1
Tom did not come home till March, and the baby had been christened
before he arrived, Thyrza having proved too soft to resist
ecclesiastical pressure. But her husband was not so disappointed as
she had feared. Indeed, Tom’s whole attitude towards the miracle she
had wrought in his absence puzzled her a little.
She had met him at the cottage door with the baby in her arms, and
after their first greeting he had said:
“Put the baby down, Thyrza. I can’t kiss you praaperly.” Then, with
his face hidden in her neck, had murmured: “It’s my wife I want.”
“But aun’t you justabout pleased wud your boy, dear?” she asked him
later, when they were having tea and eggs in a cosy blur of firelight
and sunshine.
“Reckon I am. But babies are unaccountable ugly; and as fur hoalding
him, I’d sooner nuss a dud shell.”
“He aun’t ugly, Tom; everyone says he’s a justabout lovely child—and
weighs near fourteen pounds, which is valiant fur a boy of his
months.”
“Maybe—I know naun of babies. But you, Thyrza ... reckon you’re
justabout the waonder of the world to me.”
Her eyes filled with tears as she felt his hand groping for hers on
her knees under the table.
“Reckon you’re just another baby,” she said tenderly. “And I’m the
mother of you both.”
2
But Tom learned to be father as well as husband in the days that
followed—perhaps it was the joys of his husbandhood which woke
the fatherhood in him. It did not quicken in a blinding flash, as
motherhood had come to Thyrza when her baby was first laid in her
arms, but grew and throve in his daily contact with the little bit of
helplessness and hope which he and Thyrza had made between them. It
seemed to develop out of and be part of his love for her, and in time
it seemed to have a tender, mellowing effect on that love, making
it less anxious and passionate, more selfless, more sweet, more
friendly....
Those days were different from the days they had spent together after
their marriage. They never went for long walks now, but stopped
in their little garden at the back of the cottage, where crocuses
splashed the grass with purple and egg-yellow, and celandines crept
in under the hedge from the fields of Egypt Farm. Here in the warm
spring sunshine Thyrza would sit, rocking the baby’s cradle with her
foot, while she talked to Tom in her sweet, drawly voice, of the
little trades and doings of the past year. Every now and then the
shop-bell would ring through the cottage, and she would go off to
serve and gossip, leaving baby in his father’s care.... “And doan’t
you dance him, Tom, or he’ll be sick.” For Tom was bolder now, and
took perilous liberties with young William, just as now, in his third
year of soldiering, he had begun to take them with the dud to which
he had compared him.... “Reckon he’ll start fizzing a bit before he
goes off.”
In the evenings, when the child was asleep in the cradle beside their
bed, they would go across the road to the willow-pond, and sit or
stroll there in the March dusk. Those were wonderful days of spring,
a March which was almost May, with sweet slumberous winds, so thick
and hazy that the grumble of the unceasing guns was lost in them,
and the War’s heart-beat never broke the meadow’s stillness. Soft
primrose fogs trailed over Horse Eye Marshes under the rising stars,
and away beyond them on the sea a siren crooned, like the voice of
the twilight and the deep.... When the sky was dark round the big
stars, and Orion’s sword hung above Molash Woods, they would go in
to their supper in the lamplight, to the tender, intimate talk of
their evening hours, and then up, with big reeling shadows moving
before them on beam and plaster in the candlelight, to the dim
spring-smelling room where their baby slept, and where Thyrza would
sleep with her hair spread on the pillow like a bed of celandines,
and Tom with his brown, war-calloused hand in the soft clasp of hers,
and his head in the hollow of her breast.
Tom, of course, paid many visits to his family at Worge. He found
Mus’ Beatup an invalid in the kitchen, his leg propped on a chair
before him. Owing to his constitution it had mended slowly, but four
months of forced soberness had worked a wonderful result in toning up
his whole body, so that in spite of his illness his eye was brighter,
his hand steadier and his voice clearer than at any time in Tom’s
memory. Unfortunately, the boredom and privations of his state had
only increased that “objectiousness” of disposition which Mrs. Beatup
had deplored, and Tom had to sit and listen to long harangues, in
which the War, the Christian Religion, God, Govunmunt, Monogamy, and
War Agricultural Committees were toppled together in a common ruin.
