PART II: JERRY

1

Mrs. Beatup’s tears ran down her face as she hurried back up the

drive, but she wiped them vigorously away with her apron, and had

nothing but her red eyes to show when she entered the kitchen.

Everyone had gone, except Ivy and Nell. The former had not finished

her hearty breakfast, the latter was packing her books for school,

and some sort of a wrangle was going on between them. Mrs. Beatup

heard Nell call Ivy “vulgar” just as she came into the room. Ivy

laughed, truly a vulgar performance with her mouth full.

“Now, you two gals, doan’t you start quarrelling just when you

brother’s a-gone; maybe fur ever.”

“We aun’t quarrelling,” said Ivy. “I’ve told her she’s sweet on

parson, that’s all.”

“All!” sniffed Nell. “Maybe you think it’s nothing to have your

vulgar mind making out my—my friendship with Mr. Poullett-Smith’s the

same as yours with—with—anyone that ull let you make sheep’s eyes at

him.”

“Nell!” cried her mother. “For shaum!”

“Well, I don’t care”—the younger girl’s anger had been roused by many

coarse flicks—“everyone talks about Ivy’s goings-on.”

“I doan’t care if they do,” said Ivy cavernously in her tea-cup.

“Reckon it’s cos they’re jealous of me gitting the boys.”

“Well, Ivy,” said Mrs. Beatup, “I doan’t hold wud your goings-on,

nuther; but anyway you’re useful.”

“I’m earning money, though,” said Nell; “at least I shall be when my

third year’s up.”

“And how soon ull that be, I’d lik to know? There you go, out all

day, when you might be helping us at home, and not a penny to show

fur it.”

“Mother, I’ve told you again and again—why won’t you understand?—I’m

being given lessons in exchange for those I give myself, and——”

“Lessons! A girl turned seventeen! I call it lamentable. I’d a-done

wud my schooling at twelve.”

“But you know I have to pass an exam....”

“I doan’t see no ‘have’ in it. Better kip at hoame and help me wud the

cooking. Out all day and bring home no money! I doan’t call that——”

“Well, I’m off,” said Ivy, getting up and wiping her mouth. “You two

are lik a couple of barndoor cocks, walking round and round each

other. I’ve summat better to do—I’ve the passage to scrub”—and she

took her sacking apron off the nail.

“Where’s Zacky?” asked Mrs. Beatup. “Has he started for school?”

“Yes, he’s gone wud the Sindens.”

“And Harry?”

Ivy laughed. “Oh, Harry’s along of faather, in the Sunk

field—unaccountable good and hard-working to-day, because Tom’s

a-gone; seemingly, he’d sooner please him now he aun’t here to see

than when he was here fretting his heart out over Harry’s lazy bones.”

“Well, I’m glad as someone remembers my poor boy’s gone, and is lik

to be killed.”

Mrs. Beatup’s tears burst out afresh, but Ivy comforted her with a

kiss and a clap and a few cheery words, and soon had her interested

in the various bootstains on the passage-floor. “Cow-dung, that’s

faather; and horse-dung, that’s Tom; and sheep-dung, that’s Juglery;

and that miry clay’s jest Zacky spannelling....”

2

Nell put on her hat and coat and started for school. A neat, shabby

little figure, with her town hat pulled down over her soft hair, she

walked quickly between dust-powdered hedges to Brownbread Street,

panting a little, because she was anæmic, and also because she was

still a trifle indignant. Nell did not view life and the War as her

family viewed them. Her different education had made them not quite

such matters of bread-and-cheese. She alone at Worge had felt the

humiliation—as distinct from the inconvenience—of Tom’s conscription.

She had always despised him because he did not volunteer during the

early stages of the War, and when the Conscription Act came into

force she despised him still more for his appeal to the Tribunal.

She felt that she could never think proudly of him, knowing

how unwillingly he had gone, knowing that he cared for nothing

except leaving Worge, that he never thought of the great cause of

righteousness he was to fight for, or understood the mighty issues of

his unwilling warfare.

The rest of the family were all of a block. To her mother the War was

merely a matter of prices and scarcities, to her father it was drink

restrictions and the closing of public-houses, to Ivy it was picture

postcards and boys in khaki, to Harry the unwilling performance

of tasks which would otherwise have been done by more efficient

hands, to Zacky the obscure manœuvres of a gang of small boys

whose imaginations had been touched by militarism. To Nell alone

belonged the fret and anxiety of the times, the shock of bad news,

the struggle of ineffectual small labours to win her a place in the

great woe.

To-day she was early for school, as she had meant to be, for at

the church she stopped and sat down in the porch. St. Wilfred’s,

Brownbread Street, was only a chapel-of-ease under the mother church

of Dallington. It was new-built of sandstone, an unfortunate symbol

of that Rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. The

interior, glimpsed through the open door, was dim and mediæval, the

first effect due to the deep tones of the stained-glass windows,

where the saints wore robes of crimson and sapphire and passional

violet, and the latter to the several dark oil paintings, and the

thick gilt tracery of the screen, through which the altar showed

richly coloured, with one winking red light before it.

The curate-in-charge of Brownbread Street was of mediæval tendencies,

and did his best, both in service and sermon, to transport his

congregation from the woodbine-age to the age of pilgrimages and

monasteries, with the result that, with unmediæval licence, they

sought illicit and heretical refreshment in Georgian Bethels and

Victorian Tabernacles, where they could sing good Moody and Sankey

tunes, instead of treacherous Gregorians and wobbling Plainsong.

But Nell loved the low, soft, creeping tones of Gregory’s mode, loved

the dimness, the mystery, the faint echo of Sarum ... and if in her

love was a personal element which she denied, the church was not less

a refuge from the coarse frustrations of her everyday life, such as

the Forge was to Mr. Sumption and the Shop had been to Tom.

To-day the priest was at the altar, saying the Last Gospel. Nell

could just see him from where she sat. He would be out in a couple

of minutes. She watched him glide off into the shadows, then she

rose and walked down to the little wicket-gate, where the path from

the porch met the path from the vestry. There was more colour in her

cheeks than usual.

Now and then she looked anxiously across the road at the schoolhouse

clock, where the large hand was creeping swiftly towards the hour.

From the clock her eyes slewed round to the vestry door. At last the

handle shook, and out came Mr. Poullett-Smith, walking hurriedly,

with his cassock flapping round his legs. He did not seem to see Nell

till he had nearly walked into her.

“Oh—er—good morning, Miss Beatup. I beg your pardon.”

“Good morning, Mr. Poullett-Smith. I—I wanted to tell you I’m so

sorry I haven’t finished that book you lent me. I’m afraid I’ve kept

it a terrible time.”

Her words came with a rush, blurred faintly in the last of a Sussex

accent, and her eyes were fixed on his face with an almost childish

eagerness which he could scarcely fail to notice.

“Oh, please don’t trouble. Keep the book as long as you like—the

_Sermons of St. Gregory_, isn’t it?”

“Yes—I think they’re wonderful,” breathed Nell, hoping he would never

know how difficult she found them to understand.

“They are indeed, and so stimulating.”

The Rev. Henry Poullett-Smith was a tall man, with a long nose, a

slight stoop, and a waxy brownish skin that made him look like one of

his own altar candles. As he spoke to Nell, he kept on glancing up

the street, and when a girl on a bicycle came round the corner, he

moved a few steps out into the road and took off his hat.

“Good morning, Miss Lamb.”

Marian Lamb, who was in Red Cross uniform, jumped off her bicycle and

shook hands with him before she shook hands with Nell Beatup.

“On your way to the hospital, I see.”

“Yes. I’m on morning duty this week.”

“Do you prefer that to the afternoons?”

“Not in summer. I do in winter, though.”

Nell felt ignored and insulted. She made no effort to join in this

sprightly dialogue. There was something in the curate’s manner

towards the other girl which seemed to stab her through with a sense

of her inferiority, with memories of the coarse, muddling life of

Worge to which she belonged. It was not that he showed more courtesy,

but he seemed to show more freedom ... he was more at his ease with

one of his own class.

Her cheeks burned. Of course she was not his equal. He might talk to

her and lend her books, but he did it only out of kindness; probably

looked upon it as a superior form of parish relief—doled the books as

he doled blankets.... She shrugged away, and the movement made him at

once turn to her with a remark:

“Have you been over the hospital, Miss Beatup?”

“No—I’ve never had time ... and I must hurry off now. Good morning!”

Even as she spoke she noticed that her voice was thick and drawly,

unlike Miss Lamb’s sharp, clear tones. She gripped her satchel and

hurried across the road to the schoolhouse.

3

During the next few days the most remarkable sight at Worge was

Harry’s industriousness. For nearly a week he rose at five, fed the

pigs and helped with the milking, and during the whole day he was

available for carting, digging, dunging, or anything else he had

formerly fled from. He helped Elphick spray the young fuggles down

by Forges and the Sunk Field, he took a cartload of roots over to

Three Cups Corner, he groomed the horses and plaited their manes, he

compelled Zacky with threats of personal violence to spend Saturday

afternoon scaring birds from the gooseberries, instead of, with six

other little boys, carrying out an enveloping movement on Punnetts

Town, with three-ha’pence to spend on sweets in the captured citadel.

On the occasion of Mus’ Beatup’s next lapse, he stalled the cows and

doctored the mare, and also, with much foresight, took off and hid

his father’s boots, which prevented both his going to bed in them and

his throwing them at his wife.

