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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, by D. H. Lawrence
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Prussian Officer and Other Stories
+
+Author: D. H. Lawrence
+
+Release Date: August 31, 2007 [eBook #22480]
+[Most recently updated: September 17, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRUSSIAN OFFICER AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+cover 
+
+
+
+
+THE PRUSSIAN OFFICER
+
+_and Other Stories_
+
+
+by D. H. Lawrence
+
+
+
+LONDON
+DUCKWORTH & CO,
+3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
+
+Published December 1914
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+ The Prussian Officer 
+ The Thorn in the Flesh 
+ Daughters of the Vicar 
+ A Fragment of Stained Glass
+ The Shades of Spring
+ Second Best
+ The Shadow in the Rose Garden
+ Goose Fair 
+ The White Stocking 
+ A Sick Collier
+ The Christening 
+ Odour of Chrysanthemums
+
+
+
+
+The Prussian Officer
+
+I
+
+They had marched more than thirty kilometres since dawn, along the
+white, hot road where occasional thickets of trees threw a moment of
+shade, then out into the glare again. On either hand, the valley, wide
+and shallow, glittered with heat; dark green patches of rye, pale young
+corn, fallow and meadow and black pine woods spread in a dull, hot
+diagram under a glistening sky. But right in front the mountains ranged
+across, pale blue and very still, snow gleaming gently out of the deep
+atmosphere. And towards the mountains, on and on, the regiment marched
+between the rye fields and the meadows, between the scraggy fruit trees
+set regularly on either side the high road. The burnished, dark green
+rye threw on a suffocating heat, the mountains drew gradually nearer
+and more distinct. While the feet of the soldiers grew hotter, sweat
+ran through their hair under their helmets, and their knapsacks could
+burn no more in contact with their shoulders, but seemed instead to
+give off a cold, prickly sensation.
+
+He walked on and on in silence, staring at the mountains ahead, that
+rose sheer out of the land, and stood fold behind fold, half earth,
+half heaven, the heaven, the banner with slits of soft snow, in the
+pale, bluish peaks.
+
+He could now walk almost without pain. At the start, he had determined
+not to limp. It had made him sick to take the first steps, and during
+the first mile or so, he had compressed his breath, and the cold drops
+of sweat had stood on his forehead. But he had walked it off. What were
+they after all but bruises! He had looked at them, as he was getting
+up: deep bruises on the backs of his thighs. And since he had made his
+first step in the morning, he had been conscious of them, till now he
+had a tight, hot place in his chest, with suppressing the pain, and
+holding himself in. There seemed no air when he breathed. But he walked
+almost lightly.
+
+The Captain’s hand had trembled at taking his coffee at dawn: his
+orderly saw it again. And he saw the fine figure of the Captain
+wheeling on horseback at the farm-house ahead, a handsome figure in
+pale blue uniform with facings of scarlet, and the metal gleaming on
+the black helmet and the sword-scabbard, and dark streaks of sweat
+coming on the silky bay horse. The orderly felt he was connected with
+that figure moving so suddenly on horseback: he followed it like a
+shadow, mute and inevitable and damned by it. And the officer was
+always aware of the tramp of the company behind, the march of his
+orderly among the men.
+
+The Captain was a tall man of about forty, grey at the temples. He had
+a handsome, finely knit figure, and was one of the best horsemen in the
+West. His orderly, having to rub him down, admired the amazing
+riding-muscles of his loins.
+
+For the rest, the orderly scarcely noticed the officer any more than he
+noticed himself. It was rarely he saw his master’s face: he did not
+look at it. The Captain had reddish-brown, stilt hair, that he wore
+short upon his skull. His moustache was also cut short and bristly over
+a full, brutal mouth. His face was rather rugged, the cheeks thin.
+Perhaps the man was the more handsome for the deep lines in his face,
+the irritable tension of his brow, which gave him the look of a man who
+fights with life. His fair eyebrows stood bushy over light blue eyes
+that were always flashing with cold fire.
+
+He was a Prussian aristocrat, haughty and overbearing. But his mother
+had been a Polish Countess. Having made too many gambling debts when he
+was young, he had ruined his prospects in the Army, and remained an
+infantry captain. He had never married: his position did not allow of
+it, and no woman had ever moved him to it. His time he spent
+riding—occasionally he rode one of his own horses at the races—and at
+the officers’ club. Now and then he took himself a mistress. But after
+such an event, he returned to duty with his brow still more tense, his
+eyes still more hostile and irritable. With the men, however, he was
+merely impersonal, though a devil when roused; so that, on the whole,
+they feared him, but had no great aversion from him. They accepted him
+as the inevitable.
+
+To his orderly he was at first cold and just and indifferent: he did
+not fuss over trifles. So that his servant knew practically nothing
+about him, except just what orders he would give, and how he wanted
+them obeyed. That was quite simple. Then the change gradually came.
+
+The orderly was a youth of about twenty-two, of medium height, and well
+built. He had strong, heavy limbs, was swarthy, with a soft, black,
+young moustache. There was something altogether warm and young about
+him. He had firmly marked eyebrows over dark, expressionless eyes, that
+seemed never to have thought, only to have received life direct through
+his senses, and acted straight from instinct.
+
+Gradually the officer had become aware of his servant’s young,
+vigorous, unconscious presence about him. He could not get away from
+the sense of the youth’s person, while he was in attendance. It was
+like a warm flame upon the older man’s tense, rigid body, that had
+become almost unliving, fixed. There was something so free and
+self-contained about him, and something in the young fellow’s movement,
+that made the officer aware of him. And this irritated the Prussian. He
+did not choose to be touched into life by his servant. He might easily
+have changed his man, but he did not. He now very rarely looked direct
+at his orderly, but kept his face averted, as if to avoid seeing him.
+And yet as the young soldier moved unthinking about the apartment, the
+elder watched him, and would notice the movement of his strong young
+shoulders under the blue cloth, the bend of his neck. And it irritated
+him. To see the soldier’s young, brown, shapely peasant’s hand grasp
+the loaf or the wine-bottle sent a flash of hate or of anger through
+the elder man’s blood. It was not that the youth was clumsy: it was
+rather the blind, instinctive sureness of movement of an unhampered
+young animal that irritated the officer to such a degree.
+
+Once, when a bottle of wine had gone over, and the red gushed out on to
+the tablecloth, the officer had started up with an oath, and his eyes,
+bluey like fire, had held those of the confused youth for a moment. It
+was a shock for the young soldier. He felt something sink deeper,
+deeper into his soul, where nothing had ever gone before. It left him
+rather blank and wondering. Some of his natural completeness in himself
+was gone, a little uneasiness took its place. And from that time an
+undiscovered feeling had held between the two men.
+
+Henceforward the orderly was afraid of really meeting his master. His
+subconsciousness remembered those steely blue eyes and the harsh brows,
+and did not intend to meet them again. So he always stared past his
+master, and avoided him. Also, in a little anxiety, he waited for the
+three months to have gone, when his time would be up. He began to feel
+a constraint in the Captain’s presence, and the soldier even more than
+the officer wanted to be left alone, in his neutrality as servant.
+
+He had served the Captain for more than a year, and knew his duty. This
+he performed easily, as if it were natural to him. The officer and his
+commands he took for granted, as he took the sun and the rain, and he
+served as a matter of course. It did not implicate him personally.
+
+But now if he were going to be forced into a personal interchange with
+his master he would be like a wild thing caught, he felt he must get
+away.
+
+But the influence of the young soldier’s being had penetrated through
+the officer’s stiffened discipline, and perturbed the man in him. He,
+however, was a gentleman, with long, fine hands and cultivated
+movements, and was not going to allow such a thing as the stirring of
+his innate self. He was a man of passionate temper, who had always kept
+himself suppressed. Occasionally there had been a duel, an outburst
+before the soldiers. He knew himself to be always on the point of
+breaking out. But he kept himself hard to the idea of the Service.
+Whereas the young soldier seemed to live out his warm, full nature, to
+give it off in his very movements, which had a certain zest, such as
+wild animals have in free movement. And this irritated the officer more
+and more.
+
+In spite of himself, the Captain could not regain his neutrality of
+feeling towards his orderly. Nor could he leave the man alone. In spite
+of himself, he watched him, gave him sharp orders, tried to take up as
+much of his time as possible. Sometimes he flew into a rage with the
+young soldier, and bullied him. Then the orderly shut himself off, as
+it were out of earshot, and waited, with sullen, flushed face, for the
+end of the noise. The words never pierced to his intelligence, he made
+himself, protectively, impervious to the feelings of his master.
+
+He had a scar on his left thumb, a deep seam going across the knuckle.
+The officer had long suffered from it, and wanted to do something to
+it. Still it was there, ugly and brutal on the young, brown hand. At
+last the Captain’s reserve gave way. One day, as the orderly was
+smoothing out the tablecloth, the officer pinned down his thumb with a
+pencil, asking,
+
+“How did you come by that?”
+
+The young man winced and drew back at attention.
+
+“A wood axe, Herr Hauptmann,” he answered.
+
+The officer waited for further explanation. None came. The orderly went
+about his duties. The elder man was sullenly angry. His servant avoided
+him. And the next day he had to use all his willpower to avoid seeing
+the scarred thumb. He wanted to get hold of it and—— A hot flame ran in
+his blood.
+
+He knew his servant would soon be free, and would be glad. As yet, the
+soldier had held himself off from the elder man. The Captain grew madly
+irritable. He could not rest when the soldier was away, and when he was
+present, he glared at him with tormented eyes. He hated those fine,
+black brows over the unmeaning, dark eyes, he was infuriated by the
+free movement of the handsome limbs, which no military discipline could
+make stiff. And he became harsh and cruelly bullying, using contempt
+and satire. The young soldier only grew more mute and expressionless.
+
+What cattle were you bred by, that you can’t keep straight eyes? Look
+me in the eyes when I speak to you.
+
+And the soldier turned his dark eyes to the other’s face, but there was
+no sight in them: he stared with the slightest possible cast, holding
+back his sight, perceiving the blue of his master’s eyes, but receiving
+no look from them. And the elder man went pale, and his reddish
+eyebrows twitched. He gave his order, barrenly.
+
+Once he flung a heavy military glove into the young soldier’s face.
+Then he had the satisfaction of seeing the black eyes flare up into his
+own, like a blaze when straw is thrown on a fire. And he had laughed
+with a little tremor and a sneer.
+
+But there were only two months more. The youth instinctively tried to
+keep himself intact: he tried to serve the officer as if the latter
+were an abstract authority and not a man. All his instinct was to avoid
+personal contact, even definite hate. But in spite of himself the hate
+grew, responsive to the officer’s passion. However, he put it in the
+background. When he had left the Army he could dare acknowledge it. By
+nature he was active, and had many friends. He thought what amazing
+good fellows they were. But, without knowing it, he was alone. Now this
+solitariness was intensified. It would carry him through his term. But
+the officer seemed to be going irritably insane, and the youth was
+deeply frightened.
+
+The soldier had a sweetheart, a girl from the mountains, independent
+and primitive. The two walked together, rather silently. He went with
+her, not to talk, but to have his arm round her, and for the physical
+contact. This eased him, made it easier for him to ignore the Captain;
+for he could rest with her held fast against his chest. And she, in
+some unspoken fashion, was there for him. They loved each other.
+
+The Captain perceived it, and was mad with irritation. He kept the
+young man engaged all the evenings long, and took pleasure in the dark
+look that came on his face. Occasionally, the eyes of the two men met,
+those of the younger sullen and dark, doggedly unalterable, those of
+the elder sneering with restless contempt.
+
+The officer tried hard not to admit the passion that had got hold of
+him. He would not know that his feeling for his orderly was anything
+but that of a man incensed by his stupid, perverse servant. So, keeping
+quite justified and conventional in his consciousness, he let the other
+thing run on. His nerves, however, were suffering. At last he slung the
+end of a belt in his servant’s face. When he saw the youth start back,
+the pain-tears in his eyes and the blood on his mouth, he had felt at
+once a thrill of deep pleasure and of shame.
+
+But this, he acknowledged to himself, was a thing he had never done
+before. The fellow was too exasperating. His own nerves must be going
+to pieces. He went away for some days with a woman.
+
+It was a mockery of pleasure. He simply did not want the woman. But he
+stayed on for his time. At the end of it, he came back in an agony of
+irritation, torment, and misery. He rode all the evening, then came
+straight in to supper. His orderly was out. The officer sat with his
+long, fine hands lying on the table, perfectly still, and all his blood
+seemed to be corroding.
+
+At last his servant entered. He watched the strong, easy young figure,
+the fine eyebrows, the thick black hair. In a week’s time the youth had
+got back his old well-being. The hands of the officer twitched and
+seemed to be full of mad flame. The young man stood at attention,
+unmoving, shut on.
+
+The meal went in silence. But the orderly seemed eager. He made a
+clatter with the dishes.
+
+“Are you in a hurry?” asked the officer, watching the intent, warm face
+of his servant. The other did not reply.
+
+“Will you answer my question?” said the Captain.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied the orderly, standing with his pile of deep Army
+plates. The Captain waited, looked at him, then asked again:
+
+“Are you in a hurry?
+
+“Yes, sir,” came the answer, that sent a flash through the listener.
+
+“For what?”
+
+“I was going out, sir.”
+
+“I want you this evening.”
+
+There was a moment’s hesitation. The officer had a curious stiffness of
+countenance.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied the servant, in his throat.
+
+“I want you tomorrow evening also—in fact, you may consider your
+evenings occupied, unless I give you leave.”
+
+The mouth with the young moustache set close.
+
+“Yes, sir,” answered the orderly, loosening his lips for a moment.
+
+He again turned to the door.
+
+“And why have you a piece of pencil in your ear?”
+
+The orderly hesitated, then continued on his way without answering. He
+set the plates in a pile outside the door, took the stump of pencil
+from his ear, and put it in his pocket. He had been copying a verse for
+his sweetheart’s birthday card. He returned to finish clearing the
+table. The officer’s eyes were dancing, he had a little, eager smile.
+
+“Why have you a piece of pencil in your ear?” he asked.
+
+The orderly took his hands full of dishes. His master was standing near
+the great green stove, a little smile on his face, his chin thrust
+forward. When the young soldier saw him his heart suddenly ran hot. He
+felt blind. Instead of answering, he turned dazedly to the door. As he
+was crouching to set down the dishes, he was pitched forward by a kick
+from behind. The pots went in a stream down the stairs, he clung to the
+pillar of the banisters. And as he was rising he was kicked heavily
+again, and again, so that he clung sickly to the post for some moments.
+His master had gone swiftly into the room and closed the door. The
+maid-servant downstairs looked up the staircase and made a mocking face
+at the crockery disaster.
+
+The officer’s heart was plunging. He poured himself a glass of wine,
+part of which he spilled on the floor, and gulped the remainder,
+leaning against the cool, green stove. He heard his man collecting the
+dishes from the stairs. Pale, as if intoxicated, he waited. The servant
+entered again. The Captain’s heart gave a pang, as of pleasure, seeing
+the young fellow bewildered and uncertain on his feet, with pain.
+
+“Schöner!” he said.
+
+The soldier was a little slower in coming to attention.
+
+“Yes, sir!”
+
+The youth stood before him, with pathetic young moustache, and fine
+eyebrows very distinct on his forehead of dark marble.
+
+“I asked you a question.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+The officer’s tone bit like acid.
+
+“Why had you a pencil in your ear?”
+
+Again the servant’s heart ran hot, and he could not breathe. With dark,
+strained eyes, he looked at the officer, as if fascinated. And he stood
+there sturdily planted, unconscious. The withering smile came into the
+Captain’s eyes, and he lifted his foot.
+
+“I—I forgot it—sir,” panted the soldier, his dark eyes fixed on the
+other man’s dancing blue ones.
+
+“What was it doing there?”
+
+He saw the young man’s breast heaving as he made an effort for words.
+
+“I had been writing.”
+
+“Writing what?”
+
+Again the soldier looked him up and down. The officer could hear him
+panting. The smile came into the blue eyes. The soldier worked his dry
+throat, but could not speak. Suddenly the smile lit like a name on the
+officer’s face, and a kick came heavily against the orderly’s thigh.
+The youth moved a pace sideways. His face went dead, with two black,
+staring eyes.
+
+“Well?” said the officer.
+
+The orderly’s mouth had gone dry, and his tongue rubbed in it as on dry
+brown-paper. He worked his throat. The officer raised his foot. The
+servant went stiff.
+
+“Some poetry, sir,” came the crackling, unrecognizable sound of his
+voice.
+
+“Poetry, what poetry?” asked the Captain, with a sickly smile.
+
+Again there was the working in the throat. The Captain’s heart had
+suddenly gone down heavily, and he stood sick and tired.
+
+“For my girl, sir,” he heard the dry, inhuman sound.
+
+“Oh!” he said, turning away. “Clear the table.”
+
+“Click!” went the soldier’s throat; then again, “click!” and then the
+half-articulate:
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+The young soldier was gone, looking old, and walking heavily.
+
+The officer, left alone, held himself rigid, to prevent himself from
+thinking. His instinct warned him that he must not think. Deep inside
+him was the intense gratification of his passion, still working
+powerfully. Then there was a counter-action, a horrible breaking down
+of something inside him, a whole agony of reaction. He stood there for
+an hour motionless, a chaos of sensations, but rigid with a will to
+keep blank his consciousness, to prevent his mind grasping. And he held
+himself so until the worst of the stress had passed, when he began to
+drink, drank himself to an intoxication, till he slept obliterated.
+When he woke in the morning he was shaken to the base of his nature.
+But he had fought off the realization of what he had done. He had
+prevented his mind from taking it in, had suppressed it along with his
+instincts, and the conscious man had nothing to do with it. He felt
+only as after a bout of intoxication, weak, but the affair itself all
+dim and not to be recovered. Of the drunkenness of his passion he
+successfully refused remembrance. And when his orderly appeared with
+coffee, the officer assumed the same self he had had the morning
+before. He refused the event of the past night—denied it had ever
+been—and was successful in his denial. He had not done any such
+thing—not he himself. Whatever there might be lay at the door of a
+stupid, insubordinate servant.
+
+The orderly had gone about in a stupor all the evening. He drank some
+beer because he was parched, but not much, the alcohol made his feeling
+come back, and he could not bear it. He was dulled, as if nine-tenths
+of the ordinary man in him were inert. He crawled about disfigured.
+Still, when he thought of the kicks, he went sick, and when he thought
+of the threat of more kicking, in the room afterwards, his heart went
+hot and faint, and he panted, remembering the one that had come. He had
+been forced to say, “For my girl.” He was much too done even to want to
+cry. His mouth hung slightly open, like an idiot’s. He felt vacant, and
+wasted. So, he wandered at his work, painfully, and very slowly and
+clumsily, fumbling blindly with the brushes, and finding it difficult,
+when he sat down, to summon the energy to move again. His limbs, his
+jaw, were slack and nerveless. But he was very tired. He got to bed at
+last, and slept inert, relaxed, in a sleep that was rather stupor than
+slumber, a dead night of stupefaction shot through with gleams of
+anguish.
+
+In the morning were the manœuvres. But he woke even before the bugle
+sounded. The painful ache in his chest, the dryness of his throat, the
+awful steady feeling of misery made his eyes come awake and dreary at
+once. He knew, without thinking, what had happened. And he knew that
+the day had come again, when he must go on with his round. The last bit
+of darkness was being pushed out of the room. He would have to move his
+inert body and go on. He was so young, and had known so little trouble,
+that he was bewildered. He only wished it would stay night, so that he
+could lie still, covered up by the darkness. And yet nothing would
+prevent the day from coming, nothing would save him from having to get
+up and saddle the Captain’s horse, and make the Captain’s coffee. It
+was there, inevitable. And then, he thought, it was impossible. Yet
+they would not leave him free. He must go and take the coffee to the
+Captain. He was too stunned to understand it. He only knew it was
+inevitable—inevitable however long he lay inert.
+
+At last, after heaving at himself, for he seemed to be a mass of
+inertia, he got up. But he had to force every one of his movements from
+behind, with his will. He felt lost, and dazed, and helpless. Then he
+clutched hold of the bed, the pain was so keen. And looking at his
+thighs, he saw the darker bruises on his swarthy flesh and he knew
+that, if he pressed one of his fingers on one of the bruises, he should
+faint. But he did not want to faint—he did not want anybody to know. No
+one should ever know. It was between him and the Captain. There were
+only the two people in the world now—himself and the Captain.
+
+Slowly, economically, he got dressed and forced himself to walk.
+Everything was obscure, except just what he had his hands on. But he
+managed to get through his work. The very pain revived his dull senses.
+The worst remained yet. He took the tray and went up to the Captain’s
+room. The officer, pale and heavy, sat at the table. The orderly, as he
+saluted, felt himself put out of existence. He stood still for a moment
+submitting to his own nullification, then he gathered himself, seemed
+to regain himself, and then the Captain began to grow vague, unreal,
+and the younger soldier’s heart beat up. He clung to this
+situation—that the Captain did not exist—so that he himself might live.
+But when he saw his officer’s hand tremble as he took the coffee, he
+felt everything falling shattered. And he went away, feeling as if he
+himself were coming to pieces, disintegrated. And when the Captain was
+there on horseback, giving orders, while he himself stood, with rifle
+and knapsack, sick with pain, he felt as if he must shut his eyes—as if
+he must shut his eyes on everything. It was only the long agony of
+marching with a parched throat that filled him with one single,
+sleep-heavy intention: to save himself.
+
+II
+
+He was getting used even to his parched throat. That the snowy peaks
+were radiant among the sky, that the whity-green glacier-river twisted
+through its pale shoals, in the valley below, seemed almost
+supernatural. But he was going mad with fever and thirst. He plodded on
+uncomplaining. He did not want to speak, not to anybody. There were two
+gulls, like flakes of water and snow, over the river. The scent of
+green rye soaked in sunshine came like a sickness. And the march
+continued, monotonously, almost like a bad sleep.
+
+At the next farm-house, which stood low and broad near the high road,
+tubs of water had been put out. The soldiers clustered round to drink.
+They took off their helmets, and the steam mounted from their wet hair.
+The Captain sat on horseback, watching. He needed to see his orderly.
+His helmet threw a dark shadow over his light, fierce eyes, but his
+moustache and mouth and chin were distinct in the sunshine. The orderly
+must move under the presence of the figure of the horseman. It was not
+that he was afraid, or cowed. It was as if he was disembowelled, made
+empty, like an empty shell. He felt himself as nothing, a shadow
+creeping under the sunshine. And, thirsty as he was, he could scarcely
+drink, feeling the Captain near him. He would not take off his helmet
+to wipe his wet hair. He wanted to stay in shadow, not to be forced
+into consciousness. Starting, he saw the light heel of the officer
+prick the belly of the horse; the Captain cantered away, and he himself
+could relapse into vacancy.
+
+Nothing, however, could give him back his living place in the hot,
+bright morning. He felt like a gap among it all. Whereas the Captain
+was prouder, overriding. A hot flash went through the young servant’s
+body. The Captain was firmer and prouder with life, he himself was
+empty as a shadow. Again the flash went through him, dazing him out.
+But his heart ran a little firmer.
+
+The company turned up the hill, to make a loop for the return. Below,
+from among the trees, the farm-bell clanged. He saw the labourers,
+mowing barefoot at the thick grass, leave off their work and go
+downhill, their scythes hanging over their shoulders, like long, bright
+claws curving down behind them. They seemed like dream-people, as if
+they had no relation to himself. He felt as in a blackish dream: as if
+all the other things were there and had form, but he himself was only a
+consciousness, a gap that could think and perceive.
+
+The soldiers were tramping silently up the glaring hillside. Gradually
+his head began to revolve, slowly, rhythmically. Sometimes it was dark
+before his eyes, as if he saw this world through a smoked glass, frail
+shadows and unreal. It gave him a pain in his head to walk.
+
+The air was too scented, it gave no breath. All the lush green-stuff
+seemed to be issuing its sap, till the air was deathly, sickly with the
+smell of greenness. There was the perfume of clover, like pure honey
+and bees. Then there grew a faint acrid tang—they were near the
+beeches; and then a queer clattering noise, and a suffocating, hideous
+smell; they were passing a flock of sheep, a shepherd in a black smock,
+holding his crook. Why should the sheep huddle together under this
+fierce sun. He felt that the shepherd would not see him, though he
+could see the shepherd.
+
+At last there was the halt. They stacked rifles in a conical stack, put
+down their kit in a scattered circle around it, and dispersed a little,
+sitting on a small knoll high on the hillside. The chatter began. The
+soldiers were steaming with heat, but were lively. He sat still, seeing
+the blue mountains rising upon the land, twenty kilometres away. There
+was a blue fold in the ranges, then out of that, at the foot, the
+broad, pale bed of the river, stretches of whity-green water between
+pinkish-grey shoals among the dark pine woods. There it was, spread out
+a long way off. And it seemed to come downhill, the river. There was a
+raft being steered, a mile away. It was a strange country. Nearer, a
+red-roofed, broad farm with white base and square dots of windows
+crouched beside the wall of beech foliage on the wood’s edge. There
+were long strips of rye and clover and pale green corn. And just at his
+feet, below the knoll, was a darkish bog, where globe flowers stood
+breathless still on their slim stalks. And some of the pale gold
+bubbles were burst, and a broken fragment hung in the air. He thought
+he was going to sleep.
+
+Suddenly something moved into this coloured mirage before his eyes. The
+Captain, a small, light-blue and scarlet figure, was trotting evenly
+between the strips of corn, along the level brow of the hill. And the
+man making flag-signals was coming on. Proud and sure moved the
+horseman’s figure, the quick, bright thing, in which was concentrated
+all the light of this morning, which for the rest lay a fragile,
+shining shadow. Submissive, apathetic, the young soldier sat and
+stared. But as the horse slowed to a walk, coming up the last steep
+path, the great flash flared over the body and soul of the orderly. He
+sat waiting. The back of his head felt as if it were weighted with a
+heavy piece of fire. He did not want to eat. His hands trembled
+slightly as he moved them. Meanwhile the officer on horseback was
+approaching slowly and proudly. The tension grew in the orderly’s soul.
+Then again, seeing the Captain ease himself on the saddle, the flash
+blazed through him.
+
+The Captain looked at the patch of light blue and scarlet, and dark
+heads, scattered closely on the hillside. It pleased him. The command
+pleased him. And he was feeling proud. His orderly was among them in
+common subjection. The officer rose a little on his stirrups to look.
+The young soldier sat with averted, dumb face. The Captain relaxed on
+his seat. His slim-legged, beautiful horse, brown as a beech nut,
+walked proudly uphill. The Captain passed into the zone of the
+company’s atmosphere: a hot smell of men, of sweat, of leather. He knew
+it very well. After a word with the lieutenant, he went a few paces
+higher, and sat there, a dominant figure, his sweat-marked horse
+swishing its tail, while he looked down on his men, on his orderly, a
+nonentity among the crowd.
+
+The young soldier’s heart was like fire in his chest, and he breathed
+with difficulty. The officer, looking downhill, saw three of the young
+soldiers, two pails of water between them, staggering across a sunny
+green field. A table had been set up under a tree, and there the slim
+lieutenant stood, importantly busy. Then the Captain summoned himself
+to an act of courage. He called his orderly.
+
+The name leapt into the young soldier’s throat as he heard the command,
+and he rose blindly stifled. He saluted, standing below the officer. He
+did not look up. But there was the flicker in the Captain’s voice.
+
+“Go to the inn and fetch me....” the officer gave his commands.
+“Quick!” he added.
+
+At the last word, the heart of the servant leapt with a flash, and he
+felt the strength come over his body. But he turned in mechanical
+obedience, and set on at a heavy run downhill, looking almost like a
+bear, his trousers bagging over his military boots. And the officer
+watched this blind, plunging run all the way.
+
+But it was only the outside of the orderly’s body that was obeying so
+humbly and mechanically. Inside had gradually accumulated a core into
+which all the energy of that young life was compact and concentrated.
+He executed his commission, and plodded quickly back uphill. There was
+a pain in his head, as he walked, that made him twist his features
+unknowingly. But hard there in the centre of his chest was himself,
+himself, firm, and not to be plucked to pieces.
+
+The captain had gone up into the wood. The orderly plodded through the
+hot, powerfully smelling zone of the company’s atmosphere. He had a
+curious mass of energy inside him now. The Captain was less real than
+himself. He approached the green entrance to the wood. There, in the
+half-shade, he saw the horse standing, the sunshine and the tuckering
+shadow of leaves dancing over his brown body. There was a clearing
+where timber had lately been felled. Here, in the gold-green shade
+beside the brilliant cup of sunshine, stood two figures, blue and pink,
+the bits of pink showing out plainly. The Captain was talking to his
+lieutenant.
+
+The orderly stood on the edge of the bright clearing, where great
+trunks of trees, stripped and glistening, lay stretched like naked,
+brown-skinned bodies. Chips of wood littered the trampled floor, like
+splashed light, and the bases of the felled trees stood here and there,
+with their raw, level tops. Beyond was the brilliant, sunlit green of a
+beech.
+
+“Then I will ride forward,” the orderly heard his Captain say. The
+lieutenant saluted and strode away. He himself went forward. A hot
+flash passed through his belly, as he tramped towards his officer.
+
+The Captain watched the rather heavy figure of the young soldier
+stumble forward, and his veins, too, ran hot. This was to be man to man
+between them. He yielded before the solid, stumbling figure with bent
+head. The orderly stooped and put the food on a level-sawn tree-base.
+The Captain watched the glistening, sun-inflamed, naked hands. He
+wanted to speak to the young soldier, but could not. The servant
+propped a bottle against his thigh, pressed open the cork, and poured
+out the beer into the mug. He kept his head bent. The Captain accepted
+the mug.
+
+“Hot!” he said, as if amiably.
+
+The flame sprang out of the orderly’s heart, nearly suffocating him.
+
+“Yes, sir,” he replied, between shut teeth.
+
+And he heard the sound of the Captain’s drinking, and he clenched his
+fists, such a strong torment came into his wrists. Then came the faint
+clang of the closing of the pot-lid. He looked up. The Captain was
+watching him. He glanced swiftly away. Then he saw the officer stoop
+and take a piece of bread from the tree-base. Again the flash of flame
+went through the young soldier, seeing the stiff body stoop beneath
+him, and his hands jerked. He looked away. He could feel the officer
+was nervous. The bread fell as it was being broken The officer ate the
+other piece. The two men stood tense and still, the master laboriously
+chewing his bread, the servant staring with averted face, his fist
+clenched.
+
+Then the young soldier started. The officer had pressed open the lid of
+the mug again. The orderly watched the lid of the mug, and the white
+hand that clenched the handle, as if he were fascinated. It was raised.
+The youth followed it with his eyes. And then he saw the thin, strong
+throat of the elder man moving up and down as he drank, the strong jaw
+working. And the instinct which had been jerking at the young man’s
+wrists suddenly jerked free. He jumped, feeling as if it were rent in
+two by a strong flame.
+
+The spur of the officer caught in a tree-root, he went down backwards
+with a crash, the middle of his back thudding sickeningly against a
+sharp-edged tree-base, the pot flying away. And in a second the
+orderly, with serious, earnest young face, and under-lip between his
+teeth, had got his knee in the officer’s chest and was pressing the
+chin backward over the farther edge of the tree-stump, pressing, with
+all his heart behind in a passion of relief, the tension of his wrists
+exquisite with relief. And with the base of his palms he shoved at the
+chin, with all his might. And it was pleasant, too, to have that chin,
+that hard jaw already slightly rough with beard, in his hands. He did
+not relax one hair’s breadth, but, all the force of all his blood
+exulting in his thrust, he shoved back the head of the other man, till
+there was a little cluck and a crunching sensation. Then he felt as if
+his head went to vapour. Heavy convulsions shook the body of the
+officer, frightening and horrifying the young soldier. Yet it pleased
+him, too, to repress them. It pleased him to keep his hands pressing
+back the chin, to feel the chest of the other man yield in expiration
+to the weight of his strong, young knees, to feel the hard twitchings
+of the prostrate body jerking his own whole frame, which was pressed
+down on it.