Nell no longer argued with him, his flicks and cuts had no power to
wound, and he soon gave up trying to stir her into the little furies
which had led to so many rousing arguments. It was queer how she
had changed.... Her chief arguments were with her mother, who seemed
to think that the ceremony of marriage was bound automatically to
create an abstract love of housekeeping in the female breast. She was
astonished to find that Nell had now no greater love for making beds
and washing dishes than in the days of her spinsterhood.
“I never heard of a married woman as cudn’t maake a sago pudden,” she
said to Tom.
“She’d maake it fur her husband quick enough,” said Tom with a grin.
“Well, Steve’s here most Sundays, and she’s never maade him naun but
a ginger-cake, and she used to maake that before she wur wed.”
“Wait till she’s got a liddle home of her own ... that’ll be all the
difference, woan’t it, Nell?”
Nell smiled faintly.
“Would you believe it, Tom?” said Mrs. Beatup, “but when we want a
suet pudden now we’ve got to git it off a meat-card.”
“We’ve heard out there as all you civvies wur on rations—and Mus’
Archie one day he got the platoon for a bit of _parlez-voo_ and toald
us as how you wurn’t starved, as so many chaps had letters from their
wives, saying as they cud git naun to eat.”
“Not starved! That’s valiant. And wot does Mus’ Archie know about it?
Seemingly you doan’t know wot war is out there wud all your tea and
your butter and your meat. Reckon there’ll never be peace as long as
soldiering’s the only job you can git fed at.”
“Well, you’ve guv me an unaccountable good tea fur a starving family.
And now I’ll be off and see Harry about the farm.”
Worge was in the midst of its spring sowings, and Harry spent
his long days in the fields whose harvest he would not see. The
Volunteer field was in potash now, dug for potatoes, and there were
six more acres of potatoes over by the Sunk.
“They say as how a hunderd acres of potatoes ull feed four hunderd
people fur a year,” he said to Tom—“and yit thur’s always summat
unaccountable mean about a spud.”
Tom laughed. “You’ve done valiant, Harry.” Now that his brother’s
adventure had justified itself, he had abandoned a good deal of his
croaking attitude. Besides, if things really were getting scarce at
home ... he wouldn’t like to think of Thyrza and the baby....
“I’ve done my best,” said Harry moodily, “but it’s over now. Reckon
I’ll be called up in two months’ time.”
“Who’d have thought it!—you eighteen!—and the liddle skinny limb of
wickedness you wur when I went away. I’d never have believed it, if
you’d toald me that in two year you’d have maade more of Worge than I
in five.”
“Father wants me to appeal; but it ud never do, I reckon. You cudn’t
git off, so I’m not lik to.”
“And it wouldn’t be praaper, nuther,” said Tom, rather huffily. “You
wud a brother in the Sussex! Farming’s all very well, Harry, but
soldiering’s better. I didn’t think it myself at one time, but now I
know different. A farm’s hemmed liddle use if Kayser Bill gits his
perishing plaace in the sun. Besides, the praaper job fur a praaper
Sussex chap is along of other Sussex chaps, fighting fur their farms.
That’s whur I’d lik my old brother to be, and whur he’d like to be
himself, I reckon.”
“I shudn’t,” said Harry, “any more than you did at fust.”
“I aun’t maaking out as I enjoy it—so you needn’t jump at me lik
that. The chap who tells you he enjoys it out thur, reckon he taakes
you fur a middling thick ’un, or he’s middling thick himself. But wot
I say is, that it’s the praaper plaace fur a Sussex chap to be. Ask
me wot I enjoy, and I’ll tell you”—and Tom jerked his pipe-stem over
the ribbed hump of the field towards the cottages of Sunday Street,
stewing like apples in the sunshine. “My fancy’s a liddle hoame of
my own, and a wife and child in it, and my own bit of ground outside
the door; and when we’ve wound up the watch on the Rhine, reckon I’ll
be justabout glad to taake my coat off and sit in the sun and see my
liddle ’un playing raound—and be shut of all that tedious hell wot’s
over thur, Harry, acrost Horse Eye and the Channel, if folks at home
only knew it—which seemingly they doan’t ... and I’m middling glad
they doan’t, surelye.”
Harry was impressed, and a little ashamed.
