He hurried back to Thyrza, and they shut up the shop, and went out to the field by the willow pond. A green, still dusk lay over the fields and sky; no stars were out yet, but the chalky moon hung low over the woods of Burntkitchen. The distant guns were silent, only the bleating of lambs came from the Trulilows, and every now and then a burst of liquid, trilling, sucking melody from a blackbird among the willows.
“Hark to the bird,” said Thyrza.
“Maybe he’s got a nest full of liddle ’uns.”
“And a liddle wife as can’t sing—funny how hen-birds never sing, Tom.”
“Thyrza, I wish as I cud maake a home fur you, dear.”
“Wotever maakes you think of that? The birds’ nest? Reckon I’ve got a dentical liddle home.”
“But it’s wot you’ve always lived in. I never built it for you.”
“Doan’t you go fretting over that. I’d be lonesome wudout the shop, Tom—I doan’t think as I’ll ever want to be wudout the shop. And we’ve bin so happy there together. It’s saum as if you’d built it fur me, since you’ve maade it wot it never was before.”
He drew her close to him, sleek, soft, heavy, like a little cat, and leaned his cheek against her hair.
“Reckon I’ll always think of you in it.... I’ll see you setting up in the mornun wud your eyes all blinky and your hair streaming down—and I’ll see you putting on the kettle and dusting the shop, and maybe having a bit of talk over the counter wud a luckier chap than me. And all the day through I’ll see you, and in the swale you’ll be putting your head out for a blow of air, and there’ll be the lamp in the window behind you ... and then you’ll lie asleep, and the room ull be all moony and grey, and your liddle hand ull lie out on the blanket—so, and your breath ull come lik the scent out of the grass ... and when you turn your body it’ll be lik the grass moving in the wind—and I woan’t be there to see or hear or touch or smell you.”
His arm tightened round her breast, and she leaned against him as if she would fuse her body into his, share its travels, hardships and dangers. The stars were creeping slowly into the sky, dim and rayless in the thick Spring night, which had put a purple haze into the zenith, and made the great moon glow like a copper pan. The fields were blooming with a soft yellow—the waters of the pond had a faint gleam on their stagnation, and the willows were like smoke with a fire in its heart, their boughs pouring down in misty grey towards the water, with points and sparks of light here and there, as the radiance danced among their leaves.
The swell of the field against the eastern constellations was broken by the gable of the shop, rising over the hedge and pointing to the sign of the Ram. Tom’s England—the England he would carry in his heart—had widened to take in that little humped roof of moss-grown tiles. It held not only the willow pond and the woman beside it, but the home where together they had eaten the bread and drunk the cup of common things. It was not perhaps a very lofty conception of fatherland—not even so high as Harry’s conception of a country saved by his plough. Tom’s country was only a little field-corner that held his wife and his home, but as he sat there under the stars, he felt in his vague, humble way, that it was a country a man would choose to fight for, and for which perhaps he would not be unwilling to die.
TOWARDS June the country bounded by the Four Roads woke to a certain liveliness. A big camp had sprung up on the outskirts of Hailsham, on the ridge above Horse Eye, and the excitement spread to Brownbread Street, Sunday Street, Bodle Street, Pont’s Green, Rushlake Green, and other Streets and Greens—and cottage gardens were a-swing with lines of khaki shirts, “soldiers’ washing,” taken in with high delight at an army’s big spending.
The girls of the neighbourhood began to take new sweethearts with startling quickness. They came, these strangers from the North, leaving their girls behind them, and the girls of the South had lost their men to camps in France and Midland towns. No doubt some kept faith with the absent, but the spirit of the days mistrusted space as it mistrusted time, and the wisdom of love took no more account of happiness a hundred miles away than of happiness a hundred months ahead. There were wooings and matings and partings, all played out in the few spare hours of a soldier’s day, in the few spare miles of his roaming, under the thundery thick sky of a Sussex summer, when heat and drench play their alternate havoc with the earth.
In those days Ivy Beatup lifted up her head. She had had a dull time since Kadwell and Viner and Pix went out to France. Thyrza’s cousin had turned out miserable prey—he had actually proposed himself as her husband to her father and mother, bringing forward most satisfactory evidence of a more than satisfactory income, derived from Honey’s Suitall Stores in Seaford. Thus the strain between Ivy and her family was increased, and her presence at home became a burden of reproach. They could not see why she refused to bestow her splendid healthy womanhood on this poor creature, why she would rather scrub floors and gut fowls than sit with folded hands in his parlour—that she had “taken him on” merely to kill time, and that it wasn’t her fault if he chose to treat her seriously and make a fool of himself.
“You’ll die an old maid,” said her mother. “You’ll go to the bad,” said her father, and Ivy, who had no intention of doing either, felt angry and sore, and longed to justify herself by a new love-affair more gloriously conducted.
When the soldiers came to Hailsham, she saw her chance, and resolved to make the most of it. She persuaded Harry to take her into the town on market-day, and also found that she preferred the “pictures” there to those at Senlac. Polly Sinden refused to abet her—Bill Putland had given her distinct encouragement on his last leave, and Polly decided that in future discreet behaviour would become her best. So she refused to prowl of an evening with Ivy, either in Hailsham or Senlac, and Ivy—since no girl prowls alone—had to take up with Jen Hollowbone of the Foul Mile, the same whom Bob Kadwell had jilted, but who, soothed by time and a new sweetheart, had generously forgiven her rival, especially as Bob had once again transferred his affections, and was now no more Ivy’s than Jen’s.
The two girls went into Hailsham on market-days, and strolled that way of evenings, winning the South Road by Stilliands Tower and Puddledock, through the little lanes and farm-tracks that were now all thick with June grass, and smelled of hayseed and fennel. With grass and goose-foot sticking to their skirts, and their hair spattered with the fallen blossoms of elderflower, they would come out on the South Road, where the dust swept through the twilight before the wind. Warm and flushed, with laughing eyes, and arms entwined, and slow proud movements of their bodies, the girls would stroll past the camp gates, leaning clumsily together and giggling. The men would come pouring out after the day’s routine, seeking what diversion they could find in lane or market-town. It was in this way that Ivy met Corporal Seagrim of the Northumberland Fusiliers.
He was a tall, dark giant, well past thirty, with a becoming grizzle in his hair, over the temples. His face was brown as a cob-nut, and his speech so rough and uncouth in the northern way that at first Ivy could hardly understand him. They met in the market-place. He had a companion who paired with Jen—an under-sized little miner, with a pale face and red lips, but good enough for Jen, since she already had a boy in France. Of course Ivy had several boys—but they were no more than good comrades, the interchangers of cheery postcards on service and cheery kisses on leave. If she had had a boy like Jen’s, she would have been more faithful to him than Jen was, but she was free to do as she liked with Seagrim—free when they met in the market-place, that is to say, for by the time they said good-bye at Four Wents under the stars, she was free no longer.
