Chapter 12

He hurried back to Thyrza, and they shut up the shop, and went out to the field by the willow pond. A green, still dusk lay over the fields and sky; no stars were out yet, but the chalky moon hung low over the woods of Burntkitchen. The distant guns were silent, only the bleating of lambs came from the Trulilows, and every now and then a burst of liquid, trilling, sucking melody from a blackbird among the willows.

“Hark to the bird,” said Thyrza.

“Maybe he’s got a nest full of liddle ’uns.”

[151]

“And a liddle wife as can’t sing—funny how hen-birds never sing, Tom.”

“Thyrza, I wish as I cud maake a home fur you, dear.”

“Wotever maakes you think of that? The birds’ nest? Reckon I’ve got a dentical liddle home.”

“But it’s wot you’ve always lived in. I never built it for you.”

“Doan’t you go fretting over that. I’d be lonesome wudout the shop, Tom—I doan’t think as I’ll ever want to be wudout the shop. And we’ve bin so happy there together. It’s saum as if you’d built it fur me, since you’ve maade it wot it never was before.”

He drew her close to him, sleek, soft, heavy, like a little cat, and leaned his cheek against her hair.

“Reckon I’ll always think of you in it.... I’ll see you setting up in the mornun wud your eyes all blinky and your hair streaming down—and I’ll see you putting on the kettle and dusting the shop, and maybe having a bit of talk over the counter wud a luckier chap than me. And all the day through I’ll see you, and in the swale you’ll be putting your head out for a blow of air, and there’ll be the lamp in the window behind you ... and then you’ll lie asleep, and the room ull be all moony and grey, and your liddle hand ull lie out on the blanket—so, and your breath ull come lik the scent out of the grass ... and when you turn your body it’ll be lik the grass moving in the wind—and I woan’t be there to see or hear or touch or smell you.”

His arm tightened round her breast, and she leaned against him as if she would fuse her body into his, share its travels, hardships and dangers. The stars were creeping slowly into the sky, dim and rayless in the thick Spring night, which had put a purple haze into the zenith, and made the great moon glow like a copper pan. The fields were blooming with a soft yellow—the waters of the pond had a faint gleam on their stagnation, and the willows were like smoke with a fire in its heart, their boughs pouring down in misty grey towards the water, [152] with points and sparks of light here and there, as the radiance danced among their leaves.

The swell of the field against the eastern constellations was broken by the gable of the shop, rising over the hedge and pointing to the sign of the Ram. Tom’s England—the England he would carry in his heart—had widened to take in that little humped roof of moss-grown tiles. It held not only the willow pond and the woman beside it, but the home where together they had eaten the bread and drunk the cup of common things. It was not perhaps a very lofty conception of fatherland—not even so high as Harry’s conception of a country saved by his plough. Tom’s country was only a little field-corner that held his wife and his home, but as he sat there under the stars, he felt in his vague, humble way, that it was a country a man would choose to fight for, and for which perhaps he would not be unwilling to die.