accounts, with many groans and dismal -foretellings.</p> - -<p>Those were good days for Harry, behind his plough. -Under the soft grey spring sky, rifted and stroked by -wandering primrose lights, through the damp air that -smelled of living mould, over the brown earth that rolled -and sprayed like a wave from the driving coulter, he -toiled sweating in the raw March cold. The smell of -earth, the smell of his own sweat, the smell of the sweat -of his horses hung thick over the plough, but every now -and then soft damp puffs of air would blow into the -miasma the fragrance of grass and primrose buds, of -sticky, red, uncurling leaves, and the new moss in the -woods. The share gleamed against the dun, and the -brown twigs of the copses drew their spindled tracery -against a sky which was the paler colour of earth—sometimes -a shower would fall, slanting along the hedges, the -thick drops tasting on Harry’s lips of the unfulfilled -spring.</p> - -<p>His work made him very tired. After all, he was -barely seventeen, and though sturdy had only just begun -to use his strength. The work of the farm was much -increased by the new plan, yet it was impossible to bring -extra hands to it, except occasionally by the conscription -of Zacky. Harry milked and ploughed and scattered and -dug, rising in the foggy blue darkness of the morning, -and often sitting up late over calculations and accounts. -Elphick and Juglery gave a pottering, rheumatic service, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> - -Mus’ Beatup could only be irregularly relied upon. So -in time Harry learned what it was to doze off out of sheer -weariness over his supper, or fall across the bed asleep -before he had pulled his trousers off. But strangely -enough, he found the life no hardship. Before the first -thrill of enterprise had passed he was beginning to like -the work for its own sake. There was a new keen -pleasure in the wearing of his muscles, almost a physical -luxury in his fatigue, and the lying with spread limbs -before the fire of evenings. His life seemed good and -full—everything was worth while, eating or sleeping or -toiling or resting. For the earth sometimes makes of her -servants lovers.</p> - -<p>He was far too busy during his working hours and -weary during his leisure to find much temptation in his -old errant pleasures. Willie Sinden appealed in vain to -a grimy, sweaty Harry asleep for an hour before the -fire at night—he was too unaccountable wearied to -vrother about ratting or Willie’s new ferret; and he -went to Senlac and Heathfield and Hailsham Fairs to -sell beasts, not to drink ginger-beer or pot into the German -Kaiser’s mouth in the shooting-gallery. Even the distant -woods had ceased to call, for Harry was now tasting their -adventure in his daily work. The chocolate furrows of -the Sunk Field were part of that same wonder which had -teased him in the fluttering hazels of Molash Spinney or -the wind in the gorse-thickets of Thunders Hill. The -far-off village green of Bird-in-Eye was not more full -of spells than the new-sown acres by Forges Wood. By -his toil, and because he toiled as a man, from the spark -of imagination within him, and not as a beast from the -grind of circumstances without, he had brought the distant -adventure home.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p> - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>In February Tom’s letters became more rousing. The -18th Sussex took part in the big advance on the Ancre, -and though Tom himself did not do anything very -exciting, he was no longer in the humiliating position of -having never seen a German. His descriptions of battle -were rather fumbling—“Then we had some tea and a -chap got in from the Glosters who had his tunick torn -something terrible.”—“We come into a French village -full of apple-trees and the walls were down so as you -saw into the houses, and in one house there was a pot -of ferns on the table.” He also confessed, in reply to -a message from Zacky, that though he had seen several -Germans, “with faces like roots,” he had not, to his -knowledge, killed one.</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup thought it necessary to improve on his -son’s letters at the pub.</p> - -<p>“Tom’s having valiant times,” he would say to the -bar of the Rifle Volunteer or of the Crown at Woods -Corner. “He killed a German officer wud his bayunite -and took his machine-gun. Mus’ Archie Lamb is unaccountable -proud of him, and says he’s sure to be a -lieutenant of the Sussex before long. He’s a good lad -is my lad, and it’s a tedious shaum as he was tuk away -from his praaper personal wark and maade a soldier of. -There’s none of my folk bin soldiers up till now—it’s -yeomen we’re born and we doan’t taake wages.... -When’s he think the war ull stop?—Well, it might be -any time, if the Govunmunt doan’t starve us all fust.”</p> - -<p>Sometimes Thyrza Honey brought Tom’s letters up -to read to the family at Worge. She was rather shy of -her future relations-in-law, who made no special effort -to be agreeable to her. Mrs. Beatup persisted in looking -on her as a designing woman who had forcibly - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> - -captured the innocent Tom, Nell was too clever for her, -and the males were grumpy and sidling. Only Ivy -seemed to like her, but Ivy was on bad terms with her -family at present, as ever since young Kadwell on leave -had forsaken his sweetheart of the Foul Mile for her -robuster charms, and the deserted one had turned up in -rage and dishevelment to make a personal protest at -Worge, the Beatups had chosen to resent her “goings -on.” They also threw Jerry Sumption in her teeth and -vaguely accused her of “things.” Now no young man -ever came to Worge without her parents lamenting that -they had a light daughter, and rows were frequent and -undignified. So Ivy’s liking was no recommendation of -Thyrza, who in consequence was suspected of goings on -herself. However, she would not give up her visits, for -she knew Tom liked her to pay them, and often—rather -tactlessly—sent messages to his family through her.</p> - -<p>Thyrza knew more about the British front and the -Battle of the Ancre than did the Beatups. Not that -Tom could be eloquent even to her, but her imagination, -warmed by love, was quicker to piece together the fragments -and fill in the gaps. Also he told her things that -he would not have told the others. It was she who -heard the details of the great occasion on which he first -actually and personally killed a German.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I was sentry, and you always feel as the place is full -of Boshes, and you think you see them and it isn’t -them. Then one night after moon-up I thought I saw -a Bosh over against the enemy wire, and I said to myself -as he wasn’t a Bosh really, though my hair was all -standing up on my head. Then he moved and I let -fly with my rifle as I’ve done umpty times at nothing, -and then he was still and I saw him hanging on the wire. -Reckon he was dead, but I went on putting round after -round into him I felt so queer—not scared only kind -of enjoying it like as if you were shooting at the Fair, -only I knew as I was killing something and it made me -happy. But afterwards I got very cold and sick.”</p> - -<p>“He never tells us how he feels about things,” complained -Mrs. Beatup. “It’s never more’n ‘I had my -dinner’ to us.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he doan’t git much time for writing letters. -He knows as wot he tells me gits passed on to you.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’ll never say naun agaunst you, Thyrza Honey, -but I must point out as he knew us afore he knew you. -He’s unaccountable young to be shut of his mother, and -it ud be praaperer if his messages wur to you through -us.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup’s voice was hoarse with dignity, and -Thyrza hung her head.</p> - -<p>“I’m the last as ud ever want to taake him away -from his mother,” she murmured—and ten days later -Mrs. Beatup got a thick smudgy letter on which Tom -had spent hours of ink and sweat in obedience to Thyrza’s -command.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>About a fortnight later an impudent-looking little girl -with a big mouth came wobbling up Worge drive on a -bicycle, and from a wallet extracted a telegram which she -handed to Zacky, who sat on the doorstep peeling a stick. -Zacky ran with it to his mother, who refused to open it.</p> - -<p>“I’ll have no truck with telegrams—they’re bad things. -Fetch your faather.”</p> - -<p>Zacky ran off in great excitement, and soon Mus’ -Beatup came lumbering in, very red after planting -potatoes.</p> - -<p>“Wot’s all this, mother?—another of those hemmed -telegrams?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes, and I reckon Tom’s killed this time.”</p> - -<p>“Can’t be—we only got a letter last night.”</p> - -<p>“Ivy says they taake four days to come over. He -may have bin killed this mornun—got a shell in his -stomach lik Viner’s poor young boy.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe it’s to say he’s coming hoame,” said Zacky.</p> - -<p>“Shurrup!” growled his father.</p> - -<p>He tore the envelope, with a queer twitching of the -corners of his mouth.</p> - -<p>“He aun’t killed,” he said shakily—“only wounded.”</p> - -<p>A moan came from the mother’s parted lips, and she -closed her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Maybe it’s naun very tar’ble,” continued the father. -“They said ‘serious’ in Mus’ Viner’s telegram; here it’s -only—‘regret to inform you that Private Beatup has been -wounded in action.’”</p> - -<p>“Will they let me go to him?”</p> - -<p>“Aun’t likely—he’s over in France.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup did not cry, but all the colour went from -her face and her lips were strangely blue. Then suddenly -her head fell over the back of the chair.</p> - -<p>“Zacky!” shouted Mus’ Beatup—“fetch the whisky -bottle that’s in the pocket of my oald coat behind the -door.”</p> - -<p>He put his arm round his wife, and lifted her head to -his shoulder, while Zacky ran off with piercing howls. -These were fortunately louder than those of the poor -duck whose neck Ivy was wringing outside the stable. -She rushed in, all bloody from her victim, and in a few -moments had laid her mother on the floor, unfastened -her dingy remains of stays, and dabbled her forehead -with water, while Mus’ Beatup, relieved of his stewardship, -stumped about, groaning, and drank the whisky -himself. In the midst of it all the big-mouthed little -girl, forgotten in the drive, started beating on the door -and demanding “if there was an answer, please.” - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> - -Zacky was sent to dismiss her and vented his grief on -the messenger of woe by putting out his tongue at her -till she was out of sight—a salute which she returned -with all the increased opportunities that nature had given -her.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup soon recovered.</p> - -<p>“I caum over all swummy like ... this is the first -time I’ve swounded since Zacky wur born ... I reckon -this is sharper than childbirth.”</p> - -<p>The tears came at last, and she sobbed against Ivy’s -bosom.</p> - -<p>“Doan’t go vrothering, mother. I tell you it’s naun -tar’ble. They said ‘seriously’ when poor Sid Viner wur -wounded to death, and Ted Podgam in Gallipoli. Maybe -they’ll send him hoame soon.”</p> - -<p>“I want to go to him.... He’s got a hole in him.... -Why do they kip his mother from him when he’s -sick? When he had measles he never let go my hand one -whole day, and he said, ‘Stay wud me, mother—I feel -tedious bad.’ Maybe he’s saying it now.”</p> - -<p>“And maybe he aun’t. Maybe he’s setting up in bed -eating chicken and drinking wine, wud no more’n a piece -off his big toe.”</p> - -<p>She took out a dirty handkerchief and wiped her -mother’s eyes. Then she said:</p> - -<p>“I maun go and tell Thyrza Honey.”</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>But the fates had decided to honour Tom’s mother -above his sweetheart in that it was she alone who bore -the full grief of his wounding. On her way to the shop, -Ivy met Thyrza engaged in something as near a run as -her plump person was capable of, and waving in her -hand a letter. It was a pencil-scrawl written in hospital - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> - -at Boulogne, telling Thyrza not to vrother, because he -was doing valiant. He had got a Blighty one and hoped -to be sent home soon. It was nothing serious, only a -bit of shrap in his foot. “Didn’t I tell mother as it was -no more’n a piece off his big toe?” cried Ivy triumphantly.</p> - -<p>The letter had been Thyrza’s first news of Tom’s -wound, and all the anxiety and yearning she felt were -swallowed up in the joy of his coming home. A few -days later she had a telegram from him, telling of his -arrival in hospital at Eastbourne, and by this time Mrs. -Beatup had recovered sufficiently to resent the fact that -it had been sent to Thyrza and not to her.</p> - -<p>Everyone was glad that Tom was at Eastbourne, as it -could be reached from Sunday Street in a few hours by -carrier’s cart and train. The very next morning Mrs. -Beatup and Mrs. Honey set out together, the latter with -a basket of eggs and flowers, and her pockets bulging -with Player’s cigarettes, the former nursing a weighty -dough-cake, beloved of Tom in ancient times, and so -baked that she fondly hoped he would never notice the -nearly total absence of sugar and plums. Thyrza looked -very unlike herself in a close-fitting blue jersey and -knitted cap; Mrs. Beatup wore what she called her Sunday -cape, which is to say the cape she would have worn -on Sundays if she had ever had the leisure to go out, -likewise her Sunday bonnet (similarly conditioned), made -of black straw and bearing a good crop of wheat.</p> - -<p>The two women went by carrier’s cart to Hailsham, -where they took the train, arriving at Eastbourne soon -after one. They went first to a creamery, where they -rather hesitatingly ordered poached eggs and a pot of -tea. The eggs were stale and the tea had not that -“body” which their custom required. Mrs. Beatup -began to wonder what Tom was getting to eat—if this - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> - -was what you got when you paid for it, what did you -get when you didn’t pay for it? she’d like to know.</p> - -<p>She was a little relieved at the sight of Tom, looking -much fatter and browner and better in hospital than -she had ever seen him outside it. He looked happy, -too, with his broad face all grins to see them, his mother -and sweetheart. And since he looked so brown and well -and happy, she wondered why it was that she wanted -so much to cry.</p> - -<p>Thyrza did not want to cry. She held Tom’s hand, -and laughed, and was quite talkative, for her. She -made him tell her over and over again how he had been -wounded, and how they had taken him to the base hospital -and then to Boulogne, and then in a hospital ship -all signed with the cross to Blighty. Mrs. Beatup made -up her mind that next time she would come alone.</p> - -<p>And so she did—much to the surprise of her family, -who had hitherto found her full of qualms and fears even -at the thought of a visit to Senlac.</p> - -<p>“I mun have my boy to myself whiles I’ve got the -chance,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Well,” remarked Ivy tactlessly, “I reckon he’d sooner -have you separate—he’ll be wanting Thyrza aloan a bit.”</p> - -<p>“Will he, miss? That aun’t why I’m going different -days. We aun’t all lik you wud your kissings and loverings. -I wish to goodness you’d git married and have -done.”</p> - -<p>“And taake some poor boy away from his mother,” -mocked Ivy. “I wouldn’t be so cruel.”</p> - -<p>Her mother made a swoop at her with her open hand, -but Ivy dodged, and ran off, laughing good-naturedly.</p> - -<p>None of the other Beatups ever went to see Tom at -Eastbourne. The journey was too expensive, and they -were sure to have him home on leave before long. Mrs. -Beatup went about twice a week, with various messages - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> - -from the rest of the family muddled up in her head. She -would sit beside him, holding his hand, strangely delicate -with sickness, between her own hard, cracked, work-weary -ones, wishing that they could find more to say to -each other, and at the same time cherishing those numbered -moments when she could have him to herself. -Thyrza went oftener, shutting up shop with a recklessness -that would have ruined a less personal business. -Tom’s only other visitor was the Reverend Mr. Sumption.</p> - -<p>He came one afternoon to inquire about Jerry, but -Tom could not tell him much. Jerry kept away from -him, and the little that Beatup knew of his doings he -was anxious to conceal from his father.</p> - -<p>“Maybe now he’s out there he’ll get on better,” he -suggested.</p> - -<p>“Better? He’s always done well,” said Mr. Sumption -loftily. “He’ll have to do unaccountable well if he does -better. Don’t think, Tom, that I came to you because -I doubted my son, but he was never much of a letter-writer, -and now, being busy and all....”</p> - -<p>That night Tom lay awake an hour or so, thinking of -parents. It was queer how they stuck to their children. -His mother, now, coming all this way to see him, though -she was nervous of the journey and had very little money -to spend on it.... Mr. Sumption, too, standing up for -that lousy tyke of a Jerry.... Would he ever feel like -this for one of his own flesh—not only when that one lay -helpless and dependent on him, but had gone out from -him and chosen his own path? “Even as a father pitieth -his children ...” so the Bible said, and seemingly there -was no bound or end to that pity. Perhaps one day he -would feel it in his own heart (the curve of Thyrza’s -arms made him think of a cradle). He remembered what -Mr. Sumption had said to him long ago, the night before - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> - -he joined up—“You’ll understand a bit of what I feel -... some day when you’re the father of a son.”</p> - - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>Perhaps it was the inactivity of the days that made -Tom lie awake so much at night. He generally had an -hour or two to wait for sleep, and it seemed as if in those -hours his thoughts jumped and raced in a way they -never did by daylight. It was in those hours that he -formed his resolution to marry Thyrza before he went -back to France. When he left hospital he would probably -have a fortnight or so at home, and they could be -married at once by licence. Then, he felt, with a sudden -swallowing in his throat, he would have had his little bit -of life, even if Fritz cut it short before he could see those -arms he loved become the cradle he had dreamed them.</p> - -<p>The future meant even less to him now than the past. -An almighty present ruled the world in those days, for -it was all that a man could call his own. Lord! if that -crump had dropped a few yards nearer, he might have -lost the chances he was grabbing now. He wondered -how a year ago he could ever have dreamed and dawdled -over his love for Thyrza, put off its declaration to a vague -and distant time which might never be. It was queer -how he had counted on the future then, made plans for -doing things “sometime.” The last year had taught him -how close that sometime stood to Never. Not that Tom -felt any forebodings. Indeed, he had the optimistic -fatalism of most soldiers. He was safe until a shell came -along with his number on, and then—well, many better -chaps’ numbers had been up before his. Meantime, it -was his business to seize the present hour and all it contained, -nor, when he planted, think of gathering, nor in -the seed-time dream of harvest.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p> - -<p>He never doubted Thyrza’s readiness, and was a little -surprised when she mentioned things like “gitting some -cloathes,” and “having the house done.” Experience -had not yet taught her to mistrust the future—for her -to-morrow always came, and must be decently prepared -for. However, when she saw how desperately Tom was -set on marriage, she brushed aside the scruples of habit -with a heroism they both of them failed to see.</p> - -<p>“I’ll marry you soon as you come hoame, dear, and -then we can have a bit of honeymoon.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll go away. I’ll take you to Hastings, maybe—we’ll -git a room there.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Tom! Lik a grand couple! We mun’t go -chucking the money away.”</p> - -<p>“We woan’t chuck it all away, but we’ll chuck a fair-sized -bit. I doan’t git much chance of spending out -there.”</p> - -<p>She looked at him tenderly.</p> - -<p>“To think as I ever thought you wur slower nor me!”</p> - -<p>“I wur a gurt owl,” said Tom. “Lord! if I’d a-gone -West, and never so much as kissed you....”</p> - -<p>“But you did kiss me, dear—in the shop, the evenun -afore you went away.”</p> - -<p>“Twur only your hand, and I wur all quaaking like a -calf.”</p> - -<p>Thyrza sighed.</p> - -<p>“It wur a lovely kiss.”</p> - -<p>The Beatups were naturally indignant at Tom’s -decision. To them it savoured of undue haste, if not of -indecency. Courtships in Sunday Street usually lasted -from two to ten years. Indeed, Maudie Speldrum had -been wooed for fifteen years before she took matters into -her own hands and proposed to Bert Pix. Tom had not -been engaged to Thyrza six months. What did they -want to get married for? And what was Tom but a lad?—a - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> - -mere child in his mother’s eyes—a calf that Mrs. -Honey was leading to market, all ignorant (as she could -not be) of what lay ahead. In Sunday Street, marriage -was the end—the end of love, the end of youth—and -mixed with Mrs. Beatup’s jealousy of the other woman -and suspicion of her motives, was the desire to keep her -son a little longer in the frisky meadows of his boyhood -before he was led to those lean pastures she knew so well.</p> - - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>About the middle of March, Tom was moved to a -convalescent hospital at Polegate, and a fortnight later -sent home. Worge gave him a big hail, and the whole -family, including Thyrza, sat down to a supper which -was supposed to outshine the best efforts of hospital. -That supper was not only a welcome but a farewell. -When he had eaten two more in the muddle of his kin, -he would eat a third in quiet, alone with Thyrza. The -few necessary preparations for his marriage had been -made, and the room was booked in Hastings for the third -day from now. His happiness made him dreamy, and -also tender towards those he was to leave, for though he -had not realised his mother’s jealousy of his sweetheart, -he vaguely understood that it would hurt her to lose -him, as lose him she must when he went to this other -woman’s arms. So he held her hand under the table -oftener and longer than he held Thyrza’s, and kissed her -good night without being asked.</p> - -<p>The next day Harry took him to see the spring sowings. -They were finished now, and the chocolate acres -lay moist and furrowed in a muffle of misty April sunshine. -Harry, more thickset and sinewy than of old, -tramped a little behind his brother, as a workman after -an inspector, with sidelong glance at Tom’s brown, stubborn - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> - -profile, anxious to see if praise or delight could be -read there.</p> - -<p>Tom was indeed delighted with the fruits of Harry’s -industry, swelling in soft, scored curves from Worge’s -southern boundaries at Forges Wood to the northern -limits of the Street. But he was also aghast.</p> - -<p>“You’ll never have the labour to kip and reap this—and -you’ve bruk up grass!”</p> - -<p>“I can manage valiant till harvest, and then I’ll git -extra hands. As for the grass, ’twur only an old-fool’s -idea that it mun never be ploughed.”</p> - -<p>“And I reckon ’tis a young-fool’s idea to plough it,” -said Tom rebukingly.</p> - -<p>“The newspaaper said as grass-lands mun be bruk up -now, to maake more acres.”</p> - -<p>“And wot does the paaper know about it?”</p> - -<p>“A lot, seemingly.”</p> - -<p>“It aun’t lik to know more than men as have worked -on the ground all their lives, and their faathers before -’em. Any farmer ull tell you as it’s hemmed risky to -plough grass.”</p> - -<p>“The paaper never said as it wurn’t risky, but it said -as farmers must taake some risks these times, and git -good crops fur the country, and help on the War.”</p> - -<p>“Doan’t you go vrothering about the War, youngster. -It aun’t no concern of yourn—and I reckon it woan’t -help us Sussex boys much if our farms go to the auctioneer’s -while we’re away.”</p> - -<p>“Worge woan’t go to the auctioneer’s. You spik lik -faather wud his faint heart. And a lot of good it’ll do -if you chaps beat the Germans out there and we have to -maake peace ’cos we’re starving wud hunger at home.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p> - -<p>“There’ll be no starving—you taake it from me. -We’ll have ’em across the Rhine in another six months, -so ’kip the home-fires burning till the lads’ returning,’ -and doan’t go mucking up the farm fur the saake of a -lot of silly stuff you read in the paapers.”</p> - -<p>But Harry stuck doggedly to his idea—</p> - -<p>“I mun try, Tom—and I’ll never git the plaace sold -up, fur we’re spending naun extra save fur the seed and -a bit of manure. I go unaccountable wary, and do most -of the wark myself, wud faather to help me on his good -days, and Juglery and Elphick stuck on jobs as they can’t -do no harm at. It’ll do Worge naun but good in the end—wheat’s -at eighty shilling a quarter, and guaranteed—and -anyhow, I tell you, I mun try.”</p> - -<p>Tom was impressed.</p> - -<p>“Well, Harry, I woan’t say you aun’t a good lad. -But it maakes me unaccountable narvous. Here have -I bin toiling and sweating this five year jest to kip the -farm together, and now you go busting out all round and -saying it ull win the War. Wot if we chaps out there -doan’t win, t’aun’t likely as you will. Howsumdever....”</p> - - -<h3>9</h3> - -<p>Tom’s marriage was on the Thursday of Easter week. -All the morning a soft teeming fog lay over the fields, -drawing out scents of growth and warmth and life. -Worge lay in the midst of it like the ghost of a farm, a -dim grey shadow on the whiteness, and the voices of her -men came muffled, as in dreams. Towards noon the -sunshine had begun to eat away the mist—it grew yellower, -streakier, and at last began to scatter, rolling up -the fields in solemn clouds, balling and pilling itself -against the hedges, melting into the April green of the -woods; and then suddenly it was gone—sucked up into -the sky, sucked down into the earth, living only in a few -drops in the cups of violets.</p> - -<p>The Bethel stared away across the fields to Puddledock. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> - -For some time its roof, with the chipped Georgian -pediment, had risen above the mist. Then the -grim windows had come out to stare, and then the -tombstones that grew round its feet, leaning and tottering -among the chapel weed.</p> - -<p>Tom and Thyrza were to be married at the Bethel. -This had caused some surprise in the neighbourhood, -as the Beatups had always been “Church”; but friendship -and convenience had led to the decision—friendship -for the Reverend Mr. Sumption, because Tom knew him -better than Mr. Poullett-Smith, and was sorry for him on -account of Jerry, convenience because the chapel was -close at hand, and the makers of the wedding breakfast -would have time to run across and witness the ceremony, -which they could not have done had it taken place at -Brownbread Street, two miles away.</p> - -<p>The only one to whom these reasons seemed inadequate -was Nell. To her the proceeding was not only -heretical but mean—her affection for the Church had -always been led by taste rather than belief, and her attitude, -which she had considered (under instruction) as -that of an orthodox Anglican, was in reality that of an -Italian peasant, who looks upon his church as his drawing-room, -a place of brightness to which he can go for -refuge from the drabness of every day. Her opposition -to the chapel marriage was based on an emotion similar to -what she would have felt for the party who, with the -chance of eating and drinking out of delicate china in -the drawing-room, chose to devour their food out of -broken pots in the scullery. She did not acknowledge -this, any more than she acknowledged the motive which -fed uneasily on Mr. Poullett-Smith’s inevitable disgust; -she talked to Tom about his duty as a Baptized Churchman, -and was both surprised and grieved to find that the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> - -War seemed to have destroyed what little sense of this -he had ever had.</p> - -<p>“I tell you as it’s all different out there. There aun’t -no church and chapel saum as there is here. You stick -to church on Church Parade down at the base, but -when you’re up in the firing line, there’s a queer kind -of religion going around. You hear chaps praying as -if they wur swearing and swearing as if they wur praying, -and in the Y.M. plaace they have sort of holy sing-songs -wud priests and ministers all mixed up; and I’ve -heard a Catholic priest read the English funeral over one -of us, and I’ve seen a rosary on a dead Baptist’s neck. -Church and chapel may be all very good for civvies, but -you can’t go vrothering about such things when you’re -a soldier.”</p> - -<p>Nell was hurt and frightened by these sayings. She -had an idea that any danger or suffering would only -make a man cling closer to the Sanctuary. It was terrible -to think that at the first earthquake Peter’s Rock cracked -to its foundations. A defiant loyalty inspired her, and at -first she made up her mind not to go to the wedding, but -she could not resist the temptation of asking Mr. Poullett-Smith’s -advice, and he thought she had better attend, -and pray for the backsliders. He also earnestly bade her -distrust any appearance of cracks in Peter’s Rock, and -she went away comforted, with shining eyes and burning -cheeks, and her church standing firmer than ever on the -rock which was neither Peter nor Christ, but her love for -a very ordinary young man.</p> - -<p>So all the Beatups went to the Bethel, leaving Worge -locked up and the yard in charge of Elphick. Mrs. -Beatup wore her Sunday bonnet, the wheat-crop having -been superseded, contrary to all the laws of rotation, -by one of small green grapes. Both Ivy and Nell had - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> - -new gowns, Ivy looking squeezed and unnatural in a -sky-blue cloth, which together with a pair of straight-fronted -corsets, she had bought at a Hastings dress -agency—Nell pretty and demure in a grey coat and -skirt, and one of those small towny-looking hats which -seemed to find their way to her head alone in all Dallington. -Mus’ Beatup, with Harry and Zacky, smelled -strongly of hair-oil and moth-killer, and Harry had -nearly scrubbed his skin off in his efforts to get out of -it the earth of his new furrows. He was considered too -young to be Tom’s best man, and the office had been -at the last moment unexpectedly filled by Bill Putland. -Bill, now a sergeant, was home on seven days’ leave, -looking very brown and smart, and Polly Sinden, who, -not having been invited with her parents to the breakfast, -had vowed she would waste no time going to the -chapel, suddenly changed her mind and appeared in her -most ceremonial hat.</p> - -<p>The chapel was packed with Sindens, Bourners, -Putlands, Hubbles, Viners, Kadwells, Pixes. Mrs. -Lamb of Bucksteep was there, with Miss Marian, but -as she had not thought it necessary to put on the elegant -clothes in which she was seen gliding into church on Sundays, -her presence was regarded as an affront rather -than an honour; Mrs. Beatup would have dressed herself -in her best for any Bucksteep wedding, and thought that -the squire’s wife might have done the same for her. -Also, she came in very late, and her entrance was mistaken -for that of the bride by many folk, who shot up -out of the pew-boxes, only to be disappointed by the sight -of Mrs. Lamb’s faded, powdered features behind a -spotted veil, and Miss Marian swinging along after her -with a tread like a policeman. “I reckon my feet are -smaller than hers,” thought Nell, “for all that I’m only - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> - -a farmer’s daughter.”</p> - -<p>Then Mr. Sumption came out of the vestry, and stood -under the pulpit to wait for the bride. He looked more -like a figure of cursing than of blessing—black as a rook, -with his thick curly hair falling into his eyes, yet not -quite hiding the furrows which the plough of care had -dragged across his forehead. There was a rustle and a -flutter and a turning of heads, as Thyrza came up the -aisle on the arm of the bachelor cousin who was giving -her away. She wore a grey gown like a March cloud, -and carried a bunch of flowers, and the congregation -whispered when they saw that she had sleeked her -feathery hair with water, so that it lay smooth behind -her ears, which were round and pink like those of mice. -“It didn’t look like Thyrza,” everyone said—and perhaps -that was why Tom was so loutishly nervous, and -nearly broke Bill Putland’s heart with his fumblings and -stutterings.</p> - -<p>Thyrza was nervous too, her head drooped like an -over-blown rose upon its stalk, and Mr. Sumption’s -manner was not of the kind that soothes and reassures. -He shouted at the bride and bridegroom, and “thumped -at” various members of the congregation who whispered -or (later in the proceedings) yawned. He was -not often asked to officiate at weddings, and had apparently -decided to make the most of this one, for he -wound up with an address to the married pair so lengthy -and apocalyptic that Mrs. Beatup became anxious as -to the fate of a pudding she had left to “cook itself,” -and rising noisily in her pew creaked out through a -silence weighted with doom. “And whosoever hath -not a wedding garment,” the minister shouted after her, -“shall be cast into the outer darkness, where there is -weeping and gnashing of teeth”—for which Mrs. Beatup -never forgave him, as she had spent nearly three shillings -on retrimming her bonnet, “and if her cape wurn’t - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> - -good enough fur him, she reckoned he’d never seen a -better on the gipsy-woman’s back.”</p> - -<p>The service came to an end at last, and the congregation -pushed after the bride to see her get into the cab -drawn by a pair of seedy greys, which would take her -the few yards from the chapel to the farm. The breakfast -was to be at Worge, for Thyrza had no kin besides -the bachelor cousin, and it was considered more fitting -that her husband’s family should undertake the social -and domestic duties of the occasion. The feast was -spread in the kitchen, which had been decorated with -flags, lent for the afternoon from the club-room of the -Rifle Volunteer. The unsugared wedding-cake was a -terrible humiliation to Mrs. Beatup, who felt sure that, -in spite of her repeated explanations, everyone would put -it down to poverty and meanness instead of to the tyranny -of “Govunmunt.” However, she had restored the balance -of her self-respect by providing wine (at eighteen-pence -the bottle).</p> - -<p>There was much laughter and good-humour and the -wit proper to weddings as the guests squeezed themselves -round the table. Even Mr. Sumption’s five-minute -grace, in which he approvingly mentioned more than one -dish on the table, but added to his score with Mrs. Beatup -by referring to the wine as poison and “the forerunner of -thirst in hell,” was only a temporary blight. The bride -and bridegroom alone looked subdued, their sleek heads -drooping together, their hands nervously crumbling their -food—also Ivy, who was heard to say in a hoarse whisper -to Nell, “If I can’t go somewheres and taake my stays -off I shall bust.” However, in time she forgot her constriction -in flirting with Thyrza’s bachelor cousin, who -had pale blue eyes, bulging out as if in vain effort to catch -sight of a receding chin, and was exempt by reason of -ruptured hernia from military service.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p> - -<p>The usual healths were drunk, and the sight of other -people drinking—for he himself would take only water—seemed -to intoxicate Mr. Sumption, and he forgot the -cares that had made his black hair as ashes on his head—his -sleepless anxiety for Jerry, and the crying in him of -that day which shall burn the stubble—and became merry -as a corn-fed colt, laughing with all his big white teeth, -and paying iron-shod compliments to Thyrza and Ivy -and Nell, and even Mrs. Beatup, who maintained, however, -an impressive indifference. Bill Putland made the -principal speech of the afternoon, and looked so smart -and handsome, with his hair in a soaring quiff and a -trench-ring on each hand, that Ivy might have plotted to -substitute his arm for Ern Honey’s round her waist, if -she had not been too experienced to fail to realise that -he was about the only man in Dallington she could not -win with her floppy charms.</p> - -<p>In the end all was cheerful incoherence, and just as the -sunshine was losing its heat on the yard-stones, the bride -and bridegroom rose to go away. A trap from the Volunteer -would drive them to the station, and they climbed -into it through a flying rainbow of confetti, which stuck -in Thyrza’s loosening hair, and spotted her dim gown -with colours.</p> - -<p>Amidst cheering and laughter the old horse lurched -off, and soon Thyrza’s grey and Tom’s dun were blurred -together in the distance, which was already staining with -purple as the air thickened towards the twilight. The -guests turned back into the house, or scattered over fields -and footpaths. Ivy rushed upstairs to take off her stays, -and Bill Putland swaggered home between his parents, -with a flower in his button-hole and plans in his heart for -an evening at Little Worge. The Reverend Mr. Sumption -went off with Bourner to the smithy. The blacksmith -had a shoeing and clipping to do, and the minister - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> - -would sit and watch him in the red, hoof-smelling -warmth, and lend an experienced hand if occasion -needed. Mus’ Beatup, his tongue all sour with the Australian -wine, took advantage of the general flit to creep -along the hedge to the Rifle Volunteer, there to wait for -the magic stroke of six and unlocking of his paradise. -Mrs. Beatup was the last to leave the doorstep. She -thought she could hear the old horse clopping on the -East Road, and when her eyes no longer helped her to -follow her son, she used her ears. She remembered that -earlier occasion when she had gone with him to the end -of the drive and kissed him there. He had wanted her -then; he did not want her now—his good-bye kiss had -been kind yet perfunctory. Another woman had him—a -woman who had never suffered pain or discomfort or -anxiety or privation for his sake. Yet her jealousy had -unexpectedly died. Somehow, to-day, all that she had -suffered for Tom when she bore him, nursed him, reared -him and bred him, seemed a sufficient reward in itself. -Her sufferings had made him what he was, and this other -woman took only what she, his mother, had made. “She -never went heavy wud him, nor bore him in pain, nor lay -awaake at night wud his screeching, nor thought as he’d -die when he cut his teeth, nor went all skeered when he -took the fever.... So thur aun’t no sense in vrothering. -Reckon he’ll always be more mine nor hers, even if -I am never to set eyes on him agaun.”</p> - - -<h3>10</h3> - -<p>Tom and Thyrza came back from Hastings in a few -days. They talked as if they had been away for weeks, -and indeed it had seemed weeks to them—not that any -moment had faltered or dragged, but each had held the -delight of hours, and each hour had been a day of new - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> - -wonder. Perhaps the dazzle was brightest for Tom—Thyrza -could remember an earlier honeymoon, which -had held no presage of darkness to follow, and she -slipped back pretty easily into the old habit of having -a man about her; but for Tom even the traces of her -here and there in the room, her hat thrown down, her -petticoat trailing over a chair, the dim scent of clover -that hung on her pillow, making her bed like a field, all -joined to bind him with her enchantment, to drug him -with an ecstasy which had its sweet foundation in the -commonplace.</p> - -<p>When they came back to Sunday Street the honeymoon -did not end. Contrariwise, it seemed to wax fuller -in the freedom of the old ways. Even sweeter than the -sense of passionate holiday was the taking up of a common -life together, the daily sharing of food and work and -rest, the doing of things he had done a hundred times -before, but never like this. Thyrza’s little cottage had -been hung with new curtains, and some unknown hand—which -afterwards unexpectedly proved to be Nell’s—had -filled it with flowers on the evening of their return. -Bunches of primroses, violets and bluebells stuffed the -vases in bedroom and parlour, and the soft fugitive scent -of April banks mixed with the scent of lath and plaster -which haunts old cottages, and the more spicy, powdery -smells of the shop.</p> - -<p>The days were warm and drowsy, and the fields lay -in a muffle of sunshine, their distances all blurred with -heat. Round every farm the orchards rolled in pink-stained -clouds of bloom, and the young wheat was green -as a rainy sunset. The wind that brought the mutter -of the guns, brought also the bleating of lambs from the -pastures; scents seemed to hang and brood on the air, -or drift slowly from the woods—scents of standing water -and budding thorn, of hazel leaves hot in the sun, and - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> - -soft mixed fragrances of gorse and fern, of cows, of -baking earth, of currant bushes in cottage gardens....</p> - -<p>Towards evening Tom and Thyrza usually closed the -shop, and came out—either for a stroll up to Worge to -see his family, or for some more adventurous excursion -to Brownbread Street, or Furnacefield, or up to the -North Road and the straggle of old Dallington. They -had one or two quite long walks, for a new enterprise -had kindled in them both, and for the first time there -was mystery and allure in some shaky signpost at the -throws, or a little lane creeping off secretly. One day -they walked as far as Brightling, past the obelisk, through -the shuttling dimness of Pipers Wood and up Twelve -Oaks Hill by strange farms to the sudden clump of -Brightling among the trees. They went into the churchyard -where the yews spread shadows nearly as dark as -their own blackness and strange white peacocks perched -on the tombstones, with shrill, unnatural cries. There -was also a huge cone-shaped object, built of damp stones -and thickly grown with moss, and Thyrza unaccountably -took fright at this, and the peacocks, and the shadows and -the trees, and walked for most of the way home with -her head under Tom’s coat.</p> - -<p>He did not often think of when this time should end, -of the day that crept nearer and nearer to him over -drowsing twilights and magical, green sunrises. He knew -that a month hence all this delight would be a memory, -that between him and the spurge-thickening fields of May -would lie all the life of ugly adventure into which fate -had pitched him—and Thyrza would come to him only -on scraps of paper, in puffs of scent, in fugitive dreams, -in a passing light in some other girl’s eyes.... But -he was too simple and too happy to let thoughts of the -future spoil the present, besides, his habit of disregarding -the future now stood his friend. He would not see the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> - -clover in bloom, but saw it in the green—deep, rippling, -gleaming, like the sea—he would miss the hay, but now -he could see the buttercups under the moon, so yellow -that they seemed to paint the sky and turn the moon to -honey; Thyrza might in a month’s time be a memory, -belong to phantasy, but now she was a woman solid and -close, his woman, the maker of his home, the maker of -himself anew.... Once his mother had borne him, and -now it seemed as if this woman had borne him again, -into a new experience, a new happiness, a new wonder—so -perfect and complete that sometimes he almost felt as -if it did not matter whether he held it for ever or for a -day.</p> - - -<h3>11</h3> - -<p>On his last evening, he went up to Worge to say good-bye. -He felt already as if he did not belong to the -place. Harry’s drastic dealings with the tilth seemed -to have taken the fields away from him—he no longer -felt even a distant guardianship of those brown-ribbed -acres which had been green when he worked on them. -He felt, too, with a sense of estrangement, the dirt and -litter of the house, the muddling business which at six -o’clock had Ivy swilling out the scullery and Mrs. Beatup -still struggling with the washing. Thyrza never did a -stroke of housework after dinner, and yet her morning’s -tasks were never hurried; she never had Ivy’s flushed, -red face and tousled hair, or Mrs. Beatup’s forehead -shiny with sweat.