Chapter 15

There was a farmer driving as far as Adam’s Hole on the Hailsham Road, and he offered Mr. Sumption a lift in his trap. The minister had shod his little sorrel mare, and with her hoofs ringing on the clinkered road they drove from Lion’s Green, away towards the east. The dipping sun poured upon their backs, flooding the lane and washing along their shadows ahead of them into the swale. The east was still bright, and out of it crept the moon, frail and papery, like the petal of a March flower.

The little mare spanked quickly over the way on her new-shod hoofs. Through Soul Street and Horeham Flat, by Badbrooks and Coarse Horn on the lip of the Marsh rolled the trap, with the minister nearly silent and the farmer talking about the War—till the oasts of Adam’s Hole showed their red turrets against a wood, and, declining an invitation to step in and hear half a dozen more good reasons why the Germans would never get the Channel Ports, Mr. Sumption tramped off to where the East Road swung into the flats.

The sun was now low, and the sunk light touched the moon, so that her smudged arc kindled and shone out of the cold dimness. Red and yellow gleams wavered over the country of the Four Roads, sweeping up the meadows towards Three Cups Corner, and lighting the woods that [313] blotched the chimneys of Brownbread Street. He saw Sunday Street slitting the hill with a red gape, and the sheen of the ponds by Puddledock, and the flare of gorse and broom on Magham Down. There was a great clearness and cleanness in the watery air, so that he could see the roofs of farmsteads far away and little cottages standing alone like toadstools in the fields. Sounds came clearly, too—there was a great clucking on all the farms, and the lowing of cows; now and then the bark of a dog came sharply from a great way off, sheep called their lambs in the meadows by Harebeating, and a boy was singing reedily at Cowlease Farm....

It was all very still, very lovely, steeped through with the spirit of peace—not even the beat of the guns could be heard to-night. These were the fields for which the boys in France had died, the farms and lanes they had sealed in the possession of their ancient peace by a covenant signed in blood. As Mr. Sumption looked round him at the country slowly sinking into the twilight, a little of its quiet crept into his heart. These were the fields for which the boys had died. They had not died for England—what did they know of England and the British Empire? They had died for a little corner of ground which was England to them, and the sprinkling of poor common folk who lived in it. Before their dying eyes had risen not the vision of England’s glory, but just these fields he looked on now, with the ponds, and the woods, and the red roofs ... and the women and children and old people who lived among them—the very same whom last night he had scolded and cursed, told they were scarce worth preaching at. For the first time he felt ashamed of that affair. He might not think them worth preaching at, but other men, and better men, had found them worth dying for.

Then, as he walked on towards Pont’s Green, he saw [314] these fields as the eternal possession of the boys who had died—bought by their blood. The country of the Four Roads was theirs for ever—they had won it; and this was true not only of the honoured Tom but of the dishonoured Jerry. For the first time he felt at rest about his son. “Somewhere the love of God is holding him....” He could not picture him in heaven, and he would not picture him in hell; but now he could see him as part of the fields that he, in his indirect shameful way, had died for. Surely his gipsy soul could find rest in their dawns and twilights, in the infinite calm of their noons.... Jerry would be near him at the pond side, in the meadow, in the smoke of the forge, in the murmur and shade of the wood ... and the cool winds blowing from the sea would wipe off his dishonour.