“This war queers me,” he said, and his voice, low and thick as it was, like any Sussex countryman’s, yet was enough to drown the beating of that alien heart. “I doan’t understand it. I can’t git the hang od it nohow.”
“A lot of it queers me,” said Mr. Sumption, “and I reckon that in many ways we’re all as godless as the Hun. It’s not only the Germans that shall burn like stubble—it’s us. The oven’s prepared for us as well as for them.”
They were walking together down steep fields, the ground dreamy with grey light, while before them, beyond the sea, burned the great oven of the sunset, full of horns of flame.
“I’m thinking of the farm,” continued Tom, his mind sticking to its first idea. “I’m willing enough to go and fight for the farms in France and Belgium, but seems to me a Sussex farm’s worth two furrin’ ones. Worge aun’t a fine place, but it’s done well since I wur old enough to help faather—help him wud my head as well as my arms, I mean. Faather’s an unaccountable clever chap—you should just about hear him talk at the pub, and the books he’s read you’d never believe. But he’s got ways wot aun’t good for farming, and he needs somebody there to see as things doan’t slide when he can’t look after them himself.”
“Can’t your brother Harry do anything? He must be nearly sixteen.”
“Harry’s unaccountable wild-like. He’s more lik to git us into trouble than help us at all.”
“Maybe your father will pull-to a bit when you’re gone and he sees things depend on him.”
“Maybe he will, and maybe he woan’t. But you doan’t understand, Mus’ Sumption. You doan’t know wot it feels like to be took away from your work to help along a war as you didn’t ask for and don’t see the hang of. Maybe you’d think different of the war if you had to fight in it, but being a minister of religion you aun’t ever likely to have to join up. I’m ready to go and do my share in putting chaps into the oven, as you say, but it’s no use or sense your telling me as it doan’t matter about the farm, for matter it does, and I’m unaccountable vrothered wud it all.”