Chapter SIX: § 1

It had all happened as in her heart she had expected. Her surrender had broken her life in two, and the fiery city of her love for Ernley and the bleak wilderness of its frustration lay beyond a gulf. She neither loved him nor hated him, nor was she any longer jealous of the girl who now had his kisses. She could face the prospect of meeting him--perhaps meeting them both--in the inevitable future. Neither had she, curiously enough, any feelings of triumph or self-vindication towards him or towards her family. She was not proud of her engagement to Daniel Sheather any more than one is proud of the bed on which one finds rest at the end of a weary day.

At first she was conscious of little except relief and peace. Those experiences which might have disquieted her had now no power to shake the lethargy of her being. The day after her promise Dan brought her over to Bullockdean to show his parents. She saw the contempt flickering in the younger brother’s eyes, she felt the occasional sting of the mother’s tongue, but neither could rouse her from her quiet leaning against Daniel. She liked his father too, who had Daniel’s face, with sea-blue eyes in it; there was nothing sharp nor contemptuous about him, and she saw in him without offence the naïve admiration of the male for her big charms.

Of course, if she would consent to live at the George and help with its management they could be married almost at once--there was a room, probably a couple of rooms, to spare, and she would be useful in the house and in the bar, and so earn her keep. On the other hand, if she refused, their marriage was as indefinite as hers and Ernley’s had ever seemed; Daniel would have to hunt the blue lion of the ex-service man--a job, and having found it would have to contrive, perhaps for some years, to make a living out of it himself before he attempted to support her on it too.

He scarcely seemed to doubt that she would be willing to live at the George, but she refused to make any promises. If the past were cut off from her by a gulf, the future was wrapped from her in a mist. It was essential to her new-found calm that she should not try to search it. If she had to think of the future, new doubts and new cares would arise. To-day she could look out unmoved from the shabby windows of the George’s bar and see across the road the windows of the Crown behind their snug red curtains. But could she feel sure that she would always be able to do this? She would never even ask herself the question. When the future came she would face it, but till it came she would not bring it any nearer, either with questions or with promises.

“It’s too soon to think of marrying now. I want to get used to--to this first, Daniel.”

He looked at her with his slow, spreading smile, which became mixed with a little reproach when it reached his eyes.

“Oh, Belle!... oh, dearie!”

“We haven’t been engaged a week, and before we settle to get married we’ll have to think of ever so many things. And I don’t want to think of anything just yet, Daniel.”

Her voice trembled a little, and his compassion was immediate.

“Very well, darling--then you shan’t. You shan’t ever--I’ll do all the thinking for you. Not that I was ever such a valiant chap for brains, but I can think of ordinary things.”

She knew that this courtship was moving on lines exactly opposite to the old one. Then she had been the one anxious to marry, and Ernley the one contented to drift. But probably the reasons had been the same--she had wanted to marry Ernley for the same reason that Daniel wanted to marry her--because she was not sure. She knew that, in spite of her promises, Daniel was not sure of her, and sometimes a dreadful compassion smote her. He was so sweet, so kind, so innocent, she must never make him the victim of her needs, she must never let him suffer because of her. Whatever she felt, whatever her awakening, he must not be hurt. She had sacrificed him once to her own urgencies, and it was her task to see that she did not sacrifice him again--though she realized vaguely that he was the kind of man whom women will always sacrifice, either to themselves or to other men.

§ 2

In spite of occasional qualms, those days of late February were happy enough. Belle found Dan’s lovemaking a sweeter experience than she had expected--she had expected to find him common and unpractised, challenging contrast with Ernley every hour; she had expected to find herself a cold slag-heap of burnt-out emotions. She was surprised to find that the spark in her was not dead, and that the word and touch of love had power to fan it once more into flame. She saw that Daniel would be able to give her what other men besides Ernley had given, the things which do not really matter and yet are so sweet. He could give her the exquisite moments she loved, and because he was not Ernley, she could forget herself in these, and be happy, and not wish for anything more that he could not give.

Hence she was, in a manner of speaking, happier than in the days of her love for Ernley. Dan was a much more restful lover--though he showed occasionally an ardour that surprised her, there was really as much of affection as of passion in his wooing. It delighted him to cherish her, to button her coat and tie her scarf, to rub her hands when they were cold.... And she, in the new joy of being looked after, could forgive him much that sometimes jarred--ways that weren’t the ways of Ernley, the ways of the Crown, but the common ways of the George, reminding her that she was stooping to her refuge....

