Chapter FOUR

The worst of having a secret is that, if you are of a friendly, communicative nature, it never lets you rest till you have told it to somebody, and then it is no longer a secret. Daniel wanted badly both to tell his secret and keep it, to eat his cake and have it. He nearly told his mother when he unexpectedly met her going downstairs the next morning--he had a queer feeling of treachery towards her, as if she would have hated to see another woman set up in the place she had never attempted to fill.

He put his arms round her neck and kissed her.

“What’s the matter with you, Dan?”

“I dunno.”

“You’re like a great baby.”

“I’m only saying good morning.”

“That’s a new way for you to say it.”

“I’m sorry--I can’t help it, mum.”

He took away his arms from her and went out.

It was his “early day” at the Rectory. One of Mr. Marchbanks’ many peculiarities as a clergyman was his fondness for having services without any congregation. Every morning the little rasping bell of Bullockdean Church made a short clamour at seven, and the village priest stood before the village altar while the village yawned and pulled on its trousers and lit its fires. Apparently the thing could not be done if Mr. Marchbanks was quite alone, so three or four of the local youth took turns to kneel beside him in the cold morning shadows and answer for Bullockdean. By a process of the survival of the fittest, three mornings out of the seven had fallen to Daniel’s share. Afterwards he would have breakfast at the Rectory and do one or two jobs about the place before going home.

To-day he was a little flurried over his duties. In church he stammered and gabbled and forgot his “piece”--and at the Parsonage he burnt the boiled eggs, which, as everybody knows, is an achievement usually beyond the reach of the worst cook. The lady who “helped” at the Rectory was often late, and Daniel was used to cooking the breakfast as well as eating it. He was, as he put it, “fond of messing about,” and certainly did not as a rule produce a worse meal than Mrs. Ades herself. But this morning he was demoralized, and not only brought an incinerated breakfast to the table, but ate it heedlessly, without comment or grimace. His friend could see that something was on his mind and very near his tongue.

“Mr. Marchbanks, have you ever been to Batchelors’ Hall?”

“No, never; but I’ve met Shackford on one or two occasions.”

“Ever met the girls--Lucy and--er--Belle?”

“I met Belle once out walking with young Munk, and he introduced me. But I haven’t seen her since.”

“Oh, then you’d ...” Dan’s cheeks and tongue were burning. “I say....”

“Well?”

“What would you say if ... I mean, how would you like to keep a pig?”

The clergyman looked startled. Was this the fruit of Dan’s soul in travail?

“I shouldn’t like it at all.”

“I’d take care of him for you, and you could feed him on scraps and waste ... or get a sow and mate her, and we’d make money out of the litters.”

In spite of various efforts on Mr. Marchbanks’ side and several temptations on his own he stuck to pigs till the end of breakfast.

Even by then the “help” had not arrived, and Dan, who could never quite see where a man’s work ended and a woman’s began, proceeded to a frenzied washing up and an unceremonious making of the priest’s bed by pulling down the blankets. He was smoothing the quilt over his handiwork when a ring came at the front door bell.

Dan thundered downstairs to open it, and found Jess Harman on the step with Dr. Penny’s twins in a push-cart beside her.

“Hallo, Dan! I didn’t expect to see you.”

“Mrs. Ades hasn’t come, and I’m doing her work.”

Jess, who had as pleasant a smile as her sister Maudie, grinned widely in derision.

“I reckon you are. I reckon you’ve smashed the plates----”

“I haven’t!”

“And just pulled down the cover over the bed and thought you’d made it.”

Dan blushed guiltily.

“And have you emptied the slops?”

“No.”

“D’you think they’ll empty themselves? Or d’you expect the poor man to empty them? Go on--you’re a fine housemaid.”

“Is it why you’ve called--to tell me that?” asked Dan saucily.

“No--I’ve got a message for the rector from Mrs. Penny. She says, ‘May she put off the carving class from Tuesday to Wednesday as her cook wants to change her night out?’--a verdible answer--‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

“I’ll give it,” said Dan, turning into the house, “and then maybe you’ll come and help me with the work, since you’re so smart.”

“And what’s to become of the kids? I’m hired to look after them.”

“Bring them in, and we’ll find something to keep ’em quiet. Let me help you with the pram.”

Jess wanted only a little persuasion, and the twins were brought into the kitchen, while Dan went off to the study with Mrs. Penny’s message.

“It’s ‘yes,’” he cried as he came back. “He says she may go to hell if she likes.”

“I’m sure he never said anything of the kind.”

“Didn’t say it, but he meant it. He doesn’t care when she has her old damn class.”

“Dan, what’s the matter with you? You’re getting beyond yourself.”

It was his secret again, tormenting him in a new way. It had already made him sentimental, then embarrassed, now it made him uproarious. He took the boy-twin out of his pram and tossed him up and down in his strong arms.

