' ' ;
Bonk. ^ l 1?
Gopight N°_ (~ cf*
COFYKIGirr DEPO
o$fr.
\
/ f
/
V
THE FOUR ROADS
SHEILA KAYE- SMITH
THE
FOUR ROADS
BY
SHEILA KAYE-SMITH
Author of “ Sussex Gorse,” “ The Challenge
to Sirius ” etc.
NEW
YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, ig2I,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
SEP 29 1921
Printed in the United States of America
S>CI.A627032
CONTENTS
CQ
2 T. '
PAGE
PART I
0 ^1 •*•••••••• ^
PART II
Jerry 66
PART III
Thyrza 1 15
PART IV
Ivy 153
PART V
Nell 21 1
PART VI
Baby 241
PART VII
Mr. Sumption 264
THE FOUR ROADS
THE
FOUR ROADS
PART I: TOM
I
FOUR roads in Sussex mark out a patch of country that from the wooded, sea-viewing hills behind Dallington slips down over fields and ponds and spinneys to the marshes of Hailsham and Horse Eye. The North Road, slatting the heights with its pale, hard streak, runs from far Rye to further Lewes, a road of adventures and distances, passing Woods Corner and Three Cups Corner, Punnetts Town and Cade Street, till it joins the London Road at Cross-in- Hand. The South Road borders the marsh, sometimes dry on the shelving ground above it, sometimes soggy on the marsh level, or perhaps sheeted with the over- flow of the Hurst Haven. It comes from Senlac and Hastings, and after skirting the flats, crosses the River Cuckmere, and runs tamely into Lewes, where all roads meet. The East Road is short and shaggy, running through many woods, from the North Road, which it joins at Woods Corner, to the throws at Bore- ham Street. Along this road is a string of farms — Cowlease, and Padgham, and Slivericks, mangy hold- ings for the most part, with copses running wild and fields of thistles, doors agape and walls atumble, and gable-ends stooping towards the ponds. The West
10
THE FOUR ROADS
Road is grass-grown, and in July St. John's wort and rest-harrow straggle in the ruts and make the dust smell sickly-sweet. It forks from the North Road at Punnetts Town, and runs through Rushlake Green and the Foul Mile to Hailsham in the south.
In the swale of the day, towards Easter-time, the Reverend Mr. Sumption was walking along the North Road from Dallington to Woods Corner. Dallington is the mother-parish of the country bounded by the Four Roads, though there is also a church at Brownbread Street, in charge of a curate. Mr. Sumption had no truck with either Rector or curate, for he was a min- ister of the Particular Baptists, who had a Bethel in Sunday Street, as the lane was called which linked the East Road with one that trailed in and out of farms and woods to the throws at Bucksteep Manor. Not that the sect of the Particular Baptists flourished in the parish of Dallington, but the Bethel being midway be- tween the church and the chapel, a fair congregation could be raked in on wet Sundays from the middle district, where doctrine, like most things in that land of farms, was swung by the weather.
The Reverend Mr. Sumption was a big, handsome man of forty-five, and wore a semi-clerical suit of greenish-black, with a shabby hat and a dirty collar. His face was brown, darkening round the jaw with a beard that wanted the razor twice a day, but did not get it. His eyes were dark and sunk deep in his head, gleaming like deep ditch-water under eyebrows as smooth and black as broom-pods. His teeth were very white, and his hair was grey and curly like a fleece.
As he walked he muttered to himself, and from time to time cracked the joints of his fingers with a loud rapping sound. These two habits helped form the local opinion that he was ‘'queer," an opinion bolstered by
TOM
11
more evidence than is usual in such cases. Women standing in their cottage doors noticed him twice halt and stoop — once to pick up a beetle which was labori- ously crawling from ditch to ditch, another time to pick up a swede dropped from some farm-cart. He carefully put the beetle on the opposite bank — “ Near squashed you, my dear, I did. But He Who created the creeping things upon the earth has preserved you from the boot of man.” The swede he dusted and crammed in his pocket. It was known throughout the hamlets — the “ Streets ” and “ Greens ” — of Dallington Parish that the minister was as poor as he was unblushing about his poverty.
The evening was very still. Eddies and swells of golden, watery light drifted over the hills round Dal- lington. In the north the sharp, wooded hill where Brightling stood was like a golden cone, and the kiln- shaped obelisk by Lobden’s House which marked the highest point of South-east Sussex was also burnished to rare metal. The scent of water, stagnant on fallen leaves, crept from the little woods where the primroses and windflowers smothered old stumps in their pale froth, or spattered with milky stars the young moss of the year. At Woods Corner the smoke of a turf fire was rising from the inn, and there was a smell of beer, too, as the minister passed the door, and turned down the East Road towards Slivericks. The fire and the beer both tempted him, for there was neither at the Horselunges, the tumble-down old cottage where he lodged in Sunday Street. But the former he looked on as an unmanly weakness, the latter as a snare of the devil, so he swung on, humming a metrical psalm.
About a hundred yards below Woods Corner, just where the road, washed stony by the rains, runs under the webbing of Slivericks oaks, he turned into a field,
12
THE FOUR ROADS
across which a footpath led a pale stripe towards Sun- day Street. From the top of the field he could look down over the whole sweep of country within the Four Roads, to the marshes and the sea, or rather the saf- fron and purple mists where the marshes and the sea lay together in enchantment. The yellow light wavered up to him from the sunset, over the woods of Forges and Harebeating; there was a sob of wind from Stil- liands Tower, and a gleam of half-hidden ponds in the spinneys by Puddledock. Mr. Sumption stood still and listened.
The air was full of sunset sounds — the lowing of cows came up with a mingled cuckoo’s cry, there was a tinkle of water behind him in the ditch, and the soft swish of wind in the trees and in the hedge, nodding ashes and sallows and oaks to and fro against the light- filled sky. On the wind was a mutter and pulse, a throb which seemed to be in it yet not of it, like the beating of a great heart, strangely remote from all the gleam and softness of spring sunset, pale fluttering cuckoo-flowers, and leaf-sweet pools of rain. A black- bird called from the copse by Cowlease Farm, and his song was as the voice of sunset and April and pooled rain . . . still the great distant heart throbbed on, its dim beats pulsing on the wind, aching on the sunset, over the fields of peaceful England dropping asleep in April.
The Reverend Mr. Sumption cracked his fingers loudly once or twice :
“ You hear ’em pretty plain to-night . . . the guns in France.”
2
He walked slowly on towards the stile, then stopped again and pulled a letter out of his pocket. It was a
TOM 13
dirty letter, written on cheap note-paper with a smudged in indelible pencil.
“ Dear Father/’ it ran, “ I reckon you’ll be wild when you get this. I have left the Fackory and have en- listed in the R. Sussex Regement. I could not stand that dirty tyke of Hubbard our forman any more. So I’ve gone, for I’m sick of this, and there’s no fear of my being fetched back, as I’m not satisfackory nor skilled in particular, and should have been fetched out anyhow all in good time, I reckon. So don’t go taking on about this, but please send me some fags, and I should like some chockolate, and get some of those kokernut buns at the shop with the crinkly paper round. It is a week since I did it, but I have been to the Y.M.C.A., and bought some Cherry-blossom boot-pollish and a packet of Players, and have no more money, and they said on a board ‘Write home to-night.’ Well, dear Father, I hope you will not take this too badly. Some good may come of it, for I am a soldier now and going to fight the Germans. Good-bye and don’t forget to send the things I said.
“ Your loving son,
“ Jerry.
“ (467572 Pvte. Sumption, 9th Co. 18th Bn. R. Suss. Rejiment.)”
The minister crushed the letter back into the pocket already bulging with the swede. “ O Lord,” he groaned, “why doth it please Thee to afflict Thy servant again? I reckon I’ve stood a lot on account of that boy, and there seems no end to it. He’s the prodigal son that never comes home, he’s the lo^t sheep that never gets into the fold, and yet he’s my child and the woman from Ihornden’s ...” His mutterings died down, for he heard footsteps behind him.
u
THE FOUR ROADS
A young man was crossing the field from Slivericks, a sturdy, stocky fellow, about five-and-a-half feet high, with leggings and corduroy riding-breeches, and a black coat which was a little too small for him and as he drew near sent out an odour of moth-killer — evidently some young farmer, unaccountably Sundified on a week-day evening.
“ Hullo, Tom,” said the minister.
“ Hullo, Mus’ Sumption.”
The boy stood aside for the older man to cross the stile. His head hung a little over the unaccustomed stiffness of his collar, and his eyes seemed full of rather painful thought. Mr. Sumption fumbled in his pockets, drew out the letter, the swede, a pencil without a point, a Testament, a squashed mass of chickweed, a tract, and finally a broken-backed cigarette, which he handed to Tom.
“ Bad news, I reckon ? ”
Tom nodded.
“ They woan’t let me off. I wur afeard they wouldn’t. You see, there’s faather and the boys left, and I couldn’t explain as how faather had bad habits. You can’t bite back lik that on your own kin.”
“ No, you can’t,” and Mr. Sumption carefully smoothed a dirty scrap of paper as he put it back in his pocket. “ By the way, my boy’s just joined up. I heard from him this morning. He’s in the Eighteenth Sussex — I shouldn’t wonder if you found yourselves together.”
” Lord, Mus’ Sumption! You doan’t tell me as he’s left the factory ? ”
“ Reckon he has. Thought he’d like to fight for his King and country. He was always a plucked ’un, and he couldn’t bear to see the lads going to the front with- out him.”
TOM 15
There was a gleam in the minister’s eyes, and he cracked his fingers loudly.
“ I’m proud of him — I’m proud of my boy. He’s done a fine thing, for of course he need never have gone. He’s been three years in munitions now, and him only twenty. He went up to Erith when he was a mere lad, no call for him to go, and now he’s joined up as a soldier when there was no call for him to go, neither.”
Tom looked impressed.
“ Maybe I ought to be feeling lik he does, but truth to tell it maakes me heavy-hearted to be leaving the farm just now.”
“ The Lord will provide.”
“ I’m none so sure o’ that, wud faather and his habits, and the boys so young and wild, and the girls wud their hearts in other things, and mother, poor soul, so un- sensible.”
“ Well, what does the farm matter? Beware lest it become Naboth’s vineyard unto you. Is this a time to buy cattle and vineyards and olive-yards? This is the day which the Prophet said should burn like an oven, and the proud, even the wicked, be as stubble. What’s your wretched farm? Think of the farms round Ypers and Dixmood, think of the farms round Rheims and Arrass — Stop!” and he seized Tom’s arm in his hard, restless fingers — “ Listen to those guns over in France. Perhaps every thud you hear means the end of a little farm.”
Tom stood dejectedly beside him, the broken-backed cigarette, for which the minister had unfortunately been unable to provide a light, hanging drearily from his teeth. The soft mutter and thud pulsed on. The sun was slowly foundering behind the woods of Bird-in-Eye, sending up great shafts and spines of flowery light into the sky which was now green as a meadow after rain.
16
THE FOUR ROADS
“ This war queers me,” he said, and his voice, low and thick as it was, like any Sussex countryman’s, yet was enough to drown the beating of that alien heart. “ I doan’t understand it. I can’t git the hang of it nohow.”
“ A lot of it queers me,” said Mr. Sumption, “ and I reckon that in many ways we’re all as godless as the Hun. It’s not only the Germans that shall burn like stubble — it’s us. The oven’s prepared for us as well as for them.”
They were walking together down steep fields, the ground dreamy with grey light, while before them, be- yond the sea, burned the great oven of the sunset, full of horns of flame.
