PART I THE VALLEY (continued 2)

As she lay stretched full length on the bed, a woman’s magazine crumpled under her body, her face hid in the pillow, Belle knew why she was tired. She was tired as a woman starved must always be tired. For more than a month now she had gone hungry—and it seemed a year.

She could not believe that it was only a month since she had seen Ernley. His going was like a death, a loss which time makes heavier rather than easier, for with the days the emptiness grows. It is true that for the last six months their friendship had been disruptive—he had been moody, remorseful, doubtful—she had been jealous, frantic and wearying. It had not been the kind of affair she wanted, though it was with the man she wanted. Perhaps that was the very reason why. It had been easy enough to have these adventures with men whom she did not want, men who were only the vessels of love, without personality, without being, save in so far as they brought her those rapturous dark moments which from her first tasting them had been the immortal ichor of her life. But Ernley had brought her something more—he had brought her himself, and her quarrel with him had been because he had not given her himself, but only those moments which now, without himself, were not enough.

When she had first met him and known that he would never be like the others she had felt sure that he would give her what he promised. His circumstances seemed to point to settlement and quiet possession. But she was soon to discover that his circumstances were treacherous and that he was their slave. His father would not hear of the marriage—he planned better things than Belle Shackford for the Crown—and without his father Ernley was penniless and tradeless, adrift in the great overcrowded market of post-war England, with the poison he had breathed in Flanders still infecting his body and his mind. They must wait—for something, anything, nothing—and at first Belle had been content, not knowing how much of Ernley would remain ungiven. But the content could not last—they both wanted too much of each other—she reproached him for weakness, he accused her of distrust—she was jealous of him so much away from her, he resented her jealousy. There were quarrels—- reconciliations—the stocky figure of Daniel Sheather was seen tramping over the down between Bullockdean and Batchelors’ Hall ... then more Daniel, less Ernley ... more and more Daniel, less and less Ernley ... and now all Daniel and no Ernley.

She began to cry as she thought of Dan—pity melted the ice of her grief. Poor Dan who was so sure of her, when he ought to be sure of nothing but his own disappointment. Did he really think she was so easily and so quickly to be comforted? She was conscious of a faint thrill of anger against him in the midst of her pity—anger for his stupidity, for his groundless assurance, as maddening in its way as Ernley’s groundless doubts, for his imagining that she would ever deign to become part of the household furniture of the George ... though, after all, why not? People who were not good enough for the Crown usually went to the George, so Dan was only acting upon precedent. The Crown had turned poor, penniless, lovely, careless Belle Shackford out of doors, and it would not perhaps be so stupid of her to cross the road to where the meaner inn stood open and lighted to welcome her.

Dan might have been wise in rushing his courtship into her first month of desolation. A few months later he might have found her hardened, indifferent to shelter—and, as he had dimly guessed, it was in his promise of comfort and shelter that his hope lay. He was so different from Ernley that nothing about him would ever remind her of the lost days ... to be loved by him would be like seeking forgetfulness in a new country—and that was what she wanted more than everything—forgetfulness. After all, he could give her much that was sweet. She remembered his kiss at the foot of the Bostal Way—the boy’s shy lips quickening against her own. He would be a good lover, and he would give her, besides, a tenderness, a protecting care, that Ernley had never given.

But she wrenched her mind from the thought, not so much out of her surviving love for Ernley as out of her almost maternal compassion for Dan. Poor little soul! Poor little presumptuous ass! She must not hurt him by giving him love as hard cash in exchange for protection and oblivion. She must not seek comfort at his expense. She had no right to have given him that kiss—she would have given it to any man who had been kind to her, to any man who was young and comely and tender-hearted—but he would never know that. He was probably thrilling with it now. Poor baby!

Belle sat up on her bed and thrust back the hair from her face. One piece of practical action lay before her with the promise of such relief as practical action brings. She must get rid of Daniel ... she must send him marching—in common fairness. Though susceptible, easy, careless of her own dignity, Belle was no devourer of men. The men she had known hitherto had wanted the same sort of things as herself, and she had felt no special responsibility towards them. But here was a man who wanted something different—or rather, who wanted from her what she could give only to another man. She could not bear to hurt him. She liked him. Belle liked all men.

In spite of many sad experiences she still liked them—though the manner of her liking had changed. When she had known men only from books and hearsay she had pictured them as strong, aloof, rather majestic beings, on a plane above the frailties and reactions of her femininity. The woman’s paper which her inert body had crushed for the last hour was full of print and pictures of strong, silent men in heather-mixture tweeds, with jutting chins and bulldog pipes hanging from their clenched teeth—pictures of masculine magnanimity, honour, truthfulness and protection. And such till a very few years ago she had imagined them, and had lived through some bitter times while her idol was in process of being shattered by experience. Yet out of the smash there had risen a fresh reconstruction of the masculine image—as of a being frail, erratic, sensitive, perverse, unreliable, helpless, and as such calling for more of the maternal quality of her love than any of those broken idols of tweed and iron. It was out of this infinite pity, bought of experience in exchange for respect, that she resolved to send Daniel away.

§ 2

Primed with this resolution, she went down to tea—a twilight tea, for the Shackfords must be economical with their lamps—a tea with the cloth a white stare in the grey dimness of the room, and the cups and saucers all soft spots and gleams, and the high, uncurtained window a great pool of grey light.

Her father and brother were back, tired and hungry and unsuccessful.

“Not a colt you could buy,” said Shackford, “except at ruination price. We must hang on with Queen and Swaddy a bit longer for the plough. They’ll take us through another year, anyway.”

“I hate to see those poor old horses work,” said Belle.

“But I tell you there was nothing we could buy—not half a dozen possible colts in the market, and they all at impossible prices. One of you girls should marry a millionaire, and then we could buy a motor-plough and do without horses.”

“Guess who we saw in Lewes to-day,” said Timothy in his sedate, old-man’s voice.

“Edgar,” guessed Lucy, with a glance at her pearl-set engagement ring.

“No, he wasn’t yours,” said Tim; “he was one of Belle’s.”

“How ‘one of mine’?” cried Belle.

“Well, he was your last but one, Ernley Munk.”

“Oh!...”

“What was he doing?” asked Lucy.

“He was taking out his new girl,” said Tim owlishly.

“His new girl—you don’t mean to say he’s got a new girl so quick?”

“Well, Belle’s got a new boy—why shouldn’t Ernley Munk have a new girl?”

“I haven’t got a new boy,” cried Belle fiercely.

“Oh, no, of course not—my mistake—Daniel Sheather comes to see me and Nell.”

“Now, don’t let’s have any of your sauce.”

“Sauce ... sauce?” queried Tim.

Belle half rose in her seat, then sat down again. She saw the wisdom of agreeing with her adversary while she was in the way of getting information out of him. She wiped her mouth and tried to speak steadily.

“I can’t help Dan Sheather coming to see me—I don’t encourage him. Did you see Ernley, father? Who had he got?”

“I don’t know who she was, but she was a stepper—silk stockings and fur coat and everything. They were having lunch at the White Hart.”

“And he called her ‘Kid,’” said Timothy—“I heard him.”

“Oh, I think he’s consoled himself right enough,” said Shackford, feeling that the occasion might be helpful in dispelling any surviving hankerings after her old lover that might survive in his daughter’s breast.

“He was holding her foot between his under the table—I saw him,” piped Tim.

“You seem to have seen and heard a lot,” snapped Belle.

“I always do,” the child retorted blandly.

“Did you speak to him, dad? Did he tell you who she was?”

“Yes; we had a word about the weather; and he introduced me to Miss Pearl Jenner. He said he was taking her down to Bullockdean in his side-car to spend the evening.”

A gesture of defiance on Ernley’s part?

“Sounds as if they were going to get married,” said Lucy.

“I don’t say they’ll get married—he never was the chap for settling down. But you could see he was gone on the girl. And my! she was a corker—you should have seen her nails shine!”

Belle rose from the table. She felt sick—physically sick with physical jealousy and physical humiliation. The thought of Ernley entertaining that girl at the White Hart ... it was at the White Hart that she and Ernley had met and found paradise before they found it in the dark, reedy places of the Cuckmere ... they used to have lunch, with wine ... she felt the fierce, sweet taste of the wine upon her lips, mixed with the taste of cigarettes and Ernley’s kisses.... And now perhaps this girl, this stepper, this smasher, in her fur coat and silk stockings, with her silk ankle held between Ernley’s under the table—this unknown female, better looking, better dressed and better loved than Belle Shackford—perhaps she now had that dry, sweet, smoky taste upon her lips—cold, yet burning....

Belle was in the passage, tearing one of the milk and manure smelling overcoats off the pegs, wrapping herself in it and going out. She wanted air—breath—or she would be ill. She walked quickly across the yard, splashing recklessly into the pools that lay between the cobblestones, though they gleamed their warning in the light of the dusk. Her breast was seething with the alchemy of love and hate. She had never felt it before—this hate, this jealousy—shaking her, burning her.

She wanted to kill Ernley—she wanted to kill that dim, mocking figure of the girl her mind had dressed up. He was taking her home—to where he had never taken Belle—to his own home, his fireside. He would marry her—she would have him for ever—him, the real Ernley, whom passion alone could not give ... she could not bear it.... She was sobbing—screaming—she must go in somewhere and hide her shame.

