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 manoeuvres 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!...”