Chapter 5

Ivy held her bold front for the rest of that week. Her secret portion of sorrow and craving she kept hid. Her floors were scrubbed and her pans scoured no worse for lack of that glory which makes like the silver wings of a dove those that have lien among the pots.... She still had strength to cling to the empty days, to serve through the meaningless routine that had once been a joyous rite.

Everyone had heard about Seagrim now, and had also heard that Ivy Beatup had not been deceived, but had known about his wife from the first. Some believed her, accounting for her silence by the fact that her family would have interfered had they known she was walking [170] out with a married man. These for the most part called Ivy Beatup a bad lot, though her sister-in-law Thyrza stood up for her, declaring Ivy’s friendship with the Corporal could only have been innocent and respectable—but of course Thyrza was now allied with the Beatups, and would be anxious for their good name. A large proportion of the street, however, did not believe Ivy’s version of the story—they would have her tricked, deluded—betrayed, they hinted—and found an even greater delight in pity than in blame.

All joined in wondering what she would do the following Sunday. She would not have the face to parade the man as usual. Perhaps Mrs. Seagrim was still at Hailsham—perhaps, even if she was not, the Corporal would not dare show his face after what had happened or, if he did, surely the girl would not be so brazen as to trot him out now that she knew all the parish knew she was a bad lot—or a poor victim.

However, when Sunday came, Ivy appeared in her best blue dress, and on Seagrim’s arm, as if nothing had happened. Her eyes were perhaps a little over-bright with defiance, her cheeks a little over-red for even such a full-blown peony as her face, but her manner was assured, if not very dignified, and her grins as many-toothed as on less doubtful occasions.

To tell the truth, Ivy had not meant to offer such a public challenge to a local opinion. She had made up her mind that Seagrim would not appear at all, or in a very subdued condition. However, on Friday she had a letter of the usual loving kind, excusing his absence during the week on the score of extra duty and asking her to meet him at Worge gate next Sunday morning—“with her boy’s fondest love” and a row of kisses.

Ivy’s teeth bit deep into her lip as she read this letter. He was still deceiving her, though now, thank the Lord, [171] he was also deceived himself. He did not know his wife had been to see her, and doubtless Mrs. Seagrim had now gone back to “the business”—a corn-chandler’s in Alnwick. Ivy wondered why she had kept her own counsel, but no doubt the “dressed-up hop-pole” knew best how to deal with her man. If she betrayed her plot it might have led to friction between an affectionate husband and wife, and she probably felt that she had “settled” Ivy.

The girl’s blood ran thick with humiliation—both the man and the woman had shamed her. Doubtless they loved each other well, though he, with a man’s greediness, had wanted another woman in her absence. He could never have meant to marry Ivy—his intentions must always have been vague or dishonourable. As for the wife, having spent some of the cash left over from her clothes, in running down South to look after him, she had no doubt been satisfied with warning Ivy and coaxing her husband, and had then gone back to her flourishing shop. True that this letter hardly pointed to the success of her tactics, but Ivy knew too much about men to attach great importance to it—Seagrim was just the sort of man who would have a girl wherever he went, and yet always keep the first place in his heart for the woman who had also his name. She, Ivy, was probably only a secondary attachment to fill the place of the other, and no doubt in that other’s absence; he would make every effort to keep her—but she was a stop-gap, an interlude, to him who had been her all, and filled the spare moments of one who had filled her life.

She forced herself to bite down on this bitter truth, and swallowed it—and it gave her strength for the course she meant to take.

She found Seagrim leaning against Worge gate, sucking the knob of his swagger stick, and gazing at her with shining long-lashed eyes of grey. For a moment the sight [172] of him there, his greeting, the husky tones love put into his voice, his sunburnt, hawk-like strength, all combined to make her falter. But she was made of too solid stuff to forget his callous deception of her, which he still maintained, drawing her arm through his with a few glib lies about extra duty and the sergeant. Contempt for him stabbed her heart and eyes, and for a few moments she could neither look at him nor speak.

They went to their usual parade ground, marching to and fro between the Bethel and the Shop, and Ivy’s confidence revived with her defiance of public opinion. “They’ll see I doan’t care naun fur wot they think,” she said to herself, and met boldly the outraged eyes of Bourners and Sindens and Putlands. It was a hot day, and there was a smell of dust in the air, which felt heavy and thick. The sun was dripping on Sunday Street, making the red roofs swim and dazzle in a yellow haze; the leaves of the big oaks by the forge drooped with dust, and the Bethel’s stare was hot and angry, as if its lidless eyes ached in the glow.

Ivy decided that she might now end her ordeal of the burning ploughshare. She had strutted up and down a dozen times in front of her neighbours, defying their gossip, their blame and their pity. “I done it—now I can git shut of un,” and her gaze of mixed pain and contempt wandered up to his brown face as he walked beside her, talking unheard in his booming Northumberland voice.

“It’s middling hot in the Street—let’s git into the Spinney.”

He kindled at once—it would be good to sit with her on trampled hazel leaves, to lie with their faces close and the green spurge waving round their heads in a filter of sunlight. Usually these suggestions came from him, by the rules of courting, but he loved her for the [173] boldness which could break all rule even as it lacked all craft. He slid his hand along her arm, and pressed it, with joy at the quiver she gave.