Halfway down the farm drive an old cowhouse stood open and empty. Belle went blindly in and sank down on the floor. Bowing herself into a hoop, she sobbed and sobbed—first fearlessly and then with tears that scalded her face and blinded her eyes and finally exhausted her into motionless silence.

§ 3

About an hour later, her mind bled of all thought and her heart bled of all feeling, she walked feebly back into the yard, huddling the overcoat round her and shivering. She had only physical sensations left.

A lighted patch gleamed in the house, and suddenly her sister Nellie filled it, calling from the doorway:

“Come on, Belle—come on. Where have you been? Your young man says he can’t wait any longer.”

Her young man. Daniel Sheather.

Lucy stood in the passage.

“Here she is,” she called through the drawing-room door—then to Belle. “Do take off that awful old coat. What are you thinking of? You can’t go in like that. It smells of cow-dung.”

Belle slid the coat from her shoulders and hung it up. Then she went into the drawing-room. For a moment she stood in the door, swaying a little on her muddy feet. Her skirt was muddied at the hem and torn in two places, and in taking off her coat she had pulled her jersey off one shoulder, which gleamed large and golden in the lamplight.

Daniel, who was sitting at the far end of the room, sprang up and came towards her.

“Oh, Belle, I was so afraid you wouldn’t come in before I had to go. I promised I’d be back early to-night—but I had to come over to—to——”

The words poured out of him, then dried as he saw her close. “Belle, dear, what’s the matter? Has anything happened? Are you ill?”

“No, Dan, only—only ... I’ve been out walking, and slipped in the dark.”

She tried to finish the sentence in everyday words with an everyday voice, but though she managed the words, the voice failed her. She said “slipped in the dark” in the voice of a terrified child.

“My poor little Belle.”

His arms spread out maternally, and before she could grow up again they were round her. He rocked her to him, and in the sudden comfort of him her stiffness melted—her body relaxed and her heart began to feel again. It was at first a feeling of sheer dependence, of the huddling love of a child against the parent’s breast; she thrust her head into the warm hollow of his shoulder and shivered like a child.

“Oh, Danny, save me—such dreadful thoughts ... of Ernley ... help me to forget him. I never hated him before ... I’m frightened. Oh, I can’t bear it alone.”

“You shan’t bear it alone,” he murmured. “I’ll take care of you, lovely one. I will, I will. You’ll be all mine and I’ll take care of you—you’ll be all mine—won’t you, Belle?”

She had forgotten the promise she had made to herself and to him as she lay on her bed upstairs. That ghastly hour of hatred and physical jealousy, turning for the first time her tragedy into horror, seemed to have mown down her life like a scythe. She was starting afresh, in a bare field, unimpeded by old resolutions. All she knew was that she must have comfort, tenderness and protection, and that, surprisingly, little Dan Sheather could give them to her. She knew that she must have honour and truth to restore her self-respect and the respect of her family, who had guessed her humiliation. She knew that she must have some armour against Ernley’s wounding, or, after a few more blows, he would wound her to death.

“Danny,” she cried—“Danny, save me.”

He promised that he would, though he did not yet know from what or from whom.

CHAPTER SIX

§ 1

It had all happened as in her heart she had expected. Her surrender had broken her life in two, and the fiery city of her love for Ernley and the bleak wilderness of its frustration lay beyond a gulf. She neither loved him nor hated him, nor was she any longer jealous of the girl who now had his kisses. She could face the prospect of meeting him—perhaps meeting them both—in the inevitable future. Neither had she, curiously enough, any feelings of triumph or self-vindication towards him or towards her family. She was not proud of her engagement to Daniel Sheather any more than one is proud of the bed on which one finds rest at the end of a weary day.

At first she was conscious of little except relief and peace. Those experiences which might have disquieted her had now no power to shake the lethargy of her being. The day after her promise Dan brought her over to Bullockdean to show his parents. She saw the contempt flickering in the younger brother’s eyes, she felt the occasional sting of the mother’s tongue, but neither could rouse her from her quiet leaning against Daniel. She liked his father too, who had Daniel’s face, with sea-blue eyes in it; there was nothing sharp nor contemptuous about him, and she saw in him without offence the naïve admiration of the male for her big charms.

Of course, if she would consent to live at the George and help with its management they could be married almost at once—there was a room, probably a couple of rooms, to spare, and she would be useful in the house and in the bar, and so earn her keep. On the other hand, if she refused, their marriage was as indefinite as hers and Ernley’s had ever seemed; Daniel would have to hunt the blue lion of the ex-service man—a job, and having found it would have to contrive, perhaps for some years, to make a living out of it himself before he attempted to support her on it too.

He scarcely seemed to doubt that she would be willing to live at the George, but she refused to make any promises. If the past were cut off from her by a gulf, the future was wrapped from her in a mist. It was essential to her new-found calm that she should not try to search it. If she had to think of the future, new doubts and new cares would arise. To-day she could look out unmoved from the shabby windows of the George’s bar and see across the road the windows of the Crown behind their snug red curtains. But could she feel sure that she would always be able to do this? She would never even ask herself the question. When the future came she would face it, but till it came she would not bring it any nearer, either with questions or with promises.

“It’s too soon to think of marrying now. I want to get used to—to this first, Daniel.”

He looked at her with his slow, spreading smile, which became mixed with a little reproach when it reached his eyes.

“Oh, Belle!... oh, dearie!”

“We haven’t been engaged a week, and before we settle to get married we’ll have to think of ever so many things. And I don’t want to think of anything just yet, Daniel.”

Her voice trembled a little, and his compassion was immediate.

“Very well, darling—then you shan’t. You shan’t ever—I’ll do all the thinking for you. Not that I was ever such a valiant chap for brains, but I can think of ordinary things.”

She knew that this courtship was moving on lines exactly opposite to the old one. Then she had been the one anxious to marry, and Ernley the one contented to drift. But probably the reasons had been the same—she had wanted to marry Ernley for the same reason that Daniel wanted to marry her—because she was not sure. She knew that, in spite of her promises, Daniel was not sure of her, and sometimes a dreadful compassion smote her. He was so sweet, so kind, so innocent, she must never make him the victim of her needs, she must never let him suffer because of her. Whatever she felt, whatever her awakening, he must not be hurt. She had sacrificed him once to her own urgencies, and it was her task to see that she did not sacrifice him again—though she realized vaguely that he was the kind of man whom women will always sacrifice, either to themselves or to other men.

§ 2

In spite of occasional qualms, those days of late February were happy enough. Belle found Dan’s lovemaking a sweeter experience than she had expected—she had expected to find him common and unpractised, challenging contrast with Ernley every hour; she had expected to find herself a cold slag-heap of burnt-out emotions. She was surprised to find that the spark in her was not dead, and that the word and touch of love had power to fan it once more into flame. She saw that Daniel would be able to give her what other men besides Ernley had given, the things which do not really matter and yet are so sweet. He could give her the exquisite moments she loved, and because he was not Ernley, she could forget herself in these, and be happy, and not wish for anything more that he could not give.

Hence she was, in a manner of speaking, happier than in the days of her love for Ernley. Dan was a much more restful lover—though he showed occasionally an ardour that surprised her, there was really as much of affection as of passion in his wooing. It delighted him to cherish her, to button her coat and tie her scarf, to rub her hands when they were cold.... And she, in the new joy of being looked after, could forgive him much that sometimes jarred—ways that weren’t the ways of Ernley, the ways of the Crown, but the common ways of the George, reminding her that she was stooping to her refuge....

Of course Ted Shackford was only a tenant farmer, and his daughters worked hard in house and barn—but they wore silk, and when their young men took them out they expected the best seats at the pictures and to be fed at hotels and cafés. Ernley had been an especial adept at this taking out. In the side-car of his motor-cycle Belle had ridden like a queen—to hotels and theatres and picture palaces, in Eastbourne, Lewes, Newhaven and Brighton. She had driven home with great beribboned chocolate boxes on her knees, or bunches of expensive flowers. Her sisters and friends had envied her. They did not envy her now, though they thought Dan was well enough in his way, and were glad that Belle should marry respectably before she came a cropper.

Daniel never took her anywhere except upon the broad back of the down, to the hollows by White Lion pond, or to the five haystacks standing against the sky beyond Barndean. Here they would sit on his spread coat, huddling together for warmth, he kissing and fondling her, smoking innumerable Woodbines, and talking plain country talk of birds and animals and paths and people. Nearly all their lovemaking took place out of doors. Neither Batchelors’ nor the George was quite congenial. If it had not been so cold, Belle would have asked for nothing better. As it was, she sometimes wondered why he never suggested a picture palace.

Beyond his family she had so far met none of his friends in Bullockdean. She shrank from meeting people whom she knew thought no good of her. The Harmans, the Pilbeams, the Ponts, everybody, thought of poor Belle Shackford as trash. If socially she was stooping to Daniel, in every other way he was stooping to her. She was a girl of no character, the clack of two parishes, chiefly, but not only, in connexion with young Munk. She knew that some people said she was a bad lot, and most that she was no better than she should be. She didn’t try to justify herself against these criticisms, but she sometimes wondered if the women who judged her could ever have felt as she felt, or surely they would have understood. Were there women who went through life cold, calm and sedate, unmoved, untempted, unshaken? She wondered.

