My Sheep Have Ears

Jesus promised that his sheep would hear and know his voice, but what
does his voice sound like? How does he speak to his people today?How
can the contemporary church embrace prophetic ministry in a way that
will both resource

Author: Cath Livesey

ISBN: 9780990591771
Category: Discipleship
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File Details: 14.3 MB
Language: English
Publisher: Catherine Livesey
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.
suddenly he slid towards him across the table and put his arm round
his neck.
Tom shook him off.
“Git away.”
“I’m sorry I’m such a hemmed curse to you, Tom.”
“You’re a hemmed curse indeed. I ask you to be a man in my plaace,
and you’re no more than a tedious liddle child.”
A sudden sense of the hopelessness of it all came over him—the net
in which he struggled, in which he was being dragged away from
those he could help and love. He dropped his head in his hands.
Harry stood for a moment awestruck beside him, a grotesque figure
with Tom’s coat hanging over his bare thighs. Then he turned and
crept away to bed.
The clock struck nine, and Tom lifted his head. He was utterly weary,
but he knew that if he did not take his letter over to Bucksteep to-
night he would not have time in the morning. There was no good
leaving it to other hands to deliver, for he felt that his mother would
resent its humble tone, and perhaps send instead an angry demand
which, by rousing Mus’ Archie’s rage, might end by landing Harry
before the Senlac Bench. So he put on his father’s driving coat,
which hung in the passage and smelt of manure and stale spirits,
and let himself out into the soft, throbbing darkness, lit only by a
few dim stars of the Plough.

12
Bucksteep Manor was the smaller kind of country-house, smuggled
away from the cross-roads in a larch plantation, with a tennis lawn
at the back, and a more open view swinging over a copsed valley to
Rushlake Green. It had once been a farmhouse, but a wing had
been added in modern style, and inside, the low raftering had been
swept away, so that when Tom stood in the dimly-lighted hall, which
had once been the kitchen, he could look up to a ceiling dizzily high
to his sag-roofed experience.
The Lambs were the aristocracy of Dallington, a neighbourhood
strikingly empty of “society” in the country-house sense. They had
themselves been yeoman farmers a couple of generations back, and
the present squire still interested himself shamefacedly in
Bucksteep’s hundred acres. The Beatups had but little truck with the
Manor; precarious yeomen, no rents or dues demanded intercourse,
and Mus’ Beatup had often been heard to say that some folks were
no better than other folks, for all their airs and acres.
Tom had given his letter to a rustling parlourmaid, and stood meekly
waiting for an answer, his large bovine eyes blinking with sleepiness.
From an adjoining room came the throaty music of a gramophone,
playing:
“When we wind up the Watch on the Rhine
Everything will be Potsdam fine....”
There was girls’ laughter, too—probably Miss Marian Lamb and Mus’
Archie’s intended—and every now and then he heard Mrs. Lamb’s
voice go rocketing up. He did not feel envious of all this jollity,
neither did it grate upon him; he just stood and waited under the
shaded lamps of the hall, and had nearly fallen asleep on his legs
when suddenly the door opened, with a flood of light and noise, and
shut again behind Mus’ Archie.
“Good evening, Beatup. Sorry to have kept you waiting. I couldn’t
make this out at first—had no idea your young brother was one of
the culprits to-night, or I shouldn’t have played that trick on ’em.”
“It doan’t matter, sir. Harry desarved it. It’s only as we can’t afford to
lose the clothes.”
“No, no, of course not. Come with me and pick his out of the pile,
and you can take them home.”
“Thank you, Mus’ Archie.”
He followed young Lamb into a little gun-room opening on the hall,
and was able to pick out Harry’s rather bobtail toilet from a muddle
of Sinden and Pix raiment.
“That’s all, is it? Wan’t anything to wrap ’em in?”
“No, sir, it aun’t worth it. Thank you kindly for letting me have the
things.”
“There was never any question of you not having them. I’ve no right
to keep ’em. So you’re joining up to-morrow?”
He was in uniform, but without his belt. Somehow to Tom he
seemed a burlier, browner man than the young squire whom before
the war he used to see out hunting, or shooting, or driving girls in
his car.
“Yes, I’m joining up, as they say.”
“You don’t seem over-pleased about it.”
“I aun’t, particular.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you it’s the grandest job on earth, and
that all the chaps out there are having the time of their lives. It
wouldn’t be true, though I expect the Tribunal told you so.”
“Yessir; they said as if they were only ten years younger they’d all
be in it.”
“Of course they did. Well, I’ve been out there, and I’ve seen.... But
never mind; you’ll find that out for yourself, Beatup. However, I’ll say
this much—it isn’t a nice job, or a grand job, or even a good job; but
it’s a job that’s got to be done, and when it’s done we’ll like to think
that Sussex chaps helped do it.”
Tom’s heart warmed a little towards Mus’ Archie. He was making him
feel as he had felt when Bill Putland said, “We’re all eighteenth
Sussex hereabouts.”
“It aun’t the going as un vrother me, if it wurn’t fur leaving Worge.
I’m fretted as the plaace ull land at the auctioneer’s if I’m long away.
You see, I’ve always done most of the work, in my head as well as
wud my hands. Faather, he aun’t a healthy man, and the others
aun’t much help nuther. There’s only Harry lik to be any use, and
he’s such an unaccountable limb of wickedness—for ever at his tricks
—to-night’s only one of them.”
“Perhaps he’ll pull himself together and work for Worge when he
sees you’ve gone to fight for it.”
This was new light on the matter for Tom. Hitherto he had always
thought of himself as deserting Worge in its hour of need—it had
never occurred to him that his going was the going of a champion,
not of a traitor.
“Maybe it’s as you say, Mus’ Archie. Leastways, we’ll hope so.”
They were in the hall again now, and the gramophone was singing in
its spooky voice. “You called me Baby Doll a year ago.” Tom slowly
turned the handle of the front door, sidling out on to the step.
“Thank you for the clothes, Mus’ Archie. I’ll try and talk some sense
into Harry before I go.”
