Chapter 2

He walked slowly on towards the stile, then stopped again and pulled a letter out of his pocket. It was a [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 enlisted 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 lost 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.

[14]

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.”

[15]

“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 without him.”

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 unsensible.”

“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]

“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 od 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, beyond 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 somebody 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.”

[17]

“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 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 unaccountable 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.”