“ I’m thinking of the farm,” continued Tom, his mind sticking to its first idea. “ I’m willing enough to go and fight for the farms in France and Belgium, but seems to me a Sussex farm’s worth two furrin’ ones. Worge aun’t a fine place, but it’s done well since I wur old enough to help faather — help him wud my head as well as my arms, I mean. Faather’s an unaccountable clever chap — you should just about hear him talk at the pub, and the books he’s read you’d never believe. But he’s got ways wot aun’t good for farming, and he needs some- body there to see as things doan’t slide when he can’t look after them himself.”
“ Can’t your brother Harry do anything? He must be nearly sixteen.”
“ Harry’s unaccountable wild-like. He’s more lik to git us into trouble than help us at all.”
“ Maybe your father will pull-to a bit when you’re gone and he sees things depend on him.”
“ Maybe he will, and maybe he woan’t. But you doan’t understand, Mus’ Sumption. You doan’t know wot it feels like to be took away from your work to help along a war as you didn’t ask for and don’t see the hang
TOM
17
of. Maybe you’d think different of the war if you had to fight in it, but being a minister of religion you aun’t ever likely to have to join up. I’m ready to go and do my share in putting chaps into the oven, as you say, but it’s no use or sense your telling me as it doan’t matter about the farm, for matter it does, and I’m un- accountable vrothered wud it all.”
He grunted, and spat out the fag. Mr. Sumption, taking offence at once, waved his arms like a black windmill.
“ Ho ! I don’t understand, don’t I ? with my only son just gone for a soldier. D you think you care for your dirty farm more than I care for my Jerry. D’you think I wouldn’t rather a hundred times go myself than that he should go? O Lord, that this boy should mock me! You’ll be safe enough, young Tom. You’ve only the Germans to fear, but my lad has to fear his own countrymen too. The army was not made for gipsy- women’s sons. My poor Jerry! . . . there in the ranks like a colt in harness. He’ll be sorry he’s done it to- morrow, and then they’ll kill him. . . . Oh, hold your tongue, Tom Beatup ! Here we are in Sunday Street.”
3
Sunday Street was the lane that linked up Font’s Green on the East Road with Bucksteep Manor at Four Throws. From the southern distance it looked like the street of a town, oddly flung across the hill — a streak of red houses, with the squat steeples of oasts, an illusion of shops and spires, crumbling on near approach into a few tumble-down cottages and the oasts of Egypt Farm. From the north you saw the chimneys first, high above the roofs like rabbits’ ears above their heads; then you tumbled suddenly upon the hamlet : the Bethel, the
18
THE FOUR ROADS
Horselunges, the shop, the inn whose sign was the Rifle Volunteer, the forge, the pond, the two farms — Worge and Egypt — with their cottages, and the farmstead of Little Worge sidling away towards Pont’s Green.
To-night it was fogged in the grey smoke of its own wood fires, with here and there on its windows the lemon green of the sky. It smelled faintly of wood- smoke, sweet mud and standing rain, of rot in lathes and tiles. The Horselunges, the cottage where the minister lodged, was the first house in the village after the forge. It stood opposite the Bethel, a brick, eight- eenth-century building with big gaunt windows staring blindly over the fields to Puddledock. The Bethel had been built in Georgian days when the Particular Bap- tists flourished in greater numbers round Sunday Street, and a saint of theirs had built it to “ the glory of God and in memory of my dear wife Susannah Odlarne, saved by Grace. For Many are called but Few are chosen.”
Mr. Sumption and Tom had walked the last of their way in silence. But the minister’s anger had fizzled out as quickly as it had kindled, and at the door of the forge he held out his hand very kindly to the bov.
“ Well, good-night to you, lad. I must look in and see Bourner here for a minute or two. I hope your mother won’t be much distressed at your news.”
•* Reckon she will, but it can’t be helped. . . . Funny, you doan’t hear the guns down here.”
“ No more you do, but they’re going it just the same — knocking away little farms.”
Tom nodded with a wry smile and walked off. The minister turned into the forge.
Mr. Sumption could never pass the forge, and the glow and roar of sparks from its chimney would call him over many a field, from Galleybird or Harebeating, or even
TOM 19
from the doors of sick people — if they were not very sick. He was a blacksmith's son.
His father had worked the smithy at the cross-roads by Bethersden in Kent, and Ezra Sumption had grown up in the smell of hoof -parings and the ring of smitten iron. His sketchy education finished, he had taken his place beside his father at the anvil — he had held the meek tasselled hoofs of the farm-horses, he had worked the great bellows that sent the flames roaring up the chimney like Judgment Day, he had swung the heavy smith's hammer with an arm that in a few years grew lustier than his dad's, and in time had come to cast as good iron and clap it on as surely as any smith in Kent.
But during his adolescence strange things had grown with his bulk and girth. Lonely and Bible-bred, he came to work strange dreams into the roaring furnace and clanging iron. In those sheeting, belching flames he came to see the presage of that day which should burn like an oven, the burning fiery furnace of Shad- rach, Meshach and Abed-nego, through which only those could walk unsinged who had with them the Son of God. When he swung the hammer above his head he swung God's judgment down on the molten iron, shaping out of its fiery torment a form of use. When the horse clumped out of the smithy with the new iron on his hoofs, he felt that there went a soul saved, a child of God passed through fire into service.
He became “ queer." He spoke his thoughts, and in time preached them to the men who brought their horses to be shod. His father jeered at him, his mother was afraid, but the minister of a neighbouring chapel took him up. He thought he had found a rustic saint. He invited young Sumption to his house, taught him, and encouraged him to enter the ministry. The parents were flattered by the pastor's notice, and he found little diffi-
20
THE FOUR ROADS
culty in persuading them to let their boy leave the forge and train as a minister of the Particular Baptists.
Rather bewildered and scared at the new life before him, young Ezra Sumption, comely, burly, shock-headed, brown-skinned as a mushroom in a wet field, passed into a training college of the sect, and emerged a full-blown pastor, with black clothes on his unwieldy limbs and a tongue for ever struggling with the niceties of English speech. He was a great disappointment to his benefactor, for the smith in him had triumphantly survived all gen- teel training and theological examinations ; he was to
all’ intents the same bov who had heard voices in the fire
*
and had preached to the carters. His manners and con- versation had slightly improved, and his imaginings had been given a dose of dogma, but his rough uncouthness, his “ queerness ” remained as before. He was an utter failure as assistant pastor in a chapel at Dover — the con- gregation was shocked by the violence and vulgarity of his forge-born similes, his Judgment Day appeals, all the spate and fume of the old Doomsday doctrines which were fast dying out of Nonconformity. He pined for the country, and seemed unable to conform to town habits. On his holidays he went back to the forge and helped his father with the shoeing as if he had never worn a black coat. It was on one of these holidays that he finally damned himself.
In a cottage at Ihornden where he had gone to visit a sick woman he met a gipsy girl of the Rossarmescroes or Hearns. Her people had given up their wandering life, and settled down in the neighbourhood, where they owned several cottages. Nevertheless, to marry her, as Sumption did soon after their third meeting, was his pastoral suicide. He took her with him to Dover, where they were both miserable for a few months. Then he had to give up his post. They returned to the forge at
TOM
21
Bethersden, where Sumption would have liked to be- come a blacksmith again, if it had not been for the con- tinual restless yearning of the Word within him, that drop of the divine which had somehow mixed with his clay, and made him drunken.
At the close of the year Meridian Sumption died at the birth of her child. They had been ideally happy in their short married life, in spite of the cage-bars of cir- cumstances and the drivings of the Word which divided them as in the beginning it had divided the waters from the earth. After her death he became “ queerer ” than ever. He roamed from village to village, preaching to farmers, gipsies, labourers, tinkers, all who would hear him and some who would not — leaving his child in his mother's care.
Six years later the death of his father and mother made it necessary that he should take the boy — named grotesquely Jeremiah Meridian, as if to show his double origin in religion and vagabondage. At the same time his first patron, the minister of Bethersden, offered to recommend him for the pastorate of the Particular Bap- tist Chapel at Sunday Street near Dallington. His con- science had long grieved over the vagaries of his black- smith saint, and in this empty pastorate he saw a way of settling both. Sumption had acquired a certain fame as a preacher among the ’dens of Kent, candidates for the Particular Ministry were not so many as they used to be, and the pastorate of Sunday Street, with its dwindling, bumpkin congregation, country loneliness, and small revenues, was hard to fill. After various difficulties, the new minister arrived with his black-eyed, swarthy child. He had growrn tired of his wanderings, and had con- ceived an erratic, arbitrary affection for this pledge of gipsy love. He looked forward to a settled country life and to preaching the Word in his own Bethel.
22
THE FOUR ROADS
The villagers, for the most part, liked him. His manners offended them, and as they were mostly Church- people they seldom came to his chapel except on wet Sundays, when it meant too much dirt and trouble to go to hear old Mr. Foxe at Dallington or young Mr. Poul- lett-Smith at Brownbread Street. But from the first he was as one of themselves, treated with no respect and much kindness. He was seldom invited to sick-beds or to officiate at funerals or marriages, but he never lacked an invitation to a Harvest Supper or Farmers’ Club Dinner. For his sake the neighbourhood tolerated the villainies of his Jerry, a throw-back to the poaching, roving, thiev- ing Rossarmescroes. None the less, they were glad when at the outbreak of war he went to work in a munition factory, first in London, then, through a series of not very creditable wanderings, to Erith. Only the minister grieved, for he loved Jerry as he had loved no human thing since his mother died in the little apple-smelling room above the smithy. He was not always kind to the boy, and the arm which had wielded the hammer so lustily had on one or two shocking occasions nearly broken the bones he loved. But he had for his son a half-spiritual, half-animal affection, and the villagers pitied him when the boy went, though they were glad to see him go.
“ Mus’ Sumption wur more blacksmith nor he wur minister,” they said when any local enthusiasm for him prevailed ; and it was true that in his loneliness and anxiety he would often find comfort in the forge at Sun- day Street, where he could sit and watch Bourner the smith swing his hammer, or even sometimes himself, with coat thrown off and shirt-sleeves rolled back over arms long and hairy as a gorilla’s, smite the hot iron or scrape the patient hoof, while his face grew red as copper in the firelight and the sweat ran over it and his shaggy chest.
TOM
23
To-night, when Jerry had wounded him afresh, he turned to his unfailing refuge. His pain was not the mere dread of death or maiming of the lad — it was some- thing more sinister, more intangible. “ The army is not for the gipsy woman’s son.” He feared for Jerry in that organised system of rank and order and command. He would have preferred him in the workshop even if the relative danger of the two places had been reversed. Jerry was less likely to be smashed by a German shell than by the system in which he had enrolled himself. He would break his head against its discipline, hang him- self in its rules. . . . His dread for Jerry under martial law was the dread his Meridian’s ancestors would have felt for her under a roof. It was a fear based more on instinct than on reason, therefore all the more bruising to the instinctive passion of fatherhood. It was well that he had this refuge of iron and anvil, of hammer and hoof, this small comforting similitude of the day which should burn as an oven. . . . Bourner the smith did not talk to him much. He made a few technical remarks, and winked at* his mate when Mr. Sumption boasted of Jerry’s valour in joining the army. But gradually the tired, careworn look on the minister’s face died away, his eyes ceased to smoulder and roll ; in the thick stuffy atmosphere, strong with the smell of hoofs and the am- moniacal smell of hide and horses, grey with smoke and noisy with the roar of flames and the ring of iron, he was going back in peace to his father’s house, to the smithy at the throws by Bethersden, before the burdens of divine and human love had come down upon him.
