Nell had to stop away from school till the end of the term, for Mrs. Beatup could not possibly nurse her husband without help; indeed, Nell’s help was often not enough. A broken leg in itself was serious damage for a man of Mus’ Beatup’s age and habits, and into the bargain his alcoholic deprivations brought on an attack of delirium tremens about the fifth day of his illness. For this both Nell and her mother were inadequate—Nell was sickened and terrified by this horrible travesty of a human being that shook the springs in her father’s bed, and Mrs. Beatup made him worse by trying to argue with him and taking as a personal affront his assertions as to the maggoty condition of the pillows. Harry had to spend two days away from the fields in the combined office of nurse and policeman, and on one occasion when even his strength was not enough to keep Mus’ Beatup in bed, Kadwell of Stilliands Tower prolonged an evening’s call of enquiry till the next morning.

Young Kadwell often called to enquire, and made himself useful in various ways. He was on a fortnight’s sick-leave, after an outbreak of his old wound. He had been sniped during some patrol work at Loos in 1915, [224] and though once more fit for service had been kept in England ever since. At present he was quartered at Eastbourne, but expected soon to be sent back to France.

At first Nell was too harassed and miserable to realise that his visits were largely on her account. Moreover, she was sexually very humble—she had loved so long without return that she had never learned to look for advances. But Kadwell had no reason to hide his feelings, nor any skill if he had had reason, so in time Nell was bound to become aware of them. The discovery did not give her any great pleasure—the faint pride she occasionally felt at his notice was always dangerously on the edge of disgust. She was sensitive throughout her being to his coarseness—which at the same time had curious, intermittent powers of attraction—and there was something in his bold, appraising look which struck her with shame; with his tastes, thoughts and appetites she had nothing in common. She avoided him as much as she could, feeling guilty because of the faint thrills which occasionally mixed with her dislike.

It was a sad year’s ending. Her confinement in the house dragged down even further her health and spirits, her father’s sick-bed filled her with wretchedness and shame. It seemed to preach to her the lesson of what she really was, in spite of all her dreams. How had she ever dared to plot for the greatness of the curate’s love? Who was she to mate with a priest, a scholar, a gentleman? The sordid grind of her day, shut up in the muddle of Worge, her hours in that sag-roofed, stuffy bedroom, nursing her father through the trivialities and degradations of an illness brought on and intensified by drink—and then the crowning irony of an occasional “parish visit” from her loved one, his polite enquiries, his parsonic sympathy—all seemed to shout at [225] her that she was nothing but a commo............