They had gone to the “pictures,” but soon the moving screen had become a dazzle to Ivy, the red darkness an enchantment, the tinkling music an intoxication. Seagrim’s huge brown hand lay heavily on hers, and her limbs shook as she leaned against his shoulder, almost in silence, since they found it hard to understand each other’s speech. The man thrilled and confused her as no other had done—whether it was his riper age, or his almost perfect physical beauty, or some strange animal force that thrilled his silence and slow clumsy movements, she did not seek to tell. Self-knowledge was beyond her—all she knew was that she could never give him the careless chum-like affection she had given her boys, that between them there never would be those light hearty kisses which she had so often taken and bestowed. She felt herself languid, troubled, full of a dim glamour that brought both delight and pain. The music, the red glow all seemed part of her sensation, though before she used scarcely to notice them, except to hail a popular tune or an opportunity for caresses.
When the show ended, the soldiers offered to walk with the girls as far as Four Wents, where the Puddledock lane joins the South Road. Jen and the miner walked on ahead, she holding stiffly by his arm, in a manner suitable to one demi-affianced elsewhere. Ivy and Seagrim followed. They did not speak; his arm was about her, and every now and then he would stop and pull her to him, dragging her up against him in silent passion, taking from her lips kiss after kiss. The aching passionate night looked down on them from the sky where the great stars jigged like flames, was close to them in the hedges where the scented night-wind fluttered, and the dim froth of chervil and bennet swam against the hazels. For the first time Ivy seemed to feel a hushed yet powerful life in the country which till then she had scarcely heeded more than the music and red lamps of the show. Now the scents that puffed out of the grass made her senses swim, the soft sough of the wind over the fields, the distant cry of an owl in Tillighe Wood, made her heart ache with a longing that was half its own consummation, made her lean in a drowse of ecstasy and languor against Seagrim’s beating heart, as he held her in the crook of his arm, close to his side.
At the Wents the parting came, with a loud ring of laughter from Jen, and a “pleased to ha’ met yo’” from the miner. But Ivy clung to her man, her eyes blurred with tears, her throat husky and parched with love as she murmured against his thick brown neck—
“I’ll be seeing you agaun?...”
“Aye, and yo’ will, li’l lass, li’l loove” ... he swore, and straightway made tryst.
When he was gone the night still seemed full of him—his strength and his beauty and his wonder.
Ivy was in love. The glamour had transmuted her country stuff as surely as it transmutes more delicate substance. The spring rain falls on the thick-stalked hogweed as on the spurred columbine, and the divine poetry of Love had given to her, as to a more tender nature, its unfailing gift of a new heaven and a new earth.
Her whole being seemed gathered up into Seagrim, into a strange happiness which had its roots in pain. For the first time pain and happiness were united in one emotion; when she was away from him, pain was the strong partner, when with him, then happiness prevailed—and yet not always, for sometimes in his presence her heart swooned within her, and her face would grow pale under his kisses and a moan stifle in her throat, and also, sometimes, when he was away, a strange ecstasy would seize her, and all her world would shine, and her common things of slops and guts and mire become beautiful, and the very thought of his being dazzle all the earth....
She never told him of this, indeed she herself scarcely realised it. She felt in her thoughts a soft confusion, a happy bewilderment, a sweet ache, and everything was changed and everyone spoke with a new voice—the very kitchen boards were not the same since she met Seagrim, and her family had queer new powers of delighting and grieving her. “I must be in love,” she said to herself, and straightway bought her man a pound of the best tobacco at the Shop.
She was very good to him. Her hearty, generous nature found relief in spending itself upon him. She seldom came to the meeting-place without some present of tobacco or food—she did him a dozen little services, mended his clothes, marked his handkerchiefs, polished his buttons and his boots. Strangely spiritual as the depths of her love might be, its expression was entirely practical and animal. To serve him and caress him was her only way of revealing those dim marvels that swam at the back of her mind.
The man himself was bewitched. Her generosity touched him, and it would be a strange fellow indeed who would not love to hold her to him, sweet and tumbled like an over-blown flower, and take the softness of her parted lips and sturdy neck. Ivy was like the month in which he wooed her—July, thick, drowsy, blooming, ripe, lacking the subtlety of spring and the dignity of autumn, but more satisfying to the common man who prefers enjoyment to promise or memory.
They met most evenings, he walking eastward, she westward, to Four Wents; there, where the tall stile stands between two shocks of fennel, they would lean together in the first charm of tryst, the dusk thickening round them, hazing road and fields and barns and bushes, their own faces swimming up out of it to each other’s eyes, like reflections in a pond—hers round and flushed under her tousled hair, like a poppy in a barley-field, his brown and predatory with its hawk-like nose and piercing eye under the grizzled curls. Then the dusk would smudge them into each other and they would become one in the swale....
He led her up and down the little rutted lanes, under a violet sky where the stars were red and the moon was a golden horn. The thick fanning of the July air brought scents of hayseed and flowering bean, the miasmic perfume of meadowsweet, the nutty smell of ripening corn, and the drugged sweetness of hopfields. All round them would hang the great tender silence of night, the passionate stillness of the earth under the moon, and their poor broken words only seemed a part of that silence.... “My loove, my li’l lass.” ... “I love you unaccountable, Willie.” ... “Coom closer, my dear.” ... The wind rustled over the orchards of Soul Street, and the horns of the moon were red, and the sky thick and dark as a grape, when they came back to the tall stile at the throws, and parted there with caresses which love made groping and vows which love choked to whispers.
On Sundays they met more ceremonially, pacing up and down the road at Sunday Street, from the shop to the Rifle Volunteer—which was the parade-ground of those girls of the parish who had sweethearts. Here Jen Hollowbone showed her Ted and Polly Sinden her Bill, and Ivy Beatup showed her Willie, walking proudly on his arm, smiling with all her teeth at the girls whose sweethearts were away and at the girls who had no sweethearts at all.
She even brought him to Worge once or twice, but her family did not like him. This was partly because they were still the champions of the rejected Ern Honey, and partly because they resented his gruff manner, and harsh, rumbling speech. He did not shine in company—he was for ever boasting the superiority of Northumberland ways over those of Sussex, and even told Mus’ Beatup that he “spake like a fule” on American Intervention. He horrified Nell by drinking out of his saucer—a depth below any of the family’s most degrading collapses—and offended Harry and Zacky by taking no notice of them or interest in the farm. Indeed the only being at Worge he seemed to care about—not excepting Ivy, whom he almost ignored on these occasions—was Nimrod, the old retriever; to him alone he would smile and be friendly, hugging the old black head against his tunic, and patting and slapping Nim’s sides till he became demoralised by this unaccustomed fondling and frisked about with muddy paws—which was all put down to Seagrim for unrighteousness in his account with Mrs. Beatup.