§ 3

Circumstances had combined to prevent a meeting between her and Ernley. Almost directly she had given her promise to Dan, Ernley had gone off to visit an uncle in Streatham. Belle had at first wondered if this were mere circumstance, but Daniel had assured her that old Ernley had been planning this visit for weeks, and he had expected him to make it just about now.

“You wouldn’t mind meeting old Ernley again—would you, Belle?”

“No, of course not.”

She spoke the truth. Her calm still remained unbroken; indeed it was growing, thickening in the comfortable atmosphere of Dan’s affection. She was a more placid creature than she had ever been before.

Directly Ernley came back to the Crown, Daniel put him the same question.

“You won’t mind meeting Belle again, will you, Ernley?”

“Of course not, you silly fool. Why the devil should I now?”

“Oh, no, of course not. I was only asking. I was thinking of having Belle over to spend a night or two next week. Maybe you could come to supper.”

“I’d be pleased. Why should you think I’d mind meeting her? Does she mind meeting me?”

“Oh, dear, no. She said she’d be glad.”

“That’s all right, then. The past’s forgotten, the hatchet’s buried. Have a drink.”

Dan felt infinitely relieved. Having seen so much of Belle and Ernley in the last destructive days of their love, he had found it difficult to believe that they could ever meet like ordinary human beings—though each had found, as they say, consolation elsewhere.

“How are you getting on with Pearl?” he asked.

“Oh, fine. Couldn’t be better. We had a day together in town while I was at Streatham.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

Ernley flushed.

“How can I tell? It depends on what dad thinks of it. He’s seen her once—I brought her over here—and he likes her. But I dunno. I don’t think I’m the sort of chap to get married. Not but that I’m sure to do it some day. I’ll make a damn bad husband to some poor girl.”

“That’s what you say. I don’t think so.”

“Because you don’t know half what a moody, broody sort of devil I am. I hate domestic life too—cookery books and babies and all that. You love that sort of thing, so you’re wise to get married. When is it to be?”

“I dunno. We haven’t settled yet. It all depends whether Belle ull live at the George.”

“You never thought of having her to live at the George?”

“Well, where else are we to live? If I have to leave home and get a job we can’t get married for years.”

“But you couldn’t have her at the George. It ud be impossible. She’d never cotton to that kind of life—all mixed up with your family.”

“Well, she’s lived all mixed up with her own, and they not so good as mine. And if you’d married her she’d have lived all mixed up with yours.”

“I’ve only got dad—and, Lord! it’s very different here.... But I’d better not be offensive. Belle knows how to look after herself—damn well she does! Not much putting up with unnecessary evils about Belle.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

§ 1

In spite of the professed readiness of the parties to meet each other it was not till a fortnight later that the meeting took place. First it had been obstructed by Ernley’s wish to bring his new girl, who was not available during the first week, and then by an unexpected reluctance on the part of Belle.

“But, sweetheart Belle, you said you didn’t mind meeting him.”

“And no more I do. Only I don’t want to just yet.”

“But you’ll have to do it some day—may as well do it now.”

She held out her arms to him suddenly.

“Oh, Daniel, I’m so happy—don’t let me go.”

“Let you go, lovey? That I won’t!”

He took her in his arms, and she felt his warm, gentle embrace drawing her close, till the throbbing of his heart was under hers.

“Daniel—I want to stay where I am—not go further, I mean. I’m so happy here.”

Her words were nothing to him but the echo of his own happiness in their embrace.

“Sweetheart ... I’d like to hold you always. Belle, my arms are round you always, even though you don’t see ’em.”

She gave way about meeting Ernley. After all, she must do so some time, and to feel herself, in spite of all, unready, made her afraid—made her deny her own unwillingness by acceptance. As for the added sharpness of his bringing his new girl, that might make the dose more efficacious—and she must get used to that too, as much as to the other ... every day—all her life ... only the road between them.

When the evening came and Daniel fetched her over from Batchelors’ Hall, he was disappointed to find that she was not looking her best. He too was inclined to resent the inclusion of Ernley’s girl, and his aim was to show her the woman she had supplanted as in every way a finer woman than herself. But for the last two or three days Belle had looked tired and off colour—her brightness seemed to have faded, her bigness seemed to have sagged, and Daniel, who admired brightness and bigness, was sorry, not for his own sake, but for hers.

Possibly, to a taste less naïve than his, Belle was improved by her paler looks. The ebbing of her brave colour seemed to have left her features more delicately graven, and the dimming of her eyes had given them a provoking shadowed look. She wore a yellow frock the colour of her hair.

“Your body’s undone at the back,” was Kitty Sheather’s greeting to her future daughter-in-law.

Dan—who had reluctantly contemplated Belle’s blue silk camisole on every occasion of precedence due to a lady—but had been too shy to admit it—felt relieved at his mother’s remark, though he could have wished it made more graciously.

Belle grabbed at her back, pulling her bodice, which straightway burst on the shoulder. Kitty giggled, and it seemed to Dan as if his darling’s blue eyes swam a little. His mother didn’t offer to help her, and moved by tenderness, he was no longer shy.

“Let me help you fasten up.”

He was just going to embark for the first time on the pathetic masculine struggle with hook and eye when Kitty indignantly pushed him aside.

“How dare you! I always think you a modest boy. I won’t have such things in my house. No!”

She had Belle tidy only just as the others arrived. They came in looking, perhaps by contrast, the picture of orderliness and ease. Ernley wore a blue lounge suit that made Daniel, also in a blue lounge suit, lose faith in the gent’s outfitters who had provided it. Ernley’s girl, Miss Jenner, was hall-marked Eastbourne, and evidently made Belle feel the same as Ernley had made Dan—though personally he didn’t think much of her plain black frock and little black hat in comparison with Belle’s yellow finery.

Supper was laid in the parlour at the back of the bar. It was a very superior supper, almost dinner in fact, with a couple of fowls and a treacle sponge. The drinks had been surreptitiously bought at the Crown, Tom having decided at the last moment that his bondmaster’s ale was not good enough for his guests. Dan, who had made the purchase under a vow of secrecy from Maudie Harman, suspected that Ernley guessed what had happened. He knew that the George was tied to Messrs. Hobday and Hitch, and that Messrs. Bass’s Number One was not to be found locally except in the cellars of the Crown. In vain Dan laboured to keep the bottles out of sight.... Not that he minded old Ernley knowing, any more than he minded him having a blue lounge suit that really fitted him—but he did not want Miss Jenner to think that Belle had fallen socially ... though, of course, she had ... marrying the George after being engaged to the Crown....

Dear lovely thing! As he watched her he thrilled with pride and tenderness. She was beautiful—her dress was beautiful—even though the bunch of silk flowers at her waist was a little crushed and she was always pulling them up and flouncing them out a bit. She had more scent than Miss Jenner too—it came to him in generous waves right across the table—whereas Miss Jenner’s only rose faintly from beside him. He didn’t really like scent much, still if girls used it he’d like Belle’s to be stronger than anyone else’s ... and she’d made her nails shine too, like the others—they were even brighter—though her hands were very different, being large and work-worn instead of small and white. Miss Jenner did not have to work at all—nor did her father, she told them—he was private, having retired some years ago from the building trade.

The conversation on the whole lacked spirit. No one knew whether Ernley and his girl were engaged, therefore how far it was permissible to go in raillery, and neither said anything by way of enlightenment. They talked a little about the rates, about the need of remaking the road on the east side of the valley, about a recent meet of the Southdown Hunt at Beddingham, about the new motor-’buses on the roads. Miss Jenner was very polite to Belle, admired her dress, told her about a very good shop for hats in Eastbourne and asked her if she ever went to dance at the Grand Hotel. Belle, except in answer to such questions, scarcely spoke, nor did she eat much. She sat, heavy and lovely and silent, the lamp drenching her in gold.

After supper they had a table for whist, that is to say Kitty and Ernley played Christopher and Miss Jenner, while Tom Sheather served in the bar. Dan and Belle sat and watched the whist-players, side by side on the sofa, he with his arm round her waist, as he was privileged to sit in public now they were engaged.

§ 2

“That’s a fine girl Munk has got,” said Chris, when the guests had departed and Belle had gone to help Kitty wash up in the scullery.

“Not so bad,” said Tom Sheather.

Dan swelled in silence.

“A lot of style,” commented Chris.

“Oh, yes—a lot of style. But I don’t think she comes up to our Belle.”

Chris said nothing—insultingly.

“You’ve got the best girl, Daniel,” continued his father—“and I bet young Munk sees it. I could see him staring at her all through supper. I expect he’s sorry he changed—but I reckon Belle isn’t. Hey, Daniel?”

He smote his son between the shoulders, and Dan felt loving and grateful towards him, though he still wished the family differently grouped in its alliances.

Kitty also had something to say on the subject of Munk’s girl.

“She’s quite a lady—you can see that. Never done any work.”

“Ladies’ work,” said Dan sullenly. “Look at Mrs. Penny. I’ve seen her washing her own curtains.”

Kitty sniffed.

“I dare say. I know Mrs. Penny’s sort of lady. A real lady never put her hand to anything. Dr. le Hellé’s wife in Guernsey she sit in her drawing-room all day, and ring the bell if she drop her handkerchief. Give me that sort of lady.”

“Well, don’t give her to me, that’s all.”

