§ 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.