Chapter NINE: § 1

The rest of that day was like a bad dream, and the next, and the next. Dan felt broken by all that had happened, and bewildered by his conflict of pain. He did not know which he felt worst--Belle’s pain or his own. Sometimes the worst thing in life seemed to be the thought of her alone, disillusioned and friendless, on the eve of losing her last rags of reputation, her last apology for a home--of having to face the supreme ordeal of any woman’s life without help or hope. The fact that this was due to her own deliberate choice did not make it more endurable--on the contrary. Her isolation seemed to be all the greater because his arms were outstretched to hold her, if only she would turn his way. At other times he would be completely beaten down by the sense of his own loss, of his own shame. He would also tell himself that he must have failed her in some mysterious way--that it was impossible to believe she had not loved him once--she had weighed him and found him wanting. Thus his two griefs, for her and for himself, would sometimes be brought together in an all-enveloping regret.

He said nothing to his family about what had happened. A new shamefaced reserve was upon him. He could not bear that they should know what had happened to him, or what was going to happen to Belle. Also in his heart, giving a fiery quality to his suffering, was the torment of hope, the feeling that Belle must change, relent towards him and towards herself. Then these days would be but a dreadful interlude, better secret and so forgotten.

Of course the Sheathers knew that something was amiss. Dan’s was not one of those natures which can carry on its fundamental activities in private, giving the neighbours a surface decoy. His travail was noticeable in his looks, voice, behaviour and appetite. But its causes were misjudged. His family attributed his anguish simply to his knowledge of Belle’s condition. Apparently there were limits to his assumption of Ernley’s cast-off property. Kitty was glad to see the boy show so much spirit.

“Maybe he have the spunk--you call it--not to marry her after all.”

“I hope the boy’s got too good a heart for that,” said Tom.

“Too good a heart!--you call it good heart to disgrace his family by marrying rubbish!”

“Come, come, my dear. You shouldn’t ought to speak like that of poor Belle. Reckon it ain’t the match we’d have chosen, but then it ain’t our part to choose, neither.”

“Ho! that’s the way you manage these things, you English. You say to the boys and girls: ‘You choose each other,’ and never mind what the fathers and mothers think.”

“Well, what about yourself, ma’am? Reckon if you’d gone by what your family said, you’d never have married me.”

“My father he like you very well, and as for Eugene and Philip, they are only my brothers. I do not ask my brothers.”

“You’re meaning that you’d never have married me if your dad hadn’t given his consent?”

“Certainly I never marry without his consent. But your boy he never so much as ask yours, and he marry a girl who have no character and already belong to a friend of his. Now she will have a child too soon after they are married, and the neighbours will say unkind things, whoever they think it belong to. You may think nothing of that, but I am ashamed.”

Tom merely looked at the ceiling and whistled. His argument was clearer to his heart than to his head, and his wife had, as usual, talked him down. At the other side of the table, Christopher smiled as he lit a cigarette. He felt thankful and superior because so far the love of women had not touched him.

§ 2

Dan was a conscientious soul, and he would not break his promise to Belle. On the other hand, he took his promise very literally. He had promised not to see her till, the earliest, next week, therefore on Sunday morning, immediately after breakfast, he set out for Batchelors’ Hall.

By this time he had settled himself into the conviction that he had only to see Belle in order to persuade her. His mind was full of a flood of despairing eloquence, and he hardly realized how little of that tide would actually rise to his lips. Her reasons for refusing to marry him, which still seemed so arbitrary and mysterious, could surely never stand before the torrent of his love, his pity and his pride in her. Therefore it was necessary that he should see her at the earliest possible moment, to end his torment and hers.

It was an altogether unexpected blow and backthrust of fate to find, when he came to Batchelors’ Hall, that Belle was not there. She had gone away. Such a possibility had never occurred to him. Such a thing had never happened before. Where had she gone?

“How is it that you didn’t know?” asked Lucy.

Daniel shivered in the ice of her gaze.

“Reckon she must have made up her mind unaccountable sudden.”

“Reckon she did. But it’s queer her not having told you....”

Her eyes still froze him--they were like the pale blue cracks in ice.

