“And you a Christian, Mr. Steer!”
“There’s a limit to that, ma’am,” said Steer dryly. “In my opinion, not even our Lord could have put up with that feller. Don’t you waste your breath trying to persuade me.”
“Dear me!” murmured the schoolmistress. “I don’t know which of you is worst.”
The only people, in fact, who did know were Steer and Bowden, whose convictions about each other increased as the spring came in with song and leaf and sunshine, and there was no son to attend to the sowing and the calving, and no niece to make the best butter in the parish.
Towards the end of May, on a ‘brave’ day, when the wind was lively in the ash-trees and the buttercups bright gold, the girl Pansy had her hour; and on the following morning Bowden received this letter from his son.
“Dear Father,
“They don’t let us tell where we are so all I can say is there’s some crumps come over that stop at nothing and you could bury a waggon where they hit. The grub is nothing to complain of. Hope you have done well with calves. The green within sight of here wouldn’t keep a rabbit alive half a day. The thing I wish to say is If I have a son by you know who—call it Edward, after you and me. It makes you think out here. She would like to hear perhaps that I will marry her if I come back so as not to have it on my mind. There is some German prisoners in our section—big fellows and proper swine with their machine-guns I can tell you. Hope you are well as this leaves me. Has that swine Steer given over asking for his money? I would like to see the old farm again. Tell granma to keep warm. No more now from
“Your loving son
“Ned.”
After standing for some minutes by the weighing machine trying to make head or tail of his own sensations, Bowden took the letter up to the girl Pansy, lying beside her offspring in her narrow cabin of a room. In countrymen who never observe themselves, a letter or event which ploughs up fallow land of feeling, or blasts the rock of some prejudice, causes a prolonged mental stammer or hiatus. So Ned wanted to marry the girl if he came home! The Bowdens were an old family, the girl cross-bred. It wasn’t fitting! And the news that Ned had it on his mind brought home to Bowden as never before the danger his son was in. With profound instinct he knew that compunction did not seriously visit those who felt life sure and strong within them; so that there was a kind of superstition in the way he took the letter up to the girl. After all, the child was as much bone of Ned’s bone and of his own as if the girl had been married in church—a boy too. He gave it her with the words: “Here’s a present for yu and Edward the seventh.”
The village widow, accustomed to attend these simple cases, stepped outside, and while the girl was reading, Bowden sat down on the low seat beneath the little window. The ceiling just touched his head if he remained standing. Her coarse nightgown fell back from her strong arms and neck, her hair showed black and lustreless on the coarse pillow; he could not see her face for the letter, but he heard her sigh. Somehow he felt sorry.
“Shid ought to du yu gude,” he said.
Dropping the letter, so that her eyes met his, the girl spoke.