Chapter 13

Tom swung along the dim road, where the shadows ran before him. The new-risen moon looked over the [58] hedge, an amber disc just past the full, swimming against the wind from Satanstown. In the heart of the wind seemed still to beat the pulse of those far-off guns, the ghost of their day-long thunder. Over and over in his mind Tom turned his new thought—that he was going to fight for Worge.

In a quarter of an hour he had come to Sunday Street. He could see the moonlight lying like frost on the southward slope of the roofs, and the windows of the Bethel were ghostly with it, as they stared away to the marshes. The Bethel alone seemed awake in the little huddle of sleeping cottages—it had a strange look of watchfulness and waiting, its gaunt Georgian windows never had that comfortable blinking air of the cottage lattices.... Tom did not like the Bethel at night.

He looked across the road to the Horselunges, where Mr. Sumption lived. A crack of light showed under the blind of the minister’s room, and Tom’s heart gave a little thump of self-reproach, for he had not till then thought of saying good-bye to him. He had not seen much of Mr. Sumption lately, and had been too much absorbed in his own concerns to think of him, but now he made up his mind to call and say good-bye; it was past ten o’clock and he was very tired and sleepy, nevertheless he walked up to the door of the Horselunges and knocked.

Mrs. Hubble was in bed, as the hour demanded, so the door was opened by her lodger.

“Hello, Tom. Anything the matter? Do they want me at Worge?”

Mr. Sumption was always childishly eager for some demand on his pastoral ministrations, a demand which was seldom made, as he had a disruptive bedside manner and the funds of his chapel did not admit of the doles [59] which made sick Dallington people endure the consolations of the Church.

“No, thank you, they doan’t. I’ve just come to say good-bye.”

The minister’s forehead clouded—

“Oh, you’ve remembered me at last, have you? Thought it just as well not to forget old friends before you go off to make new ones. Come in.”

Tom, who had expected this greeting, followed Mr. Sumption upstairs into the room which he called his study, but which had few points of difference from any cottage living-room in Sunday Street. There was a frayed carpet with a lot of dirt trodden into it, and a sun-sucked wall-paper adhering as closely as possible to walls complicate of beams and bulges. A solitary book-shelf supported Jessica’s First Prayer, Edwin’s Trial or The Little Christian Witness, and kindred works, cheek-by-jowl with Burton’s Four Last Things and a cage of white mice. There was another cage hanging in the window, containing a broken-winged thrush which the pastor, after the failure of many anathemas, had bought from one of those mysterious gangs of small boys which prowl round villages. An old, old cat sat before the empty grate, too decrepit to make more than one attempt a day on the thrush or the mice, and now purring wheezily in the intervals of scratching a cankered ear.

On the table was a wild, unwieldy parcel, from whose bursting sides the contents were already beginning to ooze forth.

“I’m packing a parcel for Jerry,” said the minister. “I’d just finished when you knocked.”

“It looks as if it was coming undone,” said Tom.

“So it does”—and Mr. Sumption glanced deprecatingly at his handiwork. [60] “If only I had some sealing-wax ... but the shop’s shut.”

“It’ll be open to-morrow,” said Tom, and pictured Thyrza pulling up the blind and dusting the salmon-tins in the window ... long after he had gone to catch the early train from Hailsham.

“Well, to-morrow’s time enough, as I can’t post it before then. It ud be a pity for anything to get lost. There’s three shillings’ worth of things in that parcel.”

“Have you had any more letters from Jerry?”

“Yes, I had one yesterday”—no need to tell Tom there had been no others—“He wants chocolate and cigarettes, and I put in a tin of cocoa besides, and some little squares to make soup of. He’ll be unaccountable pleased.”

“How’s he gitting on?”

“Valiant. He likes being along of the other lads. The only thing that worrits him is your sister.”

“My sister?”

“Yes, your sister Ivy. Seemingly she never answered a postcard he wrote her ten days back, and you knows he’s unaccountable set on Ivy.”

“It aun’t no use, Mus’ Sumption. Ivy’s got no thought for him, I’m certain sure, and he’s only wasting time over her.”

The minister’s comely face darkened, and he cracked his fingers once or twice.

“It’s a pity, a lamentable pity. That boy of mine’s crazy on Ivy Beatup. Are you sure she doesn’t care about him, Tom?”

“Well, who knows wot a gal thinks? I can only put two and two together. But seemingly if she’d cared she’d have answered his postcard.”

“Could you put in a word for him?”

Young Beatup shook his head—

[61]

“I woan’t meddle. If Ivy doan’t care I can’t maake her, and I reckon mother’s unaccountable set against it too.”

He had said the wrong thing. Mr. Sumption’s eyes became like burning pits. He swung his hands up and cracked them like a pistol.

“Set against it, is she? Set against my Jerry? Maybe he isn’t good enough for her—a clergyman’s son for a farmer’s daughter.”

“I never said naun of that,” mumbled Tom uneasily, remembering his mother’s reference to “gipsy muck.”

“It’s I as might be set against it,” continued the minister. “I tell you that boy’s been bred and cut above your sister. I never sent him to a board school along of farmers’ children—I taught him myself, everything I learned at college. He’d know as much I do if he hadn’t forgotten it. Yet I’m not proud; I know the boy wants your sister Ivy and ull do something silly if he can’t get her, so when he writes to me, ‘Where’s Ivy? Find out why she didn’t answer my postcard, and tell her I’ll go mad if she doesn’t take some notice of me’—why, then, I do my best—and get told my son’s not good enough for your father’s daughter.”

“I never told you any such thing,” said Tom doggedly, “but I woan’t spik to Ivy. She knows her own business best. If I were you I’d tell Jerry straight as no good ull come of his going after her. She doan’t want him—I’m certain sure of that.”

The pastor’s wrath had died down into something more piteous.

“I daresay you’re right, Tom, and maybe I did wrong to speak like that. After all, I was only a blacksmith till the Lord called me away.... I pray that He may not require my boasting of me.”

[62]

“Well, I’m unaccountable sorry about Ivy being lik that, but I thought it better to spik plain.”

Mr. Sumption sat down rather heavily at the table.

“O Lord, how shall I tell Jerry? If I tell him he’ll do something wild, sure as he’s Jerry Sumption.”

“Doan’t tell him. He’ll find out for himself soon enough.”

Mr. Sumption groaned.

“Tom Beatup,” he said slowly, “I reckon you think I’m a faithless, unprofitable steward so to set my heart on human flesh and blood. But you’ll understand a bit of what I feel ... some day, when you’re the father of a son.”