“Good night, Beatup, and good luck to you. I expect I’ll see some
more of you in the near future. All the chaps round here seem to be
drafted into the eighteenth. Bill Putland will be in our little crowd,
and Jerry Sumption—there’ll be quite a Dallington set at Waterheel.”
“I hope I’ll be with you, Mus’ Archie.”
“I hope you will, Beatup. Good night.”
“Good night, sir.”
The door shut, and he was out in the drive, where the larches
swung against the moon.
Archie Lamb went back into the drawing-room, and put a new record
on the gramophone.
“Queer chap, Beatup,” he said to his mother. “I don’t know how he’ll
shape. He looks strong and steady, but I should say about as smart
as a mangold-wurzel.”

13
Tom swung along the dim road, where the shadows ran before him.
The new-risen moon looked over the hedge, an amber disc just past
the full, swimming against the wind from Satanstown. In the heart
of the wind seemed still to beat the pulse of those far-off guns, the
ghost of their day-long thunder. Over and over in his mind Tom
turned his new thought—that he was going to fight for Worge.
In a quarter of an hour he had come to Sunday Street. He could see
the moonlight lying like frost on the southward slope of the roofs,
and the windows of the Bethel were ghostly with it, as they stared
away to the marshes. The Bethel alone seemed awake in the little
huddle of sleeping cottages—it had a strange look of watchfulness
and waiting, its gaunt Georgian windows never had that comfortable
blinking air of the cottage lattices.... Tom did not like the Bethel at
night.
He looked across the road to the Horselunges, where Mr. Sumption
lived. A crack of light showed under the blind of the minister’s room,
and Tom’s heart gave a little thump of self-reproach, for he had not
till then thought of saying good-bye to him. He had not seen much
of Mr. Sumption lately, and had been too much absorbed in his own
concerns to think of him, but now he made up his mind to call and
say good-bye; it was past ten o’clock and he was very tired and
sleepy, nevertheless he walked up to the door of the Horselunges
and knocked.
Mrs. Hubble was in bed, as the hour demanded, so the door was
opened by her lodger.
“Hello, Tom. Anything the matter? Do they want me at Worge?”
Mr. Sumption was always childishly eager for some demand on his
pastoral ministrations, a demand which was seldom made, as he had
a disruptive bedside manner and the funds of his chapel did not
admit of the doles which made sick Dallington people endure the
consolations of the Church.
“No, thank you, they doan’t. I’ve just come to say good-bye.”
The minister’s forehead clouded—
“Oh, you’ve remembered me at last, have you? Thought it just as
well not to forget old friends before you go off to make new ones.
Come in.”
Tom, who had expected this greeting, followed Mr. Sumption upstairs
into the room which he called his study, but which had few points of
difference from any cottage living-room in Sunday Street. There was
a frayed carpet with a lot of dirt trodden into it, and a sun-sucked
wall-paper adhering as closely as possible to walls complicate of
beams and bulges. A solitary book-shelf supported Jessica’s First
Prayer, Edwin’s Trial or The Little Christian Witness, and kindred
works, cheek-by-jowl with Burton’s Four Last Things and a cage of
white mice. There was another cage hanging in the window,
containing a broken-winged thrush which the pastor, after the failure
of many anathemas, had bought from one of those mysterious
gangs of small boys which prowl round villages. An old, old cat sat
before the empty grate, too decrepit to make more than one attempt
a day on the thrush or the mice, and now purring wheezily in the
intervals of scratching a cankered ear.
On the table was a wild, unwieldy parcel, from whose bursting sides
the contents were already beginning to ooze forth.
“I’m packing a parcel for Jerry,” said the minister. “I’d just finished
when you knocked.”
“It looks as if it was coming undone,” said Tom.
“So it does”—and Mr. Sumption glanced deprecatingly at his
handiwork. “If only I had some sealing-wax ... but the shop’s shut.”
“It’ll be open to-morrow,” said Tom, and pictured Thyrza pulling up
the blind and dusting the salmon-tins in the window ... long after he
had gone to catch the early train from Hailsham.
“Well, to-morrow’s time enough, as I can’t post it before then. It ud
be a pity for anything to get lost. There’s three shillings’ worth of
things in that parcel.”
“Have you had any more letters from Jerry?”
“Yes, I had one yesterday”—no need to tell Tom there had been no
others—“He wants chocolate and cigarettes, and I put in a tin of
cocoa besides, and some little squares to make soup of. He’ll be
unaccountable pleased.”
“How’s he gitting on?”
“Valiant. He likes being along of the other lads. The only thing that
worrits him is your sister.”
“My sister?”
“Yes, your sister Ivy. Seemingly she never answered a postcard he
wrote her ten days back, and you knows he’s unaccountable set on
Ivy.”
“It aun’t no use, Mus’ Sumption. Ivy’s got no thought for him, I’m
certain sure, and he’s only wasting time over her.”
The minister’s comely face darkened, and he cracked his fingers
once or twice.
“It’s a pity, a lamentable pity. That boy of mine’s crazy on Ivy
Beatup. Are you sure she doesn’t care about him, Tom?”
“Well, who knows wot a gal thinks? I can only put two and two
together. But seemingly if she’d cared she’d have answered his
postcard.”
“Could you put in a word for him?”
Young Beatup shook his head—
“I woan’t meddle. If Ivy doan’t care I can’t maake her, and I reckon
mother’s unaccountable set against it too.”
He had said the wrong thing. Mr. Sumption’s eyes became like
burning pits. He swung his hands up and cracked them like a pistol.
“Set against it, is she? Set against my Jerry? Maybe he isn’t good
enough for her—a clergyman’s son for a farmer’s daughter.”
“I never said naun of that,” mumbled Tom uneasily, remembering his
mother’s reference to “gipsy muck.”
“It’s I as might be set against it,” continued the minister. “I tell you
that boy’s been bred and cut above your sister. I never sent him to a
board school along of farmers’ children—I taught him myself,
everything I learned at college. He’d know as much I do if he hadn’t
forgotten it. Yet I’m not proud; I know the boy wants your sister Ivy
and ull do something silly if he can’t get her, so when he writes to
me, ‘Where’s Ivy? Find out why she didn’t answer my postcard, and
tell her I’ll go mad if she doesn’t take some notice of me’—why,
then, I do my best—and get told my son’s not good enough for your
father’s daughter.”