“Oh, indeed, Mister Impertinence! That is the way you speak to your mother when she is going to sit in the kitchen so that you and your young woman can sit in the parlour. I have half a mind to go to bed, and then you two cannot stay alone downstairs—no!”

“I’m sorry, mum. But I can’t bear to hear everybody except dad getting at Belle.”

“Who’s been getting at her? Not I. I have nothing to say against Belle if she will be a good girl. When I spoke of a lady I did not speak of her for you. No lady would marry a common boy.”

Holding his tongue with difficulty on the subject of common boys, Dan walked out of the kitchen and into the parlour, where he found Belle sitting under the lamp.

“Are you tired, sweetheart?”

“A little—only a little.”

“You shouldn’t ought to have washed up. Why didn’t you tell mother you were tired?”

Belle said nothing. She rose slowly and came towards Daniel as he sat on the sofa. She put her arms about him and hid her face in his shoulder.

“My lovely, my dear!” He strained her to his heart.

She did not want him to speak; she wanted just to lie heavy against him, at rest in the homely comfort of his arms; but his tongue, oiled by more generous liquor than he was accustomed to, ran on.

“Oh, darling, it’s so lovely to think that I’ve got you here with me at home to-night. That you’re not going away. It’s almost like the time when I’ll have you here always. Oh, say that time ull come soon.”

She did not speak, but he did not seem to want her assurance in words but in kisses. He stooped his head to hers as it lay on his breast, the bright rough gold all teased over his shoulder. She found herself giving her usual response, or, rather, her response coming from her ungiven, feeling apart from will.

“If you can only put up with this place for a bit,” he ran on, “I reckon it won’t be long before we get one of our own. With you to help, I’m sure mother ud give teas—and maybe let rooms, even. Then she wouldn’t want any of the money that I earn, and we could put it by. And I know dad ud help us if ever he got the chance. It’s not much I’m offering you, Belle, but I do feel as I could make you happy if you let me try.”

“I know you could, Danny—but——”

“Oh, say you’ll let me try. If you won’t come here, reckon we can’t get married for months and years. And, oh, lovely Belle, I want you so. I want you terrible—here, as I have you now. I want you and me alone together. Oh, Belle, say you’ll let me try.”

“And suppose you fail.”

She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked him suddenly in the eyes.

“And suppose you fail.”

“Fail!”—he seemed startled by the new thought—“I shan’t fail. I can’t fail. I love you too much. And, Belle, you do love me—you’ve said you love me. Oh, you still love me? Say it again.”

“I do love you, Danny dear. You know it, but——”

“Then why won’t you let me try? Why won’t you marry me at Easter and come and live here? I know it’s not what I should ought to be offering you, but it really won’t be so bad. We’ll have a couple of rooms of our own—and I’ll see as you don’t do anything but what a lady ud be willing to put her hand to in her house. We’ll keep quite private to ourselves a lot of the time. Oh, Belle, you don’t have such an easy life at Batchelors’ that you need worry about coming here. This ull be a rest to you after Batchelors’, and mother ull be good to you, I swear she will. Her tongue’s sharp like that to everyone—and dad he thinks no end of you and ull treat you kinder than your own. And I—oh, lovely Belle, I’ll be so good to you. I’ll stand between you and everything that’s rough—I’ll take care of you as if you was my child. Belle, you shall be my child and my queen if only you’ll be my wife.”

The Crown’s ale had given him a new and surprising eloquence. Belle was moved by it. She had never before had him so fluent, so shaken. As she looked into his pleading face it was almost as if its Saxon bluntness of feature was lost in the brilliance of his brown, French eyes. This was a Daniel of another, more fiery race, stirred into life by the emotion of his love.

After all, he had only said what was true when he had argued that she would, other considerations apart, be happier at the George than at Batchelors’ Hall. Her mother-in-law’s tongue would not be much sharper than her sister Lucy’s—she liked kind Tom Sheather—she need not see much of Ernley.... And she would have Dan always with her—dear Dan!—who was so strong and sturdy and comfortable, and so surprisingly, amazingly sweet ... always with her ... never alone with her fears ... too late for her doubts ... the future had come upon her. She must meet it—surrender to it. She could not turn and flee—she could not disappoint him, who had already saved her from so much.

“Belle—let me try.”

She turned her face once more to his shoulder, and gave her consent in silence, while his incoherent words of gratitude stormed at her ears.

§ 3

For the first half of the night Belle slept heavily, according to her nature. But towards morning she began to dream—queer confused dreams of the supper-table and Ernley’s face.... She heard Ernley saying again and again, “Let me try”—and awoke to remember it was Daniel who had said it. She awoke in this way several times, and at last could not fall asleep again. She lay on her back staring at the ceiling, which seemed so near after the ceiling of her room at Batchelors’ Hall. A queer light hung over it—the starlight reflected in her mirror and then cast upwards to the beams.

She must think now—she could not help it. She must think of Daniel and Ernley—Daniel to whom she had promised herself, and Ernley to whom she belonged. It was dreadful; it was humbling to realize that in spite of all that had happened, all that she had done to break her chains, she still belonged to Ernley; yet such was the situation as she saw it in the clearness of the wakeful small hours. She saw, too, that her complete surrender to Daniel, her promise to marry him at Easter, was almost entirely due to her growing realization that her heart was still Ernley’s. Twice she had known the full vitality of her surviving love for Ernley—when she had heard he loved another woman, and this last night; and each time the knowledge had driven her a definite step towards Daniel. But for the first she would never have become engaged to him; but for the second she would not have promised to marry him next month.

Was this fair to him? Of course it wasn’t; but she really could not help it. The more she realized what she had lost in Ernley the more imperative it became that she must take what she could get in Daniel. The more she realized the superiority of the Crown, the more her only chance of happiness seemed to lie in her finding a home at the George. If she had not got Daniel, she would be down and out. She was not the sort of woman who can say “the best or nothing”—she was not so fortunate as that. She must have something, somebody to fill a little of the emptiness which had come into her life when she lost her only chance of the best.

Of course it wasn’t fair to Daniel. Poor Danny.... He loved her. She was quite sure of his devotion, and tragically he was quite sure of hers. He had sometimes been doubtful and deprecating before their engagement, but ever since he had taken her surprisingly for granted. Well, then, he had only himself to thank if he was made the victim of her desperate need. After all, it was rather cool of him to imagine that she would look at him after Ernley—so soon after Ernley. He had changed his part of vicarious wooer to that of actual wooer without apparently one qualm of diffidence. It served him right to be taken at his word instead of being sent packing, as would have happened with most women. He had offered her comfort and oblivion—she would take them and let him face the consequences of his own offering.

Probably the consequences would not be so very serious. He was thick enough not to guess much that would be passing in her mind; she could no doubt make him happy enough—anyhow far happier than he would be without her.... If only she could get rid of this queer sense of kinship she had with Ernley ... a kinship quite apart from breeding, education and manners—which would still have existed if Ernley had been the son of the George and Daniel the son of the Crown. It was part of a feeling that Ernley’s life, opinions, happiness, surroundings, mattered to her intensely, whereas Dan’s did not. All that mattered to her about Dan was his love, his kisses, his protection, all, in fact, of herself that was in him.

These thoughts carried her through into the morning. The window-square became a chilly, sullen blue—the outlines of the furniture began to appear among clouds of shadow. A photograph of Daniel, which he had given her in the first week of their engagement, stood on the little table by her bed, beside her candlestick. She had brought it with her from Batchelors’ Hall, knowing that he would be pleased at such a token of attachment. It was not a good photograph—it was a portrait he had had taken soon after he joined up in ’16. There he sat, looking very stiff and upright, with his swagger-stick across his knees, his eyes black and bolting under his service cap, which was set at the conventionally rakish angle. He seemed to stare at her through the gathering light.... What a typical little soldier he looked—just a little ordinary swaddy—such as she had seen in thousands marching through Lewes, singing “It’s a long, long trail,” or “Sussex by the sea.” ... But she was a beast to think of him like that—he was not an ordinary little soldier; he was a kind, devoted, patient young lover whose only crime lay in giving her more than she could receive. Even if he knew what was passing in her mind he would not reproach her—he would be humble enough to take the crumbs of Ernley’s feast. All he wanted was, indeed, to be of service—to be her dog. In taking from him so much and giving him so little, she was not, all things considered, using him so ill.

CHAPTER EIGHT

§ 1

The next morning it was Dan’s turn to be Bullockdean at the village altar, and having tried in vain to force an extra day’s representation on Freddie Pont or Tommy Pilbeam, he resolved not to disappoint Mr. Marchbanks, but to sacrifice five minutes of Belle’s society. It was not likely to be more, as he expected her to take advantage of her absence from home, by having a good rest in bed. But by seven o’clock Belle was tired of her thoughts and of the hard places of the George’s best bed, so she rose, dressed, and came downstairs into a silent and chilly darkness.

The blinds were all down, for the Sheathers were not at their best early risers, and this morning they were tired after their dissipations. Belle opened the door, which Daniel had left on the latch, and walked out. The street was full of the pale March sunshine and the tossing March wind. The signs of the George and the Crown swung creakingly to and fro. Belle stared up at the blind face of the Crown. The street was empty, the village seemed asleep except for the columns of smoke that the wind spun, scattering them every now and then in wood-scented clouds that swept down from the roofs and mixed with the pale sunshine in the street.