</p> - -<p>His family were conscious of this—conscious that he -now had a standard of comparison by which to measure -their short-comings, and it made them sulkily suspicious -in their attitude. He was already the alien—the bird -that has left the nest, the puppy that has grown up and -gone a-hunting on his own. But this sense of estrangement - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> - -only seemed to make his parting sadder, for he -vaguely felt as if he had left them before he need, had -already divided himself from them by an earlier good-bye, -of which this was only the echo and the ghost.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup enquired politely after Thyrza, and sent -Ivy out to fetch in the others. Zacky climbed on Tom’s -knee and asked him to send him home a German helmet, -and Harry—whose heart was really very warm and loving -towards Tom—stood shyly behind his chair and could -not speak a word. Mus’ Beatup gave Tom an account -of the Battle of the Ancre, but failed to create the usual -respectful impression.</p> - -<p>“You see, faather, I was out there, and I know that -it happened different. St. Quentin aun’t anywhere near -the Rhine.”</p> - -<p>“There’s more’n one St. Quentin, saum as there’s -more’n one Mockbeggar, and more’n one Iden Green. -How do you know as there’s no St. Quentin on the -Rhine? You’ve never bin there, and you’ll never be -there, nuther.”</p> - -<p>“I reckon I’ll be there before I’m many months older.”</p> - -<p>“You woan’t,” said Mus’ Beatup solemnly, “it’s more -likely as the Germans ull be crossing the River Cuckmere -than as you’ll ever be crossing the River Rhine. Now, be -quiet, Nell, and a-done do, fur I tell you it’s bin proved -as we’ll never git to the River Rhine, so where’s the sense -of going on wud the war, I’d like to know?”</p> - -<p>“To prevent the Germans crossing the River Cuckmere,” -snapped Nell.</p> - -<p>“Oh, doan’t go talking such tar’ble stuff,” moaned -Mrs. Beatup. “If the Germans caum here I’d die of -fits.”</p> - -<p>“They woan’t come here,” said her husband, “and - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> - -we’ll never git there, so wot’s the sense of all this vrother, -and giving up our lads and ploughing up our grass and -going short of beer, all to end where we started? If -this war had bin a-going to do us any good, it ud a-done -it before now, surelye; but it’s a lousy, tedious, lamentaable -war, and the sooner we git shut of it the better.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I must be going,” said Tom, standing up. He -felt rather angry with his father, who, he thought, talked -like a “conscientious objector,” and was prostrating his -mighty intellect to base uses. “But maybe the beer has -addled him—he’s had a regular souse this winter, by his -looks.”</p> - -<p>He said good-bye to the family, refusing his mother’s -invitation to stay to supper, as he had promised to take -Thyrza for a walk that evening. However, he asked her -to come with him to the door, as there was something he -wanted to say to her alone.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup felt pleased at this mark of confidence, but -all Tom had to say as he kissed her on the threshold -was—</p> - -<p>“Mother, if anything wur to happen to me ... out -there, you know ... you’d be good to Thyrza?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Tom—you aun’t expecting aught?”</p> - -<p>“I hope not, surelye—but how am I to know?”</p> - -<p>Her face wrinkled for crying.</p> - -<p>“You didn’t use to spik lik that....”</p> - -<p>“Come, mother—be sensible. There aun’t no sense -spikking different, things being wot they are. I dudn’t -use to be married ... it’s being married that maakes a -chap think of wot might happen.”</p> - -<p>“You’d want me to taake Thyrza to live here?...”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I wouldn’t. She’ll have her liddle bit of -money, thank God, and maybe a pension besides. It -aun’t money as I’m thinking of—it’s just—it’s just as -she’ll break her heart.”</p> - -<p>“And I’ll break mine, too, I reckon.”</p> - -<p>Tom groaned.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You’re a valiant help to me, mother. I ask you a -thing to maake me a bit easier, and all you do is to -vrother me the more.”</p> - -<p>“Doan’t you go abusing your mother, Tom—wud -your last breath. If Thyrza’s heart gits broke I’ll give -her a bit of mine to mend it with—but no good ever -caum of talking of such things.”</p> - -<p>“I woan’t talk of them no more. Only, it had to be -done—you see, mother, there might be a little ’un as -well as Thyrza....”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Tom, a liddle baby fur you!”</p> - -<p>He blushed—“There aun’t no knowing, and I’d be -easier if....”</p> - -<p>“Oh, but I’d justabout love a liddle grandchild. You -need never fret over that, Tom. I’d give my days to a -liddle young un of yourn.”</p> - -<p>He kissed her, and they parted in love.</p> - - -<h3>12</h3> - -<p>He hurried back to Thyrza, and they shut up the -shop, and went out to the field by the willow pond. A -green, still dusk lay over the fields and sky; no stars -were out yet, but the chalky moon hung low over the -woods of Burntkitchen. The distant guns were silent, -only the bleating of lambs came from the Trulilows, and -every now and then a burst of liquid, trilling, sucking -melody from a blackbird among the willows.</p> - -<p>“Hark to the bird,” said Thyrza.</p> - -<p>“Maybe he’s got a nest full of liddle ’uns.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p> - -<p>“And a liddle wife as can’t sing—funny how hen-birds -never sing, Tom.”</p> - -<p>“Thyrza, I wish as I cud maake a home fur you, -dear.”</p> - -<p>“Wotever maakes you think of that? The birds’ nest? -Reckon I’ve got a dentical liddle home.”</p> - -<p>“But it’s wot you’ve always lived in. I never built -it for you.”</p> - -<p>“Doan’t you go fretting over that. I’d be lonesome -wudout the shop, Tom—I doan’t think as I’ll ever want -to be wudout the shop. And we’ve bin so happy there -together. It’s saum as if you’d built it fur me, since -you’ve maade it wot it never was before.”</p> - -<p>He drew her close to him, sleek, soft, heavy, like a -little cat, and leaned his cheek against her hair.</p> - -<p>“Reckon I’ll always think of you in it.... I’ll see -you setting up in the mornun wud your eyes all blinky -and your hair streaming down—and I’ll see you putting -on the kettle and dusting the shop, and maybe having -a bit of talk over the counter wud a luckier chap than -me. And all the day through I’ll see you, and in the -swale you’ll be putting your head out for a blow of air, -and there’ll be the lamp in the window behind you ... -and then you’ll lie asleep, and the room ull be all moony -and grey, and your liddle hand ull lie out on the blanket—so, -and your breath ull come lik the scent out of the -grass ... and when you turn your body it’ll be lik the -grass moving in the wind—and I woan’t be there to see -or hear or touch or smell you.”</p> - -<p>His arm tightened round her breast, and she leaned -against him as if she would fuse her body into his, share -its travels, hardships and dangers. The stars were creeping -slowly into the sky, dim and rayless in the thick -Spring night, which had put a purple haze into the zenith, -and made the great moon glow like a copper pan. The -fields were blooming with a soft yellow—the waters of -the pond had a faint gleam on their stagnation, and the -willows were like smoke with a fire in its heart, their -boughs pouring down in misty grey towards the water, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> - -with points and sparks of light here and there, as the -radiance danced among their leaves.</p> - -<p>The swell of the field against the eastern constellations -was broken by the gable of the shop, rising over -the hedge and pointing to the sign of the Ram. Tom’s -England—the England he would carry in his heart—had -widened to take in that little humped roof of moss-grown -tiles. It held not only the willow pond and the -woman beside it, but the home where together they had -eaten the bread and drunk the cup of common things. -It was not perhaps a very lofty conception of fatherland—not -even so high as Harry’s conception of a country -saved by his plough. Tom’s country was only a little -field-corner that held his wife and his home, but as he -sat there under the stars, he felt in his vague, humble -way, that it was a country a man would choose to fight -for, and for which perhaps he would not be unwilling -to die.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -</div> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PART IV: IVY</h2> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap">TOWARDS -June the country bounded by the Four -Roads woke to a certain liveliness. A big camp -had sprung up on the outskirts of Hailsham, on -the ridge above Horse Eye, and the excitement spread -to Brownbread Street, Sunday Street, Bodle Street, -Pont’s Green, Rushlake Green, and other Streets and -Greens—and cottage gardens were a-swing with lines of -khaki shirts, “soldiers’ washing,” taken in with high delight -at an army’s big spending.</p> - -<p>The girls of the neighbourhood began to take new -sweethearts with startling quickness. They came, these -strangers from the North, leaving their girls behind them, -and the girls of the South had lost their men to camps -in France and Midland towns. No doubt some kept faith -with the absent, but the spirit of the days mistrusted -space as it mistrusted time, and the wisdom of love took -no more account of happiness a hundred miles away than -of happiness a hundred months ahead. There were wooings -and matings and partings, all played out in the few -spare hours of a soldier’s day, in the few spare miles of -his roaming, under the thundery thick sky of a Sussex -summer, when heat and drench play their alternate havoc -with the earth.</p> - -<p>In those days Ivy Beatup lifted up her head. She -had had a dull time since Kadwell and Viner and Pix -went out to France. Thyrza’s cousin had turned out -miserable prey—he had actually proposed himself as her -husband to her father and mother, bringing forward most - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> - -satisfactory evidence of a more than satisfactory income, -derived from Honey’s Suitall Stores in Seaford. Thus -the strain between Ivy and her family was increased, and -her presence at home became a burden of reproach. They -could not see why she refused to bestow her splendid -healthy womanhood on this poor creature, why she would -rather scrub floors and gut fowls than sit with folded -hands in his parlour—that she had “taken him on” -merely to kill time, and that it wasn’t her fault if he -chose to treat her seriously and make a fool of himself.</p> - -<p>“You’ll die an old maid,” said her mother. “You’ll -go to the bad,” said her father, and Ivy, who had no -intention of doing either, felt angry and sore, and longed -to justify herself by a new love-affair more gloriously -conducted.</p> - -<p>When the soldiers came to Hailsham, she saw her -chance, and resolved to make the most of it. She -persuaded Harry to take her into the town on market-day, -and also found that she preferred the “pictures” -there to those at Senlac. Polly Sinden refused to abet -her—Bill Putland had given her distinct encouragement -on his last leave, and Polly decided that in future discreet -behaviour would become her best. So she refused -to prowl of an evening with Ivy, either in Hailsham or -Senlac, and Ivy—since no girl prowls alone—had to take -up with Jen Hollowbone of the Foul Mile, the same whom -Bob Kadwell had jilted, but who, soothed by time and a -new sweetheart, had generously forgiven her rival, especially -as Bob had once again transferred his affections, -and was now no more Ivy’s than Jen’s.</p> - -<p>The two girls went into Hailsham on market-days, and -strolled that way of evenings, winning the South Road -by Stilliands Tower and Puddledock, through the little -lanes and farm-tracks that were now all thick with June -grass, and smelled of hayseed and fennel. With grass - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> - -and goose-foot sticking to their skirts, and their hair -spattered with the fallen blossoms of elderflower, they -would come out on the South Road, where the dust swept -through the twilight before the wind. Warm and flushed, -with laughing eyes, and arms entwined, and slow proud -movements of their bodies, the girls would stroll past the -camp gates, leaning clumsily together and giggling. The -men would come pouring out after the day’s routine, seeking -what diversion they could find in lane or market-town. -It was in this way that Ivy met Corporal Seagrim -of the Northumberland Fusiliers.</p> - -<p>He was a tall, dark giant, well past thirty, with a becoming -grizzle in his hair, over the temples. His face -was brown as a cob-nut, and his speech so rough and -uncouth in the northern way that at first Ivy could -hardly understand him. They met in the market-place. -He had a companion who paired with Jen—an under-sized -little miner, with a pale face and red lips, but good -enough for Jen, since she already had a boy in France. -Of course Ivy had several boys—but they were no more -than good comrades, the interchangers of cheery postcards -on service and cheery kisses on leave. If she had -had a boy like Jen’s, she would have been more faithful -to him than Jen was, but she was free to do as she liked -with Seagrim—free when they met in the market-place, -that is to say, for by the time they said good-bye at Four -Wents under the stars, she was free no longer.</p> - -<p>They had gone to the “pictures,” but soon the moving -screen had become a dazzle to Ivy, the red darkness an -enchantment, the tinkling music an intoxication. Seagrim’s -huge brown hand lay heavily on hers, and her -limbs shook as she leaned against his shoulder, almost in -silence, since they found it hard to understand each -other’s speech. The man thrilled and confused her as no -other had done—whether it was his riper age, or his - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> - -almost perfect physical beauty, or some strange animal -force that thrilled his silence and slow clumsy movements, -she did not seek to tell. Self-knowledge was -beyond her—all she knew was that she could never give -him the careless chum-like affection she had given her -boys, that between them there never would be those light -hearty kisses which she had so often taken and bestowed. -She felt herself languid, troubled, full of a dim glamour -that brought both delight and pain. The music, the red -glow all seemed part of her sensation, though before she -used scarcely to notice them, except to hail a popular tune -or an opportunity for caresses.</p> - -<p>When the show ended, the soldiers offered to walk -with the girls as far as Four Wents, where the Puddledock -lane joins the South Road. Jen and the miner -walked on ahead, she holding stiffly by his arm, in a -manner suitable to one demi-affianced elsewhere. Ivy -and Seagrim followed. They did not speak; his arm -was about her, and every now and then he would stop -and pull her to him, dragging her up against him in -silent passion, taking from her lips kiss after kiss. The -aching passionate night looked down on them from the -sky where the great stars jigged like flames, was close -to them in the hedges where the scented night-wind fluttered, -and the dim froth of chervil and bennet swam -against the hazels. For the first time Ivy seemed to feel -a hushed yet powerful life in the country which till then -she had scarcely heeded more than the music and red -lamps of the show. Now the scents that puffed out of -the grass made her senses swim, the soft sough of the -wind over the fields, the distant cry of an owl in Tillighe -Wood, made her heart ache with a longing that was half -its own consummation, made her lean in a drowse of -ecstasy and languor against Seagrim’s beating heart, as -he held her in the crook of his arm, close to his side.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p> - -<p>At the Wents the parting came, with a loud ring of -laughter from Jen, and a “pleased to ha’ met yo’” -from the miner. But Ivy clung to her man, her eyes -blurred with tears, her throat husky and parched with -love as she murmured against his thick brown neck—</p> - -<p>“I’ll be seeing you agaun?...”</p> - -<p>“Aye, and yo’ will, li’l lass, li’l loove” ... he swore, -and straightway made tryst.</p> - -<p>When he was gone the night still seemed full of him—his -strength and his beauty and his wonder.</p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>Ivy was in love. The glamour had transmuted her -country stuff as surely as it transmutes more delicate -substance. The spring rain falls on the thick-stalked -hogweed as on the spurred columbine, and the divine -poetry of Love had given to her, as to a more tender -nature, its unfailing gift of a new heaven and a new -earth.</p> - -<p>Her whole being seemed gathered up into Seagrim, -into a strange happiness which had its roots in pain. -For the first time pain and happiness were united in -one emotion; when she was away from him, pain was -the strong partner, when with him, then happiness prevailed—and -yet not always, for sometimes in his presence -her heart swooned within her, and her face would grow -pale under his kisses and a moan stifle in her throat, and -also, sometimes, when he was away, a strange ecstasy -would seize her, and all her world would shine, and her -common things of slops and guts and mire become beautiful, -and the very thought of his being dazzle all the -earth....</p> - -<p>She never told him of this, indeed she herself scarcely -realised it. She felt in her thoughts a soft confusion, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> - -a happy bewilderment, a sweet ache, and everything was -changed and everyone spoke with a new voice—the very -kitchen boards were not the same since she met Seagrim, -and her family had queer new powers of delighting and -grieving her. “I must be in love,” she said to herself, -and straightway bought her man a pound of the best -tobacco at the Shop.</p> - -<p>She was very good to him. Her hearty, generous -nature found relief in spending itself upon him. She -seldom came to the meeting-place without some present -of tobacco or food—she did him a dozen little services, -mended his clothes, marked his handkerchiefs, polished -his buttons and his boots. Strangely spiritual as the -depths of her love might be, its expression was entirely -practical and animal. To serve him and caress him was -her only way of revealing those dim marvels that swam -at the back of her mind.</p> - -<p>The man himself was bewitched. Her generosity -touched him, and it would be a strange fellow indeed -who would not love to hold her to him, sweet and -tumbled like an over-blown flower, and take the softness -of her parted lips and sturdy neck. Ivy was like the -month in which he wooed her—July, thick, drowsy, -blooming, ripe, lacking the subtlety of spring and the dignity -of autumn, but more satisfying to the common man -who prefers enjoyment to promise or memory.</p> - -<p>They met most evenings, he walking eastward, she -westward, to Four Wents; there, where the tall stile -stands between two shocks of fennel, they would lean -together in the first charm of tryst, the dusk thickening -round them, hazing road and fields and barns and -bushes, their own faces swimming up out of it to each -other’s eyes, like reflections in a pond—hers round and -flushed under her tousled hair, like a poppy in a barley-field, -his brown and predatory with its hawk-like nose and - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> - -piercing eye under the grizzled curls. Then the dusk -would smudge them into each other and they would -become one in the swale....</p> - -<p>He led her up and down the little rutted lanes, under -a violet sky where the stars were red and the moon was -a golden horn. The thick fanning of the July air brought -scents of hayseed and flowering bean, the miasmic perfume -of meadowsweet, the nutty smell of ripening corn, -and the drugged sweetness of hopfields. All round them -would hang the great tender silence of night, the passionate -stillness of the earth under the moon, and their -poor broken words only seemed a part of that silence.... -“My loove, my li’l lass.” ... “I love you unaccountable, -Willie.” ... “Coom closer, my dear.” ... -The wind rustled over the orchards of Soul Street, and -the horns of the moon were red, and the sky thick and -dark as a grape, when they came back to the tall stile at -the throws, and parted there with caresses which love -made groping and vows which love choked to whispers.</p> - -<p>On Sundays they met more ceremonially, pacing up and -down the road at Sunday Street, from the shop to the -Rifle Volunteer—which was the parade-ground of those -girls of the parish who had sweethearts. Here Jen Hollowbone -showed her Ted and Polly Sinden her Bill, and -Ivy Beatup showed her Willie, walking proudly on his -arm, smiling with all her teeth at the girls whose sweethearts -were away and at the girls who had no sweethearts -at all.</p> - -<p>She even brought him to Worge once or twice, but -her family did not like him. This was partly because -they were still the champions of the rejected Ern Honey, -and partly because they resented his gruff manner, and -harsh, rumbling speech. He did not shine in company—he -was for ever boasting the superiority of Northumberland -ways over those of Sussex, and even told Mus’ - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> - -Beatup that he “spake like a fule” on American Intervention. -He horrified Nell by drinking out of his saucer—a -depth below any of the family’s most degrading collapses—and -offended Harry and Zacky by taking no -notice of them or interest in the farm. Indeed the only -being at Worge he seemed to care about—not excepting -Ivy, whom he almost ignored on these occasions—was -Nimrod, the old retriever; to him alone he would smile -and be friendly, hugging the old black head against his -tunic, and patting and slapping Nim’s sides till he became -demoralised by this unaccustomed fondling and frisked -about with muddy paws—which was all put down to Seagrim -for unrighteousness in his account with Mrs. -Beatup.</p> - -<p>“Wot d’you want wud un, Ivy?” she asked once—“a -gurt dark tedious chap lik that, wud never a good -word for a soul—not even yourself, he doan’t sim to -have—and a furriner too.”</p> - -<p>“He aun’t a furriner.”</p> - -<p>“He aun’t from these parts, like some I cud naum. -You’re a fool if you say no to a valiant chap lik Ernie -Honey and taake up wud a black unfriendly feller as -no one here knows naun about.”</p> - -<p>“Well, he doan’t have to have his inside tied up wud -a truss lik a parcel of hay, caase it falls out.”</p> - -<p>“You hoald your rude tongue. Wot right have you -to know aught of Ern Honey’s inside? And better a -inside lik a parcel of hay than a heart lik a barnyard -stone. He’s a hard-hearted man, your sojer—cares for -naun saave a pore heathen dog wot he brings spannelling -into the kitchen.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p> - -<p>“He cares for me.”</p> - -<p>“It doan’t sim lik it wud his ‘Eh, lass?—eh, lass?’ -whensumdever you spik. Reckon you maake yourself -cheap as rotten straw when you git so stuck on him.”</p> - -<p>“Who said I wur stuck on him?—he aun’t the fust -I’ve kept company with.”</p> - -<p>“No, he aun’t. You’re parish talk wud your goings -on. You’ll die an oald maid in the wark’us, and bring -us to shaum—and Harry ull bring us to auction, and Tom -ull be killed by a German, and bring us to death in sorrow. -All my children have turned agaunst me now I’m -old,” and Mrs. Beatup began to cry into her apron.</p> - -<p>Ivy’s big arms were round her at once....</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Relations between Ivy and Nell had always been a -little uneasy. Ivy was tolerant and good-humoured, but -could not always hide the contempt which she felt for -Nell’s refinements, while Nell, though she did not despise -Ivy, hated her coarseness—particularly since she could -never see it through her own eyes alone, but through -others to which it must appear even grosser than to -herself.</p> - -<p>One evening Nell came in from school, and as she -took off her hat before the bit of glass on the kitchen -wall, could see the reflection of Ivy munching her tea, -which she had started late, after a day’s washing. Her -sleeves were still rolled up, showing her strong arms, -white as milk to the elbow, then brown as a rye-bread -crust. Her meadow-green dress was unbuttoned, as if -to give her big breast play, and her neck was thick and -white, its modelling shown by bluish shadows. “She’s a -whacker!” thought Nell angrily to herself, then suddenly -turned round and said—</p> - -<p>“Jerry Sumption’s here.”</p> - -<p>“Lork!” said Ivy, biting off a crust.</p> - -<p>“I met him,” continued Nell, “and he knows you’re - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> - -going with Seagrim.”</p> - -<p>“Well, wot if he does?”</p> - -<p>“It might be awkward for you. He seemed very much -upset about it.”</p> - -<p>“Wot fur dud you go and tell un?”</p> - -<p>Nell sniffed.</p> - -<p>“I didn’t tell him. But your love-making isn’t exactly -private.”</p> - -<p>“No need fur it to be.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know—it might be better for you as well as -for us if the whole parish didn’t know so much about -your affairs.”</p> - -<p>“And I reckon you think as no one knows about -yourn?”</p> - -<p>Nell flushed—</p> - -<p>“Leave my affairs alone. I’ve none for you to meddle -with.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no—you aun’t sweet on Parson—not you, and -nobody knows you go after un!”</p> - -<p>“Adone-do wud your vulgar talk,” cried Nell furiously, -forgetting in her anger to clip and trim her blurry -Sussex speech. “I’ve warned you about young Sumption, -and it aun’t my fault if you have trouble.”</p> - -<p>“There woan’t be no trouble. I’ve naun to do wud -Jerry nor he wud me—I got shut of him a year agone.”</p> - -<p>All the same, she was not so easy as her words made -out. It was evil luck which had brought Jerry Sumption -back at just this time. He was bound to be a pest -anyhow, though perhaps if his jealousy had not been -roused he might have had enough sense to keep away. -Now he would most likely come and make a scene. -Even though she would not be his girl, he could never -bear to see her another man’s; he might even try to -make mischief between her and Seagrim—be hemmed -to the gipsy! At all events he would be sure to come -and kick up trouble.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p> - -<p>She was partly right. Jerry came, but he did not -make a scene. He turned up the next morning, looking -strangely dapper and subdued. Ivy interviewed him -in the outer kitchen, where she was blackleading the -fireplace. It spoke much for the sincerity of his passion -that he had hardly ever seen his charmer in a presentable -state—she was always either scrubbing the floor, or -cooking the dinner, or washing the clothes, or cleaning -the hearth. To-day there was a big smudge of black -across her cheek, and her hair was tumbling over ears -and forehead, from which she occasionally swept it back -with a smutty hand.</p> - -<p>Contrariwise, Jerry was neat and dressed out as she -had never seen him. His puttees were carefully wound, -his buttons were polished, his tunic was brushed, his -hair was sleek with water. He stood looking at her in -his furtive gipsy way, which somehow suggested a cast -in his fine eyes which were perfect enough.</p> - -<p>“Ivy....”</p> - -<p>She had decided that he should be the first to speak, -and had let the silence drag on for two full minutes.</p> - -<p>“Well?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve come—I’ve come to ask you to forgive me.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll forgive you sure enough, Jerry Sumption—but -I aun’t going wud you no more, if that’s wot you mean.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve taken up with another fellow.”</p> - -<p>“That’s no concern of yourn.”</p> - -<p>“But tell me if it’s truth or lie?”</p> - -<p>“It’s truth.”</p> - -<p>“And you love him?”</p> - -<p>“Maybe I do.”</p> - -<p>Jerry’s face went the colour of cheese.</p> - -<p>“Then you’ll never come with me again, I reckon.”</p> - -<p>“I justabout woan’t”—Ivy sat up on her heels and -looked straight into his dodging eyes—“I’ll forgive you - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> - -all, but I’ll give you naun—d’you maake that out? I -cud never have loved you, and you’ve shown me plain as -mud as you aun’t the kind of chap a girl can go with -for fun. If you’re wise you’ll kip awaay—we can’t be -friends. So you go and find some other girl as ull do -better fur you than I shud ever.”</p> - -<p>“If there hadn’t been this chap——”</p> - -<p>“It ud have bin the saum. I’m not your sort, my -lad, for all you think.”</p> - -<p>“Will this other chap marry you?”</p> - -<p>“I’ll tell naun about un. He’s no consarn of yourn, -as I’ve said a dunnamany times.”</p> - -<p>“Ivy, when I was in France, I thought to myself—’Maybe -if I’m sober and keep straight, she’ll have me -back.’”</p> - -<p>“I’m middling glad you thought it, Jerry, fur it wur -a good thought. You’ll lose naun by kipping straight -and sober, so you go on wud it, my lad.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t care, if I can’t get you.”</p> - -<p>“That’s unsensible talk. I’m not the only girl that’s -going—thur’s many better.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon there is—reckon I’ll get one for every day -of the week. No need to tell me girls are cheap—I -only thought I’d like one that wasn’t, for a change.”</p> - -<p>“Doan’t you talk so bitter.”</p> - -<p>“I talk as I feel. You’ve settled with this chap, Ivy?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve told you a dunnamany times. Wot maakes you -so thick?”</p> - -<p>He did not answer, but turned away, and walked out -of the room with a stealthy, humble step, like a beaten -dog. Ivy’s heart smote her—she could not let him go -without a kind word.</p> - -<p>“Jerry!” she called after him. But he did not turn -back—and then, unaccountably, she felt frightened.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p> - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>It was odd that Jerry’s cowed retreat should have -caused her more fear than his swaggering aggression—nevertheless, -all that day she could not get rid of her uneasiness, -and with the arbitrariness of superstition linked -the evening’s catastrophe with the earlier foreboding.</p> - -<p>She had run down to the Shop, to buy some washing -soda, and have a chat with Thyrza, and on her return -was met in the passage by Nell, who looked at her hard -and said—</p> - -<p>“There’s someone come to see you—a Mrs. Seagrim.”</p> - -<p>Ivy’s heart jumped. She wished that there had not -been quite such a wind to blow about her hair, and that -she had had time to mend the hole in her skirt that morning. -If Willie’s mother had come to inspect his choice -... howsumdever, he had often spoken of his mother -as a kind soul.</p> - -<p>But the woman in the kitchen with Mrs. Beatup was -only a few years older than Ivy—a tall, slim creature, -with reddish hair, and a beautiful pale face. She was -dressed like a lady, too, in a neat coat and skirt, with -gloves and cloth-topped boots. Ivy felt the blood drain -from her heart, and yet she had anticipated Mrs. Beatup -with no definite thought when the latter said—</p> - -<p>“Ivy, this is Corporal Seagrim’s wife.”</p> - -<p>“Pleased to meet you,” Ivy heard someone say, and -it must have been herself, for the next moment she was -shaking hands with Mrs. Seagrim.</p> - -<p>There was a moment’s pause, during which the two -women stared at Ivy, then the corporal’s wife remarked, -with a North-country accent that came startlingly from -her elegance, that it was gey dirty weather.</p> - -<p>“Thicking up fur thunder, I reckon,” said Mrs. -Beatup.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yo get it gey thick and saft down here, A’m thinking.”</p> - -<p>“Unaccountable,” said Mrs. Beatup, and squinted -nervously at Ivy.</p> - -<p>Ivy’s wits had at first been blown to the four winds, -and she sat during this conversation with her mouth -open, but gradually resolve began to form in her sickened -heart; she felt her brain and body stiffen—she would -fight....</p> - -<p>“A chose a bad week t’coom Sooth,” started Mrs. -Seagrim, “but ’twas all the choice A had—A hae t’roon -my man’s business now he’s sojering. Yo’ mither tells -me, Miss Beatup, as nane here knaws he’s marrit. But -marrit he is, and has twa bonny bairns.”</p> - -<p>“I know,” said Ivy—“he toald me.”</p> - -<p>“He toald you!” broke in Mrs. Beatup. “You said -naun to me about it.”</p> - -<p>“I disremember. He wur only here the twice.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Seagrim looked at her curiously.</p> - -<p>“Weel, maist folk didn’t sim t’knaw. A took a room -in Hailsham toon, and the gude woman said as how -t’Corporal had allus passed for a bachelor man, and -was coorting a lass up t’next village.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe she thinks he wur a-courting me,” snapped -Ivy, “but he dud naun of the like. He toald me he -was married the fust day I set eyes on un.”</p> - -<p>“Weel, that was on’y reet. So many of those marrit -sojer chaps go and deceive puir lasses. A hear there’s -been a mort of trouble and wickedness done that -way.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe,” said Ivy—“women are gurt owls, most of -them.”</p> - -<p>“And,” continued Mrs. Seagrim, “it’s only reet and - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> - -kind of the wives of such men to go and tell any poor -body as is like to be deceived by them.”</p> - -<p>“That’s true enough. But your trouble’s thrown away -on me. I knew all about un from the fust.”</p> - -<p>“Weel, A’ve done ma duty ony way,” and Mrs. Seagrim -rose, extending a gloved hand, “and A’m reet glad -as Seagrim was straight with yo’, when he seems to have -passed as single with everyone else.”</p> - -<p>“It must be a tar’ble trial to have a man lik that,” -said Ivy. “He’ll cost you a dunnamany shilluns and -pounds if you’ve got to go trapesing after him everywheres, -to tell folk he’s wed.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Seagrim smiled.</p> - -<p>When Ivy had shown her out of the front-door, she -would have liked to escape to her bedroom, but Mrs. -Beatup filled the passage.</p> - -<p>“Ivy—you might have toald me. I maade sure as -he’d deceived you.”</p> - -<p>“And I tell you he dudn’t. He toald me he wur wed, -and about his childer, and that dress-up hop-pole of a -wife of his’n.”</p> - -<p>“And you went walking out wud a married man, for -all the Street to see!”</p> - -<p>“Why not? There wur no harm done.”</p> - -<p>“No harm! I tell you it wurn’t simly.”</p> - -<p>“He’d no friends in these parts, and a man liks a -woman he can talk to.”</p> - -<p>“He’d got his wife, surelye.”</p> - -<p>“Not hereabouts. He wur middling sick wud lonesomeness.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup sniffed.</p> - -<p>“Well, you can justabout git shut of him now. Your -faather and me woan’t have you walking out wud a -married man. So maake up your mind to that.”</p> - -<p>Ivy muttered something surly and thick—the tears -were already in her throat, and pushing past her mother, -she ran upstairs.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p> - -<p>Once alone, her feelings overcame her, and she threw -herself upon the bed, sobbing with grief and rage. Seagrim -had deceived her, had meant to deceive her—that -was quite plain. Though he had never definitely spoken -of marriage, he had quite definitely posed to her as a -single man. She gathered from Mrs. Seagrim that he -made a habit of these escapades. Lord! what a fool -she had been—and yet, why should she have doubted -him whom she loved so utterly?</p> - -<p>Her hair, matted into her eyes, was soaked with tears, -as she rolled her head to and fro on the pillow, thinking -of the man she had loved, loved still, and yet hated -and despised. He had played her false—she was unable -to get over this fact, as a more sophisticated nature -might have done. Her confidence, her devotion, her passion, -he had paid with treachery and lies. She had not -fought her battle with Mrs. Seagrim in his defence—at -least not principally—she had fought it to save herself -from humiliation in the eyes of this woman, of her -mother, and of Sunday Street.</p> - -<p>Yet she cried to him out of the deep—“Oh, Willie, -Willie....” She thought of him in his strength and -grizzled beauty—she remembered particularly his neck -and his hands. “Oh, Willie, Willie....” She had -loved him as she had loved no other man. No other -man had filled the day and the night and brought the -stars to earth for her and made earth a shining heaven. -Her love was crude and physical, but it is one of the -paradoxes of love that the greater its materialism the -greater its spiritual power, that passion can open a mystic -paradise to which romance and affection have not the -key. Ivy had seen the heavens open to this clumsy soldier -of hers—to this man who had tricked her, bubbled her, -brought her to shame.</p> - -<p>She wondered if he knew of his wife’s visit—perhaps - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> - -he was with her now. Did he love her?... and those -two youngsters up in the North—a moan dragged from -her lips. His wife was dressed like a lady, but she talked -queer, though maybe they all talked like that up North. -Had she believed Ivy when she said she had always -known Seagrim was a married man? Had her mother -believed her? Would Sunday Street believe her?</p> - -<p>She sat up on the bed, and pushed the damp hair -back from her eyes. She would face them out, anyhow. -No one should point at her in scorn—or at Seagrim, -either, even though she could never trust him or love -him again. She would give the lie to all who mocked -or pitied. No one should pry into her aching heart. -Ivy Beatup wasn’t the one to be poor-deared or serve-her-righted. -She crossed the room, and plunged her face -into the basin, slopping her tear-stained cheeks with cold -water. Then she brushed back and twisted up her hair, -smoother her gown, and went downstairs with no traces -of her grief save an unnatural tidiness.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>Ivy held her bold front for the rest of that week. Her -secret portion of sorrow and craving she kept hid. Her -floors were scrubbed and her pans scoured no worse for -lack of that glory which makes like the silver wings of -a dove those that have lien among the pots.... She -still had strength to cling to the empty days, to serve -through the meaningless routine that had once been a -joyous rite.</p> - -<p>Everyone had heard about Seagrim now, and had also -heard that Ivy Beatup had not been deceived, but had -known about his wife from the first. Some believed her, -accounting for her silence by the fact that her family -would have interfered had they known she was walking - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> - -out with a married man. These for the most part called -Ivy Beatup a bad lot, though her sister-in-law Thyrza -stood up for her, declaring Ivy’s friendship with the -Corporal could only have been innocent and respectable—but -of course Thyrza was now allied with the Beatups, -and would be anxious for their good name. A large proportion -of the street, however, did not believe Ivy’s version -of the story—they would have her tricked, deluded—betrayed, -they hinted—and found an even greater delight -in pity than in blame.</p> - -<p>All joined in wondering what she would do the following -Sunday. She would not have the face to parade -the man as usual. Perhaps Mrs. Seagrim was still at -Hailsham—perhaps, even if she was not, the Corporal -would not dare show his face after what had happened -or, if he did, surely the girl would not be so brazen as -to trot him out now that she knew all the parish knew -she was a bad lot—or a poor victim.</p> - -<p>However, when Sunday came, Ivy appeared in her best -blue dress, and on Seagrim’s arm, as if nothing had happened. -Her eyes were perhaps a little over-bright with -defiance, her cheeks a little over-red for even such a full-blown -peony as her face, but her manner was assured, if -not very dignified, and her grins as many-toothed as on -less doubtful occasions.</p> - -<p>To tell the truth, Ivy had not meant to offer such a -public challenge to a local opinion. She had made up -her mind that Seagrim would not appear at all, or in a -very subdued condition. However, on Friday she had -a letter of the usual loving kind, excusing his absence -during the week on the score of extra duty and asking -her to meet him at Worge gate next Sunday morning—“with -her boy’s fondest love” and a row of kisses.</p> - -<p>Ivy’s teeth bit deep into her lip as she read this letter. -He was still deceiving her, though now, thank the Lord, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> - -he was also deceived himself. He did not know his wife -had been to see her, and doubtless Mrs. Seagrim had now -gone back to “the business”—a corn-chandler’s in Alnwick. -Ivy wondered why she had kept her own counsel, -but no doubt the “dressed-up hop-pole” knew best how -to deal with her man. If she betrayed her plot it might -have led to friction between an affectionate husband and -wife, and she probably felt that she had “settled” Ivy.</p> - -<p>The girl’s blood ran thick with humiliation—both the -man and the woman had shamed her. Doubtless they -loved each other well, though he, with a man’s greediness, -had wanted another woman in her absence. He could -never have meant to marry Ivy—his intentions must -always have been vague or dishonourable. As for the -wife, having spent some of the cash left over from her -clothes, in running down South to look after him, she -had no doubt been satisfied with warning Ivy and coaxing -her husband, and had then gone back to her flourishing -shop. True that this letter hardly pointed to the success -of her tactics, but Ivy knew too much about men to attach -great importance to it—Seagrim was just the sort of man -who would have a girl wherever he went, and yet always -keep the first place in his heart for the woman who had -also his name. She, Ivy, was probably only a secondary -attachment to fill the place of the other, and no doubt in -that other’s absence; he would make every effort to keep -her—but she was a stop-gap, an interlude, to him who -had been her all, and filled the spare moments of one who -had filled her life.</p> - -<p>She forced herself to bite down on this bitter truth, -and swallowed it—and it gave her strength for the -course she meant to take.</p> - -<p>She found Seagrim leaning against Worge gate, sucking -the knob of his swagger stick, and gazing at her with -shining long-lashed eyes of grey. For a moment the sight - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> - -of him there, his greeting, the husky tones love put into -his voice, his sunburnt, hawk-like strength, all combined -to make her falter. But she was made of too solid stuff -to forget his callous deception of her, which he still maintained, -drawing her arm through his with a few glib lies -about extra duty and the sergeant. Contempt for him -stabbed her heart and eyes, and for a few moments she -could neither look at him nor speak.</p> - -<p>They went to their usual parade ground, marching -to and fro between the Bethel and the Shop, and Ivy’s -confidence revived with her defiance of public opinion. -“They’ll see I doan’t care naun fur wot they think,” -she said to herself, and met boldly the outraged eyes -of Bourners and Sindens and Putlands. It was a hot -day, and there was a smell of dust in the air, which -felt heavy and thick. The sun was dripping on Sunday -Street, making the red roofs swim and dazzle in a yellow -haze; the leaves of the big oaks by the forge drooped -with dust, and the Bethel’s stare was hot and angry, as -if its lidless eyes ached in the glow.</p> - -<p>Ivy decided that she might now end her ordeal of the -burning ploughshare. She had strutted up and down -a dozen times in front of her neighbours, defying their -gossip, their blame and their pity. “I done it—now I -can git shut of un,” and her gaze of mixed pain and -contempt wandered up to his brown face as he walked -beside her, talking unheard in his booming Northumberland -voice.</p> - -<p>“It’s middling hot in the Street—let’s git into the -Spinney.”</p> - -<p>He kindled at once—it would be good to sit with her -on trampled hazel leaves, to lie with their faces close -and the green spurge waving round their heads in a -filter of sunlight. Usually these suggestions came from -him, by the rules of courting, but he loved her for the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> - -boldness which could break all rule even as it lacked -all craft. He slid his hand along her arm, and pressed -it, with joy at the quiver she gave.</p> - -<p>The Twelve Pound spinney stood about thirty yards -back from the Street, behind the Bethel, and was reached -by a little path and a stile opposite the Horselunges. As -they passed the inn, Ivy saw Mrs. Breathing opening the -door and the shutters for the Sunday’s short traffic, and -at the same time saw ahead of her a dusty khaki figure -ambling towards the sign with the particular padding -unsoldierly tread of Jerry Sumption.