PART IV: IVY

1

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.

2

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....

3

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.

4

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.

5

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.

6

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.

7

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.

8

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.”

9

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.

10

Jerry Sumption knew nothing of Ivy’s disappearance, for the morning

after that fatal Sunday his father had taken him off to Brighton, and

from Brighton he had gone back to France. In fact his whole notion

of the affair was hazy—inflamed by one or two unaccustomed glasses

of bad whisky and the memory of Ivy on Seagrim’s arm, he had rushed

and stumbled through what seemed to him now a wild nightmare of

phantasmagoria from which he had waked into aching and disgrace.

He was sullen company during those few days at Brighton. Mr. Sumption

had chosen Brighton because it was at a safe, and also not too

expensive, distance from Sunday Street. Moreover, he hoped it would

provide some distraction for Jerry. The financial problem had been

great, but he had solved it by drawing out the whole of his savings.

He took a poor little lodging at the back of the town, from which he

and Jerry travelled down daily by ’bus and tram to the diversions of

the sea-front.

It was not a quite successful holiday, which was indeed hardly to

be expected. Mr. Sumption brought preachment to bear on Jerry’s

sullenness—he did not understand what a hazy impression the

catastrophe had made, and that to him, though not to Ivy, the scene

by Twelve Pound spinney mattered less than that earlier scene in

Forges Field. Also Mr. Sumption’s ideas of amusement were not the

same as his son’s. He decided to risk the Lord’s displeasure and

visit a Picture Palace for Jerry’s sake, but was so scandalised by

what he saw that he insisted on leaving after half an hour’s distress.

“Surely it is the house of Satan with those red lights,” he exclaimed

with sundry cracks and tosses.

“What’s the matter with red lights? You get ’em in a forge.”

“But a forge is the place of honest toil—and a kinema’s but a place

of gaping and idleness and worse: three hundred folks got together to

see lovers kissing, which is a private matter.”

Jerry laughed bitterly.

“Three hundred folk gaping at an ungodly picture, who might be saving

their souls. I tell you, boy, there ull come a red day, that ull burn

redder than any forge or picture-house, and all the ungodly gazers

shall be pitched into it like weeds into the oven, and only the

saints escape—with the singeing of their garments.”

“Oh, Father, do speak cheerful. I’m that down-hearted.”

“Reckon you are, my poor lad—and the Lord rebuke me if I add to your

burden. This looks a godly sort of a pastry-cook’s. Let’s go in and

get some tea.”

The next day was the last of Jerry’s leave, and the one that he and

his father spent most happily together. Mr. Sumption’s ideas of

entertainment seemed quite hopeless to Jerry, but during those last

hours he felt drawn closer to the being who he knew was the only

friend he had. They spent the morning on the pier, listening to the

band, and in the afternoon went by the motor-bus to Rottingdean—a

trip so surprisingly expensive that there was no money left to pay

for their tea, and while the other excursionists sat down to long

tables, they had to wander upon the down, whence they watched the

feasters, Jerry like a forlorn sparrow and Mr. Sumption like a hungry

crow, till it was time to go home.

But all the while the minister could see his son growing more

dependent on him, and in his heart he thanked the Lord. His delight

at having won that much poor show of affection blinded him a little

to the pathos of the outlaw clinging to his only prop, before he

was flung to troubles and dangers which he realised in helpless

foreboding. The chapel weed clung to the chapel stone before it was

rudely torn up and thrown out to the burning.

Their final parting was abusive, owing to Mr. Sumption’s having left

Jerry’s dinner of sandwiches behind at their rooms, but the father

would always have a thankful memory of that evening when Jerry had

been simple and grateful and rather childish, and had listened to his

good advice, and had not interrupted with his cry for cheerfulness

the stream of Calvinistic warning.

They had sat by the big ugly window of their room, looking out at the

first dim stars pricking the sky above Kemp Town. Jerry’s eyes were

full of a mysterious trouble as they pondered the new serenity of his

father’s face.

“Father,” he said suddenly, “you’ll watch and pray that Satan don’t

get me.”

“Satan can’t hurt the elect.”

“But maybe I’m not one of the elect. Didn’t seem like it on Sunday,

did it?”

