Chapter SEVEN

Daniel was not long in finding a convenient lodging. He took a room in Greville Row, a small blind row running out of Bridge Street. The houses were mean and slaty, but from his window he had a view through chimneys of the masts of ships. Also his landlady seemed a pleasant woman, and favourably disposed towards Thomas Helier, which even a brief experience of lodging-hunting told him most landladies were not.

Into these new quarters he moved at the end of March, ready for April’s changes. The first evening was one of unparalleled misery. Indoors he missed his company--Jess Harman talking and working, Mr. Marchbanks reading and smoking--and outdoors he missed the clear pure ridges of the downs against the sky, and the low northward horizon where the sky met the Brooks in the midst of the Gate of Lewes. Here he felt cramped and lonely--cramped by the four walls of his room and landscape of masts and chimneys that shut out all but the topmost reaches of the sky--lonely with no company but that of Thomas Helier, who lay in his cot, chewing and sucking Belle’s woolly ball.

Dan had to give him his bath that night, a task which he had learned to perform, as he performed most feminine tasks, with a fair amount of efficiency. He had just finished and was tying his son into his nightgown, when the landlady came in and was at once overpowered and delighted by such an unwonted exhibition of paternal resource. She invited Dan to come down to supper with her and her husband, and the rest of the evening did not pass so badly. The landlady’s husband kept a small shop down by the harbour and was full of tales of ships and seamen. Dan wondered if he had ever had his father for customer, but was not able to give a clear enough description to stand out of the jumble of the storekeeper’s memories.

The next day, after an early breakfast of tea and bread and butter, he was off to his work, leaving Thomas Helier to the care of the landlady till it was time to take him to the “creech,” which did not open till nine. This especial “creech” was run by a local welfare committee on highly scientific and hygienic principles. When Dan called for his offspring at six o’clock, he found him in an unwonted atmosphere of fresh air and pine-tar soap. His clothing had obviously been put in a sterilizer, and on the whole he seemed almost too antiseptic to handle with a pair of work-worn hands not innocent of car-oil. But the matron and her assistant were both exceedingly cordial and kind. Dan was a relief to them in their day of inefficient yet obstinate mothers, stuffed with worn-out maxims and old-wives’ tales. They gave him a feeding-chart for Thomas Helier, and all sorts of practical and intimate information. They told him that he was just the proper weight for his age, and much better looked after than many a baby who came to them from a mother’s care. He went off glowing with pride, while Thomas, full of good cheer, pulled off his father’s cap half a dozen times on the way home and threw it on the pavement, thus providing him with introductions to any number of women he had cared to know.

After that first day he was not so lonely. His work filled up ten hours, and his early rising made him want to go early to bed. He had supper every night with his landlady and her husband, while his Sundays and his Wednesday afternoons were mostly spent at Hoddern with his mother, though he still paid occasional visits to Brakey Bottom.

Kitty Sheather was exulting in her new cottage, so well built, trim and neat. All day long she swept and dusted and polished and washed and cooked for Chris, who came home in the evening, and sometimes to mid-day dinner, looking handsomer than ever in his chauffeur’s uniform. He was happy in his new work, which involved little more than driving, as his master had two cars, an Austin two-seater, and a big Austin landaulette. There was a boy to do the washing and polishing, and for anything substantial in the way of adjustments or repairs the cars went to a garage in Newhaven. Daniel’s craving to punch his brother’s head was often almost physically painful. There was something cheeky and self-confident about Chris’s whole demeanour which simply cried out to be hit. It said: “Look at me. Here I am, keeping my mother in comfort. She’s better off with me now than she’s ever been in her life. I’ve got a good job, and I’ve done well by myself and her too. Look at you. You do nothing for her now, and never did much. If she’d only had you to depend on she’d still be living at Brakey Bottom, grudged and grumbled at by Len. You’ve got a rotten job, and can barely keep yourself and your kid.”

Dan found it very hard not to quarrel with Chris, but he knew that it would do no good, as Kitty would immediately take her darling’s part and encourage him still further in his satisfaction. Besides, hang it all, Chris was right. He _had_ done well for his mother, as well as for himself, and he loved her as few sons loved their mothers. Dan had not done well for his mother, and though he knew in his heart that he loved her as much as Chris did, he had not been able to make her see it, and possibly never would.

Of Bullockdean during this time he saw nothing, beyond its distant cluster of houses from the Lewes road. Once or twice Mr. Marchbanks came to see him in Newhaven, and they sometimes went to the pictures together on Wednesday afternoons. On other Wednesdays Jess Harman would come in and go to the pictures with him--but neither she nor Mr. Marchbanks ever gave him any news of Belle. Perhaps they would if he had asked, but he never did.