Chapter 14

For the next two or three days the work went well. The Volunteer Field was reaped, and then the Street Field; the Sunk and Forges must be tackled before the fine weather came to an end, but the low grounds by Bucksteep might be left to stand a little, being sheltered, and not quite ready for harvest. Harry’s mixed gang of helpers was a bigger success than he had dared hope. Mr. Sumption was even better the second day than the first, having worked down a stiffness which his big muscles had acquired from long disuse. Even Mrs. Beatup was impressed, and gave him a fine breakfast every morning. The other clergyman was not so useful, but he made up in effort what he lacked in achievement, [204] and by Friday was doing quite a creditable day’s work. Nell was not, of course, much good, still, she was better than nothing, and more energetic and good-humoured than Harry had ever seen her. Zacky and the hired boy conspired in laziness and evil-doing, and Harry was grateful when the Rev. Mr. Sumption took it upon himself to knock their heads together.

On Friday evening grey smears of cloud lay on a strange whiteness in the west, and on Saturday the whole sky was smudged over with a pale opacity, and the wind blew from the South. The labourers found relief from the stewing, chaffy stillness of the last few days; but Harry snuffed the air and looked wise.

“The weather’s breaking up,” he said to his father in the dinner-hour. “We’ll have to work on Sunday.”

“Wud two passons!” cried Mus’ Beatup. “They’ll never coame. They’ll be preaching tales about dead men.”

“Reckon we must do wudout them. We durn’t leave the Sunk Field till after the weather. Bucksteep can wait, surelye, but the Sunk must be reaped before the rain.”

Mus’ Beatup groaned—“That’s the wust of doing aught wud passons. ’Tis naun to them if it rains on Monday—all they care is that a dunnamany hunderd years agone it rained forty days and forty nights and drownded all the world saave Noah and his beasts. Bah!” and Mus’ Beatup spat into the hedge.

However, to their surprise, they found both the parsons ready to work on Sunday. Mr. Poullett-Smith had no less authority than the Archbishop of Canterbury—the Archbishop quoted Christ’s saying of the ox in the pit, and gave like indulgence to all Churchmen. The Rev. Mr. Sumption appeared with no such sanctions.

[205]

“I’ve got no Randall Cantuar or Charles John Chichester to tell me I may break the Lord’s commandments. Reckon the Assembly ull be against me in this, and the Lord Himself ull be against me; but I’ll risk it. For you’re a good lad, Harry Beatup, and I’m going to stand by you, and if the Lord visits it on me I must bow to His will.”

When service-time came he had the advantage, for he polished off his bewildered congregation in only a little over half an hour, whereas the curate was nearly two hours at Brownbread Street, with a sung Eucharist. “I can say what I like and pray what I like,” said Mr. Sumption. “I’m not tied down to a Roman Mass-book dressed-up Protestant.”

Mr. Smith heard him in silence. His respect for him as a man and a labourer still outweighed his contempt for him as preacher and theologian. Also he now felt that in matters of religion Mr. Sumption was slightly crazed. He could handle a horse or a hammer or a sickle with sureness and skill, and talk of them with sanity and knowledge, but once let him mount his religious notions and he would ride to the devil. Mr. Smith came to the conclusion that he was one of those crack-brained people who believed that the war was the end of the world, the Consummation of the Age foretold in Scripture, and that soon Christ would come again in the clouds with great glory.—This really was what Mr. Sumption believed, so Mr. Smith did not misjudge him much.

By noon on Sunday dark clouds were swagging up from the south-west, with a screaming wind before them. The fog and dust of the last few days had been followed by an unnatural clearness—each copse and fields and pond and lane in the country of the Four Roads stood sharply out, with inky tones in its colouring. The fields sweeping down from Sunday Street to Horse Eye were shaded from indigo almost to black, and on the marsh the slatting [206] water-courses gleamed like steel on the heavy teal-green of their levels. The sea was drawn in a black line against a thick, unhealthy white sky, blotched and straggled with grey.

