§ 1
The morning was still colourless, for though the sun had risen, there
was no pomp in the east, which was iron-grey with clouds. The down’s
back, under its coat of rime, was grey too, like the hull of a
man-o’-war--even the cottage had assumed the prevailing tones of grey
and white, with pits and streaks of blackness where the shadows fell.
White Lion cottage and a couple of disused barns stood about a hundred
yards from the pond at the top of the Bostal Way. On either side of the
doorstep daffodils were a-bloom, but as dredged of colour as the
lanterns which Daniel and Ernley still foolishly carried were dredged of
light.
“The place ull be shut up,” said Munk.
“No it won’t. Reckon he’s got to leave the door open for the nurse.
Anyways, I don’t suppose he’d lock up--that’s a high-class custom.”
He proved to be right. The door was on the latch, so he pushed Ernley
in, and through into the kitchen. The fire was laid, and Daniel soon had
a light in it, with the kettle on to boil. He propped up Ernley in the
wicker arm-chair, with his feet on the grate, and the hearthrug over his
knees.
“And now while the kettle’s boiling I’ll go upstairs and have a look at
the old man. Maybe he’s heard us come in, and is wondering what it’s all
about.”
He ran up the ladder-like little flight, and listened for a moment
outside the bedroom door. Not a sound was to be heard. He pushed the
door open and looked in. The curtains were only half-drawn, so the
daylight was in the room, smiting the light of a small fire burning
smokily in the grate, and the flame of a single candle on the dresser
beside the bed. In the mixture of daylight, firelight and candlelight he
could see the old man lying asleep in the bed; and in a chair beside
him, an open Bible on her knee, her head fallen sideways on her
shoulder, her legs stretched out forlornly in tattered stockings, slept
Belle Shackford.
Daniel stood and gaped--shut his eyes to make sure he wasn’t dreaming,
then opened them and gaped again. It would be hard to say when he would
have recovered the use of his faculties if Belle had not woken up.
“Hullo,” she said dreamily.
“Belle!” gasped Daniel.
She woke up fully, and sprang to her feet.
“How did you get here?”
“How did you get here?”
They faced each other, almost terrified. He did not dare tell her Ernley
was in the house.
“Oh, Belle! I’ve been nearly dead because of you. What in the Lord’s
name are you doing here? Reckon your dad’s out searching the whole down
after you.”
There was a slight stir of the forgotten figure in the bed.
“My dear----”
“It’s all right, father--I’m here.”
She went to the old man’s side and stooped over him.
“I’ll get you your tea in a minute.”
“That’s right, dearie--that’s right. ’Tis only I had a dream about your
mother and your Aunt Hetty.”
“I’ll put on the kettle straight away.”
She moved across to the fireplace.
“I’ve a kettle on downstairs,” said Daniel.
“What made you come? How on earth did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t know--leastways--anyways, I’ve put the kettle on.”
“Who’s the young chap?” came from the bed.
“He’s Daniel Sheather, father.”
Daniel was growing more and more confused.
“Has he coming a-courting you?”
“No, dear, not he!”
“Well, I’m glad of it, for I’d be sorry to lose you yet awhile. I’ve had
a bit of a cold, Ma’as Sheather--a bit of a cold, and just a touch of
rheumatics in my boans, so as I can’t get out on the hill just now.
Howsumdever, my young darter has been looking after me fine, and I
reckon to be out in a day or two.”
Dan did not know what to say. The situation was beyond him. However, he
was spared the burden of carrying on the conversation, for at that
moment a loud fretful voice shouted from downstairs.
“Where the hell have you got to, Daniel? The kettle’s boiling over.”
Belle jerked herself upright on her knees beside the fire.
“Who’s that?”
Daniel stuttered.
“It’s Ernley,” cried Belle.
She looked towards the door, then out of the window. She was like a hare
when the pack has cornered her.
“Let me go!” she cried frantically--“let me go!” Then: “Daniel, don’t
let him find me.”
But her panic had betrayed her, and her voice had reached Ernley in the
kitchen below.