</p> - -<p>“He’s on the drink, now’s he knows as he can’t git -me,” she thought—“the bad gipsy.” Then a feeling -of regret and hopelessness came over her. Here were -two men whose love she had muddled—one who had -hurt her and one whom she had hurt. Was love all -hurting and sorrow? For the first time the careless -game of a girl’s years became almost a sinister thing. -Her hand dragged at Seagrim’s arm, as if unconsciously -and despite herself her body appealed to the man her -soul despised ... then she lifted her eyes, and looked -into Jerry’s as he passed, trotting by with hanging head -and queer look, like a mad dog ... yes, love was a -tar’ble game.</p> - -<p>The black, still shadows of Twelve Pound Wood -swallowed her and Seagrim out of the glare. The clop -of hoofs and bowl of wheels on the Street came as from -a great way off, and the hum of poised and darting insects, -thick among the foxgloves, seemed to shut them -into a little teeming world of buzz and pollen-dust and -sun-trickled green. Seagrim stood still, and his arm slid -from the crook of Ivy’s across her back, drawing her -close. But with a sudden twisting movement she set herself -free, standing before him in the path, with the tall -foxgloves round her, flushed and freckled like her face, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> - -and behind her the pale cloud of the bennet heads like -melting smoke.</p> - -<p>“Kip clear of me, Willie Seagrim—I’ll have no truck -wud you. I’ve met your wife.”</p> - -<p>The man, slow of speech, gaped at her without a -word.</p> - -<p>“Yes. She caum round to our plaace three days -agone, and shamed me before my mother. But I said -I knew as you wur married, and to-day I walked out -wud you to show the foalkses here I aun’t bin fooled. -Now I’ve shown’ em, you can go. I’m shut of you.”</p> - -<p>“Ivy—yo’re telling me that my Bess——”</p> - -<p>“Yes—your Bess, wud gloves and buttoned boots -and——” She checked herself. “Yes, she caum, and -tried to put me to shaum. But I druv her off, surelye; -and now I’m shut of you, fur a hemmed chap wot fooled -me wud a lie.”</p> - -<p>“But A no harmed yo’——”</p> - -<p>“Harmed me!”—she gasped.</p> - -<p>“Dom that Bess for a meddlesome fule. Oh, she’s -gey canny, that Bess. But Ivy, li’l Ivy, yo’ll no cast -me off for that?”</p> - -<p>“Why shud I kip you?—you’ve bin a-fooling me. -You maade as you wur a free man, and all the while -you wur married. I—I loved you.”</p> - -<p>“And yo’ kin lo’ me still....” He sought to take -her, but she pushed him off.</p> - -<p>“Reckon I can’t. Reckon as I’ll never disremember -all the lies you’ve said. And you spuk of loving me ... -knowing all the whiles.... Oh, you sought to undo me! -Reckon I’m jest a gurt trusting owl, but it wur middling -cruel of you to trick me so.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Ivy—by God A sweer——”</p> - -<p>“Be hemmed to your silly swears. I’ll never believe -you more.”</p> - -<p>“But yo’ll no cast me off fur a wumman up -North....”</p> - -<p>“I don’t care where she be. She’s yourn—and you -hid her from me. If you’d toald me straight, maybe I—but ...”</p> - -<p>“Yo’ na speered of me. Why should A have spoken?”</p> - -<p>“You did spik—you spuk as a free man.”</p> - -<p>“A was a fule—yo’ made me mad for you.”</p> - -<p>His eye was darkening, and the corners of his mouth -had an angry twist.</p> - -<p>“You toald me as extra duty kept you away last -week,” continued Ivy, “and it wurn’t—it wur your wife. -Reckon you love her and I’m only a girl fur your spare -days. You’d kip me on fur that.”</p> - -<p>“A’ll keep yo’ on for naething. If yo’ don’t like me, -yo’ can go.”</p> - -<p>“It’s you who can go. I’m shut of you from this day -forrard. You git back to Hailsham this wunst and never -come here shaming me more.”</p> - -<p>“Yo’ll be shamed if I go. Better for yo’ if I stay.”</p> - -<p>“If you stay you’ll shaum me furder, fur you’ll shaurn -me wud my own heart. Git you gone, Willie Seagrim, -and find a bigger fool than me.”</p> - -<p>He shrugged his shoulders, and her heart sickened with -jealousy, knowing that her loss to him could not be so -serious as his to her, since he had his beautiful pale Bess, -with her red hair and stooping back, whom all the time -he had loved more than he loved Ivy, because she was -his children’s mother and had rights which he respected. -He would soon forget Ivy; perhaps he would find another -girl to solace his spare hours, but anyhow he would -forget her. The thought almost made her hold him back, -cling to him, and seek to wrest him from the other -woman with her self-confident possession. But she was -withheld by her sense of outrage, and by a queer pride - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> - -she had always had in herself, a rustic straightness which -had gone with her through all her many amours. To -surrender now could only mean disgrace, since she felt -that in some odd way it meant surrender to Bess as well -as to Bess’s master. If she became Seagrim’s woman, -which she must be now, or nothing, Bess would somehow -triumph, and triumph more utterly than if she threw him -off with scorn. Besides, he had fooled her and lied to -her; he was not worth having—let him go, though her -heart bled, and her bowels ached, as she watched him -march off away from her, shaking his shoulders in -jaunty swagger, the sunlight gleaming on his grizzled -hair, the curls she had loved to pull. She could have -called him back, and he would have come, but her lips -were shut and her throat was dry. He vanished round a -bend of the path, and all that was left of him was a -crunching footstep, heavy on last year’s leaves. Then -that too was gone, and with a little moan Ivy slid down -among the foxgloves and bennets, and sobbed with her -forehead against the earth.</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>After a little while she pulled herself up and wiped -her eyes. Her head ached and Twelve Pound Wood was -blurry with her tears. The sun struck down upon her -back, baking, aching, mocking her with the thick yellow -light in which the flies danced and the pollen hung. She -wanted to creep into the shade.</p> - -<p>But she must go home and save her face. It was -dinner-time, and she must join her family with her old -bravery, or they would suspect her humiliation. She rose -to her feet, smoothed her dress, dusted off the bennet -flowers and goose-foot burrs and the rub of pollen from -the foxgloves, pushed back the straggling hair under her - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> - -hat, wiped her eyes again, and hoped the stains and -blotches of her weeping would fade before she came to -Worge. Then she set out for the opening of the wood. -A man’s shadow lay across it, though she could not see -him as he stood behind an ash-stump. Her breathing became -shallow, and her heart thudded.... He had come -back, to find her in her weakness—he was waiting for -her.... No, it was not he, this smaller man, crouched -like a fox against the stump.</p> - -<p>“Jerry,” she cried, as she turned the elbow of the path, -and met him face to face.</p> - -<p>He was drunk; his eyes showed it with their gleam of -bleared stars, his flushed cheeks and dark swelled veins, -his hair hanging in a fringe over his brow, his mouth both -fierce and loose.... He lurched towards her, and she -just managed to brush past him, tumbling ungracefully -over the hurdle that shut off the wood. He must have -just come, for he had missed Seagrim—he might have -stumbled over her as she lay and cried among the -grasses.</p> - -<p>She did not fall as she jumped the hurdle, but her -ankle turned, making her stagger, and by the time she -could right herself, Jerry stood before her, blocking the -way to the Street. Then she saw for the first time that -he had a hammer in his hand. Ivy gave a loud scream, -and darted sideways, scrambling through the hedge into -Twelve Pound field. Jerry was after her, without a -word, no longer the furtive, padding animal she had -despised, but the armed and terrible beast of prey that -would kill and devour the foolhardy huntress who had -roused him. She staggered up the field, too breathless to -cry, but he drew even with her in a few strides, and -grabbed her by the arm.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Stop, Ivy, and say your prayers. I’m going to kill -you.”</p> - -<p>She could not speak, for her throat was dried up. -Jerry’s eyes were more of a threat than his word. They -were on fire—his skin was on fire—liquor and madness -had set him alight; and in his hand was a hammer to -hammer out her brains. She could neither cry to his -mercy nor appeal to his reason—her physical powers -were failing her, and both mercy and reason in him had -been burnt up.</p> - -<p>He gave her a violent push, and she fell on her knees.</p> - -<p>“That’s right. Say your prayers. I’m a clergyman’s -son, and you shan’t die without asking pardon for your -sins. I saw you go into the wood with him, as you -wouldn’t with me.... I’ll kill you quick, you shan’t -have any pain.... I loved you once, I reckon.”</p> - -<p>He swung up the hammer, but he was too drunk to -take aim, and the action woke her out of the trance of -fear into which he had plunged her. She felt something -graze bruisingly down her hip—then she was scrambling -on her feet again, rushing for the hedge.</p> - -<p>The hedge of Twelve Pound field is a thick hedge of -wattles and thorn. Ivy, too mad to look for a gap, tried -to force her way through it. Her head and arms stuck, -and she heard Jerry running. Then at last loud screams -broke from her—scream after scream, as he seized her -by the feet and pulled her backwards through the -brambles, leaving shreds of blue gown and yellow hair -on every twig. He pulled her out, and flung her rolling -on the grass; then the hammer swung again....</p> - -<p>But the field was full of shoutings and voices, of feet -trampling round her head. Then two hands came under -her armpits, dragging her up, and she saw her father. -She saw her brother Harry, looking very green and -scared, and last of all Jerry plunging in the lock of two -huge arms, which gripped him powerless and belonged -to the Reverend Mr. Sumption.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Take her away,” said the minister. “I’ll keep hold -of the boy.”</p> - -<p>“I wouldn’t have hurt her,” moaned Jerry. “I’m a -clergyman’s son—I’d have killed her without any pain.”</p> - -<p>“Come hoame, Ivy,” said Mus’ Beatup, and began to -lead her away.</p> - -<p>“Is it dinner-time?” asked Ivy stupidly.</p> - -<p>Harry gave a nervous guffaw.</p> - -<p>“I’ll be round and see you, neighbour,” said Sumption, -“soon as I’ve got this poor boy safe.”</p> - -<p>“’Pore boy’ indeed!” grunted Mus’ Beatup. “’Pore -boy’ as ud have bin murdering my daughter if Harry and -I hadn’t had the sperrit to break your valiant Sabbath in -the Street field. Look at his gurt big murdery hammer.”</p> - -<p>“He would not have used it—for the Angel of the -Lord led me to him, and it was the Angel of the Lord -who saved both him and the girl, despite your Sabbath-breaking.”</p> - -<p>“Then the Angel of the Lord can saave him another -wunst—when I have him brung up for murdering. -Come along, do, Harry.”</p> - -<p>Jerry was silent now, nor was he struggling. He -looked suddenly very ill, and as Ivy stumbled blindly -down the field on her father’s arm, she had a memory -of his drawn white face lolling sideways on the minister’s -shoulder.</p> - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>Two-edged disgrace struck at Ivy both at home and -in the village—for the double reason of Jerry’s assault -and Seagrim’s parade. The latter was almost the wickedest -in the Beatups’ eyes, for it had the most witnesses—the -former had no witnesses but themselves and Mr. -Sumption, though when Mus’ Beatup led Ivy home, Mus’ -Putland was already climbing the stile and Mus’ Bourner - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> - -running out of his door. It could be hushed up, muffled -and smoothed, whereas the whole Street had seen Ivy in -her flaunt of wedded Seagrim—“A bad ’un,” “a hussy” -she would be called from Harebeating to Puddledock.</p> - -<p>“’Tis sent for a judgment on you,” said Mrs. Beatup. -“If you hadn’t gone traipsing and strutting wud that -soldier, I reckon as gipsy Jerry had never gone after you -wud his hammer.”</p> - -<p>“I wurn’t a-going to show ’em as I minded their -clack,” sobbed Ivy against the kitchen table—“I said -as ‘I’ll taake him out this wunst, just to show ’em I -aun’t bin fooled, and then I’ll git shut of un.’ And I -dud, surelye.”</p> - -<p>“And a valiant fool you’re looking now, my girl—run -after and murdered, or would have bin, if your -father hadn’t a-gone weeding the oats and heard your -screeching. Reckon as half the Street heard it at their -dinners. We’ll have the law of Minister and his gipsy.”</p> - -<p>So they would have done, had it not been brought -home to them that “the law” would hoist them into -that publicity they wanted to avoid. If Jerry were tried -for attempted murder, all the disgraceful story of Ivy -and Seagrim would be spread abroad, not only throughout -Sunday Street and Brownbread Street and the other hamlets -of Dallington, but away north and south and east -and west, to Eastbourne, Hastings, Seaford, Brighton, -Grinstead, and everywhere the <cite>Sussex News</cite> was read.</p> - -<p>So the Beatups agreed to forego their revenge on condition -that the Rev. Mr. Sumption took Jerry away for -the few days remaining of his leave, and did not have -him back at the Horselunges on any future occasion.</p> - -<p>“You can’t hurt my boy without hurting your girl,” -he told them, “so best let it alone and keep ’em apart. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> - -I’m sorry for what’s happened, and maybe Jerry is, and -maybe he’s not. I reckon Satan’s got him.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he has,” said Mrs. Beatup spitefully, “and -reckon when Satan gits childern it’s cos faathers and -mothers have opened the door. ’Tis a valiant thing fur a -Christian minister not to know how to breed up his own -young boy. But the shoemaker’s wife goes the worst -shod, as they say, and reckon hell’s all spannelled up wud -parsons’ children.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you don’t know how to speak to a clergyman”—and -the Rev. Mr. Sumption turned haughtily -from the wife to the husband, who was, however, big -with an attack on Sunday observance, and no discussion -could go forward till he had been delivered of it.</p> - -<p>In the end the matter was settled, and the parting was -fairly friendly. The Beatups had a queer affection for -their pastor mingled with their disrespect, and admired -his muscle if they despised his ministrations. The proceedings -ended in an adjournment to the stables, where -Mr. Sumption gave sound and professional advice on a -sick mare.</p> - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>Poor Ivy felt as if she could never hold up her head -again. The very efforts she had made to avoid contempt -had resulted in bringing it down on her in double -measure. Garbled stories of her misadventure ran about -the Street. It was said that she had been walking out -with two men at once, that Seagrim had jilted her because -of Jerry and Jerry tried to do her in because of -Seagrim. There were other stories, too, some more -creditable, and some less—and they all found their way -to Worge, where they provoked the anger of her father, -the querulousness of her mother, the shrinking contempt -of Nell, and the loutish sniggers of Harry and Zacky.</p> - -<p>Ivy was not a sensitive soul, but the Beatup attitude -was warranted to pierce the thickest skin. The family - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> - -could not let the matter drop, and kept it up even after -those outside had let it fall in to amiable “disremembering.” -Ivy’s exuberant correspondence with the forces, -her amorous past, her scandalous future, all became subjects -of condemnation. Her people did not mean to be -unkind, but they nagged and scolded. Perhaps the balking -of their revenge on Jerry Sumption made them specially -unmerciful towards Ivy—she had to face the torrent -of the diverted stream. She had disgraced them as, -apparently, none of Mus’ Beatup’s muddled carouses or -gin-logged collapses had done. The fine, if beer-blown -flower of the Beatups had been hopelessly picked to -pieces by her wantonness and indiscretion. Nell was perhaps -the most really vindictive of the lot (for Mus’ -Beatup was easy-going and Mrs. Beatup loved her daughter -through all her reproaches), because she saw in Ivy’s -disgrace another danger to her hopes. She had enough -odds against her in her poor little reedy romance without -all the spilth of Ivy’s bursting thick amours to come -tumbling over it, choking out its life. Ivy’s village -friends turned against her too, for Polly Sinden was still -trying to live up to Bill Putland, and Jen Hollowbone of -the Foul Mile remembered the theft of Kadwell and -taunted “Sarve her right.” Thyrza, her sister-in-law, -was still friendly, but though Ivy liked Thyrza, there had -never been any real confidence or comradeship between -them—the elder girl was too quiet, too settled, and had -always been lacking in that indefinite quality which makes -a woman popular with her own sex. Ivy did not respond -to Thyrza’s few tentative efforts, made, she suspected, out -of pity, and a sense of duty to Tom. Besides, her trouble -had soured for the time even her own sweet honest heart, -and the sight of Thyrza secure of a man’s love and an -even more wonderful hope, smote her with an unbearable -sense of her own failure and loneliness.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p> - -<p>For the worst of all that Ivy had to bear was her love -for Seagrim, still alive, though wounded and outraged. -Her old gay interest in young men, her comradeships -and correspondences, had faded out and could occupy -her no more. Her heart was full of a mixed dread and -hope of meeting him again. Sometimes when the purple -chaffy evenings drew down over the fields, and the smell -of ripening grain and ripening hops made sweet sick perfume -on the drowsy air, an ache which was almost madness -would drive her out into the lanes, seeking him by -the tall stile at Four Wents, where he would never come -again. The fiery horn of the moon, the jigging candles -of the stars, would glow out of the grape-coloured sky as -she went home through a fog of tears, slipping and -stumbling in the ruts, dreaming of his step beside her and -his arm about her and his bulk all black in the dimness -of the lane.... Then suddenly she would hate him for -all he had made her suffer, for all the lies he had told -her and all the truths, for the kisses he had given her and -the tears that he had cost her—and the hate would hurt -more than love, choke her and burn her, make her throw -herself sobbing and gasping into bed, where the hunch -of Nell’s cold shoulder and the polar stars that hung in -the window joined in preaching the same lesson of loneliness.</p> - -<p>Then one day she made up her mind quite suddenly -to bear it no longer. “If you have much more of this -you’ll go crazy,” she said to herself, “—so git shut of -it, Ivy Beatup.”</p> - - -<h3>9</h3> - -<p>Ivy’s disappearance was not found out till late in -the evening. In spite of the dejection and heartache -of the last week, her failure to appear at supper with a -healthy appetite was an alarming sign. It was now - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> - -remembered that no one seemed to have seen her all -the evening. Mrs. Beatup burst into tears.</p> - -<p>“She’s chucked herself into the pond, for sartain-sure. -You’ve bin so rough wud her, Maaster—you’ve -bruk her heart, surelye.”</p> - -<p>“I rough wud a girl as has disgraced us all! I’ve -took no notice of her a dunnamany days.”</p> - -<p>“That’s why, I reckon. You’ve bruk her heart. Git -along, Harry, and drag the pond, and doan’t sit staring -at me lik a fowl wud gapes.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe she’s only gone into Senlac to see the pictures.”</p> - -<p>“And maybe she’s only run away wud that lousy -furrin soldier of hern.”</p> - -<p>“I tell you she’s drownded. I feel it in my boans. -She’s floating on the water lik a dead cat. Go out and -see, Harry! Go out and see!”</p> - -<p>Zacky began to howl.</p> - -<p>“Adone, do, mother!” cried Harry. “You’re the one -fur the miserables. Reckon Ivy’s only out enjoying -herself.”</p> - -<p>“I’d go myself,” sobbed Mrs. Beatup, “but my oald -legs feel that swummy. Oh, I can see her floating, all -swelled up!”</p> - -<p>During this scene Nell had slipped out of the room. -She was now back in the doorway, saying icily—</p> - -<p>“You needn’t worry. Ivy’s taken all her clothes with -her.”</p> - -<p>The family took a little time to get the drift of her -words.</p> - -<p>“All her clothes!” murmured Mrs. Beatup faintly.</p> - -<p>“Yes—in the pilgrim-basket, so you may be sure she -hasn’t drowned herself.”</p> - -<p>“She’s gone away wud that dirty soldier!” cried -Mus’ Beatup. “That justabout proves it.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p> - -<p>“It doan’t,” said his wife. “Ivy’s an honest girl.”</p> - -<p>“An honest girl as walks out wud a married man fur -all the Street to see, and then goes and gits half murdered -by a gipsy!”</p> - -<p>“A clergyman’s son,” corrected Mrs. Beatup. “And -it wurn’t her fault, nuther. Our Ivy may be a bit flighty, -but she’s pure as the morning’s milk.”</p> - -<p>“Whur’s she gone, then? She’d nowheres to go. You -doan’t know the warld as I do, and I tell you she’s gone -wud un, and be hemmed to her. We’re all disgraced and -ull never hoald up our heads agaun.”</p> - -<p>“I woan’t believe it.”</p> - -<p>“You’re an obstinate oald wife—I tell you it’ll be -proved to-morrer.”</p> - -<p>“How?”</p> - -<p>“I’ll go to the camp myself and find out. If Seagrim’s -gone too, then it’s proved.”</p> - -<p>The family went to bed convinced, except for Mrs. -Beatup—who kept up a mulish belief in her daughter’s -honesty—that Ivy had run away with Seagrim.</p> - -<p>The next morning Mus’ Beatup set out for Hailsham -to make enquiries. But he had not been fitted by nature -for a diplomatic visit to a military camp—all he did was -to fall foul of various sentries and nearly get arrested. -In the end he found himself back in the road, with nothing -gained except perhaps the fact that he was not in -the guard-room. He felt as if the whole British Army -were in league against him, the accomplice of one Corporal -in his crimes, and was scanning the scenery for a -public-house when he heard the sound of marching feet, -and a file came tramping up the road, commanded by -Seagrim himself.</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup straddled across his way.</p> - -<p>“Who are you? Stand clear!” cried the Corporal, -while the file marched stiffly onwards.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Whur’s my daughter?”</p> - -<p>“Stand clear—or A’ll have you put under arrest.”</p> - -<p>“I want my daughter—Ivy Beatup.”</p> - -<p>“Halt!” cried Seagrim to the file, which had now -marched a discreet distance ahead. “A don’t knaw owt -of your daughter. A’ve not clapped eyes on her sine -Sunday week.”</p> - -<p>“She’s run away.”</p> - -<p>“A don’t knaw owt.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t know where she is?”</p> - -<p>“A don’t knaw owt. Quick march!” and off went -he and his file in a cloud of dust, leaving Mus’ Beatup -furious and confounded.</p> - -<p>“He’s a militaryist,” he mumbled, “a hemmed militaryist—treating -me as if I wur pigs’ dirt. That’s wot -we’re coming to, I reckon, wot Govunmunt’s brung us to—militaryists -and the pigs’ dirt they spannell on. Ho! -there’ll be a revolution soon”—and he floundered up the -road towards Hailsham where the sign of the Red Lion -hung across the way.</p> - - -<h3>10</h3> - -<p>Jerry Sumption knew nothing of Ivy’s disappearance, -for the morning after that fatal Sunday his father had -taken him off to Brighton, and from Brighton he had -gone back to France. In fact his whole notion of the -affair was hazy—inflamed by one or two unaccustomed -glasses of bad whisky and the memory of Ivy on Seagrim’s -arm, he had rushed and stumbled through what -seemed to him now a wild nightmare of phantasmagoria -from which he had waked into aching and disgrace.</p> - -<p>He was sullen company during those few days at -Brighton. Mr. Sumption had chosen Brighton because -it was at a safe, and also not too expensive, distance -from Sunday Street. Moreover, he hoped it would provide - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> - -some distraction for Jerry. The financial problem -had been great, but he had solved it by drawing out the -whole of his savings. He took a poor little lodging at -the back of the town, from which he and Jerry travelled -down daily by ’bus and tram to the diversions of the -sea-front.</p> - -<p>It was not a quite successful holiday, which was indeed -hardly to be expected. Mr. Sumption brought -preachment to bear on Jerry’s sullenness—he did not -understand what a hazy impression the catastrophe had -made, and that to him, though not to Ivy, the scene by -Twelve Pound spinney mattered less than that earlier -scene in Forges Field. Also Mr. Sumption’s ideas of -amusement were not the same as his son’s. He decided -to risk the Lord’s displeasure and visit a Picture Palace -for Jerry’s sake, but was so scandalised by what he saw -that he insisted on leaving after half an hour’s distress.</p> - -<p>“Surely it is the house of Satan with those red lights,” -he exclaimed with sundry cracks and tosses.</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter with red lights? You get ’em in -a forge.”</p> - -<p>“But a forge is the place of honest toil—and a kinema’s -but a place of gaping and idleness and worse: three -hundred folks got together to see lovers kissing, which -is a private matter.”</p> - -<p>Jerry laughed bitterly.</p> - -<p>“Three hundred folk gaping at an ungodly picture, -who might be saving their souls. I tell you, boy, there -ull come a red day, that ull burn redder than any forge -or picture-house, and all the ungodly gazers shall be -pitched into it like weeds into the oven, and only the -saints escape—with the singeing of their garments.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Oh, Father, do speak cheerful. I’m that down-hearted.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you are, my poor lad—and the Lord rebuke -me if I add to your burden. This looks a godly sort -of a pastry-cook’s. Let’s go in and get some tea.”</p> - -<p>The next day was the last of Jerry’s leave, and the -one that he and his father spent most happily together. -Mr. Sumption’s ideas of entertainment seemed quite hopeless -to Jerry, but during those last hours he felt drawn -closer to the being who he knew was the only friend he -had. They spent the morning on the pier, listening to -the band, and in the afternoon went by the motor-bus to -Rottingdean—a trip so surprisingly expensive that there -was no money left to pay for their tea, and while the -other excursionists sat down to long tables, they had to -wander upon the down, whence they watched the feasters, -Jerry like a forlorn sparrow and Mr. Sumption like a -hungry crow, till it was time to go home.</p> - -<p>But all the while the minister could see his son growing -more dependent on him, and in his heart he thanked -the Lord. His delight at having won that much poor -show of affection blinded him a little to the pathos of -the outlaw clinging to his only prop, before he was flung -to troubles and dangers which he realised in helpless foreboding. -The chapel weed clung to the chapel stone before -it was rudely torn up and thrown out to the burning.</p> - -<p>Their final parting was abusive, owing to Mr. Sumption’s -having left Jerry’s dinner of sandwiches behind at -their rooms, but the father would always have a thankful -memory of that evening when Jerry had been simple and -grateful and rather childish, and had listened to his good -advice, and had not interrupted with his cry for cheerfulness -the stream of Calvinistic warning.</p> - -<p>They had sat by the big ugly window of their room, -looking out at the first dim stars pricking the sky above -Kemp Town. Jerry’s eyes were full of a mysterious -trouble as they pondered the new serenity of his father’s -face.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Father,” he said suddenly, “you’ll watch and pray -that Satan don’t get me.”</p> - -<p>“Satan can’t hurt the elect.”</p> - -<p>“But maybe I’m not one of the elect. Didn’t seem like -it on Sunday, did it?”</p> - -<p>“That was the Lord’s trial sent to us both—He delivered -you unto Satan for a while that you might find -His ways.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon His ways are not for my finding.”</p> - -<p>“I will pray for you, my dear.”</p> - -<p>“Father, you promise, you swear, as you’ll never let -me go? I sometimes feel as if there was only you -standing betwixt me and hell. Reckon you’re the only -soul in all the world that cares about me.”</p> - - -<h3>11</h3> - -<p>By the time Mus’ Beatup had groped his stumbling -way from Hailsham to Sunday Street, the anxieties of -Worge about Ivy were at an end. A letter had come -during the morning and was flapped in his face. He -was not sober enough to read it, nor yet too drunk to -have it read to him.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p class="sig3"> -“8 Bozzum Square,</p> -<p class="sig5"> -“Hastings. -</p> - -<p>“Dear Mother,—I hope this finds you well as it leaves -me at present. I got fed up as the boys say and came -here. Do you remember Ellen Apps and her folk lived -at the Fowl Mile up the Hollowbones. She is here working -on the trams, I heard from Jen, so thought I go and -ask her. She says I will get a job in a day or 2 with my -strong physic, so do not worry about me, I am with Ellen -and hope to start work next week. Having no more to -say, I will now draw to a close. Fondest love from</p> - -<p class="sig2"> -“Your loving daughter, <span class="smcap">Ivy</span>.” </p> -</blockquote> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I toald you as she’d never gone wud Seagrim!” cried -Mrs. Beatup.</p> - -<p>“Umph,” grunted her husband—“but she’s gone on -the trams, which is next bad to it. Now if she’d gone -maaking munititions....”</p> - -<p>“Trams is better than munititions.”</p> - -<p>“No it aun’t. Fine ladies and duchesses maake munititions, -but I never saw a duchess driving a tram.”</p> - -<p>“Ivy ull never drive a tram—she’d be killed, surelye.”</p> - -<p>“Best thing she cud do for herself now she’s disgraced -us all—a darter of mine on the trams, a good yeoman’s -darter on the trams ... ’tis shameful.”</p> - -<p>“But ’tis honest, Maaster—better nor if she’d run -away wud a man.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe—but ’tis shameful honest. I’m shut of -her!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Ned!—our girl!”</p> - -<p>“Your girl!”</p> - -<p>“You cruel, unnatural faather!”</p> - -<p>“Adone do, and taake off my boots.”</p> - -<p>The matter ended temporarily in sniffs and grunts, -but when Mus’ Beatup woke out of the sleep which -followed the removal of his boots, he reviewed it more -auspiciously. After all, working on the trams was better -than working in the fields—suppose Ivy had gone and -offered her robust services to some neighbouring farmer, -to some twopenny smallholder perhaps, then the yeoman -name of Beatup would have indeed been trampled into the -earth. Now trams were town work, trams were war -work, trams were engineering. In time “my darter on -the trams” began to sound nearly as well as “my son at -the front.”</p> - -<p>So a letter was written in which Ivy’s choice was -deplored, though not condemned. She was invited to -come home, or if obstinate on that point, to turn her - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> - -attention to the more aristocratic “munititions,” but -if it must be trams, then trams it should be unreproached.</p> - -<p>Ivy wrote back in a few days, saying that she had -“joined up” and enclosing a photograph of herself in -uniform. She would soon be earning thirty shillings a -week, and had taken a room of her own in Bozzum -Square. Her family had now quite forgiven her, especially -as they found the neighbourhood inclined to applaud -rather than to despise Beatup’s daughter on the -trams. Her mother would have liked her home, but Ivy -was quite firm about sticking to her job. “I’m best away -from the Street as things are, and I’ll send you five shillings -a week home, and you can get a girl with that and -what you save from my keep.” But it would have taken -two girls to make a real substitute for Ivy.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup, besides the gap in her motherly feelings, -missed her terribly about the house. Her sturdy willingness -to scrub or clean, her cheery indifference to the -little indelicacies of emptying slops or gutting chickens, -her unfailing good-humour and bubbling vitality, the -rough, tender comfort she gave in hours of sorrow, all -made Ivy of a special, irreplaceable value in her mother’s -working-day. Nell refused to give up her “teachering,” -and spoke obstinately of indentures, and other irrelevant -puzzles. Anyhow her squeamishness—she even washed -the dishes with a wrinkled nose—and the delicacy of her -small soft hands would make her pretty useless in hen-house -or kitchen. Mrs. Beatup began to talk of Ivy as -much as she thought of her, and soon her family came -to find her more of a nuisance now she was away than -she had been at home in her most disruptive moments.</p> - -<p>However, her forgiveness was complete, and the reconciliation -was celebrated by a solemn ride in “Ivy’s tram” -by all the Beatups. It was during the summer holidays, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> - -so Nell was able to go—Mrs. Beatup wore her Dionysian -bonnet, and her husband his best Sunday blacks, Harry -and Zacky were scrubbed and collared into oafishness, the -house was shut up and left in charge of Elphick and -Juglery, as it had never been since Tom’s wedding.</p> - -<p>“Ivy’s tram” was on the line from the Albert Memorial -to Ore, and ground its way through dreadful -suburbs up Mount Pleasant, past the decayed “residences” -of Hastings’ prime, slabbed with stucco and -bulging with bow-windows, now all grimed and peeled -and darkened, chopped into lodgings and sliced into flats, -not the ghost of prosperity but its rotting corpse.</p> - -<p>The tram ground and screamed and swished on the -rails, and Ivy, rosy-faced under her tramwayman’s cap—with -its peak over the curl that hid her ear—came -forcing her way up the inside for fares, taking from each -Beatup its separate penny. She looked exuberantly well, -and quite happy again; she also smelled strongly of tram-oil, -and Nell’s little nose wrinkled even more than when -she had smelt of soapsuds and milk. She had a cheery -word for each one of her family, who in their turn sat -abashed, holding their tickets stiffly between finger and -thumb, their eyes slewed on Ivy as she took other passengers’ -fares, answered their questions, trundled them -out, bundled them in, pulled the bell, ran up to the roof, -changed the sign, and flung a little good-humoured chaff -at Bill the motorman when they reached the terminus.</p> - -<p>She had no time off till late that evening, so when the -family had ridden in state to Ore, they rode back again -to the Memorial. The parting was a little spoiled by -the crowd which was waiting to board the tram and reduced -Mrs. Beatup’s farewell embrace into something -grabbing and unseemly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Good-by, mother dear, and doan’t you vrother. I’m -valiant here.... Full inside, ma’am, and no standing -allowed on the platform.... Now, Nell, take care of -mother and hold her arm—she’s gitting scattery—and -adone, do, mother, for there’s too many fares on the top, -and I’m hemmed if I haven’t bitten a grape out of your -bonnet.”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<h3>12</h3> - -<p>It was night before the dislocations of train and trap -brought the Beatups back to Worge. A big yellow moon -was swinging high, scattering a honey-coloured dust of -light on the fields and copses and little lanes. The -farms, hushed and shut, lay dark against their grain-fields -drooping with harvest—in some fields the corn was -already cut and shocked, each tasselled cone standing in -the moonlight beside the black pool of its shadow.</p> - -<p>The Beatups were silent—owing perhaps to their congestion -in the trap. Nell was tired, and leaned against -her mother. Life seemed a very sordid trip, in spite of -the honey-coloured moon, which swung so high, the type -of unfulfilled desire. Mrs. Beatup was thinking of Ivy -and wondering if the soles of her boots were thick enough; -and Zacky, wedged between them, planned a big hunt -for conkers the next day. On the front seat, Mus’ -Beatup sucked at his pipe and schemed a dash for the -Rifle Volunteer before closing time. “If the War goes -on much longer, there’ll be no more beer, so I mun git -wot’s to be had. It’s those Russians, and be hemmed to -them; reckon they’ll maake peace and never care if the -War goes on a dunnamany year. It’s the sort of thing -you’d expect of chaps wot went teetotal by Act of Parliament.”</p> - -<p>Harry drove the old gelding, and as the trap lurched -from farm to farm he marked those which had cut their -grain, and which had not. They had reaped the Penny -field at Cowlease, and the old bottoms of Slivericks stood - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> - -shocked beside the stream. Egypt Farm, with late hardy -sowings, had not started—Worge started to-morrow.</p> - -<p>That visit to Hastings had been a holiday before the -solemn business of the year. For a long time he had -planned his reaping—trudging the fields each day, fingering -the awns, rubbing the straw. He must not cut too -early or too late. Last year the oats had stood till they -shed their seed, this year they must be caught in just the -right moment of wind and sun.</p> - -<p>On the whole the crops promised well. The old -grounds of the Volunteer and the Street field had borne -splendidly—the ploughed grass-lands not so well, except -for Forges field, which, for some obscure reason, had -brought forth a rich yield from its sour furrows. On -the whole the wheat promised better than the oats, which -in spite of the varieties he had chosen had thickened in -the clays, and grown unwieldy with sedge leaves and tulip -roots.</p> - -<p>The problem of harvesting had worried him for a long -time, for Mus’ Beatup absolutely refused to buy a steam -reaper-and-binder; he wurn’t going to take no risks in -war-time, and Harry must make what shift he could with -the old horse machine, which had trundled slowly round -the few acres of earlier Worge harvests, and must even -trundle round the width of this new venture. In vain -Harry pointed out the labour needed for binding—he -must get help, that was all; the family would turn to, as -it always did in harvest time. The absence of Ivy was a -hard blow—for she practically did the work of a man—but -he found an unexpected substitute in the curate, who -with the other country clergy had been episcopally urged -to lend a hand in harvest time. Mr. Poullett-Smith had -watched young Beatup’s effort with an approval which -condoned his wobblings between Church and chapel, and -felt, moreover, that his help might send a balance down - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> - -on the Church side. He was a little scandalised to find -soon after that Harry had also drawn in the Rev. Mr. -Sumption—the curate’s offer put it into his head; besides, -it was just the sort of thing one asked of Mr. Sumption—it -seemed far more his job than preaching or praying.</p> - -<p>The other helpers would just be the family, this time -including Nell, for where her parson went she could go -also, in spite of stained and welted hands. Elphick and -Juglery could do about one man’s work between them, and -there was a boy over school age on the loose in the -village, who was hired for ten shillings and his meals.</p> - -<p>Harry had written to Tom and told him of his maturing -plans, but either his marriage had breached him from -Worge, or the fact that the disciple had gone so much -further than his master had made his anxious ardour -cool away. His latest communication had been a field -postcard, which, as he had forgotten to put a cross against -any of its various items, presented a bewildering and conflicting -mass of information, which Harry flipped into the -coals with a wry smile.</p> - -<p>However, he was able to stand alone, for he dared the -chances of his new deeds. Oafish as he looked in his -Sunday suit and gasper collar, the adventure of harvest -was upon him as he jolted the old trap home under the -moon. “Behold, the fields stand white to harvest” ... -the words drifted like a cloud over his brain. These -fields that he had prepared, that his plough had torn and -his harrow broken, were fields of battle like the fields -in France. On them he had fought, for the same reason -as Tom fought the Germans, all the treacheries and assaults -of nature, her raiding winds, her storming rains, -her undermining rottenness in the soil, her blasting of -thunder and choking of heat.</p> - -<p>“Reckon to-morrow’s our Big Push,” he said to his -father, rather proud of the metaphor, and was careful - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> - -that the old horse did not hurry stablewards too quickly, -lest they should be home before the closing of the Rifle -Volunteer, and lose a soldier thereby.</p> - -<h3>13</h3> - -<p>The next day broke out of a dandelion sky above -Harebeating, but before the first pale colours had filtered -into the white of the east, Harry was on his legs, pottering -in the yard. All the little odds of farm-work must be -done early, to leave him free for the day’s great doings. -He anxiously snuffed the raw air—could its moisture, -distilled in the globes that hung on thatch and ricks, be -the warning of a day’s rain? The barometer stood high, -but, like other Sussex farmers, he had learned to distrust -his barometer, knowing the sudden tricks of turning -winds, the local rains drunk out of the marshes, the -chopping of the Channel tides. He disliked the flamy -look of the sky, the glassiness of its reflection in the -ponds ... he thought he felt a puff from the south-west. -“O Lord,” he prayed, kneeling down behind the -cowhouse door, “doan’t let it rain till we’ve got our -harvest in. If faather loses money this fall, he’ll never -let me breake up grass agaun. Please, Lord, kip it fine, -wud a short east wind, and doan’t let anyone stay away -or faather go to the Volunteer till we’ve adone. For -Christ’s sake. Amen.”</p> - -<p>Feeling soothed and reassured, he went in to breakfast.</p> - -<p>The family was of mixed and uncertain mood. Mrs. -Beatup was “vrothering” about what she could give -the clergymen for dinner—“not as I care two oald -straws about Mus’ Sumption, but Mus’ Smith he mun -be guv summat gentlemanly to put inside.” Zacky was -crossly scheming how best to carry through the conker - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> - -plan which Harry had rather threateningly forbidden. -Nell was in a nervous flutter, her colour coming and -going, her little hands curling and twitching under the -table. Mus’ Beatup was given over to an orgie of pessimism, -and before breakfast was finished had traced -Worge’s progress from a blundered harvest to the auctioneer’s.</p> - -<p>“There’s too many fields gitting ripe together,” he -said drearily. “You shudn’t ought to have maade your -sowings so close. Wot you want now is a week’s fine -weather on end, and all your wark done on a wunst. -You’ll never git it, surelye—the rain ull be on you before -it’s over. Reckon the Sunk Field ull have seeded itself -before you’re at it. You shud ought to have sown it -later.”</p> - -<p>“It’s fine time to think of all that now.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve thought of it afore and agaun, but you’d never -hearken. You think you’ve got more know than your -faather wot wur a yeoman afore you wur born and never -bruk up grass in his life.”</p> - -<p>“There’s Mus’ Sumption,” cried Mrs. Beatup, looking -out of the window. “He’s middling early—reckon -he wants some breakfast.”</p> - -<p>She reckoned right. Mrs. Hubble of the Horselunges -had refused to get breakfast for her lodger at such an -ungodly hour, and he had prowled round fasting to the -Beatups, eyeing their bacon and fried bread through the -window.</p> - -<p>“The labourer is worthy of his hire,” he remarked as -he sat down to the table, “and thou shalt not muzzle the -ox which treadeth the corn....”</p> - -<p>After breakfast they all went out to the Volunteer -field, which was to be cut first. Harry took charge of the -reaper, with Zacky a scowling protestant at the horse’s -head, while the others turned to the sickling and binding. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> - -Mr. Poullett-Smith had not arrived, having first to read -Mattins and eat his breakfast, but he came about an hour -after the start, a tall, bending, monkish figure, feeling just -a little daring in his shirt-sleeves.