It would have been well if this virtuous state could have lasted

till the hay harvest. This was early, for there was a spell of heat

in May, and the fields were soon parched. The air was full of the

smell of ripe hayseed, of the baking glumes of the oats, of the hot,

sickly stew of elderflower and meadowsweet. Along the Four Roads

eddies of dust flew from under the wheels and caked the grass and

fennel-heads beside the way, and in the ruts of the little lanes

the bennet and rest-barrow sprouted, with the thick-stalked sprawly

pignut, and ragged robin. Unfortunately, all this scent and heat

made Harry remember a wood over by Cade Street, where he had once

lain and watched the moon rise rusty beyond Lobden’s House. It was

unfortunate that he had such a memory, for it had more than once

been his undoing. Somewhere under Harry’s skin, mixed with the

sluggish currents of his country blood, was a strain of poetry and

imagination. He cared nothing for books, nothing for beauty, nothing

for music (except, perhaps, when they sang “Diadem” in the Bethel at

dusk), and yet every now and then something would pull him from the

earth he toiled on—a thing he was unaware of three weeks out of the

four, seeing only the sods cleaving together—something would call

him from meadow-hills that swept up their broomy cones to the sky,

an adventure would call from the Four Roads, a longing would call

from the moon ... and off he would go to Stunts Green, to Starnash,

Oxbottom’s Town, or Burnt Kitchen—just as, after a sober week, Mus’

Beatup would go off to the Rifle Volunteer.

His promise to Tom had made him resist the cruder temptations of

ratting Sindens or bird’s-nesting Kadwells; but now it seemed to pull

the other way. His brother was the only person he was in any degree

afraid of, and he was safe at Waterheel, no longer his father’s

vicar, waiting with barnyard discipline for the truant’s return.

So Harry went off to that wood at Cade Street, and spent the night

there, in a hollow tree, watching the big yellow stars shuddering

above the ash-boughs like candles in the wind, and sleeping with his

head in a soft mush of last year’s leaves, that sent him back with

his cheeks all smeary, and his hair caked with leaf-mast.

That was the day of the haycutting, when Mus’ Beatup and Juglery

and Elphick sweated with bent backs in the field. Worge possessed a

horse-rake, but the cutting had all to be done by hand, and the men’s

backs ached and scorched in the sun, and their sweat dropped on their

scythes. This labour, as was only natural, started in Mus’ Beatup a

fearful thirst, and that night was “one of his bad nights”—one of

the worst, in fact, for he threw the candlestick at his wife as well

as his boots, and would not let her come to bed, so that she had to

sleep with Ivy and Nell.

Harry felt rather ashamed, and tried hard to atone the next day by

working himself sick. Mrs. Beatup and Ivy helped too, since haymaking

was the one kind of field work which the women did not feel it

derogatory to perform. Ivy was a whacking girl, nearly as good as a

man; but Mus’ Beatup would never have dreamed of asking her to help

fill Tom’s empty place. If town girls thought so little of themselves

as to enrol for farm work, that was no concern of his, but he was

hemmed if he’d have his wife and daughter meddling with anything

beyond the fowl-house, and as for employing other women whose dignity

mattered less to him—and, apparently, to themselves—he’d sooner Worge

went to the auctioneer’s, just to teach the government a lesson.

4

So Worge muddled through its haymaking, and then the shearing; and

Harry was sometimes idle and sometimes industrious, and Mus’ Beatup

was sometimes drunk and sometimes sober. The oats in the Street Field

and the field at the back of the Rifle Volunteer were slowly parching

to the colour of dust, though thick green shadows rippled in them,

and told how far off still the harvest was. They were spring-sown

potato-oats, chosen by Tom on account of their vigorous constitution,

though otherwise not very well suited to the clays of Sunday Street.

He had manured them at their sowing with rape-cake, nursed their

first sproutings, and now in every letter enquired after their

progress. “Keep an eye on them, dear father, for the Lord’s sake, and

do not let them stand after they’re ripe, or they will shed there

seeds for certain sure, being potatos.”

Tom had been some weeks now at Waterheel in the Midlands, a private

in the Sussex Regiment, with an elaborate and mystifying address,

which his family found the greatest difficulty in cramming into the

envelope. They did not write to him as often as he wrote to them, in

spite of the fact that they were six to one. But then they were not

far from home, dreaming of the old fields, longing for the old faces.

On the whole though, Tom was happy enough. He found his new life

strange, but not totally uncongenial. A comfortable want of

imagination made it possible for him to put Worge out of mind, now

that it was also out of sight, and he was among lads of his own age,

old acquaintances some of them—Kadwell of Stilliands Tower, and two

Viners from Satanstown, Bill Putland, Jerry Sumption. There was Mus’

Archie, too, with a nod and a kind word now and then to intensify

that “feeling of Sussex chaps” which was not quite such an uncommon

one now; and there was Mus’ Dixon, Mus’ Archie’s elder brother, who

had lived in London and written for the papers before the War, and

now used his sword to cut the leaves of books—so his orderly said—yet

was a brave man none the less, and a good officer, though he hated

the life as much as his brother loved it.

The family at Worge were surprised to find that Tom’s best pal was

Bill Putland. In Sunday Street he had had very little to do with

the Squire’s cheeky chauffeur, and there had always been a gnawing

rivalry between Egypt and Worge. But now that they had joined up

together, and been drafted into the same company, sharing the same

awkwardness and fumblings, a friendship sprang up between them, and

thrived in the atmosphere of their common life. Putland was a much

smarter recruit than Beatup, but this did not cause ill-feeling,

for Bill did much to help Tom, passing on to him the tips he picked

up so much more quickly than his friend, with the result that Tom

got through the mangold-wurzel stage sooner than Mus’ Archie had

expected. Tom on his side was humbly conscious of Bill’s superiority.

“He’s been bred up different from us,” he wrote home to Worge. “You

can see that by the way he talks and everything, and he’s a sharper

chap than me by a long chalk. But he’s unaccountable good-hearted,

and he helps me with my leathers after he’s done his own, for he’s a

sight quicker than me.”

Tom more often asked for news than he gave it. After all, life

at Waterheel Camp did not consist of much besides drills and

route-marchings, with relaxations at the Y.M.C.A. hut, and occasional

visits to the town. No one at Worge would care to hear the daily

doings of such a life, and still less were they likely to understand

it. He was uneasily conscious of what his father would say about

these things at the Rifle Volunteer. “Took my boy away from his

honest work, and all they do is to keep him forming fours and

traipsing about the country and playing dominoes at the Y.M.C.A.

That’s wot the Governmunt spends our money on,” etc., etc. And Tom

was now soldier enough to resent any criticism of the Army from

outside it.

In other quarters though, it appeared he was not so reticent. After

a while his family discovered that Thyrza Honey was hearing from him

pretty regularly. Moreover, one day Mrs. Beatup, buying candles,

found Thyrza wearing a regimental button mounted as a brooch, and was

told it was a gift from Tom.

“He’s sweet on her,” said Ivy, when the news was told.

“Him—he’s just a bit of a boy,” said his mother.

“The Army maakes men unaccountable sudden.”

“Well, anyway, she’s four years older than he is, and wot he can see

in her is more’n I can say.”

“She’s got a bit o’ money though,” said Mus’ Beatup. “I shan’t put a

spoke in his wheel if he wants to marry her.”

“Him marry! Wot are you thinking of, Ned? He’s only a bit of a boy,

as I’ve told you. Besides, she aun’t got no looks; she’s just a plain

dump of a woman, and a boy liks a pretty faace.”

“Mrs. Honey’s middling pretty,” said Ivy, “with colour and teeth and

all.”

“You’ve got queer notions of pretty. Why, only yesterday Mrs. Sinden

wur saying to me as she can’t think wot Sam Honey ever saw in Thyrza

Shearne. And you can’t git naun out of her, she’s slow as a cow, and

she looks at you lik a cow chewing the cud....”

Nell broke in—

“You’re all taking it for granted that Mrs. Honey would have Tom if

she was given the chance. Maybe he’d be quite safe even if he asked

her.”

“Nonsense, my girl,” cried Mus’ Beatup. “A woman ud taake any man as

wur fool enough to ask her; if a woman’s unwed you may reckon she’s

never been asked.”

Ivy laughed loudly at this, and Nell turned crimson.

“Women aren’t going quite so cheap as you think.”

“Oh, aun’t they!—when it’s bin proved as there’s twice as many of ’em

as there’s men. I tell you, when there’s a glut of turnips, the price

goes down.”

“There aren’t twice as many women as men. Miss Goldsack was saying

only the other day that——”

“And I tell you it’s bin proved as there are, and when the War’s

over there’ll be more still, and they’ll be going about weeping and

hollering and praying to the men to taake them.”

“They won’t. They’ll have something better to do. This War’s teaching

women to work, and——”

“Work! I wudn’t give a mouldy onion fur women’s work....”

And so on, and so on.

5

Thyrza herself was a little surprised to hear so often from Tom,

and the brooch was a piece of daring she had never expected. It is

true that from time to time she sent him presents of chocolate and

cigarettes, but his letters were much more than an acknowledgment

of these. They were not love-letters, but Thyrza knew that they

contained more confidences than those he sent to Worge—she was

familiar with all the common round of his day, from rêveille to

lights-out. He told her about the men he liked and those he didn’t,

about his drills and fatigues, about his food and Cookie’s queer

notions of a stew—Thyrza knew what was an “army biscuit,” a “choky,”

a “gor’ blimey,” and the number of stripes worn respectively by “God

Almighty,” “swank” and “goat.” Scarcely a week passed without one of

those thin yellowish envelopes, with the red triangle in the corner,

slipping under the shop door—addressed in smeary, indelible pencil,

and smelling of woodbines.