“It’ll rain before dusk,” said Harry. “It can’t hoald out much longer.”

“We’ll never git the field shocked, let alone brought in,” said Mus’ Beatup. “Here we’ve bin five hour and not maade more’n a beginning—it’s lamentaable. Reckon we might as well let the Germans beat us—we cudn’t have wuss weather.”

Harry set his teeth.

“We’ll git it finished afore the rain.”

“Afore your grandmother dies,” jeered Mus’ Beatup. “I’m off to the Volunteer.”

“And leave us.... Faather!”

“I’m not a-going to stay here catching my death wud rheumatics, working in the rain under my son’s orders. Reckon you’d sooner see me dead than lose your hemmed oats—my hemmed oats I shud say—but I—” and Mus’ Beatup swung up his chin haughtily—“have different feelings.”

“Reckon you have, and you ought to be ashaumed of yourself!” cried Harry thickly, then flushed in self rebuke, for on the whole he was a respectful son.

Mus’ Beatup sauntered away, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched to his ears—his usual attitude when he felt guilty but wanted to look swaggering. Mr. Sumption and Mr. Poullett-Smith were both at the further end of the field, and no opposition stood between him and the Rifle Volunteer save the doubtful quality his wife might offer from the kitchen window. Harry watched him with burning cheeks and a full throat. “Reckon I’m lik to kip temperance all my days wud this,” he mumbled bitterly.

[207]

He then went down to the other workers, and told them that it was going to rain and that they were a labourer short, as his father was feeling ill and had gone indoors to rest, but that he hoped by “tar’ble hard wark” to get the field cut before the storm. “If the grain’s shocked, it’ll bear the rain, but if it’s left standing, the rain ull beat down the straw, and all the seed ull fly. Juglery, you taake the reaper—Norry Noakes, you git to Tassell’s head—Mus’ Sumption and Elphick and I ull reap, and Mus’ Smith and Nell and Zacky bind.... Now I reckon ’tis a fight ’twixt us and them gurt clouds over Galleybird.”

Elphick and Juglery were inclined to grumble at having their dinner-hour cut short, and talked of judgments equally bestowed on “them wot bruk the Sabbath” and “them wot bruk up grass.” But Mus’ Sumption’s professional opinion was that the approaching storm was not in the nature of a punitive expedition—“If the Lord had wanted to spoil this harvest, He would have done it on Thursday or Friday; now all He’ll get is the tail-end, and not that if I can help it.”

He bent his huge back to the sickle, and worked for the next hour without straightening. Mr. Poullett-Smith decided to forget the Sunday-school he was supposed to catechise at three, and Nell to forget the headache which would probably have sent her off the field at the same hour. Norry Noakes and Zacky, seeing their deliverance nigh, put more energy into that afternoon than they had put into all four other days of harvest—Norry nearly dragged Tassell’s head off his neck in his efforts to make him go faster.

At about three o’clock, Mr. Sumption stood up and scanned the fields under his hand like Elijah’s servant watching for rain. Then he gave a shout that made everyone start and straighten their backs.

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“Lo! the Lord is on our side—behold more labourers for the harvest.”

Two figures were coming down the field from Worge—Ivy Beatup and a soldier. Ivy wore a pink cotton dress, belling out all round her with the wind and flapping against the soldier’s legs. She also carried unexpectedly a pink parasol.

“Thought I’d come over and see you all!” she bawled as soon as she was within earshot. “This is Sergeant Eric Staples from Canada.”

... Canada! Then no doubt he knew a bit about harvesting. Harry went forward to meet them.

“Mother toald us you’d half the Sunk to reap before the weather,” said Ivy, at closer range, “so I said we’d come and give you a hand, surelye.”

“We’ll be unaccountable glad to have you both—the rain’s blowing up and we’re short of workers.”

“I’m on it, as the boys say, and so’s the Sergeant, I reckon.”