</p> - -<p>The meeting of the two parsons was friendliest on -the Anglican side. Mr. Poullett-Smith was a good -example of the Church of England’s vocation “to provide -a resident gentleman for every parish”—besides, -he pitied Sumption. The fellow was so obviously misfitted -by his pastorate—a fanatical, ignorant Calvinism, -blown about by eschatological winds, was his whole -equipment; otherwise, thought the curate, he had neither -dignity, knowledge nor education. He would have been -far happier had he been left a blacksmith, had his half-crazy -visions been allowed to burn themselves out like his -forge fires, instead of being stoked by mistaken patronage -and inadequate theological training. As things stood, he -was absurd, even in no worthier setting than a forgotten -village Bethel—a mere caricature of a minister, even in -the pulpit of the Particular Baptists, an old-fashioned and -fanatical sect with their heads full of doomsday. But -here among the reapers he was splendid. His open shirt -displayed a neck strong and supple and plump as a boy’s—the -grey homespun was stuck with sweat to his shoulders, -and the huge muscles of his back showed under it -in long ovoid lumps. His years had taken nothing from -his strength, merely added to his solidness and endurance. -With his shock of brindled curls, his comely brown -skin, his teeth white as barley-kernels, and eyes bright and -deep as a hammer pond, and all the splendour of his body -from shoulder to heel, he was as fine a specimen of a -man as he was a poor specimen of a minister. Mr. Poullett-Smith -paid him the honour due to his body, while -seeing no honour due to his soul.</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption felt his physical superiority to the willowy, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> - -tallow-faced curate; indeed he had a double advantage -over him, for he felt a spiritual towering too. He -despised his doctrines of Universal Redemption and -Sacramental Grace just as much as he despised his lean -white arms and delicate features. He gave his hand a -grip that made him wince—he could feel the bones cracking -under the pressure.... “He keeps his hands white -that he may hold the Lord’s body,” he thought to himself.</p> - -<p>The day was hot and misty. The blue sky glowed -with a thick, soft heat, and a yellowish haze blurred -hedges and barns. Even the roofs of Worge seemed far -away, and the sounds of the neighbouring farms were -dim—but distant sounds came more clearly, a siren -crooned on the far-off sea, and the mutter of guns came -like a tread over the motionless air. Harry heard it as -he drove the reaper, mingling with the swish of sickles -and the rub of bones.</p> - -<p>For greater quickness, he had split the field into two -unequal parts—the bigger one he was cutting with the -reaper, the smaller was being cut by hand. Mr. Sumption, -Mus’ Beatup and Elphick reaped, while Nell, the -curate, Juglery and the boy from Prospect Cottages -bound the sheaves. The old horse went so slowly that the -sickles worked nearly as fast as the machine. After a -time Harry gave up his place to his father, who had been -unfitted by illness and intemperance for much strenuous -work.</p> - -<p>At first there was some talking and joking among the -harvesters, but soon this wore to silence in the heat. -Only from where Mr. Smith and Nell stooped together -over the reaped corn, gathering it into sheaves, came -murmurs of sound. Nell’s pale cheeks and lips were -flushed with her toil and stooping, and her eyes were -bright with a pleasure which toil cannot give. Her cotton -dress, the colour of the sky, set out the brightness of her - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> - -hair, the colour of the corn. Her graceful, ineffectual -hands, too, pleased the curate, for they were the only pair -besides his in the field which were not coarse and burnt, -with stubbed, black nails. Moreover, her pleasure and excitement -at the day’s long promise made her more -talkative than usual, and to a better purpose. He found -that he liked her pleasant, blurry voice, which fled and -fluttered over her words for fear that she should drawl -them.</p> - -<p>The sun climbed to the zenith, and the heat not only -baked down from the sky, but scorched up out of the -ground. The dust of the earth and of corn-stalks filled -the air with a choking, chaffy thickness. The smell of -dust came from the road, and from farmyards the smell -of baking mud. The black oasts of Egypt across the way -swam in a cloud of heat, and the red oasts of Worge were -smeared to shadows in the steam of sunshine and dust. -An aching of blue and yellow was in the harvesters’ eyes, -and their bodies seemed to melt and drip. The reaper -crawled even more slowly, with Mus’ Beatup sagging -drowsily over the reins, and Zacky drooping against old -Tassell, whose flanks ran with sweat, and from whose -steaming hide came ammoniacal stable smells, whiffing -over the harvesters every time he passed.</p> - -<p>Mr. Poullett-Smith looked more than ever like a -Sienese candle now that his forehead and cheeks were -dabbled with sweat, like wax that had melted and run. -He wiped his face periodically with a white handkerchief, -which annoyed Mr. Sumption, though it was a fact that -the curate had done excellent work, and made up in -conscientious energy what he lacked in muscle and -experience.</p> - -<p>“Take off your waistcoat, or your sweat ull spoil the -lining,” called the minister, and Mr. Smith rather unexpectedly -followed his advice, having, as it happened, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> - -quite lost sight of the pastor in that huge toiling figure, -now almost bare of chest, with arms swinging like a -flail. He saw only a labourer more experienced and a -man more manly than himself, whose muscle he respected -and whose commands he would obey.</p> - -<p>From twelve o’clock onwards the problem for Harry -had been to keep Mus’ Beatup away from the Rifle -Volunteer. The field being near the Street, they could -hear the pleasing jar of stopping wheels, the slam of -the taproom door, even the creak of the Volunteer sign. -As he swung out there over the Street, with his grey-green -uniform and obsolete rifle, he seemed to say, “In -my day yeomen never worked at noon, but came and -drank good beer made of Sussex hops and talked of how -we’d beat the French.... Now there is no good beer, -and hardly any Sussex hops, and we talk of how we and -the French together will beat the Germans. But come, -good yeomen, all the same.”</p> - -<p>Harry thought it advisable to detach Mus’ Beatup -from the reaper, which trundled him up under the eaves -of the Volunteer’s huge sprawling roof, so he suggested -that old Juglery should take his place for a while, and -that Mus’ Beatup should help with the binding. He also -persuaded Mr. Sumption to give up his sickle and bind -till closing-time. He felt that if his father worked between -the two parsons he would not be so likely to scuffle -an escape; for in spite of his rationalist enlightenment, -Mus’ Beatup’s attitude in the presence of the clergy was -very different from that which he took up in their absence—and -his contempt of their doctrine was liable to -be swallowed up in respect for their cloth.</p> - -<p>Dinner was brought out soon after noon by Mrs. -Beatup and the girl, a hard-breathing young person with -a complexion like an over-ripe plum. There was beer, -and there was tea, and bread and cheese—Mrs. Beatup’s - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> - -idea of summat gentlemanly to put inside the clergyman -materialised in several crumbly sandwiches of tinned curried -rabbit. They all sat down under the hedge furthest -from the Volunteer, and were all rather silent, except -Mr. Sumption, who had scarcely tired himself with the -morning’s work and thought this a good opportunity to -enter into an argument, or “hold a conference,” as he -put it, with Mr. Poullett-Smith on the doctrine of Efficacious -Grace. Mr. Smith, besides the reluctance of his -Anglican breeding to discuss theology with an outsider, -and his feeling as a public-school man that it was bad -form to talk shop in mixed company, was far from theologically -minded. Though he would not have owned it -for worlds, he was already tired out. The continual -stooping with the hot sun on his back had made him feel -sick and dizzy, and Mrs. Beatup’s curried sandwiches had -finished the work of the sun and roused definite symptoms -of an indelicate nature. He lay against the hedge, looking -languid and curiously human in his open shirt, his hair -hanging a little over his forehead. Nell sat on her heels, -and her eyes played over him tenderly, almost maternally.</p> - -<p>“Reckon you’re tired,” she said in a low, drawling -voice that no one else could hear.</p> - -<p>They did not go back to work till nearly two, and the -danger for Mus’ Beatup was over for the time. The -afternoon was, as usual, more tiring than the morning, -for the earth, if not the sun, was hotter, limbs were tired -and stomachs were full. Harry mounted the curate on -the reaper, though he was not much of a success, as he -failed to realise the power of old Tassell’s habit, and did -vigorous rein-work at the corners, with the result that the -old horse was thrown completely off his bearings, and on -one occasion nearly charged down the hedge, on another -knocked over Zacky, and once came wearily to a standstill -with all four feet in the uncut corn.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p> - -<p>Mr. Poullett-Smith decided that he preferred binding -to reaping, and was glad to find himself back beside -Nell with her delicate ways—it was wonderful, he -thought, how far she was above her surroundings; he -had not noticed it before, for he had hardly ever seen -her against the background of Worge, but in the frame -of church or school, where her shining was not so bright. -She was tired, he could see, but she did not grow moist -and blowsy like the rest—her pretty hair draggled a bit, -her mouth drooped rather sweetly, but exertion heightened -her anæmic tints, and there was a glow about her -when she talked, in spite of her fatigue.</p> - -<p>Suddenly, in the middle of the afternoon, she broke -away from him, and came back with a glass of water.</p> - -<p>“Is that for me?” he exclaimed, as she held it out.</p> - -<p>“Yes. I thought you must be getting thirsty.”</p> - -<p>“I am—but aren’t you thirsty, too?”</p> - -<p>“I had something to drink in the house—this is yours,” -and she watched him drink with an eager sweetness and -humility in her eyes.</p> - -<h3>14</h3> - -<p>For the next two or three days the work went well. -The Volunteer Field was reaped, and then the Street -Field; the Sunk and Forges must be tackled before the -fine weather came to an end, but the low grounds by -Bucksteep might be left to stand a little, being sheltered, -and not quite ready for harvest. Harry’s mixed gang of -helpers was a bigger success than he had dared hope. -Mr. Sumption was even better the second day than the -first, having worked down a stiffness which his big -muscles had acquired from long disuse. Even Mrs. -Beatup was impressed, and gave him a fine breakfast -every morning. The other clergyman was not so useful, -but he made up in effort what he lacked in achievement, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> - -and by Friday was doing quite a creditable day’s work. -Nell was not, of course, much good, still, she was better -than nothing, and more energetic and good-humoured -than Harry had ever seen her. Zacky and the hired boy -conspired in laziness and evil-doing, and Harry was -grateful when the Rev. Mr. Sumption took it upon himself -to knock their heads together.</p> - -<p>On Friday evening grey smears of cloud lay on a -strange whiteness in the west, and on Saturday the whole -sky was smudged over with a pale opacity, and the wind -blew from the South. The labourers found relief from -the stewing, chaffy stillness of the last few days; but -Harry snuffed the air and looked wise.</p> - -<p>“The weather’s breaking up,” he said to his father -in the dinner-hour. “We’ll have to work on Sunday.”</p> - -<p>“Wud two passons!” cried Mus’ Beatup. “They’ll -never coame. They’ll be preaching tales about dead -men.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon we must do wudout them. We durn’t leave -the Sunk Field till after the weather. Bucksteep can -wait, surelye, but the Sunk must be reaped before the -rain.”</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup groaned—“That’s the wust of doing -aught wud passons. ’Tis naun to them if it rains on -Monday—all they care is that a dunnamany hunderd -years agone it rained forty days and forty nights and -drownded all the world saave Noah and his beasts. -Bah!” and Mus’ Beatup spat into the hedge.</p> - -<p>However, to their surprise, they found both the parsons -ready to work on Sunday. Mr. Poullett-Smith had no -less authority than the Archbishop of Canterbury—the -Archbishop quoted Christ’s saying of the ox in the pit, -and gave like indulgence to all Churchmen. The Rev. -Mr. Sumption appeared with no such sanctions.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I’ve got no Randall Cantuar or Charles John Chichester -to tell me I may break the Lord’s commandments. -Reckon the Assembly ull be against me in this, and the -Lord Himself ull be against me; but I’ll risk it. For -you’re a good lad, Harry Beatup, and I’m going to stand -by you, and if the Lord visits it on me I must bow to -His will.”</p> - -<p>When service-time came he had the advantage, for he -polished off his bewildered congregation in only a little -over half an hour, whereas the curate was nearly two -hours at Brownbread Street, with a sung Eucharist. “I -can say what I like and pray what I like,” said Mr. -Sumption. “I’m not tied down to a Roman Mass-book -dressed-up Protestant.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Smith heard him in silence. His respect for him -as a man and a labourer still outweighed his contempt -for him as preacher and theologian. Also he now felt -that in matters of religion Mr. Sumption was slightly -crazed. He could handle a horse or a hammer or a -sickle with sureness and skill, and talk of them with -sanity and knowledge, but once let him mount his -religious notions and he would ride to the devil. Mr. -Smith came to the conclusion that he was one of those -crack-brained people who believed that the war was the -end of the world, the Consummation of the Age foretold -in Scripture, and that soon Christ would come again in the -clouds with great glory.—This really was what Mr. Sumption -believed, so Mr. Smith did not misjudge him much.</p> - -<p>By noon on Sunday dark clouds were swagging up -from the south-west, with a screaming wind before them. -The fog and dust of the last few days had been followed -by an unnatural clearness—each copse and fields and pond -and lane in the country of the Four Roads stood sharply -out, with inky tones in its colouring. The fields sweeping -down from Sunday Street to Horse Eye were shaded -from indigo almost to black, and on the marsh the slatting - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> - -water-courses gleamed like steel on the heavy teal-green -of their levels. The sea was drawn in a black line -against a thick, unhealthy white sky, blotched and -straggled with grey.</p> - -<p>“It’ll rain before dusk,” said Harry. “It can’t hoald -out much longer.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll never git the field shocked, let alone brought -in,” said Mus’ Beatup. “Here we’ve bin five hour and -not maade more’n a beginning—it’s lamentaable. Reckon -we might as well let the Germans beat us—we cudn’t have -wuss weather.”</p> - -<p>Harry set his teeth.</p> - -<p>“We’ll git it finished afore the rain.”</p> - -<p>“Afore your grandmother dies,” jeered Mus’ Beatup. -“I’m off to the Volunteer.”</p> - -<p>“And leave us.... Faather!”</p> - -<p>“I’m not a-going to stay here catching my death wud -rheumatics, working in the rain under my son’s orders. -Reckon you’d sooner see me dead than lose your hemmed -oats—my hemmed oats I shud say—but I—” and Mus’ -Beatup swung up his chin haughtily—“have different -feelings.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you have, and you ought to be ashaumed -of yourself!” cried Harry thickly, then flushed in self -rebuke, for on the whole he was a respectful son.</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup sauntered away, his hands in his pockets, -his shoulders hunched to his ears—his usual attitude -when he felt guilty but wanted to look swaggering. Mr. -Sumption and Mr. Poullett-Smith were both at the -further end of the field, and no opposition stood between -him and the Rifle Volunteer save the doubtful quality -his wife might offer from the kitchen window. Harry -watched him with burning cheeks and a full throat. -“Reckon I’m lik to kip temperance all my days wud -this,” he mumbled bitterly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p> - -<p>He then went down to the other workers, and told -them that it was going to rain and that they were a -labourer short, as his father was feeling ill and had gone -indoors to rest, but that he hoped by “tar’ble hard wark” -to get the field cut before the storm. “If the grain’s -shocked, it’ll bear the rain, but if it’s left standing, the -rain ull beat down the straw, and all the seed ull fly. -Juglery, you taake the reaper—Norry Noakes, you git to -Tassell’s head—Mus’ Sumption and Elphick and I ull -reap, and Mus’ Smith and Nell and Zacky bind.... -Now I reckon ’tis a fight ’twixt us and them gurt clouds -over Galleybird.”</p> - -<p>Elphick and Juglery were inclined to grumble at having -their dinner-hour cut short, and talked of judgments -equally bestowed on “them wot bruk the Sabbath” and -“them wot bruk up grass.” But Mus’ Sumption’s professional -opinion was that the approaching storm was not -in the nature of a punitive expedition—“If the Lord had -wanted to spoil this harvest, He would have done it on -Thursday or Friday; now all He’ll get is the tail-end, -and not that if I can help it.”</p> - -<p>He bent his huge back to the sickle, and worked for -the next hour without straightening. Mr. Poullett-Smith -decided to forget the Sunday-school he was supposed to -catechise at three, and Nell to forget the headache which -would probably have sent her off the field at the same -hour. Norry Noakes and Zacky, seeing their deliverance -nigh, put more energy into that afternoon than they had -put into all four other days of harvest—Norry nearly -dragged Tassell’s head off his neck in his efforts to make -him go faster.</p> - -<p>At about three o’clock, Mr. Sumption stood up and -scanned the fields under his hand like Elijah’s servant -watching for rain. Then he gave a shout that made -everyone start and straighten their backs.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Lo! the Lord is on our side—behold more labourers -for the harvest.”</p> - -<p>Two figures were coming down the field from Worge—Ivy -Beatup and a soldier. Ivy wore a pink cotton dress, -belling out all round her with the wind and flapping -against the soldier’s legs. She also carried unexpectedly -a pink parasol.</p> - -<p>“Thought I’d come over and see you all!” she bawled -as soon as she was within earshot. “This is Sergeant -Eric Staples from Canada.”</p> - -<p>... Canada! Then no doubt he knew a bit about -harvesting. Harry went forward to meet them.</p> - -<p>“Mother toald us you’d half the Sunk to reap before -the weather,” said Ivy, at closer range, “so I said we’d -come and give you a hand, surelye.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll be unaccountable glad to have you both—the -rain’s blowing up and we’re short of workers.”</p> - -<p>“I’m on it, as the boys say, and so’s the Sergeant, I -reckon.”</p> - -<p>“Sure,” said Sergeant Staples, staring round him.</p> - -<p>“Mother’s gitting a valiant supper fur us when ’tis all -a-done. She says if you’ve bruk the Sabbath one way -you may as well break it another and maake a good job -of it. Thyrza’s coming, and is bringing all her tinned -salmon. Wot do you think of my sunshade, Nell?—reckon -it’s unaccountable smart,” and Ivy threw it down -into the stubble and began rolling up her sleeves.</p> - -<p>“It’s middling kind of you,” said Harry politely to -Sergeant Staples.</p> - -<p>“Only too glad—I’ve done a power of this work over -in Sask. May I ask what this little buggy is?”—and -he pointed to the nodding erection of old Juglery -chaired above the reins that slacked on Tassell’s -rump.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p> - -<p>“That’s the reaper, surelye.”</p> - -<p>The Canadian did not speak, but the puzzled look -deepened on his face.</p> - -<p>“Maybe you’ll taake a sickle, being handy-like?”</p> - -<p>“Sure”—but when Harry gave him Mus’ Beatup’s -discarded weapon he held it at arm’s length and scratched -his head. Then he slid up to Ivy—</p> - -<p>“Say, kid, I never heard before as in the old country -they cut corn with a pocket-knife.”</p> - -<p>However, he swung his tool handily, and with the two -new workers, and the extra energy of the old, the reaping -went forward at a pace which threatened the victory of -those black clouds over Galleybird.</p> - -<p>The wind blew in droning gusts, swishing in the corn, -and fiddling in the boughs of Forges Wood. Dead leaves -began to fly out of the wood, the threat of autumn. The -men’s shirts blew against their skins, and the women’s -skirts flew out; the colours of the field grew dim—the -corn was white, the wood and the hedges were grey—only -the clothes of the harvesters stood out in smudges -of pink and blue. Then suddenly rain began to squirt -down out of a black smeary sky like charcoal—the wind -screamed, almost flattening the few last rods. No one -spoke, for no voice could be heard above the howling of -the wind. Rabbits began to pop out of the corn, but there -were no hunting dogs, no shouting groups from the cottages -come out to see the fun. When the last sickleful -had been cut, and the reaper stood still, with old Juglery -asleep on the seat, the harvesters picked up their coats -and pulled down their sleeves without a word.</p> - -<p>They were wet through—the muscles of the men’s -bodies showed through their clinging shirts and the -women were wringing their gowns. But the Sunk Field -was reaped and Harry’s harvest saved. He had won his -battle against his own ignorance, his father’s indifference, -and the earth’s treacheries. He had vindicated his daring, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> - -and he would never know how small was the thing he -had done—a few scrubby acres sown and reaped, a few -mean quarters of indifferent grain gathered in—he would -never hear Sergeant Staples say to Sergeant Speed of the -North-West Provinces that he had spent a slack afternoon -cutting mustard and cress with a pocket-knife.</p> - -<p>Food was waiting up at the farm, with Thyrza Beatup, -who, for obvious reasons now, had been unable to help -with the harvest, but had done her best by contributing -her entire stock of tinned salmon to the harvest-supper. -The party began to move off, Mr. Poullett-Smith wrapping -his coat over Nell’s shoulders with hands that perhaps -strayed a little to touch her neck. Only Mr. Sumption -was left, standing upright and stockish on the rise of -the field, a huge black shape against the sky.</p> - -<p>“Come along, Mus’ Sumption,” called Ivy, “and git -a nice tea-supper. Thur’s tinned salmon and a caake.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption’s voice came to them on the scream of -the wind—</p> - -<p>“Shall I go without thanking the Lord of the Harvest -for His mercies in allowing us to gather in the fruits of -the earth on the Sabbath Day?”</p> - -<p>“He’s praying,” said Nell, with a shiver of disgust in -her voice.</p> - -<p>The curate bit his lip.</p> - -<p>“He’s perfectly right,” he said, and going up to the -minister, he knelt down in the stubble. The others huddled -in a sheepish group by the gate. Mr. Sumption’s -prayer was blown over their heads, washed into the woods -on the rain, but they could hear the groan of his big -voice in the wind, and here and there a word of his -familiar prayer-vocabulary.... “Lord ... day ... -oven ... wicked ... righteous ... Satan ... save -... forgive.... Amen.”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -</div> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PART V: NELL</h2> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap">AUTUMN came, and gradually the farm-work slackened. -The Bucksteep acres were cut, not much the -worse for the storm—the hops were picked, and -showed a fair crop of fuggles, though the goldings had -not done so well. Harry sowed catch crops of trifolium -and Italian rye grass, and started his autumn ploughings. -Certain reactions had seized him after the harvest, and -he had gone off wandering in the fields, away to villages -where he had not strayed for months except to market. -But the lapse had been short, for the adventure of -Worge’s acres was not dead—his imagination had now -its headquarters and sanctuary in the fields where he -worked; he had no need to seek dreams and beauty far -away, for they grew at his barndoor, and he strawed -them in the furrows with his grain.</p> - -<p>Tom’s dwindling zeal was reawakened by the account -of the harvest which Harry scrawled to France—“Nine -quarters we got from the Volunteer Field and five from -the Sunk and six from Forges. Hops and roots did -middling. All the potash fields were valiant. Maybe -next year Father will buy a reaper-and-binder. The -Reverend Mr. Sumption was proper at the harvest.” -His brother wrote back a letter of which “Well done, -young ’un” was the refrain. “Queer,” he wrote, “but - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> - -there’s a Forges Wood out here—they say the 5th Sussex -named it and it was called something French before. It -is not like Forges, for it is narrow like a dibble and the -trees have no branches, being knocked off by crumps and -nothing grows there becos of the gas. There are dead -horses in it.”</p> - -<p>Tom had seen plenty of fighting that autumn in -Paschendaele, but was so far well and unhurt. He sent -Thyrza home a bit of shell which had knocked off his tin -hat and “shocked him all of a swum.” Everyone, he -wrote, had laughed fit to bust at it—Thyrza thought -that they laughed at queer things in the trenches. She -fretted a little during those autumn days, for her hope -was now almost a torment ... suppose Tom should -never see the child their love had made. Every day in -the paper there were long casualty lists, every day telegraph -boys and girls went peddling to happy homes and -blasted them with a slip of paper. They had knocked -at doors in the country of the Four Roads—the eldest -Pix had been killed early in October; then there had -been the butcher’s son at Bodle Street, and the lawyer’s -son at Hailsham, and poor Mus’ Piper’s boy had lost -both legs.... The world looked suddenly very grey -and treacherous to Thyrza; she dared not hope, lest -hope should betray her, and her few moments of peaceful -mother-happiness were riddled with doubts. Oh, if only -God would let her have Tom back somehow, no matter -how maimed, how helpless, how dependent on her.... -Then she would suddenly react from her desire, shrink -back in horror at the thought of Tom wounded, his -strong sweet body all sick and disfigured.... “Better -dead,” she would groan—and yet, a dead father for her -child.... She found war a very tar’ble thing.</p> - -<p>During the earlier years she had, in company with -most people in the country of the Four Roads, passed -lightly under its yoke. Even her widowhood had not -brought it down upon her—Sam had so often left her, -might so easily have come to grief in other ways. Except -for those who were actually and poignantly bereaved, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> - -the War made little difference to a large multitude for -whom it existed only in France and in the newspapers. -For a big section of England it did not begin till 1916, -for it was not till then that it actually set foot on English -soil. In 1916 the Conscription Act, the food scarcity, -and War Agricultural Committees dumped it down on -the doorsteps of Sussex folk who up till then had ignored -it as a furrin business. Thyrza had not thought about -it much—she had read the newspapers, and given little -bits of help to war charities that appealed to her; but -now that it had taken the man she loved, it had taken -her too. She was tied with him to its chariot-wheels, -one of the nameless victims of the great woe.</p> - -<p>Her business, too, fretted her. She was not able for -the exertions of the times, and was worried by the difficulties -of getting supplies. To have no sweets for the -little children who came in with their pennies, no tea for -the old men and women who wanted it to warm and -cheer their poor rheumatic bodies, no cheese and no -bacon for the young men who worked in the fields ... -all this grieved her gentle heart, and she brooded over it -in a way she would not have done had she been in her -usual health. She grew pale and nervous, found she had -but little to say to lingering customers, sat huddled limply -over her fire, rising slowly and heavily when the buzz -of the little bell that used to be so gay forced her to exert -herself and go to the door.</p> - -<p>In this state, Mrs. Beatup took pity on her, and forgot -the tacit warfare of the mother on the wife. If Thyrza -was going to give a child to Tom, she was also going to -give a grandchild to Tom’s mother. She often waddled -down to the shop with good advice, or asked Thyrza up -for an evening at Worge, and developed a new and unexpected -optimism for her comfort.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Reckon if Tom’s alive he’ll stick alive to the end—if -he’d bin going to be killed he’d have bin killed afore -now. Besides, he always wur the chap fur luck. I -remember how when he wur a liddle feller he slid into -the pond, and we all thought he’d be drownded, but Juglery -pulled him out, and his faather hided him nigh out -of his skin. So doan’t you vrother, my dear, but kip in -good heart fur the saake of the liddle ’un wot’s coming. -Tom ull live to see un, I can promise you. He sims unaccountable -young to have a baby, but reckon he’d be -younger still to die.”</p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>If that autumn was cruel to Thyrza in its torture of -waxing hope it was crueller still to Nell in its torture of -hope’s dying. For a week after the harvest she had -lived in flowery fields of memory, pied with all bright -colours. When she shut her eyes she could see his face -bending close to hers over the shocked corn, his thin -delicate hands moving among the straw, sliding close -enough to hers for an accidental touch ... she could -feel them brush her neck as he helped her into his coat -at the day’s end of prayer and storm....</p> - -<p>For a week her heart drowsed in its own sweetness. -Nell was happy, she grew gentler and kinder. She was -no longer an ineffective little rebel, full of disgusts and -grumbles—a delicious languor was upon her, a bright -dimness which veiled all the jags and uglinesses of her -life. During this week she did not see Mr. Poullett-Smith, -but her mind rested sweetly in his memory. -Perhaps the physical fatigue of the harvest, mixed with -the natural inertia of her anæmic condition, both had a -share in bringing about a certain passivity, or perhaps -it was the change of her love from scourge to comfort -which put an end to all her old restless efforts to see him, -her making of opportunities, her fretting glances from - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> - -the schoolhouse window, her nervous strayings to church. -Anyhow she did not see him till Sunday, when her -glorious castle fell.</p> - -<p>He came into Sunday-school as usual, with a benedictory -smile. Her memories of him in his open shirt, with -his face all red and shining and his hair caked with sweat -on his forehead, made her feel a little shocked to see him -again in his long black cassock, above which his face -showed waxy and white. Perhaps a touch of sunburn -lingered, but the black of his priestly garment wiped it -out. Who would have thought, said Nell to herself, that -this day a week ago he had been toiling as a farmhand, -with bare arms and throat, all baked and burnt and dirty -and sweaty...?</p> - -<p>He greeted the superintendent, and talked for a few -moments at her desk; then he came down among the -teachers and their classes. Nell wore a white blouse and -a big white hat like an ox-eyed daisy. Her book slid -from her knee to the floor, and there was a scuffle among -her children as Freddie Gurr from Hazard’s Green -dropped the worm he had been nursing for comfort -through the chills of his mediæval Sunday; but she did -not hear as she half rose for her greeting, then sank back, -as in the level, indifferent tones in which he had said -“Good morning, Miss Sinden—good morning, Miss Pix,” -he said “Good morning, Miss Beatup,” and passed on to -“Good morning, Miss Viner.”</p> - -<p>Nell’s heart constricted with pain. She told herself -that she was a fool to be so sensitive, that it was not -likely Mr. Poullett-Smith would greet her publicly in the -manner of their harvest friendship. But she could get -no comfort from her self-rebuke, for deep in herself she -knew that she was wise. Doubtless there was no importance -to be attached to the coldness of her friend’s -greeting. Nevertheless, he had that morning, silently - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> - -and symbolically, declared the gulf between them. In -the cornfield, working as her comrade, he had stood for -a short while on her level—for the first time her efforts -to attract him had been without handicap. But now the -handicap was restored—he was the Priest-in-Charge of -Brownbread Street, and she was the daughter of a -drunken farmer. If for a few hours she had charmed -him out of his eminent sense of fitness, the charm was -over now. What had this dignified, cassocked ecclesiastic -to do with her, a poor little nobody? His friendliness -during their common toil had been a mere passing -emotion; probably she had exaggerated it—even the little -her memory held must be halved, and that poor remainder -cancelled out by the probability that he had forgotten it.</p> - -<p>As a matter of fact the curate had not forgotten it, but -the attraction had not been robust enough to survive the -loss of its surroundings. He saw that he had been unwise -and rather unkind in yielding so easily to a mere -temporary prepossession. His more solid affections had -long been engaged elsewhere, and he spent some hours -of real self-reproach for having ever so briefly faltered. -He might have put ideas into the girl’s head—they had -certainly been in his own. However, he reflected, there -was not time to have done much harm, and he would set -matters straight at once. So for the next month his behaviour -to Nell was unflaggingly cold and polite, and at -the end of it all the parish was told of his engagement -to Marian Lamb.</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>There were days of desolation for Nell Beatup that -November. Her disappointment gripped her as a black -frost grips the fields; she felt powerless, bound, and -sterile. Even the last month, when bit by bit her happy -memories were destroyed, when she learned that all her - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> - -hopes were built on an exaggeration, a mistake, even that -month of slow disillusion had been better than this black -month of despair. In October a few crumpled leaves had -reddened the trees, a few pale draggled flowers had sweetened -the garden, a bird had sometimes perched on the -gable end and sung before he flew away. But now the -fields were black and the woods were dun, the lanes were -a poach of mud, and the smell of mud hung above field-gates -and barns—a clammy mist rose from the ponds, -making the air substantial with the taste of water ... -tears ... they seemed to hang in the rainy clouds, to -dribble from the trodden earth, and, mixed with the dead -summer’s dust, they made a grey slimy mud that sobbed -and sucked under her feet on her daily trudge to school.</p> - -<p>The killing of her hope was no mercy. Even that sick -thing had been better than this emptiness, this death. -Hope had sustained her for years, for years she had had -nothing more robust to feed on than her pale infatuation -for a man who seldom gave her crumbs. She had become -skilled in hoping, long practice made her an experienced -artificer of hope, able to build a palace out of a few -broken bricks. She had never known any other love -than this ghost of one, so there had never been a chance -of its dying of comparison. She had no intimate girl -friends, and Ivy’s full-blooded affairs struck her only -with the grossness of their quality, giving her own by -contrast a refinement and poetry that made it doubly -precious.</p> - -<p>Then had come the wonderland of those harvest days, -when hope had almost passed into confidence, when all -the wonderful things of love she had never learned yet—glamour, -pride, perfection, satisfaction—had shown her -their burning shapes. But it had all been false, a mirage -of that same hope’s sick intensity, an overreaching of -the artificer’s skill; and now her tears had turned to - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> - -mud the golden dust of harvest, and all her dreams were -dead—and stuck to her still, clogging and fouling, like -this mud of Slivericks Lane on her boots.</p> - -<p>Luckily, her day-long absence made it possible for her -to hide her wretchedness from her family. At school her -listlessness was commented on—a listlessness alternating -with an increased nerviness and a tendency to cry when -found fault with—but as Nell had always been a little -languid and a little hysterical, these exaggerations of her -natural state were put down to her health, and the schoolmistress -persuaded her to take a patent medicine containing -iron. Her love affair had been conducted on -such delicate lines that only a few had noticed it, and -no one except Ivy had given it any importance. Ivy was -intensely sorry for her sister, and on one Sunday’s visit -dared to probe her state. But Nell was like a poor little -cat caught by the tail, and could only scratch and spit, -so Ivy good-naturedly gave up the effort. She was quite -her old self again, judging by the “pals” she brought -over to Worge on her Sundays off—Motorman Hodder -and Motorman Davis, and Sergeant Staples, and Private -La Haye, and Corporal Bunch of the Moose Jaws, and -other Canadians quartered at Hastings, who sat in the -kitchen, saying, “Sure” and “Yep” and “Nope.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon it’s kill or cure wud you,” said Mrs. Beatup, -and no one knew precisely what she meant.</p> - -<p>Nell thought her worst moment would be when she delivered -to Mr. Poullett-Smith the pretty little speech she -had been making up ever since she heard of his engagement. -It was fairly bad, for Marian Lamb was with him -and had already assumed a galliard air of proprietorship.</p> - -<p>“Thank you so much, Miss Beatup—it’s awfully kind -of you. Yes, I’m awfully happy, and”—coyly—“I hope - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> - -Harry is too. But we mustn’t stop any more—Harry has -still the remains of his cold. <em>Do</em> turn up your collar, you -naughty boy.”</p> - -<p>Nell walked away rigid with contempt. “She’s silly -and she’s vulgar—she’s vulgarer than I, for all I’m only a -farmer’s daughter. ‘Naughty boy!’—how common! -She’s worse than Ivy.”</p> - -<p>Miss Marian gave up her Red Cross work, and was -seen going for long walks with her Harry, and accompanying -him on his parish rounds. She was a big, ungainly, -soapily clean female, with a certain uncouth girlishness -which did not endear her to the curate’s flock. -Nell could not imagine what he “saw in her”—she certainly -did not read the <cite>Sermons of St. Gregory</cite>. She -wondered if he had loved her long—the parish said -“years,” but that he had been unable to propose (1) till -an expected legacy arrived, (2) till Miss Marian was sure -she could get nobody else. At all events, he must have -been in love with her during those days of Nell’s mirage—it -was another bitter realisation for her to swallow, another -choking mouthful of humble-pie.</p> - -<p>The poor little teacher crept about forlornly. She had -not officially given up her Sunday-school class, but she -seized flimsy pretexts to keep away; she even sometimes -stayed away from church—then would force herself to -go thrice of a Sunday, in case her absence should be put -down to its true cause. She dodged the curate and -Marian in the lanes, but she seemed to run into them at -every corner—they always seemed to be going by the -schoolhouse window. One evening, as she passed Mr. -Smith’s cottage by the church, she saw the firelight leaping -in his uncurtained study, and two dark figures stooping -together against the glow. She stopped and stared in, -like a beggar watching a feast; the table was laid for tea, -and there were his books and his pictures, all ruddy in -the firelight, the flickering, shuttled walls of the little -room in which she had never set foot—his home. Marian -was there; she would pour out his tea and hand him his -cup. She would say, “Eat some more, dear; you’ve had - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> - -a tiring day.” Then she would make him lie back in his -armchair and put his feet to the fire, and she would curl -up at his feet and read him the <cite>Sermons of St. Gregory</cite>.... -No, she wouldn’t do anything like this. Nell -laughed—that woman was Nell, not Marian. She was -putting herself where she wanted to be, in the other’s -place. Marian would say, “Don’t eat all the cake, -naughty boy.” And then she would go and sit on his -knee. Ugh!... And Nell, who would have done so -differently, stood outside in the November dusk, with -tears and rain on her face, and little cold, red hands -clenched in impotent longing.</p> - - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>At the end of November the bells rang for the advance -at Cambrai—old Dallington tower rocked with its chimes, -and even the little tin clapper at Brownbread Street -tinkled away for an hour or more. Mr. Poullett-Smith -and his organist spent half a dozen evenings trying to -make a dodging choir face a Solemn Te Deum approved -by the Gregorian Society. Unluckily, the singers who -would have easily blustered through Stainer in F or -Martin in C, grew hang-dog and discouraged in the knots -of Tones and Mediations, so that by the time the Te -Deum was ready, Bourlon Wood had been evacuated by -the British and the victory of Cambrai became something -perilously near a fiasco. Fortunately the capture of Jerusalem -soon afterwards saved the Te Deum from being -wasted.</p> - -<p>These alternating victories and disasters were very bad -for Mus’ Beatup, for he celebrated them all in the same -way at the Rifle Volunteer. The only difference was that -from some obscure sport of habit he celebrated a victory -in gin and a defeat in whisky. He was very bad after -both aspects of Cambrai, and Jerusalem brought him to -ruin.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p> - -<p>Soon after nine there was a loud knocking at the back -door, rousing all the Beatups who had fallen asleep in the -kitchen. Nell was asleep because she always seemed to -be tired and drowsy now, Mrs. Beatup was asleep because -she reckoned she wouldn’t have much of a night -with Maaster, Zacky and Harry were asleep on the floor -in front of the fire, curled up together like puppies—Zacky -because it was long past the time he ought to have -been in bed, Harry because he had had a hard day -ploughing the clays. There was great confusion and -rubbing of eyes, and the knock was repeated.</p> - -<p>“Go and see who it is, Nell,” said Mrs. Beatup. -“Harry, I dreamt as we wur being bombed by Zepperlians -like the folk at Pett.”</p> - -<p>“I dreamt of naun—I’m going to sleep agaun.”</p> - -<p>He dropped his head back against Zacky—and just -at that moment Nell reappeared in the doorway, with a -terrified face.</p> - -<p>“Mother—it’s father; he’s been hurt....”</p> - -<p>“Hurt!—you mean killed....”</p> - -<p>“I don’t—I mean hurt. There’s a man with him, -helping him in.”</p> - -<p>“I’m a-going,” and Mrs. Beatup seized the lamp and -waddled out, followed by her scared and sleepy offspring.</p> - -<p>In the passage a big soldier was propping up a Mus’ -Beatup who looked as if he was stuffed with sawdust.</p> - -<p>“He’s had a bit of a fall,” said the soldier as he -staggered under his burden. “I was seeing him home -like, and he slipped in the yard.”</p> - -<p>“I reckon every boan in his body’s bruk,” said Mrs. -Beatup—“that’s how he looks, surelye. Let him sit -down, poor soul.”</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup slid through the soldier’s arms to a sitting -posture on the floor. Harry pushed forward and offered -to help carry him into the kitchen.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Someone ud better go fur a doctor,” said the escort. -“I don’t like the look of him.