Sheila Kaye-Smith

“ The next day was Sunday. A thick yellow haze swam over the fields, and there was a faint autumnal scent in the hedges, mixed of leaves and earth. The grain-fields still smelt of summer, with the baking glumes and the white, cracked ground. Only a few had been cut—the winter sowings at Egypt and Bucksteep; the Volunteer Field and the Street Field at Worge still carried their crops, chaffy and nutty, preyed on by conies. They should have been cut last week, but Mus’ Beatup had not been himself on Friday and Saturday, and Juglery had a bad leg, and Harry had gone to Hailsham Fair. ”

“ When the sky was dark round the big stars, and Orion’s sword hung above Molash Woods, they would go in to their supper in the lamplight, to the tender, intimate talk of their evening hours, and then up, with big reeling shadows moving before them on beam and plaster in the candlelight, to the dim spring-smelling room where their baby slept, and where Thyrza would sleep with her hair spread on the pillow like a bed of celandines, and Tom with his brown, war-calloused hand in the soft clasp of hers, and his head in the hollow of her breast. ”

“ Had she believed Ivy when she said she had always known Seagrim was a married man? Had her mother believed her? Would Sunday Street believe her?
She sat up on the bed, and pushed the damp hair back from her eyes. She would face them out, anyhow. No one should point at her in scorn—or at Seagrim, either, even though she could never trust him or love him again. She would give the lie to all who mocked or pitied. No one should pry into her aching heart. Ivy Beatup wasn’t the one to be poor-deared or serve-her-righted. ”

“ He would not disappoint this soldier brother, who had exalted his work on the farm by speaking of it as part of the adventure on which he was so much more glamorously engaged. He had never seen it in that light before—for that matter, neither had Tom. But now he would try to do his share—back Tom up, as he had said. Harry’s nature was more ardent than his brother’s, more romantic in its clay-thickened way, and on this ardour and romance Tom had unconsciously built. There was now a chance of his memory calling louder than Senlac Fair or the wood by Cade Street. ”

“ The yellow light wavered up to him from the sunset, over the woods of Forges and Harebeating; there was a sob of wind from Stilliands Tower, and a gleam of half-hidden ponds in the spinneys by Puddledock. Mr. Sumption stood still and listened.
The air was full of sunset sounds—the lowing of cows came up with a mingled cuckoo’s cry, there was a tinkle of water behind him in the ditch, and the soft swish of wind in the trees and in the hedge, nodding ashes and sallows and oaks to and fro against the light-filled sky. ”

“ Thyrza’s room was full of light, for the westering moon hung over Starnash like a sickle, and the fields showed grey against their hedges and the huddled woods. She undressed without a candle, so bright was the moon-dazzle on her window, and after saying her prayers climbed into bed, where little Will now lay in his father’s place. Once more she tried to picture that his head was Tom’s, and that her husband lay beside her, while Will slept in his cradle, as he had slept when Tom was at home. ”

“ April was May before Tom’s weeks of grace had run. The field hollows were white with drifts of hawthorn, and the pale purplish haze of the cuckoo-flower had given place to the buttercups’ dabble of gold. The papery-white of the wild cherry had gone from the woods, which were green now, thick, and full of the nutty smell of leaves. The ditches were milky with fennel, and on the high meadows by Thunders Hill the broom and the gorse clumped their yellows together, making the hill a flaming cone to those who saw it from the marshes of Horse Eye. ”

“ The smell of earth, the smell of his own sweat, the smell of the sweat of his horses hung thick over the plough, but every now and then soft damp puffs of air would blow into the miasma the fragrance of grass and primrose buds, of sticky, red, uncurling leaves, and the new moss in the woods. The share gleamed against the dun, and the brown twigs of the copses drew their spindled tracery against a sky which was the paler colour of earth—sometimes a shower would fall, slanting along the hedges, the thick drops tasting on Harry’s lips of the unfulfilled spring. ”

