Tom was not the only local casualty that week. Bourner heard of the death of his eldest son, a youth who had somehow squeezed himself out to the front at the age of seventeen; the baker at Bodle Street lost his lad, Stacey Collbran of Satanstown had died of wounds, and the late postman at Brownbread Street was reported missing. All these had been struck down together on the ravaged hills round Wytschaete, where the Eighteenth Sussex had for long hours held a trench which the German guns had pounded to a furrow. In this furrow the body of Tom Beatup lay with the bodies of other Sussex chaps, hostages to shattered Flanders earth for the inviolate Sussex fields.

Mrs. Beatup heard about it from Mus’ Archie, who wrote, as she had expected, while Bill Putland wrote to Thyrza. Tom had been shot through the head. His death must have been painless and instantaneous, the Lieutenant told his mother. Then he went on to say how much they had all liked Tom in the platoon, how popular he had been with the men and how the officers had appreciated his unfailing good-humour and reliableness. “All soldiers grumble, as you probably know, but I never met one who grumbled less than Beatup; and you could always depend on him to do what was wanted. We shall all miss him more than I can say, but he died bravely in open battle, and we all feel very proud of him.”

“Proud”—that was the word they were all throwing at her now: Mus’ Archie, the curate, even the minister. They said, “You must be very proud of Tom,” just as if all the age-old instincts of her breed did not generate a feeling of shame for one who died out of his bed. Good yeomen died between their sheets, and her son had died out in the mud, like a sheep or a dog—and yet she must be proud of him!

[274]

Thyrza was proud—she said as much between her tears. She said that Tom had died like a hero, fighting for his wife and his child.

“He died for England,” said Mr. Poullett-Smith.

“He died for Sunday Street,” said the Rev. Mr. Sumption. “I reckon that as his eyestrings cracked he saw the corner by the Forge and the oasts of Egypt Farm.”

It appeared that T............