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup held the lamp to her husband’s face, and -Harry at the same time recognised the soldier as the -eldest Kadwell from Stilliands Tower—not he who had -loved and ridden away from Jen Hollowbone, but another -brother in the Engineers. Mus’ Beatup’s eyes were -open and dazed, his mouth was open and dribbling, and -his limbs were dangling forlornly. When they tried -to pick him up, they found that his right leg was -broken.</p> - -<p>“Zacky—run up to Dallington and fetch Dr. Styles -this wunst,” ordered Harry. “Tell him it’s a broken leg—he’ll -have to bring summat to mend it with.”</p> - -<p>Zacky ran off agog, and Nell, who had been through -a first-aid course in the early days of her rivalry with -Marian Lamb, forced herself to swallow her repulsion -of the drunken, stricken figure on the passage floor, and -come forward with advice.</p> - -<p>“He ought to be put to bed at once ... he might -collapse.”</p> - -<p>“He’s collapsed,” said Mrs. Beatup in the indifferent -voice of shock.</p> - -<p>“But he must be kept warm—I’ll heat a brick in the -oven. Harry, you and Mr.——”</p> - -<p>“—Kadwell,” put in the soldier, with a bold look into -Nell’s eyes.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Kadwell—please carry him up to bed. Can you -manage him up the stairs?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon we’ll have to,” said Harry. “Stand clear, -mother.... Got his shoulders, Mus’ Kadwell?—I’ll -taake his legs.”</p> - -<p>They had a dead weight to carry to the upper floor, -but Harry, though short, was a strong, stuggy little chap, -and Steve Kadwell was enormous. He stood four inches - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> - -over six foot and was proportionately hullish of girth. -He was a handsome man, too—as he passed Nell, she -noticed his brawny neck and great rolling quiff of fair, -curly hair; she also noticed that he looked at her in a -way no other man had done. The lamplight fell becomingly -on her pretty scared face, and suggested with soft -orange lights and melting shadows the curves of her little -breast. At first she was pleased by his frank admiration, -then something in it made her feel ashamed, and she -drew back angrily into the shadow.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>Nell had to stop away from school till the end of the -term, for Mrs. Beatup could not possibly nurse her husband -without help; indeed, Nell’s help was often not -enough. A broken leg in itself was serious damage for -a man of Mus’ Beatup’s age and habits, and into the -bargain his alcoholic deprivations brought on an attack -of delirium tremens about the fifth day of his illness. -For this both Nell and her mother were inadequate—Nell -was sickened and terrified by this horrible travesty -of a human being that shook the springs in her father’s -bed, and Mrs. Beatup made him worse by trying to argue -with him and taking as a personal affront his assertions -as to the maggoty condition of the pillows. Harry had to -spend two days away from the fields in the combined -office of nurse and policeman, and on one occasion when -even his strength was not enough to keep Mus’ Beatup in -bed, Kadwell of Stilliands Tower prolonged an evening’s -call of enquiry till the next morning.</p> - -<p>Young Kadwell often called to enquire, and made himself -useful in various ways. He was on a fortnight’s sick-leave, -after an outbreak of his old wound. He had -been sniped during some patrol work at Loos in 1915, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> - -and though once more fit for service had been kept in -England ever since. At present he was quartered at -Eastbourne, but expected soon to be sent back to -France.</p> - -<p>At first Nell was too harassed and miserable to realise -that his visits were largely on her account. Moreover, -she was sexually very humble—she had loved so long -without return that she had never learned to look for -advances. But Kadwell had no reason to hide his feelings, -nor any skill if he had had reason, so in time Nell -was bound to become aware of them. The discovery did -not give her any great pleasure—the faint pride she occasionally -felt at his notice was always dangerously on -the edge of disgust. She was sensitive throughout her -being to his coarseness—which at the same time had -curious, intermittent powers of attraction—and there was -something in his bold, appraising look which struck her -with shame; with his tastes, thoughts and appetites she -had nothing in common. She avoided him as much as -she could, feeling guilty because of the faint thrills which -occasionally mixed with her dislike.</p> - -<p>It was a sad year’s ending. Her confinement in the -house dragged down even further her health and spirits, -her father’s sick-bed filled her with wretchedness and -shame. It seemed to preach to her the lesson of what -she really was, in spite of all her dreams. How had -she ever dared to plot for the greatness of the curate’s -love? Who was she to mate with a priest, a scholar, -a gentleman? The sordid grind of her day, shut up -in the muddle of Worge, her hours in that sag-roofed, -stuffy bedroom, nursing her father through the trivialities -and degradations of an illness brought on and intensified -by drink—and then the crowning irony of an -occasional “parish visit” from her loved one, his polite -enquiries, his parsonic sympathy—all seemed to shout at - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> - -her that she was nothing but a common girl, not only of -humble but of shameful heritage, an obscure, half-educated -nobody, who was now bearing the punishment of -her presumptuous hopes.</p> - -<p>She gave up her Sunday-school class, making her -father’s illness an excuse; she also gave up going to -church. This was partly due to lack of time, partly to -a dread of the empty shell. She told herself bitterly -that her religion had never been real—it had only been -part of the mirage—she might as well give up the pretence -of it. Besides, she could not bear to look any more -on the background of her vanished dreams, the soft -colours and lights against which they had glowed, to hear -the sighing tones which had set them to music in her heart.</p> - -<p>One Sunday evening, when she had gone out to stretch -her cramped legs, she heard the sound of singing come -from the Bethel. She had never been inside except for -Tom’s marriage, but now in a sudden softening of her -heart she thought she would go in. She opened the door, -and slid into an empty pew—of which there was a big -choice. Mr. Sumption stood swaying and heating time -in the pulpit, while before him his mean congregation of -Bourners and Hubbles sang—</p> - -<p> -“Let Christian faith and hope dispel<br /> -The signs of guilt and woe” ...<br /> -</p> - -<p>The air was heavy with the smell of lamp oil and -Sunday clothes and the rot of the plaster walls. Nell -sat, a little timid, in the corner of her pew. The scene -was strange and grotesque to her, yet rather kindly. -She thought Mr. Sumption looked ill and worn. She -was shocked at his haggard smile, at the unhealthy -smouldering of his eyes.... All Sunday Street knew -that he was in trouble again about Jerry, who had not -written for two months; but the village had come to - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> - -look upon it as Mr. Sumption’s natural state to be in -trouble about his son, and Nell felt there must be something -worse than usual to account for his altered looks. -Her own sadness made her soft and gentle towards him, -and she watched him with pitying eyes.</p> - -<p>The service ended, and Mr. Sumption came down to -the chapel door, where he waited to shake hands with -his departing congregation. Nell, with her ignorance of -chapel ritual, had not expected this, and was a little -flustered by it. Now he must inevitably know of her -presence, which she had not meant. But there was no -help for it, so she held out her hand in her gentle, well-bred -manner as she passed him in the doorway. He gave -a start of surprise.</p> - -<p>“I never expected to see you here,” he said.</p> - -<p>“I was passing ... and I thought the music sounded -pretty ... so I came in,” faltered Nell.</p> - -<p>“Yes—the music’s pretty,” he said absently, and she -thought his voice sounded hoarse as if from a recent cold. -Then her eyes met his, and each seemed to read the -other’s pain. Drawn together by a mystic community of -suffering, they stood for a moment in silence, still holding -hands. She felt his grip tighten on hers, and her throat -suddenly swelled with tears. They blinded her as she -went out into the dusk.</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>Shortly before Christmas Mrs. Beatup decided that -Steve Kadwell had “intentions.” He was now back at -Eastbourne, but came over to Worge every Sunday, and -after little more than half an hour beside a crushed and -plaintive Mus’ Beatup would sit in the kitchen till it was -time to go home.</p> - -<p>“Never shows the end of his nose to ’em at Stilliands -Tower,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Reckon thur’s someone - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> - -here he liks better.”</p> - -<p>“Do you mean me?” asked Nell wearily.</p> - -<p>“Well, I doan’t mean <em>me</em>—and I doan’t mean that -trug-faaced lump of an Ellen, so I reckon it’s you. You -needn’t look so black at me, Nell—thur’s no harm in a -maid getting wed. I’d bin wed a year at your age, -surelye, and three month gone wud my fust child—the -one that never opened his eyes on day.”</p> - -<p>“Did father always drink?”</p> - -<p>“Always a bit more or less—naun very lamentable—just -here a little and there a little, as the Bible says. -He’s got wuss this last few year. It’s that hemmed war.”</p> - -<p>“You and father aren’t a very good advertisement for -marriage.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup was huffed.</p> - -<p>“I dunno wot you want—here we are three years -past our silver wedding, and five strong children still -alive. It aun’t the fault of his marriage he’s bruk his -leg—he might have done it single, and you cud say the -saum of his drinking too.”</p> - -<p>Further argument was prevented by the arrival of -Steve Kadwell on his Sunday visit. Nell, who had been -a little excited by her mother’s remarks, received him -with more friendliness than usual. Certainly he was a -very personable man—better-looking even than Ivy’s Corporal -Seagrim, and younger. The grip of his huge hand -gave her an extraordinary sense of well-being and self-confidence, -and the flush which always came while his -eyes appraised her was this time half pleasurable. She -fidgeted a good deal while he was upstairs.</p> - -<p>His conversational powers were not great, and she suffered -a reaction of boredom during tea, which she and -her mother had ready for him when he came down. He -ate enormously and not very elegantly, though he was -not entirely a bumpkin—for he had spent an occasional -leave in London, “having a good time,” he told her with -a wink. He talked a good deal about himself and various - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> - -men in his platoon, whose dull doings and sayings he -related in detail. Nell lost her new friendliness, and as -soon as tea was over went out to feed the chickens and -shut them up for the night.</p> - -<p>She went into the barn to mix the feed. The sun had -just set and there was a reddish dusk, through which -she groped for the binns. She was kneading a paste -with middlings, bran and barley-meal, when she heard -a footstep on the frosty stones of the yard, and the -next minute the barn grew quite dark as a man blocked -the doorway.</p> - -<p>“Your mother said I cud come and help you.”</p> - -<p>Nell felt somehow a little frightened.</p> - -<p>“I’m all right.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you are”—he came into the barn. “You’re -fine,” and he stooped down to her, she felt his breath -fanning her neck. Her hands ceased to move in the paste, -and suddenly she began to tremble.</p> - -<p>She tried to save herself with a small, faltering -remark about the chicken-food—“Reckon soon we’ll have -to do without the meal.”</p> - -<p>He did not answer, but stooped closer still, so that -she could smell him, his virile smell of hair and leather -and tobacco. Then she suddenly snatched her hands -out of the trug, all clogged and sticky with paste and -meal, and tried to push him away.</p> - -<p>“Don’t ... don’t....”</p> - -<p>“Nellie—you’re not afraid of me?”</p> - -<p>“Please let me go”—for his arms were round her -now.</p> - -<p>“Not now I’ve got you, little kid.... I’m justabout -going to keep you till I know what you’re made -of.”</p> - -<p>He laughed, and her struggling passed suddenly into -weakness.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p> - -<p>Then his mouth pressed down on hers, and Nell, who -had till that moment known nothing but the bodiless -spirit of love, suddenly met him in the power of his fierce -body. The contact seemed to break her. She lay back -helpless in Kadwell’s arms, unable to stir or resist till -he let her go, and he did not let her go till he seemed to -have drawn all the life out of her in a long kiss—all the -hoard of fire and sweetness which she had kept long -years for another man he drew out of her with his lips -and took for his own.</p> - -<p>Then he released her, and she fell back against the -binns, gasping a little, and crying, while her eyes strained -to him through the dusk. She seemed unable to move, -and he pointed to the bowl of chicken-food on the floor, -saying, “Pick up that trug and come out.”</p> - -<p>She did as he told her, and went out meekly at his -heels.</p> - - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>Kadwell looked on Nell as a conquered kingdom. She -herself was not so sure, for after he had gone home that -night, her flagging powers revived, and she had a week -in which to recruit her forces. During that week she -passed through moments of sick revulsion from him, in -which his strength and roughness disgusted her. But -when he came again, she found herself powerless as she -had been before.</p> - -<p>He had strong allies. Nell was lonely, friendless, -humbled to the dust; she was at the same time reacting -from her former intellectual and ecclesiastical influences. -His love helped restore her self-respect and his outstretched -arms were rightly placed to catch her as the -pendulum swung her away from her old tastes and -glories. Nell found herself for the first time the interesting -member of the family—at least in her mother’s - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> - -eyes. She was the courted, the beloved—even if hand -in hand with love came strange tyrannies—and her sudden -change to exaltation from degradation turned her -head a little.</p> - -<p>Sometimes there were hours when she saw clearly, -saw that Kadwell was impossible as her mate, that they -had nothing in common, that not even his passion was -really acceptable to her.... He was a coarse brute, -who would always trample on her tastes and wishes and -ignore her mind and soul—and in these hours she knew -that it was her mind and soul which counted most, in -spite of the newly-awakened body. She was not really -of a passionate nature, only a little drugged. She was -doping herself with Steve so that she might forget the -anguish and humiliation of the past autumn.</p> - -<p>But this clearness did not last long, and it was always -fogged in the same way—by a sense of her own unworthiness. -She told herself that she was wicked to -despise Steve, who was much better than she in his -different way. He might be uneducated, coarse, and -self-willed, but he was strong and brave and resolute, -all the things that she was not—“And I say unto you, -despise not one of these little ones, for their angels do -always behold the face of my Father which is in -heaven.” ...</p> - -<p>Then she would remember his wound, which he had -got fighting for her and England over at Loos, and in -the depths of that self-contempt which was so often with -her now, alternating with her moods of self-confidence, -she acknowledged that she had done nothing for the War. -Though she had always prided herself on being more -patriotic than the rest of her family, she had done far -less than they—less than Tom, who had gone to fight, -even if ignorant and unwilling; less than Harry, who had -boldly flung down his challenge to the earth and taken up - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> - -arms against her for his country’s sake; less than Ivy, -who was cheerfully and competently filling a man’s place -and doing a man’s work; less than her mother, who had -borne these children for her country’s need; less even -than her father, who paid rates and taxes and cultivated -the ground. The fact that they were all, except perhaps -Harry, more or less unconscious of their service, only -made her reproach greater. She of her knowledge had -done nothing, and they of their ignorance had done much. -Who was she to despise them or Kadwell? Should she -not take this chance to do the little she could by bringing -comfort and happiness into a soldier’s life? She -knew all the difference that Thyrza had made to Tom—let -her do the same for Steve, humbly, simply, conscious -of her failure up till now.</p> - -<p>Early in the New Year Bill Putland suddenly came -home on leave, and still more suddenly married a bewildered -and delighted Polly Sinden. They had not even -been definitely engaged; she had not known he was coming -home till she got his telegram, fixing not only the date -of his arrival but the date of the wedding. They were -married at Brownbread Street, by an elderly clergyman -who was taking the curate’s place during his honeymoon—Mr. -Poullett-Smith had been married up at Dallington, -and the joyful clash of his wedding chimes came to Nell -as she sat with Steve in the sun-slatted murk of the Dutch -barn, and made her more than usually submissive to his -caresses.</p> - -<p>Ivy, delighted at her friend’s good luck, forgave a long -coldness, and came to Polly’s marriage. She brought -with her Sergeant Staples, and after the ceremony took -him to Worge for tea.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup had not been to the wedding, for Thyrza’s -illness had begun, and her mother-in-law had spent most -of the afternoon down at the Shop.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Oh, she’s doing valiant,” she said in answer to their -enquiries, “but ’tis unaccountable hard on a girl to be -wudout her husband at such a time....”</p> - -<p>“Where’s Nell?” asked Ivy.</p> - -<p>“Up wud her father, surelye. He’s bin easier to-day, -but he’s a tedious cross oald man these times. You’d -never think the pacerfist and objectious conscience he’s -got lying in bed and reading the paapers and wanting -things to eat and drink as he can’t git—reckon he’d stop -the War to-morrow for a bit of cheese.”</p> - -<p>“Kadwell bin here any more?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he never misses—it’ll be Nell’s turn next after -Polly. You’d best maake haste, Ivy Beatup, or at the -raate we’re going, you’ll be the only oald maid left in -the parish.”</p> - -<p>“Ha! ha!” laughed Ivy, with her mouth full of bread.</p> - -<p>“But Nell ull be a fool if she marries him,” she added -seriously. “He aun’t her kind. I know him, and he’s -a bit of a swine, I reckon.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he’s a valiant, stout chap, and Nell ull be -a fool if she says no.”</p> - -<p>Ivy did not argue the matter, but before she went -away she made an opportunity to speak to her sister -alone.</p> - -<p>“Nell, you haven’t promised Steve Kadwell?”</p> - -<p>Nell did not answer for a moment—she looked dazed. -Then she said slowly:</p> - -<p>“Yes—I promised him on Sunday.”</p> - -<p>“Then write and tell him you’ve changed your mind.”</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“Because you’re a fool. You know quite well he aun’t -the chap for you—you, wud all your liddle dentical -ways!”</p> - -<p>The tears came into Nell’s eyes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I love him.”</p> - -<p>Ivy stared critically at her. She seemed to have -altered.</p> - -<p>“Have you told mother?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“When are you going to be married?”</p> - -<p>“I dunno—we haven’t talked about it yet.”</p> - -<p>“Well, doan’t be in a hurry—give him a good think -over.”</p> - -<p>She had no time to say more, and realised that there -was not much more to be said. Nell seemed dazed and -foolish, like a pilgrim lost in a strange land.</p> - - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>Sunday Street was dazzled by its multitude of marriages. -There had been Tom Beatup’s, not a year ago, -then the curate’s, and Polly Sinden’s, on the top of each -other in January, and now, in February, Nell Beatup’s. -The last was a surprise; who would have thought, asked -the village, that Nell would be married before Ivy? One -or two mothers improved their daughters’ minds with the -moral of demure, gentle Nell’s marrying before her sister -with her loud, friendly ways. There was some jealousy, -too, for Kadwell, heir of Stilliands Tower, was considered -a good match, though a certain amount of suspicion attached -locally to his morals, due to his having once spent -a leave in Paris.</p> - -<p>Nell’s wedding was a shorn affair. Her father was, -of course, unable to come and give her away, and she -had to go up the aisle on the arm of a shuffling and -miserable Harry, to be finally disposed of by Mrs. Beatup, -who was full of doubts as to the legality of a marriage -thus officiated. Ivy could not get another day off, so had -been obliged to content herself with sending Nell a silver-plated -cruet and a rather tactless message to “come to - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> - -her if ever she felt things going a bit wrong.” Thyrza -was not present, either. She had mended slowly, in spite -of the joy of her little son, and felt unequal to the fag -and excitement of a wedding, either socially or ecclesiastically. -The gaps were completed by the absence of Mr. -Poullett-Smith, who was still away on his honeymoon. -He was expected back next week, and it was considered -locally that Nell and Kadwell would have shown a more -becoming spirit if they had waited for his ministrations. -No one guessed that it was just this chance of being -married in the curate’s absence which had finally dropped -the balance, and made Nell give way to her lover’s entreaties -and make him happy at once.</p> - -<p>After the ceremony there was a breakfast at Worge, -and that too was shorn. There had been no Ivy to help -Mrs. Beatup with the cooking, and trug-faced Ellen had -burnt the cake, which was not only sugarless, as Tom’s -had been, but without peel or plums. “Might as well eat -bread and call it caake,” said Mrs. Beatup drearily. -“They both taaste lik calf-meal.”</p> - -<p>There was no butter, as butter did not pay at its -present price, and was no longer made at Worge. Some -greenish margarine had been Ellen’s reward for standing -two hours outside the grocer’s in Senlac, but the cake -had swallowed it all up, and wanted more, judging by its -splintering behaviour under the teeth. To balance these -scarcities there was tinned salmon and tinned crab and -tinned lobster—also two bottles of wine, left over from -Tom’s wedding, and watered to make them go further.</p> - -<p>“This is wot you might call a War wedding,” said -Mrs. Beatup. “Nell, I’m unaccountable glad you got -married in church—if it had bin a chapel marriage on -the top of this”—and she waved her hand over the table—“I’d -never quite feel as you wur praaperly wed.”</p> - -<p>As a further counterblast to irregularity she had - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> - -insisted on Nell’s being married in white satin, with a stiff -white veil like a meat-safe bound over her hair with a -wreath of artificial orange-blossom. She looked very -pretty, with a becoming flush in the thick pallor of her -skin. Her eyes were bright and restless, and she breathed -quickly, so that her little pearl-and-turquoise locket, “the -gift of the bridegroom,” heaved under her transparencies—she -was too shrinking and modest to have her gown cut -low—like a shallop on a wave. She scarcely spoke during -the meal, but sat twisting her wedding-ring and staring at -her husband—following each movement with her eyes, -apparently unable to look away from him.</p> - -<p>The meal was not lively; it lacked Ivy’s good-humour, -Mus’ Beatup’s talkativeness, Bill Putland’s wit, Mr. -Sumption’s big laugh and childish enjoyment of his food. -The party consisted only of the two families—Beatups -and Kadwells. Old Mus’ Kadwell droned about the -War, and the “drore” in which he prophesied it would -end, Mrs. Kadwell compared with Mrs. Beatup a day’s -adventures in search of meat, Lizzie Kadwell tried to -flirt with Harry, who was overwhelmed with shame and -annoyance at her efforts, and Sim Kadwell, who had been -best man, gave wearying details of the Indispensable’s -Progress from tribunal to tribunal.</p> - -<p>Steve Kadwell could get only a week-end’s leave, so -the honeymoon would be short, and afterwards Nell -would come back to Worge, and live there as before, -except for her “teachering,” which her husband had -made her give up, so that she might be at hand when -he wanted her, free to go with him on any unexpected -leave. He would have longer leave given him soon, he -promised her, and they would go to London and have -a valiant time. On this occasion they were going no -further that Brighton, but they would stay at a fine hotel -and have late dinner and a fire in their bedroom.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p> - -<p>Nell drove away with her hand limp and rather cold -in Kadwell’s big fondling clasp. The pale February sun -slanted to Worge’s roof from the west, and a clammy, -mould-flavoured mist hung over the hedges, like the -winter ghost of those fogs which had webbed the farm -with dusty gold in harvest-time. Nell looked back at -the old house and the fields behind it—since she was -leaving home only for two days, it was queer to feel -that she was leaving it for ever.</p> - - -<p>9</p> - -<p>It was raining and foggy when she came back. Thick -white muffles of cloud drifted up the fields, and hung -between the hedges, catching and choking all sound. Rain -fell noiselessly, almost invisibly, apparent only in an -occasional whorl, in the dripping eaves of the stacks, the -shining roofs of the barns, and the whiteness of the -beaded grass. Nell came from Hailsham station in a -cab—her husband had told her to do so, giving her paper -money for the fare. He certainly was princely in his -ideas of spending, and there were loud and envious exclamations -at Worge when, instead of the soaked and -huddled figure expected, Nell appeared bone-dry, without -even her umbrella unfurled.</p> - -<p>“A cab from Hailsham!” cried Mrs. Beatup. -“Reckon you’ve got a good husband.”</p> - -<p>“And did you have the fire in your bedroom?” asked -Zacky.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Nell. “A shilling every night.”</p> - -<p>She kissed her mother and brothers, and Ivy, who -was over for the day and now came out of the kitchen, -with a bear’s hug for her sister.</p> - -<p>“You’ve got a new hat!” she exclaimed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes; Steve saw it in a shop in Brighton and bought -it for me.”</p> - -<p>“Lork!” cried Mrs. Beatup.</p> - -<p>“But it aun’t your usual style,” said Ivy; “you most-ways -wear ’em more quiet-like. I’ve seen many of that -sort of hat come on the tram, and it’s generally what the -boys call a tart.”</p> - -<p>Nell flushed and looked away.</p> - -<p>“We’ve got Thyrza here,” said Mrs. Beatup. “She -came up this morning afore the rain started, and we’re -kipping her till it’s a done—fust time she’s bin out, and -I’m justabout fritted lest she taakes cold.”</p> - -<p>“Has she got the baby with her?”</p> - -<p>“Surelye.... Here’s Nell, Thyrza, come up in a cab -from the station, and her husband’s guv her a new hat.”</p> - -<p>Thyrza’s eyes opened big in wonder. She sat by the -fire, with her child in her arms; she was pale, but seemed -plump and healthy, and her eyes had an eager, yearning -look which was new to them. Nell kissed her and the -baby, and sat down by the hearth with a little shiver.</p> - -<p>“I’ll git you some hot tea in a minnut,” said her -mother, “and then I’ll tell you a surprise about -Ivy.”</p> - -<p>“Adone do, mother—you’ve half toald her now.”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t—I only said it wur a surprise, which I -reckon it aun’t much of, since you’ve near married three -men in the last twelvemonth.”</p> - -<p>Ivy groaned—“Reckon your tongue’s lik a bruk -wurzel-cutter—slipping all over the plaace. Well, Nell, -you know it now—but guess who he is.”</p> - -<p>This was more difficult, as there were at least half a -dozen possible claimants, and Nell restored the secret -to a little of its lost glory by guessing wrong several -times.</p> - -<p>“It’s Eric Staples,” said Ivy at last, “and we’re going - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> - -out to Canada soon as ever he gits his discharge, which -woan’t be long now. He wur wounded and gassed at -Vimy, but he’s a stout feller still, and has got a liddle -farm in Saskatchewan wot me and him ull kip the two -of us. He says I’m the woman born for a colonial’s -wife.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you are,” said her mother fondly, “but I wish -you cud have got a husband wot took you to hotels and -guv you cab-rides and fine hats like Nell.”</p> - -<p>“I aun’t the girl fur hotels and cabs—reckon I’m only -the girl for washing the pots and scrubbing the floor, and -lucky that’s the girl Eric wants. I’d never do wud -Nell’s life—she’s a lady...” and she squeezed her -sister’s hand.</p> - -<p>Nell gave a faint squeeze in response. She was -touched by Ivy’s affection, at the same time it made her -feel a little cold, for she guessed the reason; Ivy was -only saying without words, “I’m standing by you, Nell—you’ve -done a stupid thing, and nobody knows it but -you and I. Howsumdever you can always come wud any -trouble to old Ivy.”</p> - -<p>Tea was now on the table, with the remains of the -wedding-cake. Mus’ Beatup was asleep upstairs, so it -was arranged that later on Nell should take him up his -tea and pay him her dutiful greetings. Harry and Zacky -came in very grubby after handling roots. Harry was -now a pitiless tyrant who drove and slaved his brother -out of school hours, making him dig and rake and cart -and dung; for the unthinkable thing of a year ago had -happened, and the War was dragging on towards Harry’s -eighteenth birthday, threatening to move his battle front -from the furrows and ditches of Sussex to the blasted -fields of France.</p> - -<p>Thyrza had a letter from Tom, which she read to the -company, every now and then stopping to hum over some -passage which for obviously pleasant reasons could not -be read out loud.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p> - -<p>“To think he’s never seen his baby,” she murmured, -bending towards her crooked arm.</p> - -<p>“To think of Tom ever having a baby to see,” said -Mrs. Beatup—“and you’d know he wur Tom’s by his -flat nose.”</p> - -<p>“Wot have you settled to call him?” asked Ivy. “Is -it still Thomas Edward?”</p> - -<p>“No, it’s to be Thomas William, fur Bill Putland has -promised to stand godfather.”</p> - -<p>“I doan’t lik William as much as Edward. Wot -maade you change, Thyrza?”</p> - -<p>“Tom wants him called after his best pal, surelye.”</p> - -<p>“And after the Kayser, too—William’s the Kayser’s -naum.”</p> - -<p>Thyrza looked shocked.</p> - -<p>“You’ll have to call him Bill fur short.”</p> - -<p>“That ud sound more like the Kayser than ever—I -always call the Kayser Bill.”</p> - -<p>“Then call him Willie.”</p> - -<p>“That’s the young Kayser, and Tom when he fixed -William said as he must never shorten it to Willie, ’cos -there’s a kind of shell called Little Willie, and he says as -if, when peace comes and he gits hoame, fulks wur to -say, ’Here comes Little Willie,’ he’d chuck himself down -in the lane and start digging himself in—Ha! ha!” and -Thyrza laughed at the joke, and tickled the baby to make -it laugh too, which it didn’t.</p> - -<p>“Reckon he’s too young to laugh,” said Mrs. Beatup.</p> - -<p>“He aun’t too young to cry.”</p> - -<p>“We’re none of us too young fur that, nor too oald, -nuther.”</p> - -<p>Thyrza sighed gently—</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I’m unaccountable set on Tom’s coming fur the -christening—and Passon’s been wanting to christen him; -he asked me at the churching. I thought maybe Tom cud -git leave to see his baby christened, but seemingly he -can’t.”</p> - -<p>“They’re unaccountable short wud leave,” said Mrs. -Beatup. “Steve couldn’t git more’n three days to git -married in.”</p> - -<p>“But reckon he’ll git some more later, woan’t he, -Nell?”</p> - -<p>Nell started—during the little womanly talk her mind -had gone off on questionings of its own.</p> - -<p>“Leave? Yes. He’s sure to get a week before he -goes out to France.”</p> - -<p>“You’re unaccountable lucky. Reckon he’ll taake you -to another hotel and buy you another hat.”</p> - -<p>“And send you home in another cab.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll go up and have a look at father,” said Nell.</p> - -<p>There was silence in the kitchen for a little while after -she went. Harry and Zacky had gone back to their -digging, and Ivy and Mrs. Beatup sat squatting against -Thyrza’s lap, where the baby lay more helpless than a -day-old kitten.</p> - -<p>“Nell’s middling quiet,” said her mother at last.</p> - -<p>“She’s sad at having said good-bye to Steve,” sighed -Thyrza.</p> - -<p>“I doan’t waonder as she’s vrothered,” said Mrs. -Beatup. “Courted, cried, and married, all in a huddle -lik that. Ivy, I hope as this ull be a lesson to you, and -you’ll bide your banns praaperly and buy your bits of -things in more’n one day’s shopping. Pore Nell, she sims -all swummy and of a daze, and I doan’t woander, nuther, -wud all the hurriment thur’s bin. Reckon she scarce -knows yit if she’s maid or wife.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon she does,” said Ivy.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -</div> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PART VI: BABY</h2> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap">TOM -did not come home till March, and the baby -had been christened before he arrived, Thyrza having -proved too soft to resist ecclesiastical pressure. -But her husband was not so disappointed as she had -feared. Indeed, Tom’s whole attitude towards the -miracle she had wrought in his absence puzzled her a -little.</p> - -<p>She had met him at the cottage door with the baby in -her arms, and after their first greeting he had said:</p> - -<p>“Put the baby down, Thyrza. I can’t kiss you -praaperly.” Then, with his face hidden in her neck, had -murmured: “It’s my wife I want.”</p> - -<p>“But aun’t you justabout pleased wud your boy, -dear?” she asked him later, when they were having tea -and eggs in a cosy blur of firelight and sunshine.</p> - -<p>“Reckon I am. But babies are unaccountable ugly; -and as fur hoalding him, I’d sooner nuss a dud shell.”</p> - -<p>“He aun’t ugly, Tom; everyone says he’s a justabout -lovely child—and weighs near fourteen pounds, which is -valiant fur a boy of his months.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe—I know naun of babies. But you, Thyrza -... reckon you’re justabout the waonder of the world -to me.”</p> - -<p>Her eyes filled with tears as she felt his hand groping -for hers on her knees under the table.</p> - -<p>“Reckon you’re just another baby,” she said tenderly. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> - -“And I’m the mother of you both.”</p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>But Tom learned to be father as well as husband in -the days that followed—perhaps it was the joys of his -husbandhood which woke the fatherhood in him. It -did not quicken in a blinding flash, as motherhood had -come to Thyrza when her baby was first laid in her arms, -but grew and throve in his daily contact with the little -bit of helplessness and hope which he and Thyrza had -made between them. It seemed to develop out of and -be part of his love for her, and in time it seemed to have -a tender, mellowing effect on that love, making it less -anxious and passionate, more selfless, more sweet, more -friendly....</p> - -<p>Those days were different from the days they had -spent together after their marriage. They never went -for long walks now, but stopped in their little garden at -the back of the cottage, where crocuses splashed the -grass with purple and egg-yellow, and celandines crept -in under the hedge from the fields of Egypt Farm. Here -in the warm spring sunshine Thyrza would sit, rocking -the baby’s cradle with her foot, while she talked to Tom -in her sweet, drawly voice, of the little trades and doings -of the past year. Every now and then the shop-bell would -ring through the cottage, and she would go off to serve -and gossip, leaving baby in his father’s care.... “And -doan’t you dance him, Tom, or he’ll be sick.” For Tom -was bolder now, and took perilous liberties with young -William, just as now, in his third year of soldiering, he -had begun to take them with the dud to which he had -compared him.... “Reckon he’ll start fizzing a bit -before he goes off.”</p> - -<p>In the evenings, when the child was asleep in the cradle -beside their bed, they would go across the road to the -willow-pond, and sit or stroll there in the March dusk. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> - -Those were wonderful days of spring, a March which -was almost May, with sweet slumberous winds, so thick -and hazy that the grumble of the unceasing guns was lost -in them, and the War’s heart-beat never broke the -meadow’s stillness. Soft primrose fogs trailed over -Horse Eye Marshes under the rising stars, and away beyond -them on the sea a siren crooned, like the voice of -the twilight and the deep.... When the sky was dark -round the big stars, and Orion’s sword hung above -Molash Woods, they would go in to their supper in the -lamplight, to the tender, intimate talk of their evening -hours, and then up, with big reeling shadows moving before -them on beam and plaster in the candlelight, to the -dim spring-smelling room where their baby slept, and -where Thyrza would sleep with her hair spread on the -pillow like a bed of celandines, and Tom with his brown, -war-calloused hand in the soft clasp of hers, and his head -in the hollow of her breast.</p> - -<p>Tom, of course, paid many visits to his family at -Worge. He found Mus’ Beatup an invalid in the kitchen, -his leg propped on a chair before him. Owing to his -constitution it had mended slowly, but four months of -forced soberness had worked a wonderful result in toning -up his whole body, so that in spite of his illness his eye -was brighter, his hand steadier and his voice clearer than -at any time in Tom’s memory. Unfortunately, the boredom -and privations of his state had only increased that -“objectiousness” of disposition which Mrs. Beatup had -deplored, and Tom had to sit and listen to long harangues, -in which the War, the Christian Religion, God, Govunmunt, -Monogamy, and War Agricultural Committees -were toppled together in a common ruin. Nell no longer -argued with him, his flicks and cuts had no power to -wound, and he soon gave up trying to stir her into the -little furies which had led to so many rousing arguments. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> - -It was queer how she had changed.... Her chief arguments -were with her mother, who seemed to think that -the ceremony of marriage was bound automatically to -create an abstract love of housekeeping in the female -breast. She was astonished to find that Nell had now no -greater love for making beds and washing dishes than in -the days of her spinsterhood.</p> - -<p>“I never heard of a married woman as cudn’t maake -a sago pudden,” she said to Tom.</p> - -<p>“She’d maake it fur her husband quick enough,” said -Tom with a grin.</p> - -<p>“Well, Steve’s here most Sundays, and she’s never -maade him naun but a ginger-cake, and she used to maake -that before she wur wed.”</p> - -<p>“Wait till she’s got a liddle home of her own ... -that’ll be all the difference, woan’t it, Nell?”</p> - -<p>Nell smiled faintly.</p> - -<p>“Would you believe it, Tom?” said Mrs. Beatup, -“but when we want a suet pudden now we’ve got to git -it off a meat-card.”</p> - -<p>“We’ve heard out there as all you civvies wur on -rations—and Mus’ Archie one day he got the platoon -for a bit of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">parlez-voo</i> -and toald us as how you wurn’t starved, as so many chaps had letters -from their wives, saying as they cud git naun to eat.”</p> - -<p>“Not starved! That’s valiant. And wot does Mus’ -Archie know about it? Seemingly you doan’t know wot -war is out there wud all your tea and your butter and -your meat. Reckon there’ll never be peace as long as -soldiering’s the only job you can git fed at.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you’ve guv me an unaccountable good tea fur -a starving family. And now I’ll be off and see Harry -about the farm.”</p> - -<p>Worge was in the midst of its spring sowings, and -Harry spent his long days in the fields whose harvest he - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> - -would not see. The Volunteer field was in potash now, -dug for potatoes, and there were six more acres of -potatoes over by the Sunk.</p> - -<p>“They say as how a hunderd acres of potatoes ull -feed four hunderd people fur a year,” he said to Tom—“and -yit thur’s always summat unaccountable mean -about a spud.”</p> - -<p>Tom laughed. “You’ve done valiant, Harry.” Now -that his brother’s adventure had justified itself, he had -abandoned a good deal of his croaking attitude. Besides, -if things really were getting scarce at home ... he -wouldn’t like to think of Thyrza and the baby....</p> - -<p>“I’ve done my best,” said Harry moodily, “but it’s -over now. Reckon I’ll be called up in two months’ -time.”</p> - -<p>“Who’d have thought it!—you eighteen!—and the -liddle skinny limb of wickedness you wur when I went -away. I’d never have believed it, if you’d toald me that -in two year you’d have maade more of Worge than I in -five.”</p> - -<p>“Father wants me to appeal; but it ud never do, I -reckon. You cudn’t git off, so I’m not lik to.”</p> - -<p>“And it wouldn’t be praaper, nuther,” said Tom, rather -huffily. “You wud a brother in the Sussex! Farming’s -all very well, Harry, but soldiering’s better. I didn’t -think it myself at one time, but now I know different. -A farm’s hemmed liddle use if Kayser Bill gits his perishing -plaace in the sun. Besides, the praaper job fur a -praaper Sussex chap is along of other Sussex chaps, fighting -fur their farms. That’s whur I’d lik my old brother -to be, and whur he’d like to be himself, I reckon.”</p> - -<p>“I shudn’t,” said Harry, “any more than you did at -fust.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I aun’t maaking out as I enjoy it—so you needn’t -jump at me lik that. The chap who tells you he enjoys -it out thur, reckon he taakes you fur a middling thick -’un, or he’s middling thick himself. But wot I say is, -that it’s the praaper plaace fur a Sussex chap to be. -Ask me wot I enjoy, and I’ll tell you”—and Tom jerked -his pipe-stem over the ribbed hump of the field towards -the cottages of Sunday Street, stewing like apples in the -sunshine. “My fancy’s a liddle hoame of my own, and -a wife and child in it, and my own bit of ground outside -the door; and when we’ve wound up the watch on -the Rhine, reckon I’ll be justabout glad to taake my -coat off and sit in the sun and see my liddle ’un playing -raound—and be shut of all that tedious hell wot’s over -thur, Harry, acrost Horse Eye and the Channel, if folks -at home only knew it—which seemingly they doan’t ... -and I’m middling glad they doan’t, surelye.”</p> - -<p>Harry was impressed, and a little ashamed.</p> - -<p>“Never think as I aun’t willing, Tom. I’m willing -enough, though I’d grown so unaccountable set on the -new ploughs. Howsumdever, I’ve got things started like, -and Zacky, maybe, when I’m gone, he’ll pull to and carry -on, saum as I did; and father, he’s twice the head he had -afore he bruk his leg and cudn’t git his drink. Seemingly, -they’ll do valiant wudout me, and I ... well, I’ve -come to love these fields so middling dear that if one day -I find I’ve got to die fur them, reckon I shudn’t ought -to mind much.”</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>“I must go and see Mus’ Sumption,” said Tom to -Thyrza. He said it several times before he went, for the -days swam in a golden fog over his home, shutting him -into enchanted ground. It was hard to break out of it -even to go to Worge, and he found himself shelving the -thought of leaving for two hours of worse company the -little garden where the daffodils followed the crocuses, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> - -the shop all stuffy with the smell of tea and candles, -the bluish-whiteness of the little sag-roofed rooms, and -his wife and child, who were not so much figures in the -frame of it all as an essence, a sunshine soaking through -it.... However, Thyrza kept him to his word.</p> - -<p>“I’m tedious sorry fur Mus’ Sumption—he looks that -worn and wild. Maybe you cud give him news of -Jerry.”