Chapter 7

For some minutes Mr. Sumption sat with his head buried in his hands. Before his closed eyes he saw pass the last pitiful act of Jerry’s tragedy. He saw him standing defiant and furtive—he would always look defiant and furtive, even if half awake—with his back to the wall ... then—cr-r-rack!—and he would fall down at the foot of it in a crumpled heap, that perhaps still moved a little.... But he had suffered nothing ... practically nothing....

Then he saw Jerry standing all his life with his back to a wall, every man armed against him. He had but died as he had lived. Even his own father had been against him, had misused and misunderstood him. There had never been anyone to understand that mysterious, troubled heart, anyone who could have understood it—except, perhaps, Meridian Hearn, his mother—and that queer people of defiant furtive ways, whose dark blood had run in his veins and been his ruin. Meridian Hearn should not have married the gaujo preacher from Bethersden—she should have married one of her own race, and then her child would have lived among those of like passions as he, and not among strangers, who had mobbed him and pecked his eyes out, like sparrows attacking a foreign bird.

“Oh, Meridian, Meridian!—our boy’s dead....”

There was the familiar clatter and kick outside the door, and Mrs. Hubble came in with the breakfast tray. Her face was crimson and very much excited, though she tried to work it into lines of woe; for she had at last [286] heard the news about Jerry, from Gwen Bourner, who had heard it from Mrs. Bill Putland, who had had a letter from her husband that morning. All Sunday Street now knew that Jerry Sumption had been shot as a deserter, having given the 18th Sussex the slip on the eve of the action in which Tom Beatup and Fred Bourner and Stacey Collbran and other local boys had given up their limbs and lives—he had gone to a French woman, and been found in a blouse and wooden shoes. The platoon would not miss him much, Bill Putland said; but he was unaccountable sorry for his father.

So, to do her justice, was Mrs. Hubble. She had put an extra spoonful of tea in his tea-pot, and had boiled him an egg, a luxury which was not included in his boarding fees. Moreover, she gave him a pitying glance, as she swept the litter of sermon-paper to one side.

“Will you want me to tell people?” she asked him.

“Tell people what?” His voice came throatily, like an old man’s.

“Well, I reckon you woan’t be preaching to-night?”

Something in her voice made him start up, and pull himself together. He saw her squinting compassionately at him, with the corner of her apron in readiness.

“Preach!—Why do you ask that?”

“I’ve heard about your loss. I reckon you woan’t be feeling in heart for preaching.”

He did not reply.

“I cud easy stick up a notice on the chapel door,” she continued, “and all the folkses hereabouts ud understand. They’d never expect you to spik after wot’s happened.”

“Woman!—what has happened?”

He spoke so suddenly and so loudly, that Mrs. Hubble started, and dropped the corner of her apron.

[287]

“I—I ... well, we’ve all of us heard, Mus’ Sumption....”

“Heard what?”

“I—I.... Doan’t look at me like that, minister, for the Lord’s sake.”

“Speak then. What have you all heard?”

Mrs. Hubble was recovering from her alarm and beginning to resent his manner.

“Well, reckon we’ve heard wot you’ve heard—as your boy’s bin shot fur deserting his regiment; and no one expects you to come and preach in chapel after that.”

A wave of burning crimson went over Mr. Sumption’s face, so that Mrs. Hubble said afterwards she thought as he’d go off in a stroke. Then he was suddenly white again, and speaking quietly, but in a voice that somehow frightened her more than his shouting.

“I shall certainly preach to-night. I will not have the service cancelled. Tell everyone who asks you that I shall certainly preach.”

“Very good, sir.”

She edged towards the door.

“Mrs. Hubble! Stop a moment. Say this, too. I am not ashamed of my son. I reckon you all think I am ashamed of him, and you are putting your heads together and clacking, and pitying me for it. But I am not ashamed. He died for England. Mr. Archie himself says it. These are his very words: Wait!”—for Mrs. Hubble was going to bolt.

“I’m waiting, Mus’ Sumption.”

“He says, ‘Think of your son as having died so that other men should take warning by him and not desert the ranks, and, therefore, in that sense he has died for his country.’ Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you can go.”

Mrs. Hubble fled.