“Wot d’you want wud un, Ivy?” she asked once—“a gurt dark tedious chap lik that, wud never a good word for a soul—not even yourself, he doan’t sim to have—and a furriner too.”
“He aun’t a furriner.”
“He aun’t from these parts, like some I cud naum. You’re a fool if you say no to a valiant chap lik Ernie Honey and taake up wud a black unfriendly feller as no one here knows naun about.”
“Well, he doan’t have to have his inside tied up wud a truss lik a parcel of hay, caase it falls out.”
“You hoald your rude tongue. Wot right have you to know aught of Ern Honey’s inside? And better a inside lik a parcel of hay than a heart lik a barnyard stone. He’s a hard-hearted man, your sojer—cares for naun saave a pore heathen dog wot he brings spannelling into the kitchen.”
“He cares for me.”
“It doan’t sim lik it wud his ‘Eh, lass?—eh, lass?’ whensumdever you spik. Reckon you maake yourself cheap as rotten straw when you git so stuck on him.”
“Who said I wur stuck on him?—he aun’t the fust I’ve kept company with.”
“No, he aun’t. You’re parish talk wud your goings on. You’ll die an oald maid in the wark’us, and bring us to shaum—and Harry ull bring us to auction, and Tom ull be killed by a German, and bring us to death in sorrow. All my children have turned agaunst me now I’m old,” and Mrs. Beatup began to cry into her apron.
Ivy’s big arms were round her at once....
Relations between Ivy and Nell had always been a little uneasy. Ivy was tolerant and good-humoured, but could not always hide the contempt which she felt for Nell’s refinements, while Nell, though she did not despise Ivy, hated her coarseness—particularly since she could never see it through her own eyes alone, but through others to which it must appear even grosser than to herself.
One evening Nell came in from school, and as she took off her hat before the bit of glass on the kitchen wall, could see the reflection of Ivy munching her tea, which she had started late, after a day’s washing. Her sleeves were still rolled up, showing her strong arms, white as milk to the elbow, then brown as a rye-bread crust. Her meadow-green dress was unbuttoned, as if to give her big breast play, and her neck was thick and white, its modelling shown by bluish shadows. “She’s a whacker!” thought Nell angrily to herself, then suddenly turned round and said—
“Jerry Sumption’s here.”
“Lork!” said Ivy, biting off a crust.
“I met him,” continued Nell, “and he knows you’re going with Seagrim.”
“Well, wot if he does?”
“It might be awkward for you. He seemed very much upset about it.”
“Wot fur dud you go and tell un?”
Nell sniffed.
“I didn’t tell him. But your love-making isn’t exactly private.”
“No need fur it to be.”
“I don’t know—it might be better for you as well as for us if the whole parish didn’t know so much about your affairs.”
“And I reckon you think as no one knows about yourn?”
Nell flushed—
“Leave my affairs alone. I’ve none for you to meddle with.”
“Oh, no—you aun’t sweet on Parson—not you, and nobody knows you go after un!”
“Adone-do wud your vulgar talk,” cried Nell furiously, forgetting in her anger to clip and trim her blurry Sussex speech. “I’ve warned you about young Sumption, and it aun’t my fault if you have trouble.”
“There woan’t be no trouble. I’ve naun to do wud Jerry nor he wud me—I got shut of him a year agone.”
All the same, she was not so easy as her words made out. It was evil luck which had brought Jerry Sumption back at just this time. He was bound to be a pest anyhow, though perhaps if his jealousy had not been roused he might have had enough sense to keep away. Now he would most likely come and make a scene. Even though she would not be his girl, he could never bear to see her another man’s; he might even try to make mischief between her and Seagrim—be hemmed to the gipsy! At all events he would be sure to come and kick up trouble.
She was partly right. Jerry came, but he did not make a scene. He turned up the next morning, looking strangely dapper and subdued. Ivy interviewed him in the outer kitchen, where she was blackleading the fireplace. It spoke much for the sincerity of his passion that he had hardly ever seen his charmer in a presentable state—she was always either scrubbing the floor, or cooking the dinner, or washing the clothes, or cleaning the hearth. To-day there was a big smudge of black across her cheek, and her hair was tumbling over ears and forehead, from which she occasionally swept it back with a smutty hand.
Contrariwise, Jerry was neat and dressed out as she had never seen him. His puttees were carefully wound, his buttons were polished, his tunic was brushed, his hair was sleek with water. He stood looking at her in his furtive gipsy way, which somehow suggested a cast in his fine eyes which were perfect enough.
“Ivy....”
She had decided that he should be the first to speak, and had let the silence drag on for two full minutes.
“Well?”
“I’ve come—I’ve come to ask you to forgive me.”
“I’ll forgive you sure enough, Jerry Sumption—but I aun’t going wud you no more, if that’s wot you mean.”
“You’ve taken up with another fellow.”
“That’s no concern of yourn.”
“But tell me if it’s truth or lie?”
“It’s truth.”
“And you love him?”
“Maybe I do.”
Jerry’s face went the colour of cheese.
“Then you’ll never come with me again, I reckon.”
“I justabout woan’t”—Ivy sat up on her heels and looked straight into his dodging eyes—“I’ll forgive you all, but I’ll give you naun—d’you maake that out? I cud never have loved you, and you’ve shown me plain as mud as you aun’t the kind of chap a girl can go with for fun. If you’re wise you’ll kip awaay—we can’t be friends. So you go and find some other girl as ull do better fur you than I shud ever.”
“If there hadn’t been this chap——”
“It ud have bin the saum. I’m not your sort, my lad, for all you think.”
“Will this other chap marry you?”
“I’ll tell naun about un. He’s no consarn of yourn, as I’ve said a dunnamany times.”
“Ivy, when I was in France, I thought to myself—’Maybe if I’m sober and keep straight, she’ll have me back.’”
“I’m middling glad you thought it, Jerry, fur it wur a good thought. You’ll lose naun by kipping straight and sober, so you go on wud it, my lad.”
“I don’t care, if I can’t get you.”
“That’s unsensible talk. I’m not the only girl that’s going—thur’s many better.”
“Reckon there is—reckon I’ll get one for every day of the week. No need to tell me girls are cheap—I only thought I’d like one that wasn’t, for a change.”