“Is there anything the matter between you and Belle?” she inquired.

“No--there ain’t nothing.”

“Because,” continued Lucy, “if you back out now, reckon dad ull have something to say to you.”

The freezing process changed disruptively to one like burning alive. Dan suffocated and blazed.

“I back out! I tell you.... I dunno what you mean. I’ll marry Belle to-morrow if she’ll have me. You haven’t got no right to speak so.”

“Oh, very well, don’t lose your hair. Only it’s strange your not knowing where she is.”

He suddenly realized the need for prudence.

“Where is she?” he pleaded.

“Over at her cousin Loo Dengate’s at Heathfield. It’s queer your not knowing.”

“Three Cups Corner.”

“That’s it--the house just beyond the throws.”

“I’ll be up there to-morrow. Reckon it came over her sudden to go. She’s a queer girl in some ways.”

“Reckon she’s not the only one who’s queer.”

Dan’s wrath re-kindled.

“Why d’you keep on getting at me, Lucy? I tell you this ain’t my doing. I’ll marry Belle to-morrow if----”

“You know you can’t marry her to-morrow, so what’s the sense of talking? But if you take my advice you’ll marry her just as soon as you can get the banns put up. Now I haven’t any more time to spend arguing here. We’re short in the house with Belle being away, and old Gadgett’s been laid up this week and over, and Botolph needs more looking after than the sheep. Oh, it’s a grand life for girls!”--and she banged the door in his face.

§ 3

Dan was so stricken that his first thought was to tramp over at once to Heathfield and find Belle. But his second thoughts reminded him that it would take till night to go there and back on foot, that he could not fail the George at its Sunday evening opening, and that if he waited till to-morrow he could have the trap and avoid a domestic uproar. So he set off drearily homewards, down the drive and over the flat fields of the Dicker, across the river Cuckmere at Monkyn Pin, then on to the chalky roots of Firle.

He did not particularly want to go home, but there seemed nothing else to do. His own company was intolerable, with its questions and regrets, and there was no other company that seemed better to-day. Mr. Marchbanks would be busy all the afternoon with his church and catechism--besides, he was inclined to take Jess Harman’s view of Belle Shackford, and had not been too well pleased to hear of Dan’s engagement, though he had said very little. As for Ernley, he was even more impossible. For one thing Dan had promised not to tell him anything, and knew that he could not be ten minutes in his company without telling him everything. For another, he knew now something of that strange dark attitude towards Ernley which Belle had had towards Pearl Jenner. He knew that it was really Ernley who had robbed him of Belle--or rather, and more humiliating still, that he had never really had Belle so that he could talk of robbery. Belle had always been Ernley’s--all the time that she had clung to Daniel and given him kisses and promises, she had really been Ernley’s, in a far more final and terrible way than any of them knew.

No, he had better go back home, and pour out ale and whiskies, and wash and polish glasses, and lean over the counter and talk of ships and horses to the Sunday loungers between Lewes and Newhaven. Then he would help his mother clear up, and lay the tea, and perhaps she would give him a little kindness, though she must not know what he was feeling. Then in the evening he would go to church, and perhaps find more comfort in the homely smells and drawling melodies of Bullockdean worship--get back in time for the evening’s traffic--and then tumble into bed and be tired enough to sleep.

He was hurrying on, dragged by these urgencies, and had nearly reached the top of the Bostal Way, when at a turn he met the district nurse coming down towards Alciston. He wondered vaguely whom she could have been visiting on the wilderness of the down, when he remembered Lucy’s reference to old Gadgett’s illness--the shepherd’s cottage stood remote in a hollow near White Lion pond. There was no housing close to Batchelors’ Hall, and for years the old man had lived two miles from the centre of his work. Dan had always been fond of him, and now felt uneasily remorseful for having neglected him during the thrills of courtship. If he had the nurse in, the poor old chap must be pretty bad.

“Good morning, Mr. Sheather.”

Daniel had not met the nurse, who lived at Berwick, more than once, but it was characteristic of him that those who met him once always felt well acquainted.

