For the next two or three days the work went well. The Volunteer Field was reaped, and then the Street Field; the Sunk and Forges must be tackled before the fine weather came to an end, but the low grounds by Bucksteep might be left to stand a little, being sheltered, and not quite ready for harvest. Harry’s mixed gang of helpers was a bigger success than he had dared hope. Mr. Sumption was even better the second day than the first, having worked down a stiffness which his big muscles had acquired from long disuse. Even Mrs. Beatup was impressed, and gave him a fine breakfast every morning. The other clergyman was not so useful, but he made up in effort what he lacked in achievement, [204] and by Friday was doing quite a creditable day’s work. Nell was not, of course, much good, still, she was better than nothing, and more energetic and good-humoured than Harry had ever seen her. Zacky and the hired boy conspired in laziness and evil-doing, and Harry was grateful when the Rev. Mr. Sumption took it upon himself to knock their heads together.

On Friday evening grey smears of cloud lay on a strange whiteness in the west, and on Saturday the whole sky was smudged over with a pale opacity, and the wind blew from the South. The labourers found relief from the stewing, chaffy stillness of the last few days; but Harry snuffed the air and looked wise.

“The weather’s breaking up,” he said to his father in the dinner-hour. “We’ll have to work on Sunday.”

“Wud two passons!” cried Mus’ Beatup. “They’ll never coame. They’ll be preaching tales about dead men.”

“Reckon we must do wudout them. We durn’t leave the Sunk Field till after the weather. Bucksteep can wait, surelye, but the Sunk must be reaped before the rain.”

Mus’ Beatup groaned—“That’s the wust of doing aught wud passons. ’Tis naun to them if it rains on Monday—all they care is that a dunnamany hunderd years agone it rained forty days and forty nights and drownded all the world saave Noah and his beasts. Bah!” and Mus’ Beatup spat into the hedge.

However, to their surprise, they found both the parsons ready to work on Sunday. Mr. Poullett-Smith had no less authority than the Archbishop of Canterbury—the Archbishop quoted Christ’s saying of the ox in the pit, and gave like indulgence to all Churchmen. The Rev. Mr. Sumption appeared with no such sanctions.

[205]

“I’ve got no Randall Cantuar or Charles John Chichester to tell me I may break the Lord’s commandments. Reckon the Assembly ull be against me in this, and the Lord Himself ull be against me; but I’ll risk it. For you’re a good lad, Harry Beatup, and I’m going to stand by you, and if the Lord visits it on me I must bow to His will.”

When service-time came he had the advantage, for he polished off his bewildered congregation in only a little over half an hour, whereas the curate was nearly two hours at Brownbread Street, with a sung Eucharist. “I can say what I like and pray what I like,” said Mr. Sumption. “I’m not tied down to a Roman Mass-book dressed-up Protestant.”

Mr. Smith heard him in silence. His respect for him as a man and a labourer still outweighed his contempt for him as preacher and theologian. Also he now felt that in matters of religion Mr. Sumption was slightly crazed. He could handle a horse or a hammer or a sickle with sureness and skill, and talk of them with sanity and knowledge, but once let him mount his religious notions and he would ride to the devil. Mr. Smith came to the conclusion that he was one of those crack-brained people who believed that the war was the end of the world, the Consummation of the Age foretold in Scripture, and that soon Christ would come again in the clouds with great glory.—This really was what Mr. Sumption believed, so Mr. Smith did not misjudge him much.

By noon on Sunday dark clouds were swagging up from the south-west, with a screaming wind before them. The fog and dust of the last few days had been followed by an unnatural clearness—each copse and fields and pond and lane in the country of the Four Roads stood sharply out, with inky tones in its colouring. The fields sweeping down from Sunday Street to Horse Eye were shaded from indigo almost to black, and on the marsh the slatting [206] water-courses gleamed like steel on the heavy teal-green of their levels. The sea was drawn in a black line against a thick, unhealthy white sky, blotched and straggled with grey.

“It’ll rain before dusk,” said Harry. “It can’t hoald out much longer.”

“We’ll never git the field shocked, let alone brought in,” said Mus’ Beatup. “Here we’ve bin five hour and not maade more’n a beginning—it’s lamentaable. Reckon we might as well let the Germans beat us—we cudn’t have wuss weather.”

Harry set his teeth.

“We’ll git it finished afore the rain.”

“Afore your grandmother dies,” jeered Mus’ Beatup. “I’m off to the Volunteer.”

“And leave us.... Faather!”

“I’m not a-going to stay here catching my death wud rheumatics, working in the rain under my son’s orders. Reckon you’d sooner see me dead than lose your hemmed oats—my hemmed oats I shud say—but I—” and Mus’ Beatup swung up his chin haughtily—“have different feelings.”

“Reckon you have, and you ought to be ashaumed of yourself!” cried Harry thickly, then flushed in self rebuke, for on the whole he was a respectful son.

Mus’ Beatup sauntered away, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched to his ears—his usual attitude when he felt guilty but wanted to look swaggering. Mr. Sumption and Mr. Poullett-Smith were both at the further end of the field, and no opposition stood between him and the Rifle Volunteer save the doubtful quality his wife might offer from the kitchen window. Harry watched him with burning cheeks and a full throat. “Reckon I’m lik to kip temperance all my days wud this,” he mumbled bitterly.

[207]

He then went down to the other workers, and told them that it was going to rain and that they were a labourer short, as his father was feeling ill and had gone indoors to rest, but that he hoped by “tar’ble hard wark” to get the field cut before the storm. “If the grain’s shocked, it’ll bear the rain, but if it’s left standing, the rain ull beat down the straw, and all the seed ull fly. Juglery, you taake the reaper—Norry Noakes, you git to Tassell’s head—Mus’ Sumption and Elphick and I ull reap, and Mus’ Smith and Nell and Zacky bind.... Now I reckon ’tis a fight ’twixt us and them ............