The Twelve Pound spinney stood about thirty yards back from the Street, behind the Bethel, and was reached by a little path and a stile opposite the Horselunges. As they passed the inn, Ivy saw Mrs. Breathing opening the door and the shutters for the Sunday’s short traffic, and at the same time saw ahead of her a dusty khaki figure ambling towards the sign with the particular padding unsoldierly tread of Jerry Sumption.

“He’s on the drink, now’s he knows as he can’t git me,” she thought—“the bad gipsy.” Then a feeling of regret and hopelessness came over her. Here were two men whose love she had muddled—one who had hurt her and one whom she had hurt. Was love all hurting and sorrow? For the first time the careless game of a girl’s years became almost a sinister thing. Her hand dragged at Seagrim’s arm, as if unconsciously and despite herself her body appealed to the man her soul despised ... then she lifted her eyes, and looked into Jerry’s as he passed, trotting by with hanging head and queer look, like a mad dog ... yes, love was a tar’ble game.

The black, still shadows of Twelve Pound Wood swallowed her and Seagrim out of the glare. The clop of hoofs and bowl of wheels on the Street came as from a great way off, and the hum of poised and darting insects, thick among the foxgloves, seemed to shut them into a little teeming world of buzz and pollen-dust and sun-trickled green. Seagrim stood still, and his arm slid from the crook of Ivy’s across her back, drawing her close. But with a sudden twisting movement she set herself free, standing before him in the path, with the tall foxgloves round her, flushed and freckled like her face, [174] and behind her the pale cloud of the bennet heads like melting smoke.

“Kip clear of me, Willie Seagrim—I’ll have no truck wud you. I’ve met your wife.”

The man, slow of speech, gaped at her without a word.

“Yes. She caum round to our plaace three days agone, and shamed me before my mother. But I said I knew as you wur married, and to-day I walked out wud you to show the foalkses here I aun’t bin fooled. Now I’ve shown’ em, you can go. I’m shut of you.”

“Ivy—yo’re telling me that my Bess——”

“Yes—your Bess, wud gloves and buttoned boots and——” She checked herself. “Yes, she caum, and tried to put me to shaum. But I druv her off, surelye; and now I’m shut of you, fur a hemmed chap wot fooled me wud a lie.”

“But A no harmed yo’——”

“Harmed me!”—she gasped.

“Dom that Bess for a meddlesome fule. Oh, she’s gey canny, that Bess. But Ivy, li’l Ivy, yo’ll no cast me off for that?”

“Why shud I kip you?—you’ve bin a-fooling me. You maade as you wur a free man, and all the while you wur married. I—I loved you.”

“And yo’ kin lo’ me still....” He sought to take her, but she pushed him off.

“Reckon I can’t. Reckon as I’ll never disremember all the lies you’ve said. And you spuk of loving me ... knowing all the whiles.... Oh, you sought to undo me! Reckon I’m jest a gurt trusting owl, but it wur middling cruel of you to trick me so.”

[175]

“Ivy—by God A sweer——”

“Be hemmed to your silly swears. I’ll never believe you more.”

“But yo’ll no cast me off fur a wumman up North....”

“I don’t care where she be. She’s yourn—and you hid her from me. If you’d toald me straight, maybe I—but ...”

“Yo’ na speered of me. Why should A have spoken?”

“You did spik—you spuk as a free man.”

“A was a fule—yo’ made me mad for you.”

His eye was darkening, and the corners of his mouth had an angry twist.

“You toald me as extra duty kept you away last week,” continued Ivy, “and it wurn’t—it wur your wife. Reckon you love her and I’m only a girl fur your spare days. You’d kip me on fur that.”

“A’ll keep yo’ on for naething. If yo’ don’t like me, yo’ can go.”

“It’s you who can go. I’m shut of you from this day forrard. You git back to Hailsham this wunst and never come here shaming me more.”

“Yo’ll be shamed if I go. Better for yo’ if I stay.”

“If you stay you’ll shaum me furder, fur you’ll shaurn me wud my own heart. Git you gone, Willie Seagrim, and find a bigger fool than me.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and her heart sickened with jealousy, knowing that her loss to him could not be so serious as his to her, since he had his beautiful pale Bess, with her red hair and stooping back, whom all the time he had loved more than he loved Ivy, because she was his children’s mother and had rights which he respected. He would soon forget Ivy; perhaps he would find another girl to solace his spare hours, but anyhow he would forget her. The thought almost made her hold him back, cling to him, and seek to wrest him from the other woman with her self-confident possession. But she was withheld by her sense of outrage, and by a queer pride [176] she had always had in herself, a rustic straightness which had gone with her through all her many amours. To surrender now could only mean disgrace, since she felt that in some odd way it meant surrender to Bess as well as to Bess’s master. If she became Seagrim’s woman, which she must be now, or nothing, Bess would somehow triumph, and triumph more utterly than if she threw him off with scorn. Besides, he had fooled her and lied to her; he was not worth having—let him go, though her heart bled, and her bowels ached, as she watched him march off away from her, shaking his shoulders in jaunty swagger, the sunlight gleaming on his grizzled hair, the curls she had loved to pull. She could have called him back, and he would have come, but her lips were shut and her throat was dry. He vanished round a bend of the path, and all that was left of him was a crunching footstep, heavy on last year’s leaves. Then that too was gone, and with a little moan Ivy slid down among the foxgloves and bennets, and sobbed with her forehead against the earth.