“Never think as I aun’t willing, Tom. I’m willing enough, though I’d
grown so unaccountable set on the new ploughs. Howsumdever, I’ve got
things started like, and Zacky, maybe, when I’m gone, he’ll pull to
and carry on, saum as I did; and father, he’s twice the head he had
afore he bruk his leg and cudn’t git his drink. Seemingly, they’ll do
valiant wudout me, and I ... well, I’ve come to love these fields so
middling dear that if one day I find I’ve got to die fur them, reckon
I shudn’t ought to mind much.”
3
“I must go and see Mus’ Sumption,” said Tom to Thyrza. He said it
several times before he went, for the days swam in a golden fog over
his home, shutting him into enchanted ground. It was hard to break
out of it even to go to Worge, and he found himself shelving the
thought of leaving for two hours of worse company the little garden
where the daffodils followed the crocuses, the shop all stuffy with
the smell of tea and candles, the bluish-whiteness of the little
sag-roofed rooms, and his wife and child, who were not so much
figures in the frame of it all as an essence, a sunshine soaking
through it.... However, Thyrza kept him to his word.
“I’m tedious sorry fur Mus’ Sumption—he looks that worn and wild.
Maybe you cud give him news of Jerry.”
“No good news.”
“Well, go up and have a chat wud the pore soul. Reckon he’ll be
mighty glad to see you, and you’re sure to think of summat comforting
to say.”
So Tom went, one evening after tea. He found the minister in his
faded threadbare room at the Horselunges, writing the letter which
every week he dropped into the post-box at Brownbread Street, and
generally heard no more of. The evening sun poured angrily on his
stooped grey head, and made the room warm and stuffy without the
expense of a fire. The old, old cat sat sulkily before the empty
grate, and the white mice tapped with little pink hands on the glass
front of their cage. The thrush had been dead some months.
“Hello, Tom. This is kind of you, lad,” and Mr. Sumption sprang up in
hearty welcome, shaking Tom by the hand, and actually tipping the cat
out of the armchair so that his visitor might be comfortably seated.
Tom sat down and pulled out his pipe, and for some minutes they edged
and skated about on general topics. Then the minister asked suddenly—
“And how did you leave Jerry?”
“Valiant”—certainly Jeremiah Meridian Sumption was a hardy, healthy
little beggar.
But Mr. Sumption was not deceived.
“Valiant in body, maybe. But, Tom, I fear for his immortal soul.”
Tom did not know wat to say. He had never before seen the minister
without his glorious pretence of faith in his son.
“It’s strange,” continued Mr. Sumption, “but from his birth that boy
was seemingly marked out by Satan. Maybe it was the bad blood of the
Rossarmescroes or Hearns; his mother was the sweetest, loveliest soul
that ever slept under a bush; but there’s no denying that the Hearns’
blood is bad blood—roving, thieving, lusting, Satanic blood—and he’s
got it in him, has my boy, more than he’s got the decent blood of my
fathers.”
“Has he written to you lately?”
“Oh, he writes now and again. He’s fond of me. But he doesn’t sound
happy. Then Bill Putland, when he came home to get married, he told
me——”
There was silence, and Tom fidgeted.
“He told me as Jerry had got hold of a French girl in one of the
towns—a bad lot, seemingly.”
“He’ll get over it,” said Tom. “Reckon he can’t have much love fur
such a critter.”
“You knew of it too, then?”
“Oh, we’ve all heard. He got First Field Punishment on her account,
fur——”
“Go on.”
“Thur’s naun to say. I guess she’s bad all through. Some of these
girls, they’re bits of stuff as you might say, but they’d never
kip a man off his duty or git him into trouble on their account.
Howsumdever, the wuss she is the sooner he’s lik to git shut of her.”
Mr. Sumption groaned.
“If only he could have married your sister Ivy!”
“Ivy aun’t to blame.”
“No—she’s not. I mustn’t be unjust. She treated him fair and square
all through; he says it himself. But, Tom, it’s terrible to think
that one human creature’s got the power to give another to Satan, and
no blame attached to either.”
“Maybe Jerry wur Satan’s before he wur Ivy’s,” said Tom sharply; then
felt ashamed as he met the minister’s eyes with their tortured glow.
“Maybe you’re right. This is Satan’s hour. He’s got us all for a
season, and this War is his last kick before the Angel of the Lord
chains him down in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.
These are the days of which the Scripture saith, that unless the Lord
should shorten them for the Elect’s sake, no man could be saved.”