“That was the Lord’s trial sent to us both—He delivered you unto

Satan for a while that you might find His ways.”

“Reckon His ways are not for my finding.”

“I will pray for you, my dear.”

“Father, you promise, you swear, as you’ll never let me go? I

sometimes feel as if there was only you standing betwixt me and hell.

Reckon you’re the only soul in all the world that cares about me.”

11

By the time Mus’ Beatup had groped his stumbling way from Hailsham

to Sunday Street, the anxieties of Worge about Ivy were at an end. A

letter had come during the morning and was flapped in his face. He

was not sober enough to read it, nor yet too drunk to have it read to

him.

“8 Bozzum Square,

“Hastings.

“Dear Mother,—I hope this finds you well as it leaves me at

present. I got fed up as the boys say and came here. Do you

remember Ellen Apps and her folk lived at the Fowl Mile up the

Hollowbones. She is here working on the trams, I heard from Jen,

so thought I go and ask her. She says I will get a job in a day

or 2 with my strong physic, so do not worry about me, I am with

Ellen and hope to start work next week. Having no more to say, I

will now draw to a close. Fondest love from

“Your loving daughter, IVY.”

“I toald you as she’d never gone wud Seagrim!” cried Mrs. Beatup.

“Umph,” grunted her husband—“but she’s gone on the trams, which is

next bad to it. Now if she’d gone maaking munititions....”

“Trams is better than munititions.”

“No it aun’t. Fine ladies and duchesses maake munititions, but I

never saw a duchess driving a tram.”

“Ivy ull never drive a tram—she’d be killed, surelye.”

“Best thing she cud do for herself now she’s disgraced us all—a

darter of mine on the trams, a good yeoman’s darter on the trams ...

’tis shameful.”

“But ’tis honest, Maaster—better nor if she’d run away wud a man.”

“Maybe—but ’tis shameful honest. I’m shut of her!”

“Oh, Ned!—our girl!”

“Your girl!”

“You cruel, unnatural faather!”

“Adone do, and taake off my boots.”

The matter ended temporarily in sniffs and grunts, but when Mus’

Beatup woke out of the sleep which followed the removal of his boots,

he reviewed it more auspiciously. After all, working on the trams was

better than working in the fields—suppose Ivy had gone and offered

her robust services to some neighbouring farmer, to some twopenny

smallholder perhaps, then the yeoman name of Beatup would have indeed

been trampled into the earth. Now trams were town work, trams were

war work, trams were engineering. In time “my darter on the trams”

began to sound nearly as well as “my son at the front.”

So a letter was written in which Ivy’s choice was deplored, though

not condemned. She was invited to come home, or if obstinate on that

point, to turn her attention to the more aristocratic “munititions,”

but if it must be trams, then trams it should be unreproached.

Ivy wrote back in a few days, saying that she had “joined up” and

enclosing a photograph of herself in uniform. She would soon be

earning thirty shillings a week, and had taken a room of her own in

Bozzum Square. Her family had now quite forgiven her, especially

as they found the neighbourhood inclined to applaud rather than to

despise Beatup’s daughter on the trams. Her mother would have liked

her home, but Ivy was quite firm about sticking to her job. “I’m best

away from the Street as things are, and I’ll send you five shillings

a week home, and you can get a girl with that and what you save from

my keep.” But it would have taken two girls to make a real substitute

for Ivy.

Mrs. Beatup, besides the gap in her motherly feelings, missed her

terribly about the house. Her sturdy willingness to scrub or clean,

her cheery indifference to the little indelicacies of emptying

slops or gutting chickens, her unfailing good-humour and bubbling

vitality, the rough, tender comfort she gave in hours of sorrow,

all made Ivy of a special, irreplaceable value in her mother’s

working-day. Nell refused to give up her “teachering,” and spoke

obstinately of indentures, and other irrelevant puzzles. Anyhow her

squeamishness—she even washed the dishes with a wrinkled nose—and

the delicacy of her small soft hands would make her pretty useless

in hen-house or kitchen. Mrs. Beatup began to talk of Ivy as much

as she thought of her, and soon her family came to find her more of

a nuisance now she was away than she had been at home in her most

disruptive moments.