“Sure,” said Sergeant Staples, staring round him.

“Mother’s gitting a valiant supper fur us when ’tis all a-done. She says if you’ve bruk the Sabbath one way you may as well break it another and maake a good job of it. Thyrza’s coming, and is bringing all her tinned salmon. Wot do you think of my sunshade, Nell?—reckon it’s unaccountable smart,” and Ivy threw it down into the stubble and began rolling up her sleeves.

“It’s middling kind of you,” said Harry politely to Sergeant Staples.

“Only too glad—I’ve done a power of this work over in Sask. May I ask what this little buggy is?”—and he pointed to the nodding erection of old Juglery chaired above the reins that slacked on Tassell’s rump.

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“That’s the reaper, surelye.”

The Canadian did not speak, but the puzzled look deepened on his face.

“Maybe you’ll taake a sickle, being handy-like?”

“Sure”—but when Harry gave him Mus’ Beatup’s discarded weapon he held it at arm’s length and scratched his head. Then he slid up to Ivy—

“Say, kid, I never heard before as in the old country they cut corn with a pocket-knife.”

However, he swung his tool handily, and with the two new workers, and the extra energy of the old, the reaping went forward at a pace which threatened the victory of those black clouds over Galleybird.

The wind blew in droning gusts, swishing in the corn, and fiddling in the boughs of Forges Wood. Dead leaves began to fly out of the wood, the threat of autumn. The men’s shirts blew against their skins, and the women’s skirts flew out; the colours of the field grew dim—the corn was white, the wood and the hedges were grey—only the clothes of the harvesters stood out in smudges of pink and blue. Then suddenly rain began to squirt down out of a black smeary sky like charcoal—the wind screamed, almost flattening the few last rods. No one spoke, for no voice could be heard above the howling of the wind. Rabbits began to pop out of the corn, but there were no hunting dogs, no shouting groups from the cottages come out to see the fun. When the last sickleful had been cut, and the reaper stood still, with old Juglery asleep on the seat, the harvesters picked up their coats and pulled down their sleeves without a word.

They were wet through—the muscles of the men’s bodies showed through their clinging shirts and the women were wringing their gowns. But the Sunk Field was reaped and Harry’s harvest saved. He had won his battle against his own ignorance, his father’s indifference, and the earth’s treacheries. He had vindicated his daring, [210] and he would never know how small was the thing he had done—a few scrubby acres sown and reaped, a few mean quarters of indifferent grain gathered in—he would never hear Sergeant Staples say to Sergeant Speed of the North-West Provinces that he had spent a slack afternoon cutting mustard and cress with a pocket-knife.

Food was waiting up at the farm, with Thyrza Beatup, who, for obvious reasons now, had been unable to help with the harvest, but had done her best by contributing her entire stock of tinned salmon to the harvest-supper. The party began to move off, Mr. Poullett-Smith wrapping his coat over Nell’s shoulders with hands that perhaps strayed a little to touch her neck. Only Mr. Sumption was left, standing upright and stockish on the rise of the field, a huge black shape against the sky.

“Come along, Mus’ Sumption,” called Ivy, “and git a nice tea-supper. Thur’s tinned salmon and a caake.”

Mr. Sumption’s voice came to them on the scream of the wind—

“Shall I go without thanking the Lord of the Harvest for His mercies in allowing us to gather in the fruits of the earth on the Sabbath Day?”

“He’s praying,” said Nell, with a shiver of disgust in her voice.

The curate bit his lip.

“He’s perfectly right,” he said, and going up to the minister, he knelt down in the stubble. The others huddled in a sheepish group by the gate. Mr. Sumption’s prayer was blown over their heads, washed into the woods on the rain, but they could hear the groan of his big voice in the wind, and here and there a word of his familiar prayer-vocabulary.... “Lord ... day ... oven ... wicked ... righteous ... Satan ... save ... forgive.... Amen.