Chapter 10

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 voluntary, not to say capricious, act, and her frequent lamentations were gabbled with reproach, vague hints that if [49] he had liked he could have prevented the catastrophe—precisely how, she never told him.

Mus’ Beatup was not drunk. Only a negative statement 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 Darwin’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.”

[50]

“But they lived years ago, and it’s——”

“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 relieved 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 creaking upstairs, leaving Ivy to clear away the supper. Just where the stairs bent, she suddenly stood still, as if a thought had struck her.

[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.