She noticed a growing assurance in his style—partly due, perhaps, to

the friendliness of her replies, partly, no doubt, to the growing

manhood in him. She had always looked on Tom as a kind, slow chap,

with very little to say for himself, and not too much thinking going

on either, but with an unaccountable good heart. Now she realised

that the Army was smartening him up, giving him confidence, enlarging

his ideas. Thyrza was only a countrywoman herself, born within ten

miles of where she lived now, but she did not fail to notice or to

respect this growth in Tom. “He’s gitting new ideas in his head, and

he’s waking up a bit. I shan’t lik him the less for being readier wud

his tongue, surelye.”

One of the new ideas which got into Tom’s head at Waterheel was

the desirability—indeed, the urgency—of having a “girl.” All the

chaps had girls—Bill Putland wrote to Polly Sinden at Little Worge,

though he had taken very little notice of her while he was at home;

Jerry Sumption wrote half-threatening, half-appealing scrawls to Ivy

Beatup; Kadwell and Viner had sweethearts at the Foul Mile and the

Trulilows—every evening at the Y.M.C.A. a hundred indelible pencils

travelled to and fro from tongue to paper in the service of that

god who campaigns with the god of war, and occasionally snatches

his victories. There was also the need to receive letters—a need

which Tom had never felt before, but now ached in his breast, when

at post-time he saw other men walk away tearing envelopes, while

he stood empty-handed. Thyrza wrote more often and more fully than

his mother, and he would answer quickly, to make her write again.

So closer and closer between them was drawn that link of smudged

envelopes and ruled note-paper, with their formalities of “Your

letter received quite safe,” and “Hoping this finds you well, as it

leaves me at present”—till the chain was forged which should bind

them for ever.

Thyrza pondered this in her heart. She was used to much indefinite

courtship, most of it just before lamp-time in her own little shop,

with the prelude of a “penn’orth of bull’s-eyes for the children” or

“a packet of Player’s, please.” She had also been definitely courted

once or twice in her short widowhood—by Bourner of the Forge, a

widower with five sturdy children, and Hearsfield of Mystole. She was

a type of girl who, while appealing little to her fellow-women, who

“never cud see naun in Thyrza Honey,” yet had a definite attraction

for men, by reason of that same softness and slowness for which her

own sex despised her. She had no particular wish to marry again,

and at the same time no particular objection. Her first marriage

had not been so happy as to make her anxious to repeat it, but it

had also lacked those elements of degradation which make a woman

shrink from trusting herself a second time to a master. There was too

much business and too much gossip in her life for her to feel her

loneliness as a widow, and yet she sometimes craved for the little

child which had died at birth two years ago—she “cud do wud a child,”

she sometimes said.

Tom Beatup attracted her strongly. He was much her own type—slow,

ruminative and patient as the beasts he tended—yet she saw him as

a being altogether more helpless than herself, one less able to

think and plan, one whom she could “manage” tenderly. He was not so

practical as she, and more in need of affection, of which he got

less. Thyrza sometimes pictured his round dark head upon her breast,

her arm about him, holding him there in the crook of it, both lover

and child....

From the material point of view, the match was not a good one; but

Thyrza was comfortably off, and her miniature trade was brisk. They

were both too unsophisticated to make a barrier of her little stock

of worldly goods—he had his pay, so his independence would not

suffer, and she would have a separation allowance into the bargain.

He was a slow wooer, and the tides of his boldness had never risen

again to the level of that sticky kiss he had given her hand as she

served the bull’s-eyes—but she was sure of him, and, being Thyrza,

“slow as a cow,” had no objection to waiting.

6

Another woman in Sunday Street was being courted from the Waterheel

Y.M.C.A., but she did not fill her part as comfortably as Thyrza. Not

that Ivy Beatup had much real concern for Jerry Sumption’s passion,

beating against her indifference as a wave beats and breaks against

a rock. Her chief trouble was that Jerry now threw out hints of an

approaching leave, and though she had no objection to his mingling

rage and tenderness on paper, she disliked the thought of having to

confront them mingled in his gipsy face.

The minister’s son was one of Ivy’s mistakes—she made mistakes

occasionally, as she would herself acknowledge with a good-humoured

grin. But they were never very serious. And, as the saying is, she

knew how to take care of herself. Unfortunately, Jerry had given her

more than ordinary trouble. After some years of standoffishness and

suspicion—for Mrs. Beatup had never liked her children to play with

the gipsy woman’s son—Ivy and Jerry had somehow been thrown together

during his last holiday from Erith, and she had good-naturedly

allowed him to kiss her and take her to Senlac Fair, as she would

have allowed any decent lad on leave. It was unlucky that what had

been to her no more than a bit of fun should be for Jerry the tinder

to set his body and soul alight. Ivy, more buxom than beautiful,

and, with her apple-face and her barley-straw hair, typical of those

gaujos his mother’s people had always distrusted, somehow became his

earth and sky. He loved her, and went after her as the tide after the

moon.

Ivy tried to detach him by the various means known to her experience.

For a long time she ignored his letters and postcards. Then when

these continued to pour upon her, she sent a cold, careless reply,

which had the contrary effect of making his furnace seven times

hotter; so that her next letter was warmed unconsciously by the flame

of his, and she saw that instead of having shaken him off, she had

gone a step further in his company.

No doubt the best thing to do was to tell him to his face that she

would not have him. He would not be the first chap she had told

this, but Ivy had an unaccountable shrinking from repeating the

process with Jerry. There was in him a subtle essence, a mystifying

quality—perhaps it was no more than the power of a sharper life and

death—which made him different from the other lads she knew, and

struck terror into her country soul. He was the first man she had

been ever so little afraid of. Ivy had the least imagination of all

the Beatups. That spark which sent Nell to the church, and Harry to

the woods, which made Tom feel more than roots and clay in the earth

on which he trod, and Zacky sometimes almost think himself a British

army corps, even that little spark had never flickered up in Ivy’s

honest heart. Her world was made of things she could taste and see

and hear and smell and handle, and very good things she found them.

She resented the presence in her life of something which responded to

none of these tests. Jerry’s love for her was “queer,” just as Jerry

himself was “queer,” and Ivy did not like “queer” things.

When the long-dreaded leave came at last, it took her by surprise.

She had not heard from Jerry for a week, and one morning, having run

to the pillar-box at the throws, with some letters for her soldier

friends, on her return she met Mr. Sumption, waving his arms and

cracking his joints and shouting to her even from beyond earshot,

that Jerry was coming home that evening.

“A letter came this morning. Maybe you’ve got one too?”

Ivy shook her head, and Mr. Sumption tried to disguise his pleasure

at being the only one to hear.

“He’s a good boy, Jerry—never forgets his father. But he wants to

see you though, Ivy. Maybe you’d come and have supper with us this

evening?”

“I’m unaccountable sorry, but I’m going up to Senlac town.”

“That’s a pity. Perhaps you’ll come another day?”

“If I’ve time, Mus’ Sumption—but I’m justabout vrothered these days

wud the harvesters here. Thank you kindly though, all the same.”

She had been sidling away as she spoke, and now walked off with

a brisk “Good mornun.” She was sorry to have to disappoint Mr.

Sumption, whom she liked and pitied; but there was no good letting

him think she had any use for Jerry.

Before going home she ran down the drive to Little Worge, and told

Polly Sinden she was at all costs and risks to come with her to

Senlac that evening.

For the rest of the day she was less her cheery, placid self than

usual, and the evening in Senlac town was not the treat it might

have been. All the time she was haunted by a sense of Jerry’s

nearness—perhaps he had come as far as Lewes by now, perhaps he was

already in Sunday Street, perhaps in Senlac itself. What a fool she

had been to tell Mr. Sumption where she was going! Her heart was

troubled—another of those “queer” aspects of the situation which

she so disliked. Generally when she wanted to get rid of a boy,

she did not have feelings like these. All through the soft August

twilight, when she and Polly Sinden, in the clumsy finery of country

girls, strolled arm-in-arm up and down the Upper Lake and the Lower

Lake—those two lakes of blood which an old, old war had made, giving

the town its bloody name—and even afterwards, when having by arts

known to themselves acquired two soldiers, they sat in the picture

palace with a khaki arm round each tumbled muslin waist, even then

the terror lingered, haunting, tearing, elusive as a dead leaf

on the wind. Ivy looked nervously into the shadows of the little

picture-hall, thinking she saw Jerry’s face, angry and swarthy, with

eyes like the Forge at night.... Suppose he had come after her to

Senlac ... he certainly would if he was home in time. Then came a

picture of a girl who was “done in” by her lover. Ivy could stand it

no more, and rising to her feet, plunged out over the people’s knees.

“That plaace is lik an oven,” she said to the Anzac corporal who

followed her out.... “No, thank you. I’ll go home wud Polly.”

Polly was a little annoyed that Ivy should have broken up the

party so soon; but it certainly was very hot—both the girls’ faces

were spotted with sweat and their gowns were sticking to their

shoulders. Besides, it would be as well not to get too thick with

this Australian chap now Bill Putland was writing so regularly....

