§ 1
During the first weeks of his new work Dan had not much time to spare
for calling at the Crown. He was generally so tired when he came in of
an evening that he could think only of supper and bed. His Wednesday
afternoons were full of long arrears of work in house and garden, and
his Sundays were spent at Brakey Bottom. But shortly before Christmas,
he unexpectedly met Ernley in Lewes High Street. It was a rainy night,
and he had just come off the last ’bus, which had been run into Lewes
for repairs, when he saw him turn the corner out of Station Road. Munk
hailed him with gratifying eagerness.
“Hullo, old Daniel--it’s good to see you. Where are you going?”
“I’m just starting home.”
“Come in and have a bite of something with me, and I’ll run you back in
the side-car. I’ve wanted a talk with you this age, but I never seem to
see you anywhere.”
“I’ve been wonderful busy on the ’bus.”
“I bet you have--and you look as if it suited you. You’re a marvellous
chap, Daniel.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, leading the life you do and keeping well and cheery with it all.”
“It ain’t a bad life.”
“It’s a shocking life, and I’m ashamed that you should have to lead it.
But it doesn’t seem as if I’d ever get that farm going. The tenant won’t
go out--you know old Bream’s had the brook lands since Burnt Oak was
divided, and I can’t quite get round Lord Gage on the price.”
“Oh, I’m right enough--I don’t have much time to worry.”
“Well, come and feed, anyhow. We’ll go to the White Hart.”
A few minutes later they were sitting in the warmth of the coffee-room,
the day’s rain steaming off Daniel’s clothes.
“I’m uncommonly glad to see you, Dan. D’you know--it’s so good having
you back again, and finding that....” He stopped a little before he
need, to take the bill of fare from the waitress.
They had chops and tomatoes, with porter, followed by treacle roll and
coffee. Daniel was in high spirits--it was months since he had had such
a meal on a week-day, and he was pleased to find that he and Ernley had
slipped back so happily into the old relationship. Distrust and jealousy
were gone, and Ernley was talking to him as in the old times, laying
down the law on politics, racing, farming and innkeeping--chiefly the
last.
Afterwards they had coffee, and Ernley had two brandies. These seemed to
turn his conversation into more personal channels. He finished a
sentence he had begun before dinner.
“It’s so good having you back again, and finding that we’ve got over all
that muddle--you and me--about Belle, you know.”
“Yes, I’m glad of that.”
“When I heard you were coming back, I wasn’t sure how you’d have got
over it. You’d been away two years and you’d married another girl, but
somehow I’d an idea you might come back feeling pretty much the
same--about me, I mean ... thinking I’d taken Belle from you and
suchlike.”
“I never thought you’d taken her from me, Ernley--she’d left me before
she went back to you.”
“But she left you because of me--she told me she did. It seems that I
was troubling her more or less all the time. Queer, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s queer.”
Dan had a sudden memory, so acute as to be almost a vision, of himself
facing Belle in the little parlour at Three Cups Corner, and for the
first time since his return some of the misery of those days came back
to him. He felt his love for Belle driving through his heart--not as an
actual reality, but as a memory too much alive. He said no more, but sat
in silence, smoking one of Ernley’s cigarettes.
Munk dropped the stump of his own into his coffee.
“Damn it all, Dan--now you’re at it I can talk to you. There’s no one
else I can talk to, for I never was much of a chap for making friends.
Now tell me--when you saw Belle and me together, what did you think of
us?”
“I thought--I thought you were all right. Don’t tell me I was wrong.”
“You weren’t very sharp. But of course--oh, I suppose one tries to hide
these things.”
“What things?”
“That one’s making one’s wife unhappy.”
“You ain’t never telling me that!”
His heart began to beat quickly with sickness and anger.
“Yes, I am. Did you think I’d stopped doing it just because I’d married
her? No--I haven’t. I’ve gone on like I always did. But the queer thing
is that though marriage hasn’t changed me, it’s changed her. She’s
become something different. You know what Belle always used to be--the
wild, roving kind, out for passion. I never thought she’d turn into the
mother-kind of woman--children first, husband nowhere....”
“Come, Ernley--that isn’t true.”
“Maybe it isn’t. That’s just what’s wrong with me. I exaggerate
everything. The truth is that Belle’s turned into a thoroughly good wife
and mother, and I don’t appreciate it.”
“That wild kind often does--it’s what they’re out after all along,
though maybe they don’t know it.”
“Then she ought to have married you.”
“What nonsense! She didn’t love me.”
“She’d have loved you if you’d married her. I know it’s my own fault
that she didn’t, and it’s right I should be punished for it, but not
right that she should be.”
“It seems to me you’re talking some unaccountable rubbish. Belle ud
never have been happy along of me--I’m too quiet for her. But she’d be
happy enough along of you if you weren’t always criticizing her and
pulling out your feelings to look at ’em and make other people look at
’em when they don’t want to.”