“I never told you any such thing,” said Tom doggedly, “but I woan’t
spik to Ivy. She knows her own business best. If I were you I’d tell
Jerry straight as no good ull come of his going after her. She doan’t
want him—I’m certain sure of that.”
The pastor’s wrath had died down into something more piteous.
“I daresay you’re right, Tom, and maybe I did wrong to speak like
that. After all, I was only a blacksmith till the Lord called me away....
I pray that He may not require my boasting of me.”
“Well, I’m unaccountable sorry about Ivy being lik that, but I
thought it better to spik plain.”
Mr. Sumption sat down rather heavily at the table.
“O Lord, how shall I tell Jerry? If I tell him he’ll do something wild,
sure as he’s Jerry Sumption.”
“Doan’t tell him. He’ll find out for himself soon enough.”
Mr. Sumption groaned.
“Tom Beatup,” he said slowly, “I reckon you think I’m a faithless,
unprofitable steward so to set my heart on human flesh and blood.
But you’ll understand a bit of what I feel ... some day, when you’re
the father of a son.”

14
The pale morning ray came slanting over the sky from Harebeating
towards the last stars. Slowly the trees and hedges loomed out
against the trembling yellow pools of the dawn. Colours woke in the
fields, soft hazy greens, and blues and greys that ran together like
smoke ... ponds began to gleam among the spinneys, discs of
mirrored sky, that from lustreless white became glassy yellow, then
kindled from glass to fire, then smouldered from fire to rust.
Tom saw the window square light up and frame the familiar picture
of a life’s mornings—the oasthouse, the lombardy poplar topping the
barn, the little patch of distant fields seen between the oast and the
jutting farmhouse gable. The bed was pulled up close to the window,
to allow of the door being opened, and he could lie on his side and
look straight out at the loved common things which perhaps he
might never see just so again.
It all looked very quiet, and rather cold, and the early sunless light
gave it a peculiar lifelessness, as if it was something painted, or cut
in cardboard. Even Tom was conscious of its cold, dreamlike quality;
he always said that “the yard looked corpsy at break o’ day.” Then
the distant view of little fields suddenly swam into golden light, as a
long finger of sunlight stroked the barn-roofs, then stabbed in at the
window, throwing a shaft of dancing golden motes across the room.
Tom rose, climbed out of bed over Zacky, and in about three square
feet of floor space shaved and dressed. Then he went downstairs,
unlocked the house door and stole out to his last morning’s work.
No one was about; it was not till more than an hour later that the
two antique farm-hands, Elphick and Juglery, came up from Worge
Cottages. By that time Tom had milked the cows, mixed the chicken
food, and driven the horses down to Forges field. He gave the two
unskilled labourers their orders for the day as if he expected to be
there to see them carried out. By that time Ivy was hunting for eggs,
and Mrs. Beatup was struggling with the kitchen fire, while Mus’
Beatup, in practical, unlearned mood, had gone to the Sunk field to
inspect the ewes.
As Ivy came out of the hen-house and crossed the yard, cheery,
healthy, blowsy, with eggs in a bowl, Tom had a sudden thought of
giving her Mr. Sumption’s message. But he held his tongue. He had
meant what he said when he told the minister he was not going to
meddle. He had long been convinced of the fact that his sister knew
her own business; besides, Jerry ... that lousy gipsy chap.... Pastor
might say he was getting on valiant, but all Dallington knew that he
had been given seven days C.B. within a week of his joining.
So, with nothing for Ivy but a nod, Tom went in to breakfast. Time
was short, but the breakfast was still in a rudimentary state. Mrs.
Beatup fought with the kitchen fire among whorls of smoke, while
Nell, coughing pathetically, laid the table. Harry in a fit of brotherly
love was cleaning Tom’s best boots ready for his journey to Lewes—
no one ever went to Lewes in any but Sunday clothes.
“Oh, is that you, Tom? I hope as you aun’t in a hurry. This fire’s
bewitched. Nell, give your brother a cut off the loaf. You’d better git
started, Tom, or you’ll lose your train.”
So Tom’s last breakfast at Worge was eaten in confusion and mess,
the family dropping in one by one for cuts off the loaf or helpings of
cold bacon spotted with large blisters of grease. Last of all the
breakfast arrived, in the shape of the tea-pot, and a special boiled
egg for Tom. He was not able to do more than gulp down the egg
and scald himself with the tea. Then it was time to go. He had
already tied up a few little things in a handkerchief—a razor, a piece
of soap, an old frosted Christmas card which for some obscure
reason he treasured—so there was nothing to do but to say good-
bye and beat it for Hailsham, a good seven miles.
Mus’ Beatup put down his tea-cup and looked solemn.
“Well, good-bye, my lad. I reckon you’ve got to go. Everyone’s off to
fight now, seemingly, so I suppose you must do wot others do. Not
that I think so much of this war as some folks seem to—it’s bin
going on nigh two years now, and I can’t see as we’re any of us a
penny the better off. Howsumdever....”
“He’s going to stop it,” said Nell, her face pink.
“Ho, is he? Well, I’ve no objection. Maybe I’ll write you a letter, Tom,
when Maudie calves.”
“I’d be much obliged if you would, faather, and tell me how the
wheat does this year, and them new oats by the Street.”
“Good-bye, Tom,” said Harry. “I shall miss you unaccountable.”
“And I’ll miss you, too,” said Zacky, “but there’ll be more room in the
bed.”
Tom kissed them sheepishly all round, then walked out of the door
without a word.
He was in the yard, when he heard footsteps creaking after him, and
turned round to see his mother.
“Wait a bit, Tom,” she panted; “I’ll go wud you to the geate.”
He was surprised, but it did not strike him to say so. They walked
down the drive together almost in silence, the boy hanging his head.
Mrs. Beatup sniffed and choked repeatedly.
“Doan’t go near those Germans, Tom,” she said, when they came to
a standstill. “If you do, you’ll be killed for certain sure.”
