Chapter 2

But Tom learned to be father as well as husband in the days that followed—perhaps it was the joys of his husbandhood which woke the fatherhood in him. It did not quicken in a blinding flash, as motherhood had come to Thyrza when her baby was first laid in her arms, but grew and throve in his daily contact with the little bit of helplessness and hope which he and Thyrza had made between them. It seemed to develop out of and be part of his love for her, and in time it seemed to have a tender, mellowing effect on that love, making it less anxious and passionate, more selfless, more sweet, more friendly....

Those days were different from the days they had spent together after their marriage. They never went for long walks now, but stopped in their little garden at the back of the cottage, where crocuses splashed the grass with purple and egg-yellow, and celandines crept in under the hedge from the fields of Egypt Farm. Here in the warm spring sunshine Thyrza would sit, rocking the baby’s cradle with her foot, while she talked to Tom in her sweet, drawly voice, of the little trades and doings of the past year. Every now and then the shop-bell would ring through the cottage, and she would go off to serve and gossip, leaving baby in his father’s care.... “And doan’t you dance him, Tom, or he’ll be sick.” For Tom was bolder now, and took perilous liberties with young William, just as now, in his third year of soldiering, he had begun to take them with the dud to which he had compared him.... “Reckon he’ll start fizzing a bit before he goes off.”

In the evenings, when the child was asleep in the cradle beside their bed, they would go across the road to the willow-pond, and sit or stroll there in the March dusk. [243] Those were wonderful days of spring, a March which was almost May, with sweet slumberous winds, so thick and hazy that the grumble of the unceasing guns was lost in them, and the War’s heart-beat never broke the meadow’s stillness. Soft primrose fogs trailed over Horse Eye Marshes under the rising stars, and away beyond them on the sea a siren crooned, like the voice of the twilight and the deep.... When the sky was dark round the big stars, and Orion’s sword hung above Molash Woods, they would go in to their supper in the lamplight, to the tender, intimate talk of their evening hours, and then up, with big reeling shadows moving before them on beam and plaster in the candlelight, to the dim spring-smelling room where their baby slept, and where Thyrza would sleep with her hair spread on the pillow like a bed of celandines, and Tom with his brown, war-calloused hand in the soft clasp of hers, and his head in the hollow of her breast.

Tom, of course, paid many visits to his family at Worge. He found Mus’ Beatup an invalid in the kitchen, his leg propped on a chair before him. Owing to his constitution it had mended slowly, but four months of forced soberness had worked a wonderful result in toning up his whole body, so that in spite of his illness his eye was brighter, his hand steadier and his voice clearer than at any time in Tom’s memory. Unfortunately, the boredom and privations of his state had only increased that “objectiousness” of disposition which Mrs. Beatup had deplored, and Tom had to sit and listen to long harangues, in which the War, the Christian Religion, God, Govunmunt, Monogamy, and War Agricultural Committees were toppled together in a common ruin. Nell no longer argued with him, his flicks and cuts had no power to wound, and he soon gave up trying to stir her into the little furies which had led to so many rousing arguments. [244] It was queer how she had changed.... Her chief arguments were with her mother, who seemed to think that the ceremony of marriage was bound automatically to create an abstract love of housekeeping in the female breast. She was astonished to find that Nell had now no greater love for making beds and washing dishes than in the days of her spinsterhood.

“I never heard of a married woman as cudn’t maake a sago pudden,” she said to Tom.

“She’d maake it fur her husband quick enough,” said Tom with a grin.

“Well, Steve’s here most Sundays, and she’s never maade him naun but a ginger-cake, and she used to maake that before she wur wed.”

“Wait till she’s got a liddle home of her own ... that’ll be all the difference, woan’t it, Nell?”

Nell smiled faintly.

“Would you believe it, Tom?” said Mrs. Beatup, “but when we want a suet pudden now we’ve got to git it off a meat-card.”

“We’ve heard out there as all you civvies wur on rations—and Mus’ Archie one day he got the platoon for a bit of parlez-voo and toald us as how you wurn’t starved, as so many chaps had letters from their wives, saying as they cud git naun to eat.”

“Not starved! That’s valiant. And wot does Mus’ Archie know about it? Seemingly you doan’t know wot war is out there wud all your tea and your butter and your meat. Reckon there’ll never be peace as long as soldiering’s the only job you can git fed at.”

“Well, you’ve guv me an unaccountable good tea fur a starving family. And now I’ll be off and see Harry about the farm.”

Worge was in the midst of its spring sowings, and Harry spent his long days in the fields whose harvest he [245] would not see. The Volunteer field was in potash now, dug for potatoes, and there were six more acres of potatoes over by the Sunk.

“They say as how a hunderd acres of potatoes ull feed four hunderd people fur a year,” he said to Tom—“and yit thur’s always summat unaccountable mean about a spud.”

Tom laughed. “You’ve done valiant, Harry.” Now that his brother’s adventure had justified itself, he had abandoned a good deal of his croaking attitude. Besides, if things really were getting scarce at home ... he wouldn’t like to think of Thyrza and the baby....

“I’ve done my best,” said Harry moodily, “but it’s over now. Reckon I’ll be called up in two months’ time.”

“Who’d have thought it!—you eighteen!—and the liddle skinny limb of wickedness you wur when I went away. I’d never have believed it, if you’d toald me that in two year you’d have maade more of Worge than I in five.”

“Father wants me to appeal; but it ud never do, I reckon. You cudn’t git off, so I’m not lik to.”

“And it wouldn’t be praaper, nuther,” said Tom, rather huffily. “You wud a brother in the Sussex! Farming’s all very well, Harry, but soldiering’s better. I didn’t think it myself at one time, but now I know different. A farm’s hemmed liddle use if Kayser Bill gits his perishing plaace in the sun. Besides, the praaper job fur a praaper Sussex chap is along of other Sussex chaps, fighting fur their farms. That’s whur I’d lik my old brother to be, and whur he’d like to be himself, I reckon.”

“I shudn’t,” said Harry, “any more than you did at fust.”

[246]

“I aun’t maaking out as I enjoy it—so you needn’t jump at me lik that. The chap who tells you he enjoys it out thur, reckon he taakes you fur a middling thick ’un, or he’s middling thick himself. But wot I say is, that it’s the praaper plaace fur a Sussex chap to be. Ask me wot I enjoy, and I’ll tell you”—and Tom jerked his pipe-stem over the ribbed hump of the field towards the cottages of Sunday Street, stewing like apples in the sunshine. “My fancy’s a liddle hoame of my own, and a wife and child in it, and my own bit of ground outside the door; and when we’ve wound up the watch on the Rhine, reckon I’ll be justabout glad to taake my coat off and sit in the sun and see my liddle ’un playing raound—and be shut of all that tedious hell wot’s over thur, Harry, acrost Horse Eye and the Channel, if folks at home only knew it—which seemingly they doan’t ... and I’m middling glad they doan’t, surelye.”

Harry was impressed, and a little ashamed.

“Never think as I aun’t willing, Tom. I’m willing enough, though I’d grown so unaccountable set on the new ploughs. Howsumdever, I’ve got things started like, and Zacky, maybe, when I’m gone, he’ll pull to and carry on, saum as I did; and father, he’s twice the head he had afore he bruk his leg and cudn’t git his drink. Seemingly, they’ll do valiant wudout me, and I ... well, I’ve come to love these fields so middling dear that if one day I find I’ve got to die fur them, reckon I shudn’t ought to mind much.”