“I’m sorry, Dan. I know you don’t want to, but you must. If you don’t,
Belle will have to. It does me good to have things out, and it’s such
ages since I had anyone to talk to--openly. I can’t talk to Belle. She
thinks I’m unnatural, because I don’t care for spending all my spare
time in the nursery.”
“You’ll never tell me you ain’t fond of those kids.”
“Oh, I am--I am. But I don’t want them always--hearing them when I
don’t see them. I want my wife.”
“Well, reckon you’ve got her.”
“But not as I’d like to have her. I want my old Belle as she used to
be.”
“No one ud be madder than you if you had.”
“I don’t mean looking and behaving as she used to. But I want my old
fires lit.”
Dan shivered.
“I know it’s not her fault, but I feel they’d have gone on blazing if
she hadn’t changed like this--run all to wifehood in a way I’d never
have thought.... Perhaps I shouldn’t have minded so much if the change
had been of another kind--if she’d turned sleeker and more
sophisticated. D’you remember Pearl?”
Dan nodded grimly.
“Well, she was my ideal woman--outwardly. I shouldn’t have quarrelled
with Belle if she’d taken to that sort of thing. But she’s as untidy as
ever--only without the blaze, somehow. I can’t see love in this jog-trot
way. You can--that’s why she’d better have married you.”
“Adone, do, with your talk of Belle marrying me! You ought to be ashamed
of yourself.”
“So I ought--and if she had married you I shouldn’t have been any
happier. For the queer thing is that I love her.”
“I don’t see as it’s at all queer.”
“Not queer that I should be able to stand outside like this and curse
and criticize--and yet feel that somehow, in spite of it all, I could
never live without her?”
Dan put out his cigarette with an unsteady hand.
“Have another?”
“No, thanks.”
“You’re not mad with me, are you, Daniel? It’s not quite my fault. We’re
all such insects when we try to live ... flies dancing over stagnant
water--that’s love--a dance of flies.”
Daniel rose to his feet.
“Well, I must be going now.”
“I have made you angry, then?”
“Only a bit.”
“I tell you it’s not my fault--unless being what I am’s my fault, as I
dare say it is. What you are doesn’t matter in love, but it matters in
marriage. Women ask so much more of marriage than a man does. God knows
what Belle wants. She hasn’t got it, anyway.”
Dan felt in the midst of Ernley’s speech as a man feels who sinks slowly
into a swamp. With an effort he threw himself out of it.
“All she wants is for you to be kind and good to her, and speak kind,
and care for her and the children, and understand all the trouble she
has with them and the place. She doesn’t want much, but maybe more than
you can spare from yourself.”
The colour rose in Ernley’s cheeks, and for a moment they faced each
other in an angry silence. Then Munk spoke quite calmly:
“Don’t let’s quarrel, Dan. I couldn’t bear another separation. I’m sorry
if I’ve upset you about Belle--I know I exaggerate things. If you’ll
stay my friend, you’ll help us both a lot.”
The appeal found Dan’s vulnerable part. His wrath collapsed, and he felt
a little ashamed of it.
“I’m sorry I spoke rough--but hearing you talk on and on like that----”
He said no more, and they went out together.
§ 2
Nevertheless he could not quite get rid of his anger. When Ernley had
left him at Bullockdean parsonage, and he was alone with Thomas Helier
in the little bedroom that Jess had garnished, he still felt shaken and
affronted. He felt affronted, somehow, by Ernley’s confidence. Ernley
had always been like that--taking too much for granted. Now he was
taking for granted that Daniel had “got over” his affair with Belle. Dan
had taken it for granted himself, for the matter of that, till an hour
ago; but Ernley’s cool assumption of his indifference had somehow
destroyed it. What right had Ernley to think he was made like
that?--that he could forget all those beautiful moments that had come to
him with Belle? Of course it was true that he had married another woman
and been happy with her--but that was different. He had not been in love
with Rose Falla when he married her--he had married her out of pity and
repentance, and love had somehow afterwards been made of their common
life. If Rose had still been alive he would not have thought of Belle,
and never of those beautiful moments of passion. But Rose was dead, and
with her his life in Sark was dead, and all the years and changes that
separated him from his love for Belle.
He had got into bed because of the cold, but he could not sleep. He lay
awake, staring at the ceiling and the pattern of leaves that moved there
in the moonlight. The night was still--dreadfully still.... Thomas
Helier lay quiet in his cradle, though for the first time in his life
Dan would have welcomed any distraction he chose to provide. He did not
like lying awake with his thoughts. He had no business to be thinking of
Belle like this, for though Rose was dead Ernley was alive. Curse
him!--not for being married to Belle--Daniel was still very far from
that--but for being all unworthy of his marriage--of any marriage.