“I’ll go where I’m put, surelye,” said Tom gloomily.
“Well, be careful, that’s all. Kip well behind the other lads, and
doan’t go popping your head over walls or meddling wud cannons.
And kip your feet dry, Tom, and doan’t git into temptation.”
“I promise, mother,” he mumbled against her neck, and they kissed
each other many times before she let him go.
The Rifle Volunteer looked down from his sign, where he stood in
the grey uniform and mutton-chop whiskers of an earlier
dispensation, and stared at the stocky, shambling little figure that
trudged its unwilling way to sacrifice—past Worge Cottages, stewing
in the sunshine like pippins, past Egypt Farm (which Bill Putland
would leave later and more conveniently in his father’s dog-cart),
past the shop, with a glance half shy, half beseeching, at the drawn
blinds, past the willow pond, out of Sunday Street, into the long
yellow road that led to the unsought, undesired adventure.
 PART II: JERRY
1

M
RS. BEATUP’S tears ran down her face as she hurried back up
the drive, but she wiped them vigorously away with her apron,
and had nothing but her red eyes to show when she entered
the kitchen. Everyone had gone, except Ivy and Nell. The former
had not finished her hearty breakfast, the latter was packing her
books for school, and some sort of a wrangle was going on between
them. Mrs. Beatup heard Nell call Ivy “vulgar” just as she came into
the room. Ivy laughed, truly a vulgar performance with her mouth
full.
“Now, you two gals, doan’t you start quarrelling just when you
brother’s a-gone; maybe fur ever.”
“We aun’t quarrelling,” said Ivy. “I’ve told her she’s sweet on parson,
that’s all.”
“All!” sniffed Nell. “Maybe you think it’s nothing to have your vulgar
mind making out my—my friendship with Mr. Poullett-Smith’s the
same as yours with—with—anyone that ull let you make sheep’s
eyes at him.”
“Nell!” cried her mother. “For shaum!”
“Well, I don’t care”—the younger girl’s anger had been roused by
many coarse flicks—“everyone talks about Ivy’s goings-on.”
“I doan’t care if they do,” said Ivy cavernously in her tea-cup.
“Reckon it’s cos they’re jealous of me gitting the boys.”
“Well, Ivy,” said Mrs. Beatup, “I doan’t hold wud your goings-on,
nuther; but anyway you’re useful.”
“I’m earning money, though,” said Nell; “at least I shall be when my
third year’s up.”
“And how soon ull that be, I’d lik to know? There you go, out all day,
when you might be helping us at home, and not a penny to show fur
it.”
“Mother, I’ve told you again and again—why won’t you understand?
—I’m being given lessons in exchange for those I give myself, and
——”
“Lessons! A girl turned seventeen! I call it lamentable. I’d a-done
wud my schooling at twelve.”
“But you know I have to pass an exam....”
“I doan’t see no ‘have’ in it. Better kip at hoame and help me wud
the cooking. Out all day and bring home no money! I doan’t call that
——”
“Well, I’m off,” said Ivy, getting up and wiping her mouth. “You two
are lik a couple of barndoor cocks, walking round and round each
other. I’ve summat better to do—I’ve the passage to scrub”—and
she took her sacking apron off the nail.
“Where’s Zacky?” asked Mrs. Beatup. “Has he started for school?”
“Yes, he’s gone wud the Sindens.”
“And Harry?”
Ivy laughed. “Oh, Harry’s along of faather, in the Sunk field—
unaccountable good and hard-working to-day, because Tom’s a-
gone; seemingly, he’d sooner please him now he aun’t here to see
than when he was here fretting his heart out over Harry’s lazy
bones.”
“Well, I’m glad as someone remembers my poor boy’s gone, and is
lik to be killed.”
Mrs. Beatup’s tears burst out afresh, but Ivy comforted her with a
kiss and a clap and a few cheery words, and soon had her interested
in the various bootstains on the passage-floor. “Cow-dung, that’s
faather; and horse-dung, that’s Tom; and sheep-dung, that’s
Juglery; and that miry clay’s jest Zacky spannelling....”
2
Nell put on her hat and coat and started for school. A neat, shabby
little figure, with her town hat pulled down over her soft hair, she
walked quickly between dust-powdered hedges to Brownbread
Street, panting a little, because she was anæmic, and also because
she was still a trifle indignant. Nell did not view life and the War as
her family viewed them. Her different education had made them not
quite such matters of bread-and-cheese. She alone at Worge had
felt the humiliation—as distinct from the inconvenience—of Tom’s
conscription. She had always despised him because he did not
volunteer during the early stages of the War, and when the
Conscription Act came into force she despised him still more for his
appeal to the Tribunal. She felt that she could never think proudly of
him, knowing how unwillingly he had gone, knowing that he cared
for nothing except leaving Worge, that he never thought of the great
cause of righteousness he was to fight for, or understood the mighty
issues of his unwilling warfare.
The rest of the family were all of a block. To her mother the War
was merely a matter of prices and scarcities, to her father it was
drink restrictions and the closing of public-houses, to Ivy it was
picture postcards and boys in khaki, to Harry the unwilling
performance of tasks which would otherwise have been done by
more efficient hands, to Zacky the obscure manœuvres of a gang of
small boys whose imaginations had been touched by militarism. To
Nell alone belonged the fret and anxiety of the times, the shock of
bad news, the struggle of ineffectual small labours to win her a place
in the great woe.
To-day she was early for school, as she had meant to be, for at the
church she stopped and sat down in the porch. St. Wilfred’s,
Brownbread Street, was only a chapel-of-ease under the mother
church of Dallington. It was new-built of sandstone, an unfortunate
symbol of that Rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.
The interior, glimpsed through the open door, was dim and
mediæval, the first effect due to the deep tones of the stained-glass
windows, where the saints wore robes of crimson and sapphire and
passional violet, and the latter to the several dark oil paintings, and
the thick gilt tracery of the screen, through which the altar showed
richly coloured, with one winking red light before it.
