PART III THE SEA (continued 2)

Daniel did not want to make out that he hadn’t. He suddenly saw himself as a monster of guilt, neglecting his child while he indulged in his evil passions. “Out of the heart proceed murders, adulteries....” Those were words in the Bible. Out of his heart had proceeded murders and adulteries—up there on the down. Was he the man to judge Belle’s shrewishness or Munk’s philandering? He said no more, but went sheepishly upstairs to bed.

CHAPTER SIX

§ 1

The first weeks of the New Year were depressing. It was mortal cold on the ’bus. Thomas Helier was cutting his teeth, and turned night into day at the parsonage. Mr. Marchbanks was harassed out of his usual sweet temper by his choir’s insistence on singing the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis to Cathedral settings, and Jess Harman was irritable and unfriendly for reasons unknown.

At the back of these minor disturbances lay the thundery conditions at the Crown, giving Daniel a continual sense of little-ease. He did not go again to see Ernley and Belle. He kept away unhappily and self-consciously, feeling that he could do no good either by going or by staying away. Curiosity urged him to go—apprehension kept him away. Now and then he met Belle or Ernley in the village, and they exchanged greetings and perhaps a few more meaningless words, but there was no reopening of confidence on Ernley’s part, no return of motherly sweetness on Belle’s. They were both aware of the insight he had had that night into their home life, and felt shy of him in consequence.

Daniel learned most about them from the young man at the George. The new tenants at the George were going out on Lady Day. Their tenancy had been a failure.

“There ain’t room for two pubs in this place,” said the young man sadly—“at least, not two good-class pubs. The Crown has got all the good-class trade. Of course I could make the George pay if I was to run it as your father used to run it, but I daren’t do that after all the trouble there’s been.”

“Maybe not. But why don’t you go for the sharry-bangs?” remembering Ernley’s suggestion before the smash.

“Because we ain’t in the right position for sharry-bangs. We’re off the main road, and we ain’t any distance either from Lewes or Newhaven, both of which can give better teas than any one-horse place like this. Nobody’s passing us at tea-time except cyclists, and maybe a stray motorist or two. I ain’t had anybody in for teas or lunches since October, though I provide both. If anyone comes at all this time of year they go to the Crown. I’m sick of it.”

“Where are you going?”

“I dunno—not settled yet. I’ve heard of a job in a catering business, but it means a mortal lot of travelling about, and I’m not the man to enjoy being away from my wife.”

“Who’s coming in here after you?”

“I dunno. Maybe someone out of Hobday and Hitch’s. But I’ll tell you what I’ve heard. I’ve heard as how Munk over there is thinking of buying the George.”

“You don’t tell me!”

“I do. It’s only talking, but I got it from one of Hobday and Hitch’s men last time they was here with the ale. They say he’s after it, anyway, and when you come to think of it, the two pubs together ud make a fine little place. He could put a sort of covered passage over the road—make it look old-fashioned and all that to match the rest. I heard as he thought of having the tap over here and keeping the Crown for the visitors only.”

“I wonder if he’ll do it?”

“Well, there’s no telling. He’s a clever sort of man, and ambitious. I believe he’d end up big some day if it wasn’t for his marriage.”

“You think that ull stop him?”

“Well, a man’s missus means a lot to his getting on or his getting out, and by all reports the missus at the Crown is a bit of a trial.”

“How d’you know that?”

“I don’t know it, but I’ve heard it. Maudie Harman often steps across here and has tea with my wife, and she’s told us that they have some fine rows now and again. But most likely you know more’n I do, seeing you’re friends.”

Dan uneasily scraped his foot among the sawdust.

“I don’t think there’s anything much wrong. She ain’t used to hotel life, being a farmer’s daughter. But I haven’t been near ’em since New Year.”

“Well, seemingly she’s having a jealous fit now. She’s got an idea he’s after another girl, Maudie says.”

“And ain’t he?”

“Maudie doesn’t think so. There’s a young woman he takes out a bit—one he used to know before his marriage. But Maudie doesn’t think there’s anything in it.”

“How the devil does she know?”

“By his temper. He’s always as cross and difficult as he can be, and a man ain’t like that when he’s just got a new girl.”

“It must be jolly over there,” sighed Daniel, “her jealous and him contrary.”

The young man nodded.

“There’s nothing for pulling a man and a woman down like an unhappy marriage. But you and me know that married life has no call to be like that, don’t we, Mr. Sheather?”

Daniel and the young man exchanged some opinions and confidences on marriage, a subject on which they were both of the same mind.

§ 2

Early in March a tide set into the affairs of Daniel which definitely altered their course. The start was nothing more exciting than the Downs ’Bus Company altering their time-table, but this very ordinary piece of spring tactics resulted in their employee’s complete uprooting. The first ’bus was scheduled to leave Newhaven at seven instead of nine. Work was starting earlier on the farms, and it became necessary for most of the Newhaven-dwelling labourers in the Ouse Valley to be at their posts by half-past seven at the latest. Therefore the Downs Company put on an extra ’bus which should run as far as Lewes only, and be back to take up its normal traffic at nine o’clock.

It would be extremely difficult and trying for Dan, who had not yet saved enough money to buy a bicycle, to be in Newhaven by seven. The rest of the company’s employees lived in the town, but this was out of the question for young Sheather, who had to stick to his free lodging at Bullockdean Parsonage if he was still to send half his wages to his mother at Brakey Bottom. He could, of course, apply for transfer to another route—several ’buses left Lewes in northward and westward directions at fairly reasonable hours—but he realized that his home at Bullockdean put him at a disadvantage even for these, and he was terrified of losing his job by interfering with the conditions of his employment.

The problem was in this state when an unexpected solution of it came from Brakey Bottom itself—through Chris jilting his Mary Wright. The exact reasons for this catastrophe were obscure, but Dan was not altogether surprised. As it happened Chris was now in a good position to marry. The Squire of Hoddern Place, on the other side of Telscombe, had taken a fancy to him, and had engaged him as chauffeur. He was having him taught to drive his Austin landaulette, Chris having had hitherto only an experimental acquaintance with Fords, and had promised him a good cottage to live in as well as generous wages. There was never a better opportunity for Chris to marry his Mary Wright, but in point of fact his Mary Wright lived on unwed at Exceat, while Chris brought his mother to the comfortable eight-roomed cottage beside the garage at Hoddern gates. Kitty Sheather had won at the last.

Dan felt contemptuous and indignant, but could not fail to realize the blessings of what had happened. His mother would now be provided for, comfortable and happy for life; there would no longer be any need for Daniel’s fifteen shillings a week. He could have them for his own and buy with them the freedom to live where he liked. He decided almost immediately to move into Newhaven. If he did not move he might lose his job, and once more he was restless to be away from the Crown. There was no need to go across the water this time. Once he was in Newhaven he would not have to dread those occasional evening meetings with Belle—he would not have to hear the village gossip about her and Ernley. His work would fill his days, and his evenings would be devoted to Thomas Helier. He had made up his mind to take the child with him—he could easily find some motherly woman who would take charge of him while he was at work.

He was sorry to be leaving Mr. Marchbanks and the parsonage, and knew that his services would be missed both in the garden and in the church. But if he stayed on he would have no time, with his new early hours, either for housework or for serving the altar, and if he lost his job he would come once more upon his friend’s hands and purse. No, he must clear out—everything seemed to demand it, and he’d better start at once to find some decent place to go to.

Mr. Marchbanks approved of his decision. He did not say much, but Dan knew he was glad that he was going out of reach of Belle. Young Sheather still thought the parson’s attitude towards this part of the situation narrow and unsympathetic, but he was now half glad that Mr. Marchbanks felt like this—it would comfort him when the garden beds were all over groundsel and there couldn’t be any service in Bullockdean Church because Freddie Pont had overslept himself....

Neither did Jess Harman seem to mind his going away—certainly not as much as he would have thought—but in one respect her opposition surprised him. She was indignant at his taking Thomas Helier with him.

“You’d never, Daniel! The poor little thing! You can’t take him to a strange place and then leave him alone all day.”

“Well, I can’t leave him here.”

“Why not? I’d look after him—and take him home along with me at nights. I know auntie ud let me.”

“Thank you, Jess. But I couldn’t allow it. He’s an unaccountable nuisance here at the parsonage—it’ll make up to Mr. Marchbanks a bit my going if he don’t have the kid yelling at all hours.”

“He doesn’t yell at all hours. You shouldn’t talk so! Poor little mite—he’ll die with nobody but you to look after him.”

“He won’t have nobody but me to look after him. I’ll go to a place where they’ll undertake it, or maybe put him into a creech while I’m working.”

“Why not put him out to baby-farm at once and have done with it—and him too, poor little innocent?”—and Jess Harman walked out, tossing her chin.

Emmie, his sister-in-law, took much the same view of the matter. She had begged Dan to let her have the baby at Brakey Bottom. Of course he knew that Thomas Helier would probably be happier there than in a “creech,” or with his father, but there was something at the bottom of Dan’s heart which refused to let him part with him. Whenever he thought of it he seemed to see his Rose Falla looking up at him from her big low bed in Sark, and murmuring with dying lips—“notre Helier.” He must not be unfaithful to that union which he still had with her in the child. In Thomas Helier, Rose was still alive, still able to receive his love and cherishing. She no longer slept under her ilex tree and her white French stone, but lay in his arms and received his kisses. He could not leave her behind in Bullockdean—in another grave.