However, her forgiveness was complete, and the reconciliation was

celebrated by a solemn ride in “Ivy’s tram” by all the Beatups. It

was during the summer holidays, so Nell was able to go—Mrs. Beatup

wore her Dionysian bonnet, and her husband his best Sunday blacks,

Harry and Zacky were scrubbed and collared into oafishness, the house

was shut up and left in charge of Elphick and Juglery, as it had

never been since Tom’s wedding.

“Ivy’s tram” was on the line from the Albert Memorial to Ore, and

ground its way through dreadful suburbs up Mount Pleasant, past the

decayed “residences” of Hastings’ prime, slabbed with stucco and

bulging with bow-windows, now all grimed and peeled and darkened,

chopped into lodgings and sliced into flats, not the ghost of

prosperity but its rotting corpse.

The tram ground and screamed and swished on the rails, and Ivy,

rosy-faced under her tramwayman’s cap—with its peak over the curl

that hid her ear—came forcing her way up the inside for fares, taking

from each Beatup its separate penny. She looked exuberantly well, and

quite happy again; she also smelled strongly of tram-oil, and Nell’s

little nose wrinkled even more than when she had smelt of soapsuds

and milk. She had a cheery word for each one of her family, who in

their turn sat abashed, holding their tickets stiffly between finger

and thumb, their eyes slewed on Ivy as she took other passengers’

fares, answered their questions, trundled them out, bundled them in,

pulled the bell, ran up to the roof, changed the sign, and flung a

little good-humoured chaff at Bill the motorman when they reached the

terminus.

She had no time off till late that evening, so when the family had

ridden in state to Ore, they rode back again to the Memorial. The

parting was a little spoiled by the crowd which was waiting to board

the tram and reduced Mrs. Beatup’s farewell embrace into something

grabbing and unseemly.

“Good-by, mother dear, and doan’t you vrother. I’m valiant here....

Full inside, ma’am, and no standing allowed on the platform.... Now,

Nell, take care of mother and hold her arm—she’s gitting scattery—and

adone, do, mother, for there’s too many fares on the top, and I’m

hemmed if I haven’t bitten a grape out of your bonnet.”

12

It was night before the dislocations of train and trap brought

the Beatups back to Worge. A big yellow moon was swinging high,

scattering a honey-coloured dust of light on the fields and copses

and little lanes. The farms, hushed and shut, lay dark against

their grain-fields drooping with harvest—in some fields the corn

was already cut and shocked, each tasselled cone standing in the

moonlight beside the black pool of its shadow.

The Beatups were silent—owing perhaps to their congestion in the

trap. Nell was tired, and leaned against her mother. Life seemed a

very sordid trip, in spite of the honey-coloured moon, which swung so

high, the type of unfulfilled desire. Mrs. Beatup was thinking of Ivy

and wondering if the soles of her boots were thick enough; and Zacky,

wedged between them, planned a big hunt for conkers the next day. On

the front seat, Mus’ Beatup sucked at his pipe and schemed a dash for

the Rifle Volunteer before closing time. “If the War goes on much

longer, there’ll be no more beer, so I mun git wot’s to be had. It’s

those Russians, and be hemmed to them; reckon they’ll maake peace

and never care if the War goes on a dunnamany year. It’s the sort of

thing you’d expect of chaps wot went teetotal by Act of Parliament.”

Harry drove the old gelding, and as the trap lurched from farm to

farm he marked those which had cut their grain, and which had not.

They had reaped the Penny field at Cowlease, and the old bottoms of

Slivericks stood shocked beside the stream. Egypt Farm, with late

hardy sowings, had not started—Worge started to-morrow.

That visit to Hastings had been a holiday before the solemn business

of the year. For a long time he had planned his reaping—trudging the

fields each day, fingering the awns, rubbing the straw. He must not

cut too early or too late. Last year the oats had stood till they

shed their seed, this year they must be caught in just the right

moment of wind and sun.

On the whole the crops promised well. The old grounds of the

Volunteer and the Street field had borne splendidly—the ploughed

grass-lands not so well, except for Forges field, which, for some

obscure reason, had brought forth a rich yield from its sour furrows.

