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............