Moreover, Thomas himself was now an engaging infant, who, if he occasionally yelled in the stresses of bodily development, knew his father and approved of him, signifying the same by various gross noises which were very nearly words. It would be good to find Thomas Helier to welcome him home at the end of the day, when Bullockdean was five miles up the valley, when both the tavern and the church were strange, and Belle Munk, who was half Belle Shackford, no longer walked in twilight down the street.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Daniel was not long in finding a convenient lodging. He took a room in Greville Row, a small blind row running out of Bridge Street. The houses were mean and slaty, but from his window he had a view through chimneys of the masts of ships. Also his landlady seemed a pleasant woman, and favourably disposed towards Thomas Helier, which even a brief experience of lodging-hunting told him most landladies were not.

Into these new quarters he moved at the end of March, ready for April’s changes. The first evening was one of unparalleled misery. Indoors he missed his company—Jess Harman talking and working, Mr. Marchbanks reading and smoking—and outdoors he missed the clear pure ridges of the downs against the sky, and the low northward horizon where the sky met the Brooks in the midst of the Gate of Lewes. Here he felt cramped and lonely—cramped by the four walls of his room and landscape of masts and chimneys that shut out all but the topmost reaches of the sky—lonely with no company but that of Thomas Helier, who lay in his cot, chewing and sucking Belle’s woolly ball.

Dan had to give him his bath that night, a task which he had learned to perform, as he performed most feminine tasks, with a fair amount of efficiency. He had just finished and was tying his son into his nightgown, when the landlady came in and was at once overpowered and delighted by such an unwonted exhibition of paternal resource. She invited Dan to come down to supper with her and her husband, and the rest of the evening did not pass so badly. The landlady’s husband kept a small shop down by the harbour and was full of tales of ships and seamen. Dan wondered if he had ever had his father for customer, but was not able to give a clear enough description to stand out of the jumble of the storekeeper’s memories.

The next day, after an early breakfast of tea and bread and butter, he was off to his work, leaving Thomas Helier to the care of the landlady till it was time to take him to the “creech,” which did not open till nine. This especial “creech” was run by a local welfare committee on highly scientific and hygienic principles. When Dan called for his offspring at six o’clock, he found him in an unwonted atmosphere of fresh air and pine-tar soap. His clothing had obviously been put in a sterilizer, and on the whole he seemed almost too antiseptic to handle with a pair of work-worn hands not innocent of car-oil. But the matron and her assistant were both exceedingly cordial and kind. Dan was a relief to them in their day of inefficient yet obstinate mothers, stuffed with worn-out maxims and old-wives’ tales. They gave him a feeding-chart for Thomas Helier, and all sorts of practical and intimate information. They told him that he was just the proper weight for his age, and much better looked after than many a baby who came to them from a mother’s care. He went off glowing with pride, while Thomas, full of good cheer, pulled off his father’s cap half a dozen times on the way home and threw it on the pavement, thus providing him with introductions to any number of women he had cared to know.

After that first day he was not so lonely. His work filled up ten hours, and his early rising made him want to go early to bed. He had supper every night with his landlady and her husband, while his Sundays and his Wednesday afternoons were mostly spent at Hoddern with his mother, though he still paid occasional visits to Brakey Bottom.

Kitty Sheather was exulting in her new cottage, so well built, trim and neat. All day long she swept and dusted and polished and washed and cooked for Chris, who came home in the evening, and sometimes to mid-day dinner, looking handsomer than ever in his chauffeur’s uniform. He was happy in his new work, which involved little more than driving, as his master had two cars, an Austin two-seater, and a big Austin landaulette. There was a boy to do the washing and polishing, and for anything substantial in the way of adjustments or repairs the cars went to a garage in Newhaven. Daniel’s craving to punch his brother’s head was often almost physically painful. There was something cheeky and self-confident about Chris’s whole demeanour which simply cried out to be hit. It said: “Look at me. Here I am, keeping my mother in comfort. She’s better off with me now than she’s ever been in her life. I’ve got a good job, and I’ve done well by myself and her too. Look at you. You do nothing for her now, and never did much. If she’d only had you to depend on she’d still be living at Brakey Bottom, grudged and grumbled at by Len. You’ve got a rotten job, and can barely keep yourself and your kid.”

Dan found it very hard not to quarrel with Chris, but he knew that it would do no good, as Kitty would immediately take her darling’s part and encourage him still further in his satisfaction. Besides, hang it all, Chris was right. He had done well for his mother, as well as for himself, and he loved her as few sons loved their mothers. Dan had not done well for his mother, and though he knew in his heart that he loved her as much as Chris did, he had not been able to make her see it, and possibly never would.

Of Bullockdean during this time he saw nothing, beyond its distant cluster of houses from the Lewes road. Once or twice Mr. Marchbanks came to see him in Newhaven, and they sometimes went to the pictures together on Wednesday afternoons. On other Wednesdays Jess Harman would come in and go to the pictures with him—but neither she nor Mr. Marchbanks ever gave him any news of Belle. Perhaps they would if he had asked, but he never did.

CHAPTER EIGHT

§ 1

One afternoon in May, when the first heat of the summer was in the air, and in the dust that whirled in a brown cloud behind the afternoon ’bus, a rather fuddled-looking sailorman hailed the driver on the outskirts of Newhaven. Dan was punching tickets in the front seats, and took no notice beyond pulling the bell-cord when the new passenger had collapsed creakingly in his seat at the back. It was not till he came to take his ticket that he recognized him. For fully a quarter of a mile of the Lewes road Tom Sheather and his son gazed and gaped at each other.

“Well I’m blessed!” said Daniel at last.

“Dan, is it you?” moaned his father.

“Of course it is. Who did you think it was?”

“I thought you were in Sark with your mother’s people, and I’ve had a drop to drink.... Anyway, I can’t make out what you’re doing here.”

“Earning my living,” said Dan gruffly, and pulled the bell for a non-stop at Piddinghoe. “Did you think that when you cleared out and left us all, I’d keep away, even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t? I had to come back and look after mother when you deserted her.”

“She was all right,” murmured Tom sheepishly. “I knew as Chris and Len ud look after her, even if you didn’t. And to tell you the truth, Daniel, between one man and another, the way she took on after the smash was something awful. Her tongue ... my Lord!... enough to have driven me into the deep-sea trade. But I’ve only been coasting—a Geordie, you know—what brings the coals to Newcastle—from Newcastle, I should say.”

“And is this the first time you’ve come ashore?”

“Lord, no! I’ve seen a lot of the world since I’ve been here last—Cardiff, Newcastle, Middlesbrough—first-class places—

This burst of song rang through the ’bus, making even the driver turn round on his seat. Dan was covered with confusion.

“Come, father—adone, do. There’s no need to let everyone know as you’re tight.”

“Tight! I ain’t tight. I’ve had a drop of drink, as who wouldn’t having to face what I’ve got to face. I’m going to face that tongue. I’ve had to do with some first-class tongues since I took up with the Geordie trade. But never met one like hers. I never meant to go, but I promised the old man I would. Our old man’s a good old man—a good old Bible-reading man—and he says to me, ‘Sheather,’ he says, ‘a husband and wife are one flesh.’ Then I had a row with the donkeyman off Dungeness—he says to me: ‘What did you do in the great war? I got a medal!’ I don’t believe it. You can buy ’em second-hand. You never got a medal, did you, Daniel?”

“How long are you ashore for?” asked his son severely.

“For ever and ever and ever and ever,” trolled Tom—“world without end, aymen. That’s why I’m going to see your mother.”

“Aren’t you never going to sea again?”

“Not till the old Alfred Bateson’s gone out of harbour. I won’t go sailing any more with a blighted skunk like that donkeyman. And there was others in the fo’c’sle too.... I won’t take sauce from nobody, not even from the skipper.”

“You mean as you’ve run off the sea same as you ran off the land?”

“No—I didn’t run off—I was paid off. I’ve got lots of money”—jingling his pockets—“I’m going to see my wife and children. I’m glad to see you, old Daniel. Fancy meeting you on a ’bus. ‘Ticket, please,’ you says to me, as cool as anything.”

“Well, here’s your ticket to Telscombe Throws. That’s where you get out, and it’s fourpence.”

“You mean to say you’re going to ask your own father to pay for his ticket on your ’bus?”

“It ain’t my ’bus. I’m only the conductor—thirty bob a week.”

“Why?”

“To earn my living, as I’ve told you before.”

“You needn’t be so sharp with me, Dan. You’ve got a tongue like a saw. You’re getting too like your mother for comfort.”

“I don’t see as you’ve a right to expect anything but straight talk after the way you’ve treated us. You land us all in a mess, and then clear out and leave us there.”

“Surelye you ain’t going to cast that up at me now?”

“Surelye I am. Now, father, this is where you get out. Mother’s not at Telscombe now, you know. She’s at Hoddern, with Chris.”

“Hoddern—what for?”

“Chris has got a job as shuvver to Mr. Williamson, and mother lives along of him. Don’t forget to turn off the Telscombe road at Bullock Down.”

“I don’t think I’m going,” said Tom suddenly.

“Of course you’re going.”

“I ain’t—I’m scared. She’ll have my skin off. I won’t go unless you come with me, Dan.”