Of course Ted Shackford was only a tenant farmer, and his daughters worked hard in house and barn--but they wore silk, and when their young men took them out they expected the best seats at the pictures and to be fed at hotels and cafés. Ernley had been an especial adept at this taking out. In the side-car of his motor-cycle Belle had ridden like a queen--to hotels and theatres and picture palaces, in Eastbourne, Lewes, Newhaven and Brighton. She had driven home with great beribboned chocolate boxes on her knees, or bunches of expensive flowers. Her sisters and friends had envied her. They did not envy her now, though they thought Dan was well enough in his way, and were glad that Belle should marry respectably before she came a cropper.

Daniel never took her anywhere except upon the broad back of the down, to the hollows by White Lion pond, or to the five haystacks standing against the sky beyond Barndean. Here they would sit on his spread coat, huddling together for warmth, he kissing and fondling her, smoking innumerable Woodbines, and talking plain country talk of birds and animals and paths and people. Nearly all their lovemaking took place out of doors. Neither Batchelors’ nor the George was quite congenial. If it had not been so cold, Belle would have asked for nothing better. As it was, she sometimes wondered why he never suggested a picture palace.

Beyond his family she had so far met none of his friends in Bullockdean. She shrank from meeting people whom she knew thought no good of her. The Harmans, the Pilbeams, the Ponts, everybody, thought of poor Belle Shackford as trash. If socially she was stooping to Daniel, in every other way he was stooping to her. She was a girl of no character, the clack of two parishes, chiefly, but not only, in connexion with young Munk. She knew that some people said she was a bad lot, and most that she was no better than she should be. She didn’t try to justify herself against these criticisms, but she sometimes wondered if the women who judged her could ever have felt as she felt, or surely they would have understood. Were there women who went through life cold, calm and sedate, unmoved, untempted, unshaken? She wondered.

§ 3

Circumstances had combined to prevent a meeting between her and Ernley. Almost directly she had given her promise to Dan, Ernley had gone off to visit an uncle in Streatham. Belle had at first wondered if this were mere circumstance, but Daniel had assured her that old Ernley had been planning this visit for weeks, and he had expected him to make it just about now.

“You wouldn’t mind meeting old Ernley again--would you, Belle?”

“No, of course not.”

She spoke the truth. Her calm still remained unbroken; indeed it was growing, thickening in the comfortable atmosphere of Dan’s affection. She was a more placid creature than she had ever been before.

Directly Ernley came back to the Crown, Daniel put him the same question.

“You won’t mind meeting Belle again, will you, Ernley?”

“Of course not, you silly fool. Why the devil should I now?”

“Oh, no, of course not. I was only asking. I was thinking of having Belle over to spend a night or two next week. Maybe you could come to supper.”

“I’d be pleased. Why should you think I’d mind meeting her? Does she mind meeting me?”

“Oh, dear, no. She said she’d be glad.”

“That’s all right, then. The past’s forgotten, the hatchet’s buried. Have a drink.”

Dan felt infinitely relieved. Having seen so much of Belle and Ernley in the last destructive days of their love, he had found it difficult to believe that they could ever meet like ordinary human beings--though each had found, as they say, consolation elsewhere.

“How are you getting on with Pearl?” he asked.

“Oh, fine. Couldn’t be better. We had a day together in town while I was at Streatham.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

Ernley flushed.

“How can I tell? It depends on what dad thinks of it. He’s seen her once--I brought her over here--and he likes her. But I dunno. I don’t think I’m the sort of chap to get married. Not but that I’m sure to do it some day. I’ll make a damn bad husband to some poor girl.”

“That’s what you say. I don’t think so.”

“Because you don’t know half what a moody, broody sort of devil I am. I hate domestic life too--cookery books and babies and all that. You love that sort of thing, so you’re wise to get married. When is it to be?”

“I dunno. We haven’t settled yet. It all depends whether Belle ull live at the George.”

“You never thought of having her to live at the George?”

“Well, where else are we to live? If I have to leave home and get a job we can’t get married for years.”

“But you couldn’t have her at the George. It ud be impossible. She’d never cotton to that kind of life--all mixed up with your family.”

“Well, she’s lived all mixed up with her own, and they not so good as mine. And if you’d married her she’d have lived all mixed up with yours.”

“I’ve only got dad--and, Lord! it’s very different here.... But I’d better not be offensive. Belle knows how to look after herself--damn well she does! Not much putting up with unnecessary evils about Belle.”