“Maybe now he’s out there he’ll get on better,” he suggested.
“Better? He’s always done well,” said Mr. Sumption loftily. “He’ll have to do unaccountable well if he does better. Don’t think, Tom, that I came to you because I doubted my son, but he was never much of a letter-writer, and now, being busy and all....”
That night Tom lay awake an hour or so, thinking of parents. It was queer how they stuck to their children. His mother, now, coming all this way to see him, though she was nervous of the journey and had very little money to spend on it.... Mr. Sumption, too, standing up for that lousy tyke of a Jerry.... Would he ever feel like this for one of his own flesh—not only when that one lay helpless and dependent on him, but had gone out from him and chosen his own path? “Even as a father pitieth his children ...” so the Bible said, and seemingly there was no bound or end to that pity. Perhaps one day he would feel it in his own heart (the curve of Thyrza’s arms made him think of a cradle). He remembered what Mr. Sumption had said to him long ago, the night before he joined up—“You’ll understand a bit of what I feel ... some day when you’re the father of a son.”
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.
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.”