“Doan’t you talk so bitter.”
“I talk as I feel. You’ve settled with this chap, Ivy?”
“I’ve told you a dunnamany times. Wot maakes you so thick?”
He did not answer, but turned away, and walked out of the room with a stealthy, humble step, like a beaten dog. Ivy’s heart smote her—she could not let him go without a kind word.
“Jerry!” she called after him. But he did not turn back—and then, unaccountably, she felt frightened.
It was odd that Jerry’s cowed retreat should have caused her more fear than his swaggering aggression—nevertheless, all that day she could not get rid of her uneasiness, and with the arbitrariness of superstition linked the evening’s catastrophe with the earlier foreboding.
She had run down to the Shop, to buy some washing soda, and have a chat with Thyrza, and on her return was met in the passage by Nell, who looked at her hard and said—
“There’s someone come to see you—a Mrs. Seagrim.”
Ivy’s heart jumped. She wished that there had not been quite such a wind to blow about her hair, and that she had had time to mend the hole in her skirt that morning. If Willie’s mother had come to inspect his choice ... howsumdever, he had often spoken of his mother as a kind soul.
But the woman in the kitchen with Mrs. Beatup was only a few years older than Ivy—a tall, slim creature, with reddish hair, and a beautiful pale face. She was dressed like a lady, too, in a neat coat and skirt, with gloves and cloth-topped boots. Ivy felt the blood drain from her heart, and yet she had anticipated Mrs. Beatup with no definite thought when the latter said—
“Ivy, this is Corporal Seagrim’s wife.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Ivy heard someone say, and it must have been herself, for the next moment she was shaking hands with Mrs. Seagrim.
There was a moment’s pause, during which the two women stared at Ivy, then the corporal’s wife remarked, with a North-country accent that came startlingly from her elegance, that it was gey dirty weather.
“Thicking up fur thunder, I reckon,” said Mrs. Beatup.
“Yo get it gey thick and saft down here, A’m thinking.”
“Unaccountable,” said Mrs. Beatup, and squinted nervously at Ivy.
Ivy’s wits had at first been blown to the four winds, and she sat during this conversation with her mouth open, but gradually resolve began to form in her sickened heart; she felt her brain and body stiffen—she would fight....
“A chose a bad week t’coom Sooth,” started Mrs. Seagrim, “but ’twas all the choice A had—A hae t’roon my man’s business now he’s sojering. Yo’ mither tells me, Miss Beatup, as nane here knaws he’s marrit. But marrit he is, and has twa bonny bairns.”
“I know,” said Ivy—“he toald me.”
“He toald you!” broke in Mrs. Beatup. “You said naun to me about it.”
“I disremember. He wur only here the twice.”
Mrs. Seagrim looked at her curiously.
“Weel, maist folk didn’t sim t’knaw. A took a room in Hailsham toon, and the gude woman said as how t’Corporal had allus passed for a bachelor man, and was coorting a lass up t’next village.”
“Maybe she thinks he wur a-courting me,” snapped Ivy, “but he dud naun of the like. He toald me he was married the fust day I set eyes on un.”
“Weel, that was on’y reet. So many of those marrit sojer chaps go and deceive puir lasses. A hear there’s been a mort of trouble and wickedness done that way.”
“Maybe,” said Ivy—“women are gurt owls, most of them.”
“And,” continued Mrs. Seagrim, “it’s only reet and kind of the wives of such men to go and tell any poor body as is like to be deceived by them.”
“That’s true enough. But your trouble’s thrown away on me. I knew all about un from the fust.”
“Weel, A’ve done ma duty ony way,” and Mrs. Seagrim rose, extending a gloved hand, “and A’m reet glad as Seagrim was straight with yo’, when he seems to have passed as single with everyone else.”
“It must be a tar’ble trial to have a man lik that,” said Ivy. “He’ll cost you a dunnamany shilluns and pounds if you’ve got to go trapesing after him everywheres, to tell folk he’s wed.”
Mrs. Seagrim smiled.
When Ivy had shown her out of the front-door, she would have liked to escape to her bedroom, but Mrs. Beatup filled the passage.
“Ivy—you might have toald me. I maade sure as he’d deceived you.”
“And I tell you he dudn’t. He toald me he wur wed, and about his childer, and that dress-up hop-pole of a wife of his’n.”
“And you went walking out wud a married man, for all the Street to see!”
“Why not? There wur no harm done.”
“No harm! I tell you it wurn’t simly.”
“He’d no friends in these parts, and a man liks a woman he can talk to.”
“He’d got his wife, surelye.”
“Not hereabouts. He wur middling sick wud lonesomeness.”
Mrs. Beatup sniffed.
“Well, you can justabout git shut of him now. Your faather and me woan’t have you walking out wud a married man. So maake up your mind to that.”
Ivy muttered something surly and thick—the tears were already in her throat, and pushing past her mother, she ran upstairs.
Once alone, her feelings overcame her, and she threw herself upon the bed, sobbing with grief and rage. Seagrim had deceived her, had meant to deceive her—that was quite plain. Though he had never definitely spoken of marriage, he had quite definitely posed to her as a single man. She gathered from Mrs. Seagrim that he made a habit of these escapades. Lord! what a fool she had been—and yet, why should she have doubted him whom she loved so utterly?
Her hair, matted into her eyes, was soaked with tears, as she rolled her head to and fro on the pillow, thinking of the man she had loved, loved still, and yet hated and despised. He had played her false—she was unable to get over this fact, as a more sophisticated nature might have done. Her confidence, her devotion, her passion, he had paid with treachery and lies. She had not fought her battle with Mrs. Seagrim in his defence—at least not principally—she had fought it to save herself from humiliation in the eyes of this woman, of her mother, and of Sunday Street.
Yet she cried to him out of the deep—“Oh, Willie, Willie....” She thought of him in his strength and grizzled beauty—she remembered particularly his neck and his hands. “Oh, Willie, Willie....” She had loved him as she had loved no other man. No other man had filled the day and the night and brought the stars to earth for her and made earth a shining heaven. Her love was crude and physical, but it is one of the paradoxes of love that the greater its materialism the greater its spiritual power, that passion can open a mystic paradise to which romance and affection have not the key. Ivy had seen the heavens open to this clumsy soldier of hers—to this man who had tricked her, bubbled her, brought her to shame.
She wondered if he knew of his wife’s visit—perhaps he was with her now. Did he love her?... and those two youngsters up in the North—a moan dragged from her lips. His wife was dressed like a lady, but she talked queer, though maybe they all talked like that up North. Had she believed Ivy when she said she had always known Seagrim was a married man? Had her mother believed her? Would Sunday Street believe her?
