Chapter 2

So on Harry, sixteen years old, with little or no experience, and a bad character to live down, fell the task of bringing Worge into line with a national endeavour. It was strange how his earthy imagination had taken fire at the new idea, and a curious justification of the Press. A sense of patriotism had wakened in him, as it had not wakened in Tom after nearly a twelve-month’s service. Tom was no longer indifferent or unwilling, but his enthusiasm scarcely went beyond the [120] regiment—the feeling of “Sussex chaps”—the idea of fighting for Worge, or, at the most abstract, “having a whack at Kayser Bill.”

He had been in France about three months now. He had not been sent over as soon as he expected, but in November there had been a big draft from the 18th Sussex, including Tom and Jerry and Bill, also Mus’ Archie—Mus’ Dixon, who had been badly gassed on the Somme, stayed behind in charge of “School,” and rumour said that he would not be sent out again. So far Tom seemed to have had a far duller time abroad than in England; he had not so much as seen a German; and his letters home were chiefly about mud. The family jealously hinted that his letters to Thyrza Honey were more entertaining. However, he kept his promise to Harry, and sent him councillor postcards now and again. The last had consisted of just one word—“spuds!”

That was the spring when potatoes were being sold at sixpence a pound in Eastbourne and Hastings, and such inducements were held out to growers, that instead of the usual modest half-acre, Harry intended to make potatoes part of his new scheme. The two-acre was in potash this year, also the home field, and Harry decided to break up the pasture-land next the orchard. Some of the space would have to be used for roots—swedes and wurzels—but there would be a spud-growing such as Worge had never seen in its history.

Then there was the more ticklish problem of the grain, and what kinds to sow. Harry took Tom’s advice and decided on Sandy oats for the Street field and the field next the Volunteer. In the home field he would grow awned wheat—and red spring wheat on the reclaimed tillage of the Sunk Field.

Then came the problem of which grass-lands to break [121] up. If only Tom had been there to advise him! He dare not ask his father, in case he should withdraw his first permission. Breaking up grass-land is heresy to an orthodox farmer, and it was quite possible that Mus’ Beatup would change his mind when it came to the crisis. For this reason Harry said no more about it, and planned craftily to start work on one of his father’s “bad days,” when he would not be likely to interfere. Left without counsel, he decided to break up the rest of the Sunk Field, also Forges Field, and an old pasture at the Bucksteep end of the farm. These were wretched soils and would have to be heavily manured; but none of the soils round Worge was really good, and some decent grass must be left for the cows and ewes. Manures were scarce and dear, owing to the war, but Harry thought he could make shift with the farmyard dung, supplemented by a little night-soil, and a ton of waste from the gypsum mines near Robertsbridge.

All this cost him more thinking than he had ever done in his life. Once or twice he lay awake from bed-time till dawn, adding up figures, working out ways and means, and making plans for settling any opposition, drunk or sober, from Mus’ Beatup. His responsibility was enormous, but he was at bottom too simple-minded to feel the full weight of it, and his enthusiasm flamed as clear as ever. By crabbed and common means—even the smudgy columns of a provincial newspaper—the vision had come to a country boy’s heart, and found there a divine, undeveloped quality of imagination, and an undisciplined power of enterprise. These two, which had hitherto united to keep him from his work, were now forged together in the heat of the new idea. But for the first he would never have heard the call, and the second alone made it possible that he should obey it.