“Daniel--who’s that upstairs?”
For a moment Daniel thought Belle would climb out of the window. She
made a movement towards it, then suddenly seemed to turn to wood. A
footstep mounted on the stairs, and she stood like a wooden woman in the
middle of the floor, staring over Daniel’s shoulder through the open
door behind him. Then, also quite silent, Ernley came into the room, and
took her in his arms, still made of wood.
§ 2
Daniel did not see her return to flesh and blood. After he had held her
stiffly and silently in his arms for a few moments, Ernley led her away,
and the next thing Sheather became conscious of was the kitchen door
shutting behind them.
“Who’s the young chap?” asked Gadgett.
“Ernley Munk--from the Crown at Bullockdean.”
“Munk ... Munk.... It’s Pepper at the Crown. I hope Pepper ain’t
courting my young Ellen. He ain’t a straight chap. He chalked me up a
quart pot when I’d only had a pint. I won’t have my Ellen courted by a
chap who can’t measure his ale.... Say, young feller, she’s gone out
wudout making my tea. Reckon I’m parched fur a cup o’ tea.”
It was Dan’s lot, somehow, to be making tea while the skies were
falling. Evidently fate refused to take him seriously in a tragic part.
While Ernley and Belle fought for the life of their wounded love
downstairs, he pottered about the bedroom with the kettle and
tea-cups--shook up old Gadgett’s pillows and made him comfortable--gave
him his medicine and answered obligingly to the name of Jack.
Once he crept down and listened at the kitchen door. A curious silence
brooded within--then he heard a faint movement and a still fainter voice
... evidently love was not being healed with words. As he went upstairs
again there was a stir in the house behind him, and he saw that the
nurse had come in.
“Hullo, Mr. Sheather!” she called--“I never expected to find anyone here
so early.”
“Don’t go into the kitchen,” pleaded Daniel.
“And why not?”
“Because Miss Belle Shackford’s in there.”
“Miss Belle Shackford! You don’t mean to say she’s found?”
“It’s odd as she ain’t been found before seeing as she’s seemingly been
here all the time.”
“She can’t have been. I was here at six o’clock last night.”
“Reckon she went and hid when she saw you coming. I brought Ernley Munk
in here to make him a cup of tea as he was feeling a bit ordinary--and
there was Belle sitting beside the old man, and him thinking she was his
daughter who’s been dead ten years.”
“He takes every female he sees for his daughter. Many’s the time he’s
called me Ellen and told me not to start walking out with their shepherd
at Place. We must see about getting him into the infirmary some day
soon. I’ve let him stop on here, as he seemed so set on it, but most
days he doesn’t know or care where he is.”
She had come into the room and went bustling over to the bedside.
“Well--what’s this I hear about you? You’ve been sheltering a lady.”
But old Gadgett was unequal to raillery, and confused by these flitting
females. Dan thought it best to rescue him from the nurse’s
ministrations.
“I’ve given him his medicine--and his tea along of it. Reckon he won’t
want much doing for him. If you’re going back to Alciston it ud be
Christian charity for you to call over to Batchelors’ and tell ’em there
she’s found.”
“It ud be better still if I took her back with me. What’s she doing down
in the kitchen all by herself?”
“She ain’t by herself.”
“Oh!”
The nurse looked wise, and at the same time as if she expected further
enlightenment. But Dan said nothing. He stood with his back to her,
drumming at the window.
“Is Mr. Ernley Munk with her?”
The rumour of Belle’s troubles was now up and down the two valleys of
the Ouse and the Cuckmere.
“No, he ain’t,” snapped Daniel. Which was a pity, as the nurse ran into
him and Belle at the bottom of the stairs, and thenceforward had no high
opinion of young Sheather’s truthfulness.
§ 3
They came into the bedroom together, and found Daniel sitting on the low
chair beside the bed, where the old man was dozing off again.
Seeing them standing together, he knew instinctively that they were
reconciled. But there was nothing triumphant, nothing passionate about
their reconciliation. They stood stiffly side by side, without word or
caress. Evidently they had come by stormy paths to peace.