“I’ve just been talking about you,” she continued, “to old Mr. Gadgett at White Lion Cottage, but I never thought to meet you so far from home on a Sunday morning.”

Daniel, wondering how much she knew about Belle, blushed and mumbled something about Sunday being a good day for a walk. Then:

“How is the old fellow?” he asked. “I only heard to-day as he’s been ill.”

“He’s sadly, I’m afraid--not likely to leave his bed, though perhaps he’ll stop there a month or two before he’s carried out. He gets wandering at times--takes me for his daughter, who’s been dead thirty years. But I hope some day you’ll go and see him. He says you promised him long ago, and he’s got something to show you.”

“I dunno whatever that can be. But reckon I’ll go in some morning. I haven’t time to-day.”

He must hurry back home, and pour out ale and whiskies, and wash and polish glasses, and lean over the counter and talk of ships and horses to the Sunday loungers between Lewes and Newhaven--help his mother clean up, and lay the tea--and go to church--and carry on somehow, till at last he was tired enough for sleep.

§ 4

Daniel was wrong in his idea that by deferring his visit till Monday he would be able to make it comparatively without protest. It appeared that Monday was the very day of James Munk’s funeral.

“Go over to Heathfield! I never heard of such a thing!” cried Kitty--“when it’s the funeral this afternoon.”

“I can’t help that--and I don’t care for funerals.”

“Then you are a wicked boy.”

“Come, come, my dear,” pleaded Tom; “he never was so thick as all that with poor Munk. If you and I go, and Chris, reckon there won’t be any harm in Dan taking the trap over to Heathfield to see Belle.”

“He saw her yesterday,” said Kitty, for Dan, alas! had been deceitful. “I can’t think why he must see her again to-day, especially as she go to Heathfield. Why can’t she stay at home?”

Dan looked sullen.

“I can’t help it. I must go.”

“Must go! Hark to that--hark to the boy. And what will your dear friend Ernley say if you ‘must’ go?”

“I don’t care what he says. I’m going.”

In the end, he went. When Kitty discovered that he hadn’t got a decent suit of black clothes and not a single white handkerchief, she minded less. So Daniel drove off soon after breakfast, Ernley’s British warm buttoned up to his chin. The weather was cold and grey and lowering, and clouds of dust bowled up the Lewes road, powdering the banks and hedges till they too were as grey as the sky.

It was a long drive to Heathfield--across the Ouse at Iford, then into the Beddingham road at the Lay, then along the huge, dusty, motor-ridden London to Eastbourne road as far as Firle Cross, where he had the quiet of lanes once more, through Ripe and Chalvington, twin villages of the plain, as far as Muddles Green. Then it was all cross-country by Thunders Hill and Terrible Down and the unaccustomed roads round Chiddingly. He was on the long wooded slope of country which rises from the valley of the Cuckmere to the heights of Heathfield and Cross in Hand--the black-country of a bygone day, when at night forge after forge would show a crimson eye through the dense woods, when the hammers of North Street answered the hammers of Lions Green, when Gun Hill and Thunders Hill and Clappers and Pigstone and Burntchimney first were given their names.

It was the afternoon before he found himself in Heathfield’s four-mile street, which runs dwindling from the spot where the yeoman named Iden smote down Jack Cade, to where the little lanes of the Rushlake and Dallington Weald flow into it like small streams at Three Cups Corner. He had not much difficulty in finding the Dengates’ house, which was just behind the inn, but it was altogether a tougher matter to get speech with Belle.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t see her,” said the Dengate cousin who opened the door; “she came here to get away from you,” she added, with disconcerting frankness.

