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.