Belle knew where Daniel had gone and walked up the church lane in hopes of meeting him. There were, in spite of his simplicity, one or two things in him that she could not understand. She wondered if he was religious—she thought not, for he never spoke of it. But he was a good boy, that she knew. He had always been good, even during the difficult days of the war—and, unlike many good people, he had always been kind.... Oh, she must not let him suffer! He must never suffer because of his sweetness, his generosity, his daring towards her.

She had come to the churchyard gate and would not go any farther. The lane had by now reached a level above the rest of the village, and from where she stood she was looking down on the Crown garden. It was a fine big place, plentifully studded with arbours which in summer would give shade to tea-drinking couples. Dan wanted the George to “give teas,” and thought perhaps it would do so when Belle was there to help. But there wasn’t room for two inns of that sort in the same little village—the George would simply smash once it went into deliberate competition with the Crown. That was another of Dan’s silly ideas. He ought to see that the George’s only chance was to keep its own common ways—his father had better sense than he.

A man had come out of a shed in the Crown garden and was walking towards the house. She knew immediately, by his figure and his walk, that he was Ernley. Her breath thickened, and suddenly she felt almost faint and clung to a stake in the hedgerow for support. Good Lord! what was happening to her if she could not bear even the distant sight of Ernley? Every effort she made at her own reassurance seemed only to land her further in doubt. What would become of her?

“Belle—darling! This is a fine surprise.”

Daniel had come through the gate while she stood lost in her new weakness. He put his cold cheek to hers and she found her usual comfort.

“Oh, Danny, I’m so glad to see you.”

“And I to see you, sweetheart. I never thought you’d be out so early.

“I woke up early.”

“Didn’t you sleep well, dearie? Weren’t you comfortable? I know most of our beds are full of lumps.”

“Oh, I was right enough. But I felt wide awake—and I’m not used to lying long.”

“Belle, must you go home to-day? Can’t you stay till to-morrow? I seem to have had so little of you.”

“I must go, I reckon. We’re short-handed as it is. But you’ll be coming over soon.”

“I’ll walk over with you to-day—but I’d sooner have you here.”

He stopped and drew her to him in the last shelter of the lane.

As he released her he seemed to notice something.

“Darling, are you well? You’re looking terrible pale.”

“Oh, I’m right enough.”

“But you shouldn’t ought to have come out like this before breakfast, on an empty stomach.”

“And what about yours?”

“Oh, I’m used to it. I’m tough. But you—you just about want someone to take care of you.”

He kissed her fiercely—without shelter.

“Oh, Danny—don’t. Not out here in the street.”

She had a sudden fear that Ernley would see.

“There ain’t nobody about.”

“But someone might be looking out of a window.”

He saw her eyes slant upwards to the windows of the Crown.

“Don’t you worry about old Ernley. It ud do him good to see us.”

She was seized with a strange fury at his insensitiveness. Her heart beat wildly, and for the first time she nearly gave him bitter words. But she managed to force herself to silence, and they went into the George together. Breakfast was laid in the kitchen—a substantial meal, richly various for a man who could not pay his brewer.

“Good morning, mum—good morning, dad. Here we are—here’s Belle. Reckon she’s dying for her breakfast, same as I am.”

Dan’s cheerful voice seemed to fill the room, or rather to fill all of it that was not filled by the voices of Kitty and Tom and Chris. Perversely, Belle herself felt unable to speak a word. Having shut her mouth on bitterness, she seemed unable to open it again for friendliness or greeting. She sat down beside Dan at the table—sausages appeared before her, bread and butter and a great cup of tea.

“My, Belle! but you’re looking ornery!”

Tom Sheather’s voice came down the table, bellowing ... she saw Dan cutting more bread ... she felt just as she had felt when she was watching Ernley in the Crown garden ... almost faint ... quite faint. She went suddenly in a huddle to the floor.

§ 2

The next thing that she became conscious of was a pair of eyes, looking down at her. They were dark eyes like Daniel’s, yet not Daniel’s, and they seemed to be boring down into hers, reading the inmost secrets of her heart—secrets of which even she herself was unaware. Then slowly a face surrounded them, and she realized that she was lying with her head on Kitty Sheather’s knee, looking up into her face.

She stirred uneasily, and moaned.

“Belle—Belle——”

The agonized voice came from beside her, and with a slight roll of her head she looked into Daniel’s face, convulsed and pitying.

“Oh, my darling—my poor darling!... Don’t be frightened, sweet—you’re better now. Here’s dad with some brandy.”

Tom Sheather held a flask to her lips. She drank it, gulped and sat up. For a moment the room seemed to go round, then steadied itself again. She gripped Daniel’s arm and laughed weakly.

“I fainted.”

“You’re tired, my precious—you’ve been working too hard, and you shouldn’t ought to have got up so early. Now you shall go back to bed and stay there till you’re rested.”

“No—I must go home.”

The words were out of her almost before she realized her own urgency.

“But you can’t possibly—it ud be wicked for you to go when you’re tired and ill like this.”

“I must go—I’m quite well now.”

She had scrambled to her feet, and stood swaying and clutching him by the shoulder.

“Don’t be silly, my dear,” said Tom Sheather; “we’d have it on our conscience if you went home to-day.”

“But I must—I must. I tell you I can’t stay.” Her need seemed to grow in desperation every minute. “Danny can drive me—you’ve got a trap. Please, please, Danny, take me home.”

The clear voice of Kitty Sheather broke into the discussion.

“Let her go if she want to—there’s nothing the matter with her.”

“Oh, mum! How can you speak so? Look how white she is. Is it natural for a girl to faint at her breakfast?”

“Yes,” said Kitty coolly, “sometimes quite natural.”

Belle walked towards the door, waving back Daniel when he tried to follow.

“You go and get out the trap. Please don’t come—please don’t keep me.”

She managed to hold back her tears till she was out of the room. She was aware of some sort of argument going on behind the closed door, but Daniel did not come out to her, as she had feared. No doubt his mother’s notions of propriety forbade his helping her with her packing. To her great relief, Kitty did not come either. She was left alone. She felt quite well again now, but she could not stop crying. Her tears fell on her clothes as she folded them and put them in her bag. When she had finished packing she had to wait a few minutes till they had ceased.

At last she was ready and had come downstairs in her coat of purple freize, with her sky-blue tam o’ shanter crammed down over her hair, which she had not troubled to brush out of its recent confusion. Dan was waiting for her with the trap, miserable, but resigned. Her farewells were said—defensively to Chris, gratefully to Tom, nervously to Kitty—and she was up in the trap beside Daniel, driving down Bullockdean street under the staring windows of the Crown.

“How are you feeling, dear?” he asked her every moment, and when they were out of the village he wanted to put his arm round her. Almost without knowing what she did, she pushed him away.

“Don’t, Danny, you mustn’t do that—you can’t drive with only one arm. Please get me home quickly—quickly.”

§ 3

When they came to Batchelors’ Hall, she would not let him stay. He wanted to go indoors with her and explain to her family that she was ill, and must rest. But she would not let him. She gave him on the doorstep an almost sacrificial kiss, and stood watching him drive through the gate before she went in.

Daniel was bewildered, not only by the last hour but by all the events of the morning. He was bewildered by Belle’s illness, still more by his mother’s indifference in the face of such a calamity, and most of all by Belle’s new strange aloofness, refusing his comfort when most she seemed to need it. As a rule, in her blooming health, he had always found her eager to lean on him, but now when she was ill, faint and tired, she seemed to turn away. He was distressed.

These sad thoughts occupied him all the way home, but when he reached the George they were immediately dispelled, not by any comfort, but by a fresh piece of catastrophe.

“What you think’s happened?” cried Kitty from the open door as he drove up.

“I dunno—anything good?”

“Good! I shouldn’t call it good, but I never know what you think.”

She was evidently more moved than by poor Belle’s afflictions.

“Well, then, what is it, mum?”

“James Munk—old Munk—he’s dead.”

Daniel gaped.

“He was knocked down and killed in Lewes this morning,” put in Tom Sheather over his wife’s shoulder. “A car got him as he stepped off the pavement. This very morning it was—he’s just been brought home.”

“And now Ernley have the Crown and get married at once,” said Kitty.

Dan still found himself speechless. James Munk had continually maddened him and scared him with his bitter gifts of tongue—but to be dead ... to be swept suddenly out of life in the familiar High Street of Lewes, among all the traps and cars and people and driven beasts ... he felt the back of his throat thicken with the beginnings of a sob, and hastily whipping up Spot, he drove round to the back yard, where he could be unmanly if he wished.

All that day nothing else was talked of in Bullockdean. Maudie Harman answered a continual stream of inquiries in the bar, and by common consent almost nothing but sherry was ordered, sherry being for some obscure reason considered locally as the only suitable drink in the presence of death.

Dan did not go over to the Crown. He did not know what to say to Ernley. He did not know what Ernley was feeling, whether he, too, felt all the pathos and horror of death like that in Lewes Street, or whether he was only thinking that now he was free, master of the Crown and of himself, or perhaps wondering what would have happened if his freedom had come earlier, when he was still Belle Shackford’s lover.... He had never credited Ernley with any strong feelings for his father, and he knew he wasn’t the kind of man to speak as he didn’t feel. He would not speak of James Munk in the way Daniel was accustomed to hear speak of the dead, and something in young Sheather’s country heart was shocked at the idea, and would not let him go where there was a chance of good ways being set at naught.