“Come with you and leave my ’bus! Do talk sense.”

“Well, I ain’t getting off.”

“Yes, you are. I’ll put you off if you won’t go.”

“You’re an undutiful son—that’s what you are,” moaned Tom Sheather, as the ’bus drew to a standstill in response to Dan’s ring. “The Bible says, ‘honour your father and mother.’ I’ve seen it written, and they say it in church too at the Ten Commandments.”

“Well, I’d honour you fast enough if you’d give me a chance. But you took this ’bus to go and see mother, and see her you shall, whatever happens.”

“You don’t know as I’ll go there even now you have put me off.”

“Of course you’ll go there. Now, please leave hold of that rail, father. We want to get on.”

“I don’t know as I can stand without it. I don’t think any shakes of your ’bus, Daniel—it’s making everything go round and round. I feel worse than off Flamborough Head.”

“That’s your own fault,” said Dan unsympathetically—“nothing to do with the ’bus. Now, father, adone do and go off, or you’ll get me into trouble.”

“I want to see you again.”

“So you shall. I’ll call at Hoddern to-morrow. It’s my afternoon off. Good-bye.”

He rang the bell and the ’bus went grinding away on its bottom gear, leaving Tom Sheather pathetically planted at the Throws, knowing that the worst was still before him.

§ 2

When Daniel came back that way at half-past five he was horrified to see his father apparently still standing where he had left him. But he looked different somehow. He was sober for one thing, and badly cowed. He held up a melancholy hand to stop the ’bus.

“What, you still here?” greeted Daniel.

“I’ve been,” said his father ruefully—“and I’ve come back.”

He collapsed on the nearest seat.

“She wouldn’t have me. She threw me out. She said I was good-for-nothing—vagabond was her word—she’d never look at me again. That wretched boy of hers told me the same. Dressed as a shuvver, he was—in a uniform with buttons, like yours, but a sight better than yours. He’d no call to speak to me so, seeing as I’m his father. He told me I’d dished the family and then left them.”

Chris’s reproach seemed, to Daniel, to have about it the ring of truth. But during the last two hours his anger had cooled, and by now it had evaporated—he was sorry for his father, guessing what his rout at Hoddern had been like; also he had in all honesty to confess that Kitty Sheather had probably given him a terrible time before he actually went off. It was almost certainly true that she had her own tongue to blame for her desertion. Not that there was any real excuse for his dad, he told himself severely, but there were certainly extenuating circumstances, and he could not help being sorry for him in this miscarriage of his reconciliation—also he’d been told what a tick he was quite often enough.

The front part of the ’bus was full, with human cargo for the Newhaven cinemas, but the back seats were empty enough for Dan to sit down for a few minutes beside his father.

“Cheer up, dad. I’m sorry mum won’t have you, but of course she thinks of nothing but Chris these days. He was most things to her before, but now you’ve gone he’s everything. I’m nothing, neither. We’re outside together again, us two.”

“Then you haven’t turned against me, Dan?”

“Not I. I won’t say that you haven’t behaved like a mean, low-down, wicked, unnatural cad, and that you haven’t asked for all you’ve got, but I can guess what drove you to it, and reckon I’m your son and ull stick by you.”

“Same as you always did,” beamed Tom Sheather. “You remember how it was always me and you against Chris and your mother?”

“Yes,” said Dan, and sighed. He still hankered for a different alliance, but it was not the same hankering as of old. He had tacitly come to accept his mother’s remoteness. Besides, he now had his son.

“Did you know I’d got a baby, father?”

“Yes—over in Sark.”

“No—at Newhaven. I brought him home with me. I’d never leave him with that lot at the Pêche à Agneau—savages they were, just a lot of ignorant foreign savages.”

“Your mother’s stock,” said Tom vindictively.

“Well, reckon it’s where mum gets some of her hard ways from. But we mustn’t miscall her. Now, dad, where are you getting out in Newhaven? I haven’t taken your ticket yet.”

“Reckon I’ll go to the terminus. I never took a room when I landed, thinking I’d stop along of your mother. Where’s your little place, Daniel?”

“In Greville Row—close to the bridge. I’ve only got a bedroom and there ain’t room for two. But maybe the landlady ud let you have a bed in the house.”

“That ud suit me fine—till I go to sea again. I’d have gone anyhow, for it’s a better life than on land, but now reckon I’ll go quicker. If you’ll let me stay along of you, Dan, I’ll be unaccountable obliged. I’ve got plenty of cash, and I can be looking round for a ship. There’s nothing like being able to pick your job.”

“No doubt,” said Daniel, as he pulled the bell for an old woman who wanted to get off at the Brighton Road.

§ 3

When the day’s work was over, the ’bus in the garage and Dan’s returns in the office, he took his parent to Greville Row with a view to finding him accommodation. On their way they called for Thomas Helier at the crèche and Tom Sheather had his first meeting with his grandson.

The child was looking his best. Two months of the most modern and efficient care had greatly improved both his health and appearance. His teething troubles were over, he could walk a few steps, and wholesome food and fresh air had made him merry and friendly. Tom Sheather was delighted with him.

“My Lord! Ain’t he just about splendid! Did you ever see such a boy! Brown eyes, too, like yourn, but I guess he doesn’t take after his grandma’s family—and you’ve called him Thomas, after me. Reckon you don’t think so small of your poor old dad after all.”

“He was christened before you did your bunk,” said Dan truthfully.

They walked home together, Tom carrying the baby in such a manner that he could—and did—snatch off both their caps. Their laughter went before them up the street and prepared their welcome in Greville Row. Dan already had a place in his landlady’s heart. His forlorn condition, the appealing youth of his widowerhood and fatherhood, had stirred up her maternal feelings towards him. Besides, he was uncommonly handy, for a man, about the house. He had helped her many times at the end of a heavy day—once even cooking the supper for her, when she had a headache and did not like stooping over the fire. She was glad to see his father and readily promised him a bed. If he didn’t mind the top attic, there was a bed in that, and she could easily fix him up a wash-bowl and some hooks.

So three generations of Sheathers took up their abode under Mrs. Gain’s roof—not highly successful or creditable Sheathers, but comfortable none the less. It was Tom now who took his grandson every morning to the crèche, Dan having wisely determined that he was not a fit person to have charge of the child all day. In the evening he met his son at the Downs Company’s office, and they brought Thomas Helier home together. The evening was spent with the Gains, first at supper and afterwards in the parlour, where there was a gramophone, which reminded Dan, sometimes uncomfortably, of old days at Batchelors’ Hall.

Mr. Gain and Tom Sheather had a great deal in common, and told each other over their pipes endless tales of seaports and the sea. Dan noticed a change in his father—he seemed much younger, and even more irresponsible than in the days of the George. Some of the adventures he recounted were simply the pranks of schoolboys.

His head was full of the sea. Though it was barely a year since he had signed on his first ship after nearly thirty years on land, the sea was now his world, and the land forgotten. The vicissitudes of the George did not move him, even when at midsummer its amalgamation with the Crown passed from conjecture into deed. The two inns were to be run as one hotel—“The George and Crown”—with a passage bridge across the road, from which the sign should swing. Dan was rather stirred and distressed by this new change, but Tom Sheather seemed to regard it merely as a joke.

“He’ll have bought the Ritz some day, that Ernley Munk. Who’d have thought he’d turn out such a regular old hotel-keeper—him with his books and his talk and his wenches? D’you remember that gal in black he brought over to supper with us?—and then went and married your poor Belle Shackford? I wonder how she likes all this glory?”

“Reckon she likes it well enough—why shouldn’t she?”

“Never said she shouldn’t. Clean contrary. I bet she likes spending his money on clothes. She was always a gal after clothes for her back—though she might have shown less of her back when she’d got ’em on. I never saw that gal without a hook undone.”

Dan disliked his father’s reminiscences, and changed the subject.

“Have you heard of another berth yet?”

“I’ve heard of several, but they won’t do. I tell you this time I’m going to pick my job. I’ve been on the Alfred Bateson, on the Yorkshire Crown and Rebecca Rose. I’ve a long seafaring experience, seeing I was in the coasting trade before many of these lads were born. My Lord! I’m glad I went back to the sea. There ain’t no good jobs on land, except for Christopher Sheather. You’ve got a rotten job, Daniel. Why don’t you chuck it and come along with me on my next voyage?”

“What should I do on a ship? I know nothing about the sea.”

“Weren’t you a Sarkie fisherman for two years?”

“Yes, but that was only motor-boats.”

“Well, even they ud teach you something. I never saw a wickeder coast than the coast of Sark—changing every hour, and some of those rocks not down on the chart at all. Know that rock under the Grande Moie?—forget what it’s called, but it wasn’t on the chart.”

“I never did much navigation over there—they wouldn’t let me. And, anyways, it ud be very different on a Geordie.”

“But you’d soon learn—you’re young and smart, and it’s a grand life.”

“Well, there’s no use talking. I’ve got a kid to look after.”

“You could leave him with Mr. and Mrs. Gain. Or Emmie ud take him at Brakey Bottom and be delighted. You’d be able to pay handsome for his keep, for you’d be making good money—a sight more than you make here, and not so much chance of spending it.”

Dan shook his head.

“There’s no good talking. I can’t leave the kid—and I’m not so badly off on this job, neither. It might lead to something better.”