4
After his companion had left him, Tom Beatup walked quickly down the lane, past the Horselunges and the Rifle
24
THE FOUR ROADS
Volunteer, to where Worge gate hung crooked across Worge drive, paintless and smeared with dew. Here he stopped a minute, and looked at the huddle of the farm. It was one black shape against the yellow of the sky, and the cones of its oasts and the spires of its poplars seemed part of its block, so that it looked grotesque and horned. He hesitated, rubbed his hand along the top of the gate and licked the dew off his fingers, then turned and walked eastward.
Beyond Egypt Farm and the cottages of Worge, just before the willow pond that marked the end of the street, stood the shop, where Thyrza Honey was “ licensed to sell tobacco.” It was in darkness now, except for a faint creep of light under the door. Had Thyrza “ shut up ”? No — the handle turned, the little bell gave its buzzing ring, and the warm light ran out for a moment into the darkling lane — with a smell of tea and tobacco, sweets and sawdust, scrubbed floor and rotting beams, the smell that was to Tom the same refuge as the smell of the forge was to Mr. Sumption.
The shop was empty, but he could see a shadow mov- ing to and fro across the little window at the back — a ridiculous little window, about a foot square, yet as gay with its lace curtains and pink ribbons as the drawing- room bow of a Brighton lodging-house. The next minute a face was pressed against it, then withdrawn, and the door at the back of the shop opened.
“ Good evenun, Mus’ Tom.”
“ Good evenun, Mrs. Honey.”
She moved slowly to her place behind the counter. All her movements were slow, which women sometimes found irritating, but never men, who were always either con- sciously or unconsciously aware of a kind of drawling beauty in her gait. She was fair, with hair like fluffy, sun-bleached grass. Her skin was like that of an apricot,
TOM 25
soft and thick, of a deep creamy yellow, with soft dabs of colour on her wide cheek-bones.
“ A packet of woodbines, please,” said Tom.
She reached them from the shelf behind her.
“ Have you got any bull’s-eyes ? ”
“ Yes — three-ha’pence an ounce.”
“ They've got dearer.”
“ And they’ll get dearer still, I reckon.”
“ Give me three penn’orth, please.”
She took them out of a glass bottle at her elbow.
“ Got any monster telephones ? ”
“ I dunno — I'm afeard we're sold out.”
Thyrza always spoke of herself in a business capacity as “ we.”
“ Could you maake up two penn’orth ? Harry and Zacky are unaccountable fond of them.”
“ You’re a kind brother — buying sweeties for all the family. I reckon the bull’s-eyes are fur your sisters.”
“ Reckon they are. No use giving monster telephones to girls — they can’t be eaten dentical.”
This was obvious when Thyrza finally unearthed the telephones in an old case under the ginger-beer box. They were long, black coiling strings of liquorice, re- quiring sleight of hand, combined with a certain amount of unfastidiousness, for their consumption. Tom was disappointed that Thyrza had found them so soon. He stood by the counter, fingering his purchases and wishing his money was not all gone.
“ I hear you’ve bin up at the Tribunal,” said Thyrza, coming to the rescue.
“ Yes — they woan't let me off.”
“ You’re sorry, I reckon.”
“ Unaccountable. I doan’t know wot ull become of the farm.”
26
THE FOUR ROADS
Thyrza sighed sympathetically, having nothing to say in the way of comfort.
“ They said as how I wurn’t really indispensable, faather being able-bodied and having two lads besides me, and two ‘ hands 9 ” — he laughed bitterly. “ I’d like to show ’em the ‘ hands ’ — two scarecrows, you might say.”
“ It's a sad world,” remarked Thyrza comfortably.
Mrs. Honey was a widow, but never had more than a sentimental sigh for her husband who had made her miserable, and then suddenly rather proud — on that last day of October when the Royal Sussex had held the road to Sussex against the fury of the Prussian Guard, and Sam Honey died to save the home he had made so un- happy while he lived. He had died bravely and she was proud of him, but he had lived meanly and she could not regret him.
“ Wot sort of a soldier d’you think I’ll make, Mrs. Honey? ”
“ A good one, surelye ” — and she showed him teeth like curd.
“ Pm naun so sure, though. I’m a farmer bred, and the life ull be middling strange to me.”
“ Maybe you’ll lik it. Sam liked it fine. There was no end o’ fun to be had, he said, and foakes all giving you chocolate and woodbines, just as if you wur the king.”
“ Will you send me a postcard now and agaun, Mrs. Honey? ”
“ Reckon I will.”
There was silence for a minute or two in the shop. The oil lamp swung, moving the shadows over the ceil- ing where the beams sagged with the weight of Thyrza’s little bedroom. A clock in the back room ticked loudly. Tom was still leaning across the counter, looking at Thyrza. They both felt rather awkward, as they often felt in each other’s company. Thyrza wondered when
TOM
27
Tom was going. She liked him — liked him unaccount- able— but her bit of supper was on the fire in the next room, there was some mending to be done, and many other odds and ends of feminine business before it was time to set the mouse-traps, put the milk- jug on the doorstep, and go to bed. Besides, she knew he ought to be going back to Worge to tell his family the news which should have been theirs before he brought it to her.
“ I reckon your mother ull be wondering how you’ve fared this afternoon. Has your father gone home and told her ? ”
“ I left faather at Woods Corner.”
“ She’ll be worriting about him too, then.”
“ Maybe I should ought to go home and tell them.”
He straightened himself with a sigh. He must leave his refuge of tea and soap and candles, the peace of Thyrza Honey’s slow movements and thick, sweet voice. She was sorry for him.
“ You’ll look in again, Mus’ Tom?”
“ Surelye.”
“ Maybe you’ll bring your sister Ivy round for a cup of tea before you go. Ull you be going soon? ”
“ In a fortnight. . . . Good evenun, Mrs. Honey.”
“ Good evenun, Mus’ Tom.”
Again the bell gave its buzzing ring, as he opened the door and went out.
5
Tom’s heart had sunk rather low before he came to Worge. He was always dissatisfied with himself after seeing Thryza. He never seemed able to find anything to say, just because she was the person he liked most in the world to talk to. He felt that he must be very
28
THE FOUR ROADS
different from the other men who came to see her — for men liked Thyrza — who could make even the buying of a penn’orth of sweets an occasion for artful sally and interesting conversation. That reminded him that he had left all his purchases on the counter. What an un- accountable fool he was ! However, he would not go back for them. They must wait till to-morrow. Still, he wished he hadn’t left them. Thyrza would think him silly, and besides he had wanted to give those sweets to his brothers and sisters. He nearly always brought them something when he went into the town.
They were all at supper in the kitchen — he could hear their voices. He wondered if his father had come back yet. He had not, for the first question that greeted his entrance was :
“ Whur’s your faather, Tom? ”
“ I left him at Woods Corner. I’d have thought he’d bin home by now.”
“ Then you thought silly. ’T’aun’t likely as he’ll come home till they close. You should have stopped along of un.”
“ I thought I’d better git back home and tell you the news.”
“ And wot’s that? Have they let you off? ”
“ Not they. A fortnight’s final.”
Mrs. Beatup began to cry. She was a large, stout woman with masses of rough grey hair, and a broad, rather childish face, which now looked more like a child’s than ever as it wrinkled up for crying.
“ Now, mother, doan’t you taake on,” said Ivy, the eldest girl, getting up and putting her arm round her.
“ It’s a shaame, a hemmed shaame,” sobbed the woman. “ No woander as faather’s stopped at Woods Corner. To take our eldest boy as is the prop and stay of the whole of us ! ”
TOM
29
“ He aun’t no such thing,” said Ivy, who was a strap- ping girl — rather like her mother, except that her round face ended in a sharp chin, which gave her an unex- pected air of shrewdness. The second girl, Nell, was helping her brother to his supper of pork and cabbage.
“ No one can say he’s indispensable/' she remarked in rather a pretty, half-educated voice — she was pupil teacher in her second year at the school in Brownbread Street. “ There’s Harry just on sixteen, and there’s Juglery and Elphick, and no one can say father isn’t a strong man and able to look after the farm.”
“ Your faather’s no use. Tom, did you tell them as your faather had bad habits? ”
“ No, I didn’t,” said Tom sulkily, shovelling in the cabbage with his knife.
“ Then you wur a fool. You know as your faather aun’t himself three nights out of five, and yet you go and say naun about it. How are they to know if you doan’t tell them ? ”
“ I wurn’t going to tell all the big folk round Senlac as my faather drinks.”
“ Hush, Tom ! I never said as you wur to say that — but you might have let ’em know, careful like, as he aun’t always able to look after the farm as well as you might think.”
“ It ud have done no good. Drunkenness aun’t a reason for exemption, as they say. Besides, I’d middling little to do in the matter. Faather was applying fur me, and he did all the talking — an unaccountable lot of it, too. I wurn’t took because there wurn’t enough said against it, I promise you. But seemingly before a farm chap like me gits off, he’s got to have a certifickit from the War Agricultural Committee, and they read a letter say- ing as they’d recommended one to be given, but the Executive Committee or summat hadn’t fallen in wud
30
THE FOUR ROADS
it. So there’s no use crying, mother, for go I must, and it’ll be none the easier for you making all this vrother.” He was cross because he was unhappy.
“ Will you be in the Royal Sussex, Tom — along of Mus’ Dixon and Mus’ Archie? ” asked Zacky, the young- est boy.
“ I dunno.”
“ When ull you be leaving? ”
“ In a fortnight, I’ve told you.”
“ I hear as how Bill Putland ull be going soon,” said Mrs. Beatup. “ He’d be company like fur you, Tom.” “ Bill ! — he’s too unaccountable fine and grand fur me. He thinks no end of himself being Mus’ Lamb’s chuvver. But I’ll tell you who’s joined the Sussex, though, and that’s Jerry Sumption. I met Mus’ Sumption, this evenun, and he toald me.”
“ You doan’t mean to say as Jerry’s left the fackory? ” “ Yes. He went and enlisted — minister says he’s un- accountable proud of him.”
There was a crackle of laughter round the table.
“ Well, we all of us know, and I reckon minister knows as we know, that if Jerry had bin any sort of use at the munititions they wouldn’t have let him join up. It’s a law that if you maake munititions you doan’t have to join up.”
“ Oh, Jerry’s bin never no good at naun. He’s jest a roving gipsy dog.”
Mrs. Beatup turned suddenly to Ivy:
“ Did you know aught of this? ”
“ Not I ! ” said Ivy carelessly. “ Jerry hasn’t written to me fur more’n a month. Maybe this is why.”
“ I’m justabout sorry fur Mus’ Sumption,” said Tom, whom his supper had put in better humour. “ He has a feeling as Jerry ull come to no good in the army.”
TOM
31
“ No more he will, nor nowhere, I’m thinking,” said Mrs. Beatup. “ Doan’t you never have naun to do wud him, Tom. I doan’t want my children to git the splash
of that gipsy muck ” And she threw another half-
defiant, half-furtive look at Ivy.
“ Where’s Harry?” asked Tom.
“ Out ratting,” Zacky informed him.
“ Well, he woan’t find any supper’s bin kept fur him, that’s all,” said Mrs. Beatup, rising and pushing back her chair. “ Nell, put the plaates on the tray and maake yourself useful fur wunst.”
A flush crept over Nell’s pale, pretty face, from her neck to the roots of her reddish hair. She gingerly picked up two of the smelly, greasy plates, then quickly put them down again.