Miss Sinden and Miss Beatup dismissed their escort, and, after the

proper number of “Good-by-ees,” shouted across longer and longer

darkness-muffled distances, they trudged off homewards on the North

Trade.

When Ivy reached the farm, she was told that Jerry Sumption had

called about eight o’clock—on his way from the station, without even

going first to leave his kit-bag at the Horselunges—and that Mrs.

Beatup had had an unaccountable to-do to git shut of him.

7

Having made up her mind that a meeting was inevitable, Ivy made no

more efforts to avoid one. By her absence on his first visit she had

clearly shown Jerry how matters stood, and if he was fool enough to

come again....

He was, of course. Ivy, unromantically on her knees at her usual

business of scrubbing the kitchen boards, felt no annoyance at being

so discovered, made no hasty grabs at her rolled-up sleeves, or at

the loosening knob of her hair. She would not have done so for a more

favoured lover, for none of her courtships had been of the kind that

encourages neatness and daintiness in a woman, that leads to curlings

and powderings. She knew that men liked her for her youth and health

and bigness, for her cheeriness and strength, and as all these

things were natural to her she had no need to trouble herself with

fakes.

“Hullo, Jerry,” she said, without looking up, and sending a swirl of

soapy water round his boots.

“Hullo, Ivy. Why weren’t you in when I came last night?”

“Because I’d gone into Senlac wud Polly Sinden, as your father ud

have told you, if you’d done wot you should ought and gone to him

fust.”

“You’d no call to go into Senlac—not on the first night of my leave.”

“Your leave doan’t matter to me.”

“Ivy....”

He caught her wrist as she was dipping the scrubbing-brush in the

bucket, and she was forced to meet his eyes at last. She had tried to

avoid this, staring at her soapsuds, for Jerry’s eyes were “queer.”

“Leave hold of me, Jerry.”

“Not till you stand up and look at me. I can’t speak to you on all

fours like this.”

Ivy stood up, rather wondering at Jerry’s power to make her do so.

He was a small fellow, but not of the stubby built of Tom or Harry

Beatup. On the contrary, he was lightly made as a dancing-master,

his hands and feet were small but very strong, his face was small

and brown, lit by two large sloe-black eyes, with lashes long and

curly as a child’s. His hair was curly too, in spite of its military

cropping. He was a most slovenly-looking soldier, with tunic stained

and buttons dim, and puttees looping grotesquely round his slim,

graceful legs.

“If the M.P.’s git hold of you ...” began Ivy jeeringly.

“There ain’t any M.P.’s hereabouts. I’m on my leave, and you’re

starting to spoil it already.”

“Wot have I got to do wud your leave? You’re maaking some sort gurt

big mistaake, Jerry Sumption.”

“Maybe you’ve forgotten that day at Senlac Fair?”

“And if I have, wot matter? It meant naun. You aun’t the fust lad

that’s kissed me, nor the last, nuther.”

It hurt her to have to speak so plainly, but Jerry Sumption must be

put right at once on one or two important matters he seemed to have

misunderstood. She saw his face go pale under its sunburn and she

felt sorry for him. None the less, she stuck to her harshness.

“I likked you well enough, and I lik you still; but if you think as I

meant more’n I did or said, you’re unaccountable mistaaken.”

“Ivy—come out of doors with me. I can’t speak to you in here. When my

heart’s full I want the wind blowing round me.”

She shook her head. “No, Jerry; we’ll stay where we are, surelye.

You’re hedge-born, but I’m house-born, and I lik four walls around

me when I’m vrothered. Now, lad, doan’t that show you as we two cud

never mate?”

“So, I’m vrothering you, am I?”

“Unaccountable.”

“Reckon I didn’t vrother you when I clipped you in the lane by the

stack of Slivericks.”

“Doan’t ’ee....”

His strange power over her was coming back. Looking into his eyes she

seemed to see strange secrets of woods, memories of roads and stars,

and a light that was like the light of a burning wood, such as she

had once seen, licking up from the west, burning the little farm and

the barns. She was frightened of Jerry, just as she was frightened

of Dallington churchyard at night, or that field-corner by Padgham,

where strange lights are sometimes seen. Yet it was a fear which

instead of making her run, made her stumble and droop towards him,

seeking refuge from terror in its source....

He pushed her away.

“Reckon you’ll be kissing another lad to-night.”

She felt flustered and miserable.

“You’re a lamentable trial to me, Jerry.”

“Why? ’Cos I’ve kissed you? It’s nothing. I’ll be kissing another

girl to-night.”

“You’re a valiant feller.”

“Ain’t I? You think the world of me, Ivy Beatup.”

“Do I? That’s news. Now doan’t start it all over again. I hear mother

coming.”

Mrs. Beatup’s step creaked outside, and Jerry scowled at the door.

The next moment he was astride the window-sill, a queer furtive look

in his eyes.

“You aun’t going out lik that, surelye! I’m ashamed of you. Stay and

spik to mother like a Christian.”

But he had swung his leg over, and slid into the yard. She heard him

run off, with padding footsteps like a beast.

8

The next day was Sunday. A thick yellow haze swam over the fields,

and there was a faint autumnal scent in the hedges, mixed of leaves

and earth. The grain-fields still smelt of summer, with the baking

glumes and the white, cracked ground. Only a few had been cut—the

winter sowings at Egypt and Bucksteep; the Volunteer Field and the

Street Field at Worge still carried their crops, chaffy and nutty,

preyed on by conies. They should have been cut last week, but Mus’

Beatup had not been himself on Friday and Saturday, and Juglery had a

bad leg, and Harry had gone to Hailsham Fair.

Towards eleven o’clock church and chapel goers began to dribble down

the lane to Brownbread Street, while a few strayed into the Bethel,

which looked a little less gaunt with its door open to the sunshine

and old Grandfather Hubble sitting in it with the collecting-plate

on his knees. The congregation was small, but bigger than the

Particular Baptist sect in Sunday Street. There were actually only

two received members—old Hubble and his daughter-in-law; the rest

were either members of other denominations who had quarrelled with

their respective chapels, or else felt disinclined for the trudge

into Brownbread Street. Bourner came because the minister had once

been a blacksmith, and the farmer of Puddledock came because he had

once cured a stallion of his that had lockjaw.

Jerry Sumption came because he hoped Ivy Beatup would be there. It

was a vain hope, for on fine Sundays the family at Worge always went

to church—except, of course, Mus’ Beatup, whose scientific readings

had taught him the folly of all churches, and Mrs. Beatup, who stayed

at home to cook the dinner. However, Mr. Sumption had encouraged, if

indeed he had not inspired, the illusion which landed Jerry in one

of the big back pews of the Bethel, a pew like a dusty box, smelling

of wood-rot. He knew that if he had been more candid Jerry would

have padded off over the fields to Brownbread Street and drunk in

pernicious heresies of Infant Baptism and Universal Redemption, while

he stared at his sweetheart’s profile ruddy in the sunshine which

glowed on her through some painted saint. So he concealed the fact

that the Beatups were “Church,” weather permitting, and allowed Jerry

to think he would have Ivy to grin and blink at during the sermon, as

on his last visit, when the rain was tinkling in the chapel gutters.

Finding himself sold, Jerry was inclined to sulk. Luckily he did

not suspect his father, or he would have got up and walked out. The

service was nearly half finished before he gave up hope; that is to

say, the sermon had begun, and the congregation had subsided into its

various compartments, so that anyone coming in would have seen no one

but Mr. Sumption, like a big crow in his Sunday blacks, shouting from

the pulpit at two rows of coffin-like pews. Jerry opened the door

of his, so that he could look out of the chapel door, which stood

open, and see the dull blue sky above the fields of Puddledock, and

in the foreground the neglected churchyard of the Bethel, with the

tombstones leaning this way and that.

A heavy sickness of heart fell on him, sitting there in the

rot-smelling pew, with his arms folded over his chest and his

shoulders shrugged to his ears. He felt caught in his love for Ivy

Beatup like an animal in a trap, frantic, struggling, wounding

himself with his struggles. If she did not want him, why wouldn’t she

let him go?... Lord! he would never forget her that day at Senlac

Fair, with her cheeks red as the pimpernel and her eyes like the big

twilight stars, and her hair blowing about them as they kissed....

If she had not meant it, why had she done it? If she had not wanted

his heart, why had she taken it and bruised it so? He did not please

her. Why? He had pleased other girls; and now he was in uniform ...

that ought to please her. He remembered how she had made him jealous

when she spoke of her soldier friends. Well, now he was a soldier

too—leading a damned life partly for her sake ... that ought to

please her.

In the Bethel yard rank weeds were growing, clumping round the

tombstones, thickening the grass with their fat stalks and wide

milk-bleeding leaves. They were hot in the sun, and the smell of them

crept into the Bethel and found its place in the miasma of wood-rot

and Sunday clothes and plaster and stale lamp-oil ... the smell of

pignut stewing in the sun, of the burdock and the thick fog-weed,

the plantain, the nettle, the dandelion. The chapel weeds seemed to

give Jerry an answer to his question. He did not please Ivy because

he was the gipsy-woman’s son, no less a weed because he grew in a

chapel yard. The hedge-born could not please the house-born, as she

had said—though for that matter he had been born in a bed like any

Christian, in that little room above the Forge at Bethersden, which

he could dimly remember, with its view down three cross-roads.