“I guess we’ve nearly done the Lord’s job. The perishers are even
more fed up than us, which is putting it strong. Let ’em start this
Big Push of theirn as thur’s bin such a talk about. Doan’t you
vrother about Jerry, Mus’ Sumption—he’ll be shut of this girl before
long, and you’ll git him back here and wed him to a good soul as ull
do better fur him than Ivy.”
Mr. Sumption shook his head.
“This is the war which shall end the world.”
“Reckon I aun’t going out there, away from my wife and child and
home, all among the whizz-bangs and the coal-boxes, and git all over
mud and lice, jest to help on the end of the world. This world’s good
enough fur me, and I hope it’ll go on a bit longer after peace is
signed, so as I’ll git a chance of enjoying it.”
“And they shall reign with Him a thousand years.”
Tom was a little weary of Mr. Sumption in this mood; however, he felt
sorry for him, and let him run on.
“You must be blind indeed,” continued the minister, “if you don’t
see how the Scriptures have been fulfilled—nation against nation and
kingdom against kingdom, and the Holy City given back to the Jews,
and the sun turned to darkness with the clouds of poisoned gas, and
the moon to blood ... the blood of the poor souls that are killed in
moonlight air-raids....”
Tom knocked out his pipe.
“Then at last”—and the minister’s eye kindled and his whole sunburnt
face glowed with the mixed fires of hope and fanaticism—“the sign of
the Son of Man shall appear in the heavens, and He shall come again
in power and great glory. Even so, come, Lord Jesus—but come before
our hearts are all broken. What’s the use of chaining up the Dragon
in the Lake if he’s already devoured the world? Shorten these days,
for the Elect’s sake—save us from the burning, fiery furnace which is
making frizzle of our bones and cinders of our hearts.”
He suddenly dropped his head between his hands. Tom felt a bit
upset. He had again and again heard all this in chapel, but it was
embarrassing and rather alarming to have it coming from the next
chair.
“Reckon you mind this War more’n I do,” he remarked lamely.
“Because to you it is just war—while to me it’s Judgment. This is the
day of which the Prophet spoke, the day that shall burn as an oven,
and our sons and daughters shall burn as tow.... Bless you, young
chap! there have been other wars—the country’s full of their dead
names ... there were two lakes of blood up at Senlac.... But this
war, it’s the End, it’s Doomsday. Now it shall be proved indeed that
Christ died for the Elect, for all save the Elect shall perish. Tom,
I have a terrible fear that I shall have to stand by and see my boy
perish.”
“Oh, he’ll pull through right enough—give him his head and he’ll come
to his senses afore long.”
“I’m afraid not.” Mr. Sumption rose and began walking up and down
the room, his hands clasped behind him. The dipping sun poured over
his burly figure, showing up in its beautiful merciless beam the
seediness of his coat and the worn hollows and graven lines of his
face. “I’m afraid not, Tom Beatup. I’m afraid I’ll have to stand by
and see my boy damned. I’ll stand among the sheep and see him among
the goats. There’s no good trying to job myself into thinking he’s
one of the Elect—he knows he isn’t, and I know it. Whereas I have
Assurance—I’ve had it a dunnamany years. Between us two there is a
great gulf fixed. I’ll have to dwell for ever in Mount Sion, in the
general assembly and church of the firstborn, and see him for ever
across the gulf, in hell.”
“Then reckon you’ll be in hell yourself.”
“It seems like it. But the ways of the Lord are past finding out....
And I would willingly give my soul for Jerry’s—the soul the Lord has
damned from the womb....”
Tom stood up. He felt he could not stand any more of this.
“Seemingly your religion aun’t much of a comfort to you.... Well, I
must be going now.”
“You’ll come again?”
“Reckon I will, if you’re lonesome.”
“And look here, Tom; you won’t say a word to other folk of what I’ve
spoken—about Jerry, I mean. It ud never do if the parish came to
think that he was getting into bad ways.”
“I’ll say naun—trust me. Reckon Jerry’s middling lucky to have you
stick by him as you do.”
“Jerry once said he sometimes felt as if there was only me between
him and hell. Seemingly I’m the only friend he’s got.”
Tom felt very sorry for Mr. Sumption. He told Thyrza that he thought
he must be getting queer with his troubles, and Thyrza immediately
planned to take the baby to see him; and a day or two later they
asked him down to the shop for the afternoon, and had the pleasure
of seeing him momentarily forget his troubles in a good tea. “Reckon
the poor soul thinks a lot of his inside,” said Thyrza, “and doan’t
always git enough to fill it with.”