+
+But it went still. He could look into the nostrils of the other man,
+the eyes he could scarcely see. How curiously the mouth was pushed out,
+exaggerating the full lips, and the moustache bristling up from them.
+Then, with a start, he noticed the nostrils gradually filled with
+blood. The red brimmed, hesitated, ran over, and went in a thin trickle
+down the face to the eyes.
+
+It shocked and distressed him. Slowly, he got up. The body twitched and
+sprawled there, inert. He stood and looked at it in silence. It was a
+pity it was broken. It represented more than the thing which had kicked
+and bullied him. He was afraid to look at the eyes. They were hideous
+now, only the whites showing, and the blood running to them. The face
+of the orderly was drawn with horror at the sight. Well, it was so. In
+his heart he was satisfied. He had hated the face of the Captain. It
+was extinguished now. There was a heavy relief in the orderly’s soul.
+That was as it should be. But he could not bear to see the long,
+military body lying broken over the tree-base, the fine fingers
+crisped. He wanted to hide it away.
+
+Quickly, busily, he gathered it up and pushed it under the felled
+tree-trunks, which rested their beautiful, smooth length either end on
+logs. The face was horrible with blood. He covered it with the helmet.
+Then he pushed the limbs straight and decent, and brushed the dead
+leaves off the fine cloth of the uniform. So, it lay quite still in the
+shadow under there. A little strip of sunshine ran along the breast,
+from a chink between the logs. The orderly sat by it for a few moments.
+Here his own life also ended.
+
+Then, through his daze, he heard the lieutenant, in a loud voice,
+explaining to the men outside the wood, that they were to suppose the
+bridge on the river below was held by the enemy. Now they were to march
+to the attack in such and such a manner. The lieutenant had no gift of
+expression. The orderly, listening from habit, got muddled. And when
+the lieutenant began it all again he ceased to hear. He knew he must
+go. He stood up. It surprised him that the leaves were glittering in
+the sun, and the chips of wood reflecting white from the ground. For
+him a change had come over the world. But for the rest it had not—all
+seemed the same. Only he had left it. And he could not go back. It was
+his duty to return with the beer-pot and the bottle. He could not. He
+had left all that. The lieutenant was still hoarsely explaining. He
+must go, or they would, overtake him. And he could not bear contact
+with anyone now.
+
+He drew his fingers over his eyes, trying to find out where he was.
+Then he turned away. He saw the horse standing in the path. He went up
+to it and mounted. It hurt him to sit in the saddle. The pain of
+keeping his seat occupied him as they cantered through the wood. He
+would not have minded anything, but he could not get away from the
+sense of being divided from the others. The path led out of the trees.
+On the edge of the wood he pulled up and stood watching. There in the
+spacious sunshine of the valley soldiers were moving in a little swarm.
+Every now and then, a man harrowing on a strip of fallow shouted to his
+oxen, at the turn. The village and the white-towered church was small
+in the sunshine. And he no longer belonged to it—he sat there, beyond,
+like a man outside in the dark. He had gone out from everyday life into
+the unknown, and he could not, he even did not want to go back.
+
+Turning from the sun-blazing valley, he rode deep into the wood.
+Tree-trunks, like people standing grey and still, took no notice as he
+went. A doe, herself a moving bit of sunshine and shadow, went running
+through the flecked shade. There were bright green rents in the
+foliage. Then it was all pine wood, dark and cool. And he was sick with
+pain, he had an intolerable great pulse in his head, and he was sick.
+He had never been ill in his life, he felt lost, quite dazed with all
+this.
+
+Trying to get down from the horse, he fell, astonished at the pain and
+his lack of balance. The horse shifted uneasily. He jerked its bridle
+and sent it cantering jerkily away. It was his last connection with the
+rest of things.
+
+But he only wanted to lie down and not be disturbed. Stumbling through
+the trees, he came on a quiet place where beeches and pine trees grew
+on a slope. Immediately he had lain down and closed his eyes, his
+consciousness went racing on without him. A big pulse of sickness beat
+in him as if it throbbed through the whole earth. He was burning with
+dry heat. But he was too busy, too tearingly active in the incoherent
+race of delirium to observe.
+
+III
+
+He came to with a start. His mouth was dry and hard, his heart beat
+heavily, but he had not the energy to get up. His heart beat heavily.
+Where was he?—the barracks—at home? There was something knocking. And,
+making an effort, he looked round—trees, and litter of greenery, and
+reddish, night, still pieces of sunshine on the floor. He did not
+believe he was himself, he did not believe what he saw. Something was
+knocking. He made a struggle towards consciousness, but relapsed. Then
+he struggled again. And gradually his surroundings fell into
+relationship with himself. He knew, and a great pang of fear went
+through his heart. Somebody was knocking. He could see the heavy, black
+rags of a fir tree overhead. Then everything went black. Yet he did not
+believe he had closed his eyes. He had not. Out of the blackness sight
+slowly emerged again. And someone was knocking. Quickly, he saw the
+blood-disgfigured face of his Captain, which he hated. And he held
+himself still with horror. Yet, deep inside him, he knew that it was
+so, the Captain should be dead. But the physical delirium got hold of
+him. Someone was knocking. He lay perfectly still, as if dead, with
+fear. And he went unconscious.
+
+When he opened his eyes again, he started, seeing something creeping
+swiftly up a tree-trunk. It was a little bird. And the bird was
+whistling overhead. Tap-tap-tap—it was the small, quick bird rapping
+the tree-trunk with its beak, as if its head were a little round
+hammer. He watched it curiously. It shifted sharply, in its creeping
+fashion. Then, like a mouse, it slid down the bare trunk. Its swift
+creeping sent a flash of revulsion through him. He raised his head. It
+felt a great weight. Then, the little bird ran out of the shadow across
+a still patch of sunshine, its little head bobbing swiftly, its white
+legs twinkling brightly for a moment. How neat it was in its build, so
+compact, with pieces of white on its wings. There were several of them.
+They were so pretty—but they crept like swift, erratic mice, running
+here and there among the beech-mast.
+
+He lay down again exhausted, and his consciousness lapsed. He had a
+horror of the little creeping birds. All his blood seemed to be darting
+and creeping in his head. And yet he could not move.
+
+He came to with a further ache of exhaustion. There was the pain in his
+head, and the horrible sickness, and his inability to move. He had
+never been ill in his life. He did not know where he was or what he
+was. Probably he had got sunstroke. Or what else?—he had silenced the
+Captain for ever—some time ago—oh, a long time ago. There had been
+blood on his face, and his eyes had turned upwards. It was all right,
+somehow. It was peace. But now he had got beyond himself. He had never
+been here before. Was it life, or not life? He was by himself. They
+were in a big, bright place, those others, and he was outside. The
+town, all the country, a big bright place of light: and he was outside,
+here, in the darkened open beyond, where each thing existed alone. But
+they would all have to come out there sometime, those others. Little,
+and left behind him, they all were. There had been father and mother
+and sweetheart. What did they all matter? This was the open land.
+
+He sat up. Something scuffled. It was a little, brown squirrel running
+in lovely, undulating bounds over the floor, its red tail completing
+the undulation of its body—and then, as it sat up, furling and
+unfurling. He watched it, pleased. It ran on friskily, enjoying itself.
+It flew wildly at another squirrel, and they were chasing each other,
+and making little scolding, chattering noises. The soldier wanted to
+speak to them. But only a hoarse sound came out of his throat. The
+squirrels burst away—they flew up the trees. And then he saw the one
+peeping round at him, half-way up a tree-trunk. A start of fear went
+through him, though, in so far as he was conscious, he was amused. It
+still stayed, its little, keen face staring at him halfway up the
+tree-trunk, its little ears pricked up, its clawey little hands
+clinging to the bark, its white breast reared. He started from it in
+panic.
+
+Struggling to his feet, he lurched away. He went on walking, walking,
+looking for something for a drink. His brain felt hot and inflamed for
+want of water. He stumbled on. Then he did not know anything. He went
+unconscious as he walked. Yet he stumbled on, his mouth open.
+
+When, to his dumb wonder, he opened his eyes on the world again, he no
+longer tried to remember what it was. There was thick, golden light
+behind golden-green glitterings, and tall, grey-purple shafts, and
+darknesses further off, surrounding him, growing deeper. He was
+conscious of a sense of arrival. He was amid the reality, on the real,
+dark bottom. But there was the thirst burning in his brain. He felt
+lighter, not so heavy. He supposed it was newness.
+
+The air was muttering with thunder. He thought he was walking
+wonderfully swiftly and was coming straight to relief—or was it to
+water?
+
+Suddenly he stood still with fear. There was a tremendous flare of
+gold, immense—just a few dark trunks like bars between him and it. All
+the young level wheat was burnished gold glaring on its silky green. A
+woman, full-skirted, a black cloth on her head for head-dress, was
+passing like a block of shadow through the glistening, green corn, into
+the full glare. There was a farm, too, pale blue in shadow, and the
+timber black. And there was a church spire, nearly fused away in the
+gold. The woman moved on, away from him. He had no language with which
+to speak to her. She was the bright, solid unreality. She would make a
+noise of words that would confuse him, and her eyes would look at him
+without seeing him. She was crossing there to the other side. He stood
+against a tree.
+
+When at last he turned, looking down the long, bare grove whose flat
+bed was already filling dark, he saw the mountains in a wonder-light,
+not far away, and radiant. Behind the soft, grey ridge of the nearest
+range the further mountains stood golden and pale grey, the snow all
+radiant like pure, soft gold. So still, gleaming in the sky, fashioned
+pure out of the ore of the sky, they shone in their silence. He stood
+and looked at them, his face illuminated. And like the golden, lustrous
+gleaming of the snow he felt his own thirst bright in him. He stood and
+gazed, leaning against a tree. And then everything slid away into
+space.
+
+During the night the lightning fluttered perpetually, making the whole
+sky white. He must have walked again. The world hung livid round him
+for moments, fields a level sheen of grey-green light, trees in dark
+bulk, and the range of clouds black across a white sky. Then the
+darkness fell like a shutter, and the night was whole. A faint mutter
+of a half-revealed world, that could not quite leap out of the
+darkness!—Then there again stood a sweep of pallor for the land, dark
+shapes looming, a range of clouds hanging overhead. The world was a
+ghostly shadow, thrown for a moment upon the pure darkness, which
+returned ever whole and complete.
+
+And the mere delirium of sickness and fever went on inside him—his
+brain opening and shutting like the night—then sometimes convulsions of
+terror from something with great eyes that stared round a tree—then the
+long agony of the march, and the sun decomposing his blood—then the
+pang of hate for the Captain, followed, by a pang of tenderness and
+ease. But everything was distorted, born of an ache and resolving into
+an ache.
+
+In the morning he came definitely awake. Then his brain flamed with the
+sole horror of thirstiness! The sun was on his face, the dew was
+steaming from his wet clothes. Like one possessed, he got up. There,
+straight in front of him, blue and cool and tender, the mountains
+ranged across the pale edge of the morning sky. He wanted them—he
+wanted them alone—he wanted to leave himself and be identified with
+them. They did not move, they were still and soft, with white, gentle
+markings of snow. He stood still, mad with suffering, his hands
+crisping and clutching. Then he was twisting in a paroxysm on the
+grass.
+
+He lay still, in a kind of dream of anguish. His thirst seemed to have
+separated itself from him, and to stand apart, a single demand. Then
+the pain he felt was another single self. Then there was the clog of
+his body, another separate thing. He was divided among all kinds of
+separate beings. There was some strange, agonized connection between
+them, but they were drawing further apart. Then they would all split.
+The sun, drilling down on him, was drilling through the bond. Then they
+would all fall, fall through the everlasting lapse of space. Then
+again, his consciousness reasserted itself. He roused on to his elbow
+and stared at the gleaming mountains. There they ranked, all still and
+wonderful between earth and heaven. He stared till his eyes went black,
+and the mountains, as they stood in their beauty, so clean and cool,
+seemed to have it, that which was lost in him.
+
+IV
+
+When the soldiers found him, three hours later, he was lying with his
+face over his arm, his black hair giving off heat under the sun. But he
+was still alive. Seeing the open, black mouth the young soldiers
+dropped him in horror.
+
+He died in the hospital at night, without having seen again.
+
+The doctors saw the bruises on his legs, behind, and were silent.
+
+The bodies of the two men lay together, side by side, in the mortuary,
+the one white and slender, but laid rigidly at rest, the other looking
+as if every moment it must rouse into life again, so young and unused,
+from a slumber.
+
+
+
+The Thorn in the Flesh
+
+I
+
+A wind was running, so that occasionally the poplars whitened as if a
+flame flew up them. The sky was broken and blue among moving clouds.
+Patches of sunshine lay on the level fields, and shadows on the rye and
+the vineyards. In the distance, very blue, the cathedral bristled
+against the sky, and the houses of the city of Metz clustered vaguely
+below, like a hill.
+
+Among the fields by the lime trees stood the barracks, upon bare, dry
+ground, a collection of round-roofed huts of corrugated iron, where the
+soldiers’ nasturtiums climbed brilliantly. There was a tract of
+vegetable garden at the side, with the soldiers’ yellowish lettuces in
+rows, and at the back the big, hard drilling-yard surrounded by a wire
+fence.
+
+At this time in the afternoon, the huts were deserted, all the beds
+pushed up, the soldiers were lounging about under the lime trees
+waiting for the call to drill. Bachmann sat on a bench in the shade
+that smelled sickly with blossom. Pale green, wrecked lime flowers were
+scattered on the ground. He was writing his weekly post card to his
+mother. He was a fair, long, limber youth, good looking. He sat very
+still indeed, trying to write his post card. His blue uniform, sagging
+on him as he sat bent over the card, disfigured his youthful shape. His
+sunburnt hand waited motionless for the words to come. “Dear
+mother”—was all he had written. Then he scribbled mechanically: “Many
+thanks for your letter with what you sent. Everything is all right with
+me. We are just off to drill on the fortifications——” Here he broke off
+and sat suspended, oblivious of everything, held in some definite
+suspense. He looked again at the card. But he could write no more. Out
+of the knot of his consciousness no word would come. He signed himself,
+and looked up, as a man looks to see if anyone has noticed him in his
+privacy.
+
+There was a self-conscious strain in his blue eyes, and a pallor about
+his mouth, where the young, fair moustache glistened. He was almost
+girlish in his good looks and his grace. But he had something of
+military consciousness, as if he believed in the discipline for
+himself, and found satisfaction in delivering himself to his duty.
+There was also a trace of youthful swagger and dare-devilry about his
+mouth and his limber body, but this was in suppression now.
+
+He put the post card in the pocket of his tunic, and went to join a
+group of his comrades who were lounging in the shade, laughing and
+talking grossly. Today he was out of it. He only stood near to them for
+the warmth of the association. In his own consciousness something held
+him down.
+
+Presently they were summoned to ranks. The sergeant came out to take
+command. He was a strongly built, rather heavy man of forty. His head
+was thrust forward, sunk a little between his powerful shoulders, and
+the strong jaw was pushed out aggressively. But the eyes were
+smouldering, the face hung slack and sodden with drink.
+
+He gave his orders in brutal, barking shouts, and the little company
+moved forward, out of the wire-fenced yard to the open road, marching
+rhythmically, raising the dust. Bachmann, one of the inner file of four
+deep, marched in the airless ranks, half suffocated with heat and dust
+and enclosure. Through the moving of his comrades’ bodies, he could see
+the small vines dusty by the roadside, the poppies among the tares
+fluttering and blown to pieces, the distant spaces of sky and fields
+all free with air and sunshine. But he was bound in a very dark
+enclosure of anxiety within himself.
+
+He marched with his usual ease, being healthy and well adjusted. But
+his body went on by itself. His spirit was clenched apart. And ever the
+few soldiers drew nearer and nearer to the town, ever the consciousness
+of the youth became more gripped and separate, his body worked by a
+kind of mechanical intelligence, a mere presence of mind.
+
+They diverged from the high road and passed in single file down a path
+among trees. All was silent and green and mysterious, with shadow of
+foliage and long, green, undisturbed grass. Then they came out in the
+sunshine on a moat of water, which wound silently between the long,
+flowery grass, at the foot of the earthworks, that rose in front in
+terraces walled smooth on the face, but all soft with long grass at the
+top. Marguerite daisies and lady’s-slipper glimmered white and gold in
+the lush grass, preserved here in the intense peace of the
+fortifications. Thickets of trees stood round about. Occasionally a
+puff of mysterious wind made the flowers and the long grass that
+crested the earthworks above bow and shake as with signals of oncoming
+alarm.
+
+The group of soldiers stood at the end of the moat, in their light blue
+and scarlet uniforms, very bright. The sergeant was giving them
+instructions, and his shout came sharp and alarming in the intense,
+untouched stillness of the place. They listened, finding it difficult
+to make the effort of understanding.
+
+Then it was over, and the men were moving to make preparations. On the
+other side of the moat the ramparts rose smooth and clear in the sun,
+sloping slightly back. Along the summit grass grew and tall daisies
+stood ledged high, like magic, against the dark green of the tree-tops
+behind. The noise of the town, the running of tram-cars, was heard
+distinctly, but it seemed not to penetrate this still place.
+
+The water of the moat was motionless. In silence the practice began.
+One of the soldiers took a scaling ladder, and passing along the narrow
+ledge at the foot of the earthworks, with the water of the moat just
+behind him, tried to get a fixture on the slightly sloping wall-face.
+There he stood, small and isolated, at the foot of the wall, trying to
+get his ladder settled. At last it held, and the clumsy, groping figure
+in the baggy blue uniform began to clamber up. The rest of the soldiers
+stood and watched. Occasionally the sergeant barked a command. Slowly
+the clumsy blue figure clambered higher up the wall-face. Bachmann
+stood with his bowels turned to water. The figure of the climbing
+soldier scrambled out on to the terrace up above, and moved, blue and
+distinct, among the bright green grass. The officer shouted from below.
+The soldier tramped along, fixed the ladder in another spot, and
+carefully lowered himself on to the rungs. Bachmann watched the blind
+foot groping in space for the ladder, and he felt the world fall away
+beneath him. The figure of the soldier clung cringing against the face
+of the wall, cleaving, groping downwards like some unsure insect
+working its way lower and lower, fearing every movement. At last,
+sweating and with a strained face, the figure had landed safely and
+turned to the group of soldiers. But still it had a stiffness and a
+blank, mechanical look, was something less than human.
+
+Bachmann stood there heavy and condemned, waiting for his own turn and
+betrayal. Some of the men went up easily enough, and without fear. That
+only showed it could be done lightly, and made Bachmann’s case more
+bitter. If only he could do it lightly, like that.
+
+His turn came. He knew intuitively that nobody knew his condition. The
+officer just saw him as a mechanical thing. He tried to keep it up, to
+carry it through on the face of things. His inside gripped tight, as
+yet under control, he took the ladder and went along under the wall. He
+placed his ladder with quick success, and wild, quivering hope
+possessed him. Then blindly he began to climb. But the ladder was not
+very firm, and at every hitch a great, sick, melting feeling took hold
+of him. He clung on fast. If only he could keep that grip on himself,
+he would get through. He knew this, in agony. What he could not
+understand was the blind gush of white-hot fear, that came with great
+force whenever the ladder swerved, and which almost melted his belly
+and all his joints, and left him powerless. If once it melted all his
+joints and his belly, he was done. He clung desperately to himself. He
+knew the fear, he knew what it did when it came, he knew he had only to
+keep a firm hold. He knew all this. Yet, when the ladder swerved, and
+his foot missed, there was the great blast of fear blowing on his heart
+and bowels, and he was melting weaker and weaker, in a horror of fear
+and lack of control, melting to fall.
+
+Yet he groped slowly higher and higher, always staring upwards with
+desperate face, and always conscious of the space below. But all of
+him, body and soul, was growing hot to fusion point. He would have to
+let go for very relief’s sake. Suddenly his heart began to lurch. It
+gave a great, sickly swoop, rose, and again plunged in a swoop of
+horror. He lay against the wall inert as if dead, inert, at peace, save
+for one deep core of anxiety, which knew that it was _not_ all over,
+that he was still high in space against the wall. But the chief effort
+of will was gone.
+
+There came into his consciousness a small, foreign sensation. He woke
+up a little. What was it? Then slowly it penetrated him. His water had
+run down his leg. He lay there, clinging, still with shame, half
+conscious of the echo of the sergeant’s voice thundering from below. He
+waited, in depths of shame beginning to recover himself. He had been
+shamed so deeply. Then he could go on, for his fear for himself was
+conquered. His shame was known and published. He must go on.
+
+Slowly he began to grope for the rung above, when a great shock shook
+through him. His wrists were grasped from above, he was being hauled
+out of himself up, up to the safe ground. Like a sack he was dragged
+over the edge of the earthworks by the large hands, and landed there on
+his knees, grovelling in the grass to recover command of himself, to
+rise up on his feet.
+
+Shame, blind, deep shame and ignominy overthrew his spirit and left it
+writhing. He stood there shrunk over himself, trying to obliterate
+himself.
+
+Then the presence of the officer who had hauled him up made itself felt
+upon him. He heard the panting of the elder man, and then the voice
+came down on his veins like a fierce whip. He shrank in tension of
+shame.
+
+“Put up your head—eyes front,” shouted the enraged sergeant, and
+mechanically the soldier obeyed the command, forced to look into the
+eyes of the sergeant. The brutal, hanging face of the officer violated
+the youth. He hardened himself with all his might from seeing it. The
+tearing noise of the sergeant’s voice continued to lacerate his body.
+
+Suddenly he set back his head, rigid, and his heart leapt to burst. The
+face had suddenly thrust itself close, all distorted and showing the
+teeth, the eyes smouldering into him. The breath of the barking words
+was on his nose and mouth. He stepped aside in revulsion. With a scream
+the face was upon him again. He raised his arm, involuntarily, in
+self-defence. A shock of horror went through him, as he felt his
+forearm hit the face of the officer a brutal blow. The latter
+staggered, swerved back, and with a curious cry, reeled backwards over
+the ramparts, his hands clutching the air. There was a second of
+silence, then a crash to water.
+
+Bachmann, rigid, looked out of his inner silence upon the scene.
+Soldiers were running.
+
+“You’d better clear,” said one young, excited voice to him. And with
+immediate instinctive decision he started to walk away from the spot.
+He went down the tree-hidden path to the high road where the trams ran
+to and from the town. In his heart was a sense of vindication, of
+escape. He was leaving it all, the military world, the shame. He was
+walking away from it.
+
+Officers on horseback rode sauntering down the street, soldiers passed
+along the pavement. Coming to the bridge, Bachmann crossed over to the
+town that heaped before him, rising from the flat, picturesque French
+houses down below at the water’s edge, up a jumble of roofs and chasms
+of streets, to the lovely dark cathedral with its myriad pinnacles
+making points at the sky.
+
+He felt for the moment quite at peace, relieved from a great strain. So
+he turned along by the river to the public gardens. Beautiful were the
+heaped, purple lilac trees upon the green grass, and wonderful the
+walls of the horse-chestnut trees, lighted like an altar with white
+flowers on every ledge. Officers went by, elegant and all coloured,
+women and girls sauntered in the chequered shade. Beautiful it was, he
+walked in a vision, free.
+
+II
+
+But where was he going? He began to come out of his trance of delight
+and liberty. Deep within him he felt the steady burning of shame in the
+flesh. As yet he could not bear to think of it. But there it was,
+submerged beneath his attention, the raw, steady-burning shame.
+
+It behoved him to be intelligent. As yet he dared not remember what he
+had done. He only knew the need to get away, away from everything he
+had been in contact with.
+
+But how? A great pang of fear went through him. He could not bear his
+shamed flesh to be put again between the hands of authority. Already
+the hands had been laid upon him, brutally upon his nakedness, ripping
+open his shame and making him maimed, crippled in his own control.
+
+Fear became an anguish. Almost blindly he was turning in the direction
+of the barracks. He could not take the responsibility of himself. He
+must give himself up to someone. Then his heart, obstinate in hope,
+became obsessed with the idea of his sweetheart. He would make himself
+her responsibility.
+
+Blenching as he took courage, he mounted the small, quick-hurrying tram
+that ran out of the town in the direction of the barracks. He sat
+motionless and composed, static.
+
+He got out at the terminus and went down the road. A wind was still
+running. He could hear the faint whisper of the rye, and the stronger
+swish as a sudden gust was upon it. No one was about. Feeling detached
+and impersonal, he went down a field-path between the low vines. Many
+little vine trees rose up in spires, holding out tender pink shoots,
+waving their tendrils. He saw them distinctly and wondered over them.
+In a field a little way off, men and women were taking up the hay. The
+bullock-waggon stood by on the path, the men in their blue shirts, the
+women with white cloths over their heads carried hay in their arms to
+the cart, all brilliant and distinct upon the shorn, glowing green
+acres. He felt himself looking out of darkness on to the glamorous,
+brilliant beauty of the world around him, outside him.
+
+The Baron’s house, where Emilie was maidservant, stood square and
+mellow among trees and garden and fields. It was an old French grange.
+The barracks was quite near. Bachmann walked, drawn by a single
+purpose, towards the courtyard. He entered the spacious, shadowy,
+sun-swept place. The dog, seeing a soldier, only jumped and whined for
+greeting. The pump stood peacefully in a corner, under a lime tree, in
+the shade.
+
+The kitchen door was open. He hesitated, then walked in, speaking shyly
+and smiling involuntarily. The two women started, but with pleasure.
+Emilie was preparing the tray for afternoon coffee. She stood beyond
+the table, drawn up, startled, and challenging, and glad. She had the
+proud, timid eyes of some wild animal, some proud animal. Her black
+hair was closely banded, her grey eyes watched steadily. She wore a
+peasant dress of blue cotton sprigged with little red roses, that
+buttoned tight over her strong maiden breasts.
+
+At the table sat another young woman, the nursery governess, who was
+picking cherries from a huge heap, and dropping them into a bowl. She
+was young, pretty, freckled.
+
+“Good day!” she said pleasantly. “The unexpected.”
+
+Emilie did not speak. The flush came in her dark cheek. She still stood
+watching, between fear and a desire to escape, and on the other hand
+joy that kept her in his presence.
+
+“Yes,” he said, bashful and strained, while the eyes of the two women
+were upon him. “I’ve got myself in a mess this time.”
+
+“What?” asked the nursery governess, dropping her hands in her lap.
+Emilie stood rigid.
+
+Bachmann could not raise his head. He looked sideways at the
+glistening, ruddy cherries. He could not recover the normal world.
+
+“I knocked Sergeant Huber over the fortifications down into the moat,”
+he said. “It was an accident—but——”
+
+And he grasped at the cherries, and began to eat them, unknowing,
+hearing only Emilie’s little exclamation.
+
+“You knocked him over the fortifications!” echoed Fräulein Hesse in
+horror. “How?”
+
+Spitting the cherry-stones into his hand, mechanically, absorbedly, he
+told them.
+
+“Ach!” exclaimed Emilie sharply.
+
+“And how did you get here?” asked Fräulein Hesse.
+
+“I ran off,” he said.
+
+There was a dead silence. He stood, putting himself at the mercy of the
+women. There came a hissing from the stove, and a stronger smell of
+coffee. Emilie turned swiftly away. He saw her flat, straight back and
+her strong loins, as she bent over the stove.
+
+“But what are you going to do?” said Fräulein Hesse, aghast.
+
+“I don’t know,” he said, grasping at more cherries. He had come to an
+end.
+
+“You’d better go to the barracks,” she said. “We’ll get the Herr Baron
+to come and see about it.”
+
+Emilie was swiftly and quietly preparing the tray. She picked it up,
+and stood with the glittering china and silver before her, impassive,
+waiting for his reply. Bachmann remained with his head dropped, pale
+and obstinate. He could not bear to go back.
+
+“I’m going to try to get into France,” he said.
+
+“Yes, but they’ll catch you,” said Fräulein Hesse.
+
+Emilie watched with steady, watchful grey eyes.
+
+“I can have a try, if I could hide till tonight,” he said.
+
+Both women knew what he wanted. And they all knew it was no good.
+Emilie picked up the tray, and went out. Bachmann stood with his head
+dropped. Within himself he felt the dross of shame and incapacity.
+
+“You’d never get away,” said the governess.
+
+“I can try,” he said.
+
+Today he could not put himself between the hands of the military. Let
+them do as they liked with him tomorrow, if he escaped today.
+
+They were silent. He ate cherries. The colour flushed bright into the
+cheek of the young governess.
+
+Emilie returned to prepare another tray.
+
+“He could hide in your room,” the governess said to her.
+
+The girl drew herself away. She could not bear the intrusion.
+
+“That is all I can think of that is safe from the children,” said
+Fräulein Hesse.
+
+Emilie gave no answer. Bachmann stood waiting for the two women. Emilie
+did not want the close contact with him.
+
+“You could sleep with me,” Fräulein Hesse said to her.
+
+Emilie lifted her eyes and looked at the young man, direct, clear,
+reserving herself.
+
+“Do you want that?” she asked, her strong virginity proof against him.
+
+“Yes—yes——” he said uncertainly, destroyed by shame.
+
+She put back her head.
+
+“Yes,” she murmured to herself.
+
+Quickly she filled the tray, and went out.
+
+“But you can’t walk over the frontier in a night,” said Fräulein Hesse.
+
+“I can cycle,” he said.
+
+Emilie returned, a restraint, a neutrality, in her bearing.
+
+“I’ll see if it’s all right,” said the governess.
+
+In a moment or two Bachmann was following Emilie through the square
+hall, where hung large maps on the walls. He noticed a child’s blue
+coat with brass buttons on the peg, and it reminded him of Emilie
+walking holding the hand of the youngest child, whilst he watched,
+sitting under the lime tree. Already this was a long way off. That was
+a sort of freedom he had lost, changed for a new, immediate anxiety.
+
+They went quickly, fearfully up the stairs and down a long corridor.
+Emilie opened her door, and he entered, ashamed, into her room.
+
+“I must go down,” she murmured, and she departed, closing the door
+softly.
+
+It was a small, bare, neat room. There was a little dish for
+holy-water, a picture of the Sacred Heart, a crucifix, and a
+_prie-Dieu_. The small bed lay white and untouched, the wash-hand bowl
+of red earth stood on a bare table, there was a little mirror and a
+small chest of drawers. That was all.
+
+Feeling safe, in sanctuary, he went to the window, looking over the
+courtyard at the shimmering, afternoon country. He was going to leave
+this land, this life. Already he was in the unknown.
+
+He drew away into the room. The curious simplicity and severity of the
+little Roman Catholic bedroom was foreign but restoring to him. He
+looked at the crucifix. It was a long, lean, peasant Christ carved by a
+peasant in the Black Forest. For the first time in his life, Bachmann
+saw the figure as a human thing. It represented a man hanging there in
+helpless torture. He stared at it, closely, as if for new knowledge.
+
+Within his own flesh burned and smouldered the restless shame. He could
+not gather himself together. There was a gap in his soul. The shame
+within him seemed to displace his strength and his manhood.
+
+He sat down on his chair. The shame, the roused feeling of exposure
+acted on his brain, made him heavy, unutterably heavy.
+
+Mechanically, his wits all gone, he took off his boots, his belt, his
+tunic, put them aside, and lay down, heavy, and fell into a kind of
+drugged sleep.
+
+Emilie came in a little while, and looked at him. But he was sunk in
+sleep. She saw him lying there inert, and terribly still, and she was
+afraid. His shirt was unfastened at the throat. She saw his pure white
+flesh, very clean and beautiful. And he slept inert. His legs, in the
+blue uniform trousers, his feet in the coarse stockings, lay foreign on
+her bed. She went away.
+
+III
+
+She was uneasy, perturbed to her last fibre. She wanted to remain
+clear, with no touch on her. A wild instinct made her shrink away from
+any hands which might be laid on her.
+
+She was a foundling, probably of some gipsy race, brought up in a Roman
+Catholic Rescue Home. A naïve, paganly religious being, she was
+attached to the Baroness, with whom she had served for seven years,
+since she was fourteen.
+
+She came into contact with no one, unless it were with Ida Hesse, the
+governess. Ida was a calculating, good-natured, not very
+straightforward flirt. She was the daughter of a poor country doctor.