Belle, then, had not been ashamed to tell of the rupture--at least, not to tell her cousins, though her father and sisters had had no explanation. Daniel had not expected this--he had somehow expected her tongue to be tied as his had been. He was now in unanticipated difficulties, but on one thing his mind was made up--he was not going back to Bullockdean without seeing Belle, if he had to hang round the place all night he would see her. So finding there was nothing to hide from the Dengate cousin, he pleaded valiantly--he begged for just five minutes of Belle--he would shoulder the guilt of any false pretences necessary to obtain the interview--he had come fifteen miles to see her--if she could see him this once he promised to give up and never bother her again--but if she wouldn’t see him, he would have to keep on at it till she did. This last consideration may have been the one that influenced Belle, but the Dengate cousin was honestly won by his big dark eyes. The slightly foreign air of his emotion appealed to her Saxon stolidity, and at last Dan was admitted into the little best parlour of the Dengates, where the walls were adorned with stuffed ferrets and owls, and wedding-groups of the many marriages which had taken place in that large family--innumerable white brides stared with gentle mocking eyes at him as he sat waiting for Belle.

Directly she came, the whole thing suddenly appeared to him as folly. He had been a fool to pursue her all this way--his importunity had only put him further into her contempt. He should have let her be. She would finish it now--the little that had not been finished in the great barn of Batchelors’ Hall.

“Well, Daniel, reckon you might have let me alone.”

She was more like a white owl than ever to-day, all the colour gone from her cheeks, all her feathers--the feathers of her golden hair and her brave clothes--limp and draggled. She wore an outdoor coat over her blouse and in the buttonhole was a dead jonquil.

“You might have let me be.”

“I couldn’t, Belle.”

“Why not? Haven’t I suffered enough?”

“That’s it. You’ve suffered too much. It’s time you let me comfort you.”

“Never.”

“But why, Belle? Why? I don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand that I can’t have any other husband than my baby’s father?”

“Well, that ain’t generally what people do.”

“What do they do generally?”

His mind went over a series of hasty, patched-up marriages, and he realized for the first time that what he offered Belle was not really a very fine thing.

“You know,” he mumbled.

“Yes, I know--they take anyone to give them countenance and a name to the child. But I won’t do that. Not because I’m too proud, but because I just couldn’t ... when I think of marrying a man who isn’t Ernley I feel sick.”

“But, darling, I wouldn’t ask anything of you--only to be with you and save you from being spoken of and treated bad.”

“That ud be a fine life for you.”

“I’d sooner have it than life without you.”

“You say that now, but you wouldn’t say it in a year or two. I’d never let you do a thing like that, and I couldn’t bear it myself, neither.”

“But Belle, think what ull happen if you don’t marry me. Reckon your father and sister ull go against you--maybe they’ll turn you out. You won’t have a penny--how are you to manage?”

“_I’ll_ manage well enough. I’m able to work----”

“But when the time comes.”

“I’ll be all right.”

For the first time he noticed that there was something sulky about Belle--something in the full drooping line of her mouth which hinted at sullenness.

“I shan’t be any worse off,” she said, “than if you’d never asked me, and reckon it was uncommon queer of you to ask me, so soon after my losing Ernley and all.”

His face went red--he was turning angry. Then he realized that she was hurting him because she’d been so terribly hurt herself, and his anger went its usual course into pity. “Belle, maybe it ain’t too late for you to have Ernley even now. We can’t be sure as he’s engaged to that girl--and reckon you’ve quarrelled and made it up before this.”

“He _is_ engaged to that girl--he loves her, anyway ... I wouldn’t touch him. I’d sooner die than him marry me now--marry me out of pity. Since I won’t let you marry me out of pity, d’you think I’d let him?”

“I’m not wanting to marry you out of pity. I love you, Belle.”

She sighed wearily as she saw the argument going back to its beginnings.

“Oh, reckon it’s waste of time trying to make you understand. All I wish is that you’d leave me alone. I’m sorry, Daniel--I know I’ve treated you badly. But I can’t help it--I must do as I feel.”

“But what _are_ you going to do?”

“I dunno yet. Stop on here a bit, and then go back to father’s. Now, don’t start; ‘and what ull yer do after that?’ I tell you I don’t know. I shan’t marry you and I shan’t marry Ernley, that’s all I know.”

She turned wearily towards the door, and he knew he could not hold her.

“Belle,” he tried piteously, but she shook her head.

“You asked five minutes and I’ve given you twenty--and we couldn’t say any more if we talked all night.”

She went stooping through the door, and suddenly he realized that it was closed between them. He was alone with the stuffed ferrets and the white mocking brides.