He clenched his small hard fists, and stared scowling out towards the

sun-swamped fields of the horizon. He would punish Ivy Beatup for her

cruelty, for having trodden on the chapel weed. He would make her

suffer—if he could, for she was tough and lusty as an oak. He found

himself hating her for her sturdy cheerfulness—for the shape of her

face, with the hard, round cheeks and pointed chin—for her lips which

were warm when her heart was cold....

A loud thump on the pulpit woke him out of his thoughts. His father

had noticed his abstraction for some time, and chose this way of

rousing him. From his vantage he could see into all the separate

cells of his congregation, and if he noticed anyone nodding or

mooning or reading his Bible for solace, he made haste to recall him

to a proper sense of his surroundings. He now stopped in the middle

of an eschatological trump and glared at Jerry with his bright,

tragic eyes. He had a habit of drastic personal dealings with his

flock, to which, perhaps, its small size was due. Certainly Ades of

Cowlease had never entered the Bethel door since Mr. Sumption had

“thumped” at him, and one or two others had been driven away in a

like manner. To-day everyone, even those whose heads did not pop

out of their pews like Jim-Crows, guessed that the minister had

“thumped” at Jerry, for the minister’s Jerry seldom came through a

service without being thumped at—luckily he did not much mind it.

“W’oa—old ’un,” he mumbled to himself, as he met his father’s stare,

and soon luckily came the hymn: “They shall gather by the river,”

which Jerry sang most tunefully, in a loud, sweet, not quite human

voice, forgetting all those sad thoughts of the chapel weed....

But he remembered them when he was walking across to the Horselunges

with his father.

“Father, if I can’t get Ivy Beatup, I’ll kill myself.”

“For shame, you ungodly boy—to speak so light of losing your

salvation!”

“Would I lose my salvation if I killed myself?”

“Reckon you would. Satan would get you at once.”

“I’ll kill her, then. Satan can have her and welcome.”

“It’s you he’d have if you killed her.”

“Then he’s got me both ways?”

“Reckon he has, you sinful good-for-nothing, dreaming in sermon-time.

Have done, do, with your idle talk, or Satan will get me too, and

make me give you a kick behind.”

9

Jerry’s leave was not a happy or a peaceful one—no more for his

father and Ivy Beatup than for himself. Every day he was over at

Worge—Ivy had never met anyone so undetachable. She hated herself,

too, for some temporary capitulations. Jerry had a way of making her

faint-hearted, so that she would be betrayed into a kiss, or even a

visit to the Pictures, with an entwined walk home under the stars.

She wished that some other boy—some young Pix or Viner or Kadwell—was

home on leave, then she might have escaped to him from Jerry. Not

that she really doubted herself—she had made up her mind that she did

not want him and that she would not have him; this still held good,

and her momentary lapses deceived neither her nor him. He no longer

wooed her ardently—contrariwise, he was stiff and sulky, sullen and

rough when he kissed her. He knew that there was no chance for him,

that his only prey could be the present moment, which he snatched and

despised.

Mr. Sumption, after one or two abortive attempts at persuading Ivy

to take his boy, tried to detach Jerry from the vain quest which was

spoiling these precious days.

“There’s many another girl that would have you, Jerry—and a better

match, too, for a clergyman’s son.”

“I know there is—and I’ve had ’em—and thrown ’em away again. She’s

the only one I’ve ever wanted for keeps.”

When he heard this, Mr. Sumption felt as if his heart would break.

At last came the end of Jerry’s leave. It was starless dusk, with

clouds swagging on the thundery wind. Pools and spills of white light

came from the west, making the fields look ghostly in the dripping

swale. At Worge a scent of withering corn-stalks came from the fields

where the crops had been cut at last, and as Jerry stood in the

doorway the first dead leaves of the year fell on his shoulders.

“Come out with me, Ivy. It’s for the last time, and I hate your

kitchen with the ceiling on my head, and your mother spannelling

round.”

Ivy was in a good humour. The joy of freedom was already upon her—she

felt confident, and knew that there would be no lapses this evening.

So she put a shawl over her head and went out with him. They passed

through the yard and the orchard into the grass-fields by Forges Wood.

The field was tangled and soggy, full of coarse, sour grass. In

the dip of it, by the wood’s edge, toadstools spread dim tents, or

squashed invisibly underfoot, as the twilight drank up all colours

save white and grey.

“I’ve trod on a filthy toadstool, and my foot’s all over scum,” said

Ivy, rubbing her shoe in the grass. “Let’s git through the hëadge,

Jerry, into the dry stubble.”

“This is a better place to say good-bye.”

“We’ll say good-bye in the house. Now, none of your nonsense, Jerry

Sumption”—as he put his arm round her waist.

“But it’s my last evening.”

“Well, I’ve come for a walk. Wot more d’you want? I’m naun for

cuddling, if that’s wot you’re after. I’ll give you a kiss, full

and fair, when we say good-bye in the house, but there’s to be no

lovering under hëadges.”

“You’ve been unkind all along. You’ve spoilt my leave.”

“That’s your own fault, surelye. I’ve bin straight wud you.”

He laughed bitterly. Then his laugh broke into a gipsy whine.

“Ivy, are you sure—quite sure you’ll never love me?”

“Quite sure—as I’ve told you a dunnamany times.”

“But I don’t mean now ... some day ... Ivy?”

In the dusk his face showed white as the toadstools at her feet, but

she stood firm, for his sake as well as her own.

“It’s no use talking about ‘some day’—I tell you it’s never.”

“Never!—and you’ve let me hold you and kiss you....”

“Only now and then—saum as I’d let any nice lad.”

His eyes blazed.

“You little bitch!”

“Mind your words, my boy—and leave hoald of my arm, and come into the

next field, or I’ll git hoame.”

But he did not move, and his grip on her arm tightened.

“I want you. I reckon you don’t know what that means when I say I

want you, or you wouldn’t be so damn cruel. Ivy, I can’t leave you

like this. I can’t go back to camp knowing I’m just nothing to you.

You must give me some sort of hope. It’s not fair to have led me on——”

“I never led you on——”

Her limbs were shaking. An unaccountable terror had seized her—a

terror of him, with his hot, gripping hand and blazing eyes, of the

field so dim and sour, its grass scummy with the spilth of trampled

toadstools, of the wood close by with its spindled ashes and clumping

oaks....

“Let me go!” she cried suddenly, in a weak frightened voice.

For answer he pulled her into his arms, and held her with her breast

bruised against his.

“I shan’t let you go—I’ll never let you go. Come into the wood, Ivy.

Don’t be afraid ... I love you.... Come into the wood—there’s nothing

to be afraid of. I wouldn’t hurt you for worlds.”

He tried to pick her up and carry her, but she struggled desperately

and broke free.

“This has justabout finished it all, Jerry Sumption. You’re a

beast—I’ll never let you come nigh me agaun. You’ve a-done for

yourself. I’ve bin good to you and straight wud you, and I’d have

gone on being friends; but now I’ve a-done wud you for good.”

Her voice broke with rage, and she turned to run home. But he grabbed

her again, and this time she could not escape. He was a small man,

and she was a big whacking girl; but madness was in him, and his arms

were like iron clamps.

“You shan’t get shut of me like that. I tell you I mean to have you

... and wot’s more I’ll make you have me. I’ll break your pride—I’ll

make you want to have me, ask me to take you.”

Ivy screamed.

“Scream away. No one ull hear. I’ve got you, and I’m damned if I let

you go till I please.... To-morrow you’ll be on your knees, begging

me to take you and save you.”

He clapped his hand over her mouth, and forced back her head, kissing

her strained and aching neck till she screamed with pain as well as

with fright. Her cries were stilled under his palm, her head swam,

her strength was leaving her ... she was down on one knee ... then

suddenly, she could never remember how, she was free, and running,

running as she had never run before, her breath sobbing in her

throat—across the field of the toadstools and sour grass, away from

the shadow of Forges Wood, in the orchard, to see the gable of Worge

rising against the pewter—grey of the clouds that hid the moon.

At the orchard edge she had the sense to stop and tidy herself.

There was no longer any fear of pursuit—if indeed she had ever been

pursued. She had dropped her shawl in the field, her blouse was torn

open at the neck, her hair was down on her shoulders, and her face

all blotched with excitement and tears. Also, a new experience, she

was trembling from head to foot, and her shaking hands could scarcely

fasten her blouse and twist up her hair.

“You beast!” she sobbed, as she fumbled; “you beast! You dirty gipsy!”

Then an unaccountable longing seized her for her mother—she longed

to throw her arms round her mother’s neck and cry upon her shoulder.

With a little plaintive moan she started off again for the house, but

by the time she reached the doorstep the craving had passed.

10

For half an hour after Ivy left him, Jerry lay on his face in

Forges Wood, motionless save every now and then for a quiver of his

shoulders. Over him the boughs of the ash-trees cracked and sighed,

under him the trodden leaves rustled creepingly. He felt them cold

and moist against his cheek, with the clammy mould of nettles, weeds

that were trampled and dead. His heart in him was dead—cold, heavy

and sodden as a piece of rain-soaked earth. The fire in him was

out—it had driven him mad and died. By his short madness, scarcely

five minutes long, he had lost Ivy for ever. She was gone as the

summer was gone from the woods, but, unlike the summer, she would

never come back. A sour, eternal autumn lay before him, sour as the

grass and toadstools of Forges Field, eternal as the blind, creeping

force from which toadstools are spawned into fields and poor men’s

hearts.

