He stopped. Strangely enough, he had never thought of being killed till now.
7
Tom’s calling-up papers did not arrive till a few days later. It was a showery morning, with a flooding blue sky, smeethed and streaked with low floats of cloud. The rain was cracking on the little green panes of the kitchen window, and the spatter of the drops, with the soft humming song of the kitchen fire, was in Tom’s ears as he studied the sheet which entitled one horse, one bicycle, one mule, one (asterisked) private soldier to travel cost-free to Lewes. He opened his mouth to say, “My calling-up papers have come,” but said nothing, just sat with his mouth open. The shower rattled and the fire hummed, then a sudden spill of sunshine came from the dripping edge of a cloud into the room, making the drops on the pane like golden beads, and lighting up the breakfast table, so that the mangled loaf and the dirty cups became almost as wonderful as the shining faces round them.
Mus’ Beatup was himself this morning—they still called it “himself,” though of late his real self had seemed more and more removed from the lusty headacheless man who sat among them to-day, more and more closely coiled with that abject thing of sickness and violence which came lurching down the fields at dusk from the Rifle Volunteer. He was studying his share of the post—an invitation to an auction at Rushlake Green, where Galleybird Farm was up for sale with all its live and dead stock. Mrs. Beatup had never had a letter in her life, nor apparently wanted one. She always exclaimed at the post, and wondered why Ivy should have all those postcards. In her young days no one sent postcards to girls. If a chap wanted you for wife he hung around the gate, if he did not want you for wife he took no manner of notice of you. A dozen chaps could not want Ivy for wife—her with as many freckles as a foxglove, and all blowsy too, and sunburnt as a stack—and yet there were nearly a dozen postcards strewn round her plate this morning. Some were field postcards, whizz-bangs, from Sussex chaps in France, some were stamped with the red triangle of the Y.M.C.A., some were views of furrin Midland places where Sussex chaps were in training, and some were funny ones that made Ivy throw herself back in her chair, and show her big, white, friendly teeth, and laugh “Ha! ha!” till the others said, “Let’s see, Ivy,” and the picture of the Soldier come home on leave to find twins, or the donkey chewing the Highlander’s kilt, or the Kaiser hiding in a barrel from “Ach Gott! die Royal Sussex!” would be passed round the table. To-day one of the pictures of the gentleman with twins—it was a popular one in the Sussex, and Ivy had two this morning—was from Jerry Sumption.
“Says he’s fed up,” said Ivy. “He reckons I knew about his joining. How was I to know? He’s at Waterheel Camp; and he’s met Sid Viner and young Kadwell. They kip those boys far enough from home.”
“And a good thing too,” said Mrs. Beatup. “We doan’t want Minister’s gipsy spannelling round.”
“Spik for yourself, mother—there aun’t a lad at Waterheel as I wuldn’t have here if I cud git him.”
“You’ll come to no good,” grumbled her father, and pretty Nell, with her anæmic flush, shrugged away from her sister’s sprawling elbow. She herself had had only one postcard, which she slipped hastily into the front of her blouse—unlike Ivy, who left hers scattered over the table even when the family had risen from their meal. There was not much in the postcard to justify such preferential treatment, for it ran—“There will be a meeting of the Sunday-school teachers to-morrow in church at 5.30. H. Poullett-Smith.”
Nell began to collect her books for school. She carefully dusted the crumbs from her skirt, smoothed her pretty marigold hair before the bit of mirror by the fireplace, put on her hat and jacket, and was gone. The rest of the family began to disperse. Zacky had to go to school too, but his going was an unwilling, complicated matter compared with Nell’s. His mother had to find his cap, his sister to mend his bootlace, his father to cuff his head, and finally his brother Tom to set him marching with a kick in his rear.
Ivy tied on a sacking apron and began to slop soapsuds on the floor of the outer kitchen, Mrs. Beatup set out on a quest—which experience told would last the morning—after a plate of potatoes she could have sworn she had set in the larder overnight. Mus’ Beatup went off to his fields with Harry at his tail, and calling to Tom—