Chapter XI: Part VII: Mr. Sumption (2)

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: