§ 1
Daniel knew he was a fool to go to supper at the Crown. If he was
beginning to feel like this again about Belle he ought to keep away from
her. There was no good telling himself that he was going to see
Ernley--he had plenty of opportunities for seeing Ernley without his
wife. No--he might as well be honest--he was going because he wanted to
see Belle, and also--to be frank as well as honest--because it would be
a treat to have supper at the Crown. He wondered what they would have to
eat ... chops, sausages, cutlets ... a fowl, even.... And he would be
able to sit and talk to Belle, to watch her mouth when she laughed, and
the big column of her throat, and her hair that would be like spun sugar
in the glow of the new electric light.... He was a fool to think of
going, but, of course, he went.
When Wednesday came he devoted nearly an hour to his preparations. First
he had a comprehensive wash at the sink, then he changed into his Sunday
clothes, put on new-blacked boots, and sleeked his hair with some
hair-cream specially bought in Lewes. It would never do to appear a
shabby fellow. He was just setting out when he met Mr. Marchbanks, who
surveyed him nervously.
“What time ull you be back?”
“Ten o’clock. Jess says she’ll stay till then.”
Mr. Marchbanks coughed.
“Dan--you feel--you feel quite settled in your mind about Mrs. Munk,
don’t you? I mean, you’ve quite got over all that, or you wouldn’t----”
Dan suddenly found himself angry.
“Well, if I haven’t got over it all, seeing as I’ve been married and
widowed and got a kid ... and I don’t see why you’ve any call to think
such things of me.”
“I beg your pardon. I didn’t really think it. I merely wanted to put you
on your guard. She is a very charming woman, and, of course, it isn’t
easy to forget....”
“Ho, isn’t it!” cried Daniel as he walked out.
He felt highly indignant all the way down the drive. What right had Mr.
Marchbanks to interfere? But then he’d always been like that with
Belle--disapproving. It was the one thing he couldn’t get on with in Mr.
Marchbanks--his ideas about women and love ... afraid of everything.
You’d think he’d had some kind of upset himself and got scared.
But by the time Dan had reached the village he, too, was scared--so
scared in fact that he went into the George and had a pint of Hobday and
Hitch’s before he dared go into the Crown. The young man at the George
now knew who he was, and they often exchanged confidences about the
management of an inn. The George was a quiet place now, entertaining
only a farm labourer or two, and paying its way even more uncertainly
than in the days of Thomas Sheather. Certainly the ale was bad, but Dan
obtained a slight comfort from it, though probably his reassurance was
chiefly due to the few minutes spent in old beloved surroundings--the
familiar, sawdusted floor, the low, beamed ceiling, blackened by the oil
lamp that still hung from it, the familiar whisky advertisements on the
walls, the beer-handles that he himself had worked to and fro behind the
counter for so long.
He went out feeling comforted for the evening’s adventure. The Crown was
brilliantly lit up--pouring the reflections of its electric light into
the road and across it into the dim, lamp-lit windows of the George.
Above it the blackness of its roof rose steeply into the dark sky, where
a single star hung remote from the dazzle of Bullockdean Street. Dan
looked at the star, and thought of another which he had seen in
pictures, shining above an inn at Christmas-time. Three wise men had
followed a star right across the world, and it had brought them to a
common inn. They must have had a shock. It was curious how his thoughts
of Belle seemed mixed with that story of another inn--he remembered how
he had dreamed of her when he was in Sark, in the stable with her baby
at Christmas-time. Perhaps his love for her was not the wicked thing Mr.
Marchbanks thought it.
But there was no good standing mooning in the street. He went up to the
door-bell and faced the parlourmaid, who brought him into the Munks’
private sitting-room, where they both waited. To-night Belle
surprisingly wore black, and Dan was abashed not only by the return of
her sleekness, but by the deepening of her beauty. The black made her
skin like milk and her hair like honey--it gave her an air of pale
delicacy which he had never seen her wear before. It was a delicacy of
colour rather than of outline--in outline she was still the
rich-moulded, splendid Belle whose bigness he had loved.
They spoke together rather awkwardly till dinner was ready--for it was
certainly dinner and not supper to which he had been invited. It was
served in the hotel dining-room, where the visitors already sat in
high-class dispersal, and Dan’s eyes opened wide at the sight of the two
waitresses in black and white uniforms who brought in the soup.
“Lord, Ernley, but you have come on!”
Ernley smiled complacently.
“Yes--we haven’t done so badly. As I used to say to poor dad--‘it pays
to launch out a bit.’ We were quite full for Christmas, though we’re
slacking again now.”
It struck Daniel that Ernley was looking extremely prosperous, in spite
of his inward distress. There was certainly a curve under his waistcoat
and his jaw was thicker. But his heart was lean withal--except when he
talked about the hotel, he had all his old questing bitterness. He
talked like Ernley in the trenches, though he looked very different from
the Ernley of those days.
“Egad, you’re a lucky fellow, Dan. You look straight ahead of you and
don’t worry about what’s at the side. If you had this pub now there’d be
nothing else you’d want.”
“Reckon there would be a fat lot I’d want,” said Dan, who resented this
description of himself.
“Well, I mean a wife and children with it, of course. You wouldn’t go
wanting to look beyond the horizon. You’d be satisfied with the common
business of life. I believe you’re satisfied now, even as you are.”
“I ain’t, but I haven’t got it in me to make a fuss about things like
you.”
Ernley seemed pleased at this, and laughed. Dan was beginning once more
to find him irritating, but he would not let his feelings betray him any
further. Not only was he Ernley’s guest, eating his very good food, but
he did not want to give any added distress to Belle by goading her
husband. He watched Belle secretly while he ate, watched for any
expression of her face or speech which should betray her feelings. Was
Ernley really making her unhappy, as he thought he was, or was she
merely accepting him with that motherly toleration which is so often the
female response to male unreasonableness?
He could not tell, for she sat very nearly silent. Indeed, the
conversation being little more than a monologue by Ernley, it would have
been difficult for her to do otherwise. But he noticed that she did not
smile--as she might have, pityingly or comprehendingly--though this
again he should not have expected, for it had never been Belle’s way to
smile at men except in allurement.
After supper--which though a little distressing on the human side had
been most comforting in the matter of food and drink--they returned to
the sitting-room, where Belle took out some sewing and Ernley went on
talking. He talked about the French occupation of the Ruhr, laying down
the law uncontradicted by Daniel, who had little interest in or
understanding of post-war politics in their larger issues. The rise and
fall of prices, the difficulties in the way of getting work, the gradual
withdrawal of industrial and agricultural guarantees--that was how the
hinder-parts of the Great War looked to Daniel and some millions like
him. Matters of stability, economy and reparation were all by him
vaguely classified as “talk”--and it seemed queer to him that the
politicians should go right away to Paris for their talking when the
unemployed were parading the streets of Lewes and Newhaven.
In the midst of Ernley’s talk a waitress came in and told him that he
was wanted on the telephone. He threw his cigarette into the grate and
went out, leaving Daniel and Belle to entertain each other on lower
intellectual levels. No sooner had he shut the door behind him than
Belle looked uneasy.
“I think I hear the children,” she said--and going to the door she
opened it and listened. The house was silent, save for Ernley’s distant
voice on the telephone. She came back into the room, but did not return
to her old chair, sitting down instead on one nearer the door, which she
had left open.
“I don’t hear any kids,” said Daniel.
“No.”
The monosyllable came blankly, and he suddenly realized that she was
listening intently--listening to Ernley’s voice.
“The children are very quiet as a rule,” she continued. Then shut her
mouth and listened again.
Dan had a sudden dreadful intuition that she doubted the innocence of
Ernley’s telephone call. She was trying to overhear as much of it as she
could. From where he sat he could hear nothing but a voice, but probably
from her position by the door she could distinguish words. This
suspicion so appalled him that, if Belle wanted his silence she could
not have been better served. She had never been subtle in her methods,
and he soon became convinced that she was listening, for beyond making a
few random remarks about the children, she scarcely opened her mouth
while Ernley was away.
After a time she evidently heard him put down the receiver, for she shut
the door, and strolled back to the chair she had been sitting in when he
went out. Dan sat rigid with embarrassment and misery, and had not
succeeded even in forcing out a remark about the weather when Ernley
came in.
“Well,” said Belle at once--“who was your call from?”
“Barker,” said Ernley, “he was ringing me up about that sherry.”
“But the shop’s closed.”
“He rang me up from his home.”
“Do you generally call him ‘kid’?”
Dan felt his skin go like a goose’s, not so much for Ernley possibly
snared in a delinquency as for the manner of Belle’s snaring. He saw
Munk’s face grow hard, though he answered quietly:
“I certainly don’t call him that.”
“But I heard you--you said ‘don’t be silly, kid,’ and then ‘good night,
kid’ at the end.”
Belle had always been crude in her methods--Dan had been present at many
a scene like this in the old days--but it was the first instance he had
known since her marriage. Ernley turned crimson, and Dan blushed with
him and for him.
“You must have good ears,” he said--“to hear so distinctly through two
shut doors.”
“I need ’em in this house.”
“Well, I feel this is a matter more interesting to you than to Daniel,
who probably doesn’t care how I address my wine-merchant. Did you ever
go to Barker’s, Dan, when you were in business?”
“I dunno--we--we were a tied house, you know,” stammered poor Dan.
“For your wines, I mean of course.” Ernley seemed annoyed at his failure
to assist in the diversion. “I suppose you stocked wines.”
“Yes, we stocked wines in a manner of speaking--sherry and port and
such.”
Ernley discoursed on port and sherry as he had formerly discoursed on
German reparations. But the rest of the evening was sheer agony to
Daniel. He knew that Belle was only waiting for him to be gone before
she re-opened her attack. Her parting lips and heavy brow were an
earnest of the storm that would break when she had her husband to
herself. She sat silent, huddled and lumpish, her eyes fixed sullenly on
Ernley. Sometimes Dan almost felt sorry for Munk when he thought of what
he would be put through in the next hour or so. But most often he was
angry and not sorry. Ernley had almost certainly not been talking to his
wine-merchant, and he richly deserved to be told off. Dan was outraged
and disgusted at the idea of his slightest unfaithfulness to Belle. If
he made her unhappy through being unsympathetic and tiresome, that was
bad enough, but if he distressed her through any treacherous friendship
with another woman, he was nothing but a swine.
