The George and the Crown

The George was King George the Third, and the Crown was Queen Anne’s Crown, and they faced each other across the street of Bullockdean. The George had a face of stucco, cracked...

Daniel had not remembered to order the sherry, so most of the morning was spent in driving in to Lewes to fetch it. Spot, the pony, was eighteen years old, and the trap must hav...

All his way across the down, Dan shivered with that kiss. It seemed to have given her to him, without promise, without words. Or rather, it had given him to her--he felt as if t...

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...

At Batchelors’ Hall Belle Shackford lay on her bed. She was tired. All the morning she had worked in the house and in the yard, cooking and dusting, feeding and milking. They we...

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 frustra...

In spite of the professed readiness of the parties to meet each other it was not till a fortnight later that the meeting took place. First it had been obstructed by Ernley’s wis...

The next morning it was Dan’s turn to be Bullockdean at the village altar, and having tried in vain to force an extra day’s representation on Freddie Pont or Tommy Pilbeam, he r...

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...

Belle spent at Three Cups Corner some quiet, sullen days. Then she said that she could not stay there any longer. She must go home and face her fortune. She felt restored by tha...

The next morning Daniel Sheather was serving in his father’s bar when Ernley Munk walked in. He had not seen nor spoken to Ernley since James Munk’s death, and he felt horribly...

The morning was still colourless, for though the sun had risen, there was no pomp in the east, which was iron-grey with clouds. The down’s back, under its coat of rime, was grey...

Daniel did not wake up till late the next morning. He felt heavy and stupid, as if he had a cold. He rose and dressed himself, and went downstairs, but though the remains of bre...

St. Malo guards those seas which lie on the west of Cape de la Hague, in the gulf which Normandy and Brittany make together. They were part of his bishopric of wild waves, their...

He woke early, to find the room full of sunshine and stir. The stir came from the sea, which moved in a solemn roar over the rocks below. He sat up and listened to it--how the m...

The summer rose to the solstice, and all the island smelled of hay and flowers, with heavy smells of brine upon the coast. Daniel was not unhappy. His transplantation had been i...

The winter passed, vanishing slowly through a succession of fogs, and once more the seas began to sleep and men to work. There was only what might be called one winter casualty-...

Daniel and Rose did not go to the bottom, but, not very surprisingly, the _Baleine_ did. She went aground long before it was light, on some outlying rocks half a mile from the P...

After that there remained only his humiliation when he had to tell his cousins he had changed his mind. But this was less painful than he would have thought. He felt a new, chan...

The months which followed were summer indeed. To the end of his life Daniel would always see summer as a blue sky vaulting a blue sea, in which pink and purple islands swam unde...

It was on an evening towards the end of April that Rose’s time came, and Daniel went out to La Vermandée to fetch the woman who had promised to be with her. That night he slept...

Daniel’s marriage ended as it had begun--in a strange language. This time Helier de Cartaret’s Prayer Book was open at La Sepulture des Morts, and to a jigging Anglican chant th...

The crisis came sooner than he had expected--forced by that outer world which had left him untroubled for so long. He had written to his family to tell them of Rose’s death and...

Sussex was as golden-brown as Sark, and from the downs came the same scent of hot thyme as came from the cliffs above Saignie. Otherwise there was nothing in the Ouse Valley to...

The next morning Daniel moved his son and his other belongings over to Bullockdean, borrowing the Brakey Bottom trap. His family were obviously relieved to find that he was maki...

There was some vexation at Brakey Bottom when it was discovered that Dan had become the conductor of the Uckfield ’bus, but there was really very little to be done in the way of...

During the first weeks of his new work Dan had not much time to spare for calling at the Crown. He was generally so tired when he came in of an evening that he could think only...

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...

The first weeks of the New Year were depressing. It was mortal cold on the ’bus. Thomas Helier was cutting his teeth, and turned night into day at the parsonage. Mr. Marchbanks...

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...

One afternoon in May, when the first heat of the summer was in the air, and in the dust that whirled in a brown cloud behind the afternoon ’bus, a rather fuddled-looking sailorm...

August came. Newhaven harbour was noisy with cross-Channel traffic, and the Downs Company ’buses were crowded on all journeys with the shifting, summer traffic of the roads. The...

For some time Dan had gathered that his father’s stay ashore was conditioned by the time his money lasted. More than once he could have gone out on a coaster, but he preferred t...

Suddenly the tranquillity of those days was broken by the summons that all along he had expected. Belle sent him a telegram: “Meet me outside Ship Hotel two-thirty to-morrow.” T...

They ate their meal at the Cimerosa Café, a big place attached to the leading picture-house and satisfying local ideals of smartness. Otherwise there were few elegant resorts in...

The smallness of the house shook with her dash upstairs and the banging of her door. For a moment Dan stood at the stair-foot, then he too turned and went upwards. He felt menta...

“Tickets, please”--Daniel stooped over the fat woman in the corner and waited while she fumbled in her pocket and then in her bag and then in her basket--“sixpence to Whitesmith...