“What?” asked Tom Sheather cruelly.

CHAPTER NINE

§ 1

August came. Newhaven harbour was noisy with cross-Channel traffic, and the Downs Company ’buses were crowded on all journeys with the shifting, summer traffic of the roads. The weather was very hot, and Daniel often came home of an evening limp and weary. It was hard work conducting a crowded ’bus on a hot day, with panting, sweating human beings clambering over him and clamouring at him, and a cloud of dust whirling along continually over the back step, on which he stood jarred and listless through the long hours of the lanes.

He grew so tired and out-of-sorts that on his free days he gave up his regular appearances at Hoddern. By giving a refuge to his father he had only added to his unpopularity with his mother and Chris—they showed him plainly that they thought him disloyal, and sometimes, apart from this, sitting with them at their table, he was pricked with envy. For the first time he became dispirited at the contrast between himself and Chris. There they sat opposite each other, each side of their mother. Both were in uniform and both were their mother’s sons. But Chris’s uniform was a smart summer rig-out of cream-coloured dust-cloth faced with blue, while Dan’s was his old winter uniform of green and shiny serge, patched with leather and smelling of car-oil. And if they wore mufti it was the same contrast—Chris in grey flannels and a fine shirt, looking the gentleman every bit of him except his shoes, whose failure to reach that standard was veiled from Daniel by his ignorance; while Dan’s ordinary suit was even more disreputable-looking than his uniform, because it was older, and had become too tight for him while he was in Sark. Then to crown all, Chris was his mother’s darling, loved and approved by her, while Dan his mother disapproved of and reproached: “You cannot love me, or you would not live with that vagabond man who deserted me.”

So on those hot August Wednesday and Sunday afternoons he no longer trekked up the Lewes road, but sat with Thomas Helier on the beach, watching the peacock sea grow pink against the sky—or sometimes he had what his landlady called “a good lay down” on the sofa in her sitting-room. Mrs. Gain had by this time given him the freedom of her house, including the sitting-room with its tapestried suite, central table, and permanently half-drawn blind. She was proud that he should use it, feeling sure that it was “better than anything he was accustomed to,” and certainly nothing quite like it had existed in any of Dan’s various homes—the George, Moie Fano, the Pêche à Agneau, or Bullockdean parsonage.

One particular Wednesday afternoon Tom Sheather had taken out the baby, and Dan lay asleep on the little hard green sofa, lulled by the drone of a bee under the blind. He looked particularly helpless and childish, huddled there in his shirt sleeves, his hair rubbed out of its sleekness by the tapestried cushion, his cheeks flushed by his sleep. Mrs. Gain hesitated in a tender moment before she woke him, holding out his coat for him to put on.

“Wa’r is it?” he mumbled drowsily.

“A lady to see you, Mr. Sheather. I thought I’d better bring you your coat.”

“Where?”

“I put her into the kitchen while I went to rouse you.”

“Who is she?”

“I think she said her name was Munk.”

Dan sat up, blinking and terribly awake. His thought was—“I won’t see Belle. I won’t have her in here. I’ve kept away from her for six months and I won’t have her spoil it all by coming. Show her out.” His words actually were: “Please show her in.”

In came Belle, carrying the spoils of her morning’s shopping in Newhaven. She wore a dress of flowered voile, tumbled with the heat, and under her big straw hat her hair showed yellow as straw.

“Hullo, Belle!” said Daniel awkwardly. “How nice of you to call! I haven’t seen you for ages.”

“Hullo, Daniel!” said Belle languidly, and began to cry.

The bee droned on under the blind.

§ 2

For nearly a minute Dan stood and gazed at her. At first he thought that he must be still asleep and dreaming—this was like so many of his dreams—Belle standing before him in her tumbled loveliness, tormenting his heart with her sorrow and his love. Then he discovered that he was trembling all over.

“Belle—what is it?... what’s happened?”

“You know,” sobbed Belle. “You know.”

“I don’t know. I only guess ... a dunnamany things. Belle, sit down and tell me all about it.”

She sank down on one of the tapestried armchairs, and he sat down on the sofa, purposely setting the width of the little centre table between them. The aspidistra in the middle of it partly hid her from him, screening her bowed head and dipping hat with its streaky leaves, disguising the heaving movements of her shoulders. If he had seen her without this barrier, he would have taken her in his arms.

“What is it, dear Belle. Tell me ... is it Ernley?”

“Yes—yes. Oh, Dan, I must talk to somebody about him ... and you know something already—you must ... that time you came to supper and Ernley telephoned.”

“You thought he was speaking to a girl.”

“Thought?... I knew. He’s had a girl for months. He’s been going out with that Pearl Jenner—the one he took up with when I was engaged to you. Oh, I thought that when I’d married him it would all be settled and happy, as I wanted it to be. I thought I need never be anxious or jealous any more. But now ... now....”

Her voice choked away in sobs.

“Why do you tell me all this?” asked Dan stiffly. The yearning and agitation of his heart made him seek desperately a manner that was cold.

“Why? Because you loved me once—you love me a little bit still—and you ran away from me in my hour of need, because you were frightened.”

“Belle!”

“Well, didn’t you?”

His face was scarlet. His coming to Newhaven had always seemed to him as much a renunciation as a refuge, and he was shocked to find that Belle saw it with so different eyes.

“I—I left Bullockdean,” he stammered—“I left Bullockdean because I was so miserable. It hurt me to see you and Ernley quarrelling and suspecting each other like that, and I’d no idea as you liked having me by.”

“‘No idea!’ You’re a fool, Daniel. Can’t you imagine what a difference it made, having someone that cared?... even though we never talked about it. You took fright that evening and cleared out—or else heaven knows the comfort you might have been.”

Though he felt at the back of his mind that, in spite of all she said, he had been right, Daniel still wore the colour of shame. It seemed a terrible thing to have deserted Belle—and yet, God knew.... He tried to make amends.

“I’d never have gone if I’d thought for a moment you wanted me to stay. But you never showed me ... you never seemed to want me about. If I’d known I’d have stayed. Is it too late? Can’t I help at all now?”

She stood up and with a desponding sweep of her arm pulled off her hat and dropped it on the table.

“I dunno. You can’t come back. Maybe I was wrong in blaming you. But I was mad this morning. Just as I came away he got a post-card from her. It said ‘Tivoli Palace entrance at 2.30. P.’—and he had told me he was going to Eastbourne about the new furniture.”

“You read his post-card?”

“Of course I did. Don’t be a prig, Daniel. Who wouldn’t read a post-card addressed to her husband?”

“Well, it seems to me she couldn’t have meant any harm, or she wouldn’t have sent a post-card.”

“That shows how little you know. She does that sort of thing to humiliate me—to show her power. She knows that I know. She made him bring her around the other day in the side-car of his motor-bike. God! I could scratch her face.”

She had come round the table and stood with her arms akimbo, looking down on Daniel. She was big and glowing and angry. She made him think of peonies and sunflowers. He longed to have the aspidistra once more between them, but instead she stood between him and it, hiding its desiccated respectability with her big opulent body. The sunshine poured over her flowered gown, but her head was in the shadow of the drawn blind.

“O God, what I’ve endured all these months! I can’t bear it any longer. It’s—worse—worse than before we married. I ought never to have married him. I ought to have married you, though you are such a dummy. You wouldn’t have made me unhappy like this.”

Belle Munk, the mother of Jill and Peter, the friend of Thomas Helier, was gone, and in her place stood the old Belle Shackford—who ran after men, who scratched women’s faces. As he gazed up into her restless, tragic eyes, her marriage seemed to have ended, to have dropped from her. She and Ernley were what they had been before it—jealous, quarrelling lovers, he running after Pearl Jenner, she turning to Daniel Sheather. He saw his past coming back to him in all its sorrow and joy and power. He felt it beating in his heart, and his eyes were dim with its gathering tears. Half-blind and silly, he sprang to his feet, and threw his arms about her, feeling once more the thrill of her glorious size and strength. She trembled, yielded, and as her flushed, angry mouth met his, the rent in the years was knit up, and another home and another woman no longer stood between this and their last embrace. Indeed the kiss with which he kissed her now was their parting kiss of three and a half years ago, still uniting them in its pain and sweetness. They had never drawn apart. Through all the years their lips had been together, even when she lived in his memory as a shadow on glass.

There was a knock at the door, and they separated. The aspidistra stood once more between them when Mrs. Gain came in.

“I was wondering if the lady ud like a cup of tea, Mr. Sheather. The kettle’s just boiling, and it’s nearly four o’clock.”

“No, thank you very much,” said Belle, coughing a little. “I must be getting back now.”

“I shouldn’t be a minute getting it.”

“No, thank you. I must catch the four-thirty train.”

She put on her hat, picked up her parcels and walked to the door. On the threshold she remembered herself, and turned round and shook hands with Daniel as he stood gaping at her.

§ 3

For days afterwards Daniel was shaken by this interview. It bewildered him. He did not know what to make of it, either on Belle’s side or his own. He was terrified to think that his old passion for her had revived, though, now that he no longer held her in his arms, it did not appear quite as it used in the old days. It was more physical, less romantic and adoring—marriage had changed his attitude somehow. Though that kiss had seemed in unbroken continuity with the past, his love for her was not. It was no longer so very much more than his kiss. It no longer filled his eyes, satisfying and blinding him. Moreover, he had no illusions about her love for him. It seemed to him quite plain that she had sought him out only to avenge herself on Ernley. She was desperately jealous, as she had always been. She had married to give herself security, and marriage had failed her. So she had turned to Daniel to show herself, and perhaps Ernley, that she did not care, and that where she was betrayed she could betray also.