“Hullo,” he said awkwardly.
“It’s all right, Dan,” said Ernley, in a quiet, rather flat voice.
“Belle and I are friends again, and we’re going to be married as soon as
ever it’s possible.”
There was no display of rapture to make him jealous--scarcely, indeed,
the appearance of ordinary happiness. None the less, Daniel felt sore
right through. He had not realized till then that up to that very
moment, in the face of the impossible, he had been hoping that Belle
might change, and turn to him again.
“It really is for ever this time,” Munk continued, with a faint smile.
“We’re not going to quarrel any more. It hurts too much, doesn’t it,
Belle?”
“Yes, it hurts,” she nodded.
“And we’re both ever so grateful to you, Dan, for being such a good
friend to us both.”
Dan coloured. He did not feel specially a friend of either at the
present moment. If they had been richly and aggressively happy he would
have felt less alienated than he was now by their queer exhaustion. He
saw mysteries, depths in their being which had always hitherto been
veiled from him, the outsider, but which were not strange to either of
those two.
“How are you, Ernley?” he asked, deliberately breaking the situation.
“I’m well enough. Don’t you bother about me. I’m going to take Belle
home now.”
“The nurse has gone there.”
“Yes, we saw her, and told her we’d follow.”
Belle looked regretfully over to the bed.
“He’ll be sorry when I’m gone.”
“How long have you been here?” asked Daniel.
“Since the day before yesterday. I came up straight from Batchelors’.”
“No--not straight,” broke in Ernley. “Dan, she went up to the pond, and
she walked in--my Belle--and then when the water was all up round her,
she couldn’t ... so she came out, all dripping wet, and crawled in here,
thinking she might dry herself at the fire.... And the old chap thought
she was his daughter, and she felt so glad of a little kindness that she
stayed, and tried to make herself think it was true. You did, didn’t
you, Belle?”
“I was silly,” she murmured.
“No, not silly--it was I who was ... who’d driven you to this--so hard
that you wished you were Ellen Gadgett, nursing your old sick father.”
“When the nurse came I went and hid in the lean-to. She came twice a
day.”
“And how long ud you have stayed,” asked Daniel, “if we hadn’t found
you?”
“I dunno--I didn’t think. Reckon I was cruel, but I thought nobody cared
about me.”
“You knew I cared.”
For the first time he had called their attention to his tragedy. Her
eyes suffused.
“I’m sorry, Daniel.”
“We’ve treated you badly,” said Ernley. “But, Dan, if you’ll let
us--we’ll try and make it up to you.”
“We can’t,” said Belle, more wisely.
Daniel said nothing. He turned away from them and hid his face in the
coverlet of the old shepherd’s bed. When he looked up they had gone out
together.
§ 4
He spent the rest of the day with Gadgett. He had not the courage to go
home and tell his family that he had found Belle and lost her for ever.
He would wait and let the story reach them first, as it would by
inevitable conduits before night. Also he was sorry for the poor old man
waking to find himself deprived of his daughter. But in this respect he
need not have troubled, for Gadgett woke up forty years later than he
had fallen asleep.
“That you, Ma’as Sheather?”
“It’s me, Mr. Gadgett.”
“Well, I call it more’n uncommon kind for you to have called around to
see me, and if you’ll go over there to the fireplace and turn your back
on me for a minnut I’ll show you what only a few has seen.”
Dan, in obliging apathy, turned his back. A few moments later an
inarticulate sound came from the bed.
“Are you ready, Mr. Gadgett?”
There was no reply, but a kind of summoning croak--and when Daniel
turned round he knew the reason. Mr. Gadgett was wearing his teeth.
For a moment Dan, too, was speechless. He had forgotten all about the
teeth, and even if he had remembered them and the shepherd’s promise to
show them to a good boy, he would have been surprised. The sight before
him was truly an astounding one. Mr. Gadgett had set out not only to
supply nature’s deficiency, but to improve on her perfect work. Instead
of thirty-two teeth he had fifty, twenty-five in each row. The result
was a grin of terrible magnitude.... Daniel gaped--it was lucky that he
was feeling so miserable, or he might have laughed. When he considered
that the wonder had been given its proper due of amazement the old man’s
jaws worked convulsively as he freed them to express his satisfaction.