On the whole the wheat promised better than the oats, which in spite

of the varieties he had chosen had thickened in the clays, and grown

unwieldy with sedge leaves and tulip roots.

The problem of harvesting had worried him for a long time, for Mus’

Beatup absolutely refused to buy a steam reaper-and-binder; he wurn’t

going to take no risks in war-time, and Harry must make what shift

he could with the old horse machine, which had trundled slowly round

the few acres of earlier Worge harvests, and must even trundle round

the width of this new venture. In vain Harry pointed out the labour

needed for binding—he must get help, that was all; the family would

turn to, as it always did in harvest time. The absence of Ivy was

a hard blow—for she practically did the work of a man—but he found

an unexpected substitute in the curate, who with the other country

clergy had been episcopally urged to lend a hand in harvest time. Mr.

Poullett-Smith had watched young Beatup’s effort with an approval

which condoned his wobblings between Church and chapel, and felt,

moreover, that his help might send a balance down on the Church

side. He was a little scandalised to find soon after that Harry had

also drawn in the Rev. Mr. Sumption—the curate’s offer put it into

his head; besides, it was just the sort of thing one asked of Mr.

Sumption—it seemed far more his job than preaching or praying.

The other helpers would just be the family, this time including Nell,

for where her parson went she could go also, in spite of stained

and welted hands. Elphick and Juglery could do about one man’s work

between them, and there was a boy over school age on the loose in the

village, who was hired for ten shillings and his meals.

Harry had written to Tom and told him of his maturing plans, but

either his marriage had breached him from Worge, or the fact that

the disciple had gone so much further than his master had made his

anxious ardour cool away. His latest communication had been a field

postcard, which, as he had forgotten to put a cross against any of

its various items, presented a bewildering and conflicting mass of

information, which Harry flipped into the coals with a wry smile.

However, he was able to stand alone, for he dared the chances of his

new deeds. Oafish as he looked in his Sunday suit and gasper collar,

the adventure of harvest was upon him as he jolted the old trap home

under the moon. “Behold, the fields stand white to harvest” ... the

words drifted like a cloud over his brain. These fields that he

had prepared, that his plough had torn and his harrow broken, were

fields of battle like the fields in France. On them he had fought,

for the same reason as Tom fought the Germans, all the treacheries

and assaults of nature, her raiding winds, her storming rains, her

undermining rottenness in the soil, her blasting of thunder and

choking of heat.

“Reckon to-morrow’s our Big Push,” he said to his father, rather

proud of the metaphor, and was careful that the old horse did not

hurry stablewards too quickly, lest they should be home before the

closing of the Rifle Volunteer, and lose a soldier thereby.

13

The next day broke out of a dandelion sky above Harebeating, but

before the first pale colours had filtered into the white of the

east, Harry was on his legs, pottering in the yard. All the little

odds of farm-work must be done early, to leave him free for the day’s

great doings. He anxiously snuffed the raw air—could its moisture,

distilled in the globes that hung on thatch and ricks, be the warning

of a day’s rain? The barometer stood high, but, like other Sussex

farmers, he had learned to distrust his barometer, knowing the sudden

tricks of turning winds, the local rains drunk out of the marshes,

the chopping of the Channel tides. He disliked the flamy look of the

sky, the glassiness of its reflection in the ponds ... he thought

he felt a puff from the south-west. “O Lord,” he prayed, kneeling

down behind the cowhouse door, “doan’t let it rain till we’ve got

our harvest in. If faather loses money this fall, he’ll never let me

breake up grass agaun. Please, Lord, kip it fine, wud a short east

wind, and doan’t let anyone stay away or faather go to the Volunteer

till we’ve adone. For Christ’s sake. Amen.”

Feeling soothed and reassured, he went in to breakfast.

The family was of mixed and uncertain mood. Mrs. Beatup was

“vrothering” about what she could give the clergymen for dinner—“not

as I care two oald straws about Mus’ Sumption, but Mus’ Smith he mun

be guv summat gentlemanly to put inside.” Zacky was crossly scheming

how best to carry through the conker plan which Harry had rather

threateningly forbidden. Nell was in a nervous flutter, her colour

coming and going, her little hands curling and twitching under the

table. Mus’ Beatup was given over to an orgie of pessimism, and

before breakfast was finished had traced Worge’s progress from a

blundered harvest to the auctioneer’s.