The more he thought it over, the more he felt that most likely she had no real grounds for jealousy. Ernley was only flirting, fooling around, and if she did not goad him too much would probably soon get over his infatuation. Three years ago Pearl Jenner had been only a blind and a consolation; probably she was still no more. Ernley was disappointed in his marriage too, and was trying to alter its conditions. He had certainly succeeded in diverting Belle’s attention from her children to her husband, but beyond that the matter had not prospered. She was not the woman to be roused by such means—Ernley was a fool; and he was not the man to be shaped by such handling—Belle was a fool too.

This was sometimes Dan’s view of the situation—at others he was lost, groping in his love for Belle, overcome with horror at the idea of having deserted her in her hour of need. He vowed that he would stand at her service now, and waited day after day to see if she would claim him. But two weeks passed and nothing happened. She neither wrote nor came. Her visit on that hot August afternoon began to appear more and more in the light of a caprice—the result of a sudden goading. She had repented, and was ashamed. He told himself that he ought to be ashamed too. She did not belong to him—she belonged to his best friend, whom she had taken for better, for worse, not knowing how much better or how much worse it would be.

Marriage was a queer thing, thought Daniel during those days. There seemed so many different kinds of marriage, and you never knew which kind yours was going to be. He had married without love, out of pity only, and the force of circumstances, and yet his year of marriage was (he already knew) his life’s eternal treasure. Ernley and Belle had married out of a passionate and romantic love, which had plucked them up by the roots and flung them together like trees in a hurricane. And look at them now—tossed and distressed, united and yet disunited, lovers and enemies.... Look at his father and mother too. His father had loved his mother, and had wooed her in the teeth of difficulty, while his mother had faced the anger of her kinsfolk to marry the stranger. To-day they lived apart, and yet content, his mother’s love given to her son, his father’s to the sea. They had forgotten their wooing and their love and the blue and golden days of the isles....

CHAPTER TEN

For some time Dan had gathered that his father’s stay ashore was conditioned by the time his money lasted. More than once he could have gone out on a coaster, but he preferred to remain on land, spending what he had. He went a great deal to the port taverns, but since that first afternoon Dan had never seen him drunk. He liked the society of other sailormen ashore, and often brought a couple with him to spend the evening at Greville Row, to the friendly delight of Mr. Gain.

He still talked a great deal about Dan’s joining him at sea. He disliked his son’s work on the ’bus, and it made him angry to think of him at a disadvantage when compared with Christopher. He insisted that Thomas Helier should not stand as a barrier between his father and a new life.

“There’s three sets of people as I know ud look after him—Mr. and Mrs. Gain here—your sister-in-law Emmie—or that Harman girl. There’s no use pretending you’re such an extra-special father that he’d miss you at his age. It ain’t as if you were going on long voyages—you’d be seeing him every now and again—he wouldn’t forget you like some.”

Dan shook his head.

“It isn’t only him. What should I do on board ship? I don’t see myself as an A.B.”

“You could come along as cook. My Lord, Dan! But you cook better than any of the sons of Germans we had on the Yorkshire Crown or on the Rebecca Rose. A good cook is everybody’s friend—you’d have a first-class time in the galley.”

Dan was touched by his father’s anxiety to have him with him, but he would not even discuss the matter. The land held him, though he knew not quite by what claims.

At the end of August Tom Sheather went off for a week to see a pal at Middlesbrough. This man had been skipper of the Geordie which Tom had first sailed in. He was now skipper of the White King which had put into Middlesbrough for repairs, and he invited Tom to come and spend a few days with him and his wife, who let lodgings in the town.

Dan missed his father, who had always been good company, and had filled up with talk and tales many hours that might have been disturbing if spent alone. Now he had to spend his free time as best he could, and became a devoted father to Thomas Helier, whom he took to the beach on Wednesday afternoons. Here he would lie dozing in the sunshine that warmed the shingle and danced on the little waves that the breeze whipped up on the languid August tide. Thomas Helier sometimes slept in a shawl, sometimes lay lively and garrulous, expressing his approval of the sunshine and the sea. He had a little spade, which he used at his tender age for purposes of destruction rather than construction, and with which he would beat his father when he was too drowsy for good company. He would sprawl over him, too, tugging at his hair, and pulling the carefully brushed and oiled forelock into disarray: “Dadda,” he would cry—“lady.”

His infant experience was full of ladies who had befriended him and Daniel in moments of difficulty or embarrassment. He could not think that one would ever pass without stopping to speak to them, or to put on the sock and shoe he had kicked off, or to pick up his woolly ball which had rolled away. “Lady!” he shrieked and welcomed—and Dan continued his encounters with motherly minded females whose efficient sentiment ran over at the sight of the young father and his son.

But in the evening hours, when Thomas Helier was put to bed by all the rules of the Babies’ Welfare, there could be no society either of baby or ladies on the beach. Dan could not bear the stuffiness of the Gains’ sitting-room, for the August evening was not yet dark, and he would feel drawn into the twilight, into the streets that still moved with life. Newhaven was not like Lewes after dusk—there was none of the evening coma of the market town, when the beasts have been driven home, and the Fords and gigs are away, and in the public-house sits only the auctioneer, resting after his raucous day. Newhaven streets were full of seamen, from the Geordies and other coasters, sometimes among them strangers from the Baltic or the north-west coast of France. The cinemas and the public-houses were full of them and their girls, and the pavements echoed with their tread, and the dusk was hoarse with the murmur of their voices and stinging with the smell of their pipes.

Dan went most often to the bridge. Here he would stand and look down into the basin of the Ouse, spreading towards Sleepers Hole. The masts of the ships stood like the lances of a great army between him and the pink edge of the sky. Among them he could see the smoke-stacks—red and yellow, black and white—and here and there the powerful lines of a crane. There were the ships that went up and down the Channel, and across it to the French ports, or to the Norman isles he knew so well—or turned the Lizard, or wandered up past Deal and Chatham and the flat isles of Kent into the London river. Leaning there on the bridge he would brood over all that his father had told him of the strange country of the sea—of the life on board the ships, with its gaiety and its quarrelling and its cleanliness, of the expanse which he knew only as the Channel, but which to his father was a chartered country of roads and names like the country of the downs—Elphick’s Tree, and Kinsman’s Nab, and the Horse of Willingdon, and the sea-downs of Le Colbert and Le Varne right out towards France, with Les Ridens, or Boulogne Middle.

Sometimes as he looked towards the lances of the coaster-army he felt that he, too, would like to go with them out to the new country of the English waters, leaving behind him the land that was so unfriendly, with all its perplexities and cares. The ghost of Belle Shackford would not come out to him walking upon the water. He still felt that he could not leave his son, or break any of the ties that held him to land, but for the first time he had heard the sea call.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

§ 1

Suddenly the tranquillity of those days was broken by the summons that all along he had expected. Belle sent him a telegram: “Meet me outside Ship Hotel two-thirty to-morrow.” The arrival of a telegram was itself startling in Greville Row, and in a moment of weakness he lied and said it was from his father. He had actually had a letter from his father that morning, telling him that his pal Gregory had offered him a berth on the White King, and would take on Dan as cook if he cared to think it over. He foisted the main contents of the letter on to the telegram and the deed was done.

“There now!” cried Mrs. Gain—“I was sure he’d be going to sea again soon. Will he come back here first?”

“I dunno,” said Daniel—“maybe he will, for the White King ain’t ready to sail for a fortnight or so, and he’ll want to say good-bye to me and the kid.”

“Then you ain’t going with him?”

Dan shook his head.

“That’s right,” cried the landlady—“you stop ashore. I’ve never yet believed that the sea is anything like half what they crack it up to be.”

Dan smiled wanly, and spent the rest of the evening in restless conjecture. Why was Belle throwing herself upon him now? What did she mean by her telegram?—just a meeting? or some confidence or some service? or plans altogether more sweeping and more desperate? He lay awake most of the night, and the next morning lounged, tired and inefficient, at the back of his ’bus, his mind no longer asking questions, or pricking itself to meet the future, but lumpish and inert, adapting itself to circumstances as mud adapts itself to the crushing of wagon-wheels.

But at half-past two he was outside the Ship, in appearance like any other of the young men lounging around on this early-closing day—the country-town mixture of spruceness and stolidity, blue reach-me-down, grey felt hat, and rather regrettable mauve socks. The next minute Belle appeared, big, golden, lovely, drooping with the heat that struck down from the hard blue sky and up from the hard, white pavement. She climbed off the Lewes ’bus, holding a suit-case in her hand.

“Hullo, Dan! I’m glad you’ve come.”

“Of course I’ve come.”

He took the case from her—it was heavy.

“What are you going to do with this?”

“Oh, leave it somewhere—anywhere—wherever I stay. I’ve left Ernley.”

Daniel stared at her, and the colour climbed as usual up his neck and face. He wished Belle would not spring these things on him in the public street.

“I’ve left him,” she repeated, taking off her long cotton gloves. “I couldn’t stand any more of it, and when it came to his stopping out all night....”