“Wunnerful, ain’t it?”
“Surelye, Mr. Gadgett.”
“You never thought to see such a set of teeth. A dentist couldn’t do it
more fine.”
“That he couldn’t.”
“It’s took me nigh on ten year, getting ’em all together and fixing ’em
proper. And now I mun be thinking of having my likeness took; but I’m
that stiff in my boans maybe it’ll be some days before I’m upon the
hill--let alone I get into the town.”
“How are you feeling to-day?”
“I feel valiant, save as there’s aches in all my boans, and the power is
agone from my legs. I ask the Lord how I am to follow the sheep on the
hill if He takes the power out of my legs like this?”
“Reckon you’ll be all the better for a good long rest.”
“I’m not so set on that. I’d sooner be out wud the sheep on the hill.
But it ain’t reasonable to expect it of me, and I’ve always understood
as the Lord is praaperly reasonable.”
Dan said nothing, feeling uncertain of the matter.
“There’s that nurse is an unreasonable woman,” continued the old
man--“to think of me come down to having a nurse, and I done for myself
this last twenty year. She’s all for putting things where they don’t
belong, and the trouble I’ve had wud her notions you’d never believe:
‘I’m biling kettle for your hot water, Mr. Gadgett, to give you a bit of
a wash.’ A bit of a wash! And she washes my chest and my back, which no
mortal Christian ud wash between October and May--and she calls that a
bit of a wash.... I’m like to take my death of cold wud her bits and
tricks.... She’s an unreasonable woman, wot shall never see my teeth.”
Daniel was beginning to feel drowsy in the little room, full of thick
green sunshine and crowded furniture. A fly was buzzing against the
window pane, and seemed to be the voice of the stuffy afternoon.
“If I cud only get out to my sheep.... Mus’ Shackford ull be
unaccountable put about wud me laid up here. There’s that fool Botolph’s
got ’em now.... Reckon he’ll have ’em all straggled--and the lambing
just upon us.... I mun be up for the lambing.”
“You’ll be up, sure enough, Mr. Gadgett.”
“I mun be up, surelye; or ... this is a tarble thing to have happened to
a poor old man past seventy year. I’m fretted after my sheep.... Have
you seen my gal, Ellen? She was here just now ... the one who’s in
service at Place ... but maybe it wasn’t her--I disremember. Not an
illness had I as boy or man, and now in my old age it comes upon me.
Howsumdever, I’ll always say as the Lord ain’t unreasonable, and I’d
have naught against Him if I cud get out to my sheep ... before that
fool Botolph spiles their fleeces.... He’ll get ’em all straggled.... I
wish you had ’em.”
“I’ve never had anything to do with sheep. I’d be worse than Botolph.”
“Wot? Ain’t you their shepherd-boy at Place?... No, now I see as you
ain’t. But I know who you are, and I know you’re good wud all beastses
... beastses and children ... I seen you.”
Dan’s heart suddenly tightened--he thought of Leslie and Ivy at Brakey
Bottom, and he could not bear the thought. He would never be anybody’s
father now.... He leaned his head against the bedpost, not troubling any
longer to hide his misery. After all, Mr. Gadgett was scarcely there--he
had gone back to live in yesterday.
But the old man seemed to have noticed that something was wrong.
“What ails you, lad? Do your boans ache?”
“It’s my heart that aches, Mr. Gadgett. I’ve had trouble.”
“Trouble ... trouble ... so have we all.”
“Have you had trouble, Mr. Gadgett?”
“Surelye--trouble on trouble.... Howsumever, I’ll always say as the Lord
is reasonable.”
§5
When the time came Dan was both sorry and afraid to go. He had enjoyed a
certain amount of peace, pottering about the house and looking after the
old man. At the George there would be nobody to look after--on the
contrary, everyone would be looking at him ... who had helped find Belle
for Ernley.