“Daniel--a-done do--or I’ll go at once. You’ll hurt him--he’s getting frightened.”

“Not he! He’s loving it.”

The entertainment certainly appeared successful. Young Michael Penny yelled with delight, and his sister Lois yelled with her lust for the same experience. Daniel shouted with laughter and Jess scolded him at the top of her voice. The Parsonage rang with noise--the scream of children’s voices, the roar of a man’s, the scold of a woman’s. In his study the parson put his fingers to his ears and wondered why there were so many people in his house and what they were doing.

At last the clamour subsided as the twins, tossed into gratification and only just not into sickness, were given the cat to play with, while Daniel and Jess turned to the house’s need. Dan did not go out, as he had first intended--his secret still tormented him, and he longed to tell it to Jess. So he followed her about with brooms and pails and dusters, submitting every now and then to being told he was in the way and worse than the twins for getting under her feet.

Daniel had known Jess Harman all her life, which was a couple of years shorter than his. He and the two Harmans had gone to school together and had shared many secrets about frogs and toffee and the private life of Jess and Maudie’s joint doll. Daniel had been jeered at by the other boys and his elder brother Len for liking to play with girls, but though in time he had realized his own ignominy and withdrawn to more manly spheres, he had always been fond of the sisters, and on their leaving school the friendship had been resumed with the greater self-consciousness of adolescence. Dan had actually fancied himself in love with Maudie for a couple of months--that was just after she had become barmaid at the Crown and wore her hair in two great half-moons each side of her face and was considered rather a smasher by the local youth. He had never fancied himself in love with Jess, whose career had been a lowlier one in pantries and sculleries; but to-day he certainly did experience an overwhelming desire to tell her about Belle Shackford.

“Jess,” he asked, “have you ever been in love?”

“Have you been following me round the house on purpose to ask me that?”

“Yes--oh, Jess, I’m in love myself.”

She turned round and faced him, dust-pan in hand.

“You! Daniel Sheather! Who with?”

“Belle Shackford,” he said hoarsely.

“Well!”

Jess threw her hands in the air, unheeding of the avalanche that descended from the dust-pan. “Well!”

“Well, why not?”

He was angry now. He had told his secret and wished he hadn’t.

“Well, my boy--she’s been engaged to Ernley Munk for two years--and anyhow she ain’t the girl for you.”

“How d’you mean?”

“She ain’t your sort. She’s fast. You want something quieter.”

“She’s quiet enough for me.”

He thought of her for a moment as the pigeon in his breast.

“She’s--oh, I don’t want to miscall her, Danny, for I reckon she’s had her troubles; but you know she’s fast--you know the things that have been said about her as well as I do.”

“I don’t care.”

“But you don’t believe they ain’t true?”

“I don’t care if they’re true or not.”

“Then there’s some hope for you. If you’d said to me that Belle was just like the female in ‘be thou hard as ice and chaste as snow thou shalt not escape camomile,’ then I’d think you were just a poor loon that had to be protected; but if you’re going into things with your eyes open----”

“I am.”

“And how far have you gone?”

“No way at all.”

Since she was being so unsympathetic he would not tell her about the kiss.

“Then don’t go any further.”

“I’ve gone too far to turn back.”

“You say you’ve gone no way at all and yet you’ve gone too far to turn back. You are a loon, after all, Daniel.”

“There’s no good talking to you about it,” he said sulkily. “I’m sorry I told you.”

She melted at once.

“Oh, don’t say that, Dan. I didn’t mean to be short with you--but I was sorry to think of you.... Well, never mind. I wish you happy, I’m sure, though I don’t expect it.”

“Why not?”

“Because--well, I’ve told you before, and you didn’t like it, so there’s no sense telling you again. Besides, most likely, if she’s not the sort of girl for you, she’ll see it herself and say ‘no.’ And don’t think I shan’t be sorry for you, though I say it’ll be better if she does. I’ve nothing against her myself, but I shouldn’t be acting friendly if I didn’t tell you solemn that she’s not the girl for you.”

“Then who is she the girl for?”

“Oh, a more dashing sort of chap--the kind that’ll take her riding in the side-car of his motor-bike and give her tea at an hotel in Eastbourne, and ull dance with her sometimes, and buy her garters--a chap like Ernley Munk. All the Shackford girls are like that--fond of pleasure--‘She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth,’ the Bible says.”

“Now don’t start preaching.”

“I ain’t. But there’s no harm in you knowing what the Bible says about Belle Shackford.”

“And about you too. You go to the pictures every time you get a chance.”

“Which is about once a year. Howsumever, I don’t say I shouldn’t go oftener if I could. Now, Daniel, you and me had better stop quarrelling, and go down and see if those kids haven’t baked theirselves in the oven or cut theirselves open with the kitchen knives or otherways lost me my place.”