She sat up on the bed, and pushed the damp hair back from her eyes. She would face them out, anyhow. No one should point at her in scorn—or at Seagrim, either, even though she could never trust him or love him again. She would give the lie to all who mocked or pitied. No one should pry into her aching heart. Ivy Beatup wasn’t the one to be poor-deared or serve-her-righted. She crossed the room, and plunged her face into the basin, slopping her tear-stained cheeks with cold water. Then she brushed back and twisted up her hair, smoother her gown, and went downstairs with no traces of her grief save an unnatural tidiness.
Ivy held her bold front for the rest of that week. Her secret portion of sorrow and craving she kept hid. Her floors were scrubbed and her pans scoured no worse for lack of that glory which makes like the silver wings of a dove those that have lien among the pots.... She still had strength to cling to the empty days, to serve through the meaningless routine that had once been a joyous rite.
Everyone had heard about Seagrim now, and had also heard that Ivy Beatup had not been deceived, but had known about his wife from the first. Some believed her, accounting for her silence by the fact that her family would have interfered had they known she was walking out with a married man. These for the most part called Ivy Beatup a bad lot, though her sister-in-law Thyrza stood up for her, declaring Ivy’s friendship with the Corporal could only have been innocent and respectable—but of course Thyrza was now allied with the Beatups, and would be anxious for their good name. A large proportion of the street, however, did not believe Ivy’s version of the story—they would have her tricked, deluded—betrayed, they hinted—and found an even greater delight in pity than in blame.
All joined in wondering what she would do the following Sunday. She would not have the face to parade the man as usual. Perhaps Mrs. Seagrim was still at Hailsham—perhaps, even if she was not, the Corporal would not dare show his face after what had happened or, if he did, surely the girl would not be so brazen as to trot him out now that she knew all the parish knew she was a bad lot—or a poor victim.
However, when Sunday came, Ivy appeared in her best blue dress, and on Seagrim’s arm, as if nothing had happened. Her eyes were perhaps a little over-bright with defiance, her cheeks a little over-red for even such a full-blown peony as her face, but her manner was assured, if not very dignified, and her grins as many-toothed as on less doubtful occasions.
To tell the truth, Ivy had not meant to offer such a public challenge to a local opinion. She had made up her mind that Seagrim would not appear at all, or in a very subdued condition. However, on Friday she had a letter of the usual loving kind, excusing his absence during the week on the score of extra duty and asking her to meet him at Worge gate next Sunday morning—“with her boy’s fondest love” and a row of kisses.
Ivy’s teeth bit deep into her lip as she read this letter. He was still deceiving her, though now, thank the Lord, he was also deceived himself. He did not know his wife had been to see her, and doubtless Mrs. Seagrim had now gone back to “the business”—a corn-chandler’s in Alnwick. Ivy wondered why she had kept her own counsel, but no doubt the “dressed-up hop-pole” knew best how to deal with her man. If she betrayed her plot it might have led to friction between an affectionate husband and wife, and she probably felt that she had “settled” Ivy.
The girl’s blood ran thick with humiliation—both the man and the woman had shamed her. Doubtless they loved each other well, though he, with a man’s greediness, had wanted another woman in her absence. He could never have meant to marry Ivy—his intentions must always have been vague or dishonourable. As for the wife, having spent some of the cash left over from her clothes, in running down South to look after him, she had no doubt been satisfied with warning Ivy and coaxing her husband, and had then gone back to her flourishing shop. True that this letter hardly pointed to the success of her tactics, but Ivy knew too much about men to attach great importance to it—Seagrim was just the sort of man who would have a girl wherever he went, and yet always keep the first place in his heart for the woman who had also his name. She, Ivy, was probably only a secondary attachment to fill the place of the other, and no doubt in that other’s absence; he would make every effort to keep her—but she was a stop-gap, an interlude, to him who had been her all, and filled the spare moments of one who had filled her life.
She forced herself to bite down on this bitter truth, and swallowed it—and it gave her strength for the course she meant to take.
She found Seagrim leaning against Worge gate, sucking the knob of his swagger stick, and gazing at her with shining long-lashed eyes of grey. For a moment the sight of him there, his greeting, the husky tones love put into his voice, his sunburnt, hawk-like strength, all combined to make her falter. But she was made of too solid stuff to forget his callous deception of her, which he still maintained, drawing her arm through his with a few glib lies about extra duty and the sergeant. Contempt for him stabbed her heart and eyes, and for a few moments she could neither look at him nor speak.
They went to their usual parade ground, marching to and fro between the Bethel and the Shop, and Ivy’s confidence revived with her defiance of public opinion. “They’ll see I doan’t care naun fur wot they think,” she said to herself, and met boldly the outraged eyes of Bourners and Sindens and Putlands. It was a hot day, and there was a smell of dust in the air, which felt heavy and thick. The sun was dripping on Sunday Street, making the red roofs swim and dazzle in a yellow haze; the leaves of the big oaks by the forge drooped with dust, and the Bethel’s stare was hot and angry, as if its lidless eyes ached in the glow.
Ivy decided that she might now end her ordeal of the burning ploughshare. She had strutted up and down a dozen times in front of her neighbours, defying their gossip, their blame and their pity. “I done it—now I can git shut of un,” and her gaze of mixed pain and contempt wandered up to his brown face as he walked beside her, talking unheard in his booming Northumberland voice.
“It’s middling hot in the Street—let’s git into the Spinney.”
He kindled at once—it would be good to sit with her on trampled hazel leaves, to lie with their faces close and the green spurge waving round their heads in a filter of sunlight. Usually these suggestions came from him, by the rules of courting, but he loved her for the boldness which could break all rule even as it lacked all craft. He slid his hand along her arm, and pressed it, with joy at the quiver she gave.
The Twelve Pound spinney stood about thirty yards back from the Street, behind the Bethel, and was reached by a little path and a stile opposite the Horselunges. As they passed the inn, Ivy saw Mrs. Breathing opening the door and the shutters for the Sunday’s short traffic, and at the same time saw ahead of her a dusty khaki figure ambling towards the sign with the particular padding unsoldierly tread of Jerry Sumption.
“He’s on the drink, now’s he knows as he can’t git me,” she thought—“the bad gipsy.” Then a feeling of regret and hopelessness came over her. Here were two men whose love she had muddled—one who had hurt her and one whom she had hurt. Was love all hurting and sorrow? For the first time the careless game of a girl’s years became almost a sinister thing. Her hand dragged at Seagrim’s arm, as if unconsciously and despite herself her body appealed to the man her soul despised ... then she lifted her eyes, and looked into Jerry’s as he passed, trotting by with hanging head and queer look, like a mad dog ... yes, love was a tar’ble game.
