Chapter 10

Jerry Sumption knew nothing of Ivy’s disappearance, for the morning after that fatal Sunday his father had taken him off to Brighton, and from Brighton he had gone back to France. In fact his whole notion of the affair was hazy—inflamed by one or two unaccustomed glasses of bad whisky and the memory of Ivy on Seagrim’s arm, he had rushed and stumbled through what seemed to him now a wild nightmare of phantasmagoria from which he had waked into aching and disgrace.

He was sullen company during those few days at Brighton. Mr. Sumption had chosen Brighton because it was at a safe, and also not too expensive, distance from Sunday Street. Moreover, he hoped it would provide [187] some distraction for Jerry. The financial problem had been great, but he had solved it by drawing out the whole of his savings. He took a poor little lodging at the back of the town, from which he and Jerry travelled down daily by ’bus and tram to the diversions of the sea-front.

It was not a quite successful holiday, which was indeed hardly to be expected. Mr. Sumption brought preachment to bear on Jerry’s sullenness—he did not understand what a hazy impression the catastrophe had made, and that to him, though not to Ivy, the scene by Twelve Pound spinney mattered less than that earlier scene in Forges Field. Also Mr. Sumption’s ideas of amusement were not the same as his son’s. He decided to risk the Lord’s displeasure and visit a Picture Palace for Jerry’s sake, but was so scandalised by what he saw that he insisted on leaving after half an hour’s distress.

“Surely it is the house of Satan with those red lights,” he exclaimed with sundry cracks and tosses.

“What’s the matter with red lights? You get ’em in a forge.”

“But a forge is the place of honest toil—and a kinema’s but a place of gaping and idleness and worse: three hundred folks got together to see lovers kissing, which is a private matter.”

Jerry laughed bitterly.

“Three hundred folk gaping at an ungodly picture, who might be saving their souls. I tell you, boy, there ull come a red day, that ull burn redder than any forge or picture-house, and all the ungodly gazers shall be pitched into it like weeds into the oven, and only the saints escape—with the singeing of their garments.”

[188]

“Oh, Father, do speak cheerful. I’m that down-hearted.”

“Reckon you are, my poor lad—and the Lord rebuke me if I add to your burden. This looks a godly sort of a pastry-cook’s. Let’s go in and get some tea.”

The next day was the last of Jerry’s leave, and the one that he and his father spent most happily together. Mr. Sumption’s ideas of entertainment seemed quite hopeless to Jerry, but during those last hours he felt drawn closer to the being who he knew was the only friend he had. They spent the morning on the pier, listening to the band, and in the afternoon went by the motor-bus to Rottingdean—a trip so surprisingly expensive that there was no money left to pay for their tea, and while the other excursionists sat down to long tables, they had to wander upon the down, whence they watched the feasters, Jerry like a forlorn sparrow and Mr. Sumption like a hungry crow, till it was time to go home.

But all the while the minister could see his son growing more dependent on him, and in his heart he thanked the Lord. His delight at having won that much poor show of affection blinded him a little to the pathos of the outlaw clinging to his only prop, before he was flung to troubles and dangers which he realised in helpless foreboding. The chapel weed clung to the chapel stone before it was rudely torn up and thrown out to the burning.

Their final parting was abusive, owing to Mr. Sumption’s having left Jerry’s dinner of sandwiches behind at their rooms, but the father would always have a thankful memory of that evening when Jerry had been simple and grateful and rather childish, and had listened to his good advice, and had not interrupted with his cry for cheerfulness the stream of Calvinistic warning.

They had sat by the big ugly window of their room, looking out at the first dim stars pricking the sky above Kemp Town. Jerry’s eyes were full of a mysterious trouble as they pondered the new serenity of his father’s face.

[189]

“Father,” he said suddenly, “you’ll watch and pray that Satan don’t get me.”

“Satan can’t hurt the elect.”

“But maybe I’m not one of the elect. Didn’t seem like it on Sunday, did it?”

“That was the Lord’s trial sent to us both—He delivered you unto Satan for a while that you might find His ways.”

“Reckon His ways are not for my finding.”

“I will pray for you, my dear.”

“Father, you promise, you swear, as you’ll never let me go? I sometimes feel as if there was only you standing betwixt me and hell. Reckon you’re the only soul in all the world that cares about me.”