+Having gradually come into connection with Emilie, more an alliance
+than an attachment, she put no distinction of grade between the two of
+them. They worked together, sang together, walked together, and went
+together to the rooms of Franz Brand, Ida’s sweetheart. There the three
+talked and laughed together, or the women listened to Franz, who was a
+forester, playing on his violin.
+
+In all this alliance there was no personal intimacy between the young
+women. Emilie was naturally secluded in herself, of a reserved, native
+race. Ida used her as a kind of weight to balance her own flighty
+movement. But the quick, shifty governess, occupied always in her
+dealings with admirers, did all she could to move the violent nature of
+Emilie towards some connection with men.
+
+But the dark girl, primitive yet sensitive to a high degree, was
+fiercely virgin. Her blood flamed with rage when the common soldiers
+made the long, sucking, kissing noise behind her as she passed. She
+hated them for their almost jeering offers. She was well protected by
+the Baroness.
+
+And her contempt of the common men in general was ineffable. But she
+loved the Baroness, and she revered the Baron, and she was at her ease
+when she was doing something for the service of a gentleman. Her whole
+nature was at peace in the service of real masters or mistresses. For
+her, a gentleman had some mystic quality that left her free and proud
+in service. The common soldiers were brutes, merely nothing. Her desire
+was to serve.
+
+She held herself aloof. When, on Sunday afternoon, she had looked
+through the windows of the Reichshalle in passing, and had seen the
+soldiers dancing with the common girls, a cold revulsion and anger had
+possessed her. She could not bear to see the soldiers taking off their
+belts and pulling open their tunics, dancing with their shirts showing
+through the open, sagging tunic, their movements gross, their faces
+transfigured and sweaty, their coarse hands holding their coarse girls
+under the arm-pits, drawing the female up to their breasts. She hated
+to see them clutched breast to breast, the legs of the men moving
+grossly in the dance.
+
+At evening, when she had been in the garden, and heard on the other
+side of the hedge the sexual inarticulate cries of the girls in the
+embraces of the soldiers, her anger had been too much for her, and she
+had cried, loud and cold:
+
+“What are you doing there, in the hedge?”
+
+She would have had them whipped.
+
+But Bachmann was not quite a common soldier. Fräulein Hesse had found
+out about him, and had drawn him and Emilie together. For he was a
+handsome, blond youth, erect and walking with a kind of pride,
+unconscious yet clear. Moreover, he came of a rich farming stock, rich
+for many generations. His father was dead, his mother controlled the
+moneys for the time being. But if Bachmann wanted a hundred pounds at
+any moment, he could have them. By trade he, with one of his brothers,
+was a waggon-builder. The family had the farming, smithy, and
+waggon-building of their village. They worked because that was the form
+of life they knew. If they had chosen, they could have lived
+independent upon their means.
+
+In this way, he was a gentleman in sensibility, though his intellect
+was not developed. He could afford to pay freely for things. He had,
+moreover, his native, fine breeding. Emilie wavered uncertainly before
+him. So he became her sweetheart, and she hungered after him. But she
+was virgin, and shy, and needed to be in subjection, because she was
+primitive and had no grasp on civilized forms of living, nor on
+civilized purposes.
+
+IV
+
+At six o’clock came the inquiry of the soldiers: Had anything been seen
+of Bachmann? Fräulein Hesse answered, pleased to be playing a rôle:
+
+“No, I’ve not seen him since Sunday—have you, Emilie?”
+
+“No, I haven’t seen him,” said Emilie, and her awkwardness was
+construed as bashfulness. Ida Hesse, stimulated, asked questions, and
+played her part.
+
+“But it hasn’t killed Sergeant Huber?” she cried in consternation.
+
+“No. He fell into the water. But it gave him a bad shock, and smashed
+his foot on the side of the moat. He’s in hospital. It’s a bad look-out
+for Bachmann.”
+
+Emilie, implicated and captive, stood looking on. She was no longer
+free, working with all this regulated system which she could not
+understand and which was almost god-like to her. She was put out of her
+place. Bachmann was in her room, she was no longer the faithful in
+service serving with religious surety.
+
+Her situation was intolerable to her. All evening long the burden was
+upon her, she could not live. The children must be fed and put to
+sleep. The Baron and Baroness were going out, she must give them light
+refreshment. The man-servant was coming in to supper after returning
+with the carriage. And all the while she had the insupportable feeling
+of being out of the order, self-responsible, bewildered. The control of
+her life should come from those above her, and she should move within
+that control. But now she was out of it, uncontrolled and troubled.
+More than that, the man, the lover, Bachmann, who was he, what was he?
+He alone of all men contained for her the unknown quantity which
+terrified her beyond her service. Oh, she had wanted him as a distant
+sweetheart, not close, like this, casting her out of her world.
+
+When the Baron and Baroness had departed, and the young man-servant had
+gone out to enjoy himself, she went upstairs to Bachmann. He had
+wakened up, and sat dimly in the room. Out in the open he heard the
+soldiers, his comrades, singing the sentimental songs of the nightfall,
+the drone of the concertina rising in accompaniment.
+
+“Wenn ich zu mei...nem Kinde geh’...
+In seinem Au...g die Mutter seh’...”
+
+
+But he himself was removed from it now. Only the sentimental cry of
+young, unsatisfied desire in the soldiers’ singing penetrated his blood
+and stirred him subtly. He let his head hang; he had become gradually
+roused: and he waited in concentration, in another world.
+
+The moment she entered the room where the man sat alone, waiting
+intensely, the thrill passed through her, she died in terror, and after
+the death, a great flame gushed up, obliterating her. He sat in
+trousers and shirt on the side of the bed. He looked up as she came in,
+and she shrank from his face. She could not bear it. Yet she entered
+near to him.
+
+“Do you want anything to eat?” she said.
+
+“Yes,” he answered, and as she stood in the twilight of the room with
+him, he could only hear his heart beat heavily. He saw her apron just
+level with his face. She stood silent, a little distance off, as if she
+would be there for ever. He suffered.
+
+As if in a spell she waited, standing motionless and looming there, he
+sat rather crouching on the side of the bed. A second will in him was
+powerful and dominating. She drew gradually nearer to him, coming up
+slowly, as if unconscious. His heart beat up swiftly. He was going to
+move.
+
+As she came quite close, almost invisibly he lifted his arms and put
+them round her waist, drawing her with his will and desire. He buried
+his face into her apron, into the terrible softness of her belly. And
+he was a flame of passion intense about her. He had forgotten. Shame
+and memory were gone in a whole, furious flame of passion.
+
+She was quite helpless. Her hands leapt, fluttered, and closed over his
+head, pressing it deeper into her belly, vibrating as she did so. And
+his arms tightened on her, his hands spread over her loins, warm as
+flame on her loveliness. It was intense anguish of bliss for her, and
+she lost consciousness.
+
+When she recovered, she lay translated in the peace of satisfaction.
+
+It was what she had had no inkling of, never known could be. She was
+strong with eternal gratitude. And he was there with her. Instinctively
+with an instinct of reverence and gratitude, her arms tightened in a
+little embrace upon him who held her thoroughly embraced.
+
+And he was restored and completed, close to her. That little,
+twitching, momentary clasp of acknowledgment that she gave him in her
+satisfaction, roused his pride unconquerable. They loved each other,
+and all was whole. She loved him, he had taken her, she was given to
+him. It was right. He was given to her, and they were one, complete.
+
+Warm, with a glow in their hearts and faces, they rose again, modest,
+but transfigured with happiness.
+
+“I will get you something to eat,” she said, and in joy and security of
+service again, she left him, making a curious little homage of
+departure. He sat on the side of the bed, escaped, liberated,
+wondering, and happy.
+
+V
+
+Soon she came again with the tray, followed by Fräulein Hesse. The two
+women watched him eat, watched the pride and wonder of his being, as he
+sat there blond and naïf again. Emilie felt rich and complete. Ida was
+a lesser thing than herself.
+
+“And what are you going to do?” asked Fräulein Hesse, jealous.
+
+“I must get away,” he said.
+
+But words had no meaning for him. What did it matter? He had the inner
+satisfaction and liberty.
+
+“But you’ll want a bicycle,” said Ida Hesse.
+
+“Yes,” he said.
+
+Emilie sat silent, removed and yet with him, connected with him in
+passion. She looked from this talk of bicycles and escape.
+
+They discussed plans. But in two of them was the one will, that
+Bachmann should stay with Emilie. Ida Hesse was an outsider.
+
+It was arranged, however, that Ida’s lover should put out his bicycle,
+leave it at the hut where he sometimes watched. Bachmann should fetch
+it in the night, and ride into France. The hearts of all three beat hot
+in suspense, driven to thought. They sat in a fire of agitation.
+
+Then Bachmann would get away to America, and Emilie would come and join
+him. They would be in a fine land then. The tale burned up again.
+
+Emilie and Ida had to go round to Franz Brand’s lodging. They departed
+with slight leave-taking. Bachmann sat in the dark, hearing the bugle
+for retreat sound out of the night. Then he remembered his post card to
+his mother. He slipped out after Emilie, gave it her to post. His
+manner was careless and victorious, hers shining and trustful. He
+slipped back to shelter.
+
+There he sat on the side of the bed, thinking. Again he went over the
+events of the afternoon, remembering his own anguish of apprehension
+because he had known he could not climb the wall without fainting with
+fear. Still, a flush of shame came alight in him at the memory. But he
+said to himself: “What does it matter?—I can’t help it, well then I
+can’t. If I go up a height, I get absolutely weak, and can’t help
+myself.” Again memory came over him, and a gush of shame, like fire.
+But he sat and endured it. It had to be endured, admitted, and
+accepted. “I’m not a coward, for all that,” he continued. “I’m not
+afraid of danger. If I’m made that way, that heights melt me and make
+me let go my water”—it was torture for him to pluck at this truth—“if
+I’m made like that, I shall have to abide by it, that’s all. It isn’t
+all of me.” He thought of Emilie, and was satisfied. “What I am, I am;
+and let it be enough,” he thought.
+
+Having accepted his own defect, he sat thinking, waiting for Emilie, to
+tell her. She came at length, saying that Franz could not arrange about
+his bicycle this night. It was broken. Bachmann would have to stay over
+another day.
+
+They were both happy. Emilie, confused before Ida, who was excited and
+prurient, came again to the young man. She was stiff and dignified with
+an agony of unusedness. But he took her between his hands, and
+uncovered her, and enjoyed almost like madness her helpless, virgin
+body that suffered so strongly, and that took its joy so deeply. While
+the moisture of torment and modesty was still in her eyes, she clasped
+him closer, and closer, to the victory and the deep satisfaction of
+both of them. And they slept together, he in repose still satisfied and
+peaceful, and she lying close in her static reality.
+
+VI
+
+In the morning, when the bugle sounded from the barracks they rose and
+looked out of the window. She loved his body that was proud and blond
+and able to take command. And he loved her body that was soft and
+eternal. They looked at the faint grey vapour of summer steaming off
+from the greenness and ripeness of the fields. There was no town
+anywhere, their look ended in the haze of the summer morning. Their
+bodies rested together, their minds tranquil. Then a little anxiety
+stirred in both of them from the sound of the bugle. She was called
+back to her old position, to realize the world of authority she did not
+understand but had wanted to serve. But this call died away again from
+her. She had all.
+
+She went downstairs to her work, curiously changed. She was in a new
+world of her own, that she had never even imagined, and which was the
+land of promise for all that. In this she moved and had her being. And
+she extended it to her duties. She was curiously happy and absorbed.
+She had not to strive out of herself to do her work. The doing came
+from within her without call or command. It was a delicious outflow,
+like sunshine, the activity that flowed from her and put her tasks to
+rights.
+
+Bachmann sat busily thinking. He would have to get all his plans ready.
+He must write to his mother, and she must send him money to Paris. He
+would go to Paris, and from thence, quickly, to America. It had to be
+done. He must make all preparations. The dangerous part was the getting
+into France. He thrilled in anticipation. During the day he would need
+a time-table of the trains going to Paris—he would need to think. It
+gave him delicious pleasure, using all his wits. It seemed such an
+adventure.
+
+This one day, and he would escape then into freedom. What an agony of
+need he had for absolute, imperious freedom. He had won to his own
+being, in himself and Emilie, he had drawn the stigma from his shame,
+he was beginning to be himself. And now he wanted madly to be free to
+go on. A home, his work, and absolute freedom to move and to be, in
+her, with her, this was his passionate desire. He thought in a kind of
+ecstasy, living an hour of painful intensity.
+
+Suddenly he heard voices, and a tramping of feet. His heart gave a
+great leap, then went still. He was taken. He had known all along. A
+complete silence filled his body and soul, a silence like death, a
+suspension of life and sound. He stood motionless in the bedroom, in
+perfect suspension.
+
+Emilie was busy passing swiftly about the kitchen preparing the
+children’s breakfasts when she heard the tramp of feet and the voice of
+the Baron. The latter had come in from the garden, and was wearing an
+old green linen suit. He was a man of middle stature, quick, finely
+made, and of whimsical charm. His right hand had been shot in the
+Franco-Prussian war, and now, as always when he was much agitated, he
+shook it down at his side, as if it hurt. He was talking rapidly to a
+young, stiff Ober-leutnant. Two private soldiers stood bearishly in the
+doorway.
+
+Emilie, shocked out of herself, stood pale and erect, recoiling.
+
+“Yes, if you think so, we can look,” the Baron was hastily and
+irascibly saying.
+
+“Emilie,” he said, turning to the girl, “did you put a post card to the
+mother of this Bachmann in the box last evening?”
+
+Emilie stood erect and did not answer.
+
+“Yes?” said the Baron sharply.
+
+“Yes, Herr Baron,” replied Emilie, neutral.
+
+The Baron’s wounded hand shook rapidly in exasperation. The lieutenant
+drew himself up still more stiffly. He was right.
+
+“And do you know anything of the fellow?” asked the Baron, looking at
+her with his blazing, greyish-golden eyes. The girl looked back at him
+steadily, dumb, but her whole soul naked before him. For two seconds he
+looked at her in silence. Then in silence, ashamed and furious, he
+turned away.
+
+“Go up!” he said, with his fierce, peremptory command, to the young
+officer.
+
+The lieutenant gave his order, in military cold confidence, to the
+soldiers. They all tramped across the hall. Emilie stood motionless,
+her life suspended.
+
+The Baron marched swiftly upstairs and down the corridor, the
+lieutenant and the common soldiers followed. The Baron flung open the
+door of Emilie’s room and looked at Bachmann, who stood watching,
+standing in shirt and trousers beside the bed, fronting the door. He
+was perfectly still. His eyes met the furious, blazing look of the
+Baron. The latter shook his wounded hand, and then went still. He
+looked into the eyes of the soldier, steadily. He saw the same naked
+soul exposed, as if he looked really into the _man_. And the man was
+helpless, the more helpless for his singular nakedness.
+
+“Ha!” he exclaimed impatiently, turning to the approaching lieutenant.
+
+The latter appeared in the doorway. Quickly his eyes travelled over the
+bare-footed youth. He recognized him as his object. He gave the brief
+command to dress.
+
+Bachmann turned round for his clothes. He was very still, silent in
+himself. He was in an abstract, motionless world. That the two
+gentlemen and the two soldiers stood watching him, he scarcely
+realized. They could not see him.
+
+Soon he was ready. He stood at attention. But only the shell of his
+body was at attention. A curious silence, a blankness, like something
+eternal, possessed him. He remained true to himself.
+
+The lieutenant gave the order to march. The little procession went down
+the stairs with careful, respectful tread, and passed through the hall
+to the kitchen. There Emilie stood with her face uplifted, motionless
+and expressionless. Bachmann did not look at her. They knew each other.
+They were themselves. Then the little file of men passed out into the
+courtyard.
+
+The Baron stood in the doorway watching the four figures in uniform
+pass through the chequered shadow under the lime trees. Bachmann was
+walking neutralized, as if he were not there. The lieutenant went
+brittle and long, the two soldiers lumbered beside. They passed out
+into the sunny morning, growing smaller, going towards the barracks.
+
+The Baron turned into the kitchen. Emilie was cutting bread.
+
+“So he stayed the night here?” he said.
+
+The girl looked at him, scarcely seeing. She was too much herself. The
+Baron saw the dark, naked soul of her body in her unseeing eyes.
+
+“What were you going to do?” he asked.
+
+“He was going to America,” she replied, in a still voice.
+
+“Pah! You should have sent him straight back,” fired the Baron.
+
+Emilie stood at his bidding, untouched.
+
+“He’s done for now,” he said.
+
+But he could not bear the dark, deep nakedness of her eyes, that
+scarcely changed under this suffering.
+
+“Nothing but a fool,” he repeated, going away in agitation, and
+preparing himself for what he could do.
+
+
+
+Daughters of the Vicar
+
+I
+
+Mr Lindley was first vicar of Aldecross. The cottages of this tiny
+hamlet had nestled in peace since their beginning, and the country folk
+had crossed the lanes and farm-lands, two or three miles, to the parish
+church at Greymeed, on the bright Sunday mornings.
+
+But when the pits were sunk, blank rows of dwellings started up beside
+the high roads, and a new population, skimmed from the floating scum of
+workmen, was filled in, the cottages and the country people almost
+obliterated.
+
+To suit the convenience of these new collier-inhabitants, a church must
+be built at Aldecross. There was not too much money. And so the little
+building crouched like a humped stone-and-mortar mouse, with two little
+turrets at the west corners for ears, in the fields near the cottages
+and the apple trees, as far as possible from the dwellings down the
+high road. It had an uncertain, timid look about it. And so they
+planted big-leaved ivy, to hide its shrinking newness. So that now the
+little church stands buried in its greenery, stranded and sleeping
+among the fields, while the brick houses elbow nearer and nearer,
+threatening to crush it down. It is already obsolete.
+
+The Reverend Ernest Lindley, aged twenty-seven, and newly married, came
+from his curacy in Suffolk to take charge of his church. He was just an
+ordinary young man, who had been to Cambridge and taken orders. His
+wife was a self-assured young woman, daughter of a Cambridgeshire
+rector. Her father had spent the whole of his thousand a year, so that
+Mrs Lindley had nothing of her own. Thus the young married people came
+to Aldecross to live on a stipend of about a hundred and twenty pounds,
+and to keep up a superior position.
+
+They were not very well received by the new, raw, disaffected
+population of colliers. Being accustomed to farm labourers, Mr Lindley
+had considered himself as belonging indisputably to the upper or
+ordering classes. He had to be humble to the county families, but
+still, he was of their kind, whilst the common people were something
+different. He had no doubts of himself.
+
+He found, however, that the collier population refused to accept this
+arrangement. They had no use for him in their lives, and they told him
+so, callously. The women merely said, “they were throng,” or else, “Oh,
+it’s no good you coming here, we’re Chapel.” The men were quite
+good-humoured so long as he did not touch them too nigh, they were
+cheerfully contemptuous of him, with a preconceived contempt he was
+powerless against.
+
+At last, passing from indignation to silent resentment, even, if he
+dared have acknowledged it, to conscious hatred of the majority of his
+flock, and unconscious hatred of himself, he confined his activities to
+a narrow round of cottages, and he had to submit. He had no particular
+character, having always depended on his position in society to give
+him position among men. Now he was so poor, he had no social standing
+even among the common vulgar tradespeople of the district, and he had
+not the nature nor the wish to make his society agreeable to them, nor
+the strength to impose himself where he would have liked to be
+recognized. He dragged on, pale and miserable and neutral.
+
+At first his wife raged with mortification. She took on airs and used a
+high hand. But her income was too small, the wrestling with tradesmen’s
+bills was too pitiful, she only met with general, callous ridicule when
+she tried to be impressive.
+
+Wounded to the quick of her pride, she found herself isolated in an
+indifferent, callous population. She raged indoors and out. But soon
+she learned that she must pay too heavily for her outdoor rages, and
+then she only raged within the walls of the rectory. There her feeling
+was so strong, that she frightened herself. She saw herself hating her
+husband, and she knew that, unless she were careful, she would smash
+her form of life and bring catastrophe upon him and upon herself. So in
+very fear, she went quiet. She hid, bitter and beaten by fear, behind
+the only shelter she had in the world, her gloomy, poor parsonage.
+
+Children were born one every year; almost mechanically, she continued
+to perform her maternal duty, which was forced upon her. Gradually,
+broken by the suppressing of her violent anger and misery and disgust,
+she became an invalid and took to her couch.
+
+The children grew up healthy, but unwarmed and rather rigid. Their
+father and mother educated them at home, made them very proud and very
+genteel, put them definitely and cruelly in the upper classes, apart
+from the vulgar around them. So they lived quite isolated. They were
+good-looking, and had that curiously clean, semi-transparent look of
+the genteel, isolated poor.
+
+Gradually Mr and Mrs Lindley lost all hold on life, and spent their
+hours, weeks and years merely haggling to make ends meet, and bitterly
+repressing and pruning their children into gentility, urging them to
+ambition, weighting them with duty. On Sunday morning the whole family,
+except the mother, went down the lane to church, the long-legged girls
+in skimpy frocks, the boys in black coats and long, grey, unfitting
+trousers. They passed by their father’s parishioners with mute, clear
+faces, childish mouths closed in pride that was like a doom to them,
+and childish eyes already unseeing. Miss Mary, the eldest, was the
+leader. She was a long, slim thing with a fine profile and a proud,
+pure look of submission to a high fate. Miss Louisa, the second, was
+short and plump and obstinate-looking. She had more enemies than
+ideals. She looked after the lesser children, Miss Mary after the
+elder. The collier children watched this pale, distinguished procession
+of the vicar’s family pass mutely by, and they were impressed by the
+air of gentility and distance, they made mock of the trousers of the
+small sons, they felt inferior in themselves, and hate stirred their
+hearts.
+
+In her time, Miss Mary received as governess a few little daughters of
+tradesmen; Miss Louisa managed the house and went among her father’s
+church-goers, giving lessons on the piano to the colliers’ daughters at
+thirteen shillings for twenty-six lessons.
+
+II
+
+One winter morning, when his daughter Mary was about twenty years old,
+Mr Lindley, a thin, unobtrusive figure in his black overcoat and his
+wideawake, went down into Aldecross with a packet of white papers under
+his arm. He was delivering the parish almanacs.
+
+A rather pale, neutral man of middle age, he waited while the train
+thumped over the level-crossing, going up to the pit which rattled
+busily just along the line. A wooden-legged man hobbled to open the
+gate, Mr Lindley passed on. Just at his left hand, below the road and
+the railway, was the red roof of a cottage, showing through the bare
+twigs of apple trees. Mr Lindley passed round the low wall, and
+descended the worn steps that led from the highway down to the cottage
+which crouched darkly and quietly away below the rumble of passing
+trains and the clank of coal-carts in a quiet little under-world of its
+own. Snowdrops with tight-shut buds were hanging very still under the
+bare currant bushes.
+
+The clergyman was just going to knock when he heard a clinking noise,
+and turning saw through the open door of a black shed just behind him
+an elderly woman in a black lace cap stooping among reddish big cans,
+pouring a very bright liquid into a tundish. There was a smell of
+paraffin. The woman put down her can, took the tundish and laid it on a
+shelf, then rose with a tin bottle. Her eyes met those of the
+clergyman.
+
+“Oh, is it you, Mr Lin’ley!” she said, in a complaining tone. “Go in.”
+
+The minister entered the house. In the hot kitchen sat a big, elderly
+man with a great grey beard, taking snuff. He grunted in a deep,
+muttering voice, telling the minister to sit down, and then took no
+more notice of him, but stared vacantly into the fire. Mr Lindley
+waited.
+
+The woman came in, the ribbons of her black lace cap, or bonnet,
+hanging on her shawl. She was of medium stature, everything about her
+was tidy. She went up a step out of the kitchen, carrying the paraffin
+tin. Feet were heard entering the room up the step. It was a little
+haberdashery shop, with parcels on the shelves of the walls, a big,
+old-fashioned sewing machine with tailor’s work lying round it, in the
+open space. The woman went behind the counter, gave the child who had
+entered the paraffin bottle, and took from her a jug.
+
+“My mother says shall yer put it down,” said the child, and she was
+gone. The woman wrote in a book, then came into the kitchen with her
+jug. The husband, a very large man, rose and brought more coal to the
+already hot fire. He moved slowly and sluggishly. Already he was going
+dead; being a tailor, his large form had become an encumbrance to him.
+In his youth he had been a great dancer and boxer. Now he was taciturn,
+and inert. The minister had nothing to say, so he sought for his
+phrases. But John Durant took no notice, existing silent and dull.
+
+Mrs Durant spread the cloth. Her husband poured himself beer into a
+mug, and began to smoke and drink.
+
+“Shall you have some?” he growled through his beard at the clergyman,
+looking slowly from the man to the jug, capable of this one idea.
+
+“No, thank you,” replied Mr Lindley, though he would have liked some
+beer. He must set the example in a drinking parish.
+
+“We need a drop to keep us going,” said Mrs Durant.
+
+She had rather a complaining manner. The clergyman sat on uncomfortably
+while she laid the table for the half-past ten lunch. Her husband drew
+up to eat. She remained in her little round armchair by the fire.
+
+She was a woman who would have liked to be easy in her life, but to
+whose lot had fallen a rough and turbulent family, and a slothful
+husband who did not care what became of himself or anybody. So, her
+rather good-looking square face was peevish, she had that air of having
+been compelled all her life to serve unwillingly, and to control where
+she did not want to control. There was about her, too, that masterful
+_aplomb_ of a woman who has brought up and ruled her sons: but even
+them she had ruled unwillingly. She had enjoyed managing her little
+haberdashery-shop, riding in the carrier’s cart to Nottingham, going
+through the big warehouses to buy her goods. But the fret of managing
+her sons she did not like. Only she loved her youngest boy, because he
+was her last, and she saw herself free.
+
+This was one of the houses the clergyman visited occasionally. Mrs
+Durant, as part of her regulation, had brought up all her sons in the
+Church. Not that she had any religion. Only, it was what she was used
+to. Mr Durant was without religion. He read the fervently evangelical
+_Life of John Wesley_ with a curious pleasure, getting from it a
+satisfaction as from the warmth of the fire, or a glass of brandy. But
+he cared no more about John Wesley, in fact, than about John Milton, of
+whom he had never heard.
+
+Mrs Durant took her chair to the table.
+
+“I don’t feel like eating,” she sighed.
+
+“Why—aren’t you well?” asked the clergyman, patronizing.
+
+“It isn’t that,” she sighed. She sat with shut, straight mouth. “I
+don’t know what’s going to become of us.”
+
+But the clergyman had ground himself down so long, that he could not
+easily sympathize.
+
+“Have you any trouble?” he asked.
+
+“Ay, have I any trouble!” cried the elderly woman. “I shall end my days
+in the workhouse.”
+
+The minister waited unmoved. What could she know of poverty, in her
+little house of plenty!
+
+“I hope not,” he said.
+
+“And the one lad as I wanted to keep by me——” she lamented.
+
+The minister listened without sympathy, quite neutral.
+
+“And the lad as would have been a support to my old age! What is going
+to become of us?” she said.
+
+The clergyman, justly, did not believe in the cry of poverty, but
+wondered what had become of the son.
+
+“Has anything happened to Alfred?” he asked.
+
+“We’ve got word he’s gone for a Queen’s sailor,” she said sharply.
+
+“He has joined the Navy!” exclaimed Mr Lindley. “I think he could
+scarcely have done better—to serve his Queen and country on the
+sea....”
+
+“He is wanted to serve _me_,” she cried. “And I wanted my lad at home.”
+
+Alfred was her baby, her last, whom she had allowed herself the luxury
+of spoiling.
+
+“You will miss him,” said Mr Lindley, “that is certain. But this is no
+regrettable step for him to have taken—on the contrary.”
+
+“That’s easy for you to say, Mr Lindley,” she replied tartly. “Do you
+think I want my lad climbing ropes at another man’s bidding, like a
+monkey——?”
+
+“There is no _dishonour_, surely, in serving in the Navy?”
+
+“Dishonour this dishonour that,” cried the angry old woman. “He goes
+and makes a slave of himself, and he’ll rue it.”
+
+Her angry, scornful impatience nettled the clergyman and silenced him
+for some moments.
+
+“I do not see,” he retorted at last, white at the gills and inadequate,
+“that the Queen’s service is any more to be called slavery than working
+in a mine.”
+
+“At home he was at home, and his own master. _I_ know he’ll find a
+difference.”
+
+“It may be the making of him,” said the clergyman. “It will take him
+away from bad companionship and drink.”
+
+Some of the Durants’ sons were notorious drinkers, and Alfred was not
+quite steady.
+
+“And why indeed shouldn’t he have his glass?” cried the mother. “He
+picks no man’s pocket to pay for it!”
+
+The clergyman stiffened at what he thought was an allusion to his own
+profession, and his unpaid bills.
+
+“With all due consideration, I am glad to hear he has joined the Navy,”
+he said.
+
+“Me with my old age coming on, and his father working very little! I’d
+thank you to be glad about something else besides that, Mr Lindley.”
+
+The woman began to cry. Her husband, quite impassive, finished his
+lunch of meat-pie, and drank some beer. Then he turned to the fire, as
+if there were no one in the room but himself.
+
+“I shall respect all men who serve God and their country on the sea,
+Mrs Durant,” said the clergyman stubbornly.
+
+“That is very well, when they’re not your sons who are doing the dirty
+work. It makes a difference,” she replied tartly.
+
+“I should be proud if one of my sons were to enter the Navy.”
+
+“Ay—well—we’re not all of us made alike——”
+
+The minister rose. He put down a large folded paper.
+
+“I’ve brought the almanac,” he said.
+
+Mrs Durant unfolded it.
+
+“I do like a bit of colour in things,” she said, petulantly.
+
+The clergyman did not reply.
+
+“There’s that envelope for the organist’s fund——” said the old woman,
+and rising, she took the thing from the mantelpiece, went into the
+shop, and returned sealing it up.
+
+“Which is all I can afford,” she said.
+
+Mr Lindley took his departure, in his pocket the envelope containing
+Mrs Durant’s offering for Miss Louisa’s services. He went from door to
+door delivering the almanacs, in dull routine. Jaded with the monotony
+of the business, and with the repeated effort of greeting half-known
+people, he felt barren and rather irritable. At last he returned home.
+
+In the dining-room was a small fire. Mrs Lindley, growing very stout,
+lay on her couch. The vicar carved the cold mutton; Miss Louisa, short
+and plump and rather flushed, came in from the kitchen; Miss Mary,
+dark, with a beautiful white brow and grey eyes, served the vegetables;
+the children chattered a little, but not exuberantly. The very air
+seemed starved.
+
+“I went to the Durants,” said the vicar, as he served out small
+portions of mutton; “it appears Alfred has run away to join the Navy.”
+
+“Do him good,” came the rough voice of the invalid.
+
+Miss Louisa, attending to the youngest child, looked up in protest.
+
+“Why has he done that?” asked Mary’s low, musical voice.
+
+“He wanted some excitement, I suppose,” said the vicar. “Shall we say
+grace?”
+
+The children were arranged, all bent their heads, grace was pronounced,
+at the last word every face was being raised to go on with the
+interesting subject.
+
+“He’s just done the right thing, for once,” came the rather deep voice
+of the mother; “save him from becoming a drunken sot, like the rest of
+them.”
+
+“They’re not _all_ drunken, mama,” said Miss Louisa, stubbornly.
+
+“It’s no fault of their upbringing if they’re not. Walter Durant is a
+standing disgrace.”
+
+“As I told Mrs Durant,” said the vicar, eating hungrily, “it is the
+best thing he could have done. It will take him away from temptation
+during the most dangerous years of his life—how old is he—nineteen?”
+
+“Twenty,” said Miss Louisa.
+
+“Twenty!” repeated the vicar. “It will give him wholesome discipline
+and set before him some sort of standard of duty and honour—nothing
+could have been better for him. But——”
+
+“We shall miss him from the choir,” said Miss Louisa, as if taking
+opposite sides to her parents.
+
+“That is as it may be,” said the vicar. “I prefer to know he is safe in
+the Navy, than running the risk of getting into bad ways here.”
+
+“Was he getting into bad ways?” asked the stubborn Miss Louisa.