Ernley didn’t know so much as the A B C of married life--he’d no idea
how to behave as a husband. Dan thought of the cottage at Moie Fano and
of the marriage that had begun without love, without common tastes,
without even a common language, and yet had been a thing of pure and
perfect happiness.... In marriage you had to be tender, to put yourself
in her place, to realize that she was made different from you--though
she was flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone.... And Ernley went
about showing her his feelings--like a lot of tripe ... the simile
rushed into his mind as an expression of the almost physical disgust
which he felt at Ernley’s confidences. He never used to mind his
confidences, amorous or otherwise, but now somehow he couldn’t stomach
them.... Ernley was eaten up with himself, and that was why his marriage
was unhappy. He had nothing else to make it so. Belle had got shut of
her bad ways, as Daniel had always felt sure she would; she had given
him two dear little children, and her one thought was to please him. And
he went about grumbling for his “old fires.” Silly fool! Didn’t he know
as much about love as Daniel whom he’d always looked upon as a child in
such matters? “Old fires “--put them out! They only made the place hot
and dangerous--they weren’t the sort of fire you could ever boil a
kettle on.
A clock somewhere in the house struck two, and Dan was seized with the
working-man’s terror of a sleepless night, knowing that at whatever hour
he slept he must rise for toil as usual. It was a bad thing lying awake
like this, and his reason for it was bad. If he was really beginning to
feel about Belle like this again, he had better clear out. Of course it
was natural that he should fret about two friends making each other
unhappy--but this acuteness of trouble was wrong. Maybe he was
over-tired ... well, he’d be tireder yet before he’d done with
to-morrow.
§ 3
Indeed he went through the next day little more than half awake. The hum
and rumble of the ’bus, the heavy rush of the wind as it tore after them
down the roads and eddied round him on the back step, swept him into a
drowsiness which was sometimes actual sleep. He slept standing on his
platform for brief dangerous minutes. He had always been able to sleep
on his legs, and he enjoyed these stolen naps, but he was aware of their
criminality in a ’bus conductor. He slept past the turning to Clay Hill
on the Halland road, with the result that an elderly clergyman who had
been marketing in Lewes and seemed as tired as Daniel himself had to
walk back half a mile to the sign-post, laden with bags from which were
bursting loaves of bread, potatoes, cheese and other fare for Poverty
Parsonage. After that he kept awake.
He was half asleep again when he walked up Bullockdean Street at the end
of the day, and it was as in a dream that at the rectory gate he met
Belle Shackford. She was certainly Belle Shackford, and not Belle Munk,
for she came to him out of the moonlight looking exactly as in the old
days--all her sleekness gone. Her hair was rough and towish under the
moon, which was bright enough to show him also her careless
tam-o’-shanter cap, and the piece of dyed cat-fur that lay at odds upon
her shoulders. Thus he had seen Belle years ago on many a winter’s
night, with her hair upon her cheeks and the gleam of sham pearls upon
her neck, with transparent silk stockings and cracked patent leather
shoes showing under the frayed hem of her coloured coat, and about her
the strong cloying whiff of cheap scent, at once enticing and disgusting
him.
“Hullo, Belle!” he greeted her, “where have you been?”
“Over to Batchelors’; Lucy’s been giving a party. She’s going to be
married at last, you know, and her boy’s people have been over, and
we’ve had a bit of a dance. I’m tired.”
“You don’t tell me you’ve walked back all by yourself?”
“Why not?--it isn’t far by the down, and the moon’s lovely. Ernley
wanted to fetch me, but I knew he was busy, it being so near Christmas,
and I’m always a bit nervous when he comes over to Batchelors’--he and
my dad don’t hit it off.”
“That’s a pity.”
“It is. But Ernley doesn’t understand dad, and of course I own he’s
troublesome, having an idea that I’ve married money, and so ought to
support the old home. Twice he’s tried to borrow money off Ernley, and
twice they’ve had a row about it.”
“Is your father in a bad way, then?”
“Oh, he’s sure bust sooner or later. Most farmers do these days. When
Lucy gets married there’ll be one less for the work, and he can’t afford
another man. I’m sorry about it all, which worries Ernley. He says, I
oughtn’t to feel I belong there any more.”
“Well, I don’t see that you’ve got any call to worry about Batchelors’,
after the way they’ve treated you.”
“Oh, they haven’t treated me badly. It’s always like that in a big, poor
family. You’ve got to work hard and you have rows. I don’t say I was
never to blame. But we’re all friendly enough now.”
She sighed, almost as if she regretted Batchelors’ with its toiling,
quarrelling ways. Then she asked:
“How are you getting on, Dan?”
“Oh, well enough--it’s hard work, but healthy.”
“Do you get Christmas off?”
“Only the day.”
“Well, you must come and see us some evening when you’re free--what
about supper? You promised us weeks ago that you’d come to supper.”
Daniel hesitated. He felt unwilling in part--in part too eager.
“Do come,” said Belle.
“Well, I’d like to----”
“Wednesday’s your afternoon off, isn’t it? Come next Wednesday.”
Daniel struggled in himself. He asked in himself: “Who’ll I meet?--Belle
Shackford or Belle Munk?” But all he could say outwardly was:
“Thank you kindly. I’d like to come.”