Parson's Nine

by Noel Streatfeild

  They all looked expectantly at Sirach.

  “Make them work for us,” he said, after thought.

  Baruch sat up, surprised.

  “What, for nothing, you mean? Like slaves?”

  “England never has slaves, silly, but I expect we’d make them work for us. I don’t see what else we could do with a lot of Germans.”

  “What sort of work?” asked Susanna.

  “How do I know? Just cooking and things, I suppose.”

  “What, instead of cook and Maud?” Susanna exclaimed. Sirach nodded doubtfully. “Well! Cook and Maud aren’t going to like that.”

  Manasses dug a pattern in the ashes.

  “Will we have to go to school if there’s a war?”

  Sirach threw a scone at him.

  “Of course, you fool. What difference is it going to make here? Soldiers and sailors fight wars.”

  “Ought we to be going, do you suppose?” Susanna stretched herself luxuriously. “It’s nice here.”

  They looked down at the sleepy village lying in a warm haze beneath them, at the corn waving in golden patches, at the hedges silvered with dust from the white road. A little breeze blew softly over them smelling of the countryside. Nothing seemed to move. The very cattle chewed where they stood in drowsy contentment. The only sound was the castanets of Samson’s jaws snapping happily at flies. Then suddenly the peace was broken. A tramp came over the top of the hill with a fierce-looking, disreputable cur. Samson got to his feet, the fur on his back stood up, he growled softly. The tramp came down to the children.

  “ ’Ave you young ladies an’ gen’lemen the time?” He eyed the tea table greedily. “An’ maybe a bite of food for a poor man as ’asn’t ’ad a mouthful all day.”

  “Why not?” asked Manasses with interest. “When you’ve got nearly all of a loaf; I can see it sticking out of that bundle.”

  The tramp looked at him with mournful reproach.

  “That bread is for my wife an’ little ones, young gen’lemen, an’ it’s all of the bite an’ sup they’ll ’ave this day.”

  “Not sup,” Manasses argued. “Bread isn’t—”

  He was stopped by a scowl from Sirach, who collected the remaining buns and scones and held them out to the man.

  “Here you are.”

  The tramp stepped forward. So did his dog. This was too much for Samson. Ever since this undesirable pair had appeared on the hilltop, he had shown the children by every sign he knew that these were not suitable acquaintances for them. He thought they hadn’t understood him. Very well, then, he would show them. With a sudden snarl he sprang at the strange dog. But before he could reach him the tramp gave a vicious kick and sent him sprawling on his back, and like a flash the other dog was at his throat. Instantly everything was in confusion. The tramp ran round and round the fighters, uttering strange words and not only urging his dog on, but occasionally beating with his stick at any portion of Samson that became visible. Manasses and Maccabeus shouted hoarsely:

  “Let go, good boy—Samson, let go!”

  Susanna, terrified, whistled at him breathlessly, until Sirach finished the fight. It had really ceased to be a fight, for the tramp dog, still holding Samson’s throat, was shaking him to and fro, while Samson limply did nothing at all. Sirach, seeing this, felt desperate, so he picked up the teapot, still half full of hot tea, and threw the whole contents in the tramp dog’s face. The dog opened his mouth—in that second, quick as lightning, Sirach jumped forward and seized Samson in his arms. He seemed exhausted; his throat was terribly torn and bleeding. Sirach laid him on the ground, the others gathered round him. The tramp and his dog hurried off down the hill. Samson wriggled slightly at the homely feel of the grass. Then he opened his eyes. The blood from his throat trickled into the dust. Baruch turned away retching. Sirach looked after him.

  “Oh, go away and be sick, you miserable little rat.” He leaned over Samson. “How are you, old man?”

  Hearing his voice, Samson struggled to lick his face. But the effort was too much for him. Instead, he gave a little shiver and died.

  For a time they refused to believe he was dead. They poured water on his head. Sirach kept calling him:

  “Samson, Samson. Good old man. Come on, old boy.”