“ There’s faather.”
“ Where?” Mrs. Beatup listened.
“ I heard the gate — and there goes the side door.”
The next minute a heavy, uncertain footstep was heard in the passage, then a bump as if someone had lurched into the wall. The family stood stock-still and waited.
“ Maybe he’ll hurt himself in the dark,” said Mrs. Beatup, “ now policeman woan’t let us have the light at the passage bend.”
“ No, he’s all right. There he is scrabbling at the door.”
There was the sound of fingers groping and scratching. • Then the door opened and the farmer of Worge came in, his hat a little on one side, a lock of hair falling over his red forehead, and the whole of his waistcoat undone. He stood, supporting himself against the doorpost, and glared at the family.
“ Your supper’s still hot, Ned,” said Mrs. Beatup hesitatingly — “ leastways, the gals have eaten all the
'K
32
THE FOUR ROADS
taters, but I can hot you up . . . ” She began to whimper as the bleared grey eyes slowly rolled towards her.
“ Be quiet, Mother,” said Ivy.
Mus’ Beatup, slowly and carefully, made his way towards a broken-springed arm-chair beside the fire. He then sat down by the simple process of falling into it backwards ; then he stretched out a foot that seemed made of clay and manure
“ Taake off my boots, Missus.”
6
It was quite dark before Tom was able to slip out to see to one or two odd jobs that wanted doing in the barns. He felt himself obliged to stay in the kitchen while his father was there, for though there had not been more than a few occasions when surliness had blazed into assault, he knew that it was always just possible that his father might become violent, especially as his mother always went the worst way — with tears, re- proaches, arguments and lamentations. What would happen when he was no longer at hand to watch over her he did not like to think. It was all part of the load of anxiety and love which was settling down on him.
If he had been a free man he would probably have felt quite ready for the change ahead of him. Though his imagination had scarcely taken hold of the war, and though the harrow and the plough, with the thick suck- ing earth on his boots, and the drip of rain or stew of sunshine on waiting fields, had absorbed most of the boyish spirit of adventure which might have sent him questing out of stuffier circumstances — though his was the country heart, which is the last heart for warfare — in spite of all, he might have gone gaily to the new life, with its wider reach and freedom, if he had not known
TOM
33
that his departure meant the crumbling of that little comer of England which was his, which his arm had built and his back supported.
He knew that Worge leaned on him, for he felt the weight of it even in his dreams. It was four years now since he had put his shoulder against it; he was only just twenty, but he knew that if four years ago he had not made up his mind to save the farm, his father would have drunk, and the rest of the family muddled, the place into the auction market, and the Beatups would now be scattered into towns or soaking their humble-pie in beer on smallholdings. He had done nothing very wonderful. The place was small and no more wanted a giant to hold it up than a giant to knock it down. He had merely worked while others slacked, thought while others slept, remembered while others forgot. But, with- out any thrill of pride or adventure, he knew that he had tided Worge through its bad hour, and that the same little upheld it now. He was the real farmer, though he had to be careful not to let his headship be seen. His father had not explained things clearly to the tribunal — explaining things clearly was not a quality of Tom’s either — he had been far too anxious to preserve his own importance, which might have suffered had be said, “ My son runs the farm while I’m drinking at the pub.”
The others were not even as much good as his father. In the intervals of drinking, which in spite of Mrs. Beatup’s three-in-five calculation were often quite re- spectable, he was both hard-wrorking and resourceful, though of late his brain had grown spongier and threat- ened a final rot. But the rest of the family had no up- standing moments. Ivy was strong and comparatively willing, but Tom did not believe in girls as farm-hands and never thought of Ivy even milking the cows. She and her mother looked after the chickens and did the
34
THE FOUR ROADS
housework, that was all. Nell was out all day and busy working in the evenings for her examination ; Zacky was still at school, and Harry was a rover — the comrade of other farmers’ younger sons in ratting and sparrow- hunting, in visiting fairs, in trespassing for birds’ eggs, or sometimes solitary in strange obedience to the call of distant wood or village green. Yet Harry was Tom’s one hope — a last, forlorn one.
Tom was waiting for him now. He wanted to speak to his young brother alone, not in the dim lath-smelling bedroom where Zacky would be a third. Harry did not generally stop out late, though he had occasionally roamed all night — hunger and fear of a beating (another of Tom’s quasi-patemal tasks) usually brought him home just in time to satisfy one and escape the other.
Tom looked into the cowshed — one of the cows had shown ailing signs that day, but she seemed well enough now, with her large head lolling against the stall, her eyes soft and untroubled in the brown glow of his lantern. He would not see the calf which had caused him so much half-proud anxiety; he wondered what would become of them both if it should be born on one of Father’s “ bad nights.” Then he went into the stable, where the three farm-horses — the sorrel, the brown, and the bay — stood stamping and chumbling, with the cold miasmic air like a mist above the straw. Then he went back into the yard — saw that the henhouse door was fast, that old Nimrod the watch-dog had his bone and his water and a good length of chain. It was very cold, there was a faint smell of rime on the motionless air, and the stars were like spluttering candles in the frost-black sky. These April days and nights were unaccountable tricky, he told himself. That noon the very heart of the manure-heap had melted in the sun, and now it was hardening again — his boot hardly sank into the stuff as he trod it with
TOM 35
his heel. Some of it ought to be carted to-morrow and put round the apple-trees. . . .
Harry was very late. He would go into the corn- chamber and do some accounts. He was clumsy with his figures, and they kept him there twisting and scratching his head till nearly ten o’clock, when he heard a footfall, would-be stealthy, on the stones.
He rose quickly and ran round the yard to the back- door just as a shadow melted up against it.
“ Here — you ! ” cried Tom surlily, for he was tired and muddled with his sums — “ doan’t you think to go slither- ing in quiet lik that, you good-fur-naun.”
“ I’ll come in when I like,” grumbled Harry. “ You aun’t maaster here.”
“ Well, I’m the bigger chap, anyways, so mind your manners. Where’ve you bin ? ”
“ Only down to Puddledock.”
“ Puddledock aun’t sich a valiant plaace as you shud spend half a day there. You’ve bin up to no good, I reckon. A fine chap you’ll be to mind Worge when I’m gone.”
“ You’re going, then?”
Harry’s voice was anxious, for he was fond of Tom, though he resented his interference with his liberties.
“ Yes — I’m going . . . join up in a fortnight. Come in, Harry ; I want to spik to you.”
“ I want my supper.”
“ You’ll have your supper, though you doan’t desarve it, you spannelling beggar. I’ll come and sit along of you ; we must talk business, you and I.”
“ About Worge ? ”
“ Yes.”
They were in the kitchen now, dark except for some gleeds of fire. The rest of the family had gone to bed, but the broken supper was still on the table — the hacked,
36
THE FOUR ROADS
hardening loaf, and the remains of the bacon and cab- bage under floating scabs of grease. Tom lit the lamp and Harry sat down, hungry and uncritical. The two boys were curiously alike, short and sturdy, with broad sunburnt faces, grey eyes, big mouths, and small, defiant noses. Harry’s coat was covered with clay all down one side, and the sleeve was torn — Tom was too heavy- hearted for more scolding, just noted drearily a new item of expenditure. The younger brother saw the elder’s cast-down looks :
“ I’m unaccountable sorry, Tom,” he said sheepishly.
“ Cos of wot? Cos I’m going or cos you aun’t worth your bed and keep? ”
“ Cos of both.”
“ Well, there’s naun to do about one, but a sight to do about t’other. Harry, you’ll have to mind Worge when I’m agone.”
“ Wot can I do?”
“ You can work instead of roaming, and you can see to things when faather’s bad — see as there aun’t naun foolish done or jobs disremembered. Elphick and Jug- lery have only half a head between them. Before I go I’ll tell you all I’ve had in my head about the hay in Bucksteep field, and the oats agaunst the Street and them fuggles down by the Sunk. And you’ll have to kip it all in your head saum as I’ve kipped it in mine, and see as things come out straight by harvest. D’you understand ? ”
“ Yes, Tom.”
“ And there’s Maudie’s calf due next month, and a brood of them Orpingtons, and I’d meant to buy a boar at Lewes Fair and kip him for service. You’ll never have the sense to do it. You mun stop your ratting and your roving, or Worge ull be at the auctioneer’s. Faather’s a valiant clever chap when he’s sober, and
TOM
37
book-larned too, but the men are two old turnup-heads, and Zacky’s scarce more’n a child, and the gals are gals — so it’s up to you, Harry, as they say, to kip the plaace
going”
Harry groaned
“ Why wudn’t they let you stay ? ”
“ Because they didn’t see no sense in kipping an A man on farm-work when there wur plenty about to do his job. They doan’t understand how things are, and when you coame to think of it, it’s a shaum as I can’t go wud a free heart.”
“ Do you want to go ? ”
“ I dunno. I aun’t got the chance of knowing, wud all this vrothering me. But I’d go easier if I cud think the plaace wouldn’t fall to pieces as soon as I left it, and that if I’m killed ...”
He stopped. Strangely enough, he had never thought of being killed till now.
7
Tom’s calling-up papers did not arrive till a few days later. It was a showery morning, with a flooding blue sky, smeethed and streaked with low floats of cloud. The rain was cracking on the little green panes of the kitchen window, and the spatter of the drops, with the soft humming song of the kitchen fire, was in Tom’s ears as he studied the sheet which entitled one horse, one bicycle, one mule, one (asterisked) private soldier to travel cost-free to Lewes. He opened his mouth to say, “ My calling-up papers have come,” but said noth- ing, just sat with his mouth open. The shower rattled and the fire hummed, then a sudden spill of sunshine came from the dripping edge of a cloud into the room, making the drops on the pane like golden beads, and light-
38
THE FOUR ROADS
in g up the breakfast table, so that the mangled loaf and the dirty cups became almost as wonderful as the shining faces round them.
Mus’ Beatup was himself this morning — they still called it “ himself,” though of late his real self had seemed more and more removed from the lusty head- ■
acheless man who sat among them to-day, more and more closely coiled with that abject thing of sickness and violence which came lurching down the fields at dusk from the Rifle Volunteer. He was studying his share of the post — an invitation to an auction at Rush- lake Green, where Galleybird Farm was up for sale with all its live and dead stock. Mrs. Beatup had never had a letter in her life, nor apparently wanted one. She always exclaimed at the post, and wondered why Ivy should have all those postcards. In her young days no one sent postcards to girls. If a chap wanted you for wife he hung around the gate, if he did not want you for wife he took no manner of notice of you. A dozen chaps could not want Ivy for wife — her with as many freckles as a foxglove, and all blowsy too, and sunburnt as a stack — and yet there were nearly a dozen postcards strewn round her plate this morning. Some were field postcards, whizzbangs, from Sussex chaps in France, some were stamped with the red triangle of the Y.M.C.A., some were views of furrin Midland places where Sussex chaps were in training, and some were funny ones that made Ivy throw herself back in her chair, and show her big, white, friendly teeth, and laugh “ Ha! ha! ” till the others said, “ Let’s see, Ivy,” and the picture of the Soldier come home on leave to find twins, or the donkey chewing the Highlander’s kilt, or the Kaiser hiding in a barrel from “ Ach Gott! die Royal Sussex!” would be passed round the table. To-day one of the pictures of the gentleman with twins — it was a popular one in the
TOM 39
Sussex, and Ivy had two this morning — was from Jerry Sumption.