At the George there was also plenty of talk, but it was in the right tradition. Neither Kitty nor Tom had had a good word to say for Munk while he was alive, but they had nothing but good to say of him now he was dead.

“Poor chap!” said Tom. “I saw him drive away soon after you did, Daniel—wearing his grey suit ... it seems terrible, don’t it? I’d just come up from the cellar with some of the stout, and I heard wheels and I thought ‘that can’t be Dan come back—no, it’s from the Crown’—and that very moment James Munk drove past the winder.”

“Was Ernley with him?”

“No, he was alone; but he’d got a crate or something at the back of the trap. If I’d known what was going to happen, I’d have looked more particular.”

Tom sighed regretfully. The next minute he changed the subject.

“But here we are in such a terrification about poor Munk, who’s dead, that we’ve forgotten our Belle, who’s living. I hope you left her feeling better, Daniel.”

“Yes, I think she was better, dad. She said she was—she wouldn’t let me come in.”

“Well, I hope she won’t go working herself to death at that place. That’s what’s the matter with her, you mark my words. Shackford can’t afford a proper lot of men, so he works his girls to death. Poor soul! It made my heart bleed to see her looking so ordinary.”

“It was nothing,” said Kitty, “only a little morning faintness.”

Something in her voice and in her look, as well as something vaguely suggestive and familiar about her words, made Daniel start and turn suddenly hot.

“What d’you mean, mum?”

“Only that I think you’ll soon have something more of Ernley’s to take over.”

She was standing near the door, and went out as she spoke. Dan remained, gaping at his father.

“Come, lad, don’t take on,” pleaded Tom. “Reckon mum didn’t mean what she said.”

But Daniel was no longer there.

§ 4

The news of James Munk’s death came to Batchelors’ Hall almost as quickly as it had come to Bullockdean. Fred Shackford brought it back from Lewes, and had it all ready to retail to his girls at dinner.

“He’d left his trap at the White Hart, and was just going to cross the road to Mr. Vine’s shop, when, as he stepped off the pavement, a car got him. A private car it was, driven by a gentleman from Guildford. Lord! they were upset—the lady in the back seat fainted right away. No one was to blame, they say—car going quite slow and on its proper side—only old Munk stepped off without looking around. I didn’t see it happen—- didn’t get up in time—but I saw some of the blood.”

“Was he alone?” asked Lucy. “Wasn’t Ernley with him?”

“No, he was quite alone; but, of course, everyone knew who he was. I heard it was Munk before I got anywhere near.”

“Ernley ull be able to get married now.”

“So he will, and he’ll be a bit of a catch, too. I hear the Crown’s worth something these days.”

“Mr. Munk wanted him to marry a lady. He thought he could, with the education he’d given him, and he being an officer in the war. I wonder if the girl he’s got now is a lady?”

“She looked one. But by this time it don’t matter. He can marry whom he chooses. Poor old Munk can’t stop him.”

Belle said nothing till dinner was over, then she went up to her room. She did not cry or make any sound, but in her heart was a twisting, strangling despair.

Ernley was free. He could marry anybody he chose. He could marry Pearl Jenner in her refined black frock, with her Eastbourne accent and her private father. He could have married Belle if only James Munk had died a little earlier, or if only she had been patient a little longer. He had always meant to marry her some day, either when he had found a job or his father had relented. Belle had told herself—and, unfortunately, him—that if he really loved her he would not wait, but would marry her at once, and they would face poverty together. He had assured her in return that he did love her, but that for her own sake as well as his he would not marry her without maintenance or independence. She had not believed him, and they had quarrelled—many times—and been reconciled—many times. And now, after the last quarrel, she had refused reconciliation, and instead had pledged herself to a man who was ready to marry her without maintenance or independence. Whereas, if she had waited only a few more weeks she could have had Ernley and both.

That was the sort of trick you had played on you when you were bad. Maybe if she had been good all this would never have happened. Good people would say she had got what she deserved. Perhaps they were right. After all, she ought to have understood.... Men don’t love women the way women love men. Ernley had not wanted of her all that she wanted of him, so he had been happy and satisfied without marriage. He had been happy because he did not want so much. She had made too many demands on him ... she had been like the daughter of the horseleech saying, “give—give.” She had said: “It isn’t enough that you’ve given me your friendship and so much joy—I want everything you’ve got: your home, your family, your daily life, your leisure. Give—give!”

She had asked for so much that she had got nothing. She saw that she hadn’t got even Daniel now. She could not marry Daniel now that she knew she carried Ernley’s child. To her spirit’s long recoil had now been added the recoil of the flesh—and the thing was impossible. She carried Ernley himself in her body. She could not give even so much as her body to Daniel.

She felt neither joy nor sorrow, only a deadly fear. It seemed a long time now that she had felt this fear, but it had been only faint, half-realized, a vague sickness. Now it had shape and name. Kitty Sheather’s boring eyes had given it both. She knew now what for long she had suspected, and she knew, too, that her suspicions had been more vigorous than she would acknowledge at the time. She had thrust them from her with hasty reassurances, born of ignorance out of desperation. But they, more than any bodily condition, had been responsible for her ill-health, and now that they were no longer thrust aside, but an admitted part of her stress, she felt curiously well. It was her bodily health alone that enabled her to face the future. Her mind was sick. She saw herself friendless, kicked out by her family, and bound by all the strange contrariety of nature to refuse the only help that could come to her, from Daniel. She saw herself exposed and forsaken ... she saw her love for Ernley made immortal, looking up at her with undying eyes of torment.

§ 5

She was in the midst of these thoughts, sitting on her bed, when Lucy stuck her head in at the door, saying:

“Daniel’s come.”

Well, that did not really make it any worse; on the contrary, the sooner she was through with it all the better. She rose, and without troubling about her appearance, went downstairs. He was in the drawing-room, comparing details of the Munk tragedy with her father. She was anxious to get him away, but Shackford was full of the garrulity of almost-an-eye-witness, and it was some time before he had done with the relative positions of the White Hart and the car and the body and Mr. Vine’s shop. Daniel seemed anxious to be off, too—she saw him try to break away more than once—but it was nearly ten minutes before the farmer remembered the afternoon’s milking and reluctantly went out.

Belle did not feel secure in the drawing-room, and asked him to come out of doors. He protested for her sake, as a light drizzle was falling, and it ended in their going together into the big barn. They had its vastness to themselves, and there seemed something vaguely terrible about its size to-day, for the light of the drizzling afternoon was only feebly spread among its shadows. Daniel had often dreamed of loving Belle under the mighty wing of its darkness, but now he felt almost afraid. Here was neither darkness nor light, but a grey dusk woven of the tears of the day, and though he was alone with Belle, he could not speak, for his intense pity for her had made him fear her, as he had never feared her before.

She spoke first, and her words were like a knife, cutting right down into the wound of his fear. She had no pity for him—her one thought was to do his business quickly, so that she could turn to her own.

“Daniel, it’s no good. I can’t go on with it.”

“With what, Belle?”

“Our engagement—our marriage.”

He began to stammer.

“B—but, darling—that’s—that’s what I came over about. I—I wanted to tell you it makes no difference ... even if it’s true.... I—I don’t mind—I love you just the same.”

“That isn’t what I mean. I mean that it’s I who—I can’t go on with it. I’m sorry, Daniel—I know I should ought to have done this long ago—or better still, I shouldn’t ever have let you love me. It’s my fault. But I can’t help it. I can’t marry you now that I know ... do you guess what I know?”

“Yes—mum guessed ... but, Belle, it makes no difference....”

She brushed his protest aside.

“I’m going to have Ernley’s child. I can’t marry you when I know that.”

“But, lovey, I don’t mind—I swear I don’t. And it only makes it the more necessary I should marry you—quick. Then folk can’t talk so—or anyway their talk won’t hurt you.”

“I can’t help their talk. I’d rather they talked.... I can’t help it. I can’t marry you now I know this.”

He began to look scared. At first he had put her words down to her humility, and he had thought them words of renunciation, but now he was half-guessing their true significance. Here was something altogether terrifying and incomprehensible.

“Belle, sweetheart—you mustn’t talk so. You just about must marry me now, or you’ll be done for—ruined. Oh, darling, don’t think I’ll ever miscall you for this, or fail you—and I’ll be kind to the kiddy, I swear I will—I’ll love it as if it was mine.”

His generosity almost reached her pity, but pity came too late now. The instinct which dragged her from him was stronger than any emotion which pulled her towards him—all that she could do was to soften her words a little.

“Poor Daniel—I’m unaccountable sorry. I know I’m treating you badly, but I can’t help it. I wish I could explain it all, but I can’t. Oh, can’t you understand? If I was to marry you I’d feel I was doing something wicked—committing adultery. Oh, I know I’ve done wicked things before, and you’ll think I’m silly to mind now. But this is different somehow—if I married you I’d feel I was doing worse than any other thing I’ve done. Oh, Daniel, do try and understand.”

Perhaps he was hardly to be blamed if he couldn’t.

“But, Belle, didn’t you love me all those times when you said you did?... You must have loved me when I held you in my arms, and you came so close, and you gave me all my kisses back....”

“I know. I loved to be in your arms and feel you taking care of me—but things are different now—I I couldn’t bear you to kiss me....”

His face suddenly went dark.