+
+“You know, Louisa, he wasn’t quite what he used to be,” said Miss Mary
+gently and steadily. Miss Louisa shut her rather heavy jaw sulkily. She
+wanted to deny it, but she knew it was true.
+
+For her he had been a laughing, warm lad, with something kindly and
+something rich about him. He had made her feel warm. It seemed the days
+would be colder since he had gone.
+
+“Quite the best thing he could do,” said the mother with emphasis.
+
+“I think so,” said the vicar. “But his mother was almost abusive
+because I suggested it.”
+
+He spoke in an injured tone.
+
+“What does she care for her children’s welfare?” said the invalid.
+“Their wages is all her concern.”
+
+“I suppose she wanted him at home with her,” said Miss Louisa.
+
+“Yes, she did—at the expense of his learning to be a drunkard like the
+rest of them,” retorted her mother.
+
+“George Durant doesn’t drink,” defended her daughter.
+
+“Because he got burned so badly when he was nineteen—in the pit—and
+that frightened him. The Navy is a better remedy than that, at least.”
+
+“Certainly,” said the vicar. “Certainly.”
+
+And to this Miss Louisa agreed. Yet she could not but feel angry that
+he had gone away for so many years. She herself was only nineteen.
+
+III
+
+It happened when Miss Mary was twenty-three years old, that Mr Lindley
+was very ill. The family was exceedingly poor at the time, such a lot
+of money was needed, so little was forthcoming. Neither Miss Mary nor
+Miss Louisa had suitors. What chance had they? They met no eligible
+young men in Aldecross. And what they earned was a mere drop in a void.
+The girls’ hearts were chilled and hardened with fear of this
+perpetual, cold penury, this narrow struggle, this horrible nothingness
+of their lives.
+
+A clergyman had to be found for the church work. It so happened the son
+of an old friend of Mr Lindley’s was waiting three months before taking
+up his duties. He would come and officiate, for nothing. The young
+clergyman was keenly expected. He was not more than twenty-seven, a
+Master of Arts of Oxford, had written his thesis on Roman Law. He came
+of an old Cambridgeshire family, had some private means, was going to
+take a church in Northamptonshire with a good stipend, and was not
+married. Mrs Lindley incurred new debts, and scarcely regretted her
+husband’s illness.
+
+But when Mr Massy came, there was a shock of disappointment in the
+house. They had expected a young man with a pipe and a deep voice, but
+with better manners than Sidney, the eldest of the Lindleys. There
+arrived instead a small, chétif man, scarcely larger than a boy of
+twelve, spectacled, timid in the extreme, without a word to utter at
+first; yet with a certain inhuman self-sureness.
+
+“What a little abortion!” was Mrs Lindley’s exclamation to herself on
+first seeing him, in his buttoned-up clerical coat. And for the first
+time for many days, she was profoundly thankful to God that all her
+children were decent specimens.
+
+He had not normal powers of perception. They soon saw that he lacked
+the full range of human feelings, but had rather a strong,
+philosophical mind, from which he lived. His body was almost
+unthinkable, in intellect he was something definite. The conversation
+at once took a balanced, abstract tone when he participated. There was
+no spontaneous exclamation, no violent assertion or expression of
+personal conviction, but all cold, reasonable assertion. This was very
+hard on Mrs Lindley. The little man would look at her, after one of her
+pronouncements, and then give, in his thin voice, his own calculated
+version, so that she felt as if she were tumbling into thin air through
+a hole in the flimsy floor on which their conversation stood. It was
+she who felt a fool. Soon she was reduced to a hardy silence.
+
+Still, at the back of her mind, she remembered that he was an
+unattached gentleman, who would shortly have an income altogether of
+six or seven hundred a year. What did the man matter, if there were
+pecuniary ease! The man was a trifle thrown in. After twenty-two years
+her sentimentality was ground away, and only the millstone of poverty
+mattered to her. So she supported the little man as a representative of
+a decent income.
+
+His most irritating habit was that of a sneering little giggle, all on
+his own, which came when he perceived or related some illogical
+absurdity on the part of another person. It was the only form of humour
+he had. Stupidity in thinking seemed to him exquisitely funny. But any
+novel was unintelligibly meaningless and dull, and to an Irish sort of
+humour he listened curiously, examining it like mathematics, or else
+simply not hearing. In normal human relationship he was not there.
+Quite unable to take part in simple everyday talk, he padded silently
+round the house, or sat in the dining-room looking nervously from side
+to side, always apart in a cold, rarefied little world of his own.
+Sometimes he made an ironic remark, that did not seem humanly relevant,
+or he gave his little laugh, like a sneer. He had to defend himself and
+his own insufficiency. And he answered questions grudgingly, with a yes
+or no, because he did not see their import and was nervous. It seemed
+to Miss Louisa he scarcely distinguished one person from another, but
+that he liked to be near her, or to Miss Mary, for some sort of contact
+which stimulated him unknown.
+
+Apart from all this, he was the most admirable workman. He was
+unremittingly shy, but perfect in his sense of duty: as far as he could
+conceive Christianity, he was a perfect Christian. Nothing that he
+realized he could do for anyone did he leave undone, although he was so
+incapable of coming into contact with another being, that he could not
+proffer help. Now he attended assiduously to the sick man, investigated
+all the affairs of the parish or the church which Mr Lindley had in
+control, straightened out accounts, made lists of the sick and needy,
+padded round with help and to see what he could do. He heard of Mrs
+Lindley’s anxiety about her sons, and began to investigate means of
+sending them to Cambridge. His kindness almost frightened Miss Mary.
+She honoured it so, and yet she shrank from it. For, in it all Mr Massy
+seemed to have no sense of any person, any human being whom he was
+helping: he only realized a kind of mathematical working out, solving
+of given situations, a calculated well-doing. And it was as if he had
+accepted the Christian tenets as axioms. His religion consisted in what
+his scrupulous, abstract mind approved of.
+
+Seeing his acts, Miss Mary must respect and honour him. In consequence
+she must serve him. To this she had to force herself, shuddering and
+yet desirous, but he did not perceive it. She accompanied him on his
+visiting in the parish, and whilst she was cold with admiration for
+him, often she was touched with pity for the little padding figure with
+bent shoulders, buttoned up to the chin in his overcoat. She was a
+handsome, calm girl, tall, with a beautiful repose. Her clothes were
+poor, and she wore a black silk scarf, having no furs. But she was a
+lady. As the people saw her walking down Aldecross beside Mr Massy,
+they said:
+
+“My word, Miss Mary’s got a catch. Did ever you see such a sickly
+little shrimp!”
+
+She knew they were talking so, and it made her heart grow hot against
+them, and she drew herself as it were protectively towards the little
+man beside her. At any rate, she could see and give honour to his
+genuine goodness.
+
+He could not walk fast, or far.
+
+“You have not been well?” she asked, in her dignified way.
+
+“I have an internal trouble.”
+
+He was not aware of her slight shudder. There was silence, whilst she
+bowed to recover her composure, to resume her gentle manner towards
+him.
+
+He was fond of Miss Mary. She had made it a rule of hospitality that he
+should always be escorted by herself or by her sister on his visits in
+the parish, which were not many. But some mornings she was engaged.
+Then Miss Louisa took her place. It was no good Miss Louisa’s trying to
+adopt to Mr Massy an attitude of queenly service. She was unable to
+regard him save with aversion. When she saw him from behind, thin and
+bent-shouldered, looking like a sickly lad of thirteen, she disliked
+him exceedingly, and felt a desire to put him out of existence. And yet
+a deeper justice in Mary made Louisa humble before her sister.
+
+They were going to see Mr Durant, who was paralysed and not expected to
+live. Miss Louisa was crudely ashamed at being admitted to the cottage
+in company with the little clergyman.
+
+Mrs Durant was, however, much quieter in the face of her real trouble.
+
+“How is Mr Durant?” asked Louisa.
+
+“He is no different—and we don’t expect him to be,” was the reply. The
+little clergyman stood looking on.
+
+They went upstairs. The three stood for some time looking at the bed,
+at the grey head of the old man on the pillow, the grey beard over the
+sheet. Miss Louisa was shocked and afraid.
+
+“It is so dreadful,” she said, with a shudder.
+
+“It is how I always thought it would be,” replied Mrs Durant.
+
+Then Miss Louisa was afraid of her. The two women were uneasy, waiting
+for Mr Massy to say something. He stood, small and bent, too nervous to
+speak.
+
+“Has he any understanding?” he asked at length.
+
+“Maybe,” said Mrs Durant. “Can you hear, John?” she asked loudly. The
+dull blue eye of the inert man looked at her feebly.
+
+“Yes, he understands,” said Mrs Durant to Mr Massy. Except for the dull
+look in his eyes, the sick man lay as if dead. The three stood in
+silence. Miss Louisa was obstinate but heavy-hearted under the load of
+unlivingness. It was Mr Massy who kept her there in discipline. His
+non-human will dominated them all.
+
+Then they heard a sound below, a man’s footsteps, and a man’s voice
+called subduedly:
+
+“Are you upstairs, mother?”
+
+Mrs Durant started and moved to the door. But already a quick, firm
+step was running up the stairs.
+
+“I’m a bit early, mother,” a troubled voice said, and on the landing
+they saw the form of the sailor. His mother came and clung to him. She
+was suddenly aware that she needed something to hold on to. He put his
+arms round her, and bent over her, kissing her.
+
+“He’s not gone, mother?” he asked anxiously, struggling to control his
+voice.
+
+Miss Louisa looked away from the mother and son who stood together in
+the gloom on the landing. She could not bear it that she and Mr Massy
+should be there. The latter stood nervously, as if ill at ease before
+the emotion that was running. He was a witness, nervous, unwilling, but
+dispassionate. To Miss Louisa’s hot heart it seemed all, all wrong that
+they should be there.
+
+Mrs Durant entered the bedroom, her face wet.
+
+“There’s Miss Louisa and the vicar,” she said, out of voice and
+quavering.
+
+Her son, red-faced and slender, drew himself up to salute. But Miss
+Louisa held out her hand. Then she saw his hazel eyes recognize her for
+a moment, and his small white teeth showed in a glimpse of the greeting
+she used to love. She was covered with confusion. He went round to the
+bed; his boots clicked on the plaster floor, he bowed his head with
+dignity.
+
+“How are you, dad?” he said, laying his hand on the sheet, faltering.
+But the old man stared fixedly and unseeing. The son stood perfectly
+still for a few minutes, then slowly recoiled. Miss Louisa saw the fine
+outline of his breast, under the sailor’s blue blouse, as his chest
+began to heave.
+
+“He doesn’t know me,” he said, turning to his mother. He gradually went
+white.
+
+“No, my boy!” cried the mother, pitiful, lifting her face. And suddenly
+she put her face against his shoulder, he was stooping down to her,
+holding her against him, and she cried aloud for a moment or two. Miss
+Louisa saw his sides heaving, and heard the sharp hiss of his breath.
+She turned away, tears streaming down her face. The father lay inert
+upon the white bed, Mr Massy looked queer and obliterated, so little
+now that the sailor with his sunburned skin was in the room. He stood
+waiting. Miss Louisa wanted to die, she wanted to have done. She dared
+not turn round again to look.
+
+“Shall I offer a prayer?” came the frail voice of the clergyman, and
+all kneeled down.
+
+Miss Louisa was frightened of the inert man upon the bed. Then she felt
+a flash of fear of Mr Massy, hearing his thin, detached voice. And
+then, calmed, she looked up. On the far side of the bed were the heads
+of the mother and son, the one in the black lace cap, with the small
+white nape of the neck beneath, the other, with brown, sun-scorched
+hair too close and wiry to allow of a parting, and neck tanned firm,
+bowed as if unwillingly. The great grey beard of the old man did not
+move, the prayer continued. Mr Massy prayed with a pure lucidity, that
+they all might conform to the higher Will. He was like something that
+dominated the bowed heads, something dispassionate that governed them
+inexorably. Miss Louisa was afraid of him. And she was bound, during
+the course of the prayer, to have a little reverence for him. It was
+like a foretaste of inexorable, cold death, a taste of pure justice.
+
+That evening she talked to Mary of the visit. Her heart, her veins were
+possessed by the thought of Alfred Durant as he held his mother in his
+arms; then the break in his voice, as she remembered it again and
+again, was like a flame through her; and she wanted to see his face
+more distinctly in her mind, ruddy with the sun, and his golden-brown
+eyes, kind and careless, strained now with a natural fear, the fine
+nose tanned hard by the sun, the mouth that could not help smiling at
+her. And it went through her with pride, to think of his figure, a
+straight, fine jet of life.
+
+“He is a handsome lad,” said she to Miss Mary, as if he had not been a
+year older than herself. Underneath was the deeper dread, almost
+hatred, of the inhuman being of Mr Massy. She felt she must protect
+herself and Alfred from him.
+
+“When I felt Mr Massy there,” she said, “I almost hated him. What right
+had he to be there!”
+
+“Surely he had all right,” said Miss Mary after a pause. “He is
+_really_ a Christian.”
+
+“He seems to me nearly an imbecile,” said Miss Louisa.
+
+Miss Mary, quiet and beautiful, was silent for a moment:
+
+“Oh, no,” she said. “Not _imbecile_——”
+
+“Well then—he reminds me of a six months’ child—or a five months’
+child—as if he didn’t have time to get developed enough before he was
+born.”
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Mary, slowly. “There is something lacking. But there
+is something wonderful in him: and he is really _good_——”
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Louisa, “it doesn’t seem right that he should be. What
+right has _that_ to be called goodness!”
+
+“But it _is_ goodness,” persisted Mary. Then she added, with a laugh:
+“And come, you wouldn’t deny that as well.”
+
+There was a doggedness in her voice. She went about very quietly. In
+her soul, she knew what was going to happen. She knew that Mr Massy was
+stronger than she, and that she must submit to what he was. Her
+physical self was prouder, stronger than he, her physical self disliked
+and despised him. But she was in the grip of his moral, mental being.
+And she felt the days allotted out to her. And her family watched.
+
+IV
+
+A few days after, old Mr Durant died. Miss Louisa saw Alfred once more,
+but he was stiff before her now, treating her not like a person, but as
+if she were some sort of will in command and he a separate, distinct
+will waiting in front of her. She had never felt such utter steel-plate
+separation from anyone. It puzzled her and frightened her. What had
+become of him? And she hated the military discipline—she was
+antagonistic to it. Now he was not himself. He was the will which obeys
+set over against the will which commands. She hesitated over accepting
+this. He had put himself out of her range. He had ranked himself
+inferior, subordinate to her. And that was how he would get away from
+her, that was how he would avoid all connection with her: by fronting
+her impersonally from the opposite camp, by taking up the abstract
+position of an inferior.
+
+She went brooding steadily and sullenly over this, brooding and
+brooding. Her fierce, obstinate heart could not give way. It clung to
+its own rights. Sometimes she dismissed him. Why should he, inferior,
+trouble her?
+
+Then she relapsed to him, and almost hated him. It was his way of
+getting out of it. She felt the cowardice of it, his calmly placing her
+in a superior class, and placing himself inaccessibly apart, in an
+inferior, as if she, the sensient woman who was fond of him, did not
+count. But she was not going to submit. Dogged in her heart she held on
+to him.
+
+V
+
+In six months’ time Miss Mary had married Mr Massy. There had been no
+love-making, nobody had made any remark. But everybody was tense and
+callous with expectation. When one day Mr Massy asked for Mary’s hand,
+Mr Lindley started and trembled from the thin, abstract voice of the
+little man. Mr Massy was very nervous, but so curiously absolute.
+
+“I shall be very glad,” said the vicar, “but of course the decision
+lies with Mary herself.” And his still feeble hand shook as he moved a
+Bible on his desk.
+
+The small man, keeping fixedly to his idea, padded out of the room to
+find Miss Mary. He sat a long time by her, while she made some
+conversation, before he had readiness to speak. She was afraid of what
+was coming, and sat stiff in apprehension. She felt as if her body
+would rise and fling him aside. But her spirit quivered and waited.
+Almost in expectation she waited, almost wanting him. And then she knew
+he would speak.
+
+“I have already asked Mr Lindley,” said the clergyman, while suddenly
+she looked with aversion at his little knees, “if he would consent to
+my proposal.” He was aware of his own disadvantage, but his will was
+set.
+
+She went cold as she sat, and impervious, almost as if she had become
+stone. He waited a moment nervously. He would not persuade her. He
+himself never even heard persuasion, but pursued his own course. He
+looked at her, sure of himself, unsure of her, and said:
+
+“Will you become my wife, Mary?”
+
+Still her heart was hard and cold. She sat proudly.
+
+“I should like to speak to mama first,” she said.
+
+“Very well,” replied Mr Massy. And in a moment he padded away.
+
+Mary went to her mother. She was cold and reserved.
+
+“Mr Massy has asked me to marry him, mama,” she said. Mrs Lindley went
+on staring at her book. She was cramped in her feeling.
+
+“Well, and what did you say?”
+
+They were both keeping calm and cold.
+
+“I said I would speak to you before answering him.”
+
+This was equivalent to a question. Mrs Lindley did not want to reply to
+it. She shifted her heavy form irritably on the couch. Miss Mary sat
+calm and straight, with closed mouth.
+
+“Your father thinks it would not be a bad match,” said the mother, as
+if casually.
+
+Nothing more was said. Everybody remained cold and shut-off. Miss Mary
+did not speak to Miss Louisa, the Reverend Ernest Lindley kept out of
+sight.
+
+At evening Miss Mary accepted Mr Massy.
+
+“Yes, I will marry you,” she said, with even a little movement of
+tenderness towards him. He was embarrassed, but satisfied. She could
+see him making some movement towards her, could feel the male in him,
+something cold and triumphant, asserting itself. She sat rigid, and
+waited.
+
+When Miss Louisa knew, she was silent with bitter anger against
+everybody, even against Mary. She felt her faith wounded. Did the real
+things to her not matter after all? She wanted to get away. She thought
+of Mr Massy. He had some curious power, some unanswerable right. He was
+a will that they could not controvert.—Suddenly a flush started in her.
+If he had come to her she would have flipped him out of the room. He
+was never going to touch _her_. And she was glad. She was glad that her
+blood would rise and exterminate the little man, if he came too near to
+her, no matter how her judgment was paralysed by him, no matter how he
+moved in abstract goodness. She thought she was perverse to be glad,
+but glad she was. “I would just flip him out of the room,” she said,
+and she derived great satisfaction from the open statement.
+Nevertheless, perhaps she ought still to feel that Mary, on her plane,
+was a higher being than herself. But then Mary was Mary, and she was
+Louisa, and that also was inalterable.
+
+Mary, in marrying him, tried to become a pure reason such as he was,
+without feeling or impulse. She shut herself up, she shut herself rigid
+against the agonies of shame and the terror of violation which came at
+first. She _would_ not feel, and she _would_ not feel. She was a pure
+will acquiescing to him. She elected a certain kind of fate. She would
+be good and purely just, she would live in a higher freedom than she
+had ever known, she would be free of mundane care, she was a pure will
+towards right. She had sold herself, but she had a new freedom. She had
+got rid of her body. She had sold a lower thing, her body, for a higher
+thing, her freedom from material things. She considered that she paid
+for all she got from her husband. So, in a kind of independence, she
+moved proud and free. She had paid with her body: that was henceforward
+out of consideration. She was glad to be rid of it. She had bought her
+position in the world—that henceforth was taken for granted. There
+remained only the direction of her activity towards charity and
+high-minded living.
+
+She could scarcely bear other people to be present with her and her
+husband. Her private life was her shame. But then, she could keep it
+hidden. She lived almost isolated in the rectory of the tiny village
+miles from the railway. She suffered as if it were an insult to her own
+flesh, seeing the repulsion which some people felt for her husband, or
+the special manner they had of treating him, as if he were a “case”.
+But most people were uneasy before him, which restored her pride.
+
+If she had let herself, she would have hated him, hated his padding
+round the house, his thin voice devoid of human understanding, his bent
+little shoulders and rather incomplete face that reminded her of an
+abortion. But rigorously she kept to her position. She took care of him
+and was just to him. There was also a deep craven fear of him,
+something slave-like.
+
+There was not much fault to be found with his behaviour. He was
+scrupulously just and kind according to his lights. But the male in him
+was cold and self-complete, and utterly domineering. Weak, insufficient
+little thing as he was, she had not expected this of him. It was
+something in the bargain she had not understood. It made her hold her
+head, to keep still. She knew, vaguely, that she was murdering herself.
+After all, her body was not quite so easy to get rid of. And this
+manner of disposing of it—ah, sometimes she felt she must rise and
+bring about death, lift her hand for utter denial of everything, by a
+general destruction.
+
+He was almost unaware of the conditions about him. He did not fuss in
+the domestic way, she did as she liked in the house. Indeed, she was a
+great deal free of him. He would sit obliterated for hours. He was
+kind, and almost anxiously considerate. But when he considered he was
+right, his will was just blindly male, like a cold machine. And on most
+points he was logically right, or he had with him the right of the
+creed they both accepted. It was so. There was nothing for her to go
+against.
+
+Then she found herself with child, and felt for the first time horror,
+afraid before God and man. This also she had to go through—it was the
+right. When the child arrived, it was a bonny, healthy lad. Her heart
+hurt in her body, as she took the baby between her hands. The flesh
+that was trampled and silent in her must speak again in the boy. After
+all, she had to live—it was not so simple after all. Nothing was
+finished completely. She looked and looked at the baby, and almost
+hated it, and suffered an anguish of love for it. She hated it because
+it made her live again in the flesh, when she _could_ not live in the
+flesh, she could not. She wanted to trample her flesh down, down,
+extinct, to live in the mind. And now there was this child. It was too
+cruel, too racking. For she must love the child. Her purpose was broken
+in two again. She had to become amorphous, purposeless, without real
+being. As a mother, she was a fragmentary, ignoble thing.
+
+Mr Massy, blind to everything else in the way of human feeling, became
+obsessed by the idea of his child. When it arrived, suddenly it filled
+the whole world of feeling for him. It was his obsession, his terror
+was for its safety and well-being. It was something new, as if he
+himself had been born a naked infant, conscious of his own exposure,
+and full of apprehension. He who had never been aware of anyone else,
+all his life, now was aware of nothing but the child. Not that he ever
+played with it, or kissed it, or tended it. He did nothing for it. But
+it dominated him, it filled, and at the same time emptied his mind. The
+world was all baby for him.
+
+This his wife must also bear, his question: “What is the reason that he
+cries?”—his reminder, at the first sound: “Mary, that is the
+child,”—his restlessness if the feeding-time were five minutes past.
+She had bargained for this—now she must stand by her bargain.
+
+VI
+
+Miss Louisa, at home in the dingy vicarage, had suffered a great deal
+over her sister’s wedding. Having once begun to cry out against it,
+during the engagement, she had been silenced by Mary’s quiet: “I don’t
+agree with you about him, Louisa, I _want_ to marry him.” Then Miss
+Louisa had been angry deep in her heart, and therefore silent. This
+dangerous state started the change in her. Her own revulsion made her
+recoil from the hitherto undoubted Mary.
+
+“I’d beg the streets barefoot first,” said Miss Louisa, thinking of Mr
+Massy.
+
+But evidently Mary could perform a different heroism. So she, Louisa
+the practical, suddenly felt that Mary, her ideal, was questionable
+after all. How could she be pure—one cannot be dirty in act and
+spiritual in being. Louisa distrusted Mary’s high spirituality. It was
+no longer genuine for her. And if Mary were spiritual and misguided,
+why did not her father protect her? Because of the money. He disliked
+the whole affair, but he backed away, because of the money. And the
+mother frankly did not care: her daughters could do as they liked. Her
+mother’s pronouncement:
+
+“Whatever happens to _him_, Mary is safe for life,”—so evidently and
+shallowly a calculation, incensed Louisa.
+
+“I’d rather be safe in the workhouse,” she cried.
+
+“Your father will see to that,” replied her mother brutally. This
+speech, in its indirectness, so injured Miss Louisa that she hated her
+mother deep, deep in her heart, and almost hated herself. It was a long
+time resolving itself out, this hate. But it worked and worked, and at
+last the young woman said:
+
+“They are wrong—they are all wrong. They have ground out their souls
+for what isn’t worth anything, and there isn’t a grain of love in them
+anywhere. And I _will_ have love. They want us to deny it. They’ve
+never found it, so they want to say it doesn’t exist. But I _will_ have
+it. I _will_ love—it is my birthright. I will love the man I marry—that
+is all I care about.”
+
+So Miss Louisa stood isolated from everybody. She and Mary had parted
+over Mr Massy. In Louisa’s eyes, Mary was degraded, married to Mr
+Massy. She could not bear to think of her lofty, spiritual sister
+degraded in the body like this. Mary was wrong, wrong, wrong: she was
+not superior, she was flawed, incomplete. The two sisters stood apart.
+They still loved each other, they would love each other as long as they
+lived. But they had parted ways. A new solitariness came over the
+obstinate Louisa, and her heavy jaw set stubbornly. She was going on
+her own way. But which way? She was quite alone, with a blank world
+before her. How could she be said to have any way? Yet she had her
+fixed will to love, to have the man she loved.
+
+VII
+
+When her boy was three years old, Mary had another baby, a girl. The
+three years had gone by monotonously. They might have been an eternity,
+they might have been brief as a sleep. She did not know. Only, there
+was always a weight on top of her, something that pressed down her
+life. The only thing that had happened was that Mr Massy had had an
+operation. He was always exceedingly fragile. His wife had soon learned
+to attend to him mechanically, as part of her duty.
+
+But this third year, after the baby girl had been born, Mary felt
+oppressed and depressed. Christmas drew near: the gloomy, unleavened
+Christmas of the rectory, where all the days were of the same dark
+fabric. And Mary was afraid. It was as if the darkness were coming upon
+her.
+
+“Edward, I should like to go home for Christmas,” she said, and a
+certain terror filled her as she spoke.
+
+“But you can’t leave baby,” said her husband, blinking.
+
+“We can all go.”
+
+He thought, and stared in his collective fashion.
+
+“Why do you wish to go?” he asked.
+
+“Because I need a change. A change would do me good, and it would be
+good for the milk.”
+
+He heard the will in his wife’s voice, and was at a loss. Her language
+was unintelligible to him. And while she was breeding, either about to
+have a child, or nursing, he regarded her as a special sort of being.
+
+“Wouldn’t it hurt baby to take her by the train?” he said.
+
+“No,” replied the mother, “why should it?”
+
+They went. When they were in the train, it began to snow. From the
+window of his first-class carriage the little clergyman watched the big
+flakes sweep by, like a blind drawn across the country. He was obsessed
+by thought of the baby, and afraid of the draughts of the carriage.
+
+“Sit right in the corner,” he said to his wife, “and hold baby close
+back.”
+
+She moved at his bidding, and stared out of the window. His eternal
+presence was like an iron weight on her brain. But she was going
+partially to escape for a few days.
+
+“Sit on the other side, Jack,” said the father. “It is less draughty.
+Come to this window.”
+
+He watched the boy in anxiety. But his children were the only beings in
+the world who took not the slightest notice of him.
+
+“Look, mother, look!” cried the boy. “They fly right in my face”—he
+meant the snowflakes.
+
+“Come into this corner,” repeated his father, out of another world.
+
+“He’s jumped on this one’s back, mother, an’ they’re riding to the
+bottom!” cried the boy, jumping with glee.
+
+“Tell him to come on this side,” the little man bade his wife.
+
+“Jack, kneel on this cushion,” said the mother, putting her white hand
+on the place.
+
+The boy slid over in silence to the place she indicated, waited still
+for a moment, then almost deliberately, stridently cried:
+
+“Look at all those in the corner, mother, making a heap,” and he
+pointed to the cluster of snowflakes with finger pressed dramatically
+on the pane, and he turned to his mother a bit ostentatiously.
+
+“All in a heap!” she said.
+
+He had seen her face, and had her response, and he was somewhat
+assured. Vaguely uneasy, he was reassured if he could win her
+attention.
+
+They arrived at the vicarage at half-past two, not having had lunch.
+
+“How are you, Edward?” said Mr Lindley, trying on his side to be
+fatherly. But he was always in a false position with his son-in-law,
+frustrated before him, therefore, as much as possible, he shut his eyes
+and ears to him. The vicar was looking thin and pale and ill-nourished.
+He had gone quite grey. He was, however, still haughty; but, since the
+growing-up of his children, it was a brittle haughtiness, that might
+break at any moment and leave the vicar only an impoverished, pitiable
+figure. Mrs Lindley took all the notice of her daughter, and of the
+children. She ignored her son-in-law. Miss Louisa was clucking and
+laughing and rejoicing over the baby. Mr Massy stood aside, a bent,
+persistent little figure.
+
+“Oh a pretty!—a little pretty! oh a cold little pretty come in a
+railway-train!” Miss Louisa was cooing to the infant, crouching on the
+hearthrug opening the white woollen wraps and exposing the child to the
+fireglow.
+
+“Mary,” said the little clergyman, “I think it would be better to give
+baby a warm bath; she may take a cold.”
+
+“I think it is not necessary,” said the mother, coming and closing her
+hand judiciously over the rosy feet and hands of the mite. “She is not
+chilly.”
+
+“Not a bit,” cried Miss Louisa. “She’s not caught cold.”
+
+“I’ll go and bring her flannels,” said Mr Massy, with one idea.
+
+“I can bath her in the kitchen then,” said Mary, in an altered, cold
+tone.
+
+“You can’t, the girl is scrubbing there,” said Miss Louisa. “Besides,
+she doesn’t want a bath at this time of day.”
+
+“She’d better have one,” said Mary, quietly, out of submission. Miss
+Louisa’s gorge rose, and she was silent. When the little man padded
+down with the flannels on his arm, Mrs Lindley asked:
+
+“Hadn’t _you_ better take a hot bath, Edward?”
+
+But the sarcasm was lost on the little clergyman. He was absorbed in
+the preparations round the baby.
+
+The room was dull and threadbare, and the snow outside seemed
+fairy-like by comparison, so white on the lawn and tufted on the
+bushes. Indoors the heavy pictures hung obscurely on the walls,
+everything was dingy with gloom.
+
+Except in the fireglow, where they had laid the bath on the hearth. Mrs
+Massy, her black hair always smoothly coiled and queenly, kneeled by
+the bath, wearing a rubber apron, and holding the kicking child. Her
+husband stood holding the towels and the flannels to warm. Louisa, too
+cross to share in the joy of the baby’s bath, was laying the table. The
+boy was hanging on the door-knob, wrestling with it to get out. His
+father looked round.
+
+“Come away from the door, Jack,” he said, ineffectually. Jack tugged
+harder at the knob as if he did not hear. Mr Massy blinked at him.
+
+“He must come away from the door, Mary,” he said. “There will be a
+draught if it is opened.”
+
+“Jack, come away from the door, dear,” said the mother, dexterously
+turning the shiny wet baby on to her towelled knee, then glancing
+round: “Go and tell Auntie Louisa about the train.”
+
+Louisa, also afraid to open the door, was watching the scene on the
+hearth. Mr Massy stood holding the baby’s flannel, as if assisting at
+some ceremonial. If everybody had not been subduedly angry, it would
+have been ridiculous.
+
+“I want to see out of the window,” Jack said. His father turned
+hastily.
+
+“Do _you_ mind lifting him on to a chair, Louisa,” said Mary hastily.
+The father was too delicate.
+
+When the baby was flannelled, Mr Massy went upstairs and returned with
+four pillows, which he set in the fender to warm. Then he stood
+watching the mother feed her child, obsessed by the idea of his infant.
+
+Louisa went on with her preparations for the meal. She could not have
+told why she was so sullenly angry. Mrs Lindley, as usual, lay silently
+watching.
+
+Mary carried her child upstairs, followed by her husband with the
+pillows. After a while he came down again.
+
+“What is Mary doing? Why doesn’t she come down to eat?” asked Mrs
+Lindley.
+
+“She is staying with baby. The room is rather cold. I will ask the girl
+to put in a fire.” He was going absorbedly to the door.
+
+“But Mary has had nothing to eat. It is _she_ who will catch cold,”
+said the mother, exasperated.
+
+Mr Massy seemed as if he did not hear. Yet he looked at his
+mother-in-law, and answered:
+
+“I will take her something.”
