“’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.