Chapter IV: Part II: Jerry (2)

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!...”