+
+He went out. Mrs Lindley shifted on her couch with anger. Miss Louisa
+glowered. But no one said anything, because of the money that came to
+the vicarage from Mr Massy.
+
+Louisa went upstairs. Her sister was sitting by the bed, reading a
+scrap of paper.
+
+“Won’t you come down and eat?” the younger asked.
+
+“In a moment or two,” Mary replied, in a quiet, reserved voice, that
+forbade anyone to approach her.
+
+It was this that made Miss Louisa most furious. She went downstairs,
+and announced to her mother:
+
+“I am going out. I may not be home to tea.”
+
+VIII
+
+No one remarked on her exit. She put on her fur hat, that the village
+people knew so well, and the old Norfolk jacket. Louisa was short and
+plump and plain. She had her mother’s heavy jaw, her father’s proud
+brow, and her own grey, brooding eyes that were very beautiful when she
+smiled. It was true, as the people said, that she looked sulky. Her
+chief attraction was her glistening, heavy, deep-blond hair, which
+shone and gleamed with a richness that was not entirely foreign to her.
+
+“Where am I going?” she said to herself, when she got outside in the
+snow. She did not hesitate, however, but by mechanical walking found
+herself descending the hill towards Old Aldecross. In the valley that
+was black with trees, the colliery breathed in stertorous pants,
+sending out high conical columns of steam that remained upright, whiter
+than the snow on the hills, yet shadowy, in the dead air. Louisa would
+not acknowledge to herself whither she was making her way, till she
+came to the railway crossing. Then the bunches of snow in the twigs of
+the apple tree that leaned towards the fence told her she must go and
+see Mrs Durant. The tree was in Mrs Durant’s garden.
+
+Alfred was now at home again, living with his mother in the cottage
+below the road. From the highway hedge, by the railway crossing, the
+snowy garden sheered down steeply, like the side of a hole, then
+dropped straight in a wall. In this depth the house was snug, its
+chimney just level with the road. Miss Louisa descended the stone
+stairs, and stood below in the little backyard, in the dimness and the
+semi-secrecy. A big tree leaned overhead, above the paraffin hut.
+Louisa felt secure from all the world down there. She knocked at the
+open door, then looked round. The tongue of garden narrowing in from
+the quarry bed was white with snow: she thought of the thick fringes of
+snowdrops it would show beneath the currant bushes in a month’s time.
+The ragged fringe of pinks hanging over the garden brim behind her was
+whitened now with snow-flakes, that in summer held white blossom to
+Louisa’s face. It was pleasant, she thought, to gather flowers that
+stooped to one’s face from above.
+
+She knocked again. Peeping in, she saw the scarlet glow of the kitchen,
+red firelight falling on the brick floor and on the bright chintz
+cushions. It was alive and bright as a peep-show. She crossed the
+scullery, where still an almanac hung. There was no one about. “Mrs
+Durant,” called Louisa softly, “Mrs Durant.”
+
+She went up the brick step into the front room, that still had its
+little shop counter and its bundles of goods, and she called from the
+stair-foot. Then she knew Mrs Durant was out.
+
+She went into the yard to follow the old woman’s footsteps up the
+garden path.
+
+She emerged from the bushes and raspberry canes. There was the whole
+quarry bed, a wide garden white and dimmed, brindled with dark bushes,
+lying half submerged. On the left, overhead, the little colliery train
+rumbled by. Right away at the back was a mass of trees.
+
+Louisa followed the open path, looking from right to left, and then she
+gave a cry of concern. The old woman was sitting rocking slightly among
+the ragged snowy cabbages. Louisa ran to her, found her whimpering with
+little, involuntary cries.
+
+“Whatever have you done?” cried Louisa, kneeling in the snow.
+
+“I’ve—I’ve—I was pulling a brussel-sprout stalk—and—oh-h!—something
+tore inside me. I’ve had a pain,” the old woman wept from shock and
+suffering, gasping between her whimpers—“I’ve had a pain there—a long
+time—and now—oh—oh!” She panted, pressed her hand on her side, leaned
+as if she would faint, looking yellow against the snow. Louisa
+supported her.
+
+“Do you think you could walk now?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” gasped the old woman.
+
+Louisa helped her to her feet.
+
+“Get the cabbage—I want it for Alfred’s dinner,” panted Mrs Durant.
+Louisa picked up the stalk of brussel-sprouts, and with difficulty got
+the old woman indoors. She gave her brandy, laid her on the couch,
+saying:
+
+“I’m going to send for a doctor—wait just a minute.”
+
+The young woman ran up the steps to the public-house a few yards away.
+The landlady was astonished to see Miss Louisa.
+
+“Will you send for a doctor at once to Mrs Durant,” she said, with some
+of her father in her commanding tone.
+
+“Is something the matter?” fluttered the landlady in concern.
+
+Louisa, glancing out up the road, saw the grocer’s cart driving to
+Eastwood. She ran and stopped the man, and told him.
+
+Mrs Durant lay on the sofa, her face turned away, when the young woman
+came back.
+
+“Let me put you to bed,” Louisa said. Mrs Durant did not resist.
+
+Louisa knew the ways of the working people. In the bottom drawer of the
+dresser she found dusters and flannels. With the old pit-flannel she
+snatched out the oven shelves, wrapped them up, and put them in the
+bed. From the son’s bed she took a blanket, and, running down, set it
+before the fire. Having undressed the little old woman, Louisa carried
+her upstairs.
+
+“You’ll drop me, you’ll drop me!” cried Mrs Durant.
+
+Louisa did not answer, but bore her burden quickly. She could not light
+a fire, because there was no fire-place in the bedroom. And the floor
+was plaster. So she fetched the lamp, and stood it lighted in one
+corner.
+
+“It will air the room,” she said.
+
+“Yes,” moaned the old woman.
+
+Louisa ran with more hot flannels, replacing those from the oven
+shelves. Then she made a bran-bag and laid it on the woman’s side.
+There was a big lump on the side of the abdomen.
+
+“I’ve felt it coming a long time,” moaned the old lady, when the pain
+was easier, “but I’ve not said anything; I didn’t want to upset our
+Alfred.”
+
+Louisa did not see why “our Alfred” should be spared.
+
+“What time is it?” came the plaintive voice.
+
+“A quarter to four.”
+
+“Oh!” wailed the old lady, “he’ll be here in half an hour, and no
+dinner ready for him.”
+
+“Let me do it?” said Louisa, gently.
+
+“There’s that cabbage—and you’ll find the meat in the pantry—and
+there’s an apple pie you can hot up. But _don’t you_ do it——!”
+
+“Who will, then?” asked Louisa.
+
+“I don’t know,” moaned the sick woman, unable to consider.
+
+Louisa did it. The doctor came and gave serious examination. He looked
+very grave.
+
+“What is it, doctor?” asked the old lady, looking up at him with old,
+pathetic eyes in which already hope was dead.
+
+“I think you’ve torn the skin in which a tumour hangs,” he replied.
+
+“Ay!” she murmured, and she turned away.
+
+“You see, she may die any minute—and it _may_ be swaled away,” said the
+old doctor to Louisa.
+
+The young woman went upstairs again.
+
+“He says the lump may be swaled away, and you may get quite well
+again,” she said.
+
+“Ay!” murmured the old lady. It did not deceive her. Presently she
+asked:
+
+“Is there a good fire?”
+
+“I think so,” answered Louisa.
+
+“He’ll want a good fire,” the mother said. Louisa attended to it.
+
+Since the death of Durant, the widow had come to church occasionally,
+and Louisa had been friendly to her. In the girl’s heart the purpose
+was fixed. No man had affected her as Alfred Durant had done, and to
+that she kept. In her heart, she adhered to him. A natural sympathy
+existed between her and his rather hard, materialistic mother.
+
+Alfred was the most lovable of the old woman’s sons. He had grown up
+like the rest, however, headstrong and blind to everything but his own
+will. Like the other boys, he had insisted on going into the pit as
+soon as he left school, because that was the only way speedily to
+become a man, level with all the other men. This was a great chagrin to
+his mother, who would have liked to have this last of her sons a
+gentleman.
+
+But still he remained constant to her. His feeling for her was deep and
+unexpressed. He noticed when she was tired, or when she had a new cap.
+And he bought little things for her occasionally. She was not wise
+enough to see how much he lived by her.
+
+At the bottom he did not satisfy her, he did not seem manly enough. He
+liked to read books occasionally, and better still he liked to play the
+piccolo. It amused her to see his head nod over the instrument as he
+made an effort to get the right note. It made her fond of him, with
+tenderness, almost pity, but not with respect. She wanted a man to be
+fixed, going his own way without knowledge of women. Whereas she knew
+Alfred depended on her. He sang in the choir because he liked singing.
+In the summer he worked in the garden, attended to the fowls and pigs.
+He kept pigeons. He played on Saturday in the cricket or football team.
+But to her he did not seem the man, the independent man her other boys
+had been. He was her baby—and whilst she loved him for it, she was a
+little bit contemptuous of him.
+
+There grew up a little hostility between them. Then he began to drink,
+as the others had done; but not in their blind, oblivious way. He was a
+little self-conscious over it. She saw this, and she pitied it in him.
+She loved him most, but she was not satisfied with him because he was
+not free of her. He could not quite go his own way.
+
+Then at twenty he ran away and served his time in the Navy. This made a
+man of him. He had hated it bitterly, the service, the subordination.
+For years he fought with himself under the military discipline, for his
+own self-respect, struggling through blind anger and shame and a
+cramping sense of inferiority. Out of humiliation and self-hatred, he
+rose into a sort of inner freedom. And his love for his mother, whom he
+idealised, remained the fact of hope and of belief.
+
+He came home again, nearly thirty years old, but naïve and
+inexperienced as a boy, only with a silence about him that was new: a
+sort of dumb humility before life, a fear of living. He was almost
+quite chaste. A strong sensitiveness had kept him from women. Sexual
+talk was all very well among men, but somehow it had no application to
+living women. There were two things for him, the _idea_ of women, with
+which he sometimes debauched himself, and real women, before whom he
+felt a deep uneasiness, and a need to draw away. He shrank and defended
+himself from the approach of any woman. And then he felt ashamed. In
+his innermost soul he felt he was not a man, he was less than the
+normal man. In Genoa he went with an under officer to a drinking house
+where the cheaper sort of girl came in to look for lovers. He sat there
+with his glass, the girls looked at him, but they never came to him. He
+knew that if they did come he could only pay for food and drink for
+them, because he felt a pity for them, and was anxious lest they lacked
+good necessities. He could not have gone with one of them: he knew it,
+and was ashamed, looking with curious envy at the swaggering,
+easy-passionate Italian whose body went to a woman by instinctive
+impersonal attraction. They were men, he was not a man. He sat feeling
+short, feeling like a leper. And he went away imagining sexual scenes
+between himself and a woman, walking wrapt in this indulgence. But when
+the ready woman presented herself, the very fact that she was a
+palpable woman made it impossible for him to touch her. And this
+incapacity was like a core of rottenness in him.
+
+So several times he went, drunk, with his companions, to the licensed
+prostitute houses abroad. But the sordid insignificance of the
+experience appalled him. It had not been anything really: it meant
+nothing. He felt as if he were, not physically, but spiritually
+impotent: not actually impotent, but intrinsically so.
+
+He came home with this secret, never changing burden of his unknown,
+unbestowed self torturing him. His navy training left him in perfect
+physical condition. He was sensible of, and proud of his body. He
+bathed and used dumb-bells, and kept himself fit. He played cricket and
+football. He read books and began to hold fixed ideas which he got from
+the Fabians. He played his piccolo, and was considered an expert. But
+at the bottom of his soul was always this canker of shame and
+incompleteness: he was miserable beneath all his healthy cheerfulness,
+he was uneasy and felt despicable among all his confidence and
+superiority of ideas. He would have changed with any mere brute, just
+to be free of himself, to be free of this shame of self-consciousness.
+He saw some collier lurching straight forward without misgiving,
+pursuing his own satisfactions, and he envied him. Anything, he would
+have given anything for this spontaneity and this blind stupidity which
+went to its own satisfaction direct.
+
+IX
+
+He was not unhappy in the pit. He was admired by the men, and well
+enough liked. It was only he himself who felt the difference between
+himself and the others. He seemed to hide his own stigma. But he was
+never sure that the others did not really despise him for a ninny, as
+being less a man than they were. Only he pretended to be more manly,
+and was surprised by the ease with which they were deceived. And, being
+naturally cheerful, he was happy at his work. He was sure of himself
+there. Naked to the waist, hot and grimy with labour, they squatted on
+their heels for a few minutes and talked, seeing each other dimly by
+the light of the safety lamps, while the black coal rose jutting round
+them, and the props of wood stood like little pillars in the low,
+black, very dark temple. Then the pony came and the gang-lad with a
+message from Number 7, or with a bottle of water from the horse-trough
+or some news of the world above. The day passed pleasantly enough.
+There was an ease, a go-as-you-please about the day underground, a
+delightful camaraderie of men shut off alone from the rest of the
+world, in a dangerous place, and a variety of labour, holing, loading,
+timbering, and a glamour of mystery and adventure in the atmosphere,
+that made the pit not unattractive to him when he had again got over
+his anguish of desire for the open air and the sea.
+
+This day there was much to do and Durant was not in humour to talk. He
+went on working in silence through the afternoon.
+
+“Loose-all” came, and they tramped to the bottom. The whitewashed
+underground office shone brightly. Men were putting out their lamps.
+They sat in dozens round the bottom of the shaft, down which black,
+heavy drops of water fell continuously into the sump. The electric
+lights shone away down the main underground road.
+
+“Is it raining?” asked Durant.
+
+“Snowing,” said an old man, and the younger was pleased. He liked to go
+up when it was snowing.
+
+“It’ll just come right for Christmas,” said the old man.
+
+“Ay,” replied Durant.
+
+“A green Christmas, a fat churchyard,” said the other sententiously.
+
+Durant laughed, showing his small, rather pointed teeth.
+
+The cage came down, a dozen men lined on. Durant noticed tufts of snow
+on the perforated, arched roof of the chain, and he was pleased.
+
+He wondered how it liked its excursion underground. But already it was
+getting soppy with black water.
+
+He liked things about him. There was a little smile on his face. But
+underlying it was the curious consciousness he felt in himself.
+
+The upper world came almost with a flash, because of the glimmer of
+snow. Hurrying along the bank, giving up his lamp at the office, he
+smiled to feel the open about him again, all glimmering round him with
+snow. The hills on either side were pale blue in the dusk, and the
+hedges looked savage and dark. The snow was trampled between the
+railway lines. But far ahead, beyond the black figures of miners moving
+home, it became smooth again, spreading right up to the dark wall of
+the coppice.
+
+To the west there was a pinkness, and a big star hovered half revealed.
+Below, the lights of the pit came out crisp and yellow among the
+darkness of the buildings, and the lights of Old Aldecross twinkled in
+rows down the bluish twilight.
+
+Durant walked glad with life among the miners, who were all talking
+animatedly because of the snow. He liked their company, he liked the
+white dusky world. It gave him a little thrill to stop at the garden
+gate and see the light of home down below, shining on the silent blue
+snow.
+
+X
+
+By the big gate of the railway, in the fence, was a little gate, that
+he kept locked. As he unfastened it, he watched the kitchen light that
+shone on to the bushes and the snow outside. It was a candle burning
+till night set in, he thought to himself. He slid down the steep path
+to the level below. He liked making the first marks in the smooth snow.
+Then he came through the bushes to the house. The two women heard his
+heavy boots ring outside on the scraper, and his voice as he opened the
+door:
+
+“How much worth of oil do you reckon to save by that candle, mother?”
+He liked a good light from the lamp.
+
+He had just put down his bottle and snap-bag and was hanging his coat
+behind the scullery door, when Miss Louisa came upon him. He was
+startled, but he smiled.
+
+His eyes began to laugh—then his face went suddenly straight, and he
+was afraid.
+
+“Your mother’s had an accident,” she said.
+
+“How?” he exclaimed.
+
+“In the garden,” she answered. He hesitated with his coat in his hands.
+Then he hung it up and turned to the kitchen.
+
+“Is she in bed?” he asked.
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Louisa, who found it hard to deceive him. He was
+silent. He went into the kitchen, sat down heavily in his father’s old
+chair, and began to pull off his boots. His head was small, rather
+finely shapen. His brown hair, close and crisp, would look jolly
+whatever happened. He wore heavy moleskin trousers that gave off the
+stale, exhausted scent of the pit. Having put on his slippers, he
+carried his boots into the scullery.
+
+“What is it?” he asked, afraid.
+
+“Something internal,” she replied.
+
+He went upstairs. His mother kept herself calm for his coming. Louisa
+felt his tread shake the plaster floor of the bedroom above.
+
+“What have you done?” he asked.
+
+“It’s nothing, my lad,” said the old woman, rather hard. “It’s nothing.
+You needn’t fret, my boy, it’s nothing more the matter with me than I
+had yesterday, or last week. The doctor said I’d done nothing serious.”
+
+“What were you doing?” asked her son.
+
+“I was pulling up a cabbage, and I suppose I pulled too hard; for,
+oh—there was such a pain——”
+
+Her son looked at her quickly. She hardened herself.
+
+“But who doesn’t have a sudden pain sometimes, my boy. We all do.”
+
+“And what’s it done?”
+
+“I don’t know,” she said, “but I don’t suppose it’s anything.”
+
+The big lamp in the corner was screened with a dark green, so that he
+could scarcely see her face. He was strung tight with apprehension and
+many emotions. Then his brow knitted.
+
+“What did you go pulling your inside out at cabbages for,” he asked,
+“and the ground frozen? You’d go on dragging and dragging, if you
+killed yourself.”
+
+“Somebody’s got to get them,” she said.
+
+“You needn’t do yourself harm.”
+
+But they had reached futility.
+
+Miss Louisa could hear plainly downstairs. Her heart sank. It seemed so
+hopeless between them.
+
+“Are you sure it’s nothing much, mother?” he asked, appealing, after a
+little silence.
+
+“Ay, it’s nothing,” said the old woman, rather bitter.
+
+“I don’t want you to—to—to be badly—you know.”
+
+“Go an’ get your dinner,” she said. She knew she was going to die:
+moreover, the pain was torture just then. “They’re only cosseting me up
+a bit because I’m an old woman. Miss Louisa’s _very_ good—and she’ll
+have got your dinner ready, so you’d better go and eat it.”
+
+He felt stupid and ashamed. His mother put him off. He had to turn
+away. The pain burned in his bowels. He went downstairs. The mother was
+glad he was gone, so that she could moan with pain.
+
+He had resumed the old habit of eating before he washed himself. Miss
+Louisa served his dinner. It was strange and exciting to her. She was
+strung up tense, trying to understand him and his mother. She watched
+him as he sat. He was turned away from his food, looking in the fire.
+Her soul watched him, trying to see what he was. His black face and
+arms were uncouth, he was foreign. His face was masked black with
+coal-dust. She could not see him, she could not even know him. The
+brown eyebrows, the steady eyes, the coarse, small moustache above the
+closed mouth—these were the only familiar indications. What was he, as
+he sat there in his pit-dirt? She could not see him, and it hurt her.
+
+She ran upstairs, presently coming down with the flannels and the
+bran-bag, to heat them, because the pain was on again.
+
+He was half-way through his dinner. He put down the fork, suddenly
+nauseated.
+
+“They will soothe the wrench,” she said. He watched, useless and left
+out.
+
+“Is she bad?” he asked.
+
+“I think she is,” she answered.
+
+It was useless for him to stir or comment. Louisa was busy. She went
+upstairs. The poor old woman was in a white, cold sweat of pain.
+Louisa’s face was sullen with suffering as she went about to relieve
+her. Then she sat and waited. The pain passed gradually, the old woman
+sank into a state of coma. Louisa still sat silent by the bed. She
+heard the sound of water downstairs. Then came the voice of the old
+mother, faint but unrelaxing:
+
+“Alfred’s washing himself—he’ll want his back washing——”
+
+Louisa listened anxiously, wondering what the sick woman wanted.
+
+“He can’t bear if his back isn’t washed——” the old woman persisted, in
+a cruel attention to his needs. Louisa rose and wiped the sweat from
+the yellowish brow.
+
+“I will go down,” she said soothingly.
+
+“If you would,” murmured the sick woman.
+
+Louisa waited a moment. Mrs Durant closed her eyes, having discharged
+her duty. The young woman went downstairs. Herself, or the man, what
+did they matter? Only the suffering woman must be considered.
+
+Alfred was kneeling on the hearthrug, stripped to the waist, washing
+himself in a large panchion of earthenware. He did so every evening,
+when he had eaten his dinner; his brothers had done so before him. But
+Miss Louisa was strange in the house.
+
+He was mechanically rubbing the white lather on his head, with a
+repeated, unconscious movement, his hand every now and then passing
+over his neck. Louisa watched. She had to brace herself to this also.
+He bent his head into the water, washed it free of soap, and pressed
+the water out of his eyes.
+
+“Your mother said you would want your back washing,” she said.
+
+Curious how it hurt her to take part in their fixed routine of life!
+Louisa felt the almost repulsive intimacy being forced upon her. It was
+all so common, so like herding. She lost her own distinctness.
+
+He ducked his face round, looking up at her in what was a very comical
+way. She had to harden herself.
+
+“How funny he looks with his face upside down,” she thought. After all,
+there was a difference between her and the common people. The water in
+which his arms were plunged was quite black, the soap-froth was
+darkish. She could scarcely conceive him as human. Mechanically, under
+the influence of habit, he groped in the black water, fished out soap
+and flannel, and handed them backward to Louisa. Then he remained rigid
+and submissive, his two arms thrust straight in the panchion,
+supporting the weight of his shoulders. His skin was beautifully white
+and unblemished, of an opaque, solid whiteness. Gradually Louisa saw
+it: this also was what he was. It fascinated her. Her feeling of
+separateness passed away: she ceased to draw back from contact with him
+and his mother. There was this living centre. Her heart ran hot. She
+had reached some goal in this beautiful, clear, male body. She loved
+him in a white, impersonal heat. But the sun-burnt, reddish neck and
+ears: they were more personal, more curious. A tenderness rose in her,
+she loved even his queer ears. A person—an intimate being he was to
+her. She put down the towel and went upstairs again, troubled in her
+heart. She had only seen one human being in her life—and that was Mary.
+All the rest were strangers. Now her soul was going to open, she was
+going to see another. She felt strange and pregnant.
+
+“He’ll be more comfortable,” murmured the sick woman abstractedly, as
+Louisa entered the room. The latter did not answer. Her own heart was
+heavy with its own responsibility. Mrs Durant lay silent awhile, then
+she murmured plaintively:
+
+“You mustn’t mind, Miss Louisa.”
+
+“Why should I?” replied Louisa, deeply moved.
+
+“It’s what we’re used to,” said the old woman.
+
+And Louisa felt herself excluded again from their life. She sat in
+pain, with the tears of disappointment distilling her heart. Was that
+all?
+
+Alfred came upstairs. He was clean, and in his shirt-sleeves. He looked
+a workman now. Louisa felt that she and he were foreigners, moving in
+different lives. It dulled her again. Oh, if she could only find some
+fixed relations, something sure and abiding.
+
+“How do you feel?” he said to his mother.
+
+“It’s a bit better,” she replied wearily, impersonally. This strange
+putting herself aside, this abstracting herself and answering him only
+what she thought good for him to hear, made the relations between
+mother and son poignant and cramping to Miss Louisa. It made the man so
+ineffectual, so nothing. Louisa groped as if she had lost him. The
+mother was real and positive—he was not very actual. It puzzled and
+chilled the young woman.
+
+“I’d better fetch Mrs Harrison?” he said, waiting for his mother to
+decide.
+
+“I suppose we shall have to have somebody,” she replied.
+
+Miss Louisa stood by, afraid to interfere in their business. They did
+not include her in their lives, they felt she had nothing to do with
+them, except as a help from outside. She was quite external to them.
+She felt hurt and powerless against this unconscious difference. But
+something patient and unyielding in her made her say:
+
+“I will stay and do the nursing: you can’t be left.”
+
+The other two were shy, and at a loss for an answer.
+
+“Wes’ll manage to get somebody,” said the old woman wearily. She did
+not care very much what happened, now.
+
+“I will stay until tomorrow, in any case,” said Louisa. “Then we can
+see.”
+
+“I’m sure you’ve no right to trouble yourself,” moaned the old woman.
+But she must leave herself in any hands.
+
+Miss Louisa felt glad that she was admitted, even in an official
+capacity. She wanted to share their lives. At home they would need her,
+now Mary had come. But they must manage without her.
+
+“I must write a note to the vicarage,” she said.
+
+Alfred Durant looked at her inquiringly, for her service. He had always
+that intelligent readiness to serve, since he had been in the Navy. But
+there was a simple independence in his willingness, which she loved.
+She felt nevertheless it was hard to get at him. He was so deferential,
+quick to take the slightest suggestion of an order from her,
+implicitly, that she could not get at the man in him.
+
+He looked at her very keenly. She noticed his eyes were golden brown,
+with a very small pupil, the kind of eyes that can see a long way off.
+He stood alert, at military attention. His face was still rather
+weather-reddened.
+
+“Do you want pen and paper?” he asked, with deferential suggestion to a
+superior, which was more difficult for her than reserve.
+
+“Yes, please,” she said.
+
+He turned and went downstairs. He seemed to her so self-contained, so
+utterly sure in his movement. How was she to approach him? For he would
+take not one step towards her. He would only put himself entirely and
+impersonally at her service, glad to serve her, but keeping himself
+quite removed from her. She could see he felt real joy in doing
+anything for her, but any recognition would confuse him and hurt him.
+Strange it was to her, to have a man going about the house in his
+shirt-sleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his throat bare, waiting on
+her. He moved well, as if he had plenty of life to spare. She was
+attracted by his completeness. And yet, when all was ready, and there
+was nothing more for him to do, she quivered, meeting his questioning
+look.
+
+As she sat writing, he placed another candle near her. The rather dense
+light fell in two places on the overfoldings of her hair till it
+glistened heavy and bright, like a dense golden plumage folded up. Then
+the nape of her neck was very white, with fine down and pointed wisps
+of gold. He watched it as it were a vision, losing himself. She was all
+that was beyond him, of revelation and exquisiteness. All that was
+ideal and beyond him, she was that—and he was lost to himself in
+looking at her. She had no connection with him. He did not approach
+her. She was there like a wonderful distance. But it was a treat,
+having her in the house. Even with this anguish for his mother
+tightening about him, he was sensible of the wonder of living this
+evening. The candles glistened on her hair, and seemed to fascinate
+him. He felt a little awe of her, and a sense of uplifting, that he and
+she and his mother should be together for a time, in the strange,
+unknown atmosphere. And, when he got out of the house, he was afraid.
+He saw the stars above ringing with fine brightness, the snow beneath
+just visible, and a new night was gathering round him. He was afraid
+almost with obliteration. What was this new night ringing about him,
+and what was he? He could not recognize himself nor any of his
+surroundings. He was afraid to think of his mother. And yet his chest
+was conscious of her, and of what was happening to her. He could not
+escape from her, she carried him with her into an unformed, unknown
+chaos.
+
+XI
+
+He went up the road in an agony, not knowing what it was all about, but
+feeling as if a red-hot iron were gripped round his chest. Without
+thinking, he shook two or three tears on to the snow. Yet in his mind
+he did not believe his mother would die. He was in the grip of some
+greater consciousness. As he sat in the hall of the vicarage, waiting
+whilst Mary put things for Louisa into a bag, he wondered why he had
+been so upset. He felt abashed and humbled by the big house, he felt
+again as if he were one of the rank and file. When Miss Mary spoke to
+him, he almost saluted.
+
+“An honest man,” thought Mary. And the patronage was applied as salve
+to her own sickness. She had station, so she could patronize: it was
+almost all that was left to her. But she could not have lived without
+having a certain position. She could never have trusted herself outside
+a definite place, nor respected herself except as a woman of superior
+class.
+
+As Alfred came to the latch-gate, he felt the grief at his heart again,
+and saw the new heavens. He stood a moment looking northward to the
+Plough climbing up the night, and at the far glimmer of snow in distant
+fields. Then his grief came on like physical pain. He held tight to the
+gate, biting his mouth, whispering “Mother!” It was a fierce, cutting,
+physical pain of grief, that came on in bouts, as his mother’s pain
+came on in bouts, and was so acute he could scarcely keep erect. He did
+not know where it came from, the pain, nor why. It had nothing to do
+with his thoughts. Almost it had nothing to do with him. Only it
+gripped him and he must submit. The whole tide of his soul, gathering
+in its unknown towards this expansion into death, carried him with it
+helplessly, all the fritter of his thought and consciousness caught up
+as nothing, the heave passing on towards its breaking, taking him
+further than he had ever been. When the young man had regained himself,
+he went indoors, and there he was almost gay. It seemed to excite him.
+He felt in high spirits: he made whimsical fun of things. He sat on one
+side of his mother’s bed, Louisa on the other, and a certain gaiety
+seized them all. But the night and the dread was coming on.
+
+Alfred kissed his mother and went to bed. When he was half undressed
+the knowledge of his mother came upon him, and the suffering seized him
+in its grip like two hands, in agony. He lay on the bed screwed up
+tight. It lasted so long, and exhausted him so much, that he fell
+asleep, without having the energy to get up and finish undressing. He
+awoke after midnight to find himself stone cold. He undressed and got
+into bed, and was soon asleep again.
+
+At a quarter to six he woke, and instantly remembered. Having pulled on
+his trousers and lighted a candle, he went into his mother’s room. He
+put his hand before the candle flame so that no light fell on the bed.
+
+“Mother!” he whispered.
+
+“Yes,” was the reply.
+
+There was a hesitation.
+
+“Should I go to work?”
+
+He waited, his heart was beating heavily.
+
+“I think I’d go, my lad.”
+
+His heart went down in a kind of despair.
+
+“You want me to?”
+
+He let his hand down from the candle flame. The light fell on the bed.
+There he saw Louisa lying looking up at him. Her eyes were upon him.
+She quickly shut her eyes and half buried her face in the pillow, her
+back turned to him. He saw the rough hair like bright vapour about her
+round head, and the two plaits flung coiled among the bedclothes. It
+gave him a shock. He stood almost himself, determined. Louisa cowered
+down. He looked, and met his mother’s eyes. Then he gave way again, and
+ceased to be sure, ceased to be himself.
+
+“Yes, go to work, my boy,” said the mother.
+
+“All right,” replied he, kissing her. His heart was down at despair,
+and bitter. He went away.
+
+“Alfred!” cried his mother faintly.
+
+He came back with beating heart.
+
+“What, mother?”
+
+“You’ll always do what’s right, Alfred?” the mother asked, beside
+herself in terror now he was leaving her. He was too terrified and
+bewildered to know what she meant.
+
+“Yes,” he said.
+
+She turned her cheek to him. He kissed her, then went away, in bitter
+despair. He went to work.
+
+XII
+
+By midday his mother was dead. The word met him at the pit-mouth. As he
+had known, inwardly, it was not a shock to him, and yet he trembled. He
+went home quite calmly, feeling only heavy in his breathing.
+
+Miss Louisa was still at the house. She had seen to everything
+possible. Very succinctly, she informed him of what he needed to know.
+But there was one point of anxiety for her.
+
+“You _did_ half expect it—it’s not come as a blow to you?” she asked,
+looking up at him. Her eyes were dark and calm and searching. She too
+felt lost. He was so dark and inchoate.
+
+“I suppose—yes,” he said stupidly. He looked aside, unable to endure
+her eyes on him.
+
+“I could not bear to think you might not have guessed,” she said.
+
+He did not answer.
+
+He felt it a great strain to have her near him at this time. He wanted
+to be alone. As soon as the relatives began to arrive, Louisa departed
+and came no more. While everything was arranging, and a crowd was in
+the house, whilst he had business to settle, he went well enough, with
+only those uncontrollable paroxysms of grief. For the rest, he was
+superficial. By himself, he endured the fierce, almost insane bursts of
+grief which passed again and left him calm, almost clear, just
+wondering. He had not known before that everything could break down,
+that he himself could break down, and all be a great chaos, very vast
+and wonderful. It seemed as if life in him had burst its bounds, and he
+was lost in a great, bewildering flood, immense and unpeopled. He
+himself was broken and spilled out amid it all. He could only breathe
+panting in silence. Then the anguish came on again.