“He did that?”

“Yes—he’s done it twice. And he’s going to do it again to-night. Once his motor-bike broke down at Hassocks and he couldn’t get away till morning. Convenient—a motor-bike. Another time he went up to London to the Licensed Victuallers’ dinner, and now he’s gone to the Rotary dinner at Hastings.”

It all sounded pretty harmless, but Daniel knew what it meant to Belle, and was not entirely without his own suspicions, which, however, he would not betray.

“You don’t know that it means he’s with her—Pearl Jenner.”

“I do know. I’ve seen her letters.”

Daniel looked worried.

“Yes, I dare say you think I’m low, but I’ve been driven to it. Her letters kept on coming, so I steamed one open and she’s been in town with him—he hadn’t gone to the dinner at all—he’d gone to a theatre. Oh, of course, she didn’t say he’d actually slept with her——” Dan looked round in alarm at the lounging young men and dispersing contents of the ’bus, but Belle’s warm, husky voice had more fierceness than carrying power—it filled his ears but reached nobody else’s.

“Of course she didn’t,” she continued—“she wouldn’t—and there’s no need. When he told me he was going to Hastings to-night I told him straight that he was meeting her there—and he didn’t deny it. We had a scene together then—and he went off—and I telegraphed to you. Oh, Dan, I know I’m low and bad, but he’s driven me to it—I have to know what he’s doing, or I’d go mad—and when I do know....”

The tears sprang up in her eyes, and he felt them in his own. He could not speak. He merely snatched up her bag from the pavement and carried it into the inn.

“We’ll get rid of this—and then we’ll go somewhere and talk. Don’t cry, Belle, I’ll look after you.”

But she was not so easily disposed of. The Ship was full—it had no room for her, and they were driven out once more into the street. He was perplexed as to what they should do. He could, of course, take her down to the harbour and find accommodation in the London and Paris Hotel, but Belle protested:

“I don’t want to go right away from you like that. Besides, we’ve neither of us got the money. Can’t I get a cheap room near you—isn’t there one in the house where you live?”

“There’s the one dad had, but there’s some of his tackle still in it. All the same....”

“That won’t matter. It’ll only be for a night or two. I can’t stay here.”

He did not speak. The future seemed to rise before him like a dark and terrible wall.

§ 2

Belle’s luggage, which after a furlong of hot pavements seemed to have doubled its weight at the end of his arm, was finally left in Tom Sheather’s attic. Mrs. Gain had no objection when his visitor assured her that she did not expect these luxuries of accommodation which the landlady’s experience taught her were always a source of trouble with females.

“I’ve done for nobody but gentlemen for the last ten year. Howsumever, ma’am, you’re welcome to the room for a night or two, if you can put up with it.”

She thought that her lodger looked fagged, and offered her a cup of tea in the sitting-room, which Dan accepted for her. He wanted to talk to Belle in quiet, out of the streets—though he knew now that the aspidistra and the half-drawn blind no longer afforded the protections he had relied on.

They sat down, as before, each side of the centre table, but this time she was on the sofa, and he sat on the chair under the window, the sun hot on his back. The tea came in and they both had some, their conversation mechanically adapted to Mrs. Gain’s occasional entrances.

When she had taken the tray away, he and Belle sat for some moments in silence. It was a curious fact that during the hour or so that they had been together he had grown somehow to understand her purpose in coming to him, though not a word on the subject had passed between them. She was throwing herself back into the past—into the old poverty and the old love. Ernley had failed her, prosperity had failed her, marriage had failed her. Spiritually she was turning from the Crown to the George, as she had done before.

“Well, my dear—what are we going to do?”

She stood up, and walked round the table into the patch of sunshine where he sat. Then she sank, spreading like a peony at his feet.

“Oh, Daniel—I’ve come to you.”

“To me, my lovely—why to me?”

“Because I want you.”

There was no gladness in either of their voices.

“Don’t you want Ernley any more?”

“No.”

“Nor the children?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You would if you understood what I’ve been through during these last weeks—seeing him turn from me, seeing the children dividing us instead of bringing us together, seeing everything ... die. Oh, Dan, Ernley’s dead and the children are dead, and I’m only the poor widow and mother who’s come to you. Dan, be good to me and take me. You were good to me years ago, and there’s never been anyone like you for love and kindness—if only I hadn’t been cursed.”

She hid her face on his knee, and they both trembled. He forced himself to speak.

“But, my dear, don’t you see how hopeless it all is? What can I do for you now? I make barely enough money to keep myself and the boy. We’d simply go under.”

“No, we shouldn’t. You could get better-paid work if you went to another place—and I could work, too. I’m used to working, and part of my trouble’s been that I’ve had no work lately, at least none that I could understand. Dan, don’t you see this? I’m down to the bottom, and nothing worse can happen to me than what has happened. If we had to be servants together it would be happier for me than being the landlord’s wife at the Crown. And don’t you see that you’re down to the bottom, too?—that you’ve nothing to lose? Your sister-in-law will take care of your baby for you. You won’t have to worry about him—it’ll be only our two selves, and, as I say, we’re at the bottom already, so we can’t fall any lower.”

Dan’s heart was beating violently. The wall of the future seemed to topple, and he saw beyond it a dark night into which he and Belle walked alone—hand in hand, leaving everything behind them, seeing nothing but sorrow, yet together. Years ago he had hoped to possess her with all that he most loved in life, and now she was offered to him alone, a fellow-victim, stripped and cast out. Yet he wanted her as much as when her love would have brought comfort instead of privation, pride instead of shame.

“Belle, how can I take you like that?” For her sake more than his own he still struggled a little. “You’ll regret it some day, and then in your heart you’d reproach me. You couldn’t help it. We’ll be without everything—we’ll be outside—no friends, no home, no money—Belle!”

“I shan’t mind. I’d rather have love and nothing than everything without love, and seemingly I’ve got to choose. Besides, it won’t always be like that. We’ll find work somewhere—and Ernley will divorce me and then we can get married.”

Dan’s eyes grew big at the idea of divorce. It sounded grand, but outside the normal round of human experience either in Sark or Bullockdean. Still, all that was very far ahead. Nothing was close to him but Belle in her disillusion and wreck, turning to him as to her one comfort, claiming him out of the past. She suddenly knelt upright on the floor in front of him and held out her arms. He caught her, dragging her over his knees, straining her to his heart. Once more the wall of the future was built up, and the darkness hidden. The past seemed to go over his head like a flood, bringing all his old love and joy and pain in her. He was like a man drowning in a place where waters meet.

§ 3

When they drew apart from that embrace something had changed in him. He no longer felt sorrowful and fear-driven—his heart was light, his outlook triumphant. The scheme of his life till now seemed to him in this elated moment a very mean scheme. His days on the ’bus, his nights in Greville Row, even his twilight musings on Newhaven Bridge, when the armies of the ships lifted their spears up to the sky, even these seemed trite and humdrum compared to the wonderful adventure of taking Belle out alone into an empty world.

The difficulties that lay ahead were traps for glory. He saw himself conquering fate, swimming the sea of workless post-war England, reaching a harbour of well-paid independence and building a home anew. Even the thought of parting from Thomas Helier did not seriously distress him—besides, in the fullness of time, he, too, would have his place in that new house which love should build.

Drawing Belle again into his arms, he took from her lips more power, more peace, more manhood, till he could have left that room to go through fire or walk the waters. He had never felt anything quite like this in his earlier experience of her—this sensation of drawing bigness from her bigness and strength from her strength. She had always been, too, as it were, related to other things—to ideals and hopes which formed a background to his love for her. But now she stood alone, torn out of her background, and yet somehow immense as she had never been when she belonged to it.

The sun in the street was dipping towards the roofs, and the half-drawn blind was an amber glare.

“We’ll go out,” said Dan. “Come out with me, Belle. We can’t stop in the house.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’ll go and have supper somewhere—in a shop—in a hotel. Then I’ll take you to the pictures. We must do something this first night.”

She picked up her hat from the floor.

“When ull you take me away?” she murmured—“right away?”

“I must finish my week on the ’bus.”

“No! No!” her voice came suddenly with fear—“we can’t wait. Ernley might find us.”

“Let him.”

“Oh, no—I couldn’t bear it.”

Her eyes grew large and frightened, and her breast heaved. Dan suddenly saw a vision of himself that he had often seen before—an odious, practical little cad, whose chief thought was bread and butter.

“All right—we’ll cut and run. I’ll take baby to Em’s to-morrow.”

He asked Mrs. Gain to fetch Thomas Helier that evening and put him to bed—a task she had already performed occasionally when he was at Hoddern. Then, while Belle went to her attic to tidy her dress and hair, he ran up to his room and opened the drawer where he kept his money. It was in a small, battered cash-box, and amounted in all to some three pounds—his Christmas gratuity from the ’bus company and tips from one or two passengers whom he had sensationally befriended. It was all he had in the world, but it was part of his mood now that he should spend it, that it should be flung into the heap of his welcome for Belle’s love.