“Then you can’t really have loved me, or you wouldn’t change—even now ... when things are different. Belle, I believe that you loved Ernley all the time.”

“Maybe I did—I must have—though I didn’t know it.”

“Then you’ve played the harlot to me. You’ve taken me in. You’ve given me your kisses for what you could get....”

He stopped suddenly, for he could just see her face in the faint light, and her eyes were pools of fear and pain. Even though he guessed that neither was on his account, he must pity her. He realized all that she had set before herself by this refusal of his protection, now in this last moment of her extremity. He could not believe that Ernley, probably engaged to another girl, would turn to her again. Without Ernley, without Daniel, she would have to face shame, friendlessness, poverty and pain. Something very strong, very terrible, must be driving her, even though he couldn’t understand it.

“Forgive me, dear. I shouldn’t ought to speak so. I’ll believe that you were honest with me, though I can’t understand you now.”

“Oh, Dan, I was honest, as far as I knew my heart.”

“But what do you mean to do about it if you don’t marry me? I reckon Ernley’s engaged to Miss Jenner, and you can’t do ... have ... go through this without being married.”

“I can—I must”—setting her teeth—“I will.”

He relented absolutely.

“Since you won’t have me, let me tell Ernley what’s happened. He’d never let you face it without him ... reckon he’ll chuck that girl ... anyways he should ought to provide for you.”

“Daniel, promise me—swear to me—you won’t breathe a word to Emley. I won’t be beholden to his pity. If you tell him I—I’ll kill myself.”

He was more bewildered than ever.

“Promise me, Daniel,” she repeated hoarsely, and he promised—shaken in heart and head.

The conversation seemed to have withered. They stood in the darkness, staring at each other. Voices sounded in the yard, coming from the cowhouse, and suddenly both were taken with the same fear—that they should be found here together, and be given the teasing due to lovers in the dark.

“Get out, Daniel,” cried Belle—“out by the cartshed door.”

“But you’ll let me see you again? Belle—I can’t bear this.”

“No—don’t come again—not just now. Oh, don’t you see it’s no good? I’ll never change my mind—I’m finished.”

“But you can’t....”

“Yes, I can—get out, damn you! If you don’t go now I’ll never see you again as long as I live.”

“If I go now, will you see me?”

He was like a child pleading.

“Yes—yes. Some day—next week. But get out, anyway. I’m off.”

With a sudden swooping gesture she blundered like a white owl through the darkness to the main door of the barn. He heard her calling her father’s, her sister’s name—making truce with the invader, in order to escape more easily from him, her sweetheart and servant.

CHAPTER NINE

§ 1

The rest of that day was like a bad dream, and the next, and the next. Dan felt broken by all that had happened, and bewildered by his conflict of pain. He did not know which he felt worst—Belle’s pain or his own. Sometimes the worst thing in life seemed to be the thought of her alone, disillusioned and friendless, on the eve of losing her last rags of reputation, her last apology for a home—of having to face the supreme ordeal of any woman’s life without help or hope. The fact that this was due to her own deliberate choice did not make it more endurable—on the contrary. Her isolation seemed to be all the greater because his arms were outstretched to hold her, if only she would turn his way. At other times he would be completely beaten down by the sense of his own loss, of his own shame. He would also tell himself that he must have failed her in some mysterious way—that it was impossible to believe she had not loved him once—she had weighed him and found him wanting. Thus his two griefs, for her and for himself, would sometimes be brought together in an all-enveloping regret.

He said nothing to his family about what had happened. A new shamefaced reserve was upon him. He could not bear that they should know what had happened to him, or what was going to happen to Belle. Also in his heart, giving a fiery quality to his suffering, was the torment of hope, the feeling that Belle must change, relent towards him and towards herself. Then these days would be but a dreadful interlude, better secret and so forgotten.

Of course the Sheathers knew that something was amiss. Dan’s was not one of those natures which can carry on its fundamental activities in private, giving the neighbours a surface decoy. His travail was noticeable in his looks, voice, behaviour and appetite. But its causes were misjudged. His family attributed his anguish simply to his knowledge of Belle’s condition. Apparently there were limits to his assumption of Ernley’s cast-off property. Kitty was glad to see the boy show so much spirit.

“Maybe he have the spunk—you call it—not to marry her after all.”

“I hope the boy’s got too good a heart for that,” said Tom.

“Too good a heart!—you call it good heart to disgrace his family by marrying rubbish!”

“Come, come, my dear. You shouldn’t ought to speak like that of poor Belle. Reckon it ain’t the match we’d have chosen, but then it ain’t our part to choose, neither.”

“Ho! that’s the way you manage these things, you English. You say to the boys and girls: ‘You choose each other,’ and never mind what the fathers and mothers think.”

“Well, what about yourself, ma’am? Reckon if you’d gone by what your family said, you’d never have married me.”

“My father he like you very well, and as for Eugene and Philip, they are only my brothers. I do not ask my brothers.”

“You’re meaning that you’d never have married me if your dad hadn’t given his consent?”

“Certainly I never marry without his consent. But your boy he never so much as ask yours, and he marry a girl who have no character and already belong to a friend of his. Now she will have a child too soon after they are married, and the neighbours will say unkind things, whoever they think it belong to. You may think nothing of that, but I am ashamed.”

Tom merely looked at the ceiling and whistled. His argument was clearer to his heart than to his head, and his wife had, as usual, talked him down. At the other side of the table, Christopher smiled as he lit a cigarette. He felt thankful and superior because so far the love of women had not touched him.

§ 2

Dan was a conscientious soul, and he would not break his promise to Belle. On the other hand, he took his promise very literally. He had promised not to see her till, the earliest, next week, therefore on Sunday morning, immediately after breakfast, he set out for Batchelors’ Hall.

By this time he had settled himself into the conviction that he had only to see Belle in order to persuade her. His mind was full of a flood of despairing eloquence, and he hardly realized how little of that tide would actually rise to his lips. Her reasons for refusing to marry him, which still seemed so arbitrary and mysterious, could surely never stand before the torrent of his love, his pity and his pride in her. Therefore it was necessary that he should see her at the earliest possible moment, to end his torment and hers.

It was an altogether unexpected blow and backthrust of fate to find, when he came to Batchelors’ Hall, that Belle was not there. She had gone away. Such a possibility had never occurred to him. Such a thing had never happened before. Where had she gone?

“How is it that you didn’t know?” asked Lucy.

Daniel shivered in the ice of her gaze.

“Reckon she must have made up her mind unaccountable sudden.”

“Reckon she did. But it’s queer her not having told you....”

Her eyes still froze him—they were like the pale blue cracks in ice.

“Is there anything the matter between you and Belle?” she inquired.

“No—there ain’t nothing.”

“Because,” continued Lucy, “if you back out now, reckon dad ull have something to say to you.”

The freezing process changed disruptively to one like burning alive. Dan suffocated and blazed.

“I back out! I tell you.... I dunno what you mean. I’ll marry Belle to-morrow if she’ll have me. You haven’t got no right to speak so.”

“Oh, very well, don’t lose your hair. Only it’s strange your not knowing where she is.”

He suddenly realized the need for prudence.

“Where is she?” he pleaded.

“Over at her cousin Loo Dengate’s at Heathfield. It’s queer your not knowing.”

“Three Cups Corner.”

“That’s it—the house just beyond the throws.”

“I’ll be up there to-morrow. Reckon it came over her sudden to go. She’s a queer girl in some ways.”

“Reckon she’s not the only one who’s queer.”

Dan’s wrath re-kindled.

“Why d’you keep on getting at me, Lucy? I tell you this ain’t my doing. I’ll marry Belle to-morrow if——”

“You know you can’t marry her to-morrow, so what’s the sense of talking? But if you take my advice you’ll marry her just as soon as you can get the banns put up. Now I haven’t any more time to spend arguing here. We’re short in the house with Belle being away, and old Gadgett’s been laid up this week and over, and Botolph needs more looking after than the sheep. Oh, it’s a grand life for girls!”—and she banged the door in his face.

§ 3

Dan was so stricken that his first thought was to tramp over at once to Heathfield and find Belle. But his second thoughts reminded him that it would take till night to go there and back on foot, that he could not fail the George at its Sunday evening opening, and that if he waited till to-morrow he could have the trap and avoid a domestic uproar. So he set off drearily homewards, down the drive and over the flat fields of the Dicker, across the river Cuckmere at Monkyn Pin, then on to the chalky roots of Firle.

He did not particularly want to go home, but there seemed nothing else to do. His own company was intolerable, with its questions and regrets, and there was no other company that seemed better to-day. Mr. Marchbanks would be busy all the afternoon with his church and catechism—besides, he was inclined to take Jess Harman’s view of Belle Shackford, and had not been too well pleased to hear of Dan’s engagement, though he had said very little. As for Ernley, he was even more impossible. For one thing Dan had promised not to tell him anything, and knew that he could not be ten minutes in his company without telling him everything. For another, he knew now something of that strange dark attitude towards Ernley which Belle had had towards Pearl Jenner. He knew that it was really Ernley who had robbed him of Belle—or rather, and more humiliating still, that he had never really had Belle so that he could talk of robbery. Belle had always been Ernley’s—all the time that she had clung to Daniel and given him kisses and promises, she had really been Ernley’s, in a far more final and terrible way than any of them knew.