+
+When all the people had gone from the Quarry Cottage, leaving the young
+man alone with an elderly housekeeper, then the long trial began. The
+snow had thawed and frozen, a fresh fall had whitened the grey, this
+then began to thaw. The world was a place of loose grey slosh. Alfred
+had nothing to do in the evenings. He was a man whose life had been
+filled up with small activities. Without knowing it, he had been
+centralized, polarized in his mother. It was she who had kept him. Even
+now, when the old housekeeper had left him, he might still have gone on
+in his old way. But the force and balance of his life was lacking. He
+sat pretending to read, all the time holding his fists clenched, and
+holding himself in, enduring he did not know what. He walked the black
+and sodden miles of field-paths, till he was tired out: but all this
+was only running away from whence he must return. At work he was all
+right. If it had been summer he might have escaped by working in the
+garden till bedtime. But now, there was no escape, no relief, no help.
+He, perhaps, was made for action rather than for understanding; for
+doing than for being. He was shocked out of his activities, like a
+swimmer who forgets to swim.
+
+For a week, he had the force to endure this suffocation and struggle,
+then he began to get exhausted, and knew it must come out. The instinct
+of self-preservation became strongest. But there was the question:
+Where was he to go? The public-house really meant nothing to him, it
+was no good going there. He began to think of emigration. In another
+country he would be all right. He wrote to the emigration offices.
+
+On the Sunday after the funeral, when all the Durant people had
+attended church, Alfred had seen Miss Louisa, impassive and reserved,
+sitting with Miss Mary, who was proud and very distant, and with the
+other Lindleys, who were people removed. Alfred saw them as people
+remote. He did not think about it. They had nothing to do with his
+life. After service Louisa had come to him and shaken hands.
+
+“My sister would like you to come to supper one evening, if you would
+be so good.”
+
+He looked at Miss Mary, who bowed. Out of kindness, Mary had proposed
+this to Louisa, disapproving of herself even as she did so. But she did
+not examine herself closely.
+
+“Yes,” said Durant awkwardly, “I’ll come if you want me.” But he
+vaguely felt that it was misplaced.
+
+“You’ll come tomorrow evening, then, about half-past six.”
+
+He went. Miss Louisa was very kind to him. There could be no music,
+because of the babies. He sat with his fists clenched on his thighs,
+very quiet and unmoved, lapsing, among all those people, into a kind of
+muse or daze. There was nothing between him and them. They knew it as
+well as he. But he remained very steady in himself, and the evening
+passed slowly. Mrs Lindley called him “young man”.
+
+“Will you sit here, young man?”
+
+He sat there. One name was as good as another. What had they to do with
+him?
+
+Mr Lindley kept a special tone for him, kind, indulgent, but
+patronizing. Durant took it all without criticism or offence, just
+submitting. But he did not want to eat—that troubled him, to have to
+eat in their presence. He knew he was out of place. But it was his duty
+to stay yet awhile. He answered precisely, in monosyllables.
+
+When he left he winced with confusion. He was glad it was finished. He
+got away as quickly as possible. And he wanted still more intensely to
+go right away, to Canada.
+
+Miss Louisa suffered in her soul, indignant with all of them, with him
+too, but quite unable to say why she was indignant.
+
+XIII
+
+Two evenings after, Louisa tapped at the door of the Quarry Cottage, at
+half-pas six. He had finished dinner, the woman had washed up and gone
+away, but still he sat in his pit dirt. He was going later to the New
+Inn. He had begun to go there because he must go somewhere. The mere
+contact with other men was necessary to him, the noise, the warmth, the
+forgetful flight of the hours. But still he did not move. He sat alone
+in the empty house till it began to grow on him like something
+unnatural.
+
+He was in his pit dirt when he opened the door.
+
+“I have been wanting to call—I thought I would,” she said, and she went
+to the sofa. He wondered why she wouldn’t use his mother’s round
+armchair. Yet something stirred in him, like anger, when the
+housekeeper placed herself in it.
+
+“I ought to have been washed by now,” he said, glancing at the clock,
+which was adorned with butterflies and cherries, and the name of “T.
+Brooks, Mansfield.” He laid his black hands along his mottled dirty
+arms. Louisa looked at him. There was the reserve, and the simple
+neutrality towards her, which she dreaded in him. It made it impossible
+for her to approach him.
+
+“I am afraid,” she said, “that I wasn’t kind in asking you to supper.”
+
+“I’m not used to it,” he said, smiling with his mouth, showing the
+interspaced white teeth. His eyes, however, were steady and unseeing.
+
+“It’s not _that_,” she said hastily. Her repose was exquisite and her
+dark grey eyes rich with understanding. He felt afraid of her as she
+sat there, as he began to grow conscious of her.
+
+“How do you get on alone?” she asked.
+
+He glanced away to the fire.
+
+“Oh——” he answered, shifting uneasily, not finishing his answer.
+
+Her face settled heavily.
+
+“How close it is in this room. You have such immense fires. I will take
+off my coat,” she said.
+
+He watched her take off her hat and coat. She wore a cream cashmir
+blouse embroidered with gold silk. It seemed to him a very fine
+garment, fitting her throat and wrists close. It gave him a feeling of
+pleasure and cleanness and relief from himself.
+
+“What were you thinking about, that you didn’t get washed?” she asked,
+half intimately. He laughed, turning aside his head. The whites of his
+eyes showed very distinct in his black face.
+
+“Oh,” he said, “I couldn’t tell you.”
+
+There was a pause.
+
+“Are you going to keep this house on?” she asked.
+
+He stirred in his chair, under the question.
+
+“I hardly know,” he said. “I’m very likely going to Canada.”
+
+Her spirit became very quiet and attentive.
+
+“What for?” she asked.
+
+Again he shifted restlessly on his seat.
+
+“Well”—he said slowly—“to try the life.”
+
+“But which life?”
+
+“There’s various things—farming or lumbering or mining. I don’t mind
+much what it is.”
+
+“And is that what you want?”
+
+He did not think in these times, so he could not answer.
+
+“I don’t know,” he said, “till I’ve tried.”
+
+She saw him drawing away from her for ever.
+
+“Aren’t you sorry to leave this house and garden?” she asked.
+
+“I don’t know,” he answered reluctantly. “I suppose our Fred would come
+in—that’s what he’s wanting.”
+
+“You don’t want to settle down?” she asked.
+
+He was leaning forward on the arms of his chair. He turned to her. Her
+face was pale and set. It looked heavy and impassive, her hair shone
+richer as she grew white. She was to him something steady and immovable
+and eternal presented to him. His heart was hot in an anguish of
+suspense. Sharp twitches of fear and pain were in his limbs. He turned
+his whole body away from her. The silence was unendurable. He could not
+bear her to sit there any more. It made his heart go hot and stifled in
+his breast.
+
+“Were you going out tonight?” she asked.
+
+“Only to the New Inn,” he said.
+
+Again there was silence.
+
+She reached for her hat. Nothing else was suggested to her. She _had_
+to go. He sat waiting for her to be gone, for relief. And she knew that
+if she went out of that house as she was, she went out a failure. Yet
+she continued to pin on her hat; in a moment she would have to go.
+Something was carrying her.
+
+Then suddenly a sharp pang, like lightning, seared her from head to
+foot, and she was beyond herself.
+
+“Do you want me to go?” she asked, controlled, yet speaking out of a
+fiery anguish, as if the words were spoken from her without her
+intervention.
+
+He went white under his dirt.
+
+“Why?” he asked, turning to her in fear, compelled.
+
+“Do you want me to go?” she repeated.
+
+“Why?” he asked again.
+
+“Because I wanted to stay with you,” she said, suffocated, with her
+lungs full of fire.
+
+His face worked, he hung forward a little, suspended, staring straight
+into her eyes, in torment, in an agony of chaos, unable to collect
+himself. And as if turned to stone, she looked back into his eyes.
+Their souls were exposed bare for a few moments. It was agony. They
+could not bear it. He dropped his head, whilst his body jerked with
+little sharp twitchings.
+
+She turned away for her coat. Her soul had gone dead in her. Her hands
+trembled, but she could not feel any more. She drew on her coat. There
+was a cruel suspense in the room. The moment had come for her to go. He
+lifted his head. His eyes were like agate, expressionless, save for the
+black points of torture. They held her, she had no will, no life any
+more. She felt broken.
+
+“Don’t you want me?” she said helplessly.
+
+A spasm of torture crossed his eyes, which held her fixed.
+
+“I—I——” he began, but he could not speak. Something drew him from his
+chair to her. She stood motionless, spellbound, like a creature given
+up as prey. He put his hand tentatively, uncertainly, on her arm. The
+expression of his face was strange and inhuman. She stood utterly
+motionless. Then clumsily he put his arms round her, and took her,
+cruelly, blindly, straining her till she nearly lost consciousness,
+till he himself had almost fallen.
+
+Then, gradually, as he held her gripped, and his brain reeled round,
+and he felt himself falling, falling from himself, and whilst she,
+yielded up, swooned to a kind of death of herself, a moment of utter
+darkness came over him, and they began to wake up again as if from a
+long sleep. He was himself.
+
+After a while his arms slackened, she loosened herself a little, and
+put her arms round him, as he held her. So they held each other close,
+and hid each against the other for assurance, helpless in speech. And
+it was ever her hands that trembled more closely upon him, drawing him
+nearer into her, with love.
+
+And at last she drew back her face and looked up at him, her eyes wet,
+and shining with light. His heart, which saw, was silent with fear. He
+was with her. She saw his face all sombre and inscrutable, and he
+seemed eternal to her. And all the echo of pain came back into the
+rarity of bliss, and all her tears came up.
+
+“I love you,” she said, her lips drawn and sobbing. He put down his
+head against her, unable to hear her, unable to bear the sudden coming
+of the peace and passion that almost broke his heart. They stood
+together in silence whilst the thing moved away a little.
+
+At last she wanted to see him. She looked up. His eyes were strange and
+glowing, with a tiny black pupil. Strange, they were, and powerful over
+her. And his mouth came to hers, and slowly her eyelids closed, as his
+mouth sought hers closer and closer, and took possession of her.
+
+They were silent for a long time, too much mixed up with passion and
+grief and death to do anything but hold each other in pain and kiss
+with long, hurting kisses wherein fear was transfused into desire. At
+last she disengaged herself. He felt as if his heart were hurt, but
+glad, and he scarcely dared look at her.
+
+“I’m glad,” she said also.
+
+He held her hands in passionate gratitude and desire. He had not yet
+the presence of mind to say anything. He was dazed with relief.
+
+“I ought to go,” she said.
+
+He looked at her. He could not grasp the thought of her going, he knew
+he could never be separated from her any more. Yet he dared not assert
+himself. He held her hands tight.
+
+“Your face is black,” she said.
+
+He laughed.
+
+“Yours is a bit smudged,” he said.
+
+They were afraid of each other, afraid to talk. He could only keep her
+near to him. After a while she wanted to wash her face. He brought her
+some warm water, standing by and watching her. There was something he
+wanted to say, that he dared not. He watched her wiping her face, and
+making tidy her hair.
+
+“They’ll see your blouse is dirty,” he said.
+
+She looked at her sleeves and laughed for joy.
+
+He was sharp with pride.
+
+“What shall you do?” he asked.
+
+“How?” she said.
+
+He was awkward at a reply.
+
+“About me,” he said.
+
+“What do you want me to do?” she laughed.
+
+He put his hand out slowly to her. What did it matter!
+
+“But make yourself clean,” she said.
+
+XIV
+
+As they went up the hill, the night seemed dense with the unknown. They
+kept close together, feeling as if the darkness were alive and full of
+knowledge, all around them. In silence they walked up the hill. At
+first the street lamps went their way. Several people passed them. He
+was more shy than she, and would have let her go had she loosened in
+the least. But she held firm.
+
+Then they came into the true darkness, between the fields. They did not
+want to speak, feeling closer together in silence. So they arrived at
+the Vicarage gate. They stood under the naked horse-chestnut tree.
+
+“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he said.
+
+She laughed a quick little laugh.
+
+“Come tomorrow,” she said, in a low tone, “and ask father.”
+
+She felt his hand close on hers.
+
+She gave the same sorrowful little laugh of sympathy. Then she kissed
+him, sending him home.
+
+At home, the old grief came on in another paroxysm, obliterating
+Louisa, obliterating even his mother for whom the stress was raging
+like a burst of fever in a wound. But something was sound in his heart.
+
+XV
+
+The next evening he dressed to go to the vicarage, feeling it was to be
+done, not imagining what it would be like. He would not take this
+seriously. He was sure of Louisa, and this marriage was like fate to
+him. It filled him also with a blessed feeling of fatality. He was not
+responsible, neither had her people anything really to do with it.
+
+They ushered him into the little study, which was fireless. By and by
+the vicar came in. His voice was cold and hostile as he said:
+
+“What can I do for you, young man?”
+
+He knew already, without asking.
+
+Durant looked up at him, again like a sailor before a superior. He had
+the subordinate manner. Yet his spirit was clear.
+
+“I wanted, Mr Lindley——” he began respectfully, then all the colour
+suddenly left his face. It seemed now a violation to say what he had to
+say. What was he doing there? But he stood on, because it had to be
+done. He held firmly to his own independence and self-respect. He must
+not be indecisive. He must put himself aside: the matter was bigger
+than just his personal self. He must not feel. This was his highest
+duty.
+
+“You wanted——” said the vicar.
+
+Durant’s mouth was dry, but he answered with steadiness:
+
+“Miss Louisa—Louisa—promised to marry me——”
+
+“You asked Miss Louisa if she would marry you—yes——” corrected the
+vicar. Durant reflected he had not asked her this:
+
+“If she would marry me, sir. I hope you—don’t mind.”
+
+He smiled. He was a good-looking man, and the vicar could not help
+seeing it.
+
+“And my daughter was willing to marry you?” said Mr Lindley.
+
+“Yes,” said Durant seriously. It was pain to him, nevertheless. He felt
+the natural hostility between himself and the elder man.
+
+“Will you come this way?” said the vicar. He led into the dining-room,
+where were Mary, Louisa, and Mrs Lindley. Mr Massy sat in a corner with
+a lamp.
+
+“This young man has come on your account, Louisa?” said Mr Lindley.
+
+“Yes,” said Louisa, her eyes on Durant, who stood erect, in discipline.
+He dared not look at her, but he was aware of her.
+
+“You don’t want to marry a collier, you little fool,” cried Mrs Lindley
+harshly. She lay obese and helpless upon the couch, swathed in a loose,
+dove-grey gown.
+
+“Oh, hush, mother,” cried Mary, with quiet intensity and pride.
+
+“What means have you to support a wife?” demanded the vicar’s wife
+roughly.
+
+“I!” Durant replied, starting. “I think I can earn enough.”
+
+“Well, and how much?” came the rough voice.
+
+“Seven and six a day,” replied the young man.
+
+“And will it get to be any more?”
+
+“I hope so.”
+
+“And are you going to live in that poky little house?”
+
+“I think so,” said Durant, “if it’s all right.”
+
+He took small offence, only was upset, because they would not think him
+good enough. He knew that, in their sense, he was not.
+
+“Then she’s a fool, I tell you, if she marries you,” cried the mother
+roughly, casting her decision.
+
+“After all, mama, it is Louisa’s affair,” said Mary distinctly, “and we
+must remember——”
+
+“As she makes her bed, she must lie—but she’ll repent it,” interrupted
+Mrs Lindley.
+
+“And after all,” said Mr Lindley, “Louisa cannot quite hold herself
+free to act entirely without consideration for her family.”
+
+“What do you want, papa?” asked Louisa sharply.
+
+“I mean that if you marry this man, it will make my position very
+difficult for me, particularly if you stay in this parish. If you were
+moving quite away, it would be simpler. But living here in a collier’s
+cottage, under my nose, as it were—it would be almost unseemly. I have
+my position to maintain, and a position which may not be taken
+lightly.”
+
+“Come over here, young man,” cried the mother, in her rough voice, “and
+let us look at you.”
+
+Durant, flushing, went over and stood—not quite at attention, so that
+he did not know what to do with his hands. Miss Louisa was angry to see
+him standing there, obedient and acquiescent. He ought to show himself
+a man.
+
+“Can’t you take her away and live out of sight?” said the mother.
+“You’d both of you be better off.”
+
+“Yes, we can go away,” he said.
+
+“Do you want to?” asked Miss Mary clearly.
+
+He faced round. Mary looked very stately and impressive. He flushed.
+
+“I do if it’s going to be a trouble to anybody,” he said.
+
+“For yourself, you would rather stay?” said Mary.
+
+“It’s my home,” he said, “and that’s the house I was born in.”
+
+“Then”—Mary turned clearly to her parents, “I really don’t see how you
+can make the conditions, papa. He has his own rights, and if Louisa
+wants to marry him——”
+
+“Louisa, Louisa!” cried the father impatiently. “I cannot understand
+why Louisa should not behave in the normal way. I cannot see why she
+should only think of herself, and leave her family out of count. The
+thing is enough in itself, and she ought to try to ameliorate it as
+much as possible. And if——”
+
+“But I love the man, papa,” said Louisa.
+
+“And I hope you love your parents, and I hope you want to spare them as
+much of the—the loss of prestige, as possible.”
+
+“We _can_ go away to live,” said Louisa, her face breaking to tears. At
+last she was really hurt.
+
+“Oh, yes, easily,” Durant replied hastily, pale, distressed.
+
+There was dead silence in the room.
+
+“I think it would really be better,” murmured the vicar, mollified.
+
+“Very likely it would,” said the rough-voiced invalid.
+
+“Though I think we ought to apologize for asking such a thing,” said
+Mary haughtily.
+
+“No,” said Durant. “It will be best all round.” He was glad there was
+no more bother.
+
+“And shall we put up the banns here or go to the registrar?” he asked
+clearly, like a challenge.
+
+“We will go to the registrar,” replied Louisa decidedly.
+
+Again there was a dead silence in the room.
+
+“Well, if you will have your own way, you must go your own way,” said
+the mother emphatically.
+
+All the time Mr Massy had sat obscure and unnoticed in a corner of the
+room. At this juncture he got up, saying:
+
+“There is baby, Mary.”
+
+Mary rose and went out of the room, stately; her little husband padded
+after her. Durant watched the fragile, small man go, wondering.
+
+“And where,” asked the vicar, almost genial, “do you think you will go
+when you are married?”
+
+Durant started.
+
+“I was thinking of emigrating,” he said.
+
+“To Canada? or where?”
+
+“I think to Canada.”
+
+“Yes, that would be very good.”
+
+Again there was a pause.
+
+“We shan’t see much of you then, as a son-in-law,” said the mother,
+roughly but amicably.
+
+“Not much,” he said.
+
+Then he took his leave. Louisa went with him to the gate. She stood
+before him in distress.
+
+“You won’t mind them, will you?” she said humbly.
+
+“I don’t mind them, if they don’t mind me!” he said. Then he stooped
+and kissed her.
+
+“Let us be married soon,” she murmured, in tears.
+
+“All right,” he said. “I’ll go tomorrow to Barford.”
+
+
+
+A Fragment of Stained Glass
+
+Beauvale is, or was, the largest parish in England. It is thinly
+populated, only just netting the stragglers from shoals of houses in
+three large mining villages. For the rest, it holds a great tract of
+woodland, fragment of old Sherwood, a few hills of pasture and arable
+land, three collieries, and, finally, the ruins of a Cistercian abbey.
+These ruins lie in a still rich meadow at the foot of the last fall of
+woodland, through whose oaks shines a blue of hyacinths, like water, in
+Maytime. Of the abbey, there remains only the east wall of the chancel
+standing, a wild thick mass of ivy weighting one shoulder, while
+pigeons perch in the tracery of the lofty window. This is the window in
+question.
+
+The vicar of Beauvale is a bachelor of forty-two years. Quite early in
+life some illness caused a slight paralysis of his right side, so that
+he drags a little, and so that the right corner of his mouth is twisted
+up into his cheek with a constant grimace, unhidden by a heavy
+moustache. There is something pathetic about this twist on the vicar’s
+countenance: his eyes are so shrewd and sad. It would be hard to get
+near to Mr Colbran. Indeed, now, his soul had some of the twist of his
+face, so that, when he is not ironical, he is satiric. Yet a man of
+more complete tolerance and generosity scarcely exists. Let the boors
+mock him, he merely smiles on the other side, and there is no malice in
+his eyes, only a quiet expression of waiting till they have finished.
+His people do not like him, yet none could bring forth an accusation
+against him, save, that “You never can tell when he’s having you.”
+
+I dined the other evening with the vicar in his study. The room
+scandalizes the neighbourhood because of the statuary which adorns it:
+a Laocoön and other classic copies, with bronze and silver Italian
+Renaissance work. For the rest, it is all dark and tawny.
+
+Mr Colbran is an archæologist. He does not take himself seriously,
+however, in his hobby, so that nobody knows the worth of his opinions
+on the subject.
+
+“Here you are,” he said to me after dinner, “I’ve found another
+paragraph for my great work.”
+
+“What’s that?” I asked.
+
+“Haven’t I told you I was compiling a Bible of the English people—the
+Bible of their hearts—their exclamations in presence of the unknown?
+I’ve found a fragment at home, a jump at God from Beauvale.”
+
+“Where?” I asked, startled.
+
+The vicar closed his eyes whilst looking at me.
+
+“Only on parchment,” he said.
+
+Then, slowly, he reached for a yellow book, and read, translating as he
+went:
+
+“Then, while we chanted, came a crackling at the window, at the great
+east window, where hung our Lord on the Cross. It was a malicious
+covetous Devil wrathed by us, rended the lovely image of the glass. We
+saw the iron clutches of the fiend pick the window, and a face flaming
+red like fire in a basket did glower down on us. Our hearts melted
+away, our legs broke, we thought to die. The breath of the wretch
+filled the chapel.
+
+“But our dear Saint, etc., etc., came hastening down heaven to defend
+us. The fiend began to groan and bray—he was daunted and beat off.
+
+“When the sun uprose, and it was morning, some went out in dread upon
+the thin snow. There the figure of our Saint was broken and thrown
+down, whilst in the window was a wicked hole as from the Holy Wounds
+the Blessed Blood was run out at the touch of the Fiend, and on the
+snow was the Blood, sparkling like gold. Some gathered it up for the
+joy of this House....”
+
+“Interesting,” I said. “Where’s it from?”
+
+“Beauvale records—fifteenth century.”
+
+“Beauvale Abbey,” I said; “they were only very few, the monks. What
+frightened them, I wonder.”
+
+“I wonder,” he repeated.
+
+“Somebody climbed up,” I supposed, “and attempted to get in.”
+
+“What?” he exclaimed, smiling.
+
+“Well, what do you think?”
+
+“Pretty much the same,” he replied. “I glossed it out for my book.”
+
+“Your great work? Tell me.”
+
+He put a shade over the lamp so that the room was almost in darkness.
+
+“Am I more than a voice?” he asked.
+
+“I can see your hand,” I replied. He moved entirely from the circle of
+light. Then his voice began, sing-song, sardonic:
+
+“I was a serf in Rollestoun’s Newthorpe Manor, master of the stables I
+was. One day a horse bit me as I was grooming him. He was an old enemy
+of mine. I fetched him a blow across the nose. Then, when he got a
+chance, he lashed out at me and caught me a gash over the mouth. I
+snatched at a hatchet and cut his head. He yelled, fiend as he was, and
+strained for me with all his teeth bare. I brought him down.
+
+“For killing him they flogged me till they thought I was dead. I was
+sturdy, because we horse-serfs got plenty to eat. I was sturdy, but
+they flogged me till I did not move. The next night I set fire to the
+stables, and the stables set fire to the house. I watched and saw the
+red flame rise and look out of the window, I saw the folk running, each
+for himself, master no more than one of a frightened party. It was
+freezing, but the heat made me sweat. I saw them all turn again to
+watch, all rimmed with red. They cried, all of them when the roof went
+in, when the sparks splashed up at rebound. They cried then like dogs
+at the bagpipes howling. Master cursed me, till I laughed as I lay
+under a bush quite near.
+
+“As the fire went down I got frightened. I ran for the woods, with fire
+blazing in my eyes and crackling in my ears. For hours I was all fire.
+Then I went to sleep under the bracken. When I woke it was evening. I
+had no mantle, was frozen stiff. I was afraid to move, lest all the
+sores of my back should be broken like thin ice. I lay still until I
+could bear my hunger no longer. I moved then to get used to the pain of
+movement, when I began to hunt for food. There was nothing to be found
+but hips.
+
+“After wandering about till I was faint I dropped again in the bracken.
+The boughs above me creaked with frost. I started and looked round. The
+branches were like hair among the starlight. My heart stood still.
+Again there was a creak, creak, and suddenly a whoop, that whistled in
+fading. I fell down in the bracken like dead wood. Yet, by the peculiar
+whistling sound at the end, I knew it was only the ice bending or
+tightening in the frost. I was in the woods above the lake, only two
+miles from the Manor. And yet, when the lake whooped hollowly again, I
+clutched the frozen soil, every one of my muscles as stiff as the stiff
+earth. So all the night long I dare not move my face, but pressed it
+flat down, and taut I lay as if pegged down and braced.
+
+“When morning came still I did not move, I lay still in a dream. By
+afternoon my ache was such it enlivened me. I cried, rocking my breath
+in the ache of moving. Then again I became fierce. I beat my hands on
+the rough bark to hurt them, so that I should not ache so much. In such
+a rage I was I swung my limbs to torture till I fell sick with pain.
+Yet I fought the hurt, fought it and fought by twisting and flinging
+myself, until it was overcome. Then the evening began to draw on. All
+day the sun had not loosened the frost. I felt the sky chill again
+towards afternoon. Then I knew the night was coming, and, remembering
+the great space I had just come through, horrible so that it seemed to
+have made me another man, I fled across the wood.
+
+“But in my running I came upon the oak where hanged five bodies. There
+they must hang, bar-stiff, night after night. It was a terror worse
+than any. Turning, blundering through the forest, I came out where the
+trees thinned, where only hawthorns, ragged and shaggy, went down to
+the lake’s edge.
+
+“The sky across was red, the ice on the water glistened as if it were
+warm. A few wild geese sat out like stones on the sheet of ice. I
+thought of Martha. She was the daughter of the miller at the upper end
+of the lake. Her hair was red like beech leaves in a wind. When I had
+gone often to the mill with the horses she had brought me food.
+
+“‘I thought,’ said I to her, ‘’twas a squirrel sat on your shoulder.
+’Tis your hair fallen loose.’
+
+“‘They call me the fox,’ she said.
+
+“‘Would I were your dog,’ said I. She would bring me bacon and good
+bread, when I called at the mill with the horses. The thought of cakes
+of bread and of bacon made me reel as if drunk. I had torn at the
+rabbit holes, I had chewed wood all day. In such a dimness was my head
+that I felt neither the soreness of my wounds nor the cuts of thorns on
+my knees, but stumbled towards the mill, almost past fear of man and
+death, panting with fear of the darkness that crept behind me from
+trunk to trunk.
+
+“Coming to the gap in the wood, below which lay the pond, I heard no
+sound. Always I knew the place filled with the buzz of water, but now
+it was silent. In fear of this stillness I ran forward, forgetting
+myself, forgetting the frost. The wood seemed to pursue me. I fell,
+just in time, down by a shed wherein were housed the few wintry pigs.
+The miller came riding in on his horse, and the barking of dogs was for
+him. I heard him curse the day, curse his servant, curse me, whom he
+had been out to hunt, in his rage of wasted labour, curse all. As I lay
+I heard inside the shed a sucking. Then I knew that the sow was there,
+and that the most of her sucking pigs would be already killed for
+tomorrow’s Christmas. The miller, from forethought to have young at
+that time, made profit by his sucking pigs that were sold for the
+mid-winter feast.
+
+“When in a moment all was silent in the dusk, I broke the bar and came
+into the shed. The sow grunted, but did not come forth to discover me.
+By and by I crept in towards her warmth. She had but three young left,
+which now angered her, she being too full of milk. Every now and again
+she slashed at them and they squealed. Busy as she was with them, I in
+the darkness advanced towards her. I trembled so that scarce dared I
+trust myself near her, for long dared not put my naked face towards
+her. Shuddering with hunger and fear, I at last fed of her, guarding my
+face with my arm. Her own full young tumbled squealing against me, but
+she, feeling her ease, lay grunting. At last I, too, lay drunk,
+swooning.
+
+“I was roused by the shouting of the miller. He, angered by his
+daughter who wept, abused her, driving her from the house to feed the
+swine. She came, bowing under a yoke, to the door of the shed. Finding
+the pin broken she stood afraid, then, as the sow grunted, she came
+cautiously in. I took her with my arm, my hand over her mouth. As she
+struggled against my breast my heart began to beat loudly. At last she
+knew it was I. I clasped her. She hung in my arms, turning away her
+face, so that I kissed her throat. The tears blinded my eyes, I know
+not why, unless it were the hurt of my mouth, wounded by the horse, was
+keen.
+
+“‘They will kill you,’ she whispered.
+
+“‘No,’ I answered.
+
+“And she wept softly. She took my head in her arms and kissed me,
+wetting me with her tears, brushing me with her keen hair, warming me
+through.
+
+“‘I will not go away from here,’ I said. ‘Bring me a knife, and I will
+defend myself.’
+
+“‘No,’ she wept. ‘Ah, no!’
+
+“When she went I lay down, pressing my chest where she had rested on
+the earth, lest being alone were worse emptiness than hunger.
+
+“Later she came again. I saw her bend in the doorway, a lanthorn
+hanging in front. As she peered under the redness of her falling hair,
+I was afraid of her. But she came with food. We sat together in the
+dull light. Sometimes still I shivered and my throat would not swallow.
+
+“‘If,’ said I, ‘I eat all this you have brought me, I shall sleep till
+somebody finds me.’
+
+“Then she took away the rest of the meat.
+
+“‘Why,’ said I, ‘should I not eat?’ She looked at me in tears of fear.
+
+“‘What?’ I said, but still she had no answer. I kissed her, and the
+hurt of my wounded mouth angered me.
+
+“‘Now there is my blood,’ said I, ‘on your mouth.’ Wiping her smooth
+hand over her lips, she looked thereat, then at me.
+
+“‘Leave me,’ I said, ‘I am tired.’ She rose to leave me.
+
+“‘But bring a knife,’ I said. Then she held the lanthorn near my face,
+looking as at a picture.
+
+“‘You look to me,’ she said, ‘like a stirk that is roped for the axe.
+Your eyes are dark, but they are wide open.’
+
+“‘Then I will sleep,’ said I, ‘but will not wake too late.’
+
+“‘Do not stay here,’ she said.
+
+“‘I will not sleep in the wood,’ I answered, and it was my heart that
+spoke, ‘for I am afraid. I had better be afraid of the voice of man and
+dogs, than the sounds in the woods. Bring me a knife, and in the
+morning I will go. Alone will I not go now.’
+
+“‘The searchers will take you,’ she said.
+
+“‘Bring me a knife,’ I answered.
+
+“‘Ah, go,’ she wept.
+
+“‘Not now—I will not——’
+
+“With that she lifted the lanthorn, lit up her own face and mine. Her
+blue eyes dried of tears. Then I took her to myself, knowing she was
+mine.
+
+“‘I will come again,’ she said.
+
+“She went, and I folded my arms, lay down and slept.
+
+“When I woke, she was rocking me wildly to rouse me.
+
+“‘I dreamed,’ said I, ‘that a great heap, as if it were a hill, lay on
+me and above me.’
+
+“She put a cloak over me, gave me a hunting-knife and a wallet of food,
+and other things I did not note. Then under her own cloak she hid the
+lanthorn.
+
+“‘Let us go,’ she said, and blindly I followed her.
+
+“When I came out into the cold someone touched my face and my hair.
+
+“‘Ha!’ I cried, ‘who now——?’ Then she swiftly clung to me, hushed me.
+
+“‘Someone has touched me,’ I said aloud, still dazed with sleep.