  But as he lay without a tremor, though the flies settled on him and a rabbit lolloped by within a few feet of his nose, the awful truth dawned on them, and they sat round his body saying nothing. The tears dripped unheeded off the end of Susanna’s nose. Manasses and Maccabeus had to resort to much nose-blowing. Baruch sat with his back to them all, looking ghastly. Sirach gazed bitterly round, then stooped and picked Samson up.

  “Come on, it’s no good stopping here moaning. Let’s go home.”

  On the road they met a farmer they knew. He saw Sirach’s burden.

  “Why, that’s never Samson? Dead, is he? Lay him down in the straw at the bottom of the cart, and I’ll drive you ’ome.”

  Sirach got up early the next morning and dug a grave. Before breakfast the whole household gathered round it. David blessed the place, and as they laid Samson in it, said simply:

  “Lord, we commend this friend to Thy keeping.”

  Then the children sang:

  “Under the wide and starry sky,

  Dig the grave and let me lie:

  Glad did I live and gladly die,

  And I laid me down with a will.”

  At the end of the verse Sirach took a spade and began shovelling the earth into the grave. At this minute Esdras in dusty khaki came round the side of the house. His camp was broken up, and he had sat all night with his company at the side of the road awaiting orders. Seeing the entire household gathered in front of him, his dramatic instinct came to the fore. He drew himself up.

  “War was declared at eleven o’clock last night.”

  Sirach raised grief-dulled eyes from his spade.

  “Who cares? Samson’s dead.”

  PART TWO

  The War

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  From Susanna’s point of view, the first result of there being a war was a changed attitude on the part of the grown-ups towards lessons. First Esther was allowed to disappear from the schoolroom entirely. Quite casually she got into uniform, and bicycled off every morning to a hospital in the next village. For a time nothing half as exciting as this happened to Susanna, but lessons changed character, the famous women vanished, and distinguished generals and admirals took their places, and she and Miss Crosby spent hours poring over maps of Belgium and France, underlining important places in red ink, which simple occupation would not in peacetime have been considered lessons at all. Then, suddenly, lesson hours began to shorten, and sometimes vanished altogether. First the troops camped near the village ran short of mattresses, and all the women of the neighbourhood turned to and made some more. Miss Crosby was clever with a sewing machine, so Catherine sent her to help, and since there was nothing else to be done with her, she sent Susanna too, who made herself very useful, and thought it enormous fun. The mattresses were hardly finished, and Miss Crosby and Susanna back at the schoolroom table, before the village was full of Belgian refugees. The refugees longed to be understood; they loathed having their worst tales of horror received with a polite “Oui, oui,” or, from those who fancied their French, an extremely foreign shrug of the shoulders, accompanied by an inexpressive “Vraiment!” So Miss Crosby’s assistance was called in, for she really understood French, and heard the tales of suffering with such tears in her eyes that every Belgian heart was warmed. The more the Belgians settled down, the more valuable Miss Crosby’s French became, for the Belgians, swollen with sympathy, considered nothing good enough for people who had suffered as they had. They could not believe that food could be scarce so far from the firing-line, but if indeed it were, then who had more right to such as there was than “Les braves Belge
s”? The village, however, had begun to lose interest in Belgians; their own miseries were crowding them, if not out of sight, at least into the background, so Miss Crosby became a buffer, tactfully translating screams that “Such vegetables would never, no never, make a soup” into polite speeches of thanks, delivering gifts of thin fowls and scrag ends of meat, with such an air that it closed Belgian mouths already open to say that such food was an insult to their nation, even on occasion snatching the very words from their lips as she murmured: “N’avez-vous pas déjà asset souffert?”

  Then at the end of 1915 a hospital was opened just outside the village. It required a lot of getting ready, and of course Miss Crosby, and therefore Susanna, helped, and for a time lessons were dropped altogether.

  “It’s only temporary,” Catherine comforted, when Miss Crosby exclaimed in horror at the way Susanna’s lesson hours were dwindling.