</p> - -<p>“No good news.”</p> - -<p>“Well, go up and have a chat wud the pore soul. -Reckon he’ll be mighty glad to see you, and you’re sure -to think of summat comforting to say.”</p> - -<p>So Tom went, one evening after tea. He found the -minister in his faded threadbare room at the Horselunges, -writing the letter which every week he dropped -into the post-box at Brownbread Street, and generally -heard no more of. The evening sun poured angrily on -his stooped grey head, and made the room warm and -stuffy without the expense of a fire. The old, old cat -sat sulkily before the empty grate, and the white mice -tapped with little pink hands on the glass front of their -cage. The thrush had been dead some months.</p> - -<p>“Hello, Tom. This is kind of you, lad,” and Mr. -Sumption sprang up in hearty welcome, shaking Tom by -the hand, and actually tipping the cat out of the armchair -so that his visitor might be comfortably seated.</p> - -<p>Tom sat down and pulled out his pipe, and for some -minutes they edged and skated about on general topics. -Then the minister asked suddenly—</p> - -<p>“And how did you leave Jerry?”</p> - -<p>“Valiant”—certainly Jeremiah Meridian Sumption -was a hardy, healthy little beggar.</p> - -<p>But Mr. Sumption was not deceived.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Valiant in body, maybe. But, Tom, I fear for his -immortal soul.”</p> - -<p>Tom did not know wat to say. He had never before -seen the minister without his glorious pretence of faith -in his son.</p> - -<p>“It’s strange,” continued Mr. Sumption, “but from his -birth that boy was seemingly marked out by Satan. -Maybe it was the bad blood of the Rossarmescroes or -Hearns; his mother was the sweetest, loveliest soul that -ever slept under a bush; but there’s no denying that the -Hearns’ blood is bad blood—roving, thieving, lusting, -Satanic blood—and he’s got it in him, has my boy, more -than he’s got the decent blood of my fathers.”</p> - -<p>“Has he written to you lately?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, he writes now and again. He’s fond of me. -But he doesn’t sound happy. Then Bill Putland, when -he came home to get married, he told me——”</p> - -<p>There was silence, and Tom fidgeted.</p> - -<p>“He told me as Jerry had got hold of a French girl -in one of the towns—a bad lot, seemingly.”</p> - -<p>“He’ll get over it,” said Tom. “Reckon he can’t have -much love fur such a critter.”</p> - -<p>“You knew of it too, then?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, we’ve all heard. He got First Field Punishment -on her account, fur——”</p> - -<p>“Go on.”</p> - -<p>“Thur’s naun to say. I guess she’s bad all through. -Some of these girls, they’re bits of stuff as you might -say, but they’d never kip a man off his duty or git him -into trouble on their account. Howsumdever, the wuss -she is the sooner he’s lik to git shut of her.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption groaned.</p> - -<p>“If only he could have married your sister Ivy!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Ivy aun’t to blame.”</p> - -<p>“No—she’s not. I mustn’t be unjust. She treated -him fair and square all through; he says it himself. But, -Tom, it’s terrible to think that one human creature’s got -the power to give another to Satan, and no blame attached -to either.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe Jerry wur Satan’s before he wur Ivy’s,” said -Tom sharply; then felt ashamed as he met the minister’s -eyes with their tortured glow.</p> - -<p>“Maybe you’re right. This is Satan’s hour. He’s got -us all for a season, and this War is his last kick before -the Angel of the Lord chains him down in the lake which -burneth with fire and brimstone. These are the days of -which the Scripture saith, that unless the Lord should -shorten them for the Elect’s sake, no man could be -saved.”</p> - -<p>“I guess we’ve nearly done the Lord’s job. The perishers -are even more fed up than us, which is putting it -strong. Let ’em start this Big Push of theirn as thur’s -bin such a talk about. Doan’t you vrother about Jerry, -Mus’ Sumption—he’ll be shut of this girl before long, -and you’ll git him back here and wed him to a good soul -as ull do better fur him than Ivy.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption shook his head.</p> - -<p>“This is the war which shall end the world.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I aun’t going out there, away from my wife -and child and home, all among the whizz-bangs and the -coal-boxes, and git all over mud and lice, jest to help on -the end of the world. This world’s good enough fur me, -and I hope it’ll go on a bit longer after peace is signed, -so as I’ll git a chance of enjoying it.”</p> - -<p>“And they shall reign with Him a thousand years.”</p> - -<p>Tom was a little weary of Mr. Sumption in this mood; -however, he felt sorry for him, and let him run on.</p> - -<p>“You must be blind indeed,” continued the minister, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> - -“if you don’t see how the Scriptures have been fulfilled—nation -against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and -the Holy City given back to the Jews, and the sun turned -to darkness with the clouds of poisoned gas, and the moon -to blood ... the blood of the poor souls that are killed -in moonlight air-raids....”</p> - -<p>Tom knocked out his pipe.</p> - -<p>“Then at last”—and the minister’s eye kindled and -his whole sunburnt face glowed with the mixed fires of -hope and fanaticism—“the sign of the Son of Man shall -appear in the heavens, and He shall come again in power -and great glory. Even so, come, Lord Jesus—but come -before our hearts are all broken. What’s the use of -chaining up the Dragon in the Lake if he’s already devoured -the world? Shorten these days, for the Elect’s -sake—save us from the burning, fiery furnace which is -making frizzle of our bones and cinders of our -hearts.”</p> - -<p>He suddenly dropped his head between his hands. -Tom felt a bit upset. He had again and again heard all -this in chapel, but it was embarrassing and rather alarming -to have it coming from the next chair.</p> - -<p>“Reckon you mind this War more’n I do,” he remarked -lamely.</p> - -<p>“Because to you it is just war—while to me it’s Judgment. -This is the day of which the Prophet spoke, the -day that shall burn as an oven, and our sons and daughters -shall burn as tow.... Bless you, young chap! -there have been other wars—the country’s full of their -dead names ... there were two lakes of blood up at -Senlac.... But this war, it’s the End, it’s Doomsday. -Now it shall be proved indeed that Christ died for the -Elect, for all save the Elect shall perish. Tom, I have -a terrible fear that I shall have to stand by and see my -boy perish.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, he’ll pull through right enough—give him his -head and he’ll come to his senses afore long.”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid not.” Mr. Sumption rose and began -walking up and down the room, his hands clasped behind - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> - -him. The dipping sun poured over his burly figure, showing -up in its beautiful merciless beam the seediness of -his coat and the worn hollows and graven lines of his -face. “I’m afraid not, Tom Beatup. I’m afraid I’ll have -to stand by and see my boy damned. I’ll stand among -the sheep and see him among the goats. There’s no good -trying to job myself into thinking he’s one of the Elect—he -knows he isn’t, and I know it. Whereas I have -Assurance—I’ve had it a dunnamany years. Between us -two there is a great gulf fixed. I’ll have to dwell for -ever in Mount Sion, in the general assembly and church -of the firstborn, and see him for ever across the gulf, -in hell.”</p> - -<p>“Then reckon you’ll be in hell yourself.”</p> - -<p>“It seems like it. But the ways of the Lord are past -finding out.... And I would willingly give my soul -for Jerry’s—the soul the Lord has damned from the -womb....”</p> - -<p>Tom stood up. He felt he could not stand any more -of this.</p> - -<p>“Seemingly your religion aun’t much of a comfort to -you.... Well, I must be going now.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll come again?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I will, if you’re lonesome.”</p> - -<p>“And look here, Tom; you won’t say a word to other -folk of what I’ve spoken—about Jerry, I mean. It ud -never do if the parish came to think that he was getting -into bad ways.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll say naun—trust me. Reckon Jerry’s middling -lucky to have you stick by him as you do.”</p> - -<p>“Jerry once said he sometimes felt as if there was -only me between him and hell. Seemingly I’m the only -friend he’s got.”</p> - -<p>Tom felt very sorry for Mr. Sumption. He told -Thyrza that he thought he must be getting queer with - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> - -his troubles, and Thyrza immediately planned to take -the baby to see him; and a day or two later they asked -him down to the shop for the afternoon, and had the -pleasure of seeing him momentarily forget his troubles -in a good tea. “Reckon the poor soul thinks a lot of -his inside,” said Thyrza, “and doan’t always git enough -to fill it with.”</p> - - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>The last days of Tom’s fortnight seemed to rush by -in spate; they blew before the March wind like the dust. -Thyrza hurried on her little preparations for his departure—she -was making him new shirts, and with loving -hands repairing all of his that was frayed and worn, -from his shirt to his soul.... For even Tom’s simple -soul had been touched by the blight of war, and there -was a look at the back of his eyes which came from -things he never spoke of ... things he had seen out -there in the land of horrors, which the folk at home did -not realise—and he was unaccountable glad they did not. -Thyrza’s love had driven that look to the back of his -eyes and those memories to the back of his heart, though -probably she would never be able to drive either the look -or the memories quite away. Such things were now the -lot of boys....</p> - -<p>He still went occasionally to Worge, and sat with his -father and mother in the kitchen, or gave Harry a hand -on the farm. He persuaded Mus’ Beatup to engage a -lad for cow and stable work, so that his brother’s burden -was made lighter. One day Ivy came over with Sergeant -Staples. The slow formalities of his discharge were -crawling on, and she hoped to be married and to sail -for Canada before the summer was out. It struck Tom -that she had sweetened and sobered since he saw her last. -Rumours of her affair with Seagrim had reached him, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> - -and he was glad to have her settled down. “Ricky’s a -valiant pal,” she said once, and the words struck the difference -between her love for him and the love she had -had for Seagrim, and would have explained, if anyone -had cared for an explanation, the comparative ease and -quickness with which she had turned from one to the -other. Seagrim had never been a pal—he had been a -spell, a marvel, a magic that would never come back, a -wonder which a woman’s heart must know but can -seldom keep. Ricky, with his red hair and grinning -monkeyish face, would never throw over Ivy’s world the -glamour of those weeks with Seagrim, he would never -transfigure the earth or turn pots to gold.... On the -other hand, as Ivy said, he was better to jog along with, -and she was certainly born for the ardours and endurances -of a colonial’s wife—“So that’s settled and done -with,” she thought to herself with a contented sigh—“and -I reckon I’m a middling lucky girl. It’s queer how Nell -and me have seemingly done just the saum—lost our -hearts to one man and then gone and married another. -But I kept my head and did it sensible, while she, reckon -she lost hers and did it unsensible. Poor Nell! ... -but I told her straight as Kadwell wur a swine.”</p> - -<p>Nell had left the farm about four days after Tom’s -return. Her husband had suddenly claimed her, and had -fetched her away to spend his last leave with him in -London. He expected to go to France in a week or two -now. Tom did not dislike his new brother-in-law; he -thought him a “good feller,” and considered him wonderfully -forbearing with Nell when she cried on saying -good-bye to her mother, and went away with her pretty -face all marbled and blotched with tears.</p> - -<p>“I’ve got no patience wud girls wot taake on them -silly maidenish airs,” he said to Thyrza. “You never - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> - -cried when you caum to me, surelye.”</p> - -<p>“I’d no mother to say good-bye to. Some girls always -cry when they say good-bye to their mothers.”</p> - -<p>“Nell never used to be so set on mother in the oald -times.”</p> - -<p>“But it’s different now—it always is,” said Thyrza -wisely—“that’s why some folks ud sooner have a darter -than a son. When a son goes marrying he turns away -from his parents, but a girl, the more she loves outside -the more she loves at home.”</p> - -<p>Tom pondered her words, and found himself beginning -to feel a little guilty.</p> - -<p>“Maybe you’re right. I hope Will woan’t go and disremember -us when he weds.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he will,” said Thyrza—“it’s only nature.”</p> - -<p>Tom went up to Worge every evening till the end of -his leave.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>The last evening came, and Tom’s good-byes.</p> - -<p>“Reckon it’s always ‘good-bye’ now,” said Mrs. -Beatup. “Good-bye to Ivy, good-bye to Nell, good-bye -to Tom—sims as if, as if that ward ud git lik my -oald broom, wore out from overuse.”</p> - -<p>“Thur’d be no good-byes if thur hadn’t bin howdy-dos -fust. So cheer up, mother, and we’ll be saying -howdy-do agaun before Michaelmas.”</p> - -<p>“And then good-bye. Oh, Tom, when ull this tedious -war have done?”</p> - -<p>“When it’s finished. Doan’t you fret over that, mother—reckon -that aun’t your job.”</p> - -<p>“I wish it ud have done, though, before our hearts -are broke.”</p> - -<p>Nell was expected home that evening, and Mrs. Beatup -persuaded Tom to wait for her. He spent the interval -going over the farm with Harry, and giving last advice, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> - -though it was astonishing how firm on his legs his brother -now stood. He also took his chance of a straight talk -with Zacky.</p> - -<p>“Reckon you’re growing up lik a young colt, and you’ll -have to taake your turn now—step into Harry’s plaace -saum as he stepped into mine.”</p> - -<p>Zacky’s besetting sin was not a lust for adventure in -woods and distant fields; he moved in a more humdrum -circle of dereliction—marbles and conkers and worms and -string. However, Tom discovered that he had a passion -for “taking things to pieces” and hoped to inspire him -to zeal over the new mechanical reaper which was that -year to be the wonder of Worge’s harvest.</p> - -<p>To everyone’s disappointment, Nell did not arrive in -a cab. She came on foot from Senlac station, leaving -her box to follow by the carrier. Mrs. Beatup felt that -Tom had been cheated, on his last day at home, of a fine -spectacular entertainment, and was inclined to be peevish -with Nell on his account.</p> - -<p>“Reckon it wurn’t your husband who told you to walk -six mile in the dust.”</p> - -<p>“No—but it’s such a beautiful evening, and I felt I -wanted the fresh air after London.”</p> - -<p>She looked worn and fagged, as she sat down by the -fire, spreading out her pale hands to the flames to warm.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup sniffed.</p> - -<p>“Reckon thur’s more air-raids than air in London,” -said Tom—“Ha! ha!” and they all laughed at the joke.</p> - -<p>“But they dudn’t have naun while Nell was there,” -said Mrs. Beatup, continuing her grumble. “Nell, how -dud you lik the Strand Paliss Hotel?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, pretty fair—it was very grand, but a great big -barrack like that makes my head turn round.”</p> - -<p>“How big was it?” asked Zacky. “As big as - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> - -church?”</p> - -<p>“Bigger a dunnamany times,” said Mrs. Beatup. -“I’ve seen the Hotel Metropoil in Brighton, and reckon -you cud git the whole street into it.”</p> - -<p>“Did you have a fire in your bedroom?”</p> - -<p>“No—there were hot pipes.”</p> - -<p>“Hot pipes! How queer!—I shud feel as if I wur -in a boiler.”</p> - -<p>“And there was hot and cold water laid on.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you washed.”</p> - -<p>“I had a bath.”</p> - -<p>“In your room?”</p> - -<p>“No—in a bathroom.”</p> - -<p>“A real white bath in a bathroom!...” Mrs. Beatup -was regaining confidence in her daughter. “You’ll be -gitting too grand fur us here. They say as once you -start taaking baths it’s like taaking drams, and you -can’t git shut of it. I’ll have to see if I can’t fix fur you -to have the wash-tub now and agaun.... Oh, you’ll -find us plain folks here.”</p> - -<p>Nell did not speak; she was stooping over the fire -and her spread hands shook a little.</p> - -<p>“Reckon she’s low,” said Mrs. Beatup in a hoarse -whisper to Tom; “she’s said good-bye to her man, and -she’s vrothering lest he never comes back. It’s always -’good-bye’ fur her lik fur the rest of us.”</p> - -<p>“It’ll have to be ‘good-bye’ fur me now, mother. I -must be gitting hoame.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup stood up sorrowfully—</p> - -<p>“Oh, Tom, I’ve a feeling as you’ll never come back.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve always had that feeling, mother—and I’ve -always come back, surelye.”</p> - -<p>“But maybe I’m right this time. They say as the Germans -ull maake a gurt push this Spring, and I reckon -they’re sure to kill you if they can.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Reckon they’ll have a try—and if my number’s up -I mun go, and if it aun’t, I mun stay. So thur’s no sense -in vrothering.”</p> - -<p>“You spik very differunt, Tom, from when you wur -a lad.”</p> - -<p>“I feel different, you can bet.”</p> - -<p>“And yit it’s scarce two year agone since you wur -naun but a boy, and now you’re naun of a boy that I -can see—you’re a married man and the father of a -child.”</p> - -<p>“And whur’s the harm of it?—you needn’t look so -glum.”</p> - -<p>He took her in his arms and kissed her. Then he -kissed his father—</p> - -<p>“Good-bye, dad—you’ll be climbing fences afore I’m -back, and—” in a friendly whisper, “you kip away from -that old Volunteer. See wot gitting shut of the drink has -maade you—you’re twice the man, fur all your leg. You -kip on wud it, faather. You’ve got a start like—it ought -to be easy now.”</p> - -<p>“Kip on wud wot, my lad?—wud my leg, or the drink, -or doing wudout the drink? You doan’t spik clear and -expressly—reckon you’re gitting just a brutal soldier.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe I am, Faather.”</p> - -<p>“And you’ll never come raound me to kip teetotal when -I think of them Russians—all got shut of drink the fust -month of the war, and then went and bust up and ruined -us. It’s bin proved as the war ull go on a dunnamany -years on account of them valiant teetotallers. If we -British all turn teetotal too, reckon as the war ull last fur -ever.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you’ve got the brains!” said Tom, but not in -quite the same tone as he used to say it.</p> - -<p>He said good-bye to Harry and Zacky, and to Nell—with -a pat on her shoulder and a “Doan’t you fret, my - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> - -dear—he’ll come back.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup went down with him to the end of the -drive. She looked on this as her privilege, and also had -some hazy idea about giving him good advice. All she -could think of on the present occasion was to “Kip sober -and finish the war.”</p> - -<p>“Wish that being my faather’s son maade it as easy -to do one as it does to do t’other. Now doan’t you start -crying, fur I tell you I’ll be back before you scarce know -I’m a-gone.”</p> - -<p>“It’s queer, Tom ... now, thur’s summat I want to -know. Tell me—is a wife better than a mother?”</p> - -<p>“Better—but different. Doan’t you fear, mother. I’ll -always want you. Maybe I went and disremembered you -and faather a bit after I wur married, but now I’ve a -youngster of my own it just shows me a liddle bit of -wot you feel ... and I’m sorry.”</p> - -<p>He suddenly kissed her work-soiled, roughened hand, -with its broken nails and thick dull wedding-ring sunk -into the gnarled finger.</p> - -<p>“That’s wot they do to ladies in France.”</p> - - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>She watched him walk off down the Street, stopping -to light his pipe where the oast of Egypt Farm made a -lee against the racing wind. Then she walked slowly and -heavily back to the house, planning a little consolation -for herself in listening to Nell’s tale of wonders.</p> - -<p>But when she came to the kitchen she found that -Nell had gone upstairs—to wash, Mus’ Beatup told her. -Moved by a spasm of tenderness, she took the kettle from -the fire and creaked off with it to her daughter’s room.</p> - -<p>Knocking at bedroom doors was a refinement unknown -at Worge. Mrs. Beatup accordingly burst in, to find Nell -sitting on the bed, with her face hidden in her hands. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> - -She had taken off her gown, and sat arrayed in a short -silk petticoat and an under-bodice of a transparency that -made her mother gasp; over her shoulders was nothing -but two pale-blue ribbons, against which her arms showed -yellowish-white and plumper than they used to be. So -astonished was Mrs. Beatup at this display that she -scarcely noticed the hidden face.</p> - -<p>“Nell, how fine! But you’ll catch your death—I -wonder your husband let you....” Her voice trailed -off, for Nell had dropped her hands, and her face was -running with tears.</p> - -<p>“My poor liddle girl!”—the mother’s heart went out -in pity. She put the kettle on the floor, and going over -to the bed, sat down on it with a great creaking of -springs, and put her arms round her daughter—at first -rather gingerly, for fear of spoiling so much elegance, -then straining them closer, as Nell, melted into an abandonment -of weakness, began to sob against her breast.</p> - -<p>“My poor liddle girl!... It’s unaccountable sad -fur you. I know.... I know.... But doan’t you -vrother, chick—he’ll come back. I’ve a feeling as he’ll -come back.”</p> - -<p>A long shudder passed through Nell. Then suddenly -she raised herself, gripping her mother’s arms, while her -eyes blazed through her tears. “Oh, mother, mother -... don’t you see? ... it’s not that I’m afraid he -won’t come back ... it’s that I’m afraid he will.”</p> - -<p>She threw herself down upon the pillow, sobbing with -the accumulated misery, humiliation, rage and dread of -weeks. Mrs. Beatup stared at her, dumbfounded.</p> - -<p>“Nell—wot are you talking of? You doan’t want -Steve to come back?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p> - - -<p>“No—I hate him. I—I ... if he comes back ... -and takes me away to be my husband for good, I—I’ll -kill myself.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you doan’t know what you’re saying. You -loved him unaccountable when you wur wed.”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t love him ... not truly. And he’s killed -the little love I had.”</p> - -<p>“But all the fine things he’s guv you....”</p> - -<p>“Doan’t talk about them. They’re just part of the -horribleness.”</p> - -<p>“Then you’re telling me as you maade a mistake?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I did. Reckon my only chance now is that -he won’t come back.”</p> - -<p>She began to sob again, not tempestuously, but slowly -and painfully, gradually jerking to silence. A soft green -twilight deepened in the room, and the low gurgling calls -of starlings trilled under the eaves. The mother still sat -on the bed-foot, staring at her daughter, who now lay -still, a pool of blue in the dusk with her silk petticoat, her -shoulders showing nacreous against the dead-white of the -pillow. Mrs. Beatup was stunned, her mind slowly adjusting -itself to the revelation that there was in war -another tragedy besides the tragedy of those who do not -come back—and that is the tragedy of some who do.</p> - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>The dipping sun slanted over the fields from Stilliands -Tower, and made Tom Beatup’s khaki like a knight’s -golden armour as he trudged home. The sky was a -spread pool of blue, full of light like water, and moss-green -in the east where it dipped towards the woods of -Senlac. Soft whorls of dust bowled down the lane before -a fluttering, racing wind, that smelled of primroses -and rainy grass.</p> - -<p>Tom heaved a deep sigh of well-being as he stopped -to light his pipe. To-morrow he would have left these -sun-swamped sorrowless fields and be back in the country - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> - -where the earth was torn and gutted as if by an earthquake, -all scabbed and leprous as if diseased with the -putrefaction of its million dead—where the air rocked -with crashes, roars, rumbles, whizzes, caterwaulings, and -reeked with flowing stenches of dead bodies, blood, and -hideous chemicals—where any thornbush might conceal a -sight of horror to freeze heart and eyeballs ... and -yet he could put the dread of it out of his mind, and -smile contentedly, and blink his eyes in the sun.</p> - -<p>A few yards down the street his cottage showed its -little misted shape, while its windows shone like garnets -in the western radiance, and a tall column of wood-smoke -rose behind it, blowing and bowing in the adventurous -wind, which brought him snatches of its perfume, with -the sweetness of wet banks and primroses and budding -apple-boughs.... He knew that in the shop door Thyrza -stood with the baby in her arms; she would be waiting -for him there with the sunshine swimming over her white -apron and purple gown, making the downy fluff on little -Will’s head to shine yellow as a duckling’s feathers. The -thought of wife and child was not cankered by the dread -that he might never see them again. The parting when -it came would be terrible—he might break down over it, -as he had broken down before—but he had all a soldier’s -solid fatalism and scorn of the future, and was, perhaps, -strengthened by the inarticulate knowledge that if he were -to die to-morrow he died a man complete. From the -lumbering, unawakened lad of two years ago he had -come to a perfect manhood, to be a husband and father, -fulfilling himself in a simple, natural way, with a quickness -and richness which could never have been if the war -had not seized him and forced him out of his old groove -into its adventurous paths. If he died, the war would but -have taken away what it had given—a man; for through -it he had in a short time fulfilled a long time, and at - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> - -twenty-two could die in the old age of a complete, unspotted -life.</p> - -<p>He passed under the sign of the Rifle Volunteer, straddling -the road in his green uniform, with his rifle and pot -of beer—“Queer old perisher,” thought Tom, looking -up at him—“I shudn’t like to go over the top in that rig.”</p> - -<p>The Rifle Volunteer creaked noisily on his sign, as if -the soldier of bygone years challenged the soldier of -to-day.</p> - -<p>“I am the man armed for the War That Never Was, -who marched and drilled and camped to fight the French, -who never came. And you are the man unarmed for the -War That Had To Be, who never drilled or marched or -camped to fight the Germans, who came and nearly drove -you off the earth.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he’d have bin most use a hunderd mile -away,” scoffed Tom.</p> - -<p>“I went of my free-will and you because you were -fetched,” said the Rifle Volunteer. “Two years ago I -saw you walking down this road under my patriotic legs, -a wretched, drag-heel conscript.”</p> - -<p>“He never fought in any war that I know of,” thought -Tom, “and yit I reckon thur used to be wars in these -parts in the oald days. Minister says the country’s full -of thur naums. I doan’t know naun, surelye.”</p> - -<p>The east wind blew from Senlac, sweet with the scent -of the ash-trees growing on the barrow where Saxon and -Norman lay tumbled together in the brotherhood of -sleep.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Here—when a great whinny moor rolled down from -Anderida to the sea, and Pevens Isle and Horse Isle were -green in the bight of the bay, and the family of the -Heastings had finished building their ham by the coast—here -used to be the Lake of Blood, where hearts were -drowned. A red tun stands on it now, and good folk -come to it on market-days. Thus shall it be with all wars—out -of the red blood the red town, and under the green -barrows friend and foe, tumbled together in the brotherhood -of sleep.”</p> - -<p>The east wind like a Saxon ghost whistled against -Tom’s neck.</p> - -<p>“We fought as you did once—we hated the Norman -as you hate the German, yet look how peacefully we sleep -together.”</p> - -<p>“They must have been funny,” thought Tom, “those -oald wars wud bows and arrows.”</p> - -<p>“Harold! Harold!... Rollo! Rollo!” cried the -ghosts on the east wind from Senlac.</p> - -<p>“God save the Queen,” said the Rifle Volunteer.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -</div> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PART VII: MR. SUMPTION</h2> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap">IT was early in April. A soft fleck of clouds lay over -the sky, so thin, so rifted, that the sinking lights -of afternoon bloomed their hollows with cowslip. A -misty warmth hung over the fields, drawing up the perfume -of violets and harrowed earth, of the soft clay-mud -of the lanes, not yet dry after a shower and with puddles -lying in the ruts like yellow milk.</p> - -<p>Sunday Street was in stillness, like a village in a -dream. Thin spines of wood-smoke rose from its chimneys, -blue against the grey dapple of the clouds. The -chink of a hammer came from the Forge, but so muffled, -so rhythmic that it seemed part of the silence. The -watery atmosphere intensified that effect of dream and -illusion which the village had that evening. Through it -the cottages and farms showed with a watery clearness -and at the same time a strange air of distance and -unreality. There was flooding light, yet no sunshine, -distinctness of every line in eaves and tiling, of every -daffodil and primrose in garden-borders, and yet that -peculiar sense as of something far away, intangible, a -mirage painted on a cloud. It was thus that the vision -of his home might rise before the stretched, abnormal -sight of a dying man, a simulacrum, a fetch....</p> - -<p>Thyrza Beatup sat beside the willow pond at the corner -of the Street, on the trunk of a fallen tree. In her arms -she held her baby, asleep in a shawl. She felt warm and -content and rather sleepy. In her pocket was Tom’s last - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> - -letter from France, but she did not read it, for she knew -it by heart.... “I think of you always, you dear little -creature, you and baby—even when my mind is full of -the things out here, and this great battle which is seemingly -the biggest there’s ever been.” ... “How I wonder -when I’ll get another leave. I reckon baby ull have -grown a bit and you’ll be just the same.” ... “I shut -my eyes and I can see your face; reckon I love you more -every time I think of you and I think of you day and -night, so you can guess all the love that makes.” ... -Tender phrases floated in and out of her mind, and then -she smiled as she remembered a funny story Tom had -told her about a chap in the A.S.C....</p> - -<p>She drew the baby closer into her arms, looking down -at his little sleeping face, which she thought was growing -more and more like Tom’s. She drooped her eye-lids -and in the mist of her lashes half seemed to see -Tom’s face there in the crook of her elbow, where it had -so often been, turning towards her breast. Poor Tom! -his head was not so softly pillowed these nights ... and -as suddenly she pictured him lying on the bare, foul -ground, his head on his haversack, his cheeks unshaved, -his body verminous, his limbs all aching with cold and -stiffness—he, her man, her darling, whom she would -have had rest so sweetly and so cleanly, with nothing but -sweetness and comfort for the body that she loved—then -a sudden flame of rebellion blazed up in her heart, and -its simplicity was scarred with questions—Why was this -terrible War allowed to be? How was it that women -could let their men go to endure its horrors? Did anyone -in England ever yet know what it was these boys had -to suffer? Oh, stop it, stop it! for the sake of the boys -out there, and for the boys who have still to go ... -save at least a few straight limbs, a few unbroken hearts.</p> - -<p>She clenched her hands, and little Will moaned against - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> - -her breast, and as she felt his little fists beating against -her, the hard mood softened, and she bent over him with -soothing words and caresses—words of comfort for herself -as well as for her child.</p> - -<p>“Don’t cry, liddle Will—daddy ull come back—daddy’s -thinking of us. He’s out there so that you ull never have -to go; he bears all that so that you may never have to -bear it.”</p> - -<p>A thick grape red had trickled into the west like a spill -of wine. The afternoon had suddenly crimsoned into the -evening, and ruddy lights came slanting over the fields, -deepening, reddening, so that the willows were like -flames, and the willow pond was like a lake of blood.... -The night wind rose, and Thyrza shivered.</p> - -<p>“We mun be gitting hoame, surelye,” and she stood -up, pulling the shawl over the baby’s face.</p> - -<p>At the same time her heart was full of peace. The -questioning mood had passed, and had given place to -one single deep assurance of her husband’s love. Tom’s -love seemed to go with her into the house, to be with -her as she bathed Will and put him to bed, to drive -away her brooding thoughts when, later on, she sat -alone in the lamplight at her supper. She sang to herself -as she put away the supper, a silly old song of Tom’s -when he first joined up:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The bells of hell go ring-aling-aling</div> - <div class="verse indent4">For you, but not for me;</div> -<div class="verse">For me the angels sing-aling-aling,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">They’ve got the goods for me.</div> -<div class="verse">O Death, where is thy sting-aling-aling?</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Where, grave, thy victory?</div> -<div class="verse">The bells of hell go ring-aling-aling</div> - <div class="verse indent4">For you, but not for me.”</div> -</div> - </div> - </div> - -<p>Now that darkness had fallen, the clouds had rolled -away from the big stars blinking in the far-off peace. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> - -A soft, sweet-smelling cold was in the house, the emanation -of the damp mould of the garden, where hyacinths -bathed their purples and yellows in the white flood of -the moon—of the twinkling night air, cold and clear as -water—of the fields with their brown moist ribs and -clumps of violets.</p> - -<p>Thyrza’s room was full of light, for the westering -moon hung over Starnash like a sickle, and the fields -showed grey against their hedges and the huddled woods. -She undressed without a candle, so bright was the moon-dazzle -on her window, and after saying her prayers -climbed into bed, where little Will now lay in his -father’s place. Once more she tried to picture that his -head was Tom’s, and that her husband lay beside her, -while Will slept in his cradle, as he had slept when Tom -was at home. But the illusion faltered—Will was so -small, and Tom was so big in spite of his stockiness, and -took up so much more room, making the mattress cant -under him, whereas Will lay on it as lightly as a kitten. -However, she did not badly need the comfort of make-believe, -for her sense of Tom’s love was so real, so intense, -and so sweet, that it filled all the empty corners of -her heart, making her forget the empty corners of her -bed. She lay with one arm flung out towards the baby, -the other curved against her side, while her hair spread -over the pillow like a bed of celandines, and the moonlight -drew in soft gleams and shadows the outlines of her -breast.</p> - -<p>She lay very still—nearly as still as Tom was lying in -the light of the same moon.... But not quite so still, -for the stillness of the living is never so perfect, so -untroubled as the stillness of the dead.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p> - - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>Worge knew nearly as soon as the Shop, for Nell, -running down after breakfast to buy tobacco for her -father, found the blinds still drawn. The door was -unlocked, however, so she went in and called her sister-in-law. -There was no answer, and, vaguely alarmed, -she went upstairs, to find Thyrza sitting on the unmade -bed, still wearing the print wrapper she had slipped on -when the shop-bell rang during her dressing.</p> - -<p>“I must go and tell his mother,” she kept repeating, -when Nell had read the telegram, and had set about, with -true female instinct, to make her a cup of tea.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you worry over that, dear—I’ll tell her.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he’d sooner I did.”</p> - -<p>“No—no; it would be such a strain for you. I’ll go -when I’ve made your tea.”</p> - -<p>At that moment little Will woke up, and cried for his -breakfast—his mother had forgotten him for the first -time since he was born. Nell welcomed the distraction, -though her heart tightened as she saw Thyrza’s arms -sweep to the child, and quiver while she held him with -his little cool tear-dabbled cheek against her own so tearless -and so dry. Nell left her with the boy at her -breast, a big yellow hank of hair adrift upon her shoulder, -and her eyes staring from under the tangle, fixed, -strangely dark, strangely bright, as if their grief were -both a shadow and an illumination.</p> - -<p>She herself ran back on her self-inflicted errand, all -her being merged into the one pain of knowing that in -ten minutes she would have turned a jogging peace to -bitterness, and bankrupted her mother’s life of its chief -treasure. She saw herself as a flame leaping from one -burning house to set another light.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup’s reception of the news held both the -expected and the unexpected.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I knew it,” she said stonily—“I felt it—I felt it in -my boans. And I toald him, too—I told him, poor soul, -as he’d never come back, and now he’ll never come, -surelye.” Then she said suddenly—“I mun go to her.”</p> - -<p>“Go to whom, mother dear?”</p> - -<p>“Thyrza. He’d want it ... and reckon she feels it -even wuss than me.”</p> - -<p>Nothing could dissuade her, and off she went, to -comfort the woman with whom she had so long played -tug-of-war for her son.</p> - -<p>Nell stayed behind in the dreary house, where it seemed -as if things slunk and crept. It was holiday-time, so -Zacky was at home, sobbing in a corner of the haystack, -crying on and on monotonously till he scarcely knew what -he cried for, then suddenly charmed out of his grief by a -big rat that popped out of the straw and ran across his -legs. Elphick and Juglery mumbled and grumbled together -in the barn, and talked of the shame of a yeoman -dying out of his bed, and cast deprecating eyes on the -indecency of Harry, dark against the sky on the ribbed -swell of the Street field, making his late sowings with -the new boy at his heels. Up and down the furrows went -Harry, with his head hung low, in his ears the mutter of -the guns, so faint on the windless April noon that he -sometimes thought they were just the sorrowful beating -of his own heart—up and down, scattering seed into the -earth, leaving his token of life in the fields he loved before -he was himself taken up and cast, vital and insignificant -as a seed, into the furrows of Aceldama or the -Field of Blood....</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup sat crouched over the fire, the tears every -now and then welling up in his eyes, and sometimes overflowing -on his cheeks, whence he wiped them away with -the back of his hand. “’Tis enough to maake a man -taake to drink,” he muttered to himself—“this is wot - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> - -drives men to drink, surelye.” Every now and then he -looked up at the clock.</p> - -<p>The clock struck twelve, and the Rifle Volunteer called -over the fields:</p> - -<p>“Come, farmer, and have a pot with me. You’ve lost -a son in your War—there were no sons lost in mine, but -pots of beer are good for joy or sorrow. Come and -forget that boy for five minutes, how he looked and what -he said to you, forget this War through which good yeomen -die out of their beds, and drink with the Volunteer, -who drilled and marched and camped and did every other -warlike thing save fighting, and died between his sheets.”</p> - -<p>Mus’ Beatup groped for his stick. Then he shook his -head rather sadly. “The boy’s scarce cold in his grave. -Reckon I mun wait a day or two before I disremember -his last words to me.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup did not come home till after supper, and -went to bed almost at once. She felt fagged and tottery, -and there was a shrivelled, fallen look about her face. -When she was in bed, she could not sleep, but lay watching -the moon travel across the room, lighting first the -mirror, then the wall, then her own head, then maaster’s, -then climbing away up the chimney like a ghost. Every -now and then she fell into a little, light dose, so thridden -with dreams that it was scarcely sleeping.</p> - -<p>In these dreams Tom was always a child, in her arms, -or at her feet, or spannelling about after the manner of -small boys with tops and string. She did not dream of -him as grown, and this was the basis of her new agreement -with Thyrza. Thyrza could never think of him -as a child, for she had never seen him younger than -eighteen; all her memories were concentrated in his few -short years of manhood, and his childhood belonged to -his mother. So his mother and his wife divided his -memory up between them, and each thought she had the -better part.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup wondered if anyone—Bill Putland or -Mus’ Archie—would write and tell her about Tom’s end. -So far she had no idea how he had died, and her imagination -crept tearfully round him, asking little piteous questions -of the darkness—Had he suffered much? Had he -asked for her? Had he wanted her?—Oh, reckon he had -wanted her, and she had not been there, she had not -known that he was dying, she had been pottering round -after her household, cooking and washing up and sweeping -and dusting, and thinking of him as alive and well, -while all the time he was perhaps crying out for her in -the mud of No Man’s Land....</p> - -<p>The tears rolled down her cheeks in the darkness that -followed the setting of the moon. Was it for this that -she had borne him in hope and anguish?—that he should -die alone, away from her, like a dog, in the mud?... -She saw the mud, he had so often told her of it, she saw -it sucking and oozing round him like the mud outside the -cowhouse door; she saw the milky puddles ... she saw -them grow dark and streaked with blood. Then, just as -her heart was breaking, she pictured him in the bare clean -ward of a hospital, as she had seen him at Eastbourne, -with a kind nurse to relieve his last pain and take down -his last little messages. Oh, someone was sure to write -to Tom’s mother and tell her how he had died, and perhaps -send her a message from him.</p> - -<p>The daylight crept into the room, stabbing like a finger -under the blind, and with it her restlessness increased. -Then a pool of sunshine gleamed at the side of the bed. -She felt that she could not lie any longer, so climbed -out slowly from under the blankets. She tried not to -disturb her husband, but she was too unwieldy for a -noiseless rising, and she heard him turn over and mutter, -asking her what she meant by “waaking a man to his -trouble”—then falling asleep again.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span></p> - -<p>She went down to the kitchen, to find Harry, his eyes -big and blurred with sleep, just going to set about his -business in the yard. Moved by a quake of tenderness -for this surviving son, she made him a cup of cocoa, and -insisted on his drinking it before he went out to work. -Then she did her own scrubbing with more care than -usual—“Reckon we must kip the farm up, now he’s -agone.” Urged by the same thought she went out to -the Dutch barn and mixed the chicken food, then opened -the hen-houses, feeling in the warm nests for eggs.