The black, still shadows of Twelve Pound Wood swallowed her and Seagrim out of the glare. The clop of hoofs and bowl of wheels on the Street came as from a great way off, and the hum of poised and darting insects, thick among the foxgloves, seemed to shut them into a little teeming world of buzz and pollen-dust and sun-trickled green. Seagrim stood still, and his arm slid from the crook of Ivy’s across her back, drawing her close. But with a sudden twisting movement she set herself free, standing before him in the path, with the tall foxgloves round her, flushed and freckled like her face, and behind her the pale cloud of the bennet heads like melting smoke.
“Kip clear of me, Willie Seagrim—I’ll have no truck wud you. I’ve met your wife.”
The man, slow of speech, gaped at her without a word.
“Yes. She caum round to our plaace three days agone, and shamed me before my mother. But I said I knew as you wur married, and to-day I walked out wud you to show the foalkses here I aun’t bin fooled. Now I’ve shown’ em, you can go. I’m shut of you.”
“Ivy—yo’re telling me that my Bess——”
“Yes—your Bess, wud gloves and buttoned boots and——” She checked herself. “Yes, she caum, and tried to put me to shaum. But I druv her off, surelye; and now I’m shut of you, fur a hemmed chap wot fooled me wud a lie.”
“But A no harmed yo’——”
“Harmed me!”—she gasped.
“Dom that Bess for a meddlesome fule. Oh, she’s gey canny, that Bess. But Ivy, li’l Ivy, yo’ll no cast me off for that?”
“Why shud I kip you?—you’ve bin a-fooling me. You maade as you wur a free man, and all the while you wur married. I—I loved you.”
“And yo’ kin lo’ me still....” He sought to take her, but she pushed him off.
“Reckon I can’t. Reckon as I’ll never disremember all the lies you’ve said. And you spuk of loving me ... knowing all the whiles.... Oh, you sought to undo me! Reckon I’m jest a gurt trusting owl, but it wur middling cruel of you to trick me so.”
“Ivy—by God A sweer——”
“Be hemmed to your silly swears. I’ll never believe you more.”
“But yo’ll no cast me off fur a wumman up North....”
“I don’t care where she be. She’s yourn—and you hid her from me. If you’d toald me straight, maybe I—but ...”
“Yo’ na speered of me. Why should A have spoken?”
“You did spik—you spuk as a free man.”
“A was a fule—yo’ made me mad for you.”
His eye was darkening, and the corners of his mouth had an angry twist.
“You toald me as extra duty kept you away last week,” continued Ivy, “and it wurn’t—it wur your wife. Reckon you love her and I’m only a girl fur your spare days. You’d kip me on fur that.”
“A’ll keep yo’ on for naething. If yo’ don’t like me, yo’ can go.”
“It’s you who can go. I’m shut of you from this day forrard. You git back to Hailsham this wunst and never come here shaming me more.”
“Yo’ll be shamed if I go. Better for yo’ if I stay.”
“If you stay you’ll shaum me furder, fur you’ll shaurn me wud my own heart. Git you gone, Willie Seagrim, and find a bigger fool than me.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and her heart sickened with jealousy, knowing that her loss to him could not be so serious as his to her, since he had his beautiful pale Bess, with her red hair and stooping back, whom all the time he had loved more than he loved Ivy, because she was his children’s mother and had rights which he respected. He would soon forget Ivy; perhaps he would find another girl to solace his spare hours, but anyhow he would forget her. The thought almost made her hold him back, cling to him, and seek to wrest him from the other woman with her self-confident possession. But she was withheld by her sense of outrage, and by a queer pride she had always had in herself, a rustic straightness which had gone with her through all her many amours. To surrender now could only mean disgrace, since she felt that in some odd way it meant surrender to Bess as well as to Bess’s master. If she became Seagrim’s woman, which she must be now, or nothing, Bess would somehow triumph, and triumph more utterly than if she threw him off with scorn. Besides, he had fooled her and lied to her; he was not worth having—let him go, though her heart bled, and her bowels ached, as she watched him march off away from her, shaking his shoulders in jaunty swagger, the sunlight gleaming on his grizzled hair, the curls she had loved to pull. She could have called him back, and he would have come, but her lips were shut and her throat was dry. He vanished round a bend of the path, and all that was left of him was a crunching footstep, heavy on last year’s leaves. Then that too was gone, and with a little moan Ivy slid down among the foxgloves and bennets, and sobbed with her forehead against the earth.
After a little while she pulled herself up and wiped her eyes. Her head ached and Twelve Pound Wood was blurry with her tears. The sun struck down upon her back, baking, aching, mocking her with the thick yellow light in which the flies danced and the pollen hung. She wanted to creep into the shade.
But she must go home and save her face. It was dinner-time, and she must join her family with her old bravery, or they would suspect her humiliation. She rose to her feet, smoothed her dress, dusted off the bennet flowers and goose-foot burrs and the rub of pollen from the foxgloves, pushed back the straggling hair under her hat, wiped her eyes again, and hoped the stains and blotches of her weeping would fade before she came to Worge. Then she set out for the opening of the wood. A man’s shadow lay across it, though she could not see him as he stood behind an ash-stump. Her breathing became shallow, and her heart thudded.... He had come back, to find her in her weakness—he was waiting for her.... No, it was not he, this smaller man, crouched like a fox against the stump.
“Jerry,” she cried, as she turned the elbow of the path, and met him face to face.
He was drunk; his eyes showed it with their gleam of bleared stars, his flushed cheeks and dark swelled veins, his hair hanging in a fringe over his brow, his mouth both fierce and loose.... He lurched towards her, and she just managed to brush past him, tumbling ungracefully over the hurdle that shut off the wood. He must have just come, for he had missed Seagrim—he might have stumbled over her as she lay and cried among the grasses.
She did not fall as she jumped the hurdle, but her ankle turned, making her stagger, and by the time she could right herself, Jerry stood before her, blocking the way to the Street. Then she saw for the first time that he had a hammer in his hand. Ivy gave a loud scream, and darted sideways, scrambling through the hedge into Twelve Pound field. Jerry was after her, without a word, no longer the furtive, padding animal she had despised, but the armed and terrible beast of prey that would kill and devour the foolhardy huntress who had roused him. She staggered up the field, too breathless to cry, but he drew even with her in a few strides, and grabbed her by the arm.
“Stop, Ivy, and say your prayers. I’m going to kill you.”