4
The last days of Tom’s fortnight seemed to rush by in spate; they
blew before the March wind like the dust. Thyrza hurried on her
little preparations for his departure—she was making him new shirts,
and with loving hands repairing all of his that was frayed and worn,
from his shirt to his soul.... For even Tom’s simple soul had been
touched by the blight of war, and there was a look at the back of
his eyes which came from things he never spoke of ... things he had
seen out there in the land of horrors, which the folk at home did not
realise—and he was unaccountable glad they did not. Thyrza’s love had
driven that look to the back of his eyes and those memories to the
back of his heart, though probably she would never be able to drive
either the look or the memories quite away. Such things were now the
lot of boys....
He still went occasionally to Worge, and sat with his father and
mother in the kitchen, or gave Harry a hand on the farm. He persuaded
Mus’ Beatup to engage a lad for cow and stable work, so that his
brother’s burden was made lighter. One day Ivy came over with
Sergeant Staples. The slow formalities of his discharge were crawling
on, and she hoped to be married and to sail for Canada before the
summer was out. It struck Tom that she had sweetened and sobered
since he saw her last. Rumours of her affair with Seagrim had reached
him, and he was glad to have her settled down. “Ricky’s a valiant
pal,” she said once, and the words struck the difference between her
love for him and the love she had had for Seagrim, and would have
explained, if anyone had cared for an explanation, the comparative
ease and quickness with which she had turned from one to the other.
Seagrim had never been a pal—he had been a spell, a marvel, a magic
that would never come back, a wonder which a woman’s heart must know
but can seldom keep. Ricky, with his red hair and grinning monkeyish
face, would never throw over Ivy’s world the glamour of those weeks
with Seagrim, he would never transfigure the earth or turn pots to
gold.... On the other hand, as Ivy said, he was better to jog along
with, and she was certainly born for the ardours and endurances of
a colonial’s wife—“So that’s settled and done with,” she thought to
herself with a contented sigh—“and I reckon I’m a middling lucky
girl. It’s queer how Nell and me have seemingly done just the
saum—lost our hearts to one man and then gone and married another.
But I kept my head and did it sensible, while she, reckon she lost
hers and did it unsensible. Poor Nell! ... but I told her straight as
Kadwell wur a swine.”
Nell had left the farm about four days after Tom’s return. Her
husband had suddenly claimed her, and had fetched her away to spend
his last leave with him in London. He expected to go to France in
a week or two now. Tom did not dislike his new brother-in-law;
he thought him a “good feller,” and considered him wonderfully
forbearing with Nell when she cried on saying good-bye to her mother,
and went away with her pretty face all marbled and blotched with
tears.
“I’ve got no patience wud girls wot taake on them silly maidenish
airs,” he said to Thyrza. “You never cried when you caum to me,
surelye.”
“I’d no mother to say good-bye to. Some girls always cry when they
say good-bye to their mothers.”
“Nell never used to be so set on mother in the oald times.”
“But it’s different now—it always is,” said Thyrza wisely—“that’s
why some folks ud sooner have a darter than a son. When a son goes
marrying he turns away from his parents, but a girl, the more she
loves outside the more she loves at home.”
Tom pondered her words, and found himself beginning to feel a little
guilty.
“Maybe you’re right. I hope Will woan’t go and disremember us when he
weds.”
“Reckon he will,” said Thyrza—“it’s only nature.”
Tom went up to Worge every evening till the end of his leave.
5
The last evening came, and Tom’s good-byes.
“Reckon it’s always ‘good-bye’ now,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Good-bye to
Ivy, good-bye to Nell, good-bye to Tom—sims as if, as if that ward ud
git lik my oald broom, wore out from overuse.”
“Thur’d be no good-byes if thur hadn’t bin howdy-dos fust. So cheer
up, mother, and we’ll be saying howdy-do agaun before Michaelmas.”
“And then good-bye. Oh, Tom, when ull this tedious war have done?”
“When it’s finished. Doan’t you fret over that, mother—reckon that
aun’t your job.”
“I wish it ud have done, though, before our hearts are broke.”
Nell was expected home that evening, and Mrs. Beatup persuaded Tom to
wait for her. He spent the interval going over the farm with Harry,
and giving last advice, though it was astonishing how firm on his
legs his brother now stood. He also took his chance of a straight
talk with Zacky.
