Chapter 14

An hour later Mr. Sumption had left the green hill and was walking towards a little hamlet that showed its gables at the bend of the lane. Now that his grief was spent, drunk up by the earth like a storm, he remembered that he was hungry, and set out to hunt for food. There was an inn at the beginning of the street, a low house slopped with yellow paint and swinging the sign of the Star across the road. Mr. Sumption walked in and asked the landlady for breakfast; then, upon her stare, changed his demand to dinner, whereat she told him that the Star did not give dinners, and that there was a war on. However, he managed at last to persuade her to let him have some dry bread and tea, and a quarter of an hour later he was making the best of them in a little green, sunless parlour, rather pleasantly stuffy with the ghosts of bygone pipes and pots.

The room was in the front of the house, and the shadow of the inn lay across the road, licking the bottom of the walls of the houses opposite. Above it they rose into a yellow glare of sunshine, and their roofs were bitten against a heavy blue sky. From quite near came the pleasant chink of iron, and craning his head he saw the daubed colours of a smith and wheelwright on a door a little further down the street. It comforted him to think that there should be a smith so near him, and all through his meal he listened to the clink and thud, with sometimes the clatter of new-shod hoofs in the road.

When he had finished his dinner and paid his shilling he went out and up beyond the shadow of the inn to the [309] smith’s door. The name of the hamlet was Lion’s Green, and he gathered he was some ten miles from home, beyond Horeham and Mystole. It would not take him more than a couple of hours to get back with his great stride, so there was time for him to linger and put off the evil hour when he must confront Mrs. Hubble and explain why he had been out all night. Meantime he would go and watch the smith.

There was no house opposite the forge, and the doorway was full of sunshine, which streamed into the red glare of the furnace. Mr. Sumption stood in the mixing light, a tall black figure, leaning against the doorpost. He had smoothed his creased and grass-stained clothes a little, and taken out the straws that had stuck in his hair, but he always looked ill-shaved at the best of times, and to-day his face was nearly swallowed up in his beard. The smith was working single-hand, and had no time to stare at his visitor. He wondered a little who he was, for though he wore black clothes like a minister, he was in other respects more like a tramp.

“Good afternoon,” said Mr. Sumption suddenly.

“Good afternoon,” said the smith, hesitating whether he should add “sir,” but deciding not to.

“You seem pretty busy.”

“Reckon I am—unaccountable busy. I’m aloan now—my man went last week. Thought I wur saafe wud a man of forty-eight, but now they raise the age limit to fifty, and off he goes into the Veterinary Corps.”

“Shall I give you a hand?”

The smith stared.

“I’ve done a lot of smith’s work,” continued Mr. Sumption eagerly. “There’s nothing I can’t do with hoof and iron.”

The smith hesitated; then he saw the visitor’s arms as he took off his coat and began to roll up his sleeves.

[310]

“Well, maybe ... if you know aught ... there’s the liddle cob thur wants a shoe.”

A few men and boys were in the smithy, and they looked at each other and whispered a little. They had never seen such swingeing, hairy arms as Mr. Sumption’s.

A smile was fighting its way across the stubble on the minister’s face. He cracked his joints with satisfaction, and soon the little cob was shod by as quick, as merciful, and as sure a hand as had ever touched him. His owner looked surprised.

“I’d never taake you fur a smith,” he remarked; “leastways, not wud your coat on.”

“I’m not a smith. I’m a Minister of the Gospel.”

The men winked at each other and hid their mouths. Then one of them asked suddenly:

“Are you the Rev. Mr. Sumption from Sunday Street?”

“Reckon I am. Do you know me?”

“I doan’t know you, surelye; but we’ve all heard as the minister of Sunday Street can shoe a horse wud any smith, and postwoman wur saying this marnun as he’d gone off nobody knows whur, after telling all his folk in a sermon as they’d started the War.”

Mr. Sumption looked uncomfortable.

“I only went for a bit of a tramp, and lost my way ... I’ve no call to be home before sundown—so, if you’ve any use for me, master, I can stop and give you a hand this afternoon.”

The smith was willing enough, for he was hard-pressed, and the fame of the Reverend Mr. Sumption had spread far beyond the country of the Four Roads. The strength of his great arms, his resource, his knowledge, his experience of all smithwork, made him an even more valuable assistant than the man who had gone. There was a market that day at Chiddingly, which meant more [311] work than usual, including several wheelwright’s jobs, which the smith performed himself, leaving the horses to Mr. Sumption. The furnace roared as the bellows gasped, and lit up all the sag-roofed forge, with the dark shapes of men and horses standing round, and the minister holding down the red-hot iron among the coals or beating it on the anvil, while his sweating skin was shiny and crimson in the glow.

It was like his dream of the forge at Bethersden—and he felt almost happy. The glow of his body seemed to reach his heart and warm it, and his head was no longer full of doubts like stones. He had found a refuge here, as he had found it in old days in Mus’ Bourner’s forge at Sunday Street—the heat, the roar, the flying sparks, the shaking crimson light, the smell of sweat and hoofs and horse-hide, the pleasant ache of labour in his limbs, were all part of the healing which had begun when he rubbed his cheek against the wet soil on the common. His religion had always taught him to look on his big friendly body as his enemy, to subdue and thwart and ignore it. He had not known till then how much it was his friend, and that there is such a thing as the Redemption of the Body, the mystic act through which the body saves and redeems the soul.

He worked on till the sun grew pale, and a tremulous primrose light crept over the fields of Lion’s Green, swamping the trees and hedges and grazing cows. The afternoon was passing into the evening, and Mr. Sumption knew he must start at once if he was to be home that day.

“Well, I’m middling sorry to lose you,” said the smith. “A man lik you’s wasted preaching the Gospel.”

“Reckon I shan’t do much more of that,” said Mr. Sumption wryly. “I can’t go back to my Bethel, after [312] what’s happened.”

“Well, if ever you feel you’d lik to turn blacksmith fur a change——” the smith remarked, with a grin.

“I shall go into the Army Veterinary Corps,” said Mr. Sumption.

“Wot! Lik my man?”

“Like the man I was meant to be. I agree with you, master—I’m wasted preaching the Gospel. I’d be better as a veterinary ... I’ve been thinking....”