He dragged out the walk over the down as late as possible. The day was
out, and the sky was a-swim with stars. From the back of Firle he looked
down on two valleys full of mist. Already some of the richness of spring
was in the night, and he felt some of it mocking him in his blood. He
knew how all these scents of earth and grass and growth, this softness
in the air, might have flowed like sap through his love for Belle,
quickening it towards flower and fruit. And now instead it was in him as
a thirst, stirring up desire towards a void.... As he walked through the
mocking, urging, sweet spring night, Dan understood a little more about
his fellow men, about those stumblings, those sinkings, those reactions
which before had perplexed and sometimes disgusted him.
When he came to the George, there was only one old man in the bar
besides his father and Chris. He had rather hoped for a crowd in which
he could be lost.
Tom Sheather beckoned him, and held him out a glass. Dan gulped it. It
was seventy-five per cent. whisky. His father must know.
“Still, it’s better than if she’d drowned herself, poor creature!” he
whispered to his son.
“Of course it’s better. I’d lost her anyway, so I’m glad she’s found
someone.... Have you seen Ernley?”
“No--but Chris saw Maudie Harman. She told him she reckoned they’d be
married in a week.”
Chris walked out of the bar, whistling “Whose baby are you?”
“I’m glad,” muttered Daniel into his glass, “I’m glad.”
But the deadly thing which had been growing in his heart during the walk
home was life-size now. He felt more mad than glad--mad, desperate, as
if he must die rather than endure any more of this pain. The future was
like a furious face pressed against the window. He saw himself living
for the rest of his life with Belle only across the way, unable to find
rest for his pain, continually devoured by the spring in his heart....
Oh, God, help me! I’m done!
His eye fell on the open page of a novelette, lying on the counter, left
there by a customer and forgotten.
“The two fellows went single-file through the darkness towards the
house.
“‘Keep quiet,’ hissed Lorimer, as Jack’s foot struck an object on the
gravel.
“Young O’Connor stooped and picked up whatever it was. It felt warm and
sticky. He still grasped it as they came to the house and crouched under
the window. A faint ray of light came from under the blind, and he saw
that he was holding a severed human finger.
“Lorimer was taking off his shoes....”
It seemed hours later that his father’s voice reached him.
“What’s that you’ve got, Daniel? You ain’t listening to me.”
“A book.”
“Well, you never was the one for books. What’s this one called?”
Dan reluctantly tore his eyes off the page to inspect the title--“‘Crook
O’Connor, the Public School Boy.’ May I take it up to bed with me, dad?”
“Reckon you may. I don’t know who it belongs to. And you’d better be
turning in, son. You look finished, somehow.”
Dan walked out of the room, still reading. Upstairs in his bedroom he
shuffled off his clothes and left them in a heap on the floor; then lit
his candle and crept between the blankets, the precious volume in his
hand. With licked forefinger he “found the place,” and once more the
returning horror was beaten from his mind. He forgot Belle, her loss and
his loss, he forgot the anxieties of the last two days, his final
disillusion, the face of the future pressed against the window. He was
in the glorious world of Unreality--peopled by ink-black villains and
Gentlemen Crooks, noisy with revolvers and crimson with blood--a world
remote from the humdrum sorrows of work and loss, of love for human
woman as distinct from the sweet wraiths of print....
Dan was making his first acquaintance with literature. Hitherto he had
never read much--the daily paper and occasionally the Bible had been the
only exercise-ground of the talent so laboriously acquired at school.
But now he was really reading, for his own profit and pleasure. He was
not reading as the cultured read--to enlarge his holding in life and
art; he was reading as the humble read--to escape and forget. The author
of “Crook O’Connor” did not know the rules about split infinitives and
mixed relatives, he had no regard for the probabilities or even for the
consistencies, the veins of his characters ran sawdust, the life he
portrayed had no connexion with any actualities on this planet ... but
he had provided an anodyne for the pain of at least one human creature,
and when the last page was turned and the candle had guttered out, the
ultimate blessing of sleep.