At last he rose to his feet, and stumbled off, plunging into the

thickets of Forges Wood, through the ash-plats and the oak-scrub.

Scarcely realising what he was doing, he forced his way out of the

wood, through its hedge of brambled wattles, into the lane. The

pewterish sky hung low over the hedges, and in its dull glimmer he

could see the road under his feet. He soon clambered out of the lane,

pushing through the hedge into the fields of Padgham. To eastward

lay the thick, black woods of Furnacefield, and the cry of an owl

came out of them, plaintively.

Jerry wandered in the fields till dawn, his heart cold and heavy as

a clod, though now and then little crawls of misery went into it,

like a live thing creeping into the earth. He had lost Ivy for ever

... his own madness—which was gone—had taken her from him ... she was

gone, as the summer was gone from the woods....

He came nearly as far south as Hazard’s Green, but mostly roamed in

his own tracks, prowling the barns of Burntkitchen. Then, when a

thin, greenish light shone like mould on the pewtered sky, a sudden

childish craving came to him, the same that had come to Ivy in the

orchard. As she had wanted her mother in her fright and misery, so he

wanted his father, and ran home.

11

A light was burning at the Horselunges, but the cold lamp of dawn

shone on Jerry as he stood fumbling in the doorway, then, finding the

door unlocked, crept in. A footstep creaked in his father’s room, and

the next minute the door was flung open and the minister stood at the

top of the stairs, blocked against the light, looming, monstrous,

like a huge black Satan.

“Where’ve you been?”

“In the woods.”

Jerry’s teeth were chattering as his father took him by the arm and

pulled him into the room. A fire was burning on the hearth, with the

old, old cat purring squeakily before it, while the broken-winged

thrush, which Mr. Sumption had forgotten to cover up for the night,

hopped to and fro, twittering its best effort at a song.

“Oh, may the Lord forgive you, you scamp,” groaned the minister, as

Jerry fell crumpled on the sofa. His boots and uniform were caked

with leaf-mould and clay, his hair was full of leaves and mud and his

face was streaked with dirty wet.

“Are you hungry?”

“No.”

There was a pot of something on the fire, but it was just as well

that Jerry was not hungry, for it had been burnt to a cinder long ago.

“I’ve been sitting up for you all night,” said Mr. Sumption. “When

you didn’t come in, I went over to Worge, and Ivy said you’d been out

with her, but had gone off by yourself, she didn’t know where. She’s

a kind girl, and told me not to worry.”

“Father—I’ve lost her for ever.”

It was the first time he had said the words aloud, and their

wretchedness swept over him, breaking his spirit, so that he began to

cry.

“I’ve lost her ... I was mad ... and she’s gone.”

Mr. Sumption stood staring at the small, slight figure on the sofa,

lying with its dirty face turned away, its back showing him the split

tunic of a soldier of the King. His bowels yearned towards the son of

the woman from Ihornden, and his rage switched violently from Jerry

to the cause of his grief.

“Drat the girl! Drat the slut! What is she after, despising her

betters? She’s led you on—she’s played with you. Don’t trouble about

her, Jerry, my boy. She isn’t worth it.”

“I love her,” gasped Jerry—“and I’ve lost her. It’s my own fault. I

went mad. I frightened her.... Father, I’m a beast—I reckon Satan’s

got me.”

Mr. Sumption patted his shoulder.

“I reckon Satan’s got me,” moaned the boy—“or why did I go wild like

that?”

“Satan can’t hurt the elect.”

“What’s that to me? I reckon I’m none of your elect. I’m just a poor

boy who’s done for himself.”

Mr. Sumption dropped on his knees beside him, and began to pray.

“O Lord, Thou hast given me a sore trial in this son of mine, and now

terrible doubts are in my soul as to whether he is one of the elect

for whom Jesus died. O Lord, he’s my flesh and bone, and the flesh

and bone of my dear wife who’s dead, and yet it looks as if Satan had

got him. O Lord, save my son from the lion and my darling from the

power of the dog, from the dreadful day that shall burn like an oven,

and the furnace of pitch and tow....”

“Father, have done, do—you give me the creeps.”

“I’m praying for your soul, ungrateful child.”

“Let my soul be—I’m tired to death.”

Indeed a grey shade of utter weariness had crept into his skin, so

that his face looked ghastly in the morning twilight fighting round

the lamp. Mr. Sumption, who had stood up, knelt down again, and took

off Jerry’s boots.

“Have a sleep then, my laddie—there on the sofy. It’s scarce worth

going to bed. Besides, you’d have to clean yourself first.”

“You won’t leave me, father—you’ll stay along of me?”

“I’ll stay along of you and pray quiet.”

Jerry gave a grunt, and drew up his knees to his chin, like some

animal rolling itself for sleep. Mr. Sumption knelt beside him and

continued his prayer:

“O Lord, Thou hast a son, and doesn’t Thou know what I feel about

this wretched boy of mine? Lord, give me a token that he is not

predestined to everlasting death; save him from the snares of hell,

in which he seems tangled like a bird in the snare of the fowler....”

“Oh, father, do pray cheerful,” groaned Jerry.

But praying cheerful was quite beyond the poor father’s powers, never

remarkable in this direction at the best of times. All he could do

was to sing, “Let Christian faith and hope dispel the fears of guilt

and woe,” till Jerry had fallen asleep.

12

Three hours later he woke, to find Mrs. Hubble’s big wooden wash-tub

in front of the fire.

“Up you get,” said the Reverend Mr. Sumption, “and into that bath,

and I’ll take your clothes down to be cleaned and mended before you

go to the station.”

“I’m not going to the station.”

“You’re going there two hours from now, or you won’t be in Waterheel

to-night.”

“I don’t want to be in Waterheel ever again.”

But Mr. Sumption was not having any nonsense. A large hairy paw like

a gorilla’s shot out and swung Jerry by the collar on to the floor.

“Now strip, you ungodly good-for-nothing, and I’ll send you out

looking like a clergyman’s son.”

Jerry, groaning and moaning to himself, got into the bath, while

Mr. Sumption took his dirty bundle of clothes down to Mrs. Hubble’s

kitchen, where a long and noisy argument followed on her abilities to

make bricks without straw, as she called his request to make his son

look decent. He returned to the study to find Jerry less stiff in the

joints, but growing every minute more defiant and miserable as the

steaming water cleared the fogs of sleep from his brain.

“I’m not going back to camp. I’d die if I was to go there—with Ivy

lost. It was bad enough when I had her to think of and all——But now

... I’d justabout break my heart.”

“Maybe after a time you can write to her again——”

“I can’t, I tell you. You don’t understand. I’ve lost her for ever. I

frightened her—I made her scream.”

“You’re a beast,” said his father.

“Reckon I am, and reckon you’re treating me like one.”

“If you stay behind, they’ll nab you for an absentee.”

“I don’t care if they do. I’d sooner be locked up, than a soldier any

more.”

“For shame, boy!”

“Well, how’d you like to be a soldier?—sworn at all day by bloody

sergeants, and always fatigue and C.B. I’m fed up, I tell you, and

I’m not going back.”

“You’ll go back, if I have to pull you all the way by the ears.”

“You’re the cruellest father I ever heard of.”

Mr. Sumption lost his temper, and cuffed Jerry’s head as he sat in

the tub. Luckily the boy’s defiance had been only the false flare of

damp spirits, and instead of receiving the blow with an explosion

of anger, he was merely cowed by it. Whereat Mr. Sumption’s heart

melted, and he saw the piteousness of this poor little soldier, whose

heart was black with some evil beyond his help.

The rest of the time passed amicably, till Mrs. Hubble, with many

contemptuous sniffs, brought up Jerry’s uniform brushed and mended,

and after he was dressed he did not look so bad, especially as the

bath had had the humiliating result of making his skin look several

shades lighter.

Breakfast followed, and afterwards he and his father set out for

Senlac Station, taking the longer North Road by Woods Corner and

Darwell Hole, instead of that shorter, more dangerous, way past the

gate of Worge. It was a morning of clear, golden distances, with

pillars and towers and arches of cloud moving solemnly before the

wind across a borage-blue sky. Drops of dew fell from the trees

on the backs of the two men, and the air was full of the smell of

earth and wet leaves, and that faint mocking smell of spring which

sometimes comes in autumn.

As they tramped along the North Road, away from the Obelisk by

Lobden’s House, which allows a Dallington man to see his village for

miles after he has left it, Mr. Sumption spoke very patiently and

kindly to his son.

“Keep good and straight,” he said, “for you’re a good woman’s son,

and some day you’ll find a woman whom you’ll love as I loved your

mother. May she be to you all that your mother was to me, and may you

keep her longer. But don’t go running after strange women, or think

to forget love in wantonness. One day, if you trust the Lord, you’ll

meet a girl that has been worth keeping good for, that you’ll find

lovelier than Ivy Beatup, and ull think herself honoured to marry a

clergyman’s son.”

“Clergyman’s son ...” murmured Jerry, in tones that made Mr. Sumption

swoop round on him with uplifted hand, to see a look on his face that

made him thrust it back into his pocket.

His eyes were still full of his mysterious trouble, but he did not

speak of it so much. He just plodded on beside his father like a calf

to slaughter, and at last they came to Senlac Town, with the houses

like barley-stacks in the sunshine. They were early, and had half an

hour to wait at the station. A train had just come in, and as they

crossed the bridge they suddenly met Tom Beatup.

