Chapter 2

Ivy was in love. The glamour had transmuted her country stuff as surely as it transmutes more delicate substance. The spring rain falls on the thick-stalked hogweed as on the spurred columbine, and the divine poetry of Love had given to her, as to a more tender nature, its unfailing gift of a new heaven and a new earth.

Her whole being seemed gathered up into Seagrim, into a strange happiness which had its roots in pain. For the first time pain and happiness were united in one emotion; when she was away from him, pain was the strong partner, when with him, then happiness prevailed—and yet not always, for sometimes in his presence her heart swooned within her, and her face would grow pale under his kisses and a moan stifle in her throat, and also, sometimes, when he was away, a strange ecstasy would seize her, and all her world would shine, and her common things of slops and guts and mire become beautiful, and the very thought of his being dazzle all the earth....

She never told him of this, indeed she herself scarcely realised it. She felt in her thoughts a soft confusion, [158] a happy bewilderment, a sweet ache, and everything was changed and everyone spoke with a new voice—the very kitchen boards were not the same since she met Seagrim, and her family had queer new powers of delighting and grieving her. “I must be in love,” she said to herself, and straightway bought her man a pound of the best tobacco at the Shop.

She was very good to him. Her hearty, generous nature found relief in spending itself upon him. She seldom came to the meeting-place without some present of tobacco or food—she did him a dozen little services, mended his clothes, marked his handkerchiefs, polished his buttons and his boots. Strangely spiritual as the depths of her love might be, its expression was entirely practical and animal. To serve him and caress him was her only way of revealing those dim marvels that swam at the back of her mind.

The man himself was bewitched. Her generosity touched him, and it would be a strange fellow indeed who would not love to hold her to him, sweet and tumbled like an over-blown flower, and take the softness of her parted lips and sturdy neck. Ivy was like the month in which he wooed her—July, thick, drowsy, blooming, ripe, lacking the subtlety of spring and the dignity of autumn, but more satisfying to the common man who prefers enjoyment to promise or memory.

They met most evenings, he walking eastward, she westward, to Four Wents; there, where the tall stile stands between two shocks of fennel, they would lean together in the first charm of tryst, the dusk thickening round them, hazing road and fields and barns and bushes, their own faces swimming up out of it to each other’s eyes, like reflections in a pond—hers round and flushed under her tousled hair, like a poppy in a barley-field, his brown and predatory with its hawk-like nose and [159] piercing eye under the grizzled curls. Then the dusk would smudge them into each other and they would become one in the swale....

He led her up and down the little rutted lanes, under a violet sky where the stars were red and the moon was a golden horn. The thick fanning of the July air brought scents of hayseed and flowering bean, the miasmic perfume of meadowsweet, the nutty smell of ripening corn, and the drugged sweetness of hopfields. All round them would hang the great tender silence of night, the passionate stillness of the earth under the moon, and their poor broken words only seemed a part of that silence.... “My loove, my li’l lass.” ... “I love you unaccountable, Willie.” ... “Coom closer, my dear.” ... The wind rustled over the orchards of Soul Street, and the horns of the moon were red, and the sky thick and dark as a grape, when they came back to the tall stile at the throws, and parted there with caresses which love made groping and vows which love choked to whispers.

On Sundays they met more ceremonially, pacing up and down the road at Sunday Street, from the shop to the Rifle Volunteer—which was the parade-ground of those girls of the parish who had sweethearts. Here Jen Hollowbone showed her Ted and Polly Sinden her Bill, and Ivy Beatup showed her Willie, walking proudly on his arm, smiling with all her teeth at the girls whose sweethearts were away and at the girls who had no sweethearts at all.

She even brought him to Worge once or twice, but her family did not like him. This was partly because they were still the champions of the rejected Ern Honey, and partly because they resented his gruff manner, and harsh, rumbling speech. He did not shine in company—he was for ever boasting the superiority of Northumberland ways over those of Sussex, and even told Mus’ [160] Beatup that he “spake like a fule” on American Intervention. He horrified Nell by drinking out of his saucer—a depth below any of the family’s most degrading collapses—and offended Harry and Zacky by taking no notice of them or interest in the farm. Indeed the only being at Worge he seemed to care about—not excepting Ivy, whom he almost ignored on these occasions—was Nimrod, the old retriever; to him alone he would smile and be friendly, hugging the old black head against his tunic, and patting and slapping Nim’s sides till he became demoralised by this unaccustomed fondling and frisked about with muddy paws—which was all put down to Seagrim for unrighteousness in his account with Mrs. Beatup.

“Wot d’you want wud un, Ivy?” she asked once—“a gurt dark tedious chap lik that, wud never a good word for a soul—not even yourself, he doan’t sim to have—and a furriner too.”

“He aun’t a furriner.”

“He aun’t from these parts, like some I cud naum. You’re a fool if you say no to a valiant chap lik Ernie Honey and taake up wud a black unfriendly feller as no one here knows naun about.”

“Well, he doan’t have to have his inside tied up wud a truss lik a parcel of hay, caase it falls out.”

“You hoald your rude tongue. Wot right have you to know aught of Ern Honey’s inside? And better a inside lik a parcel of hay than a heart lik a barnyard stone. He’s a hard-hearted man, your sojer—cares for naun saave a pore heathen dog wot he brings spannelling into the kitchen.”

[161]

“He cares for me.”

“It doan’t sim lik it wud his ‘Eh, lass?—eh, lass?’ whensumdever you spik. Reckon you maake yourself cheap as rotten straw when you git so stuck on him.”

“Who said I wur stuck on him?—he aun’t the fust I’ve kept company with.”

“No, he aun’t. You’re parish talk wud your goings on. You’ll die an oald maid in the wark’us, and bring us to shaum—and Harry ull bring us to auction, and Tom ull be killed by a German, and bring us to death in sorrow. All my children have turned agaunst me now I’m old,” and Mrs. Beatup began to cry into her apron.

Ivy’s big arms were round her at once....