“Reckon you’re growing up lik a young colt, and you’ll have to taake
your turn now—step into Harry’s plaace saum as he stepped into mine.”
Zacky’s besetting sin was not a lust for adventure in woods
and distant fields; he moved in a more humdrum circle of
dereliction—marbles and conkers and worms and string. However, Tom
discovered that he had a passion for “taking things to pieces” and
hoped to inspire him to zeal over the new mechanical reaper which was
that year to be the wonder of Worge’s harvest.
To everyone’s disappointment, Nell did not arrive in a cab. She
came on foot from Senlac station, leaving her box to follow by the
carrier. Mrs. Beatup felt that Tom had been cheated, on his last day
at home, of a fine spectacular entertainment, and was inclined to be
peevish with Nell on his account.
“Reckon it wurn’t your husband who told you to walk six mile in the
dust.”
“No—but it’s such a beautiful evening, and I felt I wanted the fresh
air after London.”
She looked worn and fagged, as she sat down by the fire, spreading
out her pale hands to the flames to warm.
Mrs. Beatup sniffed.
“Reckon thur’s more air-raids than air in London,” said Tom—“Ha! ha!”
and they all laughed at the joke.
“But they dudn’t have naun while Nell was there,” said Mrs. Beatup,
continuing her grumble. “Nell, how dud you lik the Strand Paliss
Hotel?”
“Oh, pretty fair—it was very grand, but a great big barrack like that
makes my head turn round.”
“How big was it?” asked Zacky. “As big as church?”
“Bigger a dunnamany times,” said Mrs. Beatup. “I’ve seen the Hotel
Metropoil in Brighton, and reckon you cud git the whole street into
it.”
“Did you have a fire in your bedroom?”
“No—there were hot pipes.”
“Hot pipes! How queer!—I shud feel as if I wur in a boiler.”
“And there was hot and cold water laid on.”
“Reckon you washed.”
“I had a bath.”
“In your room?”
“No—in a bathroom.”
“A real white bath in a bathroom!...” Mrs. Beatup was regaining
confidence in her daughter. “You’ll be gitting too grand fur us here.
They say as once you start taaking baths it’s like taaking drams, and
you can’t git shut of it. I’ll have to see if I can’t fix fur you to
have the wash-tub now and agaun.... Oh, you’ll find us plain folks
here.”
Nell did not speak; she was stooping over the fire and her spread
hands shook a little.
“Reckon she’s low,” said Mrs. Beatup in a hoarse whisper to Tom;
“she’s said good-bye to her man, and she’s vrothering lest he never
comes back. It’s always ‘good-bye’ fur her lik fur the rest of us.”
“It’ll have to be ‘good-bye’ fur me now, mother. I must be gitting
hoame.”
Mrs. Beatup stood up sorrowfully—
“Oh, Tom, I’ve a feeling as you’ll never come back.”
“You’ve always had that feeling, mother—and I’ve always come back,
surelye.”
“But maybe I’m right this time. They say as the Germans ull maake a
gurt push this Spring, and I reckon they’re sure to kill you if they
can.”
“Reckon they’ll have a try—and if my number’s up I mun go, and if it
aun’t, I mun stay. So thur’s no sense in vrothering.”
“You spik very differunt, Tom, from when you wur a lad.”
“I feel different, you can bet.”
“And yit it’s scarce two year agone since you wur naun but a boy, and
now you’re naun of a boy that I can see—you’re a married man and the
father of a child.”
“And whur’s the harm of it?—you needn’t look so glum.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her. Then he kissed his father—
“Good-bye, dad—you’ll be climbing fences afore I’m back, and—” in
a friendly whisper, “you kip away from that old Volunteer. See wot
gitting shut of the drink has maade you—you’re twice the man, fur
all your leg. You kip on wud it, faather. You’ve got a start like—it
ought to be easy now.”
“Kip on wud wot, my lad?—wud my leg, or the drink, or doing wudout
the drink? You doan’t spik clear and expressly—reckon you’re gitting
just a brutal soldier.”
“Maybe I am, Faather.”
“And you’ll never come raound me to kip teetotal when I think of them
Russians—all got shut of drink the fust month of the war, and then
went and bust up and ruined us. It’s bin proved as the war ull go
on a dunnamany years on account of them valiant teetotallers. If we
British all turn teetotal too, reckon as the war ull last fur ever.”