The curate-in-charge of Brownbread Street was of mediæval
tendencies, and did his best, both in service and sermon, to
transport his congregation from the woodbine-age to the age of
pilgrimages and monasteries, with the result that, with unmediæval
licence, they sought illicit and heretical refreshment in Georgian
Bethels and Victorian Tabernacles, where they could sing good
Moody and Sankey tunes, instead of treacherous Gregorians and
wobbling Plainsong.
But Nell loved the low, soft, creeping tones of Gregory’s mode, loved
the dimness, the mystery, the faint echo of Sarum ... and if in her
love was a personal element which she denied, the church was not
less a refuge from the coarse frustrations of her everyday life, such
as the Forge was to Mr. Sumption and the Shop had been to Tom.
To-day the priest was at the altar, saying the Last Gospel. Nell could
just see him from where she sat. He would be out in a couple of
minutes. She watched him glide off into the shadows, then she rose
and walked down to the little wicket-gate, where the path from the
porch met the path from the vestry. There was more colour in her
cheeks than usual.
Now and then she looked anxiously across the road at the
schoolhouse clock, where the large hand was creeping swiftly
towards the hour. From the clock her eyes slewed round to the
vestry door. At last the handle shook, and out came Mr. Poullett-
Smith, walking hurriedly, with his cassock flapping round his legs. He
did not seem to see Nell till he had nearly walked into her.
“Oh—er—good morning, Miss Beatup. I beg your pardon.”
“Good morning, Mr. Poullett-Smith. I—I wanted to tell you I’m so
sorry I haven’t finished that book you lent me. I’m afraid I’ve kept it
a terrible time.”
Her words came with a rush, blurred faintly in the last of a Sussex
accent, and her eyes were fixed on his face with an almost childish
eagerness which he could scarcely fail to notice.
“Oh, please don’t trouble. Keep the book as long as you like—the
Sermons of St. Gregory, isn’t it?”
“Yes—I think they’re wonderful,” breathed Nell, hoping he would
never know how difficult she found them to understand.
“They are indeed, and so stimulating.”
The Rev. Henry Poullett-Smith was a tall man, with a long nose, a
slight stoop, and a waxy brownish skin that made him look like one
of his own altar candles. As he spoke to Nell, he kept on glancing up
the street, and when a girl on a bicycle came round the corner, he
moved a few steps out into the road and took off his hat.
“Good morning, Miss Lamb.”
Marian Lamb, who was in Red Cross uniform, jumped off her bicycle
and shook hands with him before she shook hands with Nell Beatup.
“On your way to the hospital, I see.”
“Yes. I’m on morning duty this week.”
“Do you prefer that to the afternoons?”
“Not in summer. I do in winter, though.”
Nell felt ignored and insulted. She made no effort to join in this
sprightly dialogue. There was something in the curate’s manner
towards the other girl which seemed to stab her through with a
sense of her inferiority, with memories of the coarse, muddling life of
Worge to which she belonged. It was not that he showed more
courtesy, but he seemed to show more freedom ... he was more at
his ease with one of his own class.
Her cheeks burned. Of course she was not his equal. He might talk
to her and lend her books, but he did it only out of kindness;
probably looked upon it as a superior form of parish relief—doled the
books as he doled blankets.... She shrugged away, and the
movement made him at once turn to her with a remark:
“Have you been over the hospital, Miss Beatup?”
“No—I’ve never had time ... and I must hurry off now. Good
morning!”
Even as she spoke she noticed that her voice was thick and drawly,
unlike Miss Lamb’s sharp, clear tones. She gripped her satchel and
hurried across the road to the schoolhouse.

3
During the next few days the most remarkable sight at Worge was
Harry’s industriousness. For nearly a week he rose at five, fed the
pigs and helped with the milking, and during the whole day he was
available for carting, digging, dunging, or anything else he had
formerly fled from. He helped Elphick spray the young fuggles down
by Forges and the Sunk Field, he took a cartload of roots over to
Three Cups Corner, he groomed the horses and plaited their manes,
he compelled Zacky with threats of personal violence to spend
Saturday afternoon scaring birds from the gooseberries, instead of,
with six other little boys, carrying out an enveloping movement on
Punnetts Town, with three-ha’pence to spend on sweets in the
captured citadel. On the occasion of Mus’ Beatup’s next lapse, he
stalled the cows and doctored the mare, and also, with much
foresight, took off and hid his father’s boots, which prevented both
his going to bed in them and his throwing them at his wife.
It would have been well if this virtuous state could have lasted till
the hay harvest. This was early, for there was a spell of heat in May,
and the fields were soon parched. The air was full of the smell of
ripe hayseed, of the baking glumes of the oats, of the hot, sickly
stew of elderflower and meadowsweet. Along the Four Roads eddies
of dust flew from under the wheels and caked the grass and fennel-
heads beside the way, and in the ruts of the little lanes the bennet
and rest-barrow sprouted, with the thick-stalked sprawly pignut, and
ragged robin. Unfortunately, all this scent and heat made Harry
remember a wood over by Cade Street, where he had once lain and
watched the moon rise rusty beyond Lobden’s House. It was
unfortunate that he had such a memory, for it had more than once
been his undoing. Somewhere under Harry’s skin, mixed with the
sluggish currents of his country blood, was a strain of poetry and
imagination. He cared nothing for books, nothing for beauty, nothing
for music (except, perhaps, when they sang “Diadem” in the Bethel
at dusk), and yet every now and then something would pull him
from the earth he toiled on—a thing he was unaware of three weeks
out of the four, seeing only the sods cleaving together—something
would call him from meadow-hills that swept up their broomy cones
to the sky, an adventure would call from the Four Roads, a longing
would call from the moon ... and off he would go to Stunts Green, to
Starnash, Oxbottom’s Town, or Burnt Kitchen—just as, after a sober
week, Mus’ Beatup would go off to the Rifle Volunteer.
His promise to Tom had made him resist the cruder temptations of
ratting Sindens or bird’s-nesting Kadwells; but now it seemed to pull
the other way. His brother was the only person he was in any degree
afraid of, and he was safe at Waterheel, no longer his father’s vicar,
waiting with barnyard discipline for the truant’s return.