“There’s too many fields gitting ripe together,” he said drearily.

“You shudn’t ought to have maade your sowings so close. Wot you want

now is a week’s fine weather on end, and all your wark done on a

wunst. You’ll never git it, surelye—the rain ull be on you before

it’s over. Reckon the Sunk Field ull have seeded itself before you’re

at it. You shud ought to have sown it later.”

“It’s fine time to think of all that now.”

“I’ve thought of it afore and agaun, but you’d never hearken. You

think you’ve got more know than your faather wot wur a yeoman afore

you wur born and never bruk up grass in his life.”

“There’s Mus’ Sumption,” cried Mrs. Beatup, looking out of the

window. “He’s middling early—reckon he wants some breakfast.”

She reckoned right. Mrs. Hubble of the Horselunges had refused to get

breakfast for her lodger at such an ungodly hour, and he had prowled

round fasting to the Beatups, eyeing their bacon and fried bread

through the window.

“The labourer is worthy of his hire,” he remarked as he sat down

to the table, “and thou shalt not muzzle the ox which treadeth the

corn....”

After breakfast they all went out to the Volunteer field, which

was to be cut first. Harry took charge of the reaper, with Zacky a

scowling protestant at the horse’s head, while the others turned to

the sickling and binding. Mr. Poullett-Smith had not arrived, having

first to read Mattins and eat his breakfast, but he came about an

hour after the start, a tall, bending, monkish figure, feeling just a

little daring in his shirt-sleeves.

The meeting of the two parsons was friendliest on the Anglican side.

Mr. Poullett-Smith was a good example of the Church of England’s

vocation “to provide a resident gentleman for every parish”—besides,

he pitied Sumption. The fellow was so obviously misfitted by

his pastorate—a fanatical, ignorant Calvinism, blown about by

eschatological winds, was his whole equipment; otherwise, thought

the curate, he had neither dignity, knowledge nor education. He

would have been far happier had he been left a blacksmith, had his

half-crazy visions been allowed to burn themselves out like his forge

fires, instead of being stoked by mistaken patronage and inadequate

theological training. As things stood, he was absurd, even in no

worthier setting than a forgotten village Bethel—a mere caricature

of a minister, even in the pulpit of the Particular Baptists, an

old-fashioned and fanatical sect with their heads full of doomsday.

But here among the reapers he was splendid. His open shirt displayed

a neck strong and supple and plump as a boy’s—the grey homespun was

stuck with sweat to his shoulders, and the huge muscles of his back

showed under it in long ovoid lumps. His years had taken nothing

from his strength, merely added to his solidness and endurance. With

his shock of brindled curls, his comely brown skin, his teeth white

as barley-kernels, and eyes bright and deep as a hammer pond, and

all the splendour of his body from shoulder to heel, he was as fine

a specimen of a man as he was a poor specimen of a minister. Mr.

Poullett-Smith paid him the honour due to his body, while seeing no

honour due to his soul.

Mr. Sumption felt his physical superiority to the willowy,

tallow-faced curate; indeed he had a double advantage over him,

for he felt a spiritual towering too. He despised his doctrines

of Universal Redemption and Sacramental Grace just as much as he

despised his lean white arms and delicate features. He gave his hand

a grip that made him wince—he could feel the bones cracking under the

pressure.... “He keeps his hands white that he may hold the Lord’s

body,” he thought to himself.

The day was hot and misty. The blue sky glowed with a thick, soft

heat, and a yellowish haze blurred hedges and barns. Even the roofs

of Worge seemed far away, and the sounds of the neighbouring farms

were dim—but distant sounds came more clearly, a siren crooned on

the far-off sea, and the mutter of guns came like a tread over the

motionless air. Harry heard it as he drove the reaper, mingling with

the swish of sickles and the rub of bones.