“Reckon you’ve got the brains!” said Tom, but not in quite the same
tone as he used to say it.
He said good-bye to Harry and Zacky, and to Nell—with a pat on her
shoulder and a “Doan’t you fret, my dear—he’ll come back.”
Mrs. Beatup went down with him to the end of the drive. She looked on
this as her privilege, and also had some hazy idea about giving him
good advice. All she could think of on the present occasion was to
“Kip sober and finish the war.”
“Wish that being my faather’s son maade it as easy to do one as it
does to do t’other. Now doan’t you start crying, fur I tell you I’ll
be back before you scarce know I’m a-gone.”
“It’s queer, Tom ... now, thur’s summat I want to know. Tell me—is a
wife better than a mother?”
“Better—but different. Doan’t you fear, mother. I’ll always want you.
Maybe I went and disremembered you and faather a bit after I wur
married, but now I’ve a youngster of my own it just shows me a liddle
bit of wot you feel ... and I’m sorry.”
He suddenly kissed her work-soiled, roughened hand, with its broken
nails and thick dull wedding-ring sunk into the gnarled finger.
“That’s wot they do to ladies in France.”
6
She watched him walk off down the Street, stopping to light his pipe
where the oast of Egypt Farm made a lee against the racing wind. Then
she walked slowly and heavily back to the house, planning a little
consolation for herself in listening to Nell’s tale of wonders.
But when she came to the kitchen she found that Nell had gone
upstairs—to wash, Mus’ Beatup told her. Moved by a spasm of
tenderness, she took the kettle from the fire and creaked off with it
to her daughter’s room.
Knocking at bedroom doors was a refinement unknown at Worge. Mrs.
Beatup accordingly burst in, to find Nell sitting on the bed,
with her face hidden in her hands. She had taken off her gown,
and sat arrayed in a short silk petticoat and an under-bodice of
a transparency that made her mother gasp; over her shoulders was
nothing but two pale-blue ribbons, against which her arms showed
yellowish-white and plumper than they used to be. So astonished was
Mrs. Beatup at this display that she scarcely noticed the hidden face.
“Nell, how fine! But you’ll catch your death—I wonder your husband
let you....” Her voice trailed off, for Nell had dropped her hands,
and her face was running with tears.
“My poor liddle girl!”—the mother’s heart went out in pity. She
put the kettle on the floor, and going over to the bed, sat down
on it with a great creaking of springs, and put her arms round
her daughter—at first rather gingerly, for fear of spoiling so
much elegance, then straining them closer, as Nell, melted into an
abandonment of weakness, began to sob against her breast.
“My poor liddle girl!... It’s unaccountable sad fur you. I know....
I know.... But doan’t you vrother, chick—he’ll come back. I’ve a
feeling as he’ll come back.”
A long shudder passed through Nell. Then suddenly she raised herself,
gripping her mother’s arms, while her eyes blazed through her tears.
“Oh, mother, mother ... don’t you see? ... it’s not that I’m afraid
he won’t come back ... it’s that I’m afraid he will.”
She threw herself down upon the pillow, sobbing with the accumulated
misery, humiliation, rage and dread of weeks. Mrs. Beatup stared at
her, dumbfounded.
“Nell—wot are you talking of? You doan’t want Steve to come back?”
“No—I hate him. I—I ... if he comes back ... and takes me away to be
my husband for good, I—I’ll kill myself.”
“Reckon you doan’t know what you’re saying. You loved him
unaccountable when you wur wed.”
“I didn’t love him ... not truly. And he’s killed the little love I
had.”
“But all the fine things he’s guv you....”
“Doan’t talk about them. They’re just part of the horribleness.”
“Then you’re telling me as you maade a mistake?”
“Reckon I did. Reckon my only chance now is that he won’t come back.”
She began to sob again, not tempestuously, but slowly and painfully,
gradually jerking to silence. A soft green twilight deepened in
the room, and the low gurgling calls of starlings trilled under
the eaves. The mother still sat on the bed-foot, staring at her
daughter, who now lay still, a pool of blue in the dusk with her silk
petticoat, her shoulders showing nacreous against the dead-white of
the pillow. Mrs. Beatup was stunned, her mind slowly adjusting itself
to the revelation that there was in war another tragedy besides the
tragedy of those who do not come back—and that is the tragedy of some
who do.