  But when the hospital was finished, and the first batch of wounded in bed, it was found there was nobody free to look after the linen-room, so as a makeshift Miss Crosby was roped in, and spent hours counting dirty things and handing out clean, and organizing parties to mend. She tried not to let these activities encroach on Susanna’s work hours, but of course they did. She begged Catherine to do something about it.

  “You really must find someone to take my place at the hospital; Susanna’s work is being painfully neglected.”

  “I know, Crossy dear, it’s a disgrace.”

  “It’s a tragedy.”

  “Oh, not as bad as that. What she’s missing in grammar and arithmetic, she’s making up in other ways. Talking to the Belgians is very good for her French, and she sews quite nicely since she’s been helping you at the hospital.”

  “That’s begging the question. You employ me to teach Susanna, not to help in a hospital; so, much as I love the work, I must insist that I am released as soon as possible.”

  “Bless you, Crossy, you are always so stern with me, but I give in—I’ll start looking for somebody this very day.”

  And that was the end of the matter. Catherine looked, but she never found, and as the time went on Miss Crosby hadn’t the heart to bother her, for really, with Esdras and Tobit in the trenches, Susanna’s lessons did seem rather unimportant. Besides, Catherine, who had trained as a V.A.D., was put on to night duty, and such hours as she did appear during the day were devoted to the increasingly pressing subjects of coal and food. Also, at this time David upset the house and entire village by deciding to go to the front as a chaplain. In the end, in spite of several passionate interviews with his Bishop, he was kept at home and given another village as well as his own to look after. Everybody but David was thankful to hear of this decision. Catherine, walking home from the hospital, was stopped by an old woman.

  “Oh, Mrs. Churston, ma’am, I hear Vicar be not to go for the war, we be terrible pleased in the village, for as we been sayin’—‘What’ll us do if they Germans land, and Vicar away?’ ”

  As the months passed, Susanna found herself living with increasing eagerness for the next holidays. The novelty of unusual hours and occupations was wearing off, and the strain of being the only child in a house that had always been full of children, and of hearing nothing but talk of the war and food shortage, told on her. She grew silent, almost morose, and never laughed from the beginning of the term to the end. From the first day of the holidays she was a changed person; it was as though a cork had blown out of her; she clattered noisily and endlessly up and down the stairs, she shouted to the boys, she slammed all the doors, and generally made herself a nuisance.

  “Susanna has got out of hand,” said Miss Crosby. “I was afraid she might without regular lessons.”

  But Susanna didn’t care what was thought about her; she was savouring to the full the pleasantness of being with Baruch, and of spending her days fooling and laughing and pushing unhappiness into its proper place in the background. Not that even in the holidays could the war be entirely avoided, but the boys looked at it from the same angle as she did. There it was, but no need to be always jawing about it.

  In the summer holidays of ’15 they helped on the land, looking after the cattle and later picking the apples and plums.

  “There you are, my dears,” said a farmer friend whose plums they had been picking. “Here be a nice basket for yourselves; you’ve been a won’erful help. My Georgie he was a rare one at the fruit picking from the time he could stand a’most, thought a lot of fruit, he did; said he were goin’ to have a fruit farm over in Canada, but of course this war come an’ settled that.”

  “But Mr. Pullen,” exclaimed Susanna. “He’ll have his fruit farm after the war; he’s only missing, you might hear from him any day.”

  “No, Susanna, wounded and missing telegram say, but before it come we knew he were gone. Missus said to me sudden, ‘Georgie’s gone,’ and I thought an’ then I knew it were so.”

  The children left the farm soberly.

  “Mrs. Honeysett’s nephew has been killed,” said Manasses. “She heard today.”

  “And Bert at the Mill is seriously wounded,” added Maccabeus.

  Baruch, who was carrying the plums, stumbled, and all the fruit fell in the road. With yells the children fell on it and threw it back in the basket, together with handfuls of white dust. Some of the dust got on to Susanna’s nose; they decided this was screamingly funny, so, with roars of laughter, spitting plum stones to right and left, they arrived home.

