Chapter 15

Tom did not tell his family about Thyrza Honey till the morning he left Sunday Street. He knew they were curious, but he felt that he would rather face their curiosity than their comments. They were sure to be pleased at the news from a material standpoint, but against that he had to balance the fact that the women—except, perhaps, Ivy—did not like Thyrza, and that his mother still looked upon him as a little boy, too young to think of marrying. He had looked upon himself in that light six months ago—it was queer how much older he felt now. Surely it did not make you all that much older to have the sergeant howling at you, or to sleep with fifty men in a hut, or to eat stew out of a dixey.... Yet, the fact remained, that in April he had felt a boy and in September he felt a man; and, more—he was a man; for Thyrza had accepted him as her lover, and had promised to let him fulfil his manhood as her husband.

At present he was content with the first stage. Each day held a new wonder. Yet he did nothing more [112] wonderful than sit with her in the little room behind the shop—the sanctuary into which he had so often peeped in the old days, wondering what Thyrza thought and did there in the humming firelight, with her kettle and her cat and her account-books in which all the little traffic of the shop was entered with sucked pencil and puckered brows.

He would sit by her and hold her hand, so large and soft and firm, turning it over and over in his own, kissing it back and palm. Her manner was a little motherly, for she was touched by the fact that she was the first woman he had ever held or kissed, while her own experience was deep and bitter. She was older than he was too, and, as she thought, sharper at the uptake, though certainly he had improved in this of late. She would hold him in her arms, with his head against her breast, held between her heart and her elbow, as she had for a few short minutes held the little baby who died.... She never asked herself why she loved him so much better than the big, strong, hairy Bourner, or than Hearsfield, whose hands were white as a gentleman’s; all she knew was that she loved him, and that she pitied him for the fond no-reason that he loved her and through her was learning his first lessons in woman and love.

Then before he went home she would make him tea, or supper perhaps, and herself gain new sweet experience in ministering to the material wants of the man whose spirit she held. No meal prepared for Honey had been like this, and they would sit over it cosily together, all the more conscious of their union when the little buzzing bell of the shop divided them, and Tom, new privileged, would sit in the back room listening to Thyrza serving Putlands or Sindens or Bourners or Hubbles, and getting rid of them as quickly as she could—which, it must be confessed, was not very quick, for she was far too soft [113] and kind to turn anyone out who seemed to want to stay. Then the bell which had divided them would bring them together again as it rang behind the departing shopper, and Thyrza would come back to the lover waiting for her in the red twilight beside the singing fire.

They did not go out together till the last evening. Then he came to tea and stayed to supper, and in the interval they went into the lane just as the dusk came stealing up the sky. Thyrza had objected at first.

“We closed early yesterday, and folk ull be vexed if they find us shut this evenun too.”

“Folk be hemmed! This is my last evenun, and I’m going to taake you where we can’t hear that tedious liddle bell of yourn.”

“Doan’t miscall my bell, fur it rings when you come to see me. In the old days when it rang, I used to say to myself, ’Is that Tom?’ and look through the winder, hoping....”

“Thyrza, did you love me then?”

“Reckon I did. But I doan’t know as I ever thought much about it, fur I maade sure as at the raate you wur going it ud be a dunnamany years afore you started courting praaperly.”

“I’m glad I didn’t wait, surelye. Oh, liddle creature, you can’t know wot this week’s bin to me. I’ll go out to France feeling ... feeling ... I can’t tell you wot I feel, but it’s as if I wur leaving part of myself behind, and that the part I left behind wur helping and backing up the part out there ... it sounds unaccountable silly when I say it, but it’s wot I’ve got in my heart.”

They were in the big pasture meadow near Little Worge, sitting by the willow-pond which lay cupped against the lane. It was the first and the last landmark in Sunday Street—the thick scummed water with the grey trees dipping their leaves in its stillness. To-day a [114] soft wind rustled in them, blowing from the west, and scarcely louder than the wind throbbed the distant guns, the beating of that racked far-off heart whose terrible secrets Tom was soon to know. Thyrza shuffled against his side as they sat on the grass.

“Oh, Tom—hear the guns? It’s tar’ble to think of you out there.”

“I’ll come back, surelye.”

“Do you feel as if you will?”

“Surelye—since I’ve left half myself behind.”

Her arms stole round him, and the beating of that far-away heart was drowned in the beating of his under her cheek.

A pale cowslip light was in the sky, creeping over the fields, putting yellower tints into Thyrza’s butter skin and a web of gold over her ashen hair. Gradually it seemed to flower in the dusk till all the field was lit up ... the mounds and molehills with hollows scooped darkly against the light, the pond like thick yellow glass, the willows like drooping flame. The picture became graven on Tom’s heart—the grey sky blooming with light and shedding it down on the field of the mounds and molehills, the pond, the willows, and the woman drowsing in his arms—so that when later in France he thought of England, he thought of it only as that willow-pond at the opening of Sunday Street, and Thyrza Honey lying heavy and warm and sweet against his breast.

“Hold me close, Tom, dearie—hold me close, so’s I doan’t hear the war. Aun’t it queer how our hearts beat louder than the guns!...”