So Harry went off to that wood at Cade Street, and spent the night
there, in a hollow tree, watching the big yellow stars shuddering
above the ash-boughs like candles in the wind, and sleeping with his
head in a soft mush of last year’s leaves, that sent him back with his
cheeks all smeary, and his hair caked with leaf-mast.
That was the day of the haycutting, when Mus’ Beatup and Juglery
and Elphick sweated with bent backs in the field. Worge possessed a
horse-rake, but the cutting had all to be done by hand, and the
men’s backs ached and scorched in the sun, and their sweat
dropped on their scythes. This labour, as was only natural, started in
Mus’ Beatup a fearful thirst, and that night was “one of his bad
nights”—one of the worst, in fact, for he threw the candlestick at his
wife as well as his boots, and would not let her come to bed, so that
she had to sleep with Ivy and Nell.
Harry felt rather ashamed, and tried hard to atone the next day by
working himself sick. Mrs. Beatup and Ivy helped too, since
haymaking was the one kind of field work which the women did not
feel it derogatory to perform. Ivy was a whacking girl, nearly as
good as a man; but Mus’ Beatup would never have dreamed of
asking her to help fill Tom’s empty place. If town girls thought so
little of themselves as to enrol for farm work, that was no concern of
his, but he was hemmed if he’d have his wife and daughter meddling
with anything beyond the fowl-house, and as for employing other
women whose dignity mattered less to him—and, apparently, to
themselves—he’d sooner Worge went to the auctioneer’s, just to
teach the government a lesson.

4
So Worge muddled through its haymaking, and then the shearing;
and Harry was sometimes idle and sometimes industrious, and Mus’
Beatup was sometimes drunk and sometimes sober. The oats in the
Street Field and the field at the back of the Rifle Volunteer were
slowly parching to the colour of dust, though thick green shadows
rippled in them, and told how far off still the harvest was. They were
spring-sown potato-oats, chosen by Tom on account of their
vigorous constitution, though otherwise not very well suited to the
clays of Sunday Street. He had manured them at their sowing with
rape-cake, nursed their first sproutings, and now in every letter
enquired after their progress. “Keep an eye on them, dear father, for
the Lord’s sake, and do not let them stand after they’re ripe, or they
will shed there seeds for certain sure, being potatos.”
Tom had been some weeks now at Waterheel in the Midlands, a
private in the Sussex Regiment, with an elaborate and mystifying
address, which his family found the greatest difficulty in cramming
into the envelope. They did not write to him as often as he wrote to
them, in spite of the fact that they were six to one. But then they
were not far from home, dreaming of the old fields, longing for the
old faces.
On the whole though, Tom was happy enough. He found his new life
strange, but not totally uncongenial. A comfortable want of
imagination made it possible for him to put Worge out of mind, now
that it was also out of sight, and he was among lads of his own age,
old acquaintances some of them—Kadwell of Stilliands Tower, and
two Viners from Satanstown, Bill Putland, Jerry Sumption. There was
Mus’ Archie, too, with a nod and a kind word now and then to
intensify that “feeling of Sussex chaps” which was not quite such an
uncommon one now; and there was Mus’ Dixon, Mus’ Archie’s elder
brother, who had lived in London and written for the papers before
the War, and now used his sword to cut the leaves of books—so his
orderly said—yet was a brave man none the less, and a good officer,
though he hated the life as much as his brother loved it.
The family at Worge were surprised to find that Tom’s best pal was
Bill Putland. In Sunday Street he had had very little to do with the
Squire’s cheeky chauffeur, and there had always been a gnawing
rivalry between Egypt and Worge. But now that they had joined up
together, and been drafted into the same company, sharing the
same awkwardness and fumblings, a friendship sprang up between
them, and thrived in the atmosphere of their common life. Putland
was a much smarter recruit than Beatup, but this did not cause ill-
feeling, for Bill did much to help Tom, passing on to him the tips he
picked up so much more quickly than his friend, with the result that
Tom got through the mangold-wurzel stage sooner than Mus’ Archie
had expected. Tom on his side was humbly conscious of Bill’s
superiority. “He’s been bred up different from us,” he wrote home to
Worge. “You can see that by the way he talks and everything, and
he’s a sharper chap than me by a long chalk. But he’s unaccountable
good-hearted, and he helps me with my leathers after he’s done his
own, for he’s a sight quicker than me.”
Tom more often asked for news than he gave it. After all, life at
Waterheel Camp did not consist of much besides drills and route-
marchings, with relaxations at the Y.M.C.A. hut, and occasional visits
to the town. No one at Worge would care to hear the daily doings of
such a life, and still less were they likely to understand it. He was
uneasily conscious of what his father would say about these things
at the Rifle Volunteer. “Took my boy away from his honest work, and
all they do is to keep him forming fours and traipsing about the
country and playing dominoes at the Y.M.C.A. That’s wot the
Governmunt spends our money on,” etc., etc. And Tom was now
soldier enough to resent any criticism of the Army from outside it.
In other quarters though, it appeared he was not so reticent. After a
while his family discovered that Thyrza Honey was hearing from him
pretty regularly. Moreover, one day Mrs. Beatup, buying candles,
found Thyrza wearing a regimental button mounted as a brooch, and
was told it was a gift from Tom.
“He’s sweet on her,” said Ivy, when the news was told.
“Him—he’s just a bit of a boy,” said his mother.
“The Army maakes men unaccountable sudden.”
“Well, anyway, she’s four years older than he is, and wot he can see
in her is more’n I can say.”
“She’s got a bit o’ money though,” said Mus’ Beatup. “I shan’t put a
spoke in his wheel if he wants to marry her.”
“Him marry! Wot are you thinking of, Ned? He’s only a bit of a boy,
as I’ve told you. Besides, she aun’t got no looks; she’s just a plain
dump of a woman, and a boy liks a pretty faace.”
“Mrs. Honey’s middling pretty,” said Ivy, “with colour and teeth and
all.”
“You’ve got queer notions of pretty. Why, only yesterday Mrs. Sinden
wur saying to me as she can’t think wot Sam Honey ever saw in
Thyrza Shearne. And you can’t git naun out of her, she’s slow as a
cow, and she looks at you lik a cow chewing the cud....”