Ten o’clock struck, and Daniel rose to his feet with muttered excuses.
It wouldn’t do any good to stop on, so he’d better go and let them get
it over. But as he went out he felt sorry and ashamed for them both.
§ 2
Once in the dark and empty street he pulled out his handkerchief and
wiped his forehead. Whew! that had been dreadful--that glimpse of
married life.... Ernley a philanderer and Belle a shrew. He had suddenly
been shown the dark side of both his friendship and his love. Ernley,
that companion of so many years, had appeared before him as a gross and
selfish man, unhappy and yet spoilt by prosperity, thinking of nobody
but himself, and already, after barely three years of marriage, fallen
into deceit. Belle, whom, ever since his return, he had seen as all
maternal kindness, the wanton ripened and sweetened into the mother, he
had seen to-night on the level of vulgar jealousy and suspicion, dragged
by them below the decencies of common reticence ... exposing her husband
before the man who had once loved her.
He had reached the parsonage gate, but felt too much shaken to go in at
once and face the questions of Mr. Marchbanks and Jess Harman. They
would want to know what sort of evening he had spent, and he wasn’t yet
in a fit mood to tell them. He walked up the lane, which just beyond the
parsonage shrivelled into a cart-track and led under some skew-blown
thorn trees to the open down.
As he walked into the great spread loneliness of Heighton Hill, Dan’s
heart was full of offence because the love-story of Belle Shackford and
Ernley Munk had not yet been given its happy ending. He had lost her not
to joy but to sorrow. He felt that she was unhappier with the man she
had chosen than she would have been with the man who was not her choice.
Ernley had not the power to make any woman happy--he was too
self-centred, too restless, too exacting. Daniel remembered him as he
had been in courtship--that courtship which had been one long series of
quarrels and reconciliations. In marriage he was just the same--it had
not changed him. But marriage had changed Belle--it had made her a
wife, whereas Ernley was still only a lover.
He told himself that she was happy in her children. But he could have
given her those ... and he would not have stood apart from them,
contemptuous and fault-finding, as Ernley stood. Ernley would have
preferred to be without them, he did not like this change in Belle--he
did not really want a wife but a mistress. He wanted his old fires
rekindled--damn him for a silly fool--and since Belle could not do so he
was carrying the torch elsewhere.
Dan was always wretched when he hated. The emotion of hate caused him
such acute pain that whenever it was roused in him his whole being
seemed to concentrate on putting it down. Now he reminded himself of all
Ernley had endured in the war, the experiences that had given him not
only the pain of old wounds to harry him, but also had left his mind
torn and gashed. Daniel knew how still in dreams Ernley grovelled in the
craters of no-man’s land, cowering and sweating till the inevitable
crash came which brought both the full horror of his dream and a
terrified awakening. Ernley’s mind bore old wounds like his body, wounds
both of mind and body which Daniel had been spared by his better luck
and his duller constitution. You must judge him morally as you judged a
cripple physically.... And Belle, too, had been very trying. It was
maddening to be suspected ... even if you were guilty ... there had been
something vulgar and womanish in her method of reproach.... But Daniel
could not judge Belle, and thoughts of her often brought him back into
all his rage at Ernley. It was Ernley’s fault that she had behaved in
such a low fashion--she had been driven to it by his conduct, by her own
desperate efforts to defend her marriage. She was in despair, poor
Belle, and had been unable to keep up her disguises. Ernley was not
worthy of her big, generous soul--he did not appreciate the graces it
had acquired through marriage. Dan thought of her stooping over Thomas
Helier with the woolly ball in her hand.
§ 3
It was not till eleven o’clock that he felt calm enough to go back to
the parsonage. Jess Harman flung open the door in a state of high
indignation.
“Well, so you’re back at last! What’ll my auntie think of me not coming
home before this? I said I’d be back by ten.”
“You needn’t have waited.”
“I like that! With your poor little baby yelling his head off. A nice
father you are--gallivanting half the night and leaving your poor little
child at home.”
“Well, I couldn’t have taken him with me.”
“No--but you might have come back at a Christian hour. You really don’t
deserve to have a baby.”
“Now, Jess, you’ve no call to talk like that.”
“Yes, I have. I never heard of such goings on--stopping at the Crown
till all hours. It isn’t seemly that you should hang round Mrs. Ernley
Munk.”
Dan flushed.
“So it’s taken you that way too, has it?”
“How d’you mean by ‘too’?”
“You’re getting like Mr. Marchbanks, seeing harm where there ain’t
none.”
“Well, if there ain’t harm in leaving your poor child and sitting half
the night with an old sweetheart....”
“I wasn’t sitting with her. I went for a walk.”
“That was kind of you, seeing as you knew I was waiting for you here.”
“Couldn’t Mr. Marchbanks have looked after baby?”
“Him! What’s he know about a human child? Go on, Daniel--you’ve behaved
badly, and there’s no good making out you haven’t.”
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.