“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.