Nell broke in—
“You’re all taking it for granted that Mrs. Honey would have Tom if
she was given the chance. Maybe he’d be quite safe even if he
asked her.”
“Nonsense, my girl,” cried Mus’ Beatup. “A woman ud taake any man
as wur fool enough to ask her; if a woman’s unwed you may reckon
she’s never been asked.”
Ivy laughed loudly at this, and Nell turned crimson.
“Women aren’t going quite so cheap as you think.”
“Oh, aun’t they!—when it’s bin proved as there’s twice as many of
’em as there’s men. I tell you, when there’s a glut of turnips, the
price goes down.”
“There aren’t twice as many women as men. Miss Goldsack was
saying only the other day that——”
“And I tell you it’s bin proved as there are, and when the War’s over
there’ll be more still, and they’ll be going about weeping and
hollering and praying to the men to taake them.”
“They won’t. They’ll have something better to do. This War’s
teaching women to work, and——”
“Work! I wudn’t give a mouldy onion fur women’s work....”
And so on, and so on.

5
Thyrza herself was a little surprised to hear so often from Tom, and
the brooch was a piece of daring she had never expected. It is true
that from time to time she sent him presents of chocolate and
cigarettes, but his letters were much more than an acknowledgment
of these. They were not love-letters, but Thyrza knew that they
contained more confidences than those he sent to Worge—she was
familiar with all the common round of his day, from rêveille to lights-
out. He told her about the men he liked and those he didn’t, about
his drills and fatigues, about his food and Cookie’s queer notions of a
stew—Thyrza knew what was an “army biscuit,” a “choky,” a “gor’
blimey,” and the number of stripes worn respectively by “God
Almighty,” “swank” and “goat.” Scarcely a week passed without one
of those thin yellowish envelopes, with the red triangle in the corner,
slipping under the shop door—addressed in smeary, indelible pencil,
and smelling of woodbines.
She noticed a growing assurance in his style—partly due, perhaps, to
the friendliness of her replies, partly, no doubt, to the growing
manhood in him. She had always looked on Tom as a kind, slow
chap, with very little to say for himself, and not too much thinking
going on either, but with an unaccountable good heart. Now she
realised that the Army was smartening him up, giving him
confidence, enlarging his ideas. Thyrza was only a countrywoman
herself, born within ten miles of where she lived now, but she did
not fail to notice or to respect this growth in Tom. “He’s gitting new
ideas in his head, and he’s waking up a bit. I shan’t lik him the less
for being readier wud his tongue, surelye.”
One of the new ideas which got into Tom’s head at Waterheel was
the desirability—indeed, the urgency—of having a “girl.” All the
chaps had girls—Bill Putland wrote to Polly Sinden at Little Worge,
though he had taken very little notice of her while he was at home;
Jerry Sumption wrote half-threatening, half-appealing scrawls to Ivy
Beatup; Kadwell and Viner had sweethearts at the Foul Mile and the
Trulilows—every evening at the Y.M.C.A. a hundred indelible pencils
travelled to and fro from tongue to paper in the service of that god
who campaigns with the god of war, and occasionally snatches his
victories. There was also the need to receive letters—a need which
Tom had never felt before, but now ached in his breast, when at
post-time he saw other men walk away tearing envelopes, while he
stood empty-handed. Thyrza wrote more often and more fully than
his mother, and he would answer quickly, to make her write again.
So closer and closer between them was drawn that link of smudged
envelopes and ruled note-paper, with their formalities of “Your letter
received quite safe,” and “Hoping this finds you well, as it leaves me
at present”—till the chain was forged which should bind them for
ever.
Thyrza pondered this in her heart. She was used to much indefinite
courtship, most of it just before lamp-time in her own little shop,
with the prelude of a “penn’orth of bull’s-eyes for the children” or “a
packet of Player’s, please.” She had also been definitely courted once
or twice in her short widowhood—by Bourner of the Forge, a
widower with five sturdy children, and Hearsfield of Mystole. She
was a type of girl who, while appealing little to her fellow-women,
who “never cud see naun in Thyrza Honey,” yet had a definite
attraction for men, by reason of that same softness and slowness for
which her own sex despised her. She had no particular wish to marry
again, and at the same time no particular objection. Her first
marriage had not been so happy as to make her anxious to repeat it,
but it had also lacked those elements of degradation which make a
woman shrink from trusting herself a second time to a master. There
was too much business and too much gossip in her life for her to
feel her loneliness as a widow, and yet she sometimes craved for the
little child which had died at birth two years ago—she “cud do wud a
child,” she sometimes said.
Tom Beatup attracted her strongly. He was much her own type—
slow, ruminative and patient as the beasts he tended—yet she saw
him as a being altogether more helpless than herself, one less able
to think and plan, one whom she could “manage” tenderly. He was
not so practical as she, and more in need of affection, of which he
got less. Thyrza sometimes pictured his round dark head upon her
breast, her arm about him, holding him there in the crook of it, both
lover and child....
From the material point of view, the match was not a good one; but
Thyrza was comfortably off, and her miniature trade was brisk. They
were both too unsophisticated to make a barrier of her little stock of
worldly goods—he had his pay, so his independence would not
suffer, and she would have a separation allowance into the bargain.
He was a slow wooer, and the tides of his boldness had never risen
again to the level of that sticky kiss he had given her hand as she
served the bull’s-eyes—but she was sure of him, and, being Thyrza,
“slow as a cow,” had no objection to waiting.

6
Another woman in Sunday Street was being courted from the
Waterheel Y.M.C.A., but she did not fill her part as comfortably as
Thyrza. Not that Ivy Beatup had much real concern for Jerry
Sumption’s passion, beating against her indifference as a wave beats
and breaks against a rock. Her chief trouble was that Jerry now
threw out hints of an approaching leave, and though she had no
objection to his mingling rage and tenderness on paper, she disliked
the thought of having to confront them mingled in his gipsy face.