+
+“‘Oh hush!’ she wept. ‘’Tis snowing.’ The dogs within the house began
+to bark. She fled forward, I after her. Coming to the ford of the
+stream she ran swiftly over, but I broke through the ice. Then I knew
+where I was. Snowflakes, fine and rapid, were biting at my face. In the
+wood there was no wind nor snow.
+
+“‘Listen,’ said I to her, ‘listen, for I am locked up with sleep.’
+
+“‘I hear roaring overhead,’ she answered. ‘I hear in the trees like
+great bats squeaking.’
+
+“‘Give me your hand,’ said I.
+
+“We heard many noises as we passed. Once as there uprose a whiteness
+before us, she cried aloud.
+
+“‘Nay,’ said I, ‘do not untie thy hand from mine,’ and soon we were
+crossing fallen snow. But ever and again she started back from fear.
+
+“‘When you draw back my arm,’ I said, angry, ‘you loosen a weal on my
+shoulder.’
+
+“Thereafter she ran by my side, like a fawn beside its mother.
+
+“‘We will cross the valley and gain the stream,’ I said. ‘That will
+lead us on its ice as on a path deep into the forest. There we can join
+the outlaws. The wolves are driven from this part. They have followed
+the driven deer.’
+
+“We came directly on a large gleam that shaped itself up among flying
+grains of snow.
+
+“‘Ah!’ she cried, and she stood amazed.
+
+“Then I thought we had gone through the bounds into faery realm, and I
+was no more a man. How did I know what eyes were gleaming at me between
+the snow, what cunning spirits in the draughts of air? So I waited for
+what would happen, and I forgot her, that she was there. Only I could
+feel the spirits whirling and blowing about me.
+
+“Whereupon she clung upon me, kissing me lavishly, and, were dogs or
+men or demons come upon us at that moment, she had let us be stricken
+down, nor heeded not. So we moved forward to the shadow that shone in
+colours upon the passing snow. We found ourselves under a door of light
+which shed its colours mixed with snow. This Martha had never seen, nor
+I, this door open for a red and brave issuing like fires. We wondered.
+
+“‘It is faery,’ she said, and after a while, ‘Could one catch such——
+Ah, no!’
+
+“Through the snow shone bunches of red and blue.
+
+“‘Could one have such a little light like a red flower—only a little,
+like a rose-berry scarlet on one’s breast!—then one were singled out as
+Our Lady.’
+
+“I flung off my cloak and my burden to climb up the face of the shadow.
+Standing on rims of stone, then in pockets of snow, I reached upward.
+My hand was red and blue, but I could not take the stuff. Like colour
+of a moth’s wing it was on my hand, it flew on the increasing snow. I
+stood higher on the head of a frozen man, reached higher my hand. Then
+I felt the bright stuff cold. I could not pluck it off. Down below she
+cried to me to come again to her. I felt a rib that yielded, I struck
+at it with my knife. There came a gap in the redness. Looking through I
+saw below as it were white stunted angels, with sad faces lifted in
+fear. Two faces they had each, and round rings of hair. I was afraid. I
+grasped the shining red, I pulled. Then the cold man under me sank, so
+I fell as if broken on to the snow.
+
+“Soon I was risen again, and we were running downwards towards the
+stream. We felt ourselves eased when the smooth road of ice was beneath
+us. For a while it was resting, to travel thus evenly. But the wind
+blew round us, the snow hung upon us, we leaned us this way and that,
+towards the storm. I drew her along, for she came as a bird that stems
+lifting and swaying against the wind. By and by the snow came smaller,
+there was not wind in the wood. Then I felt nor labour, nor cold. Only
+I knew the darkness drifted by on either side, that overhead was a lane
+of paleness where a moon fled us before. Still, I can feel the moon
+fleeing from me, can feel the trees passing round me in slow dizzy
+reel, can feel the hurt of my shoulder and my straight arm torn with
+holding her. I was following the moon and the stream, for I knew where
+the water peeped from its burrow in the ground there were shelters of
+the outlaw. But she fell, without sound or sign.
+
+“I gathered her up and climbed the bank. There all round me hissed the
+larchwood, dry beneath, and laced with its dry-fretted cords. For a
+little way I carried her into the trees. Then I laid her down till I
+cut flat hairy boughs. I put her in my bosom on this dry bed, so we
+swooned together through the night. I laced her round and covered her
+with myself, so she lay like a nut within its shell.
+
+“Again, when morning came, it was pain of cold that woke me. I groaned,
+but my heart was warm as I saw the heap of red hair in my arms. As I
+looked at her, her eyes opened into mine. She smiled—from out of her
+smile came fear. As if in a trap she pressed back her head.
+
+“‘We have no flint,’ said I.
+
+“‘Yes—in the wallet, flint and steel and tinder box,’ she answered.
+
+“‘God yield you blessing,’ I said.
+
+“In a place a little open I kindled a fire of larch boughs. She was
+afraid of me, hovering near, yet never crossing a space.
+
+“‘Come,’ said I, ‘let us eat this food.’
+
+“‘Your face,’ she said, ‘is smeared with blood.’
+
+“I opened out my cloak.
+
+“‘But come,’ said I, ‘you are frosted with cold.’
+
+“I took a handful of snow in my hand, wiping my face with it, which
+then I dried on my cloak.
+
+“‘My face is no longer painted with blood, you are no longer afraid of
+me. Come here then, sit by me while we eat.’
+
+“But as I cut the cold bread for her, she clasped me suddenly, kissing
+me. She fell before me, clasped my knees to her breast, weeping. She
+laid her face down to my feet, so that her hair spread like a fire
+before me. I wondered at the woman. ‘Nay,’ I cried. At that she lifted
+her face to me from below. ‘Nay,’ I cried, feeling my tears fall. With
+her head on my breast, my own tears rose from their source, wetting my
+cheek and her hair, which was wet with the rain of my eyes.
+
+“Then I remembered and took from my bosom the coloured light of that
+night before. I saw it was black and rough.
+
+“‘Ah,’ said I, ‘this is magic.’
+
+“‘The black stone!’ she wondered.
+
+“‘It is the red light of the night before,’ I said.
+
+“‘It is magic,’ she answered.
+
+“‘Shall I throw it?’ said I, lifting the stone, ‘shall I throw it away,
+for fear?’
+
+“‘It shines!’ she cried, looking up. ‘It shines like the eye of a
+creature at night, the eye of a wolf in the doorway.’
+
+“‘’Tis magic,’ I said, ‘let me throw it from us.’ But nay, she held my
+arm.
+
+“‘It is red and shining,’ she cried.
+
+“‘It is a bloodstone,’ I answered. ‘It will hurt us, we shall die in
+blood.’
+
+“‘But give it to me,’ she answered.
+
+“‘It is red of blood,’ I said.
+
+“‘Ah, give it to me,’ she called.
+
+“‘It is my blood,’ I said.
+
+“‘Give it,’ she commanded, low.
+
+“‘It is my life-stone,’ I said.
+
+“‘Give it me,’ she pleaded.
+
+“‘I gave it her. She held it up, she smiled, she smiled in my face,
+lifting her arms to me. I took her with my mouth, her mouth, her white
+throat. Nor she ever shrank, but trembled with happiness.
+
+“What woke us, when the woods were filling again with shadow, when the
+fire was out, when we opened our eyes and looked up as if drowned, into
+the light which stood bright and thick on the tree-tops, what woke us
+was the sound of wolves....”
+
+
+“Nay,” said the vicar, suddenly rising, “they lived happily ever
+after.”
+
+“No,” I said.
+
+
+
+The Shades of Spring
+
+I
+
+It was a mile nearer through the wood. Mechanically, Syson turned up by
+the forge and lifted the field-gate. The blacksmith and his mate stood
+still, watching the trespasser. But Syson looked too much a gentleman
+to be accosted. They let him go in silence across the small field to
+the wood.
+
+There was not the least difference between this morning and those of
+the bright springs, six or eight years back. White and sandy-gold fowls
+still scratched round the gate, littering the earth and the field with
+feathers and scratched-up rubbish. Between the two thick holly bushes
+in the wood-hedge was the hidden gap, whose fence one climbed to get
+into the wood; the bars were scored just the same by the keeper’s
+boots. He was back in the eternal.
+
+Syson was extraordinarily glad. Like an uneasy spirit he had returned
+to the country of his past, and he found it waiting for him, unaltered.
+The hazel still spread glad little hands downwards, the bluebells here
+were still wan and few, among the lush grass and in shade of the
+bushes.
+
+The path through the wood, on the very brow of a slope, ran winding
+easily for a time. All around were twiggy oaks, just issuing their
+gold, and floor spaces diapered with woodruff, with patches of
+dog-mercury and tufts of hyacinth. Two fallen trees still lay across
+the track. Syson jolted down a steep, rough slope, and came again upon
+the open land, this time looking north as through a great window in the
+wood. He stayed to gaze over the level fields of the hill-top, at the
+village which strewed the bare upland as if it had tumbled off the
+passing waggons of industry, and been forsaken. There was a stiff,
+modern, grey little church, and blocks and rows of red dwellings lying
+at random; at the back, the twinkling headstocks of the pit, and the
+looming pit-hill. All was naked and out-of-doors, not a tree! It was
+quite unaltered.
+
+Syson turned, satisfied, to follow the path that sheered downhill into
+the wood. He was curiously elated, feeling himself back in an enduring
+vision. He started. A keeper was standing a few yards in front, barring
+the way.
+
+“Where might you be going this road, sir?” asked the man. The tone of
+his question had a challenging twang. Syson looked at the fellow with
+an impersonal, observant gaze. It was a young man of four or five and
+twenty, ruddy and well favoured. His dark blue eyes now stared
+aggressively at the intruder. His black moustache, very thick, was
+cropped short over a small, rather soft mouth. In every other respect
+the fellow was manly and good-looking. He stood just above middle
+height; the strong forward thrust of his chest, and the perfect ease of
+his erect, self-sufficient body, gave one the feeling that he was taut
+with animal life, like the thick jet of a fountain balanced in itself.
+He stood with the butt of his gun on the ground, looking uncertainly
+and questioningly at Syson. The dark, restless eyes of the trespasser,
+examining the man and penetrating into him without heeding his office,
+troubled the keeper and made him flush.
+
+“Where is Naylor? Have you got his job?” Syson asked.
+
+“You’re not from the House, are you?” inquired the keeper. It could not
+be, since everyone was away.
+
+“No, I’m not from the House,” the other replied. It seemed to amuse
+him.
+
+“Then might I ask where you were making for?” said the keeper, nettled.
+
+“Where I am making for?” Syson repeated. “I am going to Willey-Water
+Farm.”
+
+“This isn’t the road.”
+
+“I think so. Down this path, past the well, and out by the white gate.”
+
+“But that’s not the public road.”
+
+“I suppose not. I used to come so often, in Naylor’s time, I had
+forgotten. Where is he, by the way?”
+
+“Crippled with rheumatism,” the keeper answered reluctantly.
+
+“Is he?” Syson exclaimed in pain.
+
+“And who might you be?” asked the keeper, with a new intonation.
+
+“John Adderley Syson; I used to live in Cordy Lane.”
+
+“Used to court Hilda Millership?”
+
+Syson’s eyes opened with a pained smile. He nodded. There was an
+awkward silence.
+
+“And you—who are you?” asked Syson.
+
+“Arthur Pilbeam—Naylor’s my uncle,” said the other.
+
+“You live here in Nuttall?”
+
+“I’m lodgin’ at my uncle’s—at Naylor’s.”
+
+“I see!”
+
+“Did you say you was goin’ down to Willey-Water?” asked the keeper.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+There was a pause of some moments, before the keeper blurted: “_I’m_
+courtin’ Hilda Millership.”
+
+The young fellow looked at the intruder with a stubborn defiance,
+almost pathetic. Syson opened new eyes.
+
+“Are you?” he said, astonished. The keeper flushed dark.
+
+“She and me are keeping company,” he said.
+
+“I didn’t know!” said Syson. The other man waited uncomfortably.
+
+“What, is the thing settled?” asked the intruder.
+
+“How, settled?” retorted the other sulkily.
+
+“Are you going to get married soon, and all that?”
+
+The keeper stared in silence for some moments, impotent.
+
+“I suppose so,” he said, full of resentment.
+
+“Ah!” Syson watched closely.
+
+“I’m married myself,” he added, after a time.
+
+“You are?” said the other incredulously.
+
+Syson laughed in his brilliant, unhappy way.
+
+“This last fifteen months,” he said.
+
+The keeper gazed at him with wide, wondering eyes, apparently thinking
+back, and trying to make things out.
+
+“Why, didn’t you know?” asked Syson.
+
+“No, I didn’t,” said the other sulkily.
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+“Ah well!” said Syson, “I will go on. I suppose I may.” The keeper
+stood in silent opposition. The two men hesitated in the open, grassy
+space, set around with small sheaves of sturdy bluebells; a little open
+platform on the brow of the hill. Syson took a few indecisive steps
+forward, then stopped.
+
+“I say, how beautiful!” he cried.
+
+He had come in full view of the downslope. The wide path ran from his
+feet like a river, and it was full of bluebells, save for a green
+winding thread down the centre, where the keeper walked. Like a stream
+the path opened into azure shallows at the levels, and there were pools
+of bluebells, with still the green thread winding through, like a thin
+current of ice-water through blue lakes. And from under the twig-purple
+of the bushes swam the shadowed blue, as if the flowers lay in flood
+water over the woodland.
+
+“Ah, isn’t it lovely!” Syson exclaimed; this was his past, the country
+he had abandoned, and it hurt him to see it so beautiful. Wood-pigeons
+cooed overhead, and the air was full of the brightness of birds
+singing.
+
+“If you’re married, what do you keep writing to her for, and sending
+her poetry books and things?” asked the keeper. Syson stared at him,
+taken aback and humiliated. Then he began to smile.
+
+“Well,” he said, “I did not know about you....”
+
+Again the keeper flushed darkly.
+
+“But if you are married——” he charged.
+
+“I am,” answered the other cynically.
+
+Then, looking down the blue, beautiful path, Syson felt his own
+humiliation. “What right _have_ I to hang on to her?” he thought,
+bitterly self-contemptuous.
+
+“She knows I’m married and all that,” he said.
+
+“But you keep sending her books,” challenged the keeper.
+
+Syson, silenced, looked at the other man quizzically, half pitying.
+Then he turned.
+
+“Good day,” he said, and was gone. Now, everything irritated him: the
+two sallows, one all gold and perfume and murmur, one silver-green and
+bristly, reminded him, that here he had taught her about pollination.
+What a fool he was! What god-forsaken folly it all was!
+
+“Ah well,” he said to himself; “the poor devil seems to have a grudge
+against me. I’ll do my best for him.” He grinned to himself, in a very
+bad temper.
+
+II
+
+The farm was less than a hundred yards from the wood’s edge. The wall
+of trees formed the fourth side to the open quadrangle. The house faced
+the wood. With tangled emotions, Syson noted the plum blossom falling
+on the profuse, coloured primroses, which he himself had brought here
+and set. How they had increased! There were thick tufts of scarlet, and
+pink, and pale purple primroses under the plum trees. He saw somebody
+glance at him through the kitchen window, heard men’s voices.
+
+The door opened suddenly: very womanly she had grown! He felt himself
+going pale.
+
+“You?—Addy!” she exclaimed, and stood motionless.
+
+“Who?” called the farmer’s voice. Men’s low voices answered. Those low
+voices, curious and almost jeering, roused the tormented spirit in the
+visitor. Smiling brilliantly at her, he waited.
+
+“Myself—why not?” he said.
+
+The flush burned very deep on her cheek and throat.
+
+“We are just finishing dinner,” she said.
+
+“Then I will stay outside.” He made a motion to show that he would sit
+on the red earthenware pipkin that stood near the door among the
+daffodils, and contained the drinking water.
+
+“Oh no, come in,” she said hurriedly. He followed her. In the doorway,
+he glanced swiftly over the family, and bowed. Everyone was confused.
+The farmer, his wife, and the four sons sat at the coarsely laid
+dinner-table, the men with arms bare to the elbows.
+
+“I am sorry I come at lunch-time,” said Syson.
+
+“Hello, Addy!” said the farmer, assuming the old form of address, but
+his tone cold. “How are you?”
+
+And he shook hands.
+
+“Shall you have a bit?” he invited the young visitor, but taking for
+granted the offer would be refused. He assumed that Syson was become
+too refined to eat so roughly. The young man winced at the imputation.
+
+“Have you had any dinner?” asked the daughter.
+
+“No,” replied Syson. “It is too early. I shall be back at half-past
+one.”
+
+“You call it lunch, don’t you?” asked the eldest son, almost ironical.
+He had once been an intimate friend of this young man.
+
+“We’ll give Addy something when we’ve finished,” said the mother, an
+invalid, deprecating.
+
+“No—don’t trouble. I don’t want to give you any trouble,” said Syson.
+
+“You could allus live on fresh air an’ scenery,” laughed the youngest
+son, a lad of nineteen.
+
+Syson went round the buildings, and into the orchard at the back of the
+house, where daffodils all along the hedgerow swung like yellow,
+ruffled birds on their perches. He loved the place extraordinarily, the
+hills ranging round, with bear-skin woods covering their giant
+shoulders, and small red farms like brooches clasping their garments;
+the blue streak of water in the valley, the bareness of the home
+pasture, the sound of myriad-threaded bird-singing, which went mostly
+unheard. To his last day, he would dream of this place, when he felt
+the sun on his face, or saw the small handfuls of snow between the
+winter twigs, or smelt the coming of spring.
+
+Hilda was very womanly. In her presence he felt constrained. She was
+twenty-nine, as he was, but she seemed to him much older. He felt
+foolish, almost unreal, beside her. She was so static. As he was
+fingering some shed plum blossom on a low bough, she came to the back
+door to shake the tablecloth. Fowls raced from the stackyard, birds
+rustled from the trees. Her dark hair was gathered up in a coil like a
+crown on her head. She was very straight, distant in her bearing. As
+she folded the cloth, she looked away over the hills.
+
+Presently Syson returned indoors. She had prepared eggs and curd
+cheese, stewed gooseberries and cream.
+
+“Since you will dine tonight,” she said, “I have only given you a light
+lunch.”
+
+“It is awfully nice,” he said. “You keep a real idyllic atmosphere—your
+belt of straw and ivy buds.”
+
+Still they hurt each other.
+
+He was uneasy before her. Her brief, sure speech, her distant bearing,
+were unfamiliar to him. He admired again her grey-black eyebrows, and
+her lashes. Their eyes met. He saw, in the beautiful grey and black of
+her glance, tears and a strange light, and at the back of all, calm
+acceptance of herself, and triumph over him.
+
+He felt himself shrinking. With an effort he kept up the ironic manner.
+
+She sent him into the parlour while she washed the dishes. The long low
+room was refurnished from the Abbey sale, with chairs upholstered in
+claret-coloured rep, many years old, and an oval table of polished
+walnut, and another piano, handsome, though still antique. In spite of
+the strangeness, he was pleased. Opening a high cupboard let into the
+thickness of the wall, he found it full of his books, his old
+lesson-books, and volumes of verse he had sent her, English and German.
+The daffodils in the white window-bottoms shone across the room, he
+could almost feel their rays. The old glamour caught him again. His
+youthful water-colours on the wall no longer made him grin; he
+remembered how fervently he had tried to paint for her, twelve years
+before.
+
+She entered, wiping a dish, and he saw again the bright, kernel-white
+beauty of her arms.
+
+“You are quite splendid here,” he said, and their eyes met.
+
+“Do you like it?” she asked. It was the old, low, husky tone of
+intimacy. He felt a quick change beginning in his blood. It was the
+old, delicious sublimation, the thinning, almost the vaporizing of
+himself, as if his spirit were to be liberated.
+
+“Aye,” he nodded, smiling at her like a boy again. She bowed her head.
+
+“This was the countess’s chair,” she said in low tones. “I found her
+scissors down here between the padding.”
+
+“Did you? Where are they?”
+
+Quickly, with a lilt in her movement, she fetched her work-basket, and
+together they examined the long-shanked old scissors.
+
+“What a ballad of dead ladies!” he said, laughing, as he fitted his
+fingers into the round loops of the countess’s scissors.
+
+“I knew you could use them,” she said, with certainty. He looked at his
+fingers, and at the scissors. She meant his fingers were fine enough
+for the small-looped scissors.
+
+“That is something to be said for me,” he laughed, putting the scissors
+aside. She turned to the window. He noticed the fine, fair down on her
+cheek and her upper lip, and her soft, white neck, like the throat of a
+nettle flower, and her fore-arms, bright as newly blanched kernels. He
+was looking at her with new eyes, and she was a different person to
+him. He did not know her. But he could regard her objectively now.
+
+“Shall we go out awhile?” she asked.
+
+“Yes!” he answered. But the predominant emotion, that troubled the
+excitement and perplexity of his heart, was fear, fear of that which he
+saw. There was about her the same manner, the same intonation in her
+voice, now as then, but she was not what he had known her to be. He
+knew quite well what she had been for him. And gradually he was
+realizing that she was something quite other, and always had been.
+
+She put no covering on her head, merely took off her apron, saying, “We
+will go by the larches.” As they passed the old orchard, she called him
+in to show him a blue-tit’s nest in one of the apple trees, and a
+sycock’s in the hedge. He rather wondered at her surety, at a certain
+hardness like arrogance hidden under her humility.
+
+“Look at the apple buds,” she said, and he then perceived myriads of
+little scarlet balls among the drooping boughs. Watching his face, her
+eyes went hard. She saw the scales were fallen from him, and at last he
+was going to see her as she was. It was the thing she had most dreaded
+in the past, and most needed, for her soul’s sake. Now he was going to
+see her as she was. He would not love her, and he would know he never
+could have loved her. The old illusion gone, they were strangers, crude
+and entire. But he would give her her due—she would have her due from
+him.
+
+She was brilliant as he had not known her. She showed him nests: a
+jenny wren’s in a low bush.
+
+“See this jinty’s!” she exclaimed.
+
+He was surprised to hear her use the local name. She reached carefully
+through the thorns, and put her fingers in the nest’s round door.
+
+“Five!” she said. “Tiny little things.”
+
+She showed him nests of robins, and chaffinches, and linnets, and
+buntings; of a wagtail beside the water.
+
+“And if we go down, nearer the lake, I will show you a
+kingfisher’s....”
+
+“Among the young fir trees,” she said, “there’s a throstle’s or a
+blackie’s on nearly every bough, every ledge. The first day, when I had
+seen them all, I felt as if I mustn’t go in the wood. It seemed a city
+of birds: and in the morning, hearing them all, I thought of the noisy
+early markets. I was afraid to go in my own wood.”
+
+She was using the language they had both of them invented. Now it was
+all her own. He had done with it. She did not mind his silence, but was
+always dominant, letting him see her wood. As they came along a marshy
+path where forget-me-nots were opening in a rich blue drift: “We know
+all the birds, but there are many flowers we can’t find out,” she said.
+It was half an appeal to him, who had known the names of things.
+
+She looked dreamily across to the open fields that slept in the sun.
+
+“I have a lover as well, you know,” she said, with assurance, yet
+dropping again almost into the intimate tone.
+
+This woke in him the spirit to fight her.
+
+“I think I met him. He is good-looking—also in Arcady.”
+
+Without answering, she turned into a dark path that led up-hill, where
+the trees and undergrowth were very thick.
+
+“They did well,” she said at length, “to have various altars to various
+gods, in old days.”
+
+“Ah yes!” he agreed. “To whom is the new one?”
+
+“There are no old ones,” she said. “I was always looking for this.”
+
+“And whose is it?” he asked.
+
+“I don’t know,” she said, looking full at him.
+
+“I’m very glad, for your sake,” he said, “that you are satisfied.”
+
+“Aye—but the man doesn’t matter so much,” she said. There was a pause.
+
+“No!” he exclaimed, astonished, yet recognizing her as her real self.
+
+“It is one’s self that matters,” she said. “Whether one is being one’s
+own self and serving one’s own God.”
+
+There was silence, during which he pondered. The path was almost
+flowerless, gloomy. At the side, his heels sank into soft clay.
+
+III
+
+“I,” she said, very slowly, “I was married the same night as you.”
+
+He looked at her.
+
+“Not legally, of course,” she replied. “But—actually.”
+
+“To the keeper?” he said, not knowing what else to say.
+
+She turned to him.
+
+“You thought I could not?” she said. But the flush was deep in her
+cheek and throat, for all her assurance.
+
+Still he would not say anything.
+
+“You see”—she was making an effort to explain—”_I_ had to understand
+also.”
+
+“And what does it amount to, this _understanding_?” he asked.
+
+“A very great deal—does it not to you?” she replied. “One is free.”
+
+“And you are not disappointed?”
+
+“Far from it!” Her tone was deep and sincere.
+
+“You love him?”
+
+“Yes, I love him.”
+
+“Good!” he said.
+
+This silenced her for a while.
+
+“Here, among his things, I love him,” she said.
+
+His conceit would not let him be silent.
+
+“It needs this setting?” he asked.
+
+“It does,” she cried. “You were always making me to be not myself.”
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+“But is it a matter of surroundings?” he said. He had considered her
+all spirit.
+
+“I am like a plant,” she replied. “I can only grow in my own soil.”
+
+They came to a place where the undergrowth shrank away, leaving a bare,
+brown space, pillared with the brick-red and purplish trunks of pine
+trees. On the fringe, hung the sombre green of elder trees, with flat
+flowers in bud, and below were bright, unfurling pennons of fern. In
+the midst of the bare space stood a keeper’s log hut. Pheasant-coops
+were lying about, some occupied by a clucking hen, some empty.
+
+Hilda walked over the brown pine-needles to the hut, took a key from
+among the eaves, and opened the door. It was a bare wooden place with a
+carpenter’s bench and form, carpenter’s tools, an axe, snares, traps,
+some skins pegged down, everything in order. Hilda closed the door.
+Syson examined the weird flat coats of wild animals, that were pegged
+down to be cured. She turned some knotch in the side wall, and
+disclosed a second, small apartment.
+
+“How romantic!” said Syson.
+
+“Yes. He is very curious—he has some of a wild animal’s cunning—in a
+nice sense—and he is inventive, and thoughtful—but not beyond a certain
+point.”
+
+She pulled back a dark green curtain. The apartment was occupied almost
+entirely by a large couch of heather and bracken, on which was spread
+an ample rabbit-skin rug. On the floor were patchwork rugs of cat-skin,
+and a red calf-skin, while hanging from the wall were other furs. Hilda
+took down one, which she put on. It was a cloak of rabbit-skin and of
+white fur, with a hood, apparently of the skins of stoats. She laughed
+at Syson from out of this barbaric mantle, saying:
+
+“What do you think of it?”
+
+“Ah—! I congratulate you on your man,” he replied.
+
+“And look!” she said.
+
+In a little jar on a shelf were some sprays, frail and white, of the
+first honeysuckle.
+
+“They will scent the place at night,” she said.
+
+He looked round curiously.
+
+“Where does he come short, then?” he asked. She gazed at him for a few
+moments. Then, turning aside:
+
+“The stars aren’t the same with him,” she said. “You could make them
+flash and quiver, and the forget-me-nots come up at me like
+phosphorescence. You could make things _wonderful_. I have found it
+out—it is true. But I have them all for myself, now.”
+
+He laughed, saying:
+
+“After all, stars and forget-me-nots are only luxuries. You ought to
+make poetry.”
+
+“Aye,” she assented. “But I have them all now.”
+
+Again he laughed bitterly at her.
+
+She turned swiftly. He was leaning against the small window of the
+tiny, obscure room, and was watching her, who stood in the doorway,
+still cloaked in her mantle. His cap was removed, so she saw his face
+and head distinctly in the dim room. His black, straight, glossy hair
+was brushed clean back from his brow. His black eyes were watching her,
+and his face, that was clear and cream, and perfectly smooth, was
+flickering.
+
+“We are very different,” she said bitterly.
+
+Again he laughed.
+
+“I see you disapprove of me,” he said.
+
+“I disapprove of what you have become,” she said.
+
+“You think we might”—he glanced at the hut—“have been like this—you and
+I?”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“You! no; never! You plucked a thing and looked at it till you had
+found out all you wanted to know about it, then you threw it away,” she
+said.
+
+“Did I?” he asked. “And could your way never have been my way? I
+suppose not.”
+
+“Why should it?” she said. “I am a separate being.”
+
+“But surely two people sometimes go the same way,” he said.
+
+“You took me away from myself,” she said.
+
+He knew he had mistaken her, had taken her for something she was not.
+That was his fault, not hers.
+
+“And did you always know?” he asked.
+
+“No—you never let me know. You bullied me. I couldn’t help myself. I
+was glad when you left me, really.”
+
+“I know you were,” he said. But his face went paler, almost deathly
+luminous.
+
+“Yet,” he said, “it was you who sent me the way I have gone.”
+
+“I!” she exclaimed, in pride.
+
+“You _would_ have me take the Grammar School scholarship—and you would
+have me foster poor little Botell’s fervent attachment to me, till he
+couldn’t live without me—and because Botell was rich and influential.
+You triumphed in the wine-merchant’s offer to send me to Cambridge, to
+befriend his only child. You wanted me to rise in the world. And all
+the time you were sending me away from you—every new success of mine
+put a separation between us, and more for you than for me. You never
+wanted to come with me: you wanted just to send me to see what it was
+like. I believe you even wanted me to marry a lady. You wanted to
+triumph over society in me.”
+
+“And I am responsible,” she said, with sarcasm.
+
+“I distinguished myself to satisfy you,” he replied.
+
+“Ah!” she cried, “you always wanted change, change, like a child.”
+
+“Very well! And I am a success, and I know it, and I do some good work.
+But—I thought you were different. What right have you to a man?”
+
+“What do you want?” she said, looking at him with wide, fearful eyes.
+
+He looked back at her, his eyes pointed, like weapons.
+
+“Why, nothing,” he laughed shortly.
+
+There was a rattling at the outer latch, and the keeper entered. The
+woman glanced round, but remained standing, fur-cloaked, in the inner
+doorway. Syson did not move.
+
+The other man entered, saw, and turned away without speaking. The two
+also were silent.
+
+Pilbeam attended to his skins.
+
+“I must go,” said Syson.
+
+“Yes,” she replied.
+
+“Then I give you ‘To our vast and varying fortunes.’” He lifted his
+hand in pledge.
+
+“‘To our vast and varying fortunes,’” she answered gravely, and
+speaking in cold tones.
+
+“Arthur!” she said.
+
+The keeper pretended not to hear. Syson, watching keenly, began to
+smile. The woman drew herself up.
+
+“Arthur!” she said again, with a curious upward inflection, which
+warned the two men that her soul was trembling on a dangerous crisis.
+
+The keeper slowly put down his tool and came to her.
+
+“Yes,” he said.
+
+“I wanted to introduce you,” she said, trembling.
+
+“I’ve met him a’ready,” said the keeper.
+
+“Have you? It is Addy, Mr Syson, whom you know about.—This is Arthur,
+Mr Pilbeam,” she added, turning to Syson. The latter held out his hand
+to the keeper, and they shook hands in silence.
+
+“I’m glad to have met you,” said Syson. “We drop our correspondence,
+Hilda?”
+
+“Why need we?” she asked.
+
+The two men stood at a loss.
+
+“_Is_ there no need?” said Syson.
+
+Still she was silent.
+
+“It is as you will,” she said.
+
+They went all three together down the gloomy path.
+
+“‘_Qu’il était bleu, le ciel, et grand l’espoir_,’” quoted Syson, not
+knowing what to say.
+
+“What do you mean?” she said. “Besides, _we_ can’t walk in _our_ wild
+oats—we never sowed any.”
+
+Syson looked at her. He was startled to see his young love, his nun,
+his Botticelli angel, so revealed. It was he who had been the fool. He
+and she were more separate than any two strangers could be. She only
+wanted to keep up a correspondence with him—and he, of course, wanted
+it kept up, so that he could write to her, like Dante to some Beatrice
+who had never existed save in the man’s own brain.
+
+At the bottom of the path she left him. He went along with the keeper,
+towards the open, towards the gate that closed on the wood. The two men
+walked almost like friends. They did not broach the subject of their
+thoughts.
