Chapter FIVE: § 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.