Chapter 13

In the old days it used to take Tom a good couple of hours to walk from Senlac to Sunday Street—but then, he had generally been behind a drove of lazy tups or heifers, or silly scattering sheep. To-day he swung smartly along, scarcely feeling the weight of his kit-bag, whistling as he walked. It was good to feel the soft thick [104] fanning of the Sussex air, so different from the keen Derbyshire wind, with its smell of bilberries and slaty earth; to see the old places along the North Trade—Whitelands, Park Gate, Burntkitchen, and then, when he came to the throws, that wide sudden view of the country bounded by the Four Roads, swamped in hazy sunshine, with the trickle of lanes and the twist of the rough, blotched hedges, and the pale patches of the stubble, and the low clouds sailing over it from Cross-in-Hand. He walked through Brownbread Street, empty save for the waggon-team that drowsed outside the George, silent save for the hum of children’s voices in the school. Then he came to Pont’s Green, where the lane to Sunday Street meets the East Road. The hops were being picked in the low sheltered fields by Slivericks Wood, and the smoke of the drying furnace streamed out of the cowl of the oasthouse at the throws, while all the air seemed heavy with the sweet, sleepy scent of stripping bines.

He had meant, traitorously, to call at the shop before he went home; but just as he came to the willow-pond, a small dusty figure ran out of the hedge, and seized him round the waist.

“Hullo, Tom!”

“Hullo, Zacky! Wot are you doing here?”

“I haven’t bin to school—I couldn’t go when I heard you wur coming. Mother got your telegram this mornun, and she wur sure it wur to say as you wur killed.”

“Was she pleased when she found it wasn’t?”

“Unaccountable. But she’d nigh cried her eyes out first, and told Ivy and Nell as something tarr’ble had happened to you, afore they found as she’d never opened the telegram.”

“I’ll write a letter next time,” said Tom; “but I [105] never knew for sure till yesterday that I’d be gitting leave so soon.”

He did not scold Zacky for having stayed away from school. It was a relief not to have to exercise quasi-paternal authority any more, but just to take the truant’s hand and walk with him to Worge Gate—where Mus’ Beatup was standing with his gun, having seen Tom in the distance from Podder’s Field, where the conies are, while Mrs. Beatup was running down the drive from the house, her apron blowing before her like a sail.

“Here you are, my boy,” said Mus’ Beatup sententiously, clapping him on the shoulder. “Come to see how we’re gitting on now you’ve left us. The oald farm’s standing yit—the oald farm’s standing yit.”

“And looks valiant,” said Tom, grinning, and kissing his mother.

“Not so valiant as it ud look if there wurn’t no war on.”

“Maybe—that cud be said of most of us.”

“Not of you, Tom,” said Mrs. Beatup. “I never saw you look praaperer than to-day.”

“Oh, I’m in splendid heart—eat till I’m fit to bust.”

“You wear your cap like Bill Putland,” said Zacky. “It maakes you look different-like.”

Tom’s cap indeed had a rakish tilt over one ear, though he did not profess to imitate Bill Putland’s jauntiness.

“Maybe old Bill ull git a bit of leave in a week or two. I see Jerry Sumption’s gone back to-day. I met him and minister at the station.”

Mrs. Beatup gave a snort.

“And unaccountable glad I am to see the last of Gipsy Jerry; he’s justabout plagued Ivy to death all the time he’s bin here. She says she’s shut of him, and I hope to goodness she means it.”

“Jerry shud never have gone fur a soldier,” said Tom. [106] “He’s got no praaper ideas of things, and is fur ever gitting in trouble. Come, mother, let’s be walking up to the house and put my bag in the bedroom.”

“Wot’s in your bag?” asked Zacky.

“Soap, razor, slacks, and one or two liddle bits of things,” said Tom, grinning down at him in proud consciousness of two pounds of Derby rock—to such magnificence had his sweetmeat buying risen from his old penn-’orths of bull’s-eyes.

They walked up to the house, and greetings came with Ivy hanging out the clothes, and Harry toiling over the corn accounts in shame-faced arrears. Then his bag was unpacked, and presents given to everybody—sweetstuff to Zacky and Harry, a good knife to his father, and to his mother a wonderful handkerchief case with the arms of the Royal Sussex worked in lurid silks; there was a needlebook of the same sort for Nell, when she should come home from school; and for Ivy there was a mother-o’-pearl brooch, and, which she liked even better, messages from a dozen Sussex chaps at Waterheel.

Then as the family went back to its business, Tom, who for the first time in his life had none, slipped out of the house, and jogged quietly down the drive towards the village. There would be just time before dinner to call at the shop.

The blind was down, for the sunshine was streaming in at the little leaded window, threatening the perils of dissolution to the sugar mice (made before the sugar scarcity, indeed, it must be confessed, before the War) and of fermentation to the tinned crab. Tom’s hand may have shaken a little as he pulled down the latch, but except for that his manner was stout, very different from his sheepish entrances of months ago.

Buzz ... ting ... Thyrza looked up from the packing-case she was breaking open behind the counter. The next moment she gave a little cry. She had just been [107] thinking of Tom at Waterheel, wondering if it was his dinner-time yet, and what Cookie had put in the stew; and then she had lifted her eyes to see his broad, sunburnt face smiling at her from the door, with his hair curling under his khaki cap, and his sturdy figure looking at once stronger and slimmer in its uniform.

“Tom!” she gasped, and held out her hand across the counter—hoping....

But he had gone beyond the timid daring of those days. Before she knew what was happening, he had marched boldly round behind the counter and taken her in his arms.