“ Says he’s fed up,” said Ivy. “ He reckons I knew about his joining. How was I to know ? He’s at Water- heel Camp ; and he’s met Sid Viner and young Kadwell. They kip those boys far enough from home.”
“ And a good thing too,” said Mrs. Beatup. “ We doan’t want Minister’s gipsy spannelling round.”
“ Spik for yourself, mother — there aun’t a lad at Waterheel as I wuldn’t have here if I cud git him.”
“ You’ll come to no good,” grumbled her father, and pretty Nell, with her anaemic flush, shrugged away from her sister’s sprawling elbow. She herself had Tad only one postcard, which she slipped hastily into the front of her blouse — unlike Ivy, who left hers scattered over the table even when the family had risen from their meal. There was not much in the postcard to justify such preferential treatment, for it ran — “ There will be a meeting of the Sunday-school teachers to-morrow in church at 5.30. H. Poullett-Smith,”
Nell began to collect her books for school. She care- fully dusted the crumbs from her skirt, smoothed her pretty marigold hair before the bit of mirror by the fire- place, put on her hat and jacket, and was gone. The rest of the family began to disperse. Zacky had to go to school too, but his going was an unwilling, complicated matter compared with Nell’s. His mother had to find his cap, his sister to mend his bootlace, his father to cuff his head, and finally his brother Tom to set him march- ing with a kick in his rear.
Ivy tied on a sacking apron and began to slop soap- suds on the floor of the outer kitchen, Mrs. Beatup set out on a quest — which experience told would last the morning — after a plate of potatoes she could have sworn she had set in the larder overnight. Mus’ Beatup went off
40
THE FOUR ROADS
to his fields with Harry at his tail, and calling to Tom — “ Have you bin over to Egypt about them roots ? ”
“ No — I’m going this mornun.”
“ Then you can tell Putland as it’s taake or leave — he pays my price or he doan’t have my wurzels.”
“ Yes, Father.”
Tom went off very quietly, fingering the summons in his pocket. How many times now would he go on these errands to Egypt, Cowlease, Slivericks and other farms? His father would have to go, or if unfit, then Harry would be sent — Harry who would sell you a cart of swedes for tuppence or exchange a prize pig for a ferret. That was an unaccountable queer little bit of paper in his pocket. He could tear it in two, but it could also do the same for him, and in any conflict it must come out winner. It was, as it were, a finger of that in- visible hand which was being thrust down through the clouds to grab Tom and other little people. The huge, unseen, unlimited, unmerciful force of a kingdom’s power lay behind it, and Tom’s single body and soul must obey without hope of escape the great Manhood that demanded them both, as a potter demands clay and scoops up the helpless earth to bake in his oven. . . .
All this in a more or less rag-and-tag state was passing through his mind as he walked down the drive of Worge, with speedwell a-bloom between the ruts, and came to the Inn whose painted sign was a volunteer of Queen Victoria’s day. It was an old house, with a huge wind- ward sprawl of roof, but had not been licensed more than sixty years. Tom disliked it as a temptation which Providence had tactlessly dumped at their door. If Mus’ Beatup had had to walk to the Crown at Woods Corner or the George at Brownbread Street he would have been more continuously the smart, upstanding man he was this morning.
TOM
41
Egypt Farm was just across the road. It was smaller than Worge, but also brighter and more prosperous- looking. There was new white paint round the windows and on the cowls of the oasts, and the little patch of garden by the door was trim, with hyacinths a-blowing and early roses spotting the trellis with their first buds.
“ Mornun, Tom,” called Mrs. Putland cheerily. She was putting a suet pudding into the oven, with the kitchen door wide open, and saw him as he crossed the yard.
“ Mornun, ma’am. Is the maaster at home? ”
“ Maaster’s over at Satanstown buying a calf. Can I give him your message? ”
“ Faather says as it’s taake it or leave it about them roots.”
“ Then I reckon he’ll taake it. He never wur the man to higgle-haggle, and the roots is good roots.”
“ Justabout valiant — I never got a tidier crop out of Podder’s field.”
Mrs. Putland had come to the door and stood looking at him, with her arms akimbo. She was a small, trim woman, buttoned and sleeked, and somehow the expres- sion of her face was the same as the expression of the house — the clean, kindly, enquiring look of Egypt with its white-framed staring windows and smooth, ruddy tiles.
“ It’ll be unaccountable sad fur your faather to lose you. You’ve bin the prop-stick of Worge this five year.”
“ Can’t be helped. I’ve got to go. Had my calling-up paapers this mornun.”
“ That’s queer. So did Bill. Reckon you’ll go to- gether.”
“ Didn’t Bill try fur exemption, then? ”
“ No — Mus’ Lamb wouldn’t have it. Besides, there wurn’t no reason as he should stay. We’ve done wud-
42
THE FOUR ROADS
out him here since he went to the Manor, and Mus’ Lamb ull kip his plaace fur him till he comes back.”
Tom envied Bill his free heart.
“ I’ll give him a call,” continued Bill’s mother. “ He aun’t due up at the Manor fur an hour yit, and he wur saying only last night as he never sees you now.”
A few minutes later Bill answered his mother’s call, and sauntered round the corner of the house, his hands in his pockets, his chauffeur’s cap a little on one side. He had a handsome, fresh-coloured face, strangely cheeky for a country boy’s, and Tom always felt rather ill at ease in his presence, a little awed by the fact that though his hands might sometimes be brown and greasy with motor-oil, his body was of a well-washed whiteness un- known at Worge.
“ Hullo, Bill.”
“ Hullo, Tom.”
There had never been a very deep friendship between them ; Bill was inclined to be patronising, and Tom both to resent it and to envy him. But to-day a new, mys- terious bond was linking them. In the pocket of Bill’s neat livery there was a paper exactly like that in Tom’s manure-slopped corduroys.
“ I hear you’ve bin called up, Bill.”
“ Yes — in a fortnight, they say.”
“ I’m going too — in a fortnight.”
“ Pleased?”
“ No. I’m unaccountable vrothered at leaving the farm. Wot d’you feel about it? ”
“ Oh, me? — I’m not sorry. They’ll keep my place open for me at the Manor, and I shall like getting a hit at Kayser Bill. Besides, the gals think twice as much of you if you’re in uniform.”
This was a new complexion on the case, and Tom’s thoughts wandered down to the shop.
TOM
43
“ I shall like being along of Mils’ Archie, too — he told me I could be along of him. We’re all eighteenth Sussex hereabouts. I reckon you’ll be in with us.”
“ I dunno.”
Tom’s brows were crinkled, for he was thinking hard. He was chewing the fact that for a free man there might be something rather pleasant in soldiering. This happy, conceited, self-confident little chauffeur was teaching him that the soldier’s lot was not entirely dark. “ Called up ” — “ taken ” — “ fetched along ” — those were the words of his conscript’s vocabulary. But now for the first time he saw something beyond them, a voluntary endeavour be- yond the conscript’s obedience, a corporate enthusiasm beyond his lonely unwillingness. “ We’re all eighteenth Sussex hereabouts. ...”
8
April was May before Tom’s weeks of grace had run. The field hollows were white with drifts of hawthorn, and the pale purplish haze of the cuckoo-flower had given place to the buttercups’ dabble of gold. The papery- white of the wild cherry had gone from the woods, which were green now, thick, and full of the nutty smell of leaves. The ditches were milky with fennel, and on the high meadows by Thunders Hill the broom and the gorse clumped their yellows together, making the hill a flaming cone to those who saw it from the marshes of Horse Eye.
The farmers of Dallington watched their hayfields rust. There was little corn in that country bounded by the Four Roads, so as the sun climbed higher noon by noon, the neighbourhood grew gipsy-brown — the straw- coloured feathers of the grass veiled a glowing heart of clover, and above them opened the white ox-eyes and pools of sorrel. . . .
THE FOUR ROADS
44
Tom Beatup watched ripen the fields whose harvest he would not see. There were some twenty acres of hay at Worge, and two fields in which the green corn was his hope and dread. The crop was promising on the whole — a bit sedge-leaved perhaps, but firm in its seed. There were the hops, too, in the low fields by Puddledock, where Forges Wood shut off the north-east wind. He trundled the insect-sprayer round the bines, and afterwards loved the smell of his green, sticky hands.
He would have been rightly offended if anyone had told him that his chief pangs of parting were for the farm. None the less, there was a lingering wistfulness in his last dealings with it which was not in his intercourse with his family. He loved his mother, he admired his father, he felt for his brothers and sisters an elder brother’s half-anxious, half-contemptuous fondness; but in his last services for Worge, whether in field or barn, there was something almost sacramental. His duties were rites — he was the unconscious priest of that tumble-down altar before which the manure smoked as incense and on which the burnt-offering of his boyhood lay.
He had, too, a hunger for the fields, not only the fields of Worge, but for all those within the Four Roads — which he did not see as roads leading to adventure, but as boundaries fencing home. When his tasks allowed he would roam in the webbing of tracks that the farms have spun between the lanes — he would go to Starnash or Oxbottom Town, watch the lightless sky grow purple over Muddles Green, and the big stars begin to spark it as the moon hung like a red lamp above Mystole Wood. High on the zenith the sky would be rainy green, and he would watch it deepen to purple round the crimson moon, all unconscious of its beauty, loving it only because it hung above this clay in which his feet were stuck, be-
TOM 45
cause from it came the brightness which waked the homely things he had put in the earth to sleep. . . .
Sometimes he would be disturbed by another quest, and would beat slowly up and down on the road outside the shop, longing to go in and yet strangely reluctant. He felt all tied-up and dumb. He could not tell Thyrza Honey what he felt at leaving her any more than he could have told Starnash or Thunders Hill — than he could have told the little brother who lay against him on cold nights — or the dreamy-eyed cows he milked — or even the grinning, whining watch-dog who muddied him with his love. He was dumb, as all these were dumb. He felt unaccountable vrothered at having to leave them all, and that was the utmost he could say; and yet he knew that in Thyrza’s case, at any rate, it was not enough. A man with a better tongue than he would have gone into that shop, and shut himself into the light and tea-smelling warmth, instead of pacing up and down under the cold stars.
On the last day of all he plucked up courage. He could not go without saying good-bye, and he had always brought her the big things of his life — from his buying of a horse-rake to the news of the Tribunal’s decision — though each time he had wrapped his need in some penny purchase of tobacco or sweets.
The little bell buzzed and ting’d. The shop was empty and rather dark, for a grey starless dusk was on the fields after a rainy day. The wind rattled the door he had shut behind him, and moaned round the little leaded window banked up with penny toys and tins of fruit. It had a long sighing sweep over the fields from Bird-in-
46
THE FOUR ROADS
Eye, and just across the road was a willow pond, from which it seemed to drink sadness. Over the banks of papered tins and paint-slopped toys he could see the grey bending backs of the willows, and the steely ruffle of the pond under the wind. His throat grew tight with a word that was stuck in it — “ Good-bye.”
The door of the back room opened, and there was a leap of firelight and the song of a kettle before it shut. “ Evenun, Mus’ Tom,” said Mrs. Honey.
“ Evenun,” said Tom. “ A packet of Player’s, please.” Thyrza put it on the counter. “ Any sweeties ? ”
“ Yes. I’ll taake a quarter of bull’s-eyes and four- penn’orth of telephones. I woan’t leave them behind me this time ” — and Tom grinned sheepishly.
“ Your brothers and sisters ull miss you,” said Thyrza, poking with a knife at the sticky wedge of the bull’s-eyes. “ Not more’n I’ll miss them and the whole plaace.”
“ I reckon it’s sad to say good-bye.”