She could not speak, for her throat was dried up. Jerry’s eyes were more of a threat than his word. They were on fire—his skin was on fire—liquor and madness had set him alight; and in his hand was a hammer to hammer out her brains. She could neither cry to his mercy nor appeal to his reason—her physical powers were failing her, and both mercy and reason in him had been burnt up.
He gave her a violent push, and she fell on her knees.
“That’s right. Say your prayers. I’m a clergyman’s son, and you shan’t die without asking pardon for your sins. I saw you go into the wood with him, as you wouldn’t with me.... I’ll kill you quick, you shan’t have any pain.... I loved you once, I reckon.”
He swung up the hammer, but he was too drunk to take aim, and the action woke her out of the trance of fear into which he had plunged her. She felt something graze bruisingly down her hip—then she was scrambling on her feet again, rushing for the hedge.
The hedge of Twelve Pound field is a thick hedge of wattles and thorn. Ivy, too mad to look for a gap, tried to force her way through it. Her head and arms stuck, and she heard Jerry running. Then at last loud screams broke from her—scream after scream, as he seized her by the feet and pulled her backwards through the brambles, leaving shreds of blue gown and yellow hair on every twig. He pulled her out, and flung her rolling on the grass; then the hammer swung again....
But the field was full of shoutings and voices, of feet trampling round her head. Then two hands came under her armpits, dragging her up, and she saw her father. She saw her brother Harry, looking very green and scared, and last of all Jerry plunging in the lock of two huge arms, which gripped him powerless and belonged to the Reverend Mr. Sumption.
“Take her away,” said the minister. “I’ll keep hold of the boy.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt her,” moaned Jerry. “I’m a clergyman’s son—I’d have killed her without any pain.”
“Come hoame, Ivy,” said Mus’ Beatup, and began to lead her away.
“Is it dinner-time?” asked Ivy stupidly.
Harry gave a nervous guffaw.
“I’ll be round and see you, neighbour,” said Sumption, “soon as I’ve got this poor boy safe.”
“’Pore boy’ indeed!” grunted Mus’ Beatup. “’Pore boy’ as ud have bin murdering my daughter if Harry and I hadn’t had the sperrit to break your valiant Sabbath in the Street field. Look at his gurt big murdery hammer.”
“He would not have used it—for the Angel of the Lord led me to him, and it was the Angel of the Lord who saved both him and the girl, despite your Sabbath-breaking.”
“Then the Angel of the Lord can saave him another wunst—when I have him brung up for murdering. Come along, do, Harry.”
Jerry was silent now, nor was he struggling. He looked suddenly very ill, and as Ivy stumbled blindly down the field on her father’s arm, she had a memory of his drawn white face lolling sideways on the minister’s shoulder.
Two-edged disgrace struck at Ivy both at home and in the village—for the double reason of Jerry’s assault and Seagrim’s parade. The latter was almost the wickedest in the Beatups’ eyes, for it had the most witnesses—the former had no witnesses but themselves and Mr. Sumption, though when Mus’ Beatup led Ivy home, Mus’ Putland was already climbing the stile and Mus’ Bourner running out of his door. It could be hushed up, muffled and smoothed, whereas the whole Street had seen Ivy in her flaunt of wedded Seagrim—“A bad ’un,” “a hussy” she would be called from Harebeating to Puddledock.
“’Tis sent for a judgment on you,” said Mrs. Beatup. “If you hadn’t gone traipsing and strutting wud that soldier, I reckon as gipsy Jerry had never gone after you wud his hammer.”
“I wurn’t a-going to show ’em as I minded their clack,” sobbed Ivy against the kitchen table—“I said as ‘I’ll taake him out this wunst, just to show ’em I aun’t bin fooled, and then I’ll git shut of un.’ And I dud, surelye.”
“And a valiant fool you’re looking now, my girl—run after and murdered, or would have bin, if your father hadn’t a-gone weeding the oats and heard your screeching. Reckon as half the Street heard it at their dinners. We’ll have the law of Minister and his gipsy.”
So they would have done, had it not been brought home to them that “the law” would hoist them into that publicity they wanted to avoid. If Jerry were tried for attempted murder, all the disgraceful story of Ivy and Seagrim would be spread abroad, not only throughout Sunday Street and Brownbread Street and the other hamlets of Dallington, but away north and south and east and west, to Eastbourne, Hastings, Seaford, Brighton, Grinstead, and everywhere the Sussex News was read.
So the Beatups agreed to forego their revenge on condition that the Rev. Mr. Sumption took Jerry away for the few days remaining of his leave, and did not have him back at the Horselunges on any future occasion.
“You can’t hurt my boy without hurting your girl,” he told them, “so best let it alone and keep ’em apart. I’m sorry for what’s happened, and maybe Jerry is, and maybe he’s not. I reckon Satan’s got him.”
“Reckon he has,” said Mrs. Beatup spitefully, “and reckon when Satan gits childern it’s cos faathers and mothers have opened the door. ’Tis a valiant thing fur a Christian minister not to know how to breed up his own young boy. But the shoemaker’s wife goes the worst shod, as they say, and reckon hell’s all spannelled up wud parsons’ children.”
“Reckon you don’t know how to speak to a clergyman”—and the Rev. Mr. Sumption turned haughtily from the wife to the husband, who was, however, big with an attack on Sunday observance, and no discussion could go forward till he had been delivered of it.
In the end the matter was settled, and the parting was fairly friendly. The Beatups had a queer affection for their pastor mingled with their disrespect, and admired his muscle if they despised his ministrations. The proceedings ended in an adjournment to the stables, where Mr. Sumption gave sound and professional advice on a sick mare.
Poor Ivy felt as if she could never hold up her head again. The very efforts she had made to avoid contempt had resulted in bringing it down on her in double measure. Garbled stories of her misadventure ran about the Street. It was said that she had been walking out with two men at once, that Seagrim had jilted her because of Jerry and Jerry tried to do her in because of Seagrim. There were other stories, too, some more creditable, and some less—and they all found their way to Worge, where they provoked the anger of her father, the querulousness of her mother, the shrinking contempt of Nell, and the loutish sniggers of Harry and Zacky.