</p> - -<p>By now the sun was high, a big blazing pan slopping -fire over the roofs and into the ponds. The air was -full of sounds—crowings, cacklings, cluckings, the scurry -of fowls, the stamping of horses, and then the whining -hiss of milk into zinc pails. Hoofs thudded in the lane, -the call of a girl came from a distant field, all the country -of the Four Roads was waking to life and work, faltering -no more than light and darkness because one of its sons -had died for the fields he used to plough. Wheels -crunched in the drive, and then came the postman’s knock. -Mrs. Beatup put down her trug of meal, and waddled off -towards the house ... perhaps a letter had come about -Tom; it was rather early yet, still, perhaps it had come.</p> - -<p>But Harry had already been to the door, and shook his -head when she asked if there was anything for her.</p> - -<p>“Thur’s naun.”</p> - -<p>“Naun fur none of us?”</p> - -<p>“Only fur me.”</p> - -<p>She saw that he was carrying a long, official-looking -envelope, and that his hand was clenched round it, as if -he held a knife.</p> - -<p>“Wot’s that?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span></p> - -<p>“My calling-up paapers.”</p> - - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Tom was not the only local casualty that week. -Bourner heard of the death of his eldest son, a youth -who had somehow squeezed himself out to the front at -the age of seventeen; the baker at Bodle Street lost his -lad, Stacey Collbran of Satanstown had died of wounds, -and the late postman at Brownbread Street was reported -missing. All these had been struck down together on -the ravaged hills round Wytschaete, where the Eighteenth -Sussex had for long hours held a trench which the -German guns had pounded to a furrow. In this furrow -the body of Tom Beatup lay with the bodies of other -Sussex chaps, hostages to shattered Flanders earth for -the inviolate Sussex fields.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Beatup heard about it from Mus’ Archie, who -wrote, as she had expected, while Bill Putland wrote to -Thyrza. Tom had been shot through the head. His -death must have been painless and instantaneous, the -Lieutenant told his mother. Then he went on to say how -much they had all liked Tom in the platoon, how popular -he had been with the men and how the officers had appreciated -his unfailing good-humour and reliableness. “All -soldiers grumble, as you probably know, but I never met -one who grumbled less than Beatup; and you could -always depend on him to do what was wanted. We shall -all miss him more than I can say, but he died bravely in -open battle, and we all feel very proud of him.”</p> - -<p>“Proud”—that was the word they were all throwing -at her now: Mus’ Archie, the curate, even the minister. -They said, “You must be very proud of Tom,” just as -if all the age-old instincts of her breed did not generate -a feeling of shame for one who died out of his bed. Good -yeomen died between their sheets, and her son had died -out in the mud, like a sheep or a dog—and yet she must -be proud of him!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span></p> - -<p>Thyrza was proud—she said as much between her -tears. She said that Tom had died like a hero, fighting -for his wife and his child.</p> - -<p>“He died for England,” said Mr. Poullett-Smith.</p> - -<p>“He died for Sunday Street,” said the Rev. Mr. Sumption. -“I reckon that as his eyestrings cracked he saw the -corner by the Forge and the oasts of Egypt Farm.”</p> - -<p>It appeared that Tom had died for a great many things, -but in her heart Mrs. Beatup guessed that it was really -a very little thing that he had died for—</p> - -<p>“Reckon all he saw then wur our faaces,” she said to -herself.</p> - -<p>As there had been so many local deaths, both now and -during the winter, it struck the curate to hold a memorial -service in the church at Brownbread Street. He knew -how the absence of a funeral, of any possibility of paying -mortuary honour to the loved ones, would add to the grief -of those left behind. So he hastily summoned a protesting -and bewildered choir to practise <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Æterna Christi -Munera</i>, and announced a requiem for the following -Friday.</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption saw in this one more attempt of the -church to “get the pull over him,” and resolved to contest -the advantage. He too would have a memorial -service, conducted on godly Calvinistic lines; there should -be no Popish prayers for the dead or vain confidence in -their eternal welfare, just a sober recollection before God -and preparation for judgment.</p> - -<p>It was perhaps a tacit confession of weakness that Mr. -Sumption did not offer this attraction as a rival to the -Church service, but planned to have it later in the same -day, so that those with a funeral appetite could attend -both. Experience had taught him that what he had to -depend on was not so much his flock’s conviction as their -lack of conviction. The Particular Baptists in Sunday - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> - -Street, those, that is to say, who for conscience’ sake -would never worship outside the Bethel, would not fill -two pews. He depended for the rest of his congregation -on the straying sheep of Ecclesia Anglicana, of the Wesleyans, -Primitive Methodists, Ebenezers, Bible Christians, -Congregationalists, and other sects that stuck tin roofs -about the parish fields.</p> - -<p>It occurred to him that perhaps now was his great -chance to scatter the rival shepherds, so made his preparations -with elaborate care, boldly facing the handicaps -his conscience imposed by forbidding him to use decorations, -anthems, or instrumental music. He even had a -few handbills printed at his own expense, and canvassed a -hopeful popularity by rightly diagnosing the complaint -of some sick ewes belonging to Mus’ Putland.</p> - - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>On Thursday evening he sat in his room at the Horselunges, -preparing his sermon. Of course his sermons -were not written, but he took great pains with their -preparation under heads and points. He felt that this -occasion demanded a special effort, and it was unfortunate -that he felt all muddled and crooked, his thoughts -continually springing away from their discipline of -heads and racing off on queer adventures, scarcely agreeable -to Calvinistic theology.</p> - -<p>He thought of those dead boys, some of whom he knew -well and others whom he knew but slightly, and he pictured -them made perfect by suffering, buying themselves -the Kingdom of Heaven by their blood. He knew that -his creed gave him no right to do so—Christ died for the -elect, and no man can squeeze his way into salvation by -wounds and blood. And yet these boys were crucified -with Christ.... He saw all the crosses of Flanders, a -million graves.... Perhaps there was a back way to - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> - -the Kingdom, a path of pain and sacrifice by which sinners -won the gate....</p> - -<p>He rebuked himself, and bent again to his work. The -setting sun poured in from the west, making the little -room, with its faded, peeling walls, and mangy furniture, -a tub of swimming light. Mr. Sumption had got down -to his Fourthly when his thoughts went off again, and -this time after a boy who was not dead. It was a couple -of months since he had heard from Jerry, and the letter -had been unsatisfactory, though by this time he should -have learned not to expect so much from Jerry’s letters. -He lifted his head from the paper with a sigh, and, chin -propped on hand, gazed out of the window to where bars -of heavy crimson cloud reefed the blue bay of light. He -remembered an evening nearly a year ago, when he and -Jerry had sat by the window of a poor lodging-house -room in Kemp Town, and felt nearer to each other than -before in their lives....</p> - -<p>“Reckon he can’t help it—reckon he’s just a vessel of -wrath.”</p> - -<p>He bit his tongue as a cure for weakness, and for -another ten minutes bobbed and fumed over his notes. -The sermon was not going well. He had taken for his -text: “Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for -the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand; a -day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and -of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains.” -He told the congregation that their grief for -the death of these young men was but part of the universal -woe, a spark of that furnace which should devour -the world. Melting together in Doomsday fires the Book -of Revelation and the Minor Prophets, he pointed out -how the Scriptures had been fulfilled ... the Beast, -the False Prophet, the Army from the North, the Star -called Wormwood, the Woman on Seven Hills, the Vision - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> - -of Four Horns, the Crowns of Joshua, the Flying Roll, -all these were in the world to-day, Signs in the rolling -clouds of smoke that poured from the burning fiery furnace, -where only the Children of God could walk unharmed. -“And the Sign of the Son of Man shall be -in the heavens....”</p> - -<p>Here it was that again his thoughts became treacherous -to his theme. Instead of the Sign of the Son of -Man appearing in the heavens, he seemed to see it rising -out of the earth, the crosses on the million graves of -Flanders. Could it be that Christ was already come? -... come in the brave and patient sufferings of boys, -who died that the world might live?... “It is expedient -that one man should die for the people.” He drove away -the thought as a blasphemy, and stooped once more to his -paper, while his finger rubbed under the lines of his big -Bible beside him.</p> - -<p>“Sixthly: The Crowns of Joshua. Satan at his right -hand. ‘The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan.’ The promise -of the Branch. The promise of the Temple. But all -must first be utterly destroyed. ‘I will utterly consume -all things, saith the Lord.’ Don’t think the War will end -before everything is destroyed. ‘That day is a day of -wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness -and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day -of clouds and thick darkness.’ The hope of the Elect. -’I will bring the third part through fire.’ ...”</p> - -<p>There was the rattle and jar of crockery outside the -door, and the next minute Mrs. Hubble kicked it open, -and brought in the minister’s supper of bread and cocoa. -She set it down, ruthlessly sweeping aside his books and -paper, and then took a telegram out of her apron pocket.</p> - -<p>“This has just come, and the girl’s waiting for an -answer.”</p> - -<p>Telegrams came only on one errand in the country of - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> - -the Four Roads, and Mrs. Hubble felt sure that this was -to announce either the wounds or death of Jerry. It is -true that he might be coming home on leave, but in that -case she reckoned he would never trouble to send a telegram—he -would just turn up, and give her his room to -sweep and his bed to make all on the minute.</p> - -<p>She narrowly watched the minister as he read it—if it -brought bad news she would like to be able to give the -village a detailed account of his reception of it. But he -made no sign—only struck her for the first time as looking -rather stupid. It was queer that she had never -noticed before what a heavy, blunted kind of face he -had.</p> - -<p>“Any answer?”</p> - -<p>He shook his head, and put the telegram face downwards -on the tray. Mrs. Hubble flounced out and banged -the door.</p> - -<p>For some minutes after she had gone Mr. Sumption -sat motionless, his arm dangling at his sides, his eyes fixed -rather vacantly on the steam rising from the cocoa-jug. -The sun had dipped behind the meadow-hills of Bird-in-Eye, -and only a few red, fiery rays glowed on the ceiling. -Mr. Sumption picked up the telegram and read it -again.</p> - -<p>“Deeply regret to inform you that Private J. M. -Sumption has died at the front.”</p> - -<p>He felt weak, boneless, as if his joints had been smitten -asunder. Something hot and heavy seemed to press down -his skull. He could not think, and yet the inhibition was -not a respite, but a torment. His ears sang. Every now -and then he tried pitifully to collect himself, but failed. -Jerry dead ... Jerry dead ... then suddenly his head -fell forward on his hands, and he began to cry, first -weakly, then stormily, noisily, his whole body shaking.</p> - -<p>The sobs stopped as suddenly as they had begun, but - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> - -the brain-pressure had been relieved, and he could now -think a little. He saw, as from a great way off, himself -before the telegram came—he saw that as he planned -that memorial service, prepared that elegiac sermon, there -had run in his veins a fiery, subtle pride that he, at least, -was father of a living man. He had not seen it at the -time, but he saw it now—now that his pride had been -trampled and he himself was in the same abyss with the -souls he was to comfort. He too was father of the -dead; Jerry was dead—at last and for ever beyond the -reach of his help, his efforts, even his prayers ... the -son of the woman from Ihornden.</p> - -<p>The room was almost in darkness now; fiery lights -moved and shifted, and by their glow he read the telegram -over again, for at the bottom of his heart was -always a sick, insane thought that he must be mistaken, -that this blow could not have fallen, that Jerry must still -be somewhere alive and up to no good. But the message -was there, and now on this third reading, he noticed -something peculiar about the phrasing of it—“Private -Sumption has died at the front.” Surely this was not the -usual form of announcement. He had seen several such -messages of woe, and they had read “killed in action” -or “died of wounds.” He had never seen one put exactly -like this.</p> - -<p>However, it was not of any real importance. Jerry was -dead; that was the only vital, necessary fact. But he -would write to Mus’ Archie for particulars.... The -lamp was on the table, and he lit it, pushing aside the -unused supper-tray and the littered sermon-paper.</p> - - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>He wrote on into the night. He found a certain -crookedness in his ideas which made him tear up several - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> - -efforts—he once even found himself writing to Jerry, -a proceeding which struck him with peculiar horror. -The hours ticked on; the big constellations swung -solemnly across the uncurtained window (luckily Policeman -was in bed, and did not see the lozenge of gold lamplight -that lay in Mrs. Hubble’s backyard). Inside the -room the cat prowled to and fro, miaowling to be let out -for a scamper on the barn-roofs—at last, he jumped on -the table and, upsetting the cocoa, lapped his fill and -retired to dignified repose. The mice tapped on the glass -front of their cage with little pink hands like anemones.... -Mr. Sumption for once did not notice his animals; -he sat brooding over the table long after he had finished -writing. Then, as the sky was fading into light, and big -greyish-white clouds like mushrooms were banking -towards the east, he dropped asleep, his head fallen over -the back of his chair, with the mouth a little open, his -arms hanging at his sides.</p> - -<p>The daylight fought with the lamplight, and as with -a sudden crimson rift it won the victory, Mr. Sumption -woke—from dreams full of the roaring of a forge and his -own arm swung above his head, as in the old days at -Bethersden. He sat for a few moments rubbing his eyes, -feeling very stiff and cold. Then he realised that he was -hungry. The supper-tray was still before him, swimming -in cocoa. He ate the bread—dry, because the minister -was one of those greedy souls who devour their week’s -ration of butter in the first three days, and neither jam -nor cheese was to be had in Sunday Street, even if he -could have afforded them. When he had eaten all the -bread, he began to feel thirsty. He longed for a cup of -tea. Overhead in the attic there was a trampling, which -told him that Mrs. Hubble would soon be down to boil -the kettle. He hung about the stairhead till she appeared—shouting -back at her father-in-law, who would not get - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> - -up, and generally in a bad mood for her lodger’s service.</p> - -<p>However, to his surprise, she was quite obliging—he -did not know what his night had made of him. She -hurried down to the kitchen to light the fire, and bade -him come too and warm himself. Mr. Sumption would -have preferred to be alone, but he was beginning to feel -very cold, and a kind of weakness was upon him, so he -came and sat by her fire, and drank gratefully the big, -strong cup of tea she gave him.</p> - -<p>“You’ve had bad news of Mus’ Jerry, I reckon,” -said Mrs. Hubble.</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption nodded, and warmed his hands round -the cup. He could not bring himself to say that Jerry -was dead.</p> - -<p>“This is a tar’ble war,” continued Mrs. Hubble, “and -I reckon those are best off wot are put out of it”—this -was to find out what really had happened to Jerry. “I -often think,” she added piously, “of the happy lot of the -dead—no more trouble, no more pain, no more worriting -after absent friends, no more standing in queues. I often -think, minister, as it’s a pity we aun’t all dead.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe, maybe,” said Mr. Sumption.</p> - -<p>He rose and walked restlessly out of the kitchen. He -both wanted companionship and yet could not bear it. -When would the day end—the day that streamed and -blew and shone over Jerry’s grave?... He was going -upstairs, when he heard a shuffle of paper behind him, -and saw that a letter had been pushed under the door. -The post came early to Sunday Street, and Mr. Sumption -ran down again, full of an eager, futile hope. The letter -bore the familiar field postmark, and at first he thought -it was from Jerry, and that he was going to suffer that -rending, ecstatic agony of reading letters from the dead. -But as he picked it up he saw that the writing was not -Jerry’s, but in a hand he did not know. Whose could it - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> - -be?—whosoever it was must be writing about his son. -He tore it open as he went up to his room, and at the -bottom of the folded paper saw, “Yours, with sincerest -sympathy, Archibald Lamb.”</p> - -<p>Of course, it was Mr. Archie—writing to Jerry’s father -as he had written to Tom’s mother. The minister had -had very little to do with the Squire, except on one -occasion, when he had met him riding home from a day’s -hunting, on a badly-lamed horse, and had applied a -fomentation which Mr. Archie said had worked a wonderful -cure. Now there were two pages covered with -his big, firm handwriting. Mr. Sumption pulled them out -of the envelope, and from between them a grimy piece of -paper fell to the ground, scrawled over with the familiar -smudge of indelible pencil.</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption grabbed it, letting Mr. Archie’s letter -fall in its stead. As he began to read it, he wondered if -it had been found on Jerry’s body—it was certainly more -smeary and stained than usual. After he had read a -little, he sat down in his chair. His hand shook, and he -stooped his head nearer and nearer to the writing as if -his sight were failing him.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p> -“<span class="smcap">Dear Father</span>,<br /> -</p> - -<p>“By the time you get this I will be out of the way -of troubling you any more. I am in great trouble. Mr. -Archie said perhaps not tell you, but I said I would -rather you knew. It is like this. I kept away in —— -last time we went up to the trenches, with a lady friend, -you may have heard of. Beatup says he told you. Well, -I am to be shot for it. I was court-martialled, and they -said to be shot. Dear Father, this will make you very -sorry, but it cannot be helped, and I am not worth it. -I have been a very bad son to you, and done many wicked -things besides. Things always were against me. Mr. -Archie has been very kind, and so has the pardry here. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> - -Mr. Archie is sitting with me to-night, and he says he -will stay all night, as I am feeling very much upset at -this great trouble. I am leaving you my ring made out -of a piece of Zep and my purse, only I am afraid there -is no money in it. Please remember me to Ivy Beatup, -and say if it had not been for her I should not be here -now. I think that is all.</p> - -<p class="sig40"> -“Ever your loving son,</p> - -<p class="sig4">“<span class="smcap">Jeremiah Meridian Sumption</span>. <br /> -</p> - -<p>“P.S.—The pardry says Jesus will forgive my sins. -Thank you very much, dear father, for those fags you -sent. I am smoking one now.”</p> -</blockquote> - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>It was nearly half an hour later that Mr. Sumption -picked up Archie Lamb’s letter. It caught his eye at -last as he stared at the floor, and he picked it up and -unfolded it. Perhaps it would give him a grain of -comfort.</p> - -<p>The lieutenant afterwards described it as the most -sickening job he had ever had in his life. The usual -letter of condolence and explanation, such as he had over -and over again written to parents and wives, became an -easy task compared with this. Here he had to deal not -only with sorrow, but with disgrace. He could not write, -as he had so often written, “We are proud of him.” -He could not refer back with congratulations to a good -record—Jerry had died as he had lived, a bad soldier, a -disgrace to the uniform he wore, and there seemed very -little that could be decently said about him.</p> - -<p>However, the innate kind-heartedness and good feeling -of the young officer pulled him successfully through an -ordeal that would have staggered many better wits. He - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> - -began by explaining his reluctance, and that he was writing -only because Jerry wished it—though, perhaps, it -was better, after all, that his father should know the -truth. “As a matter of fact, it is not so dreadful as it -sounds. Your son is not to die so much as a punishment -as a warning. The shooting of deserters is chiefly a -deterrent—and your son is dying so that other men may -be warned by his fate to stick to the ranks and do their -duty as soldiers; therefore you may say that, indirectly, -he is dying for his country. Moreover, his disappearance -was not due to cowardice, but to other reasons which you -probably know of. I don’t know if this mitigates it to -you, it certainly does to me. Sumption is not a coward. -I have seen him in action, and I repeat that he is as -plucky as any one.</p> - -<p>“I am sitting with him now, and I want to make your -mind easy about the end. When I have finished writing -this he will be given his supper, food and a hot drink. -Then he will go to sleep. He will be roused just ten -minutes before the time, and hurried off, still half-asleep—he -will never be quite awake. There will be no awful -apprehension and agony, such as I expect you imagine—please -don’t worry about that.</p> - -<p>“I have not been able to get him a padre of his own -church, but a very good Congregational man has been -with him, and has, of course, respected your convictions -in every way.</p> - -<p>“Now before I end up, I want to say again that it -isn’t really as bad as it looks—the disgrace, I mean. -Think of your son as having died so that other men -should take warning by him and not desert the ranks, -and therefore, in that sense he has died for his country.”</p> - -<p>Then Archie Lamb asked Mr. Sumption to write to -him if there was anything more he wanted to know, and -said that he would forward Jerry’s purse and ring at the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> - -first opportunity. After the signature was added: “It -is all over now, and happened as I told you. He was still -half asleep, and suffered practically nothing.”</p> - - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>For some minutes Mr. Sumption sat with his head -buried in his hands. Before his closed eyes he saw pass -the last pitiful act of Jerry’s tragedy. He saw him standing -defiant and furtive—he would always look defiant -and furtive, even if half awake—with his back to the -wall ... then—cr-r-rack!—and he would fall down at -the foot of it in a crumpled heap, that perhaps still moved -a little.... But he had suffered nothing ... practically -nothing....</p> - -<p>Then he saw Jerry standing all his life with his back -to a wall, every man armed against him. He had but -died as he had lived. Even his own father had been -against him, had misused and misunderstood him. There -had never been anyone to understand that mysterious, -troubled heart, anyone who could have understood it—except, -perhaps, Meridian Hearn, his mother—and that -queer people of defiant furtive ways, whose dark blood -had run in his veins and been his ruin. Meridian Hearn -should not have married the <i>gaujo</i> preacher from Bethersden—she -should have married one of her own race, -and then her child would have lived among those of like -passions as he, and not among strangers, who had mobbed -him and pecked his eyes out, like sparrows attacking a -foreign bird.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Meridian, Meridian!—our boy’s dead....”</p> - -<p>There was the familiar clatter and kick outside the -door, and Mrs. Hubble came in with the breakfast tray. -Her face was crimson and very much excited, though she -tried to work it into lines of woe; for she had at last - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> - -heard the news about Jerry, from Gwen Bourner, who -had heard it from Mrs. Bill Putland, who had had a -letter from her husband that morning. All Sunday -Street now knew that Jerry Sumption had been shot as -a deserter, having given the 18th Sussex the slip on the -eve of the action in which Tom Beatup and Fred Bourner -and Stacey Collbran and other local boys had given up -their limbs and lives—he had gone to a French woman, -and been found in a blouse and wooden shoes. The -platoon would not miss him much, Bill Putland said; -but he was unaccountable sorry for his father.</p> - -<p>So, to do her justice, was Mrs. Hubble. She had put -an extra spoonful of tea in his tea-pot, and had boiled -him an egg, a luxury which was not included in his boarding -fees. Moreover, she gave him a pitying glance, as -she swept the litter of sermon-paper to one side.</p> - -<p>“Will you want me to tell people?” she asked him.</p> - -<p>“Tell people what?” His voice came throatily, like -an old man’s.</p> - -<p>“Well, I reckon you woan’t be preaching to-night?”</p> - -<p>Something in her voice made him start up, and pull -himself together. He saw her squinting compassionately -at him, with the corner of her apron in readiness.</p> - -<p>“Preach!—Why do you ask that?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve heard about your loss. I reckon you woan’t be -feeling in heart for preaching.”</p> - -<p>He did not reply.</p> - -<p>“I cud easy stick up a notice on the chapel door,” -she continued, “and all the folkses hereabouts ud understand. -They’d never expect you to spik after wot’s -happened.”</p> - -<p>“Woman!—what has happened?”</p> - -<p>He spoke so suddenly and so loudly, that Mrs. Hubble -started, and dropped the corner of her apron.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I—I ... well, we’ve all of us heard, Mus’ Sumption....”</p> - -<p>“Heard what?”</p> - -<p>“I—I.... Doan’t look at me like that, minister, for -the Lord’s sake.”</p> - -<p>“Speak then. What have you all heard?”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Hubble was recovering from her alarm and beginning -to resent his manner.</p> - -<p>“Well, reckon we’ve heard wot you’ve heard—as your -boy’s bin shot fur deserting his regiment; and no one -expects you to come and preach in chapel after that.”</p> - -<p>A wave of burning crimson went over Mr. Sumption’s -face, so that Mrs. Hubble said afterwards she thought as -he’d go off in a stroke. Then he was suddenly white -again, and speaking quietly, but in a voice that somehow -frightened her more than his shouting.</p> - -<p>“I shall certainly preach to-night. I will not have the -service cancelled. Tell everyone who asks you that I shall -certainly preach.”</p> - -<p>“Very good, sir.”</p> - -<p>She edged towards the door.</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Hubble! Stop a moment. Say this, too. I -am not ashamed of my son. I reckon you all think I am -ashamed of him, and you are putting your heads together -and clacking, and pitying me for it. But I am not -ashamed. He died for England. Mr. Archie himself -says it. These are his very words: Wait!”—for Mrs. -Hubble was going to bolt.</p> - -<p>“I’m waiting, Mus’ Sumption.”</p> - -<p>“He says, ‘Think of your son as having died so that -other men should take warning by him and not desert -the ranks, and, therefore, in that sense he has died for -his country.’ Do you understand?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, sir.”</p> - -<p>“Then you can go.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Hubble fled.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span></p> - - -<h3>8</h3> - -<p>All that morning heavy pacings over her head convinced -Mrs. Hubble that the minister was preparing a -wonderful sermon. She generally guessed the temper of -his discourse by the weight and width of the stumpings -which preceded it. To-day she could hear him, as she -expressed it, all over the room ... he was kicking the -fire-irons ... he had overturned his chair ... he had -flung up the window and banged it down again. Obviously -something great was in process, and at the same -time she felt that Mr. Sumption was rather mad. It -was nothing short of indecent for him to preach to-night, -after what had happened—and the queer way he had -spoken about Jerry, too....</p> - -<p>By this time the whole of Sunday Street knew about -Jerry. He was discussed at breakfast-tables, in barns, -on doorsteps, on milking-stools. No one was surprised; -indeed, most people seemed to have foretold his bad end. -“I said as he’d come to no good, that gipsy’s brat.”</p> - -<p>“A valiant minister wot can’t breed up his own son.” -“Howsumdever, I’m middling sorry fur the poor chap; I’ll never -disremember how he saaved that cow of mine wot wur dying of -garget.” “And I’m hemmed, maaster, if he wurn’t better wud my -lambing ewes than my own looker, surelye.”</p> - -<p>On the whole, the news improved his chances of a congregation. -It was a better advertisement than the notice -on the church door, or even than his veterinary achievement -at Egypt Farm. Some “wanted to see how he took -it,” others openly admired his pluck; all were stirred by -curiosity and also by compassion. During the years he -had lived among them he had grown dear to them and -rather contemptible. They looked down on him for his -shabbiness, his poverty, his pastoral blundering, his lack - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> - -of education; but they liked him for his willingness, his -simplicity, his sturdy good looks, his strong muscles, his -knowledge of cattle and horses.</p> - -<p>All that morning people wavered up the street towards -the Horselunges, and looked at it, and at the Bethel. -Sometimes they gathered together in little groups, but -always some way off. The Bethel stared blindly over -the roof of the Horselunges, as if it ignored the misery -huddled at its doors. No matter what might be the private -sorrows of its servant, he must come to-night and -preach within its walls those iron doctrines of Doomsday -and Damnation in whose honour it had been built and -had stood staring over the fields with the blind eyes of a -corpse for a hundred years.</p> - -<p>Towards noon Thyrza Beatup came up the street, -walking briskly, with her weeds flapping behind her. It -was the first time she had been out since her widowing, -and people stared at her from their doors as she walked -boldly up to Horselunges and knocked.</p> - -<p>“How is poor Mus’ Sumption?” she asked Mrs. -Hubble.</p> - -<p>“Lamentaable, lamentaable,” said Mrs. Hubble, with -eye and apron in conjunction.</p> - -<p>“Well, please tell him as Mrs. Tom Beatup sends her -kind remembrances and sympathy, and she reckons she -knows wot he feels, feeling the saum herself.”</p> - -<p>“Very good, Mrs. Beatup.”</p> - -<p>“And you’ll be sure and give it all wot I said—about -feeling the saum myself?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, sartain.”</p> - -<p>Thyrza walked off. Her face was very white and -wooden. Mrs. Hubble stared after her.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Middling pretty as golden-haired women look in them -weeds.... Feels the saum as Mus’ Sumption, does she? -That’s queer, seeing as Tom died lik Onward Christian -Soldiers, and Jerry lik a dog. Howsumdever, I mun give -her words ... maybe he’ll be fool enough to believe -them.”</p> - -<p>The day was warm and misty, without much sun. The -sky above the woods was yellowish, like milk, and the air -smelt of rain. But the rain did not come till evening. -Mr. Poullett-Smith’s congregation assembled dry, and -nobody’s black was spoiled on the way home. In spite -of this, the service was not thickly attended. The advertisement -which Jerry Sumption’s death had given the -Bethel made those who had time or inclination for only -one church-going decide to put it off until the evening. -Only a few assembled to hear the curate pray that the -souls they commemorated—among which he was not -afraid to include Jerry—might be brought by Saint -Michael, the standard-bearer, into the holy light.</p> - -<p>On the other hand, the Bethel was crowded, and by -this time it was raining hard. The air was thick with the -steaming of damp clothes. The lamps shuddered and -smoked in the draught of the rising wind, and the big, -blinded windows were running down with rain, as if they -wept for the destruction of the chapel weed....</p> - -<p>Never had the Rev. Mr. Sumption such a congregation. -Nearly the whole of Sunday Street jostled in the pews. -Instead of the meagre peppering of heads, there were -tight rows of them, like peas in pods. All the Beatups -were there, except Nell, who had stayed at home to look -after the house; even Mus’ Beatup had hobbled over on -his stick. The Putlands were there, and Mrs. Bill Putland, -and the Sindens and the Bourners and the Hubbles. -Thyrza had come, with little Will asleep in her arms—she -sat near the back, in case she should have to take him out. -The Hollowbones had come from the Foul Mile and the -Kadwells from Stilliands Tower; there were Collbrans -from Satanstown, Viners from Puddledock, Ades from - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> - -Bodle Street, and even stragglers from Brownbread -Street and Dallington. Most of them had never been in -the Bethel before, and it struck them as unaccountable -mean, with its smoking lamps and windows flapping with -dingy blinds, its pews that smelled of wood-rot, and its -walls all peeled and scarred with moisture and decay.</p> - -<p>There was a rustle and scrape as Mr. Sumption came -in, through the little door behind the pulpit. Then there -was silence as he stood looking down, apparently unmoved, -on what must have been to him an extraordinary -sight—his church crowded, full to the doors, as he had -so often dreamed, but never seen. He looked pale and -languid, and his eyes were like smoky lanterns. His voice -also seemed to have lost its ring as he gave out the number -of the psalm, and then in the prayer which followed it. -Moreover, though the congregation, being mostly new, -shuffled and kicked its heels disgracefully, he thumped at -no one.</p> - -<p>“Pore soul, he shudn’t ought to have tried it,” thought -Thyrza to herself in her corner. “He’ll never get -through.”</p> - -<p>After the prayer, which was astonishingly nerveless for -a prayer of Mr. Sumption’s, came a hymn, during which -the minister sat in the pulpit, his hand over his face. -Those in the front rows saw his jaws work as if he was -praying. People whispered behind their Bibles—“He’s -different, surelye—just lik a Church parson to-night.” -“Reckon it’s changed him—knocked all the beans out of -him, as you might say.” “Pore chap, he looks middling -tired—reckon he finds this a tar’ble job.”</p> - -<p>Then the singing stopped, and Mr. Sumption stood up, -wearily turning over the leaves of his big Bible.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Brethren, you will find my text in the Eleventh of -John, the fiftieth verse: ‘It is expedient that one man -should die for the people.’”</p> - - -<p>9</p> - -<p>The sermon began with the unaccustomed flatness of -the rest of the service. Mr. Sumption’s voice had lost -its resonance, his arms no longer waved like windmill-sails, -nor did his joints crack like dried osiers. He made -his points languidly on his fingers, instead of thumping -them out on the pulpit with his fist. The congregation -would have been disappointed if they had not known -the reason for this slackness; as things were, it was part -of the spectacle. They noticed, too, a certain bitterness -that crept into his speech now and then, as when he -described the Chief Priests and Scribes plotting together -to take refuge behind the sacrifice of Christ. “It is -expedient for us ... that the whole nation perish not.”</p> - -<p>“Brethren, I see them nodding their ugly beards together, -and saying: ‘Let this young man go and die for -us. One man must die for the people, and it shan’t be -one of us, I reckon—we’re too important, we can’t be -spared. Let us send this young man to his death. It is -expedient that he should die for the nation.’”</p> - -<p>Then suddenly he stiffened his back, bringing his open -Bible together with a thud, while his voice rang out with -the old clearness:</p> - -<p>“Reckon that was what you said among yourselves -when you saw the young men we’re thinking of to-night -go up before the Tribunal, or volunteer at the Recruiting -Office. You said to yourselves, ‘That’s right, that’s -proper. It is expedient that these young men should -go and die for the people. I like to see a young man -go to fight for his country. I’m too old.... I’ve got a -bad leg ... but I like to see the young men go.’”</p> - -<p>For a moment he stood and glared at them, as in the -old days, his eyes like coals, his big teeth bared like a -fighting dog’s. Then once again his weariness dropped - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> - -over him, his head hung, and his sentences ran together, -husky and indistinct.</p> - -<p>The congregation shuffled and coughed. The service -required peppermint-sucking to help it through, and owing -to war conditions no peppermints were forthcoming. -Zacky Beatup made a rabbit out of his handkerchief and -slid it over the back of the pew at Lily Sinden. Mus’ -Beatup began to calculate the odds against the Bethel -closing before the Rifle Volunteer. Old Mus’ Hollowbone -from the Foul Mile crossed his legs and went to -sleep, just as if he was sitting with the Wesleyans. -Then Maudie Sinden pulled a screw of paper out of her -pocket and extracted a piece of black gum—the very piece -she had taken out of her mouth on entering the chapel, -knowing that no sweet had ever been sucked there since -Tommy Bourner was bidden “spue forth that apple of -Sodom” two years ago. Thyrza had never seen a congregation -so demoralised, but then she had never seen a -minister so dull, so drony, so lack-lustre, so lifeless. “He -shudn’t ought to have tried it, poor chap,” she murmured -into the baby’s shawl.</p> - -<p>Then suddenly Mr. Sumption’s fist came down on his -Bible. The pulpit lamps shuddered, and rattled their -glass shades, and the congregation started into postures -of attention, as the minister glared up and down the rows -of heads in the pod-like pews.</p> - -<p>“Reckon you’ve no heart for the Gospel to-day,” he -said severely. “Pray the Lord to change your hearts, - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> - -as He changed my sermon. This is not the sermon I -had meant to preach to you, and if you don’t like it, it -is the Lord’s doing. I had for my text: ‘The day of -the Lord is at hand, as the morning spread upon the -mountains.’ That was my text, and I had meant to warn -you all of the coming of that day, as I have so often -warned you. It is a day which shall burn like an oven, -and the strong man shall cry therein mightily; it is a day -of darkness and gloominess, of clouds and thick darkness. -Then I was going forward to show you how the -Sign of the Son of Man shall be in the heavens, and how -He shall appear in clouds with great glory.... But the -Lord came then and smote me, and I lay as dead before -Him, like Moses in the Mount. And when I came to -myself, I knew that the Sign of the Son of Man is -already with us here—not in heaven, but on earth—rising -up out of the earth ... over there in France—the -crosses of the million Christs you have crucified.”</p> - -<p>They were all listening now. He could see their craning, -attentive faces, and their kicks and coughs had died -down into a rather scandalised silence.</p> - -<p>“The million Christs you have crucified, all those boys -you sent out to die for the people. You sent them in -millions to die for you and for your little children, and -their blood shall be on you and on your children. Oh, -you stiff-necked and uncircumcised—talking of Judgment -as if it was a great way off, and behold it is at your -doors; and the Christ Whom you look for has come suddenly -to His temple—in the suffering youth of this country—all -countries—in these boys who go out and suffer -and die and bleed, cheerfully, patiently, like sheep—that -the whole nation perish not.</p> - -<p>“Think of the boys you have sent, the boys we’re -specially remembering here to-day. There was Tom -Beatup—a good honest lad, simple and clean as a little -child. He went out to fight for you, but I reckon you -never woke up in your comfortable bed and said: -’There’s poor Tom Beatup, up to the loins in mud, and -freezing with cold, and maybe as empty as a rusty pail.’ -The thought of him never spoiled your night’s rest, and -you never felt, ‘I’ve got to struggle tooth and nail to be -worth his sacrificing himself like that for an old useless - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> - -trug like me, and I’ll do my best to help my country at -home in any way as it can be done, so as the War ull -be shortened and Tom ull have a few nights less in the -mud.’ That’s what you ought to have said, but I reckon -you didn’t say it.</p> - -<p>“There’s Stacey Collbran, too, who left a young -sweetheart, and ull never know the love of wedded life -because you had to be died for. Do you ever think of -him when your Wife lies in your bosom, and say, ‘Reckon -I’ll be good to my wife, since for my sake a poor chap -never had his’?</p> - -<p>“And there’s Fred Bourner, and Sid Viner, and Joe -Kadwell, and Leslie Ades—they all went out to die for -you, and they died, and you come here to remember them -to-night; but in your hearts, which ought to be breaking -with reverence and gratitude, you’re just saying, ‘It’s -proper, it’s expedient that these men should die for the -people, that the whole nation perish not.’</p> - -<p>“And there’s my boy....”</p> - -<p>The minister’s voice hung paused for a minute. He -leaned over the pulpit, his hands gripping the wood till -their knuckles stood out white from the coarse brown. -His eyes travelled up and down the pew-pods of staring -heads, as if he expected to see contradiction or mockery -or surprise. But the Sunday Street face is not expressive, -and except for the utter stillness, Mr. Sumption might -have been reading the chapel accounts.</p> - -<p>“There’s my boy, Jerry Sumption; Maybe you thought -I wouldn’t talk of him to-night, that I’d be ashamed, that -I’d never dare mention his name along of your gallant -boys. Besides, you say, What’s he got to do with it? -He never died for the people. But you thought wrong. -I’m not ashamed to speak his name along of Tom and -Stace and Fred and Sid and Joe, and he hasn’t got nothing -to do with it, either. For I tell you—<em>my boy died for</em> - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> - -<em>your boys</em>. He died as an example and warning to them, -to save them from a like fate, and if that isn’t dying for -them.... These are Mr. Archie Lamb’s very words: -’Your son is dying so that other men may be warned by -his fate and stick to the ranks and do their duty as soldiers; -therefore, in that sense he has died for his country.’ -I reckon it seems a big thing to shoot a boy just -for going off to see his girl when the company’s marching; -but if it weren’t done then other boys ud stop away -and the regiment go to pieces. Mr. Archie and the other -officers said, ‘It is expedient that one man should die for -the regiment, that the whole army perish not.’...</p> - -<p>“No! I am not ashamed of my boy! If he was led -astray at the last moment by his evil, human passions, -who shall judge him?—Not I, and not you. He did not -desert because he was a coward, because he funked the -battle before him. Listen again to Mr. Archie Lamb; -he says, ‘Sumption is not a coward—I have seen him -in action, and I repeat that he is as plucky as any one.’ -And he joined up as a volunteer, too—he didn’t have to -be fetched, he didn’t go before the Tribunal and say he’d -got a bad leg, or a bad arm, and his father couldn’t run -the business without him. He joined up out of free-will -and love of his country. The Army was no place for -him, for his blood was the blood of the Rossarmescroes -or Hearns, which knows not obedience. When he joined -he risked his life not only at the hands of the enemy but -at the hands of his own countrymen, and it is his own -countrymen that have put him to death, ‘that the whole -nation perish not.’</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I tell you, my boy died for your boys; my boy died -for you, and you shall not look down on his sacrifice. -Over his grave is the Sign of the Son of Man, Who gave -His life as a ransom for many. To save your boys from -the possibility of a disgrace such as his my boy died in -shame. When they see the grave of Jerry Sumption they -will say: ‘That is the grave of a man who died because -he could not obey laws or control passions, because he -was not master of his own blood. Therefore let us take -heed by him and walk warily, and do our duty as soldiers; -and if we must die, not die as he died....’ So -my son died for your sons, and my son and your sons -died for you; and I ask you: ‘Are you worth dying -for?’”</p> - -<p>Again the minister was silent, staring down at the -rows of wooden, expressionless faces, now faintly a-sweat -in the steam and heat of the Bethel. Then suddenly he -burst out at them, loudly, impatiently:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I’ll tell you the truth about yourselves; I’ll tell you -if you’re worth dying for. What has this War meant to -you? What have you done for this War? There’s just -one answer to both questions. Nothing. While men were -fighting for their own and your existence, while they were -suffering horrors out there in France which you can’t -think of, and if you could think of could not speak of, -you were just muddling about there in your little ways, -thinking of nothing but crops and prices and the little silly -inconveniences you had to put up with. Ho! I reckon -you never thought of the War, except when you got some -cheery letter from your boy, telling you he was having the -time of his life out there, or when the price of bread -went up, or you had to eat margarine instead of butter, -or you couldn’t get your Sunday joint. All that war -meant to you was new orders about lights, and tribunals -taking your farm-hands, and prices going up and food -getting scarce, and the War Agricultural Committee leaving -Cultivation orders. And all the time you grumbled -and groused, and wrote out to your boys that you were -dying of want, weakening their hearts—they who wrote -you kind and cheery letters out of the gates of hell. You -stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You -little, little souls, that only bother about the little concerns -of your little parish in the middle of this great woe. The -end of the world is come, and you know it not; Christ -is dying for you and you heed Him not. Are you worth -dying for? Are you worth living for? No—you’re -scarce worth preaching at.”</p> - -<p>By this time there were signs of animation among the -pea-pods. The peas rolled from side to side, and a faint -rustle of indignation came from them.</p> - -<p>“I know why you’re here to-night,” continued Mr. - -Sumption. “You’ve come to gaze on me, to watch me -in my trouble, to see how I take it. You haven’t come to - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> - -hear the Gospel—you yawned and wriggled all the time -I was preaching it. You haven’t come just to think of -the dead boys—you did that in church this morning. -You’re here to gaze at me, to see how I take it. Well, -now you see how I take it. You see I’m not ashamed. -Why should I be ashamed of my son? He’s worth a -bundle of you—he’s died a better death than anyone in -this church is likely to die; and if he lived a vessel of -wrath, at all events he was a full vessel, not just a jug -of emptiness. He lived like the wild man he was born, -and he died like a poor wild animal shot down. But I am -not ashamed of him. And though he died without baptism, -without conversion, without assurance, I cannot and -I will not believe that he is lost. Somewhere the love of -God is holding him. The Lord tells me that my fatherhood -is only a poor mess of His; well, in that case, I -reckon He won’t cast out my lad. Willingly I’d bear his -sins for him, and so I reckon Christ will bear them even -for the child of wrath. Where I can love, He can love -more, and since He died as a felon, reckon He feels for -my poor boy. He knows what it is to stand with His -back to the wall and see every man’s hand raised against -Him, and every man’s tongue stuck out. And because -He knows, He understands, and because He understands, -He forgives. Amen.”</p> - -<p>The windows of the Bethel shook mournfully in the -wind, and the rain hissed down them, as if it shuddered -and wept to hear such doctrine within its walls. But -the sounds were lost in the shuffle of the rising congregation, -standing up to sing the psalm.</p> - - -<h3>10</h3> - -<p>That night the minister did not stand at the door to -shake hands with the departing congregation. Beatups, -Putlands, Sindens, Hubbles, Bourners, jostled their way -unsaluted into the darkness, groping with umbrellas, -fumbling into cloaks. But even the rain could not prevent -an exchange of indignation. People formed themselves -into clumps and scurried together over the wet -road. From every clump voices rose in expostulation and -resentment.</p> - -<p>“To think as I’d live to be insulted in church!”</p> - -<p>“Reckon he’d never dare say half that in a plaace -whur folkses’ tongues wurn’t tied to answer him.”</p> - -<p>“Maade out as we thought only of our insides,” said -Mrs. Sinden. “Seemingly he never thinks of his, when -all the village knows he wur trying the other day to -make Mrs. Tom give him a tin of salmon fur ninepence -instead of one-and-three.”</p> - -<p>“And she did it, too,” said Mrs. Putland.</p> - -<p>“It’s twice,” said Mrs. Beatup, “as he called me stiff-necked -and uncircumcised, and I reckon I aun’t neither.”</p> - -<p>“And he said I wur lik an empty jug,” said Mus’ -Beatup.</p> - -<p>“And his Jerry’s worth a bundle of us,” laughed Mus’ -Sinden.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Wot vrothers me,” wheezed old Father-in-law -Hubble, “is that to the best of my hearing I heard him -maake out as Christ died fur all.”</p> - -<p>“And why shudn’t he?” asked Mus’ Putland.</p> - -<p>“Because Mus’ Sumption’s paid seventy pound a year -to teach as Christ died for the Elect, and so he always -has done till to-night.”</p> - -<p>“Well, seemingly thur wurn’t much Elect in gipsy -Jerry, so he had to change his mind about that. Reckon -he had to git Jerry saaved somehow.”</p> - -<p>“But he’d no call to chaange the Divine council—I’ve -half a mind to write to the Assembly about it.”</p> - -<p>“Wot sticks in my gizzard,” said Mus’ Bourner, “is -that to hear him you’d think as we’re all to blame for -Jerry’s going wrong, while I tell you it’s naun but his -own mismanaging and bad breeding-up of the boy. -’Bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he -is old he will not depart from it.’ That’s Bible, but it’s -sense too. It’s all very praaper for Minister to stick by -the young boy now and say he aun’t ashaumed of him, -but if only he’d brought him up Christian and not spoiled -him, reckon he’d never have bin called upon to stand thur -and say it.”</p> - -<p>There were murmurs and assenting “Surelyes.”</p> - -<p>“He spoiled that boy summat tar’ble,” continued the -smith. “Cudn’t say No to him, and let him have his -head justabout shocking. Then maybe he’d git angry -when the young chap had disgraced him, and hit him -about a bit. But thur aun’t no sense in that, nuther. -Wot Jerry wanted wur a firm, light hand and no whip—and -Mus’ Sumption ud have been the fust to see it if -Jerry had bin a horse.”</p> - -<p>“Well, he’s got his punishment now,” said Mrs. Putland. -“Poor soul, my heart bleeds for him.”</p> - -<p>“Howsumdever, he’d no call to insult us,” said Mrs. - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> - -Sinden, “and I fur one ull never set foot agaun in that -Bethel as long as I live.”</p> - -<p>Thyrza Beatup did not walk with the others. Her -grief was still too raw, and Mr. Sumption’s words about -Tom had made her cry. She carried Will under her -cloak, walking quickly over the wet ruts, home to the -fire before which she would undress him and put him -to bed. Mr. Sumption’s sermon had not had the same -effect on her as on the others—for one thing, she thought -of Tom more than of Jerry; for another, her feeling -towards the minister was of pure compassion. Poor -chap! how he must have suffered, how he must have -hated all those Who mourned honourably, who grieved -for heroes and saints, such as her Tom. What would -she have felt, she wondered, if Tom had died like -Jerry?...</p> - -<p>She wished she could have seen Mr. Sumption after -the service, and asked him in to a bit of supper. Poor -soul! one could always comfort him through his inside. -She was glad Tom had been to see him on his last leave -... he had spoken very nicely of Tom.</p> - -<p>She came to the little house, all blurred into the darkness, -with the rain scudding before it. A pale, blue light -hung under the clouds from the hidden moon, and was -faintly reflected in the gleaming wet of the roadway. -Thyrza fumbled for her key, and let herself into the -shop. The firelight leaped to meet her. As she turned -to shut the door, she saw a man go quickly past, head -sloped, shoulders hunched against the Wind.</p> - - -<h3>11</h3> - -<p>Mr. Sumption felt he could not stay indoors—he could -not bear the thought of sitting long hours, harassed and -lonely, in that shabby, wind-thridden study of his, with - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span> - -the peeled wall-paper flapping in the draught and the -rain cracking on the windows. Besides, he would have -to face a personal encounter with Mrs. Hubble, and -weather the storm of her wrath at being “preached at”; -more than once she had thought fit to give him a piece of -her mind when the sermon had affronted her. The -tongue of a scolding woman was an anti-climax he dared -not face, so he let himself out of the little door at the -back of the chapel, and, turning up his collar, marched -away against the rain.</p> - -<p>He had no exact idea where he was going. All he -knew was that he wanted to get away from Sunday -Street, from the people who had come to stare at him -in his trouble. A lump of rage rose in his throat and -choked him, and tears of rage burned at the back of his -eyes. He saw the rows of stolid faces, the greased heads, -the stupid bonnets. There they had sat and wagged -in judgment on him and his boy. There they had sat, -the people who were content to be suffered and died -for by the boys in Flanders, while they stayed at home -and grumbled. Well, thank the Lord he had told them -what they were! Ho! he had given it to them straight—he -had made their ears burn!</p> - -<p>He walked on and on, cracking his joints with fury. -He had turned into the East Road at Pont’s Green, and -was now hurrying southward, head down, to meet the -gale. There was something in the flogging and whirling -of the wind which stimulated him; he found relief in -pushing against the storm, in swallowing the rain that -beat upon his lips and trickled down his face. He would -walk till he was tired, and then he would find some -sheltered place to go to sleep. Only through exhaustion -could he hope to find sleep to-night. It would be horrible -to lie and toss in stuffy sheets, while the darkness pressed -down his eyeballs and at last the dawn crept mocking - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span> - -round the window.... It did not matter if he stopped -out all night; he did not care what people thought of -him—he had burned his boats.</p> - -<p>The moon was still pale under the clouds, and the wet -road gleamed like pewter. The hedges roared, as the -wind moved in them, and every now and then he could -hear the swish of a great tree, or the cracking and crying -of a wood. In the midst of all this tumult he felt very -lonely—if he passed a farm, with slats of lamplight under -its blinds, he felt more lonely still. But it was better -than the loneliness of a room, of the room to which someone -he loved would never come again. He had a sudden -memory of Jerry as he had seen him, the morning after -the boy’s own night out of doors, sitting like a monkey -in the big wash-tub in front of the fire....</p> - -<p>It must have been between two and three o’clock in -the morning when Mr. Sumption found the road leading -past the gape of a big barn. By this time his legs were -aching with cold and wet, and his face felt all raw with -the sting of the rain. It would be good to take shelter -for a little while. Then he would go home, and brave -Mrs. Hubble. He would be back in his study when she -brought in his breakfast. Breakfast ... he rubbed his -big hands together, he was already beginning to feel -hungry. But before he went home he must rest. That -weariness which had muffled him like a cloak in the -chapel, fumbling his movements and veiling his eyes, was -dropping over him now. He felt the weight of it in his -limbs, and, worse still, in his heart and brain. When he -shut his eyes he saw nothing but rows of heads, staring -and wagging.... He went into the barn, and the sudden -stopping of the wind and rain made him feel dazed. -Then a queer thing happened—he pitched forward on his -face into a pile of straw, not giddy, not fainting, merely -fast asleep.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p> - - -<h3>12</h3> - -<p>For some hours he slept heavily in his pitched, huddled -attitude, but as the cloud of sleep lightened before waking, -he had another dream of the old forge at Bethersden, and -of himself working there, in the days before the -“voices” came. He saw the great red glow of the -forge spread out over the cross-roads, fanning up the road -to Horsmonden and the road to Witsunden and the road -to Castweasel. He saw the smithy full of it, and himself -and his father working in it, with arms swung over the -glowing iron—he heard the roar of the furnace and the -thump of the hammers; and a great fulness of peace was -in his heart. Dimly conscious in his dream of all that -had passed since those happy days, he felt a wonderful -relief at being back in them, and the sweetest doubt as -to the reality of his later experiences.... So it had -been a dream, all his ministerial trouble and travail, his -brief snatch at love, his son’s birth in sorrow and life in -defiance and death in shame.... The hammers swung, -and the forge roared, and the light fanned up to the -stars....</p> - -<p>Then he woke, with the roar and thump still in his -ears, for his head hung down over the straw below the -level of his body. All his limbs were cramped, and he -found it difficult to rise. The first despair of waking was -upon him, and he wished he could have died in his dream. -Bright sunshine was streaming into the barn, lighting up -its dark old corners where the cobwebs hung like lace. -Framed in the big doorway was a green hill freckled with -primroses and cuckoo flowers, with broom bushes budding -against a thick blue sky that seemed to drip with sunshine.</p> - -<p>He stumbled out into the stroke of the wind, now -scarcely enough to ripple the big rain puddles that lay - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span> - -blue and glimmering in the road. He was in a part of -the country he did not know, doubtless beyond the frontiers -of the Four Roads, in some by-lane behind Rushlake -Green.</p> - -<p>Though it was too late, he felt that even now he could -not go back to Sunday Street. He shrank from meeting -human beings, especially those who had sat before him in -rows like pea-pods last night. Oh, those heads! he would -never forget them, how they had stared and rolled.... -He turned away from the road, and went up the rising -ground behind the barn. It was a spread of wild land, -some common now in its spring bloom of gorse and -violets. He threw himself down upon the turf, and for -a few minutes lay motionless, with the sun gently steaming -his damp crumpled clothes.</p> - -<p>He longed to be back in his dream, back in the red -glow of the furnace, back at the old cross-roads in Kent. -A sense of great cruelty and injustice was upon him. -Why had the Lord called him from the work he loved, -away to unknown cares and sorrows, to a life for which -he was not fitted? It even seemed to him that if only -he had been left a blacksmith this tragedy of Jerry -would not have happened ... if Jerry had never been -in the impossible, grotesque situation of “a clergyman’s -son.”... Why had the Lord sent voices, which never -came now, which, indeed, had not come since his marriage? -Why had the Lord raised up the minister at Tenterden, -to send him to a training college and try to make -him what he never could be, a gentleman? He was no -minister—only a poor image of one, which everybody -laughed at. He had had qualms of doubts before this, -but he had put them from him; now he was too exhausted, -too badly bruised and beaten, to deceive himself -any further. He was no minister of God—he could -hardly, after a twelve years’ pastorate, scrape together a - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> - -congregation; people went anywhere but to the Particular -Baptists. They never asked for his ministrations at sick-beds, -they hardly ever came to him to be married or -buried, as if they doubted the efficacy of these rites at -his hands; he had not performed one baptism in the last -five years, and the only time his church has been full was -when they had all come to gaze on him, to see how he -bore his trouble. On the other hand, if a man had a sick -sheep or an ailing cow, or if his horse went lame or -spoiled his knees, he called him in at once. That ought to -have shown him. He was not a minister but a farrier, -and the people of Sunday Street knew it, and treated him -accordingly.</p> - -<p>He lay with his face hidden against the grass. It -seemed as if his life had stopped like a watch, leaving -him, like a stopped watch, still in being. Jerry, the centre -and spring of his existence for twenty years, was gone; -his ministry was gone—he could not go back after what -had happened, and no brethren would call him elsewhere. -He could not stay on at Sunday Street or return to the -forge at Bethersden. Here he was, past middle age, -without friends, without kin, without livelihood, without -resources of any kind. He saw himself alone in a world -burning and crashing to ruin, a world that bristled with -the crosses of martyred boys and was black with the -dead hopes of their fathers.</p> - -<p>A sob broke from him, but without tears. His being -seemed dried up. The horror of thick darkness was upon -him, of this blasted world rocking and staggering to the -pit, of the flame which devoured all, good and bad, elect -and damned, wheat and weeds. Who could endure to the -end of this Judgment? Who hoped to be saved? All -was burnt up, dried, and blasted. The day of the Lord -had come indeed and had consumed him like a dry stick.</p> - -<p>“My soul is full of troubles and my life draweth nigh -unto the grave.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I am counted with them that go down into the pit.</p> - -<p>“Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the -grave, whom Thou rememberest no more.</p> - -<p>“Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in -the deeps.</p> - -<p>“Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast vexed -me with thy waves.</p> - -<p>“Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut -me off.</p> - -<p>“Lover and friend hast thou put from me, and mine -acquaintance into darkness.”</p> - - -<h3>13</h3> - -<p>His hands clenched on the young grass, slowly dragging -out bunches of tender, growing things. He began -to smell the sweetness of their roots, of the soil that -clung to them—moist, full of sap and growth, of inevitable -rebirth. These budding, springing things, growing -out of deadness into life and warmth, suddenly gave him -a little piteous thrill of joy, which broke into his despair -like a trickle of rain into dry sods. The earth seemed to -hold a steadfast hope in her stillness and strength, in her -scent and moisture and green life struggling out of death.... -Those boys who had cast themselves down on the -earth to die, perhaps they had found this hope ... -perhaps disgraced Jerry slept with it. No man, no blood-lusty -power, could cheat them of it, for even bodies blown -into a thousand pieces the earth takes into her kind stillness -and makes them whole in union with herself.</p> - -<p>Even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the earth -had not failed him. No one could separate him from her -or cheat him of his reward in her. From her he had come -and to her he would return, and in her he would be one -with those whom he had lost, his dead wife and his dead - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span> - -son. There should be no disgrace there, nor torment, nor -tears, nor sighing; no parting, when all are united in the -one element and the children are asleep together on the -mother’s breast....</p> - - -<h3>14</h3> - -<p>An hour later Mr. Sumption had left the green hill and -was walking towards a little hamlet that showed its -gables at the bend of the lane. Now that his grief was -spent, drunk up by the earth like a storm, he remembered -that he was hungry, and set out to hunt for food. There -was an inn at the beginning of the street, a low house -slopped with yellow paint and swinging the sign of the -Star across the road. Mr. Sumption walked in and asked -the landlady for breakfast; then, upon her stare, changed -his demand to dinner, whereat she told him that the Star -did not give dinners, and that there was a war on. However, -he managed at last to persuade her to let him have -some dry bread and tea, and a quarter of an hour later -he was making the best of them in a little green, sunless -parlour, rather pleasantly stuffy with the ghosts of bygone -pipes and pots.</p> - -<p>The room was in the front of the house, and the -shadow of the inn lay across the road, licking the bottom -of the walls of the houses opposite. Above it they rose -into a yellow glare of sunshine, and their roofs were -bitten against a heavy blue sky. From quite near came -the pleasant chink of iron, and craning his head he saw -the daubed colours of a smith and wheelwright on a door -a little further down the street. It comforted him to -think that there should be a smith so near him, and all -through his meal he listened to the clink and thud, with -sometimes the clatter of new-shod hoofs in the road.</p> - -<p>When he had finished his dinner and paid his shilling -he went out and up beyond the shadow of the inn to the - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> - -smith’s door. The name of the hamlet was Lion’s Green, -and he gathered he was some ten miles from home, beyond -Horeham and Mystole. It would not take him more -than a couple of hours to get back with his great stride, -so there was time for him to linger and put off the evil -hour when he must confront Mrs. Hubble and explain -why he had been out all night. Meantime he would go -and watch the smith.</p> - -<p>There was no house opposite the forge, and the doorway -was full of sunshine, which streamed into the red -glare of the furnace. Mr. Sumption stood in the mixing -light, a tall black figure, leaning against the doorpost. -He had smoothed his creased and grass-stained clothes -a little, and taken out the straws that had stuck in his -hair, but he always looked ill-shaved at the best of times, -and to-day his face was nearly swallowed up in his beard. -The smith was working single-hand, and had no time to -stare at his visitor. He wondered a little who he was, for -though he wore black clothes like a minister, he was in -other respects more like a tramp.</p> - -<p>“Good afternoon,” said Mr. Sumption suddenly.</p> - -<p>“Good afternoon,” said the smith, hesitating whether -he should add “sir,” but deciding not to.</p> - -<p>“You seem pretty busy.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I am—unaccountable busy. I’m aloan now—my -man went last week. Thought I wur saafe wud a -man of forty-eight, but now they raise the age limit to -fifty, and off he goes into the Veterinary Corps.”</p> - -<p>“Shall I give you a hand?”</p> - -<p>The smith stared.</p> - -<p>“I’ve done a lot of smith’s work,” continued Mr. -Sumption eagerly. “There’s nothing I can’t do with hoof -and iron.”</p> - -<p>The smith hesitated; then he saw the visitor’s arms as -he took off his coat and began to roll up his sleeves.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, maybe ... if you know aught ... there’s -the liddle cob thur wants a shoe.”</p> - -<p>A few men and boys were in the smithy, and they -looked at each other and whispered a little. They had -never seen such swingeing, hairy arms as Mr. Sumption’s.</p> - -<p>A smile was fighting its way across the stubble on the -minister’s face. He cracked his joints with satisfaction, -and soon the little cob was shod by as quick, as merciful, -and as sure a hand as had ever touched him. His owner -looked surprised.</p> - -<p>“I’d never taake you fur a smith,” he remarked; -“leastways, not wud your coat on.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not a smith. I’m a Minister of the Gospel.”</p> - -<p>The men winked at each other and hid their mouths. -Then one of them asked suddenly:</p> - -<p>“Are you the Rev. Mr. Sumption from Sunday -Street?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I am. Do you know me?”</p> - -<p>“I doan’t know you, surelye; but we’ve all heard as -the minister of Sunday Street can shoe a horse wud any -smith, and postwoman wur saying this marnun as he’d -gone off nobody knows whur, after telling all his folk in -a sermon as they’d started the War.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption looked uncomfortable.</p> - -<p>“I only went for a bit of a tramp, and lost my way -... I’ve no call to be home before sundown—so, if -you’ve any use for me, master, I can stop and give you -a hand this afternoon.”</p> - -<p>The smith was willing enough, for he was hard-pressed, -and the fame of the Reverend Mr. Sumption had spread -far beyond the country of the Four Roads. The strength -of his great arms, his resource, his knowledge, his experience -of all smithwork, made him an even more valuable -assistant than the man who had gone. There was -a market that day at Chiddingly, which meant more - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span> - -work than usual, including several wheelwright’s jobs, -which the smith performed himself, leaving the horses -to Mr. Sumption. The furnace roared as the bellows -gasped, and lit up all the sag-roofed forge, with the dark -shapes of men and horses standing round, and the minister -holding down the red-hot iron among the coals or -beating it on the anvil, while his sweating skin was shiny -and crimson in the glow.</p> - -<p>It was like his dream of the forge at Bethersden—and -he felt almost happy. The glow of his body seemed to -reach his heart and warm it, and his head was no longer -full of doubts like stones. He had found a refuge here, -as he had found it in old days in Mus’ Bourner’s forge at -Sunday Street—the heat, the roar, the flying sparks, the -shaking crimson light, the smell of sweat and hoofs and -horse-hide, the pleasant ache of labour in his limbs, were -all part of the healing which had begun when he rubbed -his cheek against the wet soil on the common. His -religion had always taught him to look on his big friendly -body as his enemy, to subdue and thwart and ignore it. -He had not known till then how much it was his friend, -and that there is such a thing as the Redemption of the -Body, the mystic act through which the body saves and -redeems the soul.</p> - -<p>He worked on till the sun grew pale, and a tremulous -primrose light crept over the fields of Lion’s Green, -swamping the trees and hedges and grazing cows. The -afternoon was passing into the evening, and Mr. Sumption -knew he must start at once if he was to be home -that day.</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m middling sorry to lose you,” said the smith. -“A man lik you’s wasted preaching the Gospel.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I shan’t do much more of that,” said Mr. -Sumption wryly. “I can’t go back to my Bethel, after - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span> - -what’s happened.”</p> - -<p>“Well, if ever you feel you’d lik to turn blacksmith -fur a change——” the smith remarked, with a grin.</p> - -<p>“I shall go into the Army Veterinary Corps,” said -Mr. Sumption.</p> - -<p>“Wot! Lik my man?”</p> - -<p>“Like the man I was meant to be. I agree with you, -master—I’m wasted preaching the Gospel. I’d be better -as a veterinary ... I’ve been thinking....”</p> - - -<h3>15</h3> - -<p>There was a farmer driving as far as Adam’s Hole on -the Hailsham Road, and he offered Mr. Sumption a lift -in his trap. The minister had shod his little sorrel mare, -and with her hoofs ringing on the clinkered road they -drove from Lion’s Green, away towards the east. The -dipping sun poured upon their backs, flooding the lane -and washing along their shadows ahead of them into the -swale. The east was still bright, and out of it crept the -moon, frail and papery, like the petal of a March flower.</p> - -<p>The little mare spanked quickly over the way on her -new-shod hoofs. Through Soul Street and Horeham -Flat, by Badbrooks and Coarse Horn on the lip of the -Marsh rolled the trap, with the minister nearly silent and -the farmer talking about the War—till the oasts of -Adam’s Hole showed their red turrets against a wood, -and, declining an invitation to step in and hear half a -dozen more good reasons why the Germans would never -get the Channel Ports, Mr. Sumption tramped off to -where the East Road swung into the flats.</p> - -<p>The sun was now low, and the sunk light touched the -moon, so that her smudged arc kindled and shone out of -the cold dimness. Red and yellow gleams wavered over -the country of the Four Roads, sweeping up the meadows -towards Three Cups Corner, and lighting the woods that - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span> - -blotched the chimneys of Brownbread Street. He saw -Sunday Street slitting the hill with a red gape, and the -sheen of the ponds by Puddledock, and the flare of gorse -and broom on Magham Down. There was a great clearness -and cleanness in the watery air, so that he could see -the roofs of farmsteads far away and little cottages standing -alone like toadstools in the fields. Sounds came -clearly, too—there was a great clucking on all the farms, -and the lowing of cows; now and then the bark of a dog -came sharply from a great way off, sheep called their -lambs in the meadows by Harebeating, and a boy was -singing reedily at Cowlease Farm....</p> - -<p>It was all very still, very lovely, steeped through with -the spirit of peace—not even the beat of the guns could -be heard to-night. These were the fields for which the -boys in France had died, the farms and lanes they had -sealed in the possession of their ancient peace by a covenant -signed in blood. As Mr. Sumption looked round -him at the country slowly sinking into the twilight, a -little of its quiet crept into his heart. These were the -fields for which the boys had died. They had not died for -England—what did they know of England and the British -Empire? They had died for a little corner of ground -which was England to them, and the sprinkling of poor -common folk who lived in it. Before their dying eyes -had risen not the vision of England’s glory, but just these -fields he looked on now, with the ponds, and the woods, -and the red roofs ... and the women and children and -old people who lived among them—the very same whom -last night he had scolded and cursed, told they were -scarce worth preaching at. For the first time he felt -ashamed of that affair. He might not think them worth -preaching at, but other men, and better men, had found -them worth dying for.</p> - -<p>Then, as he walked on towards Pont’s Green, he saw - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span> - -these fields as the eternal possession of the boys who had -died—bought by their blood. The country of the Four -Roads was theirs for ever—they had won it; and this -was true not only of the honoured Tom but of the dishonoured -Jerry. For the first time he felt at rest about -his son. “Somewhere the love of God is holding him....” -He could not picture him in heaven, and he would -not picture him in hell; but now he could see him as part -of the fields that he, in his indirect shameful way, had -died for. Surely his gipsy soul could find rest in their -dawns and twilights, in the infinite calm of their noons.... -Jerry would be near him at the pond side, in the -meadow, in the smoke of the forge, in the murmur and -shade of the wood ... and the cool winds blowing -from the sea would wipe off his dishonour.</p> - - -<h3>16</h3> - -<p>The lanes were empty for it was supper-time on the -farms. A pale green was washing the rim of the sky, -and the starlight shook among the ash-trees that trembled -beside the road. Faint scents of hidden primroses stole -up from the banks with the vital sweetness of the new-sown -ploughlands. It was growing cold, and Mr. Sumption -walked briskly. When he came to Pont’s Green he -thought he saw the back of old Hubble tottering on ahead, -so he slackened his pace a little, for he hoped to get -home without meeting any of his congregation. The feeling -of shame was growing, he felt as if he had despised -Christ’s little ones ... after all, who shall be found -big enough to fit the times? What man is built to the -stature of Doomsday?</p> - -<p>He heard himself called as he entered the village, and -turning his head, saw Thyrza standing in the shop door, -the last light gleaming on her apron.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Mus’ Sumption!—is that you?”</p> - -<p>He thought of going on, pretending not to hear; but -there was a gentleness in Thyrza’s voice which touched -him. He remembered the message she had sent him yesterday -morning. “She’s a kind soul,” he thought, and -stopped.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Mus’ Sumption—whur have you bin?”</p> - -<p>Her hand closed warmly on his, and her eyes travelled -over him in eagerness and pity.</p> - -<p>“I’ve been over to Lion’s Green,” said Mr. Sumption. -“I couldn’t lie quiet at the Horselunges last night. I -reckon tongues are wagging a bit.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon they are—but we’ll all be justabout glad to -see you back. I went up only this afternoon and asked -Policeman if he cud do aught. Come in to the fire—you -look middling tired.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve been working at the smith’s over at Lion’s Green -all the afternoon,” said the minister proudly.</p> - -<p>“Surelye! Everyone knows wot a valiant smith you -maake; but come in and have a bite of supper. The -fire’s bright and the kettle’s boiling, and thur’s a bit of -bacon in the pan.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Sumption’s mouth watered. He had had nothing -that day except the bread and tea provided at the inn, -and it was not likely that Mrs. Hubble would have much -of a meal awaiting him. True, it was doubtful morality -to encroach on Thyrza’s bacon ration, but Thyrza herself -encouraged the lapse, pulling at his hand, and opening -the shop door behind her, so that his temptations -might be reinforced by the smell of cooking.</p> - -<p>“Come in, and you shall have the best rasher you -ever ate in your life—and eggs and hot tea and a bit of -pudden and a fire to your feet.”</p> - -<p>She led him through the shop, whence the bottles of -sweets had vanished long ago, and the empty spaces - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> - -were filled with large cardboard posters, displaying -Thyrza’s licence to sell margarine, and the Government -list of prices—through into the little back room, where -the firelight covered the walls with nodding spindles, and -little Will lay in his cradle fast asleep.</p> - -<p>“I have him in here fur company like,” said Thyrza. -“Reckon he sleeps as well as in the bed, and it aun’t so -lonesome fur me.”</p> - -<p>For the first time he heard her sorrow drag at her -voice, and noticed, as, manlike, he had not done before, -her widow’s dress with its white collar and cuffs.</p> - -<p>“God bless you, Mrs. Tom,” he said, and she turned -quickly away from him to the fire.</p> - -<p>For some minutes there was silence, broken only by -the humming of the kettle and the hiss of fat in the pan. -Mr. Sumption lay back in an armchair, more tired than -he would care to own. The window was uncurtained, and -in the square of it he saw the big stars of the Wain ... -according to the lore both of the country of the Four -Roads and of his old home in Kent, this was the waggon -in which the souls of the dead rode over the sky, and -that night he, in spite of his theological training, and -Thyrza, in spite of her Board School education, both felt -an echo of the old superstition in their hearts. Did Tom -and Jerry ride there past the window, aloft and at rest -in the great spaces, while those who loved them struggled -on in the old fret and the new loneliness?</p> - -<p>“I always kip the blind up till the last minnut,” said -Thyrza at the fire. “It aun’t so lonesome fur me. Howsumdever, -I’ve company to-night, and I mun git the -lamp.”</p> - -<p>So the lamp was set on the table, and the blind came -down and shut out Tom and Jerry on their heavenly -ride. Mr. Sumption pulled his chair up to a big plate -of eggs and bacon, with a cup of tea beside it, and fell to - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> - -after the shortest grace Thyrza had ever heard from him.</p> - -<p>“Reckon I’m hungry, reckon I’m tired—and you, Mrs. -Tom, are as the widow of Zarephath, who ministered to -Elijah in the dearth. May you be rewarded and find your -bacon ration as the widow’s cruse this week.”</p> - -<p>He was beginning definitely to enjoy her company. -Thyrza’s charm was of the comfortable, pervasive kind -that attracted all sorts of men in every station. He -found that he liked to listen to her soft, drawly voice, -to watch her slow, heavy movements, to gaze at her -tranquil face with the hair like flowering grass. She at -once soothed and stimulated him. She encouraged him -to talk, and when the edge was off his appetite, he did so, -telling her a little of what had happened to him the last -night and day.</p> - -<p>“And what do you think I’ve learned by it all, Mrs. -Tom? What do you think my trouble’s taught me?”</p> - -<p>Thyrza shook her head. In her simple life trouble -came and went without any lesson but its patient bearing.</p> - -<p>“It’s taught me I’m a blacksmith, and no minister.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon you’re both,” said Thyrza.</p> - -<p>“No—I’m not—I’m just the smith. And to prove it -to you, from this day forward I shall not teach or preach -another word.”</p> - -<p>“Wot! give up the Bethel!—not be minister here any -more?”</p> - -<p>“Not here nor anywhere. I’m no minister—I’ve never -been a minister.”</p> - -<p>“But——”</p> - -<p>“There’s no good arguing. My mind’s made up. I -shall write to the Assembly this very night.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Oh——”</p> - -<p>“How shall I dare to teach and guide others, who -could not even teach and guide my own son? No, don’t -interrupt me—the Lord has opened my eyes, and I see -myself as just a poor, plain, ignorant man. Reckon I’m -only the common blacksmith I was born and bred, and -trying to make myself different has led to nothing but -pain and trouble, both for me and for others. I ask you -what good has my ministry ever done a human soul?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Mus’ Sumption, doan’t spik lik that,” said -Thyrza, with the tears in her eyes. “Reckon I’ll never -disremember how beautiful you talked of Tom last night -... and oh, the comfort it guv me to hear you talk so!”</p> - -<p>“You’re a good soul, Missus—reckon there’s none I -could speak to as I’m speaking to you now. But you -mustn’t think high of me—I spoke ill last night; I was -like Peter before the Lord let down the sheet on him—calling -His creatures common and unclean. I’ve failed -as a minister, and I’ve failed as a father—the only thing -I haven’t failed as is a blacksmith; thank the Lord I’ve -still some credit left at that.”</p> - -<p>He hid his face for a moment. Thyrza felt confused -... she scarcely understood.</p> - -<p>“Then wot ull you do, Mus’ Sumption, if you mean -to be minister no more?”</p> - -<p>“Join the A.V.C.—Army Veterinary Corps. I see as -plain as daylight that’s my job.”</p> - -<p>“Wot! Go and fight?”</p> - -<p>“Reckon there won’t be much fighting for a chap of -my age. But I’ll be useful in my way. I hear they’re -short of farriers and smiths. Besides, they’re calling up -all fit men under fifty, and I can’t claim exemption as a -minister, seeing I ain’t one; and reckon Mr. Smith ull -go now Randall Cantuar and Charles John Chichester -have said he may.... So I’m off to Lewes to-morrow, -Mrs. Tom.”</p> - -<p>“We shall miss you unaccountable. Besides, it aun’t -the life fur a man lik you.”</p> - -<p>He laughed. “That’s just where you’re wrong—it’s - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span> - -the very proper life for a man like me, it’s the life I -should have been leading the last thirty years. Howsoever, -it’s not too late to mend, and reckon I’ll be glad -to have my part in the big job at last. Here’s thirty -years that I’ve been preaching the Day of the Lord, and -now’s my chance of helping that day through a bit.”</p> - -<p>He stood up and pushed back his chair.</p> - -<p>“Oh, doan’t be going yit, Mus’ Sumption.”</p> - -<p>“Reckon I must—I’ve all sorts of things to do. Don’t -be sorry for me—I’m doing the happiest thing I ever did -as well as the best. I’ll be doing the work I was born -for, and I’ll be helping the world through judgment, and -I’ll be doing what I owe my boy—your boy—all the boys -that are dead.”</p> - -<p>Thyrza’s eyes filled with tears when he spoke of Tom. -For a moment he seemed to forget his surroundings, -and to fancy himself back in the pulpit he had renounced, -for he held up his hand and his voice came throatily:</p> - -<p>“Behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; -and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be -as stubble. But unto you that fear My name shall the -Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings. -And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to their children, -and the heart of the children to their fathers.... -Oh, Thyrza, the world is sown over with young, brave -lives, and it’s our job to see that they are not as the seed -scattered by the wayside, sown in vain. Reckon we must -water them with our tears and manure them with our -works, and so we shall quicken the harvest of Aceldama, -when our beloved shall rise again....”</p> - -<p>His voice strangled a little; then he continued in his -ordinary tones:</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span></p> - -<p>“That’s why I’m joining up. I owe it to Jerry—to -finish what he began. By working hard, and submitting -to orders, as he could never do, poor soul, maybe I’ll be -able to clear off the debt he owed. He shall rise again -in his father’s effort....”</p> - -<p>Thyrza was crying now. “And Tom?” she asked in -her tears—“I want to do summat for him, too, Mus’ -Sumption. How shall Tom rise up agaun?”</p> - -<p>He pointed to the cradle at her feet:</p> - -<p>“There’s your Tom—risen again both for you and for -his country. Take him and be comforted.”</p> - -<p>She sank down on her knees beside the cradle, hiding -her face under the hood, and he turned and left her, stalking -out through the shop into the darkness.</p> - -<p>Crouching there in the firelight, with her baby held -warm and heavy against her breast, she heard his tread -grow fainter and fainter, till at last only an occasional -throb of wind brought her the footsteps of the lonely man -upon the road.</p> -</div> - -<p> </p> -<hr class="full" /> -<p> </p> - -<div class="transnote"> - <p class="center space-above"><span class="smcap">Transcriber’s Note.</span> - </p> - <ul class="index"> - <li class="isub1_first">Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors have been silently corrected.</li> - <li class="isub1">Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.</li> - </ul> -</div> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<hr class="pg" /> -<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOUR ROADS***</p> -<p>******* This file should be named 56298-h.htm or 56298-h.zip *******</p> -<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> -<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/6/2/9/56298">http://www.gutenberg.org/5/6/2/9/56298</a></p> -<p> -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed.</p> - -<p>Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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