“Tom!” cried the minister, cracking his joints with delight. “Who’d

have thought to meet you! I’d no idea you were coming home.”

“Nor had I till yesterday—seven days’ leave before I go to France. I

sent off a telegram, but I reckon it was too late for them to get it

last night. Hullo, Jerry! Enjoyed yourself?”

“Unaccountable,” said Jerry with a leer.

“Wait for me, Tom,” said Mr. Sumption, “and we’ll walk home together.

I shan’t be more than twenty minutes or so.”

“I’m justabout sorry, but I must git off this wunst. Reckon I’ll see

you again soon.”

“Come round to the Horselunges one evening.”

“I will, surelye”—and Tom was off, whistling “Sussex by the Sea.”

It seemed to Mr. Sumption that he looked a bigger, older man than the

Tom Beatup of five months ago. He seemed to have grown and filled

out, he had lost his yokel shuffle, and his uniform was smart and

neat. The minister glanced down at Jerry, who stood beside him,

small, untidy, cowed and furtive. Jerry undoubtedly did not look his

best in uniform—it seemed to exaggerate the worst of those gipsy

characteristics which he had inherited from the Rossarmescroes

or Hearns. Now, in civvies he used not to look so bad—he was a

well-made, graceful little chap....

“Jerry,” said Mr. Sumption, “why can’t you look like Tom Beatup?”

“I reckon it’s because I’m Jerry Sumption—the clergyman’s son.”

And again there was that look on his face which prevented retaliation.

13

In the old days it used to take Tom a good couple of hours to walk

from Senlac to Sunday Street—but then, he had generally been behind

a drove of lazy tups or heifers, or silly scattering sheep. To-day

he swung smartly along, scarcely feeling the weight of his kit-bag,

whistling as he walked. It was good to feel the soft thick fanning

of the Sussex air, so different from the keen Derbyshire wind, with

its smell of bilberries and slaty earth; to see the old places along

the North Trade—Whitelands, Park Gate, Burntkitchen, and then, when

he came to the throws, that wide sudden view of the country bounded

by the Four Roads, swamped in hazy sunshine, with the trickle of

lanes and the twist of the rough, blotched hedges, and the pale

patches of the stubble, and the low clouds sailing over it from

Cross-in-Hand. He walked through Brownbread Street, empty save for

the waggon-team that drowsed outside the George, silent save for the

hum of children’s voices in the school. Then he came to Pont’s Green,

where the lane to Sunday Street meets the East Road. The hops were

being picked in the low sheltered fields by Slivericks Wood, and the

smoke of the drying furnace streamed out of the cowl of the oasthouse

at the throws, while all the air seemed heavy with the sweet, sleepy

scent of stripping bines.

He had meant, traitorously, to call at the shop before he went home;

but just as he came to the willow-pond, a small dusty figure ran out

of the hedge, and seized him round the waist.

“Hullo, Tom!”

“Hullo, Zacky! Wot are you doing here?”

“I haven’t bin to school—I couldn’t go when I heard you wur coming.

Mother got your telegram this mornun, and she wur sure it wur to say

as you wur killed.”

“Was she pleased when she found it wasn’t?”

“Unaccountable. But she’d nigh cried her eyes out first, and told Ivy

and Nell as something tarr’ble had happened to you, afore they found

as she’d never opened the telegram.”

“I’ll write a letter next time,” said Tom; “but I never knew for

sure till yesterday that I’d be gitting leave so soon.”

He did not scold Zacky for having stayed away from school. It was a

relief not to have to exercise quasi-paternal authority any more, but

just to take the truant’s hand and walk with him to Worge Gate—where

Mus’ Beatup was standing with his gun, having seen Tom in the

distance from Podder’s Field, where the conies are, while Mrs. Beatup

was running down the drive from the house, her apron blowing before

her like a sail.

“Here you are, my boy,” said Mus’ Beatup sententiously, clapping him

on the shoulder. “Come to see how we’re gitting on now you’ve left

us. The oald farm’s standing yit—the oald farm’s standing yit.”

“And looks valiant,” said Tom, grinning, and kissing his mother.

“Not so valiant as it ud look if there wurn’t no war on.”

“Maybe—that cud be said of most of us.”

“Not of you, Tom,” said Mrs. Beatup. “I never saw you look praaperer

than to-day.”

“Oh, I’m in splendid heart—eat till I’m fit to bust.”

“You wear your cap like Bill Putland,” said Zacky. “It maakes you

look different-like.”

Tom’s cap indeed had a rakish tilt over one ear, though he did not

profess to imitate Bill Putland’s jauntiness.

“Maybe old Bill ull git a bit of leave in a week or two. I see Jerry

Sumption’s gone back to-day. I met him and minister at the station.”

Mrs. Beatup gave a snort.

“And unaccountable glad I am to see the last of Gipsy Jerry; he’s

justabout plagued Ivy to death all the time he’s bin here. She says

she’s shut of him, and I hope to goodness she means it.”

“Jerry shud never have gone fur a soldier,” said Tom. “He’s got no

praaper ideas of things, and is fur ever gitting in trouble. Come,

mother, let’s be walking up to the house and put my bag in the

bedroom.”

“Wot’s in your bag?” asked Zacky.

“Soap, razor, slacks, and one or two liddle bits of things,” said

Tom, grinning down at him in proud consciousness of two pounds of

Derby rock—to such magnificence had his sweetmeat buying risen from

his old penn-’orths of bull’s-eyes.

They walked up to the house, and greetings came with Ivy hanging

out the clothes, and Harry toiling over the corn accounts in

shame-faced arrears. Then his bag was unpacked, and presents given to

everybody—sweetstuff to Zacky and Harry, a good knife to his father,

and to his mother a wonderful handkerchief case with the arms of the

Royal Sussex worked in lurid silks; there was a needlebook of the

same sort for Nell, when she should come home from school; and for

Ivy there was a mother-o’-pearl brooch, and, which she liked even

better, messages from a dozen Sussex chaps at Waterheel.

Then as the family went back to its business, Tom, who for the first

time in his life had none, slipped out of the house, and jogged

quietly down the drive towards the village. There would be just time

before dinner to call at the shop.

The blind was down, for the sunshine was streaming in at the little

leaded window, threatening the perils of dissolution to the sugar

mice (made before the sugar scarcity, indeed, it must be confessed,

before the War) and of fermentation to the tinned crab. Tom’s hand

may have shaken a little as he pulled down the latch, but except for

that his manner was stout, very different from his sheepish entrances

of months ago.

Buzz ... ting ... Thyrza looked up from the packing-case she was

breaking open behind the counter. The next moment she gave a little

cry. She had just been thinking of Tom at Waterheel, wondering if

it was his dinner-time yet, and what Cookie had put in the stew; and

then she had lifted her eyes to see his broad, sunburnt face smiling

at her from the door, with his hair curling under his khaki cap, and

his sturdy figure looking at once stronger and slimmer in its uniform.

“Tom!” she gasped, and held out her hand across the counter—hoping....

But he had gone beyond the timid daring of those days. Before she

knew what was happening, he had marched boldly round behind the

counter and taken her in his arms.

14

Tom’s family gave a poor reception to his news that this was “last

leave” before going to France.

“I knew as that there telegram meant something tar’ble,” wailed Mrs.

Beatup. “It wurn’t fur naun I cried, Nell, though you did despise me.”

“I didn’t despise you,” said Nell; “you’re very unjust, mother.”

“Unjust, am I?—wud my boy going out to be slaughtered like a pig.”

“I aun’t going to be slaughtered, mother—not if I know it. It’s I

who’ll do the slaughtering.”

“You who’d go swummy at wringing a cockerel’s neck.... Reckon a

German ull taake some killing—want more’n a twist and a pull.”

“He’ll want no more’n I’ve got to give him. Now, doan’t you taake on

so, mother—there’s naun to vrother about. Maybe I woan’t be off so

soon after all—it’s only an idea that’s going round. And if I do go,

I aun’t afeard. I’ve a feeling as no harm ull come to me.”

“And I’ve a feeling as it will. Howsumdever ... I mun think as I’ve

got four children left ... and a hoame ... and a husband”—remembering

her blessings one by one.

Mus’ Beatup was inclined to be contemptuous.

“Wot fur are they sending you out now? You’ve bin training scarce

five month.”

“Many of the boys git less.”

“Maybe they do, wud Governmunt being wot it is. As if anyone wud know

cudn’t see as it taakes ten year to maake a looker.”

“Reckon things have to go quicker in the Army than on a farm. If we

all took ten years to git ready, the Bosches ud have us middling

soon.”

“They’d taake ten years, too, and it ud all go much better.”

“At that raate we’d never have done, surelye.”

“And wot maakes you think as we’ll ever have done, as things are?...

Go forrard five mile in a year, and it’ll be two hundred years afore

we git to the Kayser’s royal palace. You see ’em all fighting around

a farm as it wur the Tower of Lunnon—their objective, they call it.

If Worge wur an objective it ud taake the Germans fifteen month to

git into it, and we’d taake another fifteen month to git ’em out; and

then they’d git in agaun, and it ud go on lik that till the plaace

wur in shards. I tell you this aun’t a hurrying sort of war, and ull

be won by them wot lives longest.”

Tom was impressed. “Seemingly you know more about it than I do.”

“I read the paapers, and reckon I do a bit of thinking as well.”

