Chapter 8

All that morning heavy pacings over her head convinced Mrs. Hubble that the minister was preparing a wonderful sermon. She generally guessed the temper of his discourse by the weight and width of the stumpings which preceded it. To-day she could hear him, as she expressed it, all over the room ... he was kicking the fire-irons ... he had overturned his chair ... he had flung up the window and banged it down again. Obviously something great was in process, and at the same time she felt that Mr. Sumption was rather mad. It was nothing short of indecent for him to preach to-night, after what had happened—and the queer way he had spoken about Jerry, too....

By this time the whole of Sunday Street knew about Jerry. He was discussed at breakfast-tables, in barns, on doorsteps, on milking-stools. No one was surprised; indeed, most people seemed to have foretold his bad end. “I said as he’d come to no good, that gipsy’s brat.”

“A valiant minister wot can’t breed up his own son.” “Howsumdever, I’m middling sorry fur the poor chap; I’ll never disremember how he saaved that cow of mine wot wur dying of garget.” “And I’m hemmed, maaster, if he wurn’t better wud my lambing ewes than my own looker, surelye.”

On the whole, the news improved his chances of a congregation. It was a better advertisement than the notice on the church door, or even than his veterinary achievement at Egypt Farm. Some “wanted to see how he took it,” others openly admired his pluck; all were stirred by curiosity and also by compassion. During the years he had lived among them he had grown dear to them and rather contemptible. They looked down on him for his shabbiness, his poverty, his pastoral blundering, his lack [289] of education; but they liked him for his willingness, his simplicity, his sturdy good looks, his strong muscles, his knowledge of cattle and horses.

All that morning people wavered up the street towards the Horselunges, and looked at it, and at the Bethel. Sometimes they gathered together in little groups, but always some way off. The Bethel stared blindly over the roof of the Horselunges, as if it ignored the misery huddled at its doors. No matter what might be the private sorrows of its servant, he must come to-night and preach within its walls those iron doctrines of Doomsday and Damnation in whose honour it had been built and had stood staring over the fields with the blind eyes of a corpse for a hundred years.

Towards noon Thyrza Beatup came up the street, walking briskly, with her weeds flapping behind her. It was the first time she had been out since her widowing, and people stared at her from their doors as she walked boldly up to Horselunges and knocked.

“How is poor Mus’ Sumption?” she asked Mrs. Hubble.

“Lamentaable, lamentaable,” said Mrs. Hubble, with eye and apron in conjunction.

“Well, please tell him as Mrs. Tom Beatup sends her kind remembrances and sympathy, and she reckons she knows wot he feels, feeling the saum herself.”

“Very good, Mrs. Beatup.”

“And you’ll be sure and give it all wot I said—about feeling the saum myself?”

“Oh, sartain.”

Thyrza walked off. Her face was very white and wooden. Mrs. Hubble stared after her.

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“Middling pretty as golden-haired women look in them weeds.... Feels the saum as Mus’ Sumption, does she? That’s queer, seeing as Tom died lik Onward Christian Soldiers, and Jerry lik a dog. Howsumdever, I mun give her words ... maybe he’ll be fool enough to believe them.”

The day was warm and misty, without much sun. The sky above the woods was yellowish, like milk, and the air smelt of rain. But the rain did not come till evening. Mr. Poullett-Smith’s congregation assembled dry, and nobody’s black was spoiled on the way home. In spite of this, the service was not thickly attended. The advertisement which Jerry Sumption’s death had given the Bethel made those who had time or inclination for only one church-going decide to put it off until the evening. Only a few assembled to hear the curate pray that the souls they commemorated—among which he was not afraid to include Jerry—might be brought by Saint Michael, the standard-bearer, into the holy light.

On the other hand, the Bethel was crowded, and by this time it was raining hard. The air was thick with the steaming of damp clothes. The lamps shuddered and smoked in the draught of the rising wind, and the big, blinded windows were running down with rain, as if they wept for the destruction of the chapel weed....

Never had the Rev. Mr. Sumption such a congregation. Nearly the whole of Sunday Street jostled in the pews. Instead of the meagre peppering of heads, there were tight rows of them, like peas in pods. All the Beatups were there, except Nell, who had stayed at home to look after the house; even Mus’ Beatup had hobbled over on his stick. The Putlands were there, and Mrs. Bill Putland, and the Sindens and the Bourners and the Hubbles. Thyrza had come, with little Will asleep in her arms—she sat near the back, in case she should have to take him out. The Hollowbones had come from the Foul Mile and the Kadwells from Stilliands Tower; there were Collbrans from Satanstown, Viners from Puddledock, Ades from [291] Bodle Street, and even stragglers from Brownbread Street and Dallington. Most of them had never been in the Bethel before, and it struck them as unaccountable mean, with its smoking lamps and windows flapping with dingy blinds, its pews that smelled of wood-rot, and its walls all peeled and scarred with moisture and decay.

There was a rustle and scrape as Mr. Sumption came in, through the little door behind the pulpit. Then there was silence as he stood looking down, apparently unmoved, on what must have been to him an extraordinary sight—his church crowded, full to the doors, as he had so often dreamed, but never seen. He looked pale and languid, and his eyes were like smoky lanterns. His voice also seemed to have lost its ring as he gave out the number of the psalm, and then in the prayer which followed it. Moreover, though the congregation, being mostly new, shuffled and kicked its heels disgracefully, he thumped at no one.

“Pore soul, he shudn’t ought to have tried it,” thought Thyrza to herself in her corner. “He’ll never get through.”

After the prayer, which was astonishingly nerveless for a prayer of Mr. Sumption’s, came a hymn, during which the minister sat in the pulpit, his hand over his face. Those in the front rows saw his jaws work as if he was praying. People whispered behind their Bibles—“He’s different, surelye—just lik a Church parson to-night.” “Reckon it’s changed him—knocked all the beans out of him, as you might say.” “Pore chap, he looks middling tired—reckon he finds this a tar’ble job.”

Then the singing stopped, and Mr. Sumption stood up, wearily turning over the leaves of his big Bible.

[292]

“Brethren, you will find my text in the Eleventh of John, the fiftieth verse: ‘It is expedient that one man should die for the people.’”