“ Unaccountable sad.”
Her eyes were fixed on him very tenderly. She was sorry for Tom Beatup — had always been a little sorry for him— she could not quite tell why.
“ It’ll be a long time before I see you again, Thyrza.” “ Maybe not — you may git leave and come to see us.”
He shook his head “ Not vet awhile.”
His parcels lay before him, but she did not expect him to go. He was leaning across the counter, staring at her with big, solemn eyes, and she knew that she liked his face, broad and ruddy as a September moon, that she like the whole sturdy set of him.
“ Stay and have a bit of supper wud me, Tom.” It was quite unconsciously that they had become Tom and Thyrza to each other.
The colour burned into his cheeks, but he shook his head.
T
TOM 47
“ No, thank you kindly. I’ve got to git back hoame. I’ve a dunnamany things to do this last evenun.”
“ Then come on your fust leave.”
“ Reckon I will Oh, Thryza ! ”
His hunger had outrun his shyness. He was trem- bling. She had lifted her hand to smooth back the soft fuzz of her hair, which in the dusk had become the colour of hay in starlight, and as she dropped her hand, he caught it, and held it, then kissed it. It was warm and wide and soft and rather sticky.
I “ Oh, Tommy ”
“ D’you mind, Thyrza?”
“ I? — Lord, no, dear.”
He was still holding her hand across the counter, and now he slowly pulled her towards him. Her darling face was coming closer to him out of the shadows; he could smell her hair. . . .
Buzz — Ting.
Their hands dropped and they started upright, both looking utterly foolish. The Reverend Henry Poullett- Smith sniffed an air of constraint as he entered.
“ Good evening, Mrs. Honey. I came to leave this — er — notice about the Empire Day performance at the schools. Perhaps you’ll be so kind as to show it in the window, and — er — come yourself.”
“ Thank you, sir. I’ll put it here by the tinned salmon. That’s what gets looked at most.”
“ Thank you, Mrs. Honey. Hullo, Beatup — I didn’t see you in this dim light.”
“ I’ll be gitting the lamp,” said Thyrza.
Tom swept his parcels off the counter into his pockets-, and muttered something about “ hoame.”
“ This is your last day, isn’t it? ” asked the curate.
“ Yessir. Off to-morrow.”
48
THE FOUR ROADS
“ Sorry? ”
“ Middling sorry, for some reasons/’
“ But it will be a big experience for you.”
The curate was young, and sometimes vaguely hankered after that adventure in which no priests but those of godless France might share. It was hard to see it being wasted on a pudding-headed chap like Beatup.
Tom only grunted his reply to this challenge. He was angry with the parson for having come into the shop, discreet as had been his entry. He did not think of waiting till he had gone, for somehow no one, especially a man, ever left Thyrza’s shop in a hurry, as if the tranquil dawdle of the shopkeeper communicated itself to her customers, making them lounge and linger long after their purchases were made.
“ Good-bye, Mrs. Honey.”
“ Good-bye, Tom.”
“ Good-bye, and good luck,” said the curate, shaking hands.
The bell buzzed again, and Tom was out in the throb and shudder of the wind, while Thyrza lit the lamp in the house behind him.
io
When he reached home he found all the family at supper, except Harry, who after a fortnight’s doubtful virtue had, on his brother’s last night at home, escapaded off with two young Sindens from Little Worge. Mrs. Beatup was inclined to be tearful about it. “ Wot we’ll do when you’re agone, Tom, Lord only knows.” Of late she had taken to treating Tom’s departure as a volun- tary, not to say capricious, act, and her frequent lamen- tations were gabbled with reproach, vague hints that if
TOM 49
he had liked he could have prevented the catastrophe — precisely how, she never told him.
Mus’ Beatup was not drunk. Only a negative state- ment could describe him, for neither was he sober. An alcoholic Laodicean, neither hot nor cold, he lolled over the head of the table, and argued with Nell, the pupil- teacher, on the utter futility of the Church of England, or, indeed, any sort of Church. It was characteristic of Nell that she would argue with her father, drunk or sober. She had championed her causes against a far less responsible adversary than she had before her to- day. Her cheeks were pink with refutation, and her little sighs and exclamations and chipped beginnings of phrases popped like corks round Mus’ Beatup’s droning eloquence — that eloquence which so filled Tom with admiration and made him boast of his father’s book-learning among the farms.
“ It’s as plain as the nose on your face, and has all bin proved over and over again as there wuren’t no such persons as Adam and Eve. There’s a chap called Dar- win ’s proved as we’re the offsprings of monkeys, and a chap called Bradlaugh ’s proved as we all come out of stuff called prottoplasm — so where are your Adam and Eve, I’d lik to know? ”
“But, father, as if it mattered. The Church . . .”
“ The Church is there to prove as the world was maade in six days, when it’s bin proved over and over again as it hasn’t.”
“ The Church is there for no such thing — it’s ”
“ I tell you it’s bin proved as it’s there for that very purpose.”
“Who’s proved it?”
“ Darwin and Huxley and Bradlaugh, and a lot more clever chaps.”
“ But they lived years ago, and it’s ”
50
THE FOUR ROADS
“ Not so many years ago as your Adam and Eve, and yet you go and believe in them. . .
“ I don’t. Not in the sense. ...”
“ When it’s bin proved as there never wur no Adam and Eve. The fust people wur monkeys, descended from prottoplasm, and then caum the missing lynx and then caum us. I tell you it’s all bin proved over and over again, and parson chaps and silly gals aun’t likely to prove anything different.”
Tom listened respectfully, if rather grudgingly, to this learned conversation. He wanted to talk to his father about one or two matters concerning the farm, but knew there would be no chance for him to-night. He kept up at intervals a grunting intercourse with his mother, who wanted every other minute to know where he’d been and where Harry had got to, and what in the Lord’s name they were to do without him. Into the bargain, he ate a hearty supper, for though he was in love and rather miserable, he was also a healthy young animal, sharp-set after a day in the open air.
At last the theological argument ended, not because it was any nearer solution or had indeed moved at all from its first premises, but because the end of supper dispersed the combatants, Nell to her work, and Mus’ Beatup, ignominiously, to the kitchen sink. Having re- lieved his stomach of its load of bad beer and half- masticated food, he went grumbling upstairs to bed, wondering what we were all coming to nowadays, and why nobody stopped the war.
Mrs. Beatup reckoned, with a sigh, that she had better go to bed too, as Maaster didn’t like it if she disturbed him later. So she lit her candle, and went slowly creak- ing upstairs, leaving Ivy to clear away the supper. Just where the stairs bent, she suddenly stood still, as if a thought had struck her.
TOM
51
“ Tom,” she called.
He was cleaning his boots in the outer kitchen, but when he heard her he ran up to where she stood, thick against her monstrous shadow in the angle of the stairs.
“ It’s queer as you never think of kissing your mother.”
He had not kissed her for weeks, but now, suddenly troubled, he did so.
“ I’m sorry, mother.”
“ And so you may be — on your last night, too.”
He stood looking at her sheepishly.
“ Well, git down to your business. I mustn’t linger, or Maaster ull be gitting into bed in his boots.”
He went downstairs, feeling suddenly smartingly sorry for his mother as she waddled upwards to this drunkard’s bed. He saw that her lot was a hard one.
ii
The passage was in darkness, and Tom did not see, but felt, the side door swing open, with a damp drench of wind from the yard. There was a grey mist in the passage. The next minute a white stick-like thing flew out of it, suddenly like the wind, and then bumped into Tom, with the unexpected contact of warm flesh against his hands, and “ Oo-er,” in Harry’s voice.
“ Harry ...”
“ Oh, that’s you, Tom? Lemme git up and fetch some cloathes.”
“ But where’s those as you went out in? ”
“ I dunno. I’ll tell you afterwards, but I’m coaid, and I want my supper.”
The slow, facile anger of his type went tingling into Tom’s speech and hands.
“ Supper! I’m hemmed if you git so much as a bite.
52
THE FOUR ROADS
Tell me this wunst where you left your cloathes or I’ll knock your head off, surelye.”
He laid violent hands on Harry, who was, however, far too slippery to hold. He was free in a minute and dashed into the outer kitchen, slamming the door after him.
When Tom came in he was sitting tailor-fashion on the table, gnawing the top of a cottage loaf. The elder brother could not help laughing at him, he looked such a queer goblin creature.
“ Doan’t be vrothered, Tom/’ whined Harry, taking advantage of his relenting — “ it’s your last night at home.”
Tom winced — they were always throwing it at him, his “ last night.”
“ Lucky fur you as it is — and unlucky fur me — and unlucky fur Worge if this is the way you're going on when I’m a -gone. Where’ve you bin? ”
“ Only over to Bucksteep, Tom.”
“ But wot have you done wud your clothes? ”
“ Mus’ Archie’s got ’em.”
“ Wot d’you mean? Spik the truth.”
“It’s Bible truth. Willie and Peter Sinden and Bob Pix and me thought as how we’d bathe by moonlight in Bucksteep pond, and Mus’ Archie’s hoame on leave, and he wur walking wud his young woman in the paddock, and he sawed us, and took all our cloathes whiles we wur in the water. He thought as how he’d got us then, and that we couldn’t git away wudout our cloathes. But he’s found he’s wrong, fur we climbed up the far bank into Throws Wood, and ran hoame.”
“ You mean to tell me as you’ve come in your skin all the way from Bucksteep?”
Harry nodded, and laughed at some Puckish memory. “ Well, all I wonder is as you wurn’t took and put in
TOM 53
gaol — you would have been if policeman had met you — and you’ll catch your death of cold.”
He pulled off his coat and most ungently bundled Harry into it. Then another idea struck him. He groaned, and scratched his head.
“ I must write to Mus’ Archie this wunst.”
“ Why, Tom?”
“ To git your clothes back. We can’t afford to lose a good suit of clothes.”
He turned wearily to the cupboard, and took out a penny ink-bottle, a pen, and some cheap writing-paper. “ Tom — he’ll know it wur me if you write.”
“ I can’t help that — we must git your clothes back.”
“ But they were only old cloathes.”
“ Adone-do, Harry. We can’t afford to lose so much as an old shirt. Oh, you’re vrothering me to madness wud your doings.”
He began to scrawl in his slow, round hand. He was no letter-writer, and found it difficult to put his request into words. He also wanted to plead for Harry, to explain a little of his own hard case, and ask that the matter might be allowed to stop at the scare and scolding Harry had received, for “ I am joining up to-morrow, and it is very hard to leave them all like this, from your obedient servant Thomas Beatup.”
Harry watched him, bobbing over the sheet, every now and then passing his tongue over his lips in the agony of composition. Then suddenly he slid towards him across the table and put his arm round his neck. Tom shook him off.
“ Git away.”
“ I’m sorry I’m such a hemmed curse to you, Tom.”
“ You’re a hemmed curse indeed. I ask you to be a man in my plaace, and you’re no more than a tedious liddle child.”
54
THE FOUR ROADS
A sudden sense of the hopelessness of it all came over him — the net in which he struggled, in which he was being dragged away from those he could help and love. He dropped his head in his hands. Harry stood for a moment awestruck beside him, a grotesque figure with Tom’s coat hanging over his bare thighs. Then he turned and crept away to bed.
The clock struck nine, and Tom lifted his head. He was utterly weary, but he knew that if he did not take his letter over to Bucksteep to-night he would not have time in the morning. There was no good leaving it to other hands to deliver, for he felt that his mother would resent its humble tone, and perhaps send instead an angry demand which, by rousing Mus’ Archie’s rage, might end by landing Harry before the Senlac Bench. So he put on his father’s driving coat, which hung in the passage and smelt of manure and stale spirits, and let himself out into the soft, throbbing darkness, lit only by a few dim stars of the Plough.