“ Tom Beatup watched ripen the fields whose harvest he would not see. There were some twenty acres of hay at Worge, and two fields in which the green corn was his hope and dread. The crop was promising on the whole—a bit sedge-leaved perhaps, but firm in its seed. There were the hops, too, in the low fields by Puddledock, where Forges Wood shut off the north-east wind. He trundled the insect-sprayer round the bines, and afterwards loved the smell of his green, sticky hands. ”

“ The smell of dust came from the road, and from farmyards the smell of baking mud. The black oasts of Egypt across the way swam in a cloud of heat, and the red oasts of Worge were smeared to shadows in the steam of sunshine and dust. An aching of blue and yellow was in the harvesters’ eyes, and their bodies seemed to melt and drip. The reaper crawled even more slowly, with Mus’ Beatup sagging drowsily over the reins, and Zacky drooping against old Tassell, whose flanks ran with sweat, and from whose steaming hide came ammoniacal stable smells, whiffing over the harvesters every time he passed. ”

“ Sometimes when the purple chaffy evenings drew down over the fields, and the smell of ripening grain and ripening hops made sweet sick perfume on the drowsy air, an ache which was almost madness would drive her out into the lanes, seeking him by the tall stile at Four Wents, where he would never come again. The fiery horn of the moon, the jigging candles of the stars, would glow out of the grape-coloured sky as she went home through a fog of tears, slipping and stumbling in the ruts, dreaming of his step beside her and his arm about her and his bulk all black in the dimness of the lane.... ”

“ Sumption walked briskly. When he came to Pont’s Green he thought he saw the back of old Hubble tottering on ahead, so he slackened his pace a little, for he hoped to get home without meeting any of his congregation. The feeling of shame was growing, he felt as if he had despised Christ’s little ones ... after all, who shall be found big enough to fit the times? What man is built to the stature of Doomsday?
He heard himself called as he entered the village, and turning his head, saw Thyrza standing in the shop door, the last light gleaming on her apron. ”

“ Mr. Sumption’s sermon had not had the same effect on her as on the others—for one thing, she thought of Tom more than of Jerry; for another, her feeling towards the minister was of pure compassion. Poor chap! how he must have suffered, how he must have hated all those Who mourned honourably, who grieved for heroes and saints, such as her Tom. What would she have felt, she wondered, if Tom had died like Jerry?...
She wished she could have seen Mr. Sumption after the service, and asked him in to a bit of supper. Poor soul! one could always comfort him through his inside. ”

“ The hedge-born could not please the house-born, as she had said—though for that matter he had been born in a bed like any Christian, in that little room above the Forge at Bethersden, which he could dimly remember, with its view down three cross-roads.
He clenched his small hard fists, and stared scowling out towards the sun-swamped fields of the horizon. He would punish Ivy Beatup for her cruelty, for having trodden on the chapel weed. He would make her suffer—if he could, for she was tough and lusty as an oak. ”

“ There was a farmer driving as far as Adam’s Hole on the Hailsham Road, and he offered Mr. Sumption a lift in his trap. The minister had shod his little sorrel mare, and with her hoofs ringing on the clinkered road they drove from Lion’s Green, away towards the east. The dipping sun poured upon their backs, flooding the lane and washing along their shadows ahead of them into the swale. The east was still bright, and out of it crept the moon, frail and papery, like the petal of a March flower. ”

“ Rain fell noiselessly, almost invisibly, apparent only in an occasional whorl, in the dripping eaves of the stacks, the shining roofs of the barns, and the whiteness of the beaded grass. Nell came from Hailsham station in a cab—her husband had told her to do so, giving her paper money for the fare. He certainly was princely in his ideas of spending, and there were loud and envious exclamations at Worge when, instead of the soaked and huddled figure expected, Nell appeared bone-dry, without even her umbrella unfurled.
“A cab from Hailsham!” cried Mrs. Beatup. “Reckon you’ve got a good husband.” ”

“ Tom knocked out his pipe.
“Then at last”—and the minister’s eye kindled and his whole sunburnt face glowed with the mixed fires of hope and fanaticism—“the sign of the Son of Man shall appear in the heavens, and He shall come again in power and great glory. Even so, come, Lord Jesus—but come before our hearts are all broken. What’s the use of chaining up the Dragon in the Lake if he’s already devoured the world? Shorten these days, for the Elect’s sake—save us from the burning, fiery furnace which is making frizzle of our bones and cinders of our hearts.” ”

“ Behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be as stubble. But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings. And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to their children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.... Oh, Thyrza, the world is sown over with young, brave lives, and it’s our job to see that they are not as the seed scattered by the wayside, sown in vain. ”

“ Harry milked and ploughed and scattered and dug, rising in the foggy blue darkness of the morning, and often sitting up late over calculations and accounts. Elphick and Juglery gave a pottering, rheumatic service, [124] Mus’ Beatup could only be irregularly relied upon. So in time Harry learned what it was to doze off out of sheer weariness over his supper, or fall across the bed asleep before he had pulled his trousers off. But strangely enough, he found the life no hardship. Before the first thrill of enterprise had passed he was beginning to like the work for its own sake. ”

“ No doubt some kept faith with the absent, but the spirit of the days mistrusted space as it mistrusted time, and the wisdom of love took no more account of happiness a hundred miles away than of happiness a hundred months ahead. There were wooings and matings and partings, all played out in the few spare hours of a soldier’s day, in the few spare miles of his roaming, under the thundery thick sky of a Sussex summer, when heat and drench play their alternate havoc with the earth. ”

“ The two girls went into Hailsham on market-days, and strolled that way of evenings, winning the South Road by Stilliands Tower and Puddledock, through the little lanes and farm-tracks that were now all thick with June grass, and smelled of hayseed and fennel. With grass [155] and goose-foot sticking to their skirts, and their hair spattered with the fallen blossoms of elderflower, they would come out on the South Road, where the dust swept through the twilight before the wind. ”

“ He would have been far happier had he been left a blacksmith, had his half-crazy visions been allowed to burn themselves out like his forge fires, instead of being stoked by mistaken patronage and inadequate theological training. As things stood, he was absurd, even in no worthier setting than a forgotten village Bethel—a mere caricature of a minister, even in the pulpit of the Particular Baptists, an old-fashioned and fanatical sect with their heads full of doomsday. ”

“ Amidst cheering and laughter the old horse lurched off, and soon Thyrza’s grey and Tom’s dun were blurred together in the distance, which was already staining with purple as the air thickened towards the twilight. The guests turned back into the house, or scattered over fields and footpaths. Ivy rushed upstairs to take off her stays, and Bill Putland swaggered home between his parents, with a flower in his button-hole and plans in his heart for an evening at Little Worge. ”

“ They never went for long walks now, but stopped in their little garden at the back of the cottage, where crocuses splashed the grass with purple and egg-yellow, and celandines crept in under the hedge from the fields of Egypt Farm. Here in the warm spring sunshine Thyrza would sit, rocking the baby’s cradle with her foot, while she talked to Tom in her sweet, drawly voice, of the little trades and doings of the past year. Every now and then the shop-bell would ring through the cottage, and she would go off to serve and gossip, leaving baby in his father’s care.... ”

“ Eddies and swells of golden, watery light drifted over the hills round Dallington. In the north the sharp, wooded hill where Brightling stood was like a golden cone, and the kiln-shaped obelisk by Lobden’s House which marked the highest point of South-east Sussex was also burnished to rare metal. The scent of water, stagnant on fallen leaves, crept from the little woods where the primroses and windflowers smothered old stumps in their pale froth, or spattered with milky stars the young moss of the year. ”

“ This is the day which the Prophet said should burn like an oven, and the proud, even the wicked, be as stubble. What’s your wretched farm? Think of the farms round Ypers and Dixmood, think of the farms round Rheims and Arrass—Stop!” and he seized Tom’s arm in his hard, restless fingers—“Listen to those guns over in France. Perhaps every thud you hear means the end of a little farm.”
Tom stood dejectedly beside him, the broken-backed cigarette, for which the minister had unfortunately been unable to provide a light, hanging drearily from his teeth. The soft mutter and thud pulsed on. ”

“ 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. ”