The minister’s son was one of Ivy’s mistakes—she made mistakes
occasionally, as she would herself acknowledge with a good-
humoured grin. But they were never very serious. And, as the saying
is, she knew how to take care of herself. Unfortunately, Jerry had
given her more than ordinary trouble. After some years of
standoffishness and suspicion—for Mrs. Beatup had never liked her
children to play with the gipsy woman’s son—Ivy and Jerry had
somehow been thrown together during his last holiday from Erith,
and she had good-naturedly allowed him to kiss her and take her to
Senlac Fair, as she would have allowed any decent lad on leave. It
was unlucky that what had been to her no more than a bit of fun
should be for Jerry the tinder to set his body and soul alight. Ivy,
more buxom than beautiful, and, with her apple-face and her barley-
straw hair, typical of those gaujos his mother’s people had always
distrusted, somehow became his earth and sky. He loved her, and
went after her as the tide after the moon.
Ivy tried to detach him by the various means known to her
experience. For a long time she ignored his letters and postcards.
Then when these continued to pour upon her, she sent a cold,
careless reply, which had the contrary effect of making his furnace
seven times hotter; so that her next letter was warmed
unconsciously by the flame of his, and she saw that instead of
having shaken him off, she had gone a step further in his company.
No doubt the best thing to do was to tell him to his face that she
would not have him. He would not be the first chap she had told
this, but Ivy had an unaccountable shrinking from repeating the
process with Jerry. There was in him a subtle essence, a mystifying
quality—perhaps it was no more than the power of a sharper life and
death—which made him different from the other lads she knew, and
struck terror into her country soul. He was the first man she had
been ever so little afraid of. Ivy had the least imagination of all the
Beatups. That spark which sent Nell to the church, and Harry to the
woods, which made Tom feel more than roots and clay in the earth
on which he trod, and Zacky sometimes almost think himself a
British army corps, even that little spark had never flickered up in
Ivy’s honest heart. Her world was made of things she could taste
and see and hear and smell and handle, and very good things she
found them. She resented the presence in her life of something
which responded to none of these tests. Jerry’s love for her was
“queer,” just as Jerry himself was “queer,” and Ivy did not like
“queer” things.
When the long-dreaded leave came at last, it took her by surprise.
She had not heard from Jerry for a week, and one morning, having
run to the pillar-box at the throws, with some letters for her soldier
friends, on her return she met Mr. Sumption, waving his arms and
cracking his joints and shouting to her even from beyond earshot,
that Jerry was coming home that evening.
“A letter came this morning. Maybe you’ve got one too?”
Ivy shook her head, and Mr. Sumption tried to disguise his pleasure
at being the only one to hear.
“He’s a good boy, Jerry—never forgets his father. But he wants to
see you though, Ivy. Maybe you’d come and have supper with us
this evening?”
“I’m unaccountable sorry, but I’m going up to Senlac town.”
“That’s a pity. Perhaps you’ll come another day?”
“If I’ve time, Mus’ Sumption—but I’m justabout vrothered these days
wud the harvesters here. Thank you kindly though, all the same.”
She had been sidling away as she spoke, and now walked off with a
brisk “Good mornun.” She was sorry to have to disappoint Mr.
Sumption, whom she liked and pitied; but there was no good letting
him think she had any use for Jerry.
Before going home she ran down the drive to Little Worge, and told
Polly Sinden she was at all costs and risks to come with her to
Senlac that evening.
For the rest of the day she was less her cheery, placid self than
usual, and the evening in Senlac town was not the treat it might
have been. All the time she was haunted by a sense of Jerry’s
nearness—perhaps he had come as far as Lewes by now, perhaps
he was already in Sunday Street, perhaps in Senlac itself. What a
fool she had been to tell Mr. Sumption where she was going! Her
heart was troubled—another of those “queer” aspects of the
situation which she so disliked. Generally when she wanted to get rid
of a boy, she did not have feelings like these. All through the soft
August twilight, when she and Polly Sinden, in the clumsy finery of
country girls, strolled arm-in-arm up and down the Upper Lake and
the Lower Lake—those two lakes of blood which an old, old war had
made, giving the town its bloody name—and even afterwards, when
having by arts known to themselves acquired two soldiers, they sat
in the picture palace with a khaki arm round each tumbled muslin
waist, even then the terror lingered, haunting, tearing, elusive as a
dead leaf on the wind. Ivy looked nervously into the shadows of the
little picture-hall, thinking she saw Jerry’s face, angry and swarthy,
with eyes like the Forge at night.... Suppose he had come after her
to Senlac ... he certainly would if he was home in time. Then came a
picture of a girl who was “done in” by her lover. Ivy could stand it no
more, and rising to her feet, plunged out over the people’s knees.
“That plaace is lik an oven,” she said to the Anzac corporal who
followed her out.... “No, thank you. I’ll go home wud Polly.”
Polly was a little annoyed that Ivy should have broken up the party
so soon; but it certainly was very hot—both the girls’ faces were
spotted with sweat and their gowns were sticking to their shoulders.
Besides, it would be as well not to get too thick with this Australian
chap now Bill Putland was writing so regularly.... Miss Sinden and
Miss Beatup dismissed their escort, and, after the proper number of
“Good-by-ees,” shouted across longer and longer darkness-muffled
distances, they trudged off homewards on the North Trade.
When Ivy reached the farm, she was told that Jerry Sumption had
called about eight o’clock—on his way from the station, without even
going first to leave his kit-bag at the Horselunges—and that Mrs.
Beatup had had an unaccountable to-do to git shut of him.

7
Having made up her mind that a meeting was inevitable, Ivy made
no more efforts to avoid one. By her absence on his first visit she
had clearly shown Jerry how matters stood, and if he was fool
enough to come again....
He was, of course. Ivy, unromantically on her knees at her usual
business of scrubbing the kitchen boards, felt no annoyance at being
so discovered, made no hasty grabs at her rolled-up sleeves, or at
the loosening knob of her hair. She would not have done so for a
more favoured lover, for none of her courtships had been of the kind
that encourages neatness and daintiness in a woman, that leads to
curlings and powderings. She knew that men liked her for her youth