Chapter 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 nothing, 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 [38] lighting 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 headacheless 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 Rushlake 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, whizz-bangs, 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 [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 Waterheel 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 an?mic flush, shrugged away from her sister’s sprawling elbow. She herself had had 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 carefully dusted the crumbs from her skirt, smoothed her pretty marigold hair before the bit of mirror by the fireplace, 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 marching with a kick in his rear.

Ivy tied on a sacking apron and began to slop soapsuds 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] 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 invisible 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 windward 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.

[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 expression 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 together.”

[42]

“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 wudout 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 unknown 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, mysterious 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.

[43]

“I shall like being along of Mus’ 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 beyond the conscript’s obedience, a corporate enthusiasm beyond his lonely unwillingness. “We’re all eighteenth Sussex hereabouts....”