Chapter 7

Perhaps it was the inactivity of the days that made Tom lie awake so much at night. He generally had an hour or two to wait for sleep, and it seemed as if in those hours his thoughts jumped and raced in a way they never did by daylight. It was in those hours that he formed his resolution to marry Thyrza before he went back to France. When he left hospital he would probably have a fortnight or so at home, and they could be married at once by licence. Then, he felt, with a sudden swallowing in his throat, he would have had his little bit of life, even if Fritz cut it short before he could see those arms he loved become the cradle he had dreamed them.

The future meant even less to him now than the past. An almighty present ruled the world in those days, for it was all that a man could call his own. Lord! if that crump had dropped a few yards nearer, he might have lost the chances he was grabbing now. He wondered how a year ago he could ever have dreamed and dawdled over his love for Thyrza, put off its declaration to a vague and distant time which might never be. It was queer how he had counted on the future then, made plans for doing things “sometime.” The last year had taught him how close that sometime stood to Never. Not that Tom felt any forebodings. Indeed, he had the optimistic fatalism of most soldiers. He was safe until a shell came along with his number on, and then—well, many better chaps’ numbers had been up before his. Meantime, it was his business to seize the present hour and all it contained, nor, when he planted, think of gathering, nor in the seed-time dream of harvest.

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He never doubted Thyrza’s readiness, and was a little surprised when she mentioned things like “gitting some cloathes,” and “having the house done.” Experience had not yet taught her to mistrust the future—for her to-morrow always came, and must be decently prepared for. However, when she saw how desperately Tom was set on marriage, she brushed aside the scruples of habit with a heroism they both of them failed to see.

“I’ll marry you soon as you come hoame, dear, and then we can have a bit of honeymoon.”

“We’ll go away. I’ll take you to Hastings, maybe—we’ll git a room there.”

“Oh, Tom! Lik a grand couple! We mun’t go chucking the money away.”

“We woan’t chuck it all away, but we’ll chuck a fair-sized bit. I doan’t git much chance of spending out there.”

She looked at him tenderly.

“To think as I ever thought you wur slower nor me!”

“I wur a gurt owl,” said Tom. “Lord! if I’d a-gone West, and never so much as kissed you....”

“But you did kiss me, dear—in the shop, the evenun afore you went away.”

“Twur only your hand, and I wur all quaaking like a calf.”

Thyrza sighed.

“It wur a lovely kiss.”

The Beatups were naturally indignant at Tom’s decision. To them it savoured of undue haste, if not of indecency. Courtships in Sunday Street usually lasted from two to ten years. Indeed, Maudie Speldrum had been wooed for fifteen years before she took matters into her own hands and proposed to Bert Pix. Tom had not been engaged to Thyrza six months. What did they want to get married for? And what was Tom but a lad?—a [135] mere child in his mother’s eyes—a calf that Mrs. Honey was leading to market, all ignorant (as she could not be) of what lay ahead. In Sunday Street, marriage was the end—the end of love, the end of youth—and mixed with Mrs. Beatup’s jealousy of the other woman and suspicion of her motives, was the desire to keep her son a little longer in the frisky meadows of his boyhood before he was led to those lean pastures she knew so well.