12
Bucksteep Manor was the smaller kind of country- house, smuggled away from the cross-roads in a larch plantation, with a tennis lawn at the back, and a more open view swinging over a copsed valley to Rushlake Green. It had once been a farmhouse, but a wing had been added in modern style, and inside, the low raftering had been swept away, so that when Tom stood in the dimly-lighted hall, which had once been the kitchen, he could look up to a ceiling dizzily high to his sag-roofed experience.
The Lambs were the aristocracy of Dallington, a neighbourhood strikingly empty of “ society ” in the country-house sense. They had themselves been yeo-
TOM
man farmers a couple of generations back, and the pres- ent squire still interested himself shamefacedly in Buck- steep’s hundred acres. The Beatups had but little truck with the Manor ; precarious yeomen, no rents or dues demanded intercourse, and Mus’ Beatup had often been heard to say that some folks were no better than other folks, for all their airs and acres.
Tom had given his letter to a rustling parlourmaid, and stood meekly waiting for an answer, his large bovine eyes blinking with sleepiness. From an adjoining room came the throaty music of a gramophone, playing:
“ When we wind up the Watch on the Rhine Everything will be Potsdam fine ...”
There was girls’ laughter, too — probably Miss Marian Lamb and Mus’ Archie’s intended — and every now and then he heard Mrs. Lamb’s voice go rocketing up. He did not feel envious of all this jollity, neither did it grate upon him; he just stood and waited under the shaded lamps of the hall, and had nearly fallen asleep on his legs when suddenly the door opened, with a flood of light and noise, and shut again behind Mus’ Archie.
“ Good evening, Beatup. Sorry to have kept you wait- ing. I couldn’t make this out at first — had no idea your young brother was one of the culprits to-night, or I shouldn’t have played that trick on ’em.”
“ It doan’t matter, sir. Harry desarved it. It’s only as we can’t afford to lose the clothes.”
“ No, no, of course not. Come with me and pick his out of the pile, and you can take them home.”
“ Thank you, Mus’ Archie.”
He followed young Lamb into a little gun-room open- ing on the hall, and was able to pick out Harry’s rather bobtail toilet from a muddle of Sinden and Pix raiment. “ That’s all, is it? Wan’t anything to wrap ’em in?”
56
THE FOUR ROADS
“ No, sir, it aun’t worth it. Thank you kindly for letting me have the things.”
“ There was never any question of you not having them. I’ve no right to keep ’em. So you’re joining up to-morrow? ”
He was in uniform, but without his belt. Somehow to Tom he seemed a burlier, browner man than the young squire whom before the war he used to see out hunting, or shooting, or driving girls in his car.
“ Yes, I’m joining up, as they say.”
“ You don’t seem over-pleased about it.”
“ I aun’t, particular.”
“ Well, I’m not going to tell you it’s the grandest job on earth, and that all the chaps out there are having the time of their lives. It wouldn’t be true, though I expect the Tribunal told you so.”
“Yessir; they said as if they were only ten years younger they’d all be in it.”
“ Of course they did. Well, I’ve been out there, and I’ve seen . . . But never mind ; you’ll find that out for yourself, Beatup. However, I’ll say this much — it isn’t a nice job, or a grand job, or even a good job ; but it’s a job that’s got to be done, and when it’s done we’ll like to think that Sussex chaps helped do it.”
Tom’s heart warmed a little towards Mus’ Archie. He was making him feel as he had felt when Bill Putland said, ” We’re all eighteenth Sussex hereabouts.”
“ It aun’t the going as un vrother me, if it wurn’t fur leaving Worge. I’m fretted as the plaace ull land at the auctioneer’s if I’m long away. You see, I’ve always done most of the work, in my head as well as wud my hands. Faather, he aun’t a healthy man, and the others aun’t much help nuther. There’s only Harry lik to be any use, and he’s such an unaccountable limb of wickedness — for ever at his tricks — to-night’s only one cf them.”
TOM 57
“ Perhaps he’ll pull himself together and work for Worge when he sees you’ve gone to fight for it.”
This was new light on the matter for Tom. Hitherto he had always thought of himself as deserting Worge in its hour of need — it had never occurred to him that his going was the going of a champion, not of a traitor.
“ Maybe it’s as you say, Mus’ Archie. Leastways, we’ll hope so.”
They were in the hall again now, and the gramophone was singing in its spooky voice. “ You called me Baby Doll a year ago.” Tom slowly turned the handle of the front door, sidling out on to the step.
“ Thank you for the clothes, Mus’ Archie. I’ll try and talk some sense into Harry before I go.”
“ Good night, Beatup, and good luck to you. I ex- pect I’ll see some more of you in the near future. All the chaps round here seem to be drafted into the eight- eenth. Bill Putland will be in our little crowd, and Jerry Sumption — there’ll be quite a Dallington set at Waterheel.”
“ I hope I’ll be with you, Mus’ Archie.”
“ I hope you will, Beatup. Good night.”
“ Good night, sir.”
The door shut, and he was out in the drive, where the larches swung against the moon.
Archie Lamb went back into the drawing-room, and put a new record on the gramophone.
“ Queer chap, Beatup,” he said to his mother. “ I don’t know how he’ll shape. He looks strong and steady, but I should say about as smart as a mangold-wurzel.”
13
Tom swung along the dim road, where the shadows ran before him. The new-risen moon looked over the
58
THE FOUR ROADS
hedge, an amber disc just past the full, swimming against the wind from Satanstown. In the heart of the wind seemed still to beat the pulse of those far-off guns, the ghost of their day-long thunder. Over and over in his mind Tom turned his new thought — that he was going to fight for Worge.
In a quarter of an hour he had come to Sunday Street. He could see the moonlight lying like frost on the south- ward slope of the roofs, and the windows of the Bethel were ghostly with it, as they stared away to the marshes. The Bethel alone seemed awake in the little huddle of sleeping cottages — it had a strange look of watchfulness and waiting, its gaunt Georgian windows never had that comfortable blinking air of the cottage lattices . . . Tom did not like the Bethel at night.
He looked across the road to the Horselunges, where Mr. Sumption lived. A crack of light showed under the blind of the minister's room, and Tom's heart gave a little thump of self-reproach, for he had not till then thought of saying good-bye to him. He had not seen much of Mr. Sumption lately, and had been too much absorbed in his own concerns to think of him, but now he made up his mind to call and say good-bye ; it was past ten o'clock and he was very tired and sleepy, never- theless he walked up to the door of the Horselunges and knocked.
Mrs. Hubble was in bed, as the hour demanded, so the door was opened by her lodger.
“Hello, Tom. Anything the matter? Do they want me at Worge ? "
Mr. Sumption was always childishly eager for some demand on his pastoral ministrations, a demand which was seldom made, as he had a disruptive bedside manner and the funds of his chapel did not admit of the doles
TOM 59
which made sick Dallington people endure the consola- tions of the Church.
“ No, thank you, they doan’t. I’ve just come to say good-bye.”
The minister’s forehead clouded —
“ Oh, you’ve remembered me at last, have you? Thought it just as well not to forget old friends before you go off to make new ones. Come in.”
Tom, who had expected this greeting, followed Mr. Sumption upstairs into the room which he called his study, but which had few points of difference from any cottage living-room in Sunday Street. There was a frayed carpet with a lot of dirt trodden into it, and a sun-sucked wall-paper adhering as closely as possible to walls complicate of beams and bulges. A solitary book- shelf supported Jessica s First Prayer , Edwin s Trial or The Little Christian Witness , and kindred works, cheek- by-jowl with Burton’s Four Last Things and a cage of white mice. There was another cage hanging in the window, containing a broken-winged thrush which the pastor, after the failure of many anathemas, had bought from one of those mysterious gangs of small boys which prowl round villages. An old, old cat sat before the empty grate, too decrepit to make more than one attempt a day on the thrush or the mice, and now purring wheez- ily in the intervals of scratching a cankered ear.
On the table was a wild, unwieldy parcel, from whose bursting sides the contents were already beginning to ooze forth.
“ I’m packing a parcel for Jerry,” said the minister. “ Td just finished when you knocked.”
“ It looks as if it was coming undone,” said Tom.
“ So it does ” — and Mr. Sumption glanced depre- catingly at his handiwork. “ If only I had some sealing- wax . . . but the shop’s shut.”
60
THE FOUR ROADS
“ It’ll be open to-morrow,” said Tom, and pictured Thyrza pulling up the blind and dusting the salmon-tins in the window . . . long after he had gone to catch the early train from Hailsham.
“ Well, to-morrow’s time enough, as I can’t post it before then. It ud be a pity for anything to get lost. There’s three shillings’ worth of things in that parcel.”
“ Have you had any more letters from Jerry? ”
“ Yes, I had one yesterday ” — no need to tell Tom there had been no others — “ He wants chocolate and cigarettes, and I put in a tin of cocoa besides, and some little squares to make soup of. He’ll be unaccountable pleased.”
“ How’s he gitting on ? ”
“ Valiant. He likes being along of the other lads. The only thing that worrits him is your sister.”
“My sister?”
“ Yes, your sister Ivy. Seemingly she never answered a postcard he wrote her ten days back, and you knows he’s unaccountable set on Ivy.”
“ It aun’t no use, Mus’ Sumption. Ivy’s got no thought for him, I’m certain sure, and he’s only wasting time over her.”
The minister’s comely face darkened, and he cracked his fingers once or twice.
“ It’s a pity, a lamentable pity. That boy of mine’s crazy on Ivy Beatup. Are you sure she doesn’t care about him, Tom? ”
“ Well, who knows wot a gal thinks ? I can only put two and two together. But seemingly if she’d cared she’d have answered his postcard.”
“ Could you put in a word for him? ”
Young Beatup shook his head —
“ I woan’t meddle. If Ivy doan’t care I can’t maake
TOM 61
her, and I reckon mother’s unaccountable set against it too.”
He had said the wrong thing. Mr. Sumption’s eyes became like burning pits. He swung his hands up and cracked them like a pistol.
“ Set against it, is she? Set against my Jerry? May- be he isn’t good enough for her — a clergyman’s son for a farmer’s daughter.
“ I never said naun of that,” mumbled Tom uneasily, remembering his mother’s reference to “ gipsy muck.” “ It’s I as might be set against it,” continued the minister. “ I tell you that boy’s been bred and cut above your sister. I never sent him to a board school along of farmers’ children — I taught him myself, everything I learned at college. He’d know as much I do if he hadn’t forgotten it. Yet I’m not proud; I know the boy wants your sister Ivy and ull do something silly if he can’t get her, so when he writes to me, ‘ Where’s Ivy ? Find out why she didn’t answer my postcard, and tell her I’ll go mad if she doesn’t take some notice of me ’ — why, then, I do my best — and get told my son’s not good enough for your father’s daughter.”
“ I never told you any such thing,” said Tom dog- gedly, “ but I woan’t spik to Ivy. She knows her own business best. If I were you I’d tell Jerry straight as no good ull come of his going after her. She doan’t want him — I’m certain sure of that.”
The pastor’s wrath had died down into something more piteous.
“ I daresay you’re right, Tom, and maybe I did wrong to speak like that. After all, I was only a blacksmith till the Lord called me away ... I pray that He may not require my boasting of me.”