  “Seems a shame,” said Susanna to Baruch that night, “that Georgie was killed before he could go to Canada, and you and me, because we’re too young for the war, will be able to go.”

  Baruch nodded, fidgeting uneasily.

  “Let’s play that new patience,” he suggested.

  That September Esdras was wounded. It was only in a minor way, through the foot, but it kept him at home for some months, first in a London hospital, then hopping about on crutches in the grounds of a convalescent home, and finally in the Vicarage on sick leave. Heavenly as it was to have him safe at home, Catherine found him an anxiety. She couldn’t keep him happy; war nerves had made him incurably restless. In the Vicarage and village there was little to amuse him, though she gave up her hospital work entirely in order to entertain him. Whenever he could he dashed off to London for a few days, returning incredibly the worse for wear, and while he was at home had a habit of limping off by himself for hours on end. Catherine was inclined to feel the London exploits the safer of the two. Before the war rumours had reached her that he was seeing too much of Fanny Griggs; she was married now, but was he amusing himself with someone else? After he had been home for two months a medical board sent him back to the trenches.

  He wrote to Catherine some weeks later. While he had been at home she had felt miserably out of touch with him; with the arrival of his letter she felt him with her again.

  “Dearest Mother,

  I have been wanting to write to you ever since I got back, but have been too busy. Don’t worry about me (my soul, I mean, not my body). I am not awfully good at this war business, and must get through it in my own way. I know you worried about me while I was home, and however little I showed it I felt a cad, but if it’s any comfort to you to know it, I behaved quite decently all the time, at least up to my own standards if not quite up to Father’s. I have been sitting in a shell-hole writing this and humming ‘Rock of Ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee,’ one of my more appropriate quotations, don’t you think?

  Love, Esdras.”

  During the January of 1916 Judith came home. Catherine took a day off from the hospital and went over to see her. She found her comfortably settled in her house in the country, but indescribably gloomy. She poured out a tale of woe. She was expecting a baby in the autumn. Her husband had placed her in the depths of the country, and had then settled himself in London doing some sort of government work which he wouldn’t discuss wit
h her. All the women in the world were doing useful interesting things except herself, and she was bored, bored, bored.

  “But, darling,” Catherine expostulated, “you’ll be fit to do some war-work if you want to, at the end of the year.”

  “Yes, clean out the pantry of the local hospital, I suppose; a job any fool could do.”

  “Perhaps Harry will let you and the baby join him in London; you’ll find any amount of interesting work there.”

  “Harry let me bring his baby to London! Not if I know my Harry. As soon as he knew we were expecting Kitchener, he said: ‘That knocks London on the head for you, old lady.’ And he sent off a cable then and there to tell them to get this place ready, and came back to me grinning from ear to ear and rubbing his hands. ‘That’s splendid,’ he said. ‘I like to think of you settled down at ‘Gales’ just the place to bring up a baby.’ ”

  “It’s a beautiful house.”

  “Oh yes, I know, but it’s terribly depressing. Everything creaks, and the wind always howls round the chimneypots. That’s why it’s called ‘Gales’ I suppose.”

  “Come home for a bit.”

  “I can’t very well. Harry doesn’t seem to know when he’ll get a day off, but he’ll pop down here when he does and expect to find me waiting for him.”

  “I wonder what his work is.”

  “So do I. Nothing very exciting, I imagine. He loves having secrets from me; he never talked to me about his work while we were in Egypt, though I could have been a great help to him, and, goodness knows, there was nothing mysterious about his job there; he discussed it with everybody else, even with the Arabs.”

  “Why don’t you come home with me and let Harry join you there?”

  “He wouldn’t like it; you’re all busy, he likes being the only person who has to work.”

  “Well, he can’t hope to find that anywhere in wartime.”

  “He can here.”

  “It’s very bad for you sitting about by yourself; surely Harry will let you join him in London for a week or two?”