No, he had better go back home, and pour out ale and whiskies, and wash and polish glasses, and lean over the counter and talk of ships and horses to the Sunday loungers between Lewes and Newhaven. Then he would help his mother clear up, and lay the tea, and perhaps she would give him a little kindness, though she must not know what he was feeling. Then in the evening he would go to church, and perhaps find more comfort in the homely smells and drawling melodies of Bullockdean worship—get back in time for the evening’s traffic—and then tumble into bed and be tired enough to sleep.

He was hurrying on, dragged by these urgencies, and had nearly reached the top of the Bostal Way, when at a turn he met the district nurse coming down towards Alciston. He wondered vaguely whom she could have been visiting on the wilderness of the down, when he remembered Lucy’s reference to old Gadgett’s illness—the shepherd’s cottage stood remote in a hollow near White Lion pond. There was no housing close to Batchelors’ Hall, and for years the old man had lived two miles from the centre of his work. Dan had always been fond of him, and now felt uneasily remorseful for having neglected him during the thrills of courtship. If he had the nurse in, the poor old chap must be pretty bad.

“Good morning, Mr. Sheather.”

Daniel had not met the nurse, who lived at Berwick, more than once, but it was characteristic of him that those who met him once always felt well acquainted.

“I’ve just been talking about you,” she continued, “to old Mr. Gadgett at White Lion Cottage, but I never thought to meet you so far from home on a Sunday morning.”

Daniel, wondering how much she knew about Belle, blushed and mumbled something about Sunday being a good day for a walk. Then:

“How is the old fellow?” he asked. “I only heard to-day as he’s been ill.”

“He’s sadly, I’m afraid—not likely to leave his bed, though perhaps he’ll stop there a month or two before he’s carried out. He gets wandering at times—takes me for his daughter, who’s been dead thirty years. But I hope some day you’ll go and see him. He says you promised him long ago, and he’s got something to show you.”

“I dunno whatever that can be. But reckon I’ll go in some morning. I haven’t time to-day.”

He must hurry back home, and pour out ale and whiskies, and wash and polish glasses, and lean over the counter and talk of ships and horses to the Sunday loungers between Lewes and Newhaven—help his mother clean up, and lay the tea—and go to church—and carry on somehow, till at last he was tired enough for sleep.

§ 4

Daniel was wrong in his idea that by deferring his visit till Monday he would be able to make it comparatively without protest. It appeared that Monday was the very day of James Munk’s funeral.

“Go over to Heathfield! I never heard of such a thing!” cried Kitty—“when it’s the funeral this afternoon.”

“I can’t help that—and I don’t care for funerals.”

“Then you are a wicked boy.”

“Come, come, my dear,” pleaded Tom; “he never was so thick as all that with poor Munk. If you and I go, and Chris, reckon there won’t be any harm in Dan taking the trap over to Heathfield to see Belle.”

“He saw her yesterday,” said Kitty, for Dan, alas! had been deceitful. “I can’t think why he must see her again to-day, especially as she go to Heathfield. Why can’t she stay at home?”

Dan looked sullen.

“I can’t help it. I must go.”

“Must go! Hark to that—hark to the boy. And what will your dear friend Ernley say if you ‘must’ go?”

“I don’t care what he says. I’m going.”

In the end, he went. When Kitty discovered that he hadn’t got a decent suit of black clothes and not a single white handkerchief, she minded less. So Daniel drove off soon after breakfast, Ernley’s British warm buttoned up to his chin. The weather was cold and grey and lowering, and clouds of dust bowled up the Lewes road, powdering the banks and hedges till they too were as grey as the sky.

It was a long drive to Heathfield—across the Ouse at Iford, then into the Beddingham road at the Lay, then along the huge, dusty, motor-ridden London to Eastbourne road as far as Firle Cross, where he had the quiet of lanes once more, through Ripe and Chalvington, twin villages of the plain, as far as Muddles Green. Then it was all cross-country by Thunders Hill and Terrible Down and the unaccustomed roads round Chiddingly. He was on the long wooded slope of country which rises from the valley of the Cuckmere to the heights of Heathfield and Cross in Hand—the black-country of a bygone day, when at night forge after forge would show a crimson eye through the dense woods, when the hammers of North Street answered the hammers of Lions Green, when Gun Hill and Thunders Hill and Clappers and Pigstone and Burntchimney first were given their names.

It was the afternoon before he found himself in Heathfield’s four-mile street, which runs dwindling from the spot where the yeoman named Iden smote down Jack Cade, to where the little lanes of the Rushlake and Dallington Weald flow into it like small streams at Three Cups Corner. He had not much difficulty in finding the Dengates’ house, which was just behind the inn, but it was altogether a tougher matter to get speech with Belle.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t see her,” said the Dengate cousin who opened the door; “she came here to get away from you,” she added, with disconcerting frankness.

Belle, then, had not been ashamed to tell of the rupture—at least, not to tell her cousins, though her father and sisters had had no explanation. Daniel had not expected this—he had somehow expected her tongue to be tied as his had been. He was now in unanticipated difficulties, but on one thing his mind was made up—he was not going back to Bullockdean without seeing Belle, if he had to hang round the place all night he would see her. So finding there was nothing to hide from the Dengate cousin, he pleaded valiantly—he begged for just five minutes of Belle—he would shoulder the guilt of any false pretences necessary to obtain the interview—he had come fifteen miles to see her—if she could see him this once he promised to give up and never bother her again—but if she wouldn’t see him, he would have to keep on at it till she did. This last consideration may have been the one that influenced Belle, but the Dengate cousin was honestly won by his big dark eyes. The slightly foreign air of his emotion appealed to her Saxon stolidity, and at last Dan was admitted into the little best parlour of the Dengates, where the walls were adorned with stuffed ferrets and owls, and wedding-groups of the many marriages which had taken place in that large family—innumerable white brides stared with gentle mocking eyes at him as he sat waiting for Belle.

Directly she came, the whole thing suddenly appeared to him as folly. He had been a fool to pursue her all this way—his importunity had only put him further into her contempt. He should have let her be. She would finish it now—the little that had not been finished in the great barn of Batchelors’ Hall.

“Well, Daniel, reckon you might have let me alone.”

She was more like a white owl than ever to-day, all the colour gone from her cheeks, all her feathers—the feathers of her golden hair and her brave clothes—limp and draggled. She wore an outdoor coat over her blouse and in the buttonhole was a dead jonquil.

“You might have let me be.”

“I couldn’t, Belle.”

“Why not? Haven’t I suffered enough?”

“That’s it. You’ve suffered too much. It’s time you let me comfort you.”

“Never.”

“But why, Belle? Why? I don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand that I can’t have any other husband than my baby’s father?”

“Well, that ain’t generally what people do.”

“What do they do generally?”

His mind went over a series of hasty, patched-up marriages, and he realized for the first time that what he offered Belle was not really a very fine thing.

“You know,” he mumbled.

“Yes, I know—they take anyone to give them countenance and a name to the child. But I won’t do that. Not because I’m too proud, but because I just couldn’t ... when I think of marrying a man who isn’t Ernley I feel sick.”

“But, darling, I wouldn’t ask anything of you—only to be with you and save you from being spoken of and treated bad.”

“That ud be a fine life for you.”

“I’d sooner have it than life without you.”

“You say that now, but you wouldn’t say it in a year or two. I’d never let you do a thing like that, and I couldn’t bear it myself, neither.”

“But Belle, think what ull happen if you don’t marry me. Reckon your father and sister ull go against you—maybe they’ll turn you out. You won’t have a penny—how are you to manage?”

“I’ll manage well enough. I’m able to work——”

“But when the time comes.”

“I’ll be all right.”

For the first time he noticed that there was something sulky about Belle—something in the full drooping line of her mouth which hinted at sullenness.

“I shan’t be any worse off,” she said, “than if you’d never asked me, and reckon it was uncommon queer of you to ask me, so soon after my losing Ernley and all.”

His face went red—he was turning angry. Then he realized that she was hurting him because she’d been so terribly hurt herself, and his anger went its usual course into pity. “Belle, maybe it ain’t too late for you to have Ernley even now. We can’t be sure as he’s engaged to that girl—and reckon you’ve quarrelled and made it up before this.”

“He is engaged to that girl—he loves her, anyway ... I wouldn’t touch him. I’d sooner die than him marry me now—marry me out of pity. Since I won’t let you marry me out of pity, d’you think I’d let him?”

“I’m not wanting to marry you out of pity. I love you, Belle.”

She sighed wearily as she saw the argument going back to its beginnings.

“Oh, reckon it’s waste of time trying to make you understand. All I wish is that you’d leave me alone. I’m sorry, Daniel—I know I’ve treated you badly. But I can’t help it—I must do as I feel.”

“But what are you going to do?”

“I dunno yet. Stop on here a bit, and then go back to father’s. Now, don’t start; ‘and what ull yer do after that?’ I tell you I don’t know. I shan’t marry you and I shan’t marry Ernley, that’s all I know.”

She turned wearily towards the door, and he knew he could not hold her.

“Belle,” he tried piteously, but she shook her head.

“You asked five minutes and I’ve given you twenty—and we couldn’t say any more if we talked all night.”

She went stooping through the door, and suddenly he realized that it was closed between them. He was alone with the stuffed ferrets and the white mocking brides.

CHAPTER TEN