“ Well, I’m unaccountable sorry about Ivy being lik that, but I thought it better to spik plain.”
62
THE FOUR ROADS
Mr. Sumption sat down rather heavily at the table.
“ O Lord, how shall I tell Jerry? If I tell him he’ll do something wild, sure as he’s Jerry Sumption; ”
“ Doan’t tell him. He’ll find out for himself soon enough.”
Mr. Sumption groaned.
“ Tom Beatup,” he said slowly, “ I reckon you think I’m a faithless, unprofitable steward so to set my heart on human flesh and blood. But you’ll understand a bit of what I feel . . . some day, when you’re the father of a son.”
14
The pale morning ray came slanting over the sky from Harebeating towards the last stars. Slowly the trees and hedges loomed out against the trembling yellow pools of the dawn. Colours woke in the fields, soft hazy greens, and blues and greys that ran together like smoke . . . ponds began to gleam among the spinneys, discs of mirrored sky, that from lustreless white became glassy yellow, then kindled from glass to fire, then smouldered from fire to rust.
Tom saw the window square light up and frame the familiar picture of a life’s mornings — the oast-house, the lombardy poplar topping the barn, the little patch of distant fields seen between the oast and the jutting farm- house gable. The bed was pulled up close to the window, to allow of the door being opened, and he could lie on his side and look straight out at the loved common things which perhaps he might never see just so again.
It all looked very quiet, and rather cold, and the early sunless light gave it a peculiar lifelessness, as if it was something painted, or cut in cardboard. Even Tom was conscious of its cold, dreamlike quality; he always said
TOM
63
that “the yard looked corpsy at break o’ day.” Then the distant view of little fields suddenly swam into golden light, as a long finger of sunlight stroked the barn- roofs, then stabbed in at the window, throwing a shaft of dancing golden motes across the room. Tom rose, climbed out of bed over Zacky, and in about three square feet of floor space shaved and dressed. Then he went downstairs, unlocked the house door and stole out to his last morning’s work.
No one was about; it was not till more than an hour later that the two antique farm-hands, Elphick and Juglery, came up from Worge Cottages. By that time Tom had milked the cows, mixed the chicken food, and driven the horses down to Forges field. He gave the two unskilled labourers their orders for the day as if he ex- pected to be there to see them carried out. By that time Ivy was hunting for eggs, and Mrs. Beatup was struggling with the kitchen fire, while Mus’ Beatup, in practical, unlearned mood, had gone to the Sunk field to inspect the ewes.
As Ivy came out of the hen-house and crossed the yard, cheery, healthy, blowsy, with eggs in a bowl, Tom had a sudden thought of giving her Mr. Sumption’s message. But he held his tongue. He had meant what he said when he told the minister he was not going to meddle. He had long been convinced of the fact that his sister knew her own business; besides, Jerry . . . that lousy gipsy chap . . . Pastor might say he was getting on valiant, but all Dallington knew that he had been given seven days C.B. within a week of his joining.
So, with nothing for Ivy but a nod, Tom went in to breakfast. Time was short, but the breakfast was still in a rudimentary state. Mrs. Beatup fought with the kitchen fire among whorls of smoke, while Nell, coughing pathetically, laid the table. Harry in a fit of brotherly
64
THE FOUR ROADS
love was cleaning Tom’s best boots ready for his journey to Lewes — no one ever went to Lewes in any but Sunday clothes.
“Oh, is that you, Tom? I hope as you aun’t in a hurry. This fire’s bewitched. Nell, give your brother a cut off the loaf. You’d better git started, Tom, or you’ll lose your train.”
So Tom’s last breakfast at Worge was eaten in con- fusion and mess, the family dropping in one by one for cuts off the loaf or helpings of cold bacon spotted with large blisters of grease. Last of all the breakfast arrived, in the shape of the tea-pot, and a special boiled egg for Tom. He was not able to do more than gulp down the egg and scald himself with the tea. Then it was time to go. He had already tied up a few little things in a handkerchief — a razor, a piece of soap, an old frosted Christmas card which for some obscure reason he treas- ured— so there was nothing to do but to say good-bye and beat it for Hailsham, a good seven miles.
Mus’ Beatup put down his tea-cup and looked solemn.
“ Well, good-bye, my lad. I reckon you’ve got to go. Everyone’s off to fight now, seemingly, so I suppose you must do wot others do. Not that I think so much of this war as some folks seem to — it’s bin going on nigh two years now, and I can’t see as we’re any of us a penny the better off. Howsumdever . . .”
“ He’s going to stop it,” said Nell, her face pink.
“ Ho, is he? Well, I’ve no objection. Maybe I’ll write you a letter, Tom, when Maudie calves.”
“ I’d be much obliged if you would, faather, and tell me how the wheat does this year, and them new oats by the Street.”
“ Good-bye, Tom,” said Harry. “ I shall miss you unaccountable.”
TOM
65
“ And I’ll miss you, too,” said Zacky, “ but there’ll be more room in the bed.”
Tom kissed them sheepishly all round, then walked out of the door without a word.
He was in the yard, when he heard footsteps creaking after him, and turned round to see his mother.
“ Wait a bit, Tom,” she panted; “ I’ll go wud you to the geate.”
He was surprised, but it did not strike him to say so. They walked down the drive together almost in silence, the boy hanging his head. Mrs. Beatup sniffed and choked repeatedly.
“ Doan’t go near those Germans, Tom,” she said, when they came to a standstill. “If you do, you’ll be killed for certain sure.”
“ I’ll go where I’m put, surelye,” said Tom gloomily.
“Well, be careful, that’s all. Kip well behind the other lads, and doan’t go popping your head over walls or meddling wud cannons. And kip your feet dry, Tom, and doan’t git into temptation.”
“ I promise, mother,” he mumbled against her neck, and they kissed each other many times before she let him go.
The Rifle Volunteer looked down from his sign, where he stood in the grey uniform and mutton-chop whiskers of an earlier dispensation, and stared at the stocky, shambling little figure that trudged its unwilling way to sacrifice — past Worge Cottages, stewing in the sunshine like pippins, past Egypt Farm (which Bill Putland would leave later and more conveniently in his father’s dog- cart), past the shop, with a glance half shy, half be- seeching, at the drawn blinds, past the willow pond, out of Sunday Street, into the long yellow road that led to the unsought, undesired adventure.
PART II: JERRY
i
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 friend- ship 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
66
JERRY 67
your goings-on, nuther ; but anyway you’re use- ful.”
“ 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 lament- able. 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 hardworking 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 com- forted her with a kiss and a clap and a few cheery words, and soon had her interested in the various bootstains
68
THE FOUR ROADS
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 anaemic, 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 conscrip- tion. 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 un- willingly 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 familv were all of a block. To her
*
mother the War was merely a matter of prices and scar- cities, 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
JERRY 69
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 pre- vail. The interior, glimpsed through the open door, was dim and mediaeval, 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 mediaeval tendencies, and did his best, both in service and sermon, to transport his congregation from the wood- bine-age to the age of pilgrimages and monasteries, with the result that, with unmediaeval 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 every- day 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
70
THE FOUR ROADS
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 hur- riedly, 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 Pm so sorry I haven’t finished that book you lent me. Pm afraid Pve 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.
JERRY
71
“ 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 move- ment 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 for- merly 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
72
THE FOUR ROADS
the horses and plaited their manes, he compelled Zacky with threats of personal violence to spend Saturday after- noon scaring birds from the gooseberries, instead of, with six other little boys, carrying out an enveloping move- ment 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 elder-flower 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-harrow sprouted, with the thick-stalked sprawly pig-nut, 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 b roomy cones to the sky, an adventure would
JERRY
73
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 Kad- wells ; 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
74
THE FOUR ROADS
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 be- yond 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 some- times 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 cer- tain 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.
JERRY
75
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
76 THE FOUR ROADS
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. More- over, one day Mrs. Beatup, buying candles, found Thyrza wearing a regimental button mounted as a brooch, and was told it was a gift fronTTom.
“ 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.”
77
JERRY
“ Mrs. Honey’s middling pretty,” said Ivy, “ with her colour and teeth and all.”
“ You’ve got queer notions of pretty. Why, only yes- terday 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 Tors, and the brooch was a piece of daring she had never expected. It is true that from time to time she
78
THE FOUR ROADS
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 reveille 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 cor- ner, 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, giv- ing 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 Put- land 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 sweet-
JERRY
79
hearts at the Foul Mile and the Trulilows — every eve- ning 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
80
THE FOUR ROADS
sometimes craved for the little child which had died at birth two years ago — she “ cud do wTud a child,” she some- times 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 help- less than herself, one less able to think and plan, one whom she could “ manage ” tenderly. He wras 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 un- sophisticated 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
JERRY 81
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 goodj 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 variolic 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 con- trary 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 unaccount- able 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
8?,
THE FOUR ROADS
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 be- yond 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 dis- guise 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.”
JERRY 83
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 pic- ture-hall, thinking she saw Jerry’s face, angry and swarthy, with eyes like the Forge at night. . . . Sup- pose 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.
8 4
THE FOUR ROADS
“ 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 in- evitable, 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
JERRY
85
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 send- ing 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 soap- suds, 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.”
86
THE FOUR ROADS
“ 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 im- portant 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 un- accountable 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. Look- ing 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
JERRY 87
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
88
THE FOUR ROADS
few strayed into the Bethel, which looked a little less gaunt with its door open to the sunshine and old Grand- father 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 min- ister 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 in- spired, 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 Brown- bread 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 con- cealed 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
JERRY 89
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 church- yard 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, clump- ing 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 . . .
90
THE FOUR ROADS
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 moon- ing or reading his Bible for solace, he made haste to re- call 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 Cow- lease had never entered the Bethel door since Mr. Sump- tion 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
JERRY
91
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. “ Woa — 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, dream- ing 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
92
THE FOUR ROADS
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
JERRY 93
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.
“ Fve 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 headge, 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 headges.”
“ 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 you ...”
and kiss
94
THE FOUR ROADS
“ 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.”
JERRY
95
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 whack- ing 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.
96
THE FOUR ROADS
“ 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.
io
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 Padg-
JERRY
97
ham. To eastward lay the thick, black woods of Furnace- field, 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 crav- ing 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.
ii
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, loom- ing, 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
98
THE FOUR ROADS
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 tq 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 ? ”
JERRY
99
“ 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
100
THE FOUR ROADS
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 washtub 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
JERRY 101
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 receiv- ing 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 uni- form 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.
102
THE FOUR ROADS
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
i
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 Dalling- ton 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 up- lifted 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
JERRY 103
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 clergy- man’s son.”
And again there was that look on his face which pre- vented 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
104
THE FOUR ROADS
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.”
JERRY
105
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 senten- tiously, 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
106
THE FOUR ROADS
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 con- sciousness of two pounds of Derby rock — to such magnifi- cence 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 shamefaced 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, mes- sages 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 pack- ing-case she was breaking open behind the counter.. The next moment she gave a little cry. She had just been
JERRY
107
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, sun- burnt 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
TonTs 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 un- just, 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
108 THE FOUR ROADS
hoame . . . and a husband ” — remembering her bless- ings 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
JERRY
109
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 Jug- lery 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 watchdog 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 stand- ing a day over their due. Try Sandy oat this fall — and Flemish oat is good in clays, I’ve heard tell. And the
110
THE FOUR ROADS
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 4 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 uni- form, 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 some- thing 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
Ill
JERRY
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 ad- venture 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 Sep- tember 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
112
THE FOUR ROADS
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 her- self 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
JERRY
113
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, 4 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