CHAPTER TWELVE

§ 1

They ate their meal at the Cimerosa Café, a big place attached to the leading picture-house and satisfying local ideals of smartness. Otherwise there were few elegant resorts in Newhaven—the shore-walking sailormen off the Geordies and other coasting craft sought homeliness rather than elegance, and were catered for by a multitude of small taverns and shops. The London and Paris Hotel provided for the more sophisticated tastes of the passing population of the boat trains. For the ’busman’s holiday and the shopgirl’s night out there was the Cimerosa Café, with its inlaid tables and mirrored walls to provide a glitter of luxury and a certain approximation to those homes of splendour whose doors would be thrown open on the screen of the picture-house beyond.

Both Belle and Daniel were much impressed as they sat together at their little table, an island in the midst of the vastness. All round them was the glitter of glass and steel, polished tiles and polished wood, flowers made at once cheaper and more impressive by masses of gypsophila and asparagus fern, while the tinkle and wail of a piano and two fiddles came threading a plaintive way through the clatter of knives and voices.

Dan was at first struck dumb by the elegance of the waitress and the profusion of the menu. But between them he and Belle managed at last to stumble upon the materials of a meal. They had soup, fried cutlets with French beans, and finally a fruit salad. Belle, as once mistress of the Crown, knew more about food than Daniel, and also chose the sauterne that her lover was drinking for the first time.

Though more at their ease when they had begun eating they scarcely talked during their dinner. They belonged to that order of society which is too polite to talk when music is being provided for its entertainment. They listened respectfully to each item as if they had been at a concert, and applauded respectfully at the end. Belle ate slowly and sat dreamily, hardly seeming to notice her surroundings. Dan, on the other hand, stared about the room, watching the other diners and the waitresses moving among them, interested in their manners and their food, as it was his custom to be interested in other people’s concerns.

There was another smaller hall beyond the first, and from where he sat he could see a part of it reflected in the mirror opposite him. In the mirror he saw a man and woman come in together and sit down at a table under a palm. The elegance of the woman’s black dress and hat made him look at her twice, and with a start he recognized her as Pearl Jenner. The man was unknown.

At first surprise and interest made him miss the significance of this encounter, but in a minute or two he realized what it meant. Belle had come to him because she believed her husband to be with another woman, and here was this other woman without him but with another man. She was certainly guiltless on this occasion, though, Dan told himself angrily, it did not follow that she had been guiltless on any other.

After all, Belle had made sure of her perfidy by effective if low expedients.

He wondered if Belle could see her, but Belle sat with her back to the mirror and outside the angle of direct vision. She could not see nor be seen. Then he suddenly asked himself what she would do if she realized that to-night at least her suspicions were confounded, and Ernley was innocently eating his dinner in Hastings, the blameless guest of Rotarians.

The question rushed at him out of the void, bringing with it the answer not of itself, but of another question which he had not yet dared to ask. “She is here not because of her love of me, but because of her love of Ernley.” His hand shook as he quickly raised his glass, and the glitter of the room with its lights and glass and silver and flowers seemed to heel over as in a nightmare. By an act of violence he pushed the question which had no answer and the answer which had no question out of his mind together. At the same time he stood up. He must do something—he must settle something—find out something about Pearl Jenner and why she was there. Then perhaps he would not trouble about Belle and why she was there.

“Where are you going?” asked Belle, waking out of her dream.

“I’m going to ask if they have any programmes. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He had seen some posters of the cinema entertainment displayed in the inner room, and first of all he went and scanned these and took a couple of leaflets. On his way back he stopped at Pearl Jenner’s table.

“Good evening,” he said.

Miss Jenner lifted her large, rather prominent eyes from her plate and surveyed him carefully without a word. In that glance Dan saw a grease mark on his waistcoat exposed, his collar and tie dismissed as impossible.

“I believe we’ve met before,” he said nervously.

Miss Jenner obviously did not remember the occasion, and her escort now joined her in her stare. Dan was nearly overwhelmed, but managed to stand his ground.

“It was at Bullockdean—the George Inn. You came with Mr. Ernley Munk to meet my—to meet his—leastways....”

Luckily she remembered now.

“Oh, yes. But that was a long time ago.”

“More’n three years.”

“Fancy your remembering.”

She had lost the deficiencies of his collar and tie in the dark, broad comeliness of his face, with the tan of the summer roads upon the cheeks, and the brightness of love and excitement in the eyes.

“I ain’t likely to forget.”

He thought a touch of gallantry would not come amiss. Then suddenly his gaze fell to her hand and saw that she wore a wedding ring.

“Are you married now?” The words broke straight out of his surprise.

She bridled suitably.

“Yes—I’m married. This is my husband, Mr. Percy Johnson. We’re going to Paris—travelling for his firm.”

“Oh.”

“He’s got a job over there, and we thought we’d tack it on to our honeymoon. We had meant to cross to-night, but there’s too much swell on for me, so I said we’d stop at the London and Paris Hotel.”

He seemed properly impressed.

“Sit down and have a drink of something with us,” said Mr. Percy Johnson.

“No—no—much obliged, I’m sure. I’ve got a friend waiting. Good-bye.”

“So pleased to have met you,” said the lady graciously.

Daniel fled.

He walked quickly back into the next room and sat down opposite Belle.

“It begins at half-past eight. We’d better be going.”

“Well, I’m ready. What a time you were.”

“I met a chap I knew.”

His heart was sick because he knew that he had not the courage to tell her about Pearl Jenner who was now Pearl Johnson.

§ 2

He told himself it did not really matter. The thing that mattered was Belle’s jealous suspicion of Ernley, not the question of whether it was or was not justified. After all, it probably was justified, though Miss Jenner had seen the wisdom of escaping from a difficult situation by the most convenient road. Ernley had certainly deceived his wife, plotted and schemed and lied. He had made Belle’s life a torture by uncertainty, as she had made his a boredom by certainty. Their marriage was smashed—trodden in pieces—by themselves. What did anything else matter?—Pearl Jenner or Pearl Johnson? Daniel stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and having paid his bill, led the way out of the Cimerosa Café into the Cimerosa Palace.

“We’ll have a box,” he said to Belle as she followed.

“But——”

“I don’t care. We must have a good time to-night.”

The desire to strip the future was even more fiercely upon him.

So Belle and Daniel went into the house of Life together.

Life moved before them, flickering on a screen in a procession, as the procession of life moves before the immortal gods. Those ’busmen and shopgirls in the darkness were as the immortal gods, seeing as in a mirror for their sport, life and love and death and hate and jealousy and wealth and despair and laughter and tenderness and vice and beauty and age and youth and piety and folly.... Scenes of splendour, a great country house full of servants, rooms that were halls, halls that were the naves of cathedrals, meals that were banquets—vicarious luxury for the immortal gods, making them forget the stained tablecloths and bed-sitting-rooms of their experience—scenes of squalor, drink and violence, nothing to eat ... pity bringing comfort to the immortal gods, who see the depths beneath them and are content.... Far lands, palms, temple bells, spreading pagodas rising tier on tier above the ageless dragon-shaped trees, an echo of gongs and terror—and the immortal gods forget the limits of the Southern Railway and have seen the world and yet are thankful that they sit at home.... A royal garden-party—greatness condescending at a factory—a fashionable cricket match ... elegance for the immortal gods, the wand passed over their jap silks and serge reach-me-downs ... a drama of High Life—Vice and Virtue matched as through the million ages—vice purple-mouthed, virtue starry-eyed—vice drinking champagne and dancing on a restaurant table—virtue weeping and putting the babies to bed—vice flaunting—virtue shrinking—vice trapped in a burning theatre and destroyed sensationally—virtue welcoming erring weakness home with close-up of forgiveness—the Moral Sense of the immortal gods is satisfied.... The loveliest most aloof of animal souls takes on human weakness, and shows the immortal gods their own silly vices, shifts and philanderings through a diminishing glass. Felix keeps on walking and the gods laugh ... they laugh again as a greater than Grimaldi comes before them, futile, pathetic, exalted—here are the shifts of humanity, laughable, piteous, and yet dignified. He fools, falls, blunders and is cursed and blessed, and when he has gone there is more laughter, and among it the first real tears the immortal gods have shed. For the greater than Grimaldi has shown them human nature as immortal gods should see it—as a thing of futility and dignity, tears and laughter.... Now “Next week’s features” and “God save the King,” and the immortal gods have descended from their velvet thrones and are ’busmen and shopgirls once more in the street, clasping each other as the crowd disperses on the pavements and the great arclamps of the entrance die.

Dan’s arm was clasping Belle as he led her homewards. His body was drugged by her sweetness, and his mind was drugged by Life. They did not speak, for their thoughts were passing in a procession as on a screen. Belle walked with her head bent, one arm hanging limply, one hand holding Dan’s hand against her waist. Dan walked with his head high, and saw the lamplight in her yellow hair and breaking into the shadows flung by her hat. They came together to Greville Row, and stood together in the narrow hallway, with the door shutting out the street lamp and the moon.

Behind them the steep, narrow stairs soared into a still deeper darkness. Dan’s arms came out and took Belle, drawing her big shoulder down on his, holding her flushed face and rough hair down against his cheek.

“Oh, Belle,” he murmured thickly in her hair. “Oh, Belle—I must love you.”

And all the House of Life danced before the darkness of his closed eyes that were closed against hers. She shuddered in his arms, moved herself suddenly, and broke from him in tears.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

§ 1

The smallness of the house shook with her dash upstairs and the banging of her door. For a moment Dan stood at the stair-foot, then he too turned and went upwards. He felt mentally bruised, but still exalted, as he opened the door of his little room and went in. The moon and the street lamp were together in a queer troubled light, and the occasional surfaces of furniture gleamed in pale flecks. His bed was all white, and Thomas Helier’s bed beside it, with a blot which was Thomas Helier himself.

