Chapter 11

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 coald, and I want my supper.”

The slow, facile anger of his type went tingling into Tom’s speech and hands.

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“Supper! I’m hemmed if you git so much as a bite. 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.

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“Well, all I wonder is as you wurn’t took and put in 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.”

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“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.”

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.