Chapter II: Part I: TOM (2)

“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.