Dan went over to the window, and looked out on the roofs without seeing them. Why had Belle cried when she left him? He knew that women cry for joy as much as for sorrow, but he did not think that Belle had cried for joy. How could she have cried for sorrow with his arms round her and the vows of his love upon her? Only because she still loved Ernley and still belonged to him. Only because she loved Ernley so much that when she saw her marriage breaking she had deliberately killed it rather than let it drag on as a broken thing. He, Daniel, was only the stick she had taken to break her marriage, to put her wounded love out of its pain—he was not there to give her love but to kill her love. That night she was expecting him to go up to her room and kill the last of her love for Ernley. To-morrow she would wake up without love, empty, like sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

He shut his eyes again and the darkness flickered as with lights on a screen. He saw the procession of his love for Belle—his courtship of her at Batchelors’ Hall, the tall house and the tall nodding trees, and the black-and-white striped walls of the drawing-room where the gramophone played. He saw himself going to seek her up the narrow lanes by Rushlake Green, and pleading with her in the cottage at Three Cups Corner, where the white brides mocked him from the wall.... Then he saw her and Ernley standing together in the doorway of old Gadgett’s bedroom, holding each other by the hand, and looking at each other with sad eyes, as if they looked forward into their marriage and saw it appointed for sorrow....

He knew that his love had ended there. After that there had been no love, only despair, and then escape ... and since he had come back he had not loved her as in the old days, but in a different, unhappier way. He loved her for herself and himself only. He loved her as other men had loved her before Ernley, and to-night his love for her was just a flame, seeking to devour—not the flame of the hearth where the food is cooked and life made warm and secure, but the flame of the burning house, which seeks only to destroy, and is the enemy of the hearth upon which the dead, burnt house shall fall.

He opened his eyes again and looked down at the little dark shape of Thomas Helier asleep in his moonlit bed. Then he remembered his own marriage. Till that moment it had been merely an empty space in his thoughts of Belle. But now it became an island, and the rest of life the empty sea. That year of his married life, belonging to the stranger, the strange land and the strange language, was none the less his heart’s true home and abiding sweetness. All that he had ever known of love was in that marriage, which had gathered up into itself not only his love for Rose Falla but his love for Belle Shackford. His love for Belle had led him to his marriage with Rose, and his love for Belle had been made holy by his marriage with Rose.

“Oh, Rose, Rose—dear little Rose—I remember that evening when I took you into my arms in the dark cottage at Moie Fano, and outside was the cliff like a terrible blind thing asleep in the light. Something better than love had given you to me then. I thought, ‘All my love is in Sussex with Belle Shackford’—and reckon I never knew that love was in our marriage and nowhere else.... If I let Belle use me to break her marriage, I break my own—I break faith with Rose—I break faith with Belle. I cannot love a woman away from marriage—if I did that my love would be like the cliff at Moie Fano—a terrible blind thing asleep in the light.”

He sank down on his knees before the window, and his thoughts which had been drowned came out of the water, and he knew himself to be set on a mad and evil way. He was about to break a marriage—a wounded marriage, it is true, but not wounded to death. Belle had taken Ernley as he had taken Rose—“pour le mieux et pour le pire”—“for better for worse.” He had known nothing of the worse in his marriage with Rose, for his Rose had been a sweet flower plucked before the rains. But if they had lived on together they would probably have had to forgive just like everyone else. He could have forgiven Rose anything—Rose would have forgiven him anything. By that same power Ernley could forgive Belle and Belle could forgive Ernley. And Belle had less to forgive Ernley than she thought ... there lay Daniel’s shame. He was a thief breaking into the inn of marriage with a lie. What does it matter? The inn of marriage is empty—it is already robbed. No—love is still there. Respect and trust and seemliness are gone, but love is still there—sitting alone and waiting for the others to come back ... love of the mother for the children and the children for the mother—love of the wife for the husband and the husband for the wife. Belle knew that, and that was why she wanted him to break into the inn of marriage and help her kill love—love waiting in the empty house till her children return.... “But I can’t do that—I can’t—because for a year I, too, lived with love in the inn of marriage, and if I kill Belle’s love for her husband I kill my own for Belle, my own for Rose, my own for our child, since these are all part of the same thing. Oh, God, I can’t do it—I can’t hurt the best thing you’ve ever given me—your own thing—part of yourself.”

§ 2

The dawn was breaking, with the masts of the ships standing up before it like spears before a banner. Dan still knelt beside the window in the dishevelment of a sleepless night. His collar was askew, and that tie, damned of Pearl Johnson, was under one ear. His hair was rumpled out of its sleekness, and the long, straight lick of it hung sideways almost to his shoulder. He must clean and tidy himself before he went up to Belle and told her that his own marriage had been too great a treasure for him to be the thief of hers.

He must tell her at once, so that she could go back at once to Ernley. If she went now the situation might be saved. Indeed, the very fact of her having gone away might take from her that certainty which had so disenchanted her husband. This thing that had happened might be the very thing needed to establish happiness for Belle and Ernley. Whether Belle had loved Daniel or not, or Ernley had loved Pearl or not, was no matter. Pearl and Daniel had been useful to break up a hard piece of life—and now that their task was done, Pearl could go to her Mr. Johnson, and Daniel could go....

He plunged his head into his basin of cold water. What should he do when he had lost Belle? Didn’t he still love her? Yes—but that terrible, stripped future which had once enticed him now filled him entirely with fear. He could not take Belle away from everything that truly belonged to her—her marriage, her home, her husband, her children ... any more than he could go away himself from all that truly belonged to him—his marriage, his home, Rose Falla or Notre Helier.

The baby was still asleep—he had slept peacefully all through the night of his father’s distress. Soon he would be waking and demanding attention in one form or another. Poor little kid—at least one would not have to part with him now ... or only for a little while. His father would have to go away for a little while, to forget this new sound of Belle’s footsteps in his life. Going away was a great cure for everything—made everything seem like shadows on glass ... then when you came back you could pick up things again in a new way—he had picked up his love for Belle in a new way; if he had picked it up in the old way he could not have renounced it now. But there was sea water in the blood of his father’s son, and a sea change was a change of heart. When did the White King sail from Middlesbrough?...

§ 3

From Belle’s window, too, one could see the masts of the ships, but now the sunlight gleamed upon them—they were no longer lances but Aaron’s rod in flower. As Dan came stooping into the attic with its low-set window, the first thing he saw was the flowering of Aaron’s rod against the sea. The dawn was full of colour—rose and brown and blue, and the breeze of it rushed into the attic, both salt and sweet.

It was almost like an encounter, and gave him a queer sense of exaltation, and the strength to look at Belle as she lay on the bed, outside the clothes, wrapped in a purple cotton kimono, over which her hair flowed tawny and challenging. Her face was hidden in the hollow of one elbow, and she slept incredibly, in spite of his knock and his entrance and the flowering of the dawn.

But immediately he came and stood beside her she woke—she sat up, sweeping the hair out of her eyes. Her hair frightened him—it was so aggressively abandoned, so bright, so coarse, so curly.... He remembered the fine silk of Rose’s hair among his fingers and upon his lips. Belle had let down her hair to smother and bind him—- a crude and easy charm. He suddenly felt very far away from her.

“Well,” she said sullenly—“what do you want now?”

“I want to talk to you.”

He pulled a chair beside the bed and sat down. She yawned and stretched her arms, then suddenly burst into tears.

“Belle—Belle—don’t cry. You know you don’t really love me.”

“Since when have you discovered that?”

Her voice was not sweet.

“Since I said good night to you—when you cried.... I guessed then that you’d come to me not because you loved me, but because you loved Ernley.”

“You’re damned clever, ain’t you.”

“And, Belle, I saw I was a swine, for I was keeping something back from you—something about Ernley.”

“What?”

“That he hasn’t been with Pearl Jenner at Hastings.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I saw her here in Newhaven last night.”

Belle seized his arm.

“She was at the café,” faltered Daniel, realizing how treacherous he must now appear—“I saw her in the other room—that’s why I went in to get a programme, and——”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew it ud made a difference to your feelings about Ernley. You see, it wasn’t only that she was there—she’d got a man with her—her husband.”

“D’you mean to say she’s married?”

“Just—they’re off to Paris to-day.”

“And you never told me?”

“I—I couldn’t.”

“Why?—why?”

“Because I knew it ud mean I’d lose you—you’d go back to Ernley after that.”

“Cad!” shrieked Belle. “You dirty little cad!”

She sprang off the bed, and stood before him barefooted on the floor, blazing with anger. She was so much the virago that he almost cowered, and the shame of his own fear made him angry, too. He rose to his feet, and then suddenly the fear of his own shame drove down upon him and swept the anger out of his heart. After all, Belle was right. He had behaved like a cad with that lie of silence. If Belle had not wept like that at the foot of the stairs, how much of her life would he have left her? She was saved only by her tears.

“I’m sorry, Belle—forgive me, Belle.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I loved you and reckon I wasn’t strong enough to tell you something that might send you from me.”

“And why are you strong enough now—when it’s too late?”

“My dear, it ain’t too late.”