For greater quickness, he had split the field into two unequal

parts—the bigger one he was cutting with the reaper, the smaller was

being cut by hand. Mr. Sumption, Mus’ Beatup and Elphick reaped,

while Nell, the curate, Juglery and the boy from Prospect Cottages

bound the sheaves. The old horse went so slowly that the sickles

worked nearly as fast as the machine. After a time Harry gave up

his place to his father, who had been unfitted by illness and

intemperance for much strenuous work.

At first there was some talking and joking among the harvesters, but

soon this wore to silence in the heat. Only from where Mr. Smith

and Nell stooped together over the reaped corn, gathering it into

sheaves, came murmurs of sound. Nell’s pale cheeks and lips were

flushed with her toil and stooping, and her eyes were bright with a

pleasure which toil cannot give. Her cotton dress, the colour of the

sky, set out the brightness of her hair, the colour of the corn.

Her graceful, ineffectual hands, too, pleased the curate, for they

were the only pair besides his in the field which were not coarse

and burnt, with stubbed, black nails. Moreover, her pleasure and

excitement at the day’s long promise made her more talkative than

usual, and to a better purpose. He found that he liked her pleasant,

blurry voice, which fled and fluttered over her words for fear that

she should drawl them.

The sun climbed to the zenith, and the heat not only baked down from

the sky, but scorched up out of the ground. The dust of the earth

and of corn-stalks filled the air with a choking, chaffy thickness.

The smell of dust came from the road, and from farmyards the smell

of baking mud. The black oasts of Egypt across the way swam in a

cloud of heat, and the red oasts of Worge were smeared to shadows in

the steam of sunshine and dust. An aching of blue and yellow was in

the harvesters’ eyes, and their bodies seemed to melt and drip. The

reaper crawled even more slowly, with Mus’ Beatup sagging drowsily

over the reins, and Zacky drooping against old Tassell, whose flanks

ran with sweat, and from whose steaming hide came ammoniacal stable

smells, whiffing over the harvesters every time he passed.

Mr. Poullett-Smith looked more than ever like a Sienese candle now

that his forehead and cheeks were dabbled with sweat, like wax that

had melted and run. He wiped his face periodically with a white

handkerchief, which annoyed Mr. Sumption, though it was a fact that

the curate had done excellent work, and made up in conscientious

energy what he lacked in muscle and experience.

“Take off your waistcoat, or your sweat ull spoil the lining,” called

the minister, and Mr. Smith rather unexpectedly followed his advice,

having, as it happened, quite lost sight of the pastor in that huge

toiling figure, now almost bare of chest, with arms swinging like a

flail. He saw only a labourer more experienced and a man more manly

than himself, whose muscle he respected and whose commands he would

obey.

From twelve o’clock onwards the problem for Harry had been to keep

Mus’ Beatup away from the Rifle Volunteer. The field being near the

Street, they could hear the pleasing jar of stopping wheels, the

slam of the taproom door, even the creak of the Volunteer sign. As

he swung out there over the Street, with his grey-green uniform and

obsolete rifle, he seemed to say, “In my day yeomen never worked at

noon, but came and drank good beer made of Sussex hops and talked of

how we’d beat the French.... Now there is no good beer, and hardly

any Sussex hops, and we talk of how we and the French together will

beat the Germans. But come, good yeomen, all the same.”

Harry thought it advisable to detach Mus’ Beatup from the reaper,

which trundled him up under the eaves of the Volunteer’s huge

sprawling roof, so he suggested that old Juglery should take his

place for a while, and that Mus’ Beatup should help with the binding.

He also persuaded Mr. Sumption to give up his sickle and bind till

closing-time. He felt that if his father worked between the two

parsons he would not be so likely to scuffle an escape; for in spite

of his rationalist enlightenment, Mus’ Beatup’s attitude in the

presence of the clergy was very different from that which he took up

in their absence—and his contempt of their doctrine was liable to be

swallowed up in respect for their cloth.

Dinner was brought out soon after noon by Mrs. Beatup and the girl,

a hard-breathing young person with a complexion like an over-ripe

plum. There was beer, and there was tea, and bread and cheese—Mrs.

Beatup’s idea of summat gentlemanly to put inside the clergyman

materialised in several crumbly sandwiches of tinned curried rabbit.

They all sat down under the hedge furthest from the Volunteer, and

were all rather silent, except Mr. Sumption, who had scarcely tired

himself with the morning’s work and thought this a good opportunity

to enter into an argument, or “hold a conference,” as he put it, with

Mr. Poullett-Smith on the doctrine of Efficacious Grace. Mr. Smith,

besides the reluctance of his Anglican breeding to discuss theology

with an outsider, and his feeling as a public-school man that it was

bad form to talk shop in mixed company, was far from theologically

minded. Though he would not have owned it for worlds, he was already

tired out. The continual stooping with the hot sun on his back had

made him feel sick and dizzy, and Mrs. Beatup’s curried sandwiches

had finished the work of the sun and roused definite symptoms of an

indelicate nature. He lay against the hedge, looking languid and

curiously human in his open shirt, his hair hanging a little over

his forehead. Nell sat on her heels, and her eyes played over him

tenderly, almost maternally.

“Reckon you’re tired,” she said in a low, drawling voice that no one

else could hear.

They did not go back to work till nearly two, and the danger for

Mus’ Beatup was over for the time. The afternoon was, as usual, more

tiring than the morning, for the earth, if not the sun, was hotter,

limbs were tired and stomachs were full. Harry mounted the curate

on the reaper, though he was not much of a success, as he failed to

realise the power of old Tassell’s habit, and did vigorous rein-work

at the corners, with the result that the old horse was thrown

completely off his bearings, and on one occasion nearly charged down

the hedge, on another knocked over Zacky, and once came wearily to a

standstill with all four feet in the uncut corn.

Mr. Poullett-Smith decided that he preferred binding to reaping, and

was glad to find himself back beside Nell with her delicate ways—it

was wonderful, he thought, how far she was above her surroundings; he

had not noticed it before, for he had hardly ever seen her against

the background of Worge, but in the frame of church or school, where

her shining was not so bright. She was tired, he could see, but she

did not grow moist and blowsy like the rest—her pretty hair draggled

a bit, her mouth drooped rather sweetly, but exertion heightened her

anæmic tints, and there was a glow about her when she talked, in

spite of her fatigue.

Suddenly, in the middle of the afternoon, she broke away from him,

and came back with a glass of water.

“Is that for me?” he exclaimed, as she held it out.

“Yes. I thought you must be getting thirsty.”

“I am—but aren’t you thirsty, too?”

“I had something to drink in the house—this is yours,” and she

watched him drink with an eager sweetness and humility in her eyes.

14

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, 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.

“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 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.

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 gurt

clouds over Galleybird.”

Elphick and Juglery were inclined to grumble at having their

dinner-hour cut short, and talked of judgments equally bestowed on

“them wot bruk the Sabbath” and “them wot bruk up grass.” But Mus’

Sumption’s professional opinion was that the approaching storm was

not in the nature of a punitive expedition—“If the Lord had wanted to

spoil this harvest, He would have done it on Thursday or Friday; now

all He’ll get is the tail-end, and not that if I can help it.”

He bent his huge back to the sickle, and worked for the next hour

without straightening. Mr. Poullett-Smith decided to forget the

Sunday-school he was supposed to catechise at three, and Nell to

forget the headache which would probably have sent her off the field

at the same hour. Norry Noakes and Zacky, seeing their deliverance

nigh, put more energy into that afternoon than they had put into all

four other days of harvest—Norry nearly dragged Tassell’s head off

his neck in his efforts to make him go faster.

At about three o’clock, Mr. Sumption stood up and scanned the fields

under his hand like Elijah’s servant watching for rain. Then he gave

a shout that made everyone start and straighten their backs.

“Lo! the Lord is on our side—behold more labourers for the harvest.”

Two figures were coming down the field from Worge—Ivy Beatup and a

soldier. Ivy wore a pink cotton dress, belling out all round her with

the wind and flapping against the soldier’s legs. She also carried

unexpectedly a pink parasol.

“Thought I’d come over and see you all!” she bawled as soon as she

was within earshot. “This is Sergeant Eric Staples from Canada.”

... Canada! Then no doubt he knew a bit about harvesting. Harry went

forward to meet them.

“Mother toald us you’d half the Sunk to reap before the weather,”

said Ivy, at closer range, “so I said we’d come and give you a hand,

surelye.”