“Reckon you do. Howsumdever, it’s my plaace to fight and not to

think—I leave that to men lik you.”

In spite of his respect for Mus’ Beatup as a military tactician, he

was a bit disgusted with him as a farmer. A searching of the farm

accounts and an examination of the shame-faced Harry revealed a

state of affairs even more depressing than he had looked for. The

harvest had been mismanaged, the oats having been allowed to stand

too long, and a quantity of seed had been lost. The blight had got

into the hops owing to insufficient spraying, and two sheep had

died of bronchitis. Tom was at first inclined to be angry. Harry

acknowledged having played truant on one or two important occasions,

though he insisted, whiningly, that he had worked “lik ten black

slaves” for most of the summer. If he had always been on the spot,

the aberrations of Mus’ Beatup and the laziness and pigheadedness of

Elphick and Juglery might have been counteracted to a certain degree.

Tom would have liked to have beaten Harry, just to teach him the

disadvantages of ratting in harvest-time, but he was now oddly loath

to exercise the old compulsory tyrannies. He saw, too, the pathos

of Harry’s youth, forced to play watch-dog to middle-aged vice and

ancient inefficiency.

So, instead of being angry, he was just patient. He went out a good

deal during his leave, and the family whispered, “Thyrza Honey”;

but in the afternoons and soft evenings, when all the fields were

rusty in the harvest moon, he would walk with Harry over the farm,

and point out to him the work that would have soon to be done in the

way of sowings and diggings, with never a word of reproach for the

pitiable deeds of the summer.

“It aun’t too late to try fur a catch crop or two—harrow some clover

on the Volunteer stubble, and if you sow early and late red, and late

white, you’ll git cuttings right on into June. I wudn’t have potato

oats agaun fur the Street field—their rootses git too thick fur

clays, and they shed seed unaccountable if you leave them standing a

day over their due. Try Sandy oat this fall—and Flemish oat is good

in clays, I’ve heard tell. And the two-acre shud go into potash next

year—wurzels or swedes, or maybe potatoes.”

“I’ll never kip all this in my head, Tom.”

“You’ll justabout have to, sonny. I tell you this farm’s your job,

saum as mine’s soldiering. I’m going to fight fur Worge, and you’ve

got to back me up and see as Worge is kept going fur me to fight fur.”

“I’ll do my best, surelye—but you must write, Tom, and maake me mind

it all. Write and say, ‘This week you must drill the two-acre’—or

‘To-morrow’s the day to start thinning,’ or ‘Maake a strong furrer

this frost,’ so’s I shan’t disremember the lot.”

“I’ll send you a postcard at whiles, to kip you up to it; but I

shan’t be here to see how things are going, so you’ll have to trust

to your own gumption. And doan’t go agaunst faather when he’s sober,

fur he’s a clever chap and knows wot he’s doing; but when he’s tight

doan’t let him meddle, for he’s unaccountable contrary and ud pot a

harvest just to spite the Government. As fur Juglery and Elphick,

they’ve got no more sense nor roots, so doan’t you ever be asking wot

to do of them.”

Harry was impressed by all this counsel. But perhaps its real

weight lay in Tom’s new glamour, his khaki uniform, his occasional

jauntiness, his military slang and tales of camp life. He had always

been fond of his brother and liked him for a good fellow; but now

he went a step further, and admired him. There was something about

this quiet, neat, efficient young soldier, which had been lacking

in good-natured old Tom, with his dirty skin and sloppy corduroys.

Without quite understanding what it was, or how it had come there,

Harry was both sensible and envious of it. He felt that he would like

to be a soldier too, wear khaki, carry mysterious tools, and have

before him a dim, glorious adventure called France. But since these

things were not to be, a kind of rudimentary hero-worship led him to

make plans for “carrying on” at home. He would not disappoint this

soldier brother, who had exalted his work on the farm by speaking of

it as part of the adventure on which he was so much more glamorously

engaged. He had never seen it in that light before—for that matter,

neither had Tom. But now he would try to do his share—back Tom up, as

he had said. Harry’s nature was more ardent than his brother’s, more

romantic in its clay-thickened way, and on this ardour and romance

Tom had unconsciously built. There was now a chance of his memory

calling louder than Senlac Fair or the wood by Cade Street.

15

Tom did not tell his family about Thyrza Honey till the morning he

left Sunday Street. He knew they were curious, but he felt that he

would rather face their curiosity than their comments. They were sure

to be pleased at the news from a material standpoint, but against

that he had to balance the fact that the women—except, perhaps,

Ivy—did not like Thyrza, and that his mother still looked upon him

as a little boy, too young to think of marrying. He had looked upon

himself in that light six months ago—it was queer how much older he

felt now. Surely it did not make you all that much older to have the

sergeant howling at you, or to sleep with fifty men in a hut, or to

eat stew out of a dixey.... Yet, the fact remained, that in April he

had felt a boy and in September he felt a man; and, more—he was a

man; for Thyrza had accepted him as her lover, and had promised to

let him fulfil his manhood as her husband.

At present he was content with the first stage. Each day held a new

wonder. Yet he did nothing more wonderful than sit with her in

the little room behind the shop—the sanctuary into which he had so

often peeped in the old days, wondering what Thyrza thought and did

there in the humming firelight, with her kettle and her cat and her

account-books in which all the little traffic of the shop was entered

with sucked pencil and puckered brows.

He would sit by her and hold her hand, so large and soft and firm,

turning it over and over in his own, kissing it back and palm. Her

manner was a little motherly, for she was touched by the fact that

she was the first woman he had ever held or kissed, while her own

experience was deep and bitter. She was older than he was too, and,

as she thought, sharper at the uptake, though certainly he had

improved in this of late. She would hold him in her arms, with his

head against her breast, held between her heart and her elbow, as she

had for a few short minutes held the little baby who died.... She

never asked herself why she loved him so much better than the big,

strong, hairy Bourner, or than Hearsfield, whose hands were white

as a gentleman’s; all she knew was that she loved him, and that she

pitied him for the fond no-reason that he loved her and through her

was learning his first lessons in woman and love.

Then before he went home she would make him tea, or supper perhaps,

and herself gain new sweet experience in ministering to the material

wants of the man whose spirit she held. No meal prepared for Honey

had been like this, and they would sit over it cosily together, all

the more conscious of their union when the little buzzing bell of the

shop divided them, and Tom, new privileged, would sit in the back

room listening to Thyrza serving Putlands or Sindens or Bourners or

Hubbles, and getting rid of them as quickly as she could—which, it

must be confessed, was not very quick, for she was far too soft and

kind to turn anyone out who seemed to want to stay. Then the bell

which had divided them would bring them together again as it rang

behind the departing shopper, and Thyrza would come back to the lover

waiting for her in the red twilight beside the singing fire.

They did not go out together till the last evening. Then he came to

tea and stayed to supper, and in the interval they went into the lane

just as the dusk came stealing up the sky. Thyrza had objected at

first.

“We closed early yesterday, and folk ull be vexed if they find us

shut this evenun too.”

“Folk be hemmed! This is my last evenun, and I’m going to taake you

where we can’t hear that tedious liddle bell of yourn.”

“Doan’t miscall my bell, fur it rings when you come to see me. In the

old days when it rang, I used to say to myself, ‘Is that Tom?’ and

look through the winder, hoping....”

“Thyrza, did you love me then?”

“Reckon I did. But I doan’t know as I ever thought much about it, fur

I maade sure as at the raate you wur going it ud be a dunnamany years

afore you started courting praaperly.”

“I’m glad I didn’t wait, surelye. Oh, liddle creature, you can’t know

wot this week’s bin to me. I’ll go out to France feeling ... feeling

... I can’t tell you wot I feel, but it’s as if I wur leaving part

of myself behind, and that the part I left behind wur helping and

backing up the part out there ... it sounds unaccountable silly when

I say it, but it’s wot I’ve got in my heart.”

They were in the big pasture meadow near Little Worge, sitting by the

willow-pond which lay cupped against the lane. It was the first and

the last landmark in Sunday Street—the thick scummed water with the

grey trees dipping their leaves in its stillness. To-day a soft wind

rustled in them, blowing from the west, and scarcely louder than the

wind throbbed the distant guns, the beating of that racked far-off

heart whose terrible secrets Tom was soon to know. Thyrza shuffled

against his side as they sat on the grass.

“Oh, Tom—hear the guns? It’s tar’ble to think of you out there.”

“I’ll come back, surelye.”

“Do you feel as if you will?”

“Surelye—since I’ve left half myself behind.”

Her arms stole round him, and the beating of that far-away heart was

drowned in the beating of his under her cheek.

A pale cowslip light was in the sky, creeping over the fields,

putting yellower tints into Thyrza’s butter skin and a web of gold

over her ashen hair. Gradually it seemed to flower in the dusk till

all the field was lit up ... the mounds and molehills with hollows

scooped darkly against the light, the pond like thick yellow glass,

the willows like drooping flame. The picture became graven on Tom’s

heart—the grey sky blooming with light and shedding it down on the

field of the mounds and molehills, the pond, the willows, and the

woman drowsing in his arms—so that when later in France he thought

of England, he thought of it only as that willow-pond at the opening

of Sunday Street, and Thyrza Honey lying heavy and warm and sweet

against his breast.

“Hold me close, Tom, dearie—hold me close, so’s I doan’t hear the

war. Aun’t it queer how our hearts beat louder than the guns!...”