Ivy was not a sensitive soul, but the Beatup attitude was warranted to pierce the thickest skin. The family could not let the matter drop, and kept it up even after those outside had let it fall in to amiable “disremembering.” Ivy’s exuberant correspondence with the forces, her amorous past, her scandalous future, all became subjects of condemnation. Her people did not mean to be unkind, but they nagged and scolded. Perhaps the balking of their revenge on Jerry Sumption made them specially unmerciful towards Ivy—she had to face the torrent of the diverted stream. She had disgraced them as, apparently, none of Mus’ Beatup’s muddled carouses or gin-logged collapses had done. The fine, if beer-blown flower of the Beatups had been hopelessly picked to pieces by her wantonness and indiscretion. Nell was perhaps the most really vindictive of the lot (for Mus’ Beatup was easy-going and Mrs. Beatup loved her daughter through all her reproaches), because she saw in Ivy’s disgrace another danger to her hopes. She had enough odds against her in her poor little reedy romance without all the spilth of Ivy’s bursting thick amours to come tumbling over it, choking out its life. Ivy’s village friends turned against her too, for Polly Sinden was still trying to live up to Bill Putland, and Jen Hollowbone of the Foul Mile remembered the theft of Kadwell and taunted “Sarve her right.” Thyrza, her sister-in-law, was still friendly, but though Ivy liked Thyrza, there had never been any real confidence or comradeship between them—the elder girl was too quiet, too settled, and had always been lacking in that indefinite quality which makes a woman popular with her own sex. Ivy did not respond to Thyrza’s few tentative efforts, made, she suspected, out of pity, and a sense of duty to Tom. Besides, her trouble had soured for the time even her own sweet honest heart, and the sight of Thyrza secure of a man’s love and an even more wonderful hope, smote her with an unbearable sense of her own failure and loneliness.
For the worst of all that Ivy had to bear was her love for Seagrim, still alive, though wounded and outraged. Her old gay interest in young men, her comradeships and correspondences, had faded out and could occupy her no more. Her heart was full of a mixed dread and hope of meeting him again. Sometimes when the purple chaffy evenings drew down over the fields, and the smell of ripening grain and ripening hops made sweet sick perfume on the drowsy air, an ache which was almost madness would drive her out into the lanes, seeking him by the tall stile at Four Wents, where he would never come again. The fiery horn of the moon, the jigging candles of the stars, would glow out of the grape-coloured sky as she went home through a fog of tears, slipping and stumbling in the ruts, dreaming of his step beside her and his arm about her and his bulk all black in the dimness of the lane.... Then suddenly she would hate him for all he had made her suffer, for all the lies he had told her and all the truths, for the kisses he had given her and the tears that he had cost her—and the hate would hurt more than love, choke her and burn her, make her throw herself sobbing and gasping into bed, where the hunch of Nell’s cold shoulder and the polar stars that hung in the window joined in preaching the same lesson of loneliness.
Then one day she made up her mind quite suddenly to bear it no longer. “If you have much more of this you’ll go crazy,” she said to herself, “—so git shut of it, Ivy Beatup.”
Ivy’s disappearance was not found out till late in the evening. In spite of the dejection and heartache of the last week, her failure to appear at supper with a healthy appetite was an alarming sign. It was now remembered that no one seemed to have seen her all the evening. Mrs. Beatup burst into tears.
“She’s chucked herself into the pond, for sartain-sure. You’ve bin so rough wud her, Maaster—you’ve bruk her heart, surelye.”
“I rough wud a girl as has disgraced us all! I’ve took no notice of her a dunnamany days.”
“That’s why, I reckon. You’ve bruk her heart. Git along, Harry, and drag the pond, and doan’t sit staring at me lik a fowl wud gapes.”
“Maybe she’s only gone into Senlac to see the pictures.”
“And maybe she’s only run away wud that lousy furrin soldier of hern.”
“I tell you she’s drownded. I feel it in my boans. She’s floating on the water lik a dead cat. Go out and see, Harry! Go out and see!”
Zacky began to howl.
“Adone, do, mother!” cried Harry. “You’re the one fur the miserables. Reckon Ivy’s only out enjoying herself.”
“I’d go myself,” sobbed Mrs. Beatup, “but my oald legs feel that swummy. Oh, I can see her floating, all swelled up!”
During this scene Nell had slipped out of the room. She was now back in the doorway, saying icily—
“You needn’t worry. Ivy’s taken all her clothes with her.”
The family took a little time to get the drift of her words.
“All her clothes!” murmured Mrs. Beatup faintly.
“Yes—in the pilgrim-basket, so you may be sure she hasn’t drowned herself.”
“She’s gone away wud that dirty soldier!” cried Mus’ Beatup. “That justabout proves it.”
“It doan’t,” said his wife. “Ivy’s an honest girl.”
“An honest girl as walks out wud a married man fur all the Street to see, and then goes and gits half murdered by a gipsy!”
“A clergyman’s son,” corrected Mrs. Beatup. “And it wurn’t her fault, nuther. Our Ivy may be a bit flighty, but she’s pure as the morning’s milk.”
“Whur’s she gone, then? She’d nowheres to go. You doan’t know the warld as I do, and I tell you she’s gone wud un, and be hemmed to her. We’re all disgraced and ull never hoald up our heads agaun.”
“I woan’t believe it.”
“You’re an obstinate oald wife—I tell you it’ll be proved to-morrer.”
“How?”
“I’ll go to the camp myself and find out. If Seagrim’s gone too, then it’s proved.”
The family went to bed convinced, except for Mrs. Beatup—who kept up a mulish belief in her daughter’s honesty—that Ivy had run away with Seagrim.
The next morning Mus’ Beatup set out for Hailsham to make enquiries. But he had not been fitted by nature for a diplomatic visit to a military camp—all he did was to fall foul of various sentries and nearly get arrested. In the end he found himself back in the road, with nothing gained except perhaps the fact that he was not in the guard-room. He felt as if the whole British Army were in league against him, the accomplice of one Corporal in his crimes, and was scanning the scenery for a public-house when he heard the sound of marching feet, and a file came tramping up the road, commanded by Seagrim himself.
Mus’ Beatup straddled across his way.
“Who are you? Stand clear!” cried the Corporal, while the file marched stiffly onwards.
“Whur’s my daughter?”
“Stand clear—or A’ll have you put under arrest.”
“I want my daughter—Ivy Beatup.”
“Halt!” cried Seagrim to the file, which had now marched a discreet distance ahead. “A don’t knaw owt of your daughter. A’ve not clapped eyes on her sine Sunday week.”
“She’s run away.”
“A don’t knaw owt.”
“You don’t know where she is?”
“A don’t knaw owt. Quick march!” and off went he and his file in a cloud of dust, leaving Mus’ Beatup furious and confounded.
“He’s a militaryist,” he mumbled, “a hemmed militaryist—treating me as if I wur pigs’ dirt. That’s wot we’re coming to, I reckon, wot Govunmunt’s brung us to—militaryists and the pigs’ dirt they spannell on. Ho! there’ll be a revolution soon”—and he floundered up the road towards Hailsham where the sign of the Red Lion hung across the way.