7
The dipping sun slanted over the fields from Stilliands Tower, and
made Tom Beatup’s khaki like a knight’s golden armour as he trudged
home. The sky was a spread pool of blue, full of light like water,
and moss-green in the east where it dipped towards the woods of
Senlac. Soft whorls of dust bowled down the lane before a fluttering,
racing wind, that smelled of primroses and rainy grass.
Tom heaved a deep sigh of well-being as he stopped to light his pipe.
To-morrow he would have left these sun-swamped sorrowless fields
and be back in the country where the earth was torn and gutted as
if by an earthquake, all scabbed and leprous as if diseased with
the putrefaction of its million dead—where the air rocked with
crashes, roars, rumbles, whizzes, caterwaulings, and reeked with
flowing stenches of dead bodies, blood, and hideous chemicals—where
any thornbush might conceal a sight of horror to freeze heart and
eyeballs ... and yet he could put the dread of it out of his mind,
and smile contentedly, and blink his eyes in the sun.
A few yards down the street his cottage showed its little misted
shape, while its windows shone like garnets in the western radiance,
and a tall column of wood-smoke rose behind it, blowing and bowing in
the adventurous wind, which brought him snatches of its perfume, with
the sweetness of wet banks and primroses and budding apple-boughs....
He knew that in the shop door Thyrza stood with the baby in her arms;
she would be waiting for him there with the sunshine swimming over
her white apron and purple gown, making the downy fluff on little
Will’s head to shine yellow as a duckling’s feathers. The thought
of wife and child was not cankered by the dread that he might never
see them again. The parting when it came would be terrible—he might
break down over it, as he had broken down before—but he had all a
soldier’s solid fatalism and scorn of the future, and was, perhaps,
strengthened by the inarticulate knowledge that if he were to die
to-morrow he died a man complete. From the lumbering, unawakened lad
of two years ago he had come to a perfect manhood, to be a husband
and father, fulfilling himself in a simple, natural way, with a
quickness and richness which could never have been if the war had not
seized him and forced him out of his old groove into its adventurous
paths. If he died, the war would but have taken away what it had
given—a man; for through it he had in a short time fulfilled a long
time, and at twenty-two could die in the old age of a complete,
unspotted life.
He passed under the sign of the Rifle Volunteer, straddling the road
in his green uniform, with his rifle and pot of beer—“Queer old
perisher,” thought Tom, looking up at him—“I shudn’t like to go over
the top in that rig.”
The Rifle Volunteer creaked noisily on his sign, as if the soldier of
bygone years challenged the soldier of to-day.
“I am the man armed for the War That Never Was, who marched and
drilled and camped to fight the French, who never came. And you are
the man unarmed for the War That Had To Be, who never drilled or
marched or camped to fight the Germans, who came and nearly drove you
off the earth.”
“Reckon he’d have bin most use a hunderd mile away,” scoffed Tom.
“I went of my free-will and you because you were fetched,” said the
Rifle Volunteer. “Two years ago I saw you walking down this road
under my patriotic legs, a wretched, drag-heel conscript.”
“He never fought in any war that I know of,” thought Tom, “and yit I
reckon thur used to be wars in these parts in the oald days. Minister
says the country’s full of thur naums. I doan’t know naun, surelye.”
The east wind blew from Senlac, sweet with the scent of the ash-trees
growing on the barrow where Saxon and Norman lay tumbled together in
the brotherhood of sleep.
“Here—when a great whinny moor rolled down from Anderida to the
sea, and Pevens Isle and Horse Isle were green in the bight of the
bay, and the family of the Heastings had finished building their
ham by the coast—here used to be the Lake of Blood, where hearts
were drowned. A red tun stands on it now, and good folk come to it
on market-days. Thus shall it be with all wars—out of the red blood
the red town, and under the green barrows friend and foe, tumbled
together in the brotherhood of sleep.”
The east wind like a Saxon ghost whistled against Tom’s neck.
“We fought as you did once—we hated the Norman as you hate the
German, yet look how peacefully we sleep together.”
“They must have been funny,” thought Tom, “those oald wars wud bows
and arrows.”
“Harold! Harold!... Rollo! Rollo!” cried the ghosts on the east wind
from Senlac.
“God save the Queen,” said the Rifle Volunteer.