“We’ll be unaccountable glad to have you both—the rain’s blowing up

and we’re short of workers.”

“I’m on it, as the boys say, and so’s the Sergeant, I reckon.”

“Sure,” said Sergeant Staples, staring round him.

“Mother’s gitting a valiant supper fur us when ’tis all a-done. She

says if you’ve bruk the Sabbath one way you may as well break it

another and maake a good job of it. Thyrza’s coming, and is bringing

all her tinned salmon. Wot do you think of my sunshade, Nell?—reckon

it’s unaccountable smart,” and Ivy threw it down into the stubble and

began rolling up her sleeves.

“It’s middling kind of you,” said Harry politely to Sergeant Staples.

“Only too glad—I’ve done a power of this work over in Sask. May I ask

what this little buggy is?”—and he pointed to the nodding erection of

old Juglery chaired above the reins that slacked on Tassell’s rump.

“That’s the reaper, surelye.”

The Canadian did not speak, but the puzzled look deepened on his face.

“Maybe you’ll taake a sickle, being handy-like?”

“Sure”—but when Harry gave him Mus’ Beatup’s discarded weapon he held

it at arm’s length and scratched his head. Then he slid up to Ivy—

“Say, kid, I never heard before as in the old country they cut corn

with a pocket-knife.”

However, he swung his tool handily, and with the two new workers, and

the extra energy of the old, the reaping went forward at a pace which

threatened the victory of those black clouds over Galleybird.

The wind blew in droning gusts, swishing in the corn, and fiddling in

the boughs of Forges Wood. Dead leaves began to fly out of the wood,

the threat of autumn. The men’s shirts blew against their skins, and

the women’s skirts flew out; the colours of the field grew dim—the

corn was white, the wood and the hedges were grey—only the clothes of

the harvesters stood out in smudges of pink and blue. Then suddenly

rain began to squirt down out of a black smeary sky like charcoal—the

wind screamed, almost flattening the few last rods. No one spoke, for

no voice could be heard above the howling of the wind. Rabbits began

to pop out of the corn, but there were no hunting dogs, no shouting

groups from the cottages come out to see the fun. When the last

sickleful had been cut, and the reaper stood still, with old Juglery

asleep on the seat, the harvesters picked up their coats and pulled

down their sleeves without a word.

They were wet through—the muscles of the men’s bodies showed through

their clinging shirts and the women were wringing their gowns. But

the Sunk Field was reaped and Harry’s harvest saved. He had won his

battle against his own ignorance, his father’s indifference, and the

earth’s treacheries. He had vindicated his daring, and he would

never know how small was the thing he had done—a few scrubby acres

sown and reaped, a few mean quarters of indifferent grain gathered

in—he would never hear Sergeant Staples say to Sergeant Speed of the

North-West Provinces that he had spent a slack afternoon cutting

mustard and cress with a pocket-knife.

Food was waiting up at the farm, with Thyrza Beatup, who, for obvious

reasons now, had been unable to help with the harvest, but had done

her best by contributing her entire stock of tinned salmon to the

harvest-supper. The party began to move off, Mr. Poullett-Smith

wrapping his coat over Nell’s shoulders with hands that perhaps

strayed a little to touch her neck. Only Mr. Sumption was left,

standing upright and stockish on the rise of the field, a huge black

shape against the sky.

“Come along, Mus’ Sumption,” called Ivy, “and git a nice tea-supper.

Thur’s tinned salmon and a caake.”

Mr. Sumption’s voice came to them on the scream of the wind—

“Shall I go without thanking the Lord of the Harvest for His mercies

in allowing us to gather in the fruits of the earth on the Sabbath

Day?”

“He’s praying,” said Nell, with a shiver of disgust in her voice.

The curate bit his lip.

“He’s perfectly right,” he said, and going up to the minister, he

knelt down in the stubble. The others huddled in a sheepish group

by the gate. Mr. Sumption’s prayer was blown over their heads,

washed into the woods on the rain, but they could hear the groan

of his big voice in the wind, and here and there a word of his

familiar prayer-vocabulary.... “Lord ... day ... oven ... wicked ...

righteous ... Satan ... save ... forgive.... Amen.”