+
+Instead of going straight to the high-road gate, Syson went along the
+wood’s edge, where the brook spread out in a little bog, and under the
+alder trees, among the reeds, great yellow stools and bosses of
+marigolds shone. Threads of brown water trickled by, touched with gold
+from the flowers. Suddenly there was a blue flash in the air, as a
+kingfisher passed.
+
+Syson was extraordinarily moved. He climbed the bank to the gorse
+bushes, whose sparks of blossom had not yet gathered into a flame.
+Lying on the dry brown turf, he discovered sprigs of tiny purple
+milkwort and pink spots of lousewort. What a wonderful world it
+was—marvellous, for ever new. He felt as if it were underground, like
+the fields of monotone hell, notwithstanding. Inside his breast was a
+pain like a wound. He remembered the poem of William Morris, where in
+the Chapel of Lyonesse a knight lay wounded, with the truncheon of a
+spear deep in his breast, lying always as dead, yet did not die, while
+day after day the coloured sunlight dipped from the painted window
+across the chancel, and passed away. He knew now it never had been
+true, that which was between him and her, not for a moment. The truth
+had stood apart all the time.
+
+Syson turned over. The air was full of the sound of larks, as if the
+sunshine above were condensing and falling in a shower. Amid this
+bright sound, voices sounded small and distinct.
+
+“But if he’s married, an’ quite willing to drop it off, what has ter
+against it?” said the man’s voice.
+
+“I don’t want to talk about it now. I want to be alone.”
+
+Syson looked through the bushes. Hilda was standing in the wood, near
+the gate. The man was in the field, loitering by the hedge, and playing
+with the bees as they settled on the white bramble flowers.
+
+There was silence for a while, in which Syson imagined her will among
+the brightness of the larks. Suddenly the keeper exclaimed “Ah!” and
+swore. He was gripping at the sleeve of his coat, near the shoulder.
+Then he pulled off his jacket, threw it on the ground, and absorbedly
+rolled up his shirt sleeve right to the shoulder.
+
+“Ah!” he said vindictively, as he picked out the bee and flung it away.
+He twisted his fine, bright arm, peering awkwardly over his shoulder.
+
+“What is it?” asked Hilda.
+
+“A bee—crawled up my sleeve,” he answered.
+
+“Come here to me,” she said.
+
+The keeper went to her, like a sulky boy. She took his arm in her
+hands.
+
+“Here it is—and the sting left in—poor bee!”
+
+She picked out the sting, put her mouth to his arm, and sucked away the
+drop of poison. As she looked at the red mark her mouth had made, and
+at his arm, she said, laughing:
+
+“That is the reddest kiss you will ever have.”
+
+When Syson next looked up, at the sound of voices, he saw in the shadow
+the keeper with his mouth on the throat of his beloved, whose head was
+thrown back, and whose hair had fallen, so that one rough rope of dark
+brown hair hung across his bare arm.
+
+“No,” the woman answered. “I am not upset because he’s gone. You won’t
+understand....”
+
+Syson could not distinguish what the man said. Hilda replied, clear and
+distinct:
+
+“You know I love you. He has gone quite out of my life—don’t trouble
+about him....” He kissed her, murmuring. She laughed hollowly.
+
+“Yes,” she said, indulgent. “We will be married, we will be married.
+But not just yet.” He spoke to her again. Syson heard nothing for a
+time. Then she said:
+
+“You must go home, now, dear—you will get no sleep.”
+
+Again was heard the murmur of the keeper’s voice, troubled by fear and
+passion.
+
+“But why should we be married at once?” she said. “What more would you
+have, by being married? It is most beautiful as it is.”
+
+At last he pulled on his coat and departed. She stood at the gate, not
+watching him, but looking over the sunny country.
+
+When at last she had gone, Syson also departed, going back to town.
+
+
+
+Second Best
+
+“Oh, I’m tired!” Frances exclaimed petulantly, and in the same instant
+she dropped down on the turf, near the hedge-bottom. Anne stood a
+moment surprised, then, accustomed to the vagaries of her beloved
+Frances, said:
+
+“Well, and aren’t you always likely to be tired, after travelling that
+blessed long way from Liverpool yesterday?” and she plumped down beside
+her sister. Anne was a wise young body of fourteen, very buxom,
+brimming with common sense. Frances was much older, about twenty-three,
+and whimsical, spasmodic. She was the beauty and the clever child of
+the family. She plucked the goose-grass buttons from her dress in a
+nervous, desperate fashion. Her beautiful profile, looped above with
+black hair, warm with the dusky-and-scarlet complexion of a pear, was
+calm as a mask, her thin brown hand plucked nervously.
+
+“It’s not the journey,” she said, objecting to Anne’s obtuseness. Anne
+looked inquiringly at her darling. The young girl, in her
+self-confident, practical way, proceeded to reckon up this whimsical
+creature. But suddenly she found herself full in the eyes of Frances;
+felt two dark, hectic eyes flaring challenge at her, and she shrank
+away. Frances was peculiar for these great, exposed looks, which
+disconcerted people by their violence and their suddenness.
+
+“What’s a matter, poor old duck?” asked Anne, as she folded the slight,
+wilful form of her sister in her arms. Frances laughed shakily, and
+nestled down for comfort on the budding breasts of the strong girl.
+
+“Oh, I’m only a bit tired,” she murmured, on the point of tears.
+
+“Well, of course you are, what do you expect?” soothed Anne. It was a
+joke to Frances that Anne should play elder, almost mother to her. But
+then, Anne was in her unvexed teens; men were like big dogs to her:
+while Frances, at twenty-three, suffered a good deal.
+
+The country was intensely morning-still. On the common everything shone
+beside its shadow, and the hillside gave off heat in silence. The brown
+turf seemed in a low state of combustion, the leaves of the oaks were
+scorched brown. Among the blackish foliage in the distance shone the
+small red and orange of the village.
+
+The willows in the brook-course at the foot of the common suddenly
+shook with a dazzling effect like diamonds. It was a puff of wind. Anne
+resumed her normal position. She spread her knees, and put in her lap a
+handful of hazel nuts, whity-green leafy things, whose one cheek was
+tanned between brown and pink. These she began to crack and eat.
+Frances, with bowed head, mused bitterly.
+
+“Eh, you know Tom Smedley?” began the young girl, as she pulled a tight
+kernel out of its shell.
+
+“I suppose so,” replied Frances sarcastically.
+
+“Well, he gave me a wild rabbit what he’d caught, to keep with my tame
+one—and it’s living.”
+
+“That’s a good thing,” said Frances, very detached and ironic.
+
+“Well, it _is!_ He reckoned he’d take me to Ollerton Feast, but he
+never did. Look here, he took a servant from the rectory; I saw him.”
+
+“So he ought,” said Frances.
+
+“No, he oughtn’t! and I told him so. And I told him I should tell
+you—an’ I have done.”
+
+Click and snap went a nut between her teeth. She sorted out the kernel,
+and chewed complacently.
+
+“It doesn’t make much difference,” said Frances.
+
+“Well, ’appen it doesn’t; but I was mad with him all the same.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I was; he’s no right to go with a servant.”
+
+“He’s a perfect right,” persisted Frances, very just and cold.
+
+“No, he hasn’t, when he’d said he’d take me.”
+
+Frances burst into a laugh of amusement and relief.
+
+“Oh, no; I’d forgot that,” she said, adding, “And what did he say when
+you promised to tell me?”
+
+“He laughed and said, ‘he won’t fret her fat over that.’”
+
+“And she won’t,” sniffed Frances.
+
+There was silence. The common, with its sere, blonde-headed thistles,
+its heaps of silent bramble, its brown-husked gorse in the glare of
+sunshine, seemed visionary. Across the brook began the immense pattern
+of agriculture, white chequering of barley stubble, brown squares of
+wheat, khaki patches of pasture, red stripes of fallow, with the
+woodland and the tiny village dark like ornaments, leading away to the
+distance, right to the hills, where the check-pattern grew smaller and
+smaller, till, in the blackish haze of heat, far off, only the tiny
+white squares of barley stubble showed distinct.
+
+“Eh, I say, here’s a rabbit hole!” cried Anne suddenly. “Should we
+watch if one comes out? You won’t have to fidget, you know.”
+
+The two girls sat perfectly still. Frances watched certain objects in
+her surroundings: they had a peculiar, unfriendly look about them: the
+weight of greenish elderberries on their purpling stalks; the twinkling
+of the yellowing crab-apples that clustered high up in the hedge,
+against the sky: the exhausted, limp leaves of the primroses lying flat
+in the hedge-bottom: all looked strange to her. Then her eyes caught a
+movement. A mole was moving silently over the warm, red soil, nosing,
+shuffling hither and thither, flat, and dark as a shadow, shifting
+about, and as suddenly brisk, and as silent, like a very ghost of _joie
+de vivre_. Frances started, from habit was about to call on Anne to
+kill the little pest. But, today, her lethargy of unhappiness was too
+much for her. She watched the little brute paddling, snuffing, touching
+things to discover them, running in blindness, delighted to ecstasy by
+the sunlight and the hot, strange things that caressed its belly and
+its nose. She felt a keen pity for the little creature.
+
+“Eh, our Fran, look there! It’s a mole.”
+
+Anne was on her feet, standing watching the dark, unconscious beast.
+Frances frowned with anxiety.
+
+“It doesn’t run off, does it?” said the young girl softly. Then she
+stealthily approached the creature. The mole paddled fumblingly away.
+In an instant Anne put her foot upon it, not too heavily. Frances could
+see the struggling, swimming movement of the little pink hands of the
+brute, the twisting and twitching of its pointed nose, as it wrestled
+under the sole of the boot.
+
+“It _does_ wriggle!” said the bonny girl, knitting her brows in a frown
+at the eerie sensation. Then she bent down to look at her trap. Frances
+could now see, beyond the edge of the boot-sole, the heaving of the
+velvet shoulders, the pitiful turning of the sightless face, the
+frantic rowing of the flat, pink hands.
+
+“Kill the thing,” she said, turning away her face.
+
+“Oh—I’m not,” laughed Anne, shrinking. “You can, if you like.”
+
+“I _don’t_ like,” said Frances, with quiet intensity.
+
+After several dabbling attempts, Anne succeeded in picking up the
+little animal by the scruff of its neck. It threw back its head, flung
+its long blind snout from side to side, the mouth open in a peculiar
+oblong, with tiny pinkish teeth at the edge. The blind, frantic mouth
+gaped and writhed. The body, heavy and clumsy, hung scarcely moving.
+
+“Isn’t it a snappy little thing,” observed Anne twisting to avoid the
+teeth.
+
+“What are you going to do with it?” asked Frances sharply.
+
+“It’s got to be killed—look at the damage they do. I s’ll take it home
+and let dadda or somebody kill it. I’m not going to let it go.”
+
+She swaddled the creature clumsily in her pocket-handkerchief and sat
+down beside her sister. There was an interval of silence, during which
+Anne combated the efforts of the mole.
+
+“You’ve not had much to say about Jimmy this time. Did you see him
+often in Liverpool?” Anne asked suddenly.
+
+“Once or twice,” replied Frances, giving no sign of how the question
+troubled her.
+
+“And aren’t you sweet on him any more, then?”
+
+“I should think I’m not, seeing that he’s engaged.”
+
+“Engaged? Jimmy Barrass! Well, of all things! I never thought _he’d_
+get engaged.”
+
+“Why not, he’s as much right as anybody else?” snapped Frances.
+
+Anne was fumbling with the mole.
+
+“’Appen so,” she said at length; “but I never thought Jimmy would,
+though.”
+
+“Why not?” snapped Frances.
+
+“_I_ don’t know—this blessed mole, it’ll not keep still!—who’s he got
+engaged to?”
+
+“How should I know?”
+
+“I thought you’d ask him; you’ve known him long enough. I s’d think he
+thought he’d get engaged now he’s a Doctor of Chemistry.”
+
+Frances laughed in spite of herself.
+
+“What’s that got to do with it?” she asked.
+
+“I’m sure it’s got a lot. He’ll want to feel _somebody_ now, so he’s
+got engaged. Hey, stop it; go in!”
+
+But at this juncture the mole almost succeeded in wriggling clear. It
+wrestled and twisted frantically, waved its pointed blind head, its
+mouth standing open like a little shaft, its big, wrinkled hands spread
+out.
+
+“Go in with you!” urged Anne, poking the little creature with her
+forefinger, trying to get it back into the handkerchief. Suddenly the
+mouth turned like a spark on her finger.
+
+“Oh!” she cried, “he’s bit me.”
+
+She dropped him to the floor. Dazed, the blind creature fumbled round.
+Frances felt like shrieking. She expected him to dart away in a flash,
+like a mouse, and there he remained groping; she wanted to cry to him
+to be gone. Anne, in a sudden decision of wrath, caught up her sister’s
+walking-cane. With one blow the mole was dead. Frances was startled and
+shocked. One moment the little wretch was fussing in the heat, and the
+next it lay like a little bag, inert and black—not a struggle, scarce a
+quiver.
+
+“It is dead!” Frances said breathlessly. Anne took her finger from her
+mouth, looked at the tiny pinpricks, and said:
+
+“Yes, he is, and I’m glad. They’re vicious little nuisances, moles
+are.”
+
+With which her wrath vanished. She picked up the dead animal.
+
+“Hasn’t it got a beautiful skin,” she mused, stroking the fur with her
+forefinger, then with her cheek.
+
+“Mind,” said Frances sharply. “You’ll have the blood on your skirt!”
+
+One ruby drop of blood hung on the small snout, ready to fall. Anne
+shook it off on to some harebells. Frances suddenly became calm; in
+that moment, grown-up.
+
+“I suppose they have to be killed,” she said, and a certain rather
+dreary indifference succeeded to her grief. The twinkling crab-apples,
+the glitter of brilliant willows now seemed to her trifling, scarcely
+worth the notice. Something had died in her, so that things lost their
+poignancy. She was calm, indifference overlying her quiet sadness.
+Rising, she walked down to the brook course.
+
+“Here, wait for me,” cried Anne, coming tumbling after.
+
+Frances stood on the bridge, looking at the red mud trodden into
+pockets by the feet of cattle. There was not a drain of water left, but
+everything smelled green, succulent. Why did she care so little for
+Anne, who was so fond of her? she asked herself. Why did she care so
+little for anyone? She did not know, but she felt a rather stubborn
+pride in her isolation and indifference.
+
+They entered a field where stooks of barley stood in rows, the
+straight, blonde tresses of the corn streaming on to the ground. The
+stubble was bleached by the intense summer, so that the expanse glared
+white. The next field was sweet and soft with a second crop of seeds;
+thin, straggling clover whose little pink knobs rested prettily in the
+dark green. The scent was faint and sickly. The girls came up in single
+file, Frances leading.
+
+Near the gate a young man was mowing with the scythe some fodder for
+the afternoon feed of the cattle. As he saw the girls he left off
+working and waited in an aimless kind of way. Frances was dressed in
+white muslin, and she walked with dignity, detached and forgetful. Her
+lack of agitation, her simple, unheeding advance made him nervous. She
+had loved the far-off Jimmy for five years, having had in return his
+half-measures. This man only affected her slightly.
+
+Tom was of medium stature, energetic in build. His smooth, fair-skinned
+face was burned red, not brown, by the sun, and this ruddiness enhanced
+his appearance of good humour and easiness. Being a year older than
+Frances, he would have courted her long ago had she been so inclined.
+As it was, he had gone his uneventful way amiably, chatting with many a
+girl, but remaining unattached, free of trouble for the most part. Only
+he knew he wanted a woman. He hitched his trousers just a trifle
+self-consciously as the girls approached. Frances was a rare, delicate
+kind of being, whom he realized with a queer and delicious stimulation
+in his veins. She gave him a slight sense of suffocation. Somehow, this
+morning, she affected him more than usual. She was dressed in white.
+He, however, being matter-of-fact in his mind, did not realize. His
+feeling had never become conscious, purposive.
+
+Frances knew what she was about. Tom was ready to love her as soon as
+she would show him. Now that she could not have Jimmy, she did not
+poignantly care. Still, she would have something. If she could not have
+the best—Jimmy, whom she knew to be something of a snob—she would have
+the second best, Tom. She advanced rather indifferently.
+
+“You are back, then!” said Tom. She marked the touch of uncertainty in
+his voice.
+
+“No,” she laughed, “I’m still in Liverpool,” and the undertone of
+intimacy made him burn.
+
+“This isn’t you, then?” he asked.
+
+Her heart leapt up in approval. She looked in his eyes, and for a
+second was with him.
+
+“Why, what do you think?” she laughed.
+
+He lifted his hat from his head with a distracted little gesture. She
+liked him, his quaint ways, his humour, his ignorance, and his slow
+masculinity.
+
+“Here, look here, Tom Smedley,” broke in Anne.
+
+“A moudiwarp! Did you find it dead?” he asked.
+
+“No, it bit me,” said Anne.
+
+“Oh, aye! An’ that got your rag out, did it?”
+
+“No, it didn’t!” Anne scolded sharply. “Such language!”
+
+“Oh, what’s up wi’ it?”
+
+“I can’t bear you to talk broad.”
+
+“Can’t you?”
+
+He glanced at Frances.
+
+“It isn’t nice,” Frances said. She did not care, really. The vulgar
+speech jarred on her as a rule; Jimmy was a gentleman. But Tom’s manner
+of speech did not matter to her.
+
+“I like you to talk _nicely_,” she added.
+
+“Do you,” he replied, tilting his hat, stirred.
+
+“And generally you _do_, you know,” she smiled.
+
+“I s’ll have to have a try,” he said, rather tensely gallant.
+
+“What?” she asked brightly.
+
+“To talk nice to you,” he said. Frances coloured furiously, bent her
+head for a moment, then laughed gaily, as if she liked this clumsy
+hint.
+
+“Eh now, you mind what you’re saying,” cried Anne, giving the young man
+an admonitory pat.
+
+“You wouldn’t have to give yon mole many knocks like that,” he teased,
+relieved to get on safe ground, rubbing his arm.
+
+“No indeed, it died in one blow,” said Frances, with a flippancy that
+was hateful to her.
+
+“You’re not so good at knockin’ ’em?” he said, turning to her.
+
+“I don’t know, if I’m cross,” she said decisively.
+
+“No?” he replied, with alert attentiveness.
+
+“I could,” she added, harder, “if it was necessary.”
+
+He was slow to feel her difference.
+
+“And don’t you consider it _is_ necessary?” he asked, with misgiving.
+
+“W—ell—is it?” she said, looking at him steadily, coldly.
+
+“I reckon it is,” he replied, looking away, but standing stubborn.
+
+She laughed quickly.
+
+“But it isn’t necessary for _me_,” she said, with slight contempt.
+
+“Yes, that’s quite true,” he answered.
+
+She laughed in a shaky fashion.
+
+“_I know it is_,” she said; and there was an awkward pause.
+
+“Why, would you _like_ me to kill moles then?” she asked tentatively,
+after a while.
+
+“They do us a lot of damage,” he said, standing firm on his own ground,
+angered.
+
+“Well, I’ll see the next time I come across one,” she promised,
+defiantly. Their eyes met, and she sank before him, her pride troubled.
+He felt uneasy and triumphant and baffled, as if fate had gripped him.
+She smiled as she departed.
+
+“Well,” said Anne, as the sisters went through the wheat stubble; “I
+don’t know what you two’s been jawing about, I’m sure.”
+
+“Don’t you?” laughed Frances significantly.
+
+“No, I don’t. But, at any rate, Tom Smedley’s a good deal better to my
+thinking than Jimmy, so there—and nicer.”
+
+“Perhaps he is,” said Frances coldly.
+
+And the next day, after a secret, persistent hunt, she found another
+mole playing in the heat. She killed it, and in the evening, when Tom
+came to the gate to smoke his pipe after supper, she took him the dead
+creature.
+
+“Here you are then!” she said.
+
+“Did you catch it?” he replied, taking the velvet corpse into his
+fingers and examining it minutely. This was to hide his trepidation.
+
+“Did you think I couldn’t?” she asked, her face very near his.
+
+“Nay, I didn’t know.”
+
+She laughed in his face, a strange little laugh that caught her breath,
+all agitation, and tears, and recklessness of desire. He looked
+frightened and upset. She put her hand to his arm.
+
+“Shall you go out wi’ me?” he asked, in a difficult, troubled tone.
+
+She turned her face away, with a shaky laugh. The blood came up in him,
+strong, overmastering. He resisted it. But it drove him down, and he
+was carried away. Seeing the winsome, frail nape of her neck, fierce
+love came upon him for her, and tenderness.
+
+“We s’ll ’ave to tell your mother,” he said. And he stood, suffering,
+resisting his passion for her.
+
+“Yes,” she replied, in a dead voice. But there was a thrill of pleasure
+in this death.
+
+
+
+The Shadow in the Rose Garden
+
+A rather small young man sat by the window of a pretty seaside cottage
+trying to persuade himself that he was reading the newspaper. It was
+about half-past eight in the morning. Outside, the glory roses hung in
+the morning sunshine like little bowls of fire tipped up. The young man
+looked at the table, then at the clock, then at his own big silver
+watch. An expression of stiff endurance came on to his face. Then he
+rose and reflected on the oil-paintings that hung on the walls of the
+room, giving careful but hostile attention to “The Stag at Bay”. He
+tried the lid of the piano, and found it locked. He caught sight of his
+own face in a little mirror, pulled his brown moustache, and an alert
+interest sprang into his eyes. He was not ill-favoured. He twisted his
+moustache. His figure was rather small, but alert and vigorous. As he
+turned from the mirror a look of self-commiseration mingled with his
+appreciation of his own physiognomy.
+
+In a state of self-suppression, he went through into the garden. His
+jacket, however, did not look dejected. It was new, and had a smart and
+self-confident air, sitting upon a confident body. He contemplated the
+Tree of Heaven that flourished by the lawn, then sauntered on to the
+next plant. There was more promise in a crooked apple tree covered with
+brown-red fruit. Glancing round, he broke off an apple and, with his
+back to the house, took a clean, sharp bite. To his surprise the fruit
+was sweet. He took another. Then again he turned to survey the bedroom
+windows overlooking the garden. He started, seeing a woman’s figure;
+but it was only his wife. She was gazing across to the sea, apparently
+ignorant of him.
+
+For a moment or two he looked at her, watching her. She was a
+good-looking woman, who seemed older than he, rather pale, but healthy,
+her face yearning. Her rich auburn hair was heaped in folds on her
+forehead. She looked apart from him and his world, gazing away to the
+sea. It irked her husband that she should continue abstracted and in
+ignorance of him; he pulled poppy fruits and threw them at the window.
+She started, glanced at him with a wild smile, and looked away again.
+Then almost immediately she left the window. He went indoors to meet
+her. She had a fine carriage, very proud, and wore a dress of soft
+white muslin.
+
+“I’ve been waiting long enough,” he said.
+
+“For me or for breakfast?” she said lightly. “You know we said nine
+o’clock. I should have thought you could have slept after the journey.”
+
+“You know I’m always up at five, and I couldn’t stop in bed after six.
+You might as well be in pit as in bed, on a morning like this.”
+
+“I shouldn’t have thought the pit would occur to you, here.”
+
+She moved about examining the room, looking at the ornaments under
+glass covers. He, planted on the hearthrug, watched her rather
+uneasily, and grudgingly indulgent. She shrugged her shoulders at the
+apartment.
+
+“Come,” she said, taking his arm, “let us go into the garden till Mrs
+Coates brings the tray.”
+
+“I hope she’ll be quick,” he said, pulling his moustache. She gave a
+short laugh, and leaned on his arm as they went. He had lighted a pipe.
+
+Mrs Coates entered the room as they went down the steps. The
+delightful, erect old lady hastened to the window for a good view of
+her visitors. Her china-blue eyes were bright as she watched the young
+couple go down the path, he walking in an easy, confident fashion, with
+his wife, on his arm. The landlady began talking to herself in a soft,
+Yorkshire accent.
+
+“Just of a height they are. She wouldn’t ha’ married a man less than
+herself in stature, I think, though he’s not her equal otherwise.” Here
+her granddaughter came in, setting a tray on the table. The girl went
+to the old woman’s side.
+
+“He’s been eating the apples, gran’,” she said.
+
+“Has he, my pet? Well, if he’s happy, why not?”
+
+Outside, the young, well-favoured man listened with impatience to the
+chink of the teacups. At last, with a sigh of relief, the couple came
+in to breakfast. After he had eaten for some time, he rested a moment
+and said:
+
+“Do you think it’s any better place than Bridlington?”
+
+“I do,” she said, “infinitely! Besides, I am at home here—it’s not like
+a strange seaside place to me.”
+
+“How long were you here?”
+
+“Two years.”
+
+He ate reflectively.
+
+“I should ha’ thought you’d rather go to a fresh place,” he said at
+length.
+
+She sat very silent, and then, delicately, put out a feeler.
+
+“Why?” she said. “Do you think I shan’t enjoy myself?”
+
+He laughed comfortably, putting the marmalade thick on his bread.
+
+“I hope so,” he said.
+
+She again took no notice of him.
+
+“But don’t say anything about it in the village, Frank,” she said
+casually. “Don’t say who I am, or that I used to live here. There’s
+nobody I want to meet, particularly, and we should never feel free if
+they knew me again.”
+
+“Why did you come, then?”
+
+“‘Why?’ Can’t you understand why?”
+
+“Not if you don’t want to know anybody.”
+
+“I came to see the place, not the people.”
+
+He did not say any more.
+
+“Women,” she said, “are different from men. I don’t know why I wanted
+to come—but I did.”
+
+She helped him to another cup of coffee, solicitously.
+
+“Only,” she resumed, “don’t talk about me in the village.” She laughed
+shakily. “I don’t want my past brought up against me, you know.” And
+she moved the crumbs on the cloth with her finger-tip.
+
+He looked at her as he drank his coffee; he sucked his moustache, and
+putting down his cup, said phlegmatically:
+
+“I’ll bet you’ve had a lot of past.”
+
+She looked with a little guiltiness, that flattered him, down at the
+tablecloth.
+
+“Well,” she said, caressive, “you won’t give me away, who I am, will
+you?”
+
+“No,” he said, comforting, laughing, “I won’t give you away.”
+
+He was pleased.
+
+She remained silent. After a moment or two she lifted her head, saying:
+
+“I’ve got to arrange with Mrs Coates, and do various things. So you’d
+better go out by yourself this morning—and we’ll be in to dinner at
+one.”
+
+“But you can’t be arranging with Mrs Coates all morning,” he said.
+
+“Oh, well—then I’ve some letters to write, and I must get that mark out
+of my skirt. I’ve got plenty of little things to do this morning. You’d
+better go out by yourself.”
+
+He perceived that she wanted to be rid of him, so that when she went
+upstairs, he took his hat and lounged out on to the cliffs,
+suppressedly angry.
+
+Presently she too came out. She wore a hat with roses, and a long lace
+scarf hung over her white dress. Rather nervously, she put up her
+sunshade, and her face was half-hidden in its coloured shadow. She went
+along the narrow track of flag-stones that were worn hollow by the feet
+of the fishermen. She seemed to be avoiding her surroundings, as if she
+remained safe in the little obscurity of her parasol.
+
+She passed the church, and went down the lane till she came to a high
+wall by the wayside. Under this she went slowly, stopping at length by
+an open doorway, which shone like a picture of light in the dark wall.
+There in the magic beyond the doorway, patterns of shadow lay on the
+sunny court, on the blue and white sea-pebbles of its paving, while a
+green lawn glowed beyond, where a bay tree glittered at the edges. She
+tiptoed nervously into the courtyard, glancing at the house that stood
+in shadow. The uncurtained windows looked black and soulless, the
+kitchen door stood open. Irresolutely she took a step forward, and
+again forward, leaning, yearning, towards the garden beyond.
+
+She had almost gained the corner of the house when a heavy step came
+crunching through the trees. A gardener appeared before her. He held a
+wicker tray on which were rolling great, dark red gooseberries,
+overripe. He moved slowly.
+
+“The garden isn’t open today,” he said quietly to the attractive woman,
+who was poised for retreat.
+
+For a moment she was silent with surprise. How should it be public at
+all?
+
+“When is it open?” she asked, quick-witted.
+
+“The rector lets visitors in on Fridays and Tuesdays.”
+
+She stood still, reflecting. How strange to think of the rector opening
+his garden to the public!
+
+“But everybody will be at church,” she said coaxingly to the man.
+“There’ll be nobody here, will there?”
+
+He moved, and the big gooseberries rolled.
+
+“The rector lives at the new rectory,” he said.
+
+The two stood still. He did not like to ask her to go. At last she
+turned to him with a winning smile.
+
+“Might I have _one_ peep at the roses?” she coaxed, with pretty
+wilfulness.
+
+“I don’t suppose it would matter,” he said, moving aside: “you won’t
+stop long——”
+
+She went forward, forgetting the gardener in a moment. Her face became
+strained, her movements eager. Glancing round, she saw all the windows
+giving on to the lawn were curtainless and dark. The house had a
+sterile appearance, as if it were still used, but not inhabited. A
+shadow seemed to go over her. She went across the lawn towards the
+garden, through an arch of crimson ramblers, a gate of colour. There
+beyond lay the soft blue sea with the bay, misty with morning, and the
+farthest headland of black rock jutting dimly out between blue and blue
+of the sky and water. Her face began to shine, transfigured with pain
+and joy. At her feet the garden fell steeply, all a confusion of
+flowers, and away below was the darkness of tree-tops covering the
+beck.
+
+She turned to the garden that shone with sunny flowers around her. She
+knew the little corner where was the seat beneath the yew tree. Then
+there was the terrace where a great host of flowers shone, and from
+this, two paths went down, one at each side of the garden. She closed
+her sunshade and walked slowly among the many flowers. All round were
+rose bushes, big banks of roses, then roses hanging and tumbling from
+pillars, or roses balanced on the standard bushes. By the open earth
+were many other flowers. If she lifted her head, the sea was upraised
+beyond, and the Cape.
+
+Slowly she went down one path, lingering, like one who has gone back
+into the past. Suddenly she was touching some heavy crimson roses that
+were soft as velvet, touching them thoughtfully, without knowing, as a
+mother sometimes fondles the hand of her child. She leaned slightly
+forward to catch the scent. Then she wandered on in abstraction.
+Sometimes a flame-coloured, scentless rose would hold her arrested. She
+stood gazing at it as if she could not understand it. Again the same
+softness of intimacy came over her, as she stood before a tumbling heap
+of pink petals. Then she wondered over the white rose, that was
+greenish, like ice, in the centre. So, slowly, like a white, pathetic
+butterfly, she drifted down the path, coming at last to a tiny terrace
+all full of roses. They seemed to fill the place, a sunny, gay throng.
+She was shy of them, they were so many and so bright. They seemed to be
+conversing and laughing. She felt herself in a strange crowd. It
+exhilarated her, carried her out of herself. She flushed with
+excitement. The air was pure scent.
+
+Hastily, she went to a little seat among the white roses, and sat down.
+Her scarlet sunshade made a hard blot of colour. She sat quite still,
+feeling her own existence lapse. She was no more than a rose, a rose
+that could not quite come into blossom, but remained tense. A little
+fly dropped on her knee, on her white dress. She watched it, as if it
+had fallen on a rose. She was not herself.
+
+Then she started cruelly as a shadow crossed her and a figure moved
+into her sight. It was a man who had come in slippers, unheard. He wore
+a linen coat. The morning was shattered, the spell vanished away. She
+was only afraid of being questioned. He came forward. She rose. Then,
+seeing him, the strength went from her and she sank on the seat again.
+
+He was a young man, military in appearance, growing slightly stout. His
+black hair was brushed smooth and bright, his moustache was waxed. But
+there was something rambling in his gait. She looked up, blanched to
+the lips, and saw his eyes. They were black, and stared without seeing.
+They were not a man’s eyes. He was coming towards her.
+
+He stared at her fixedly, made unconscious salute, and sat down beside
+her on the seat. He moved on the bench, shifted his feet, saying, in a
+gentlemanly, military voice:
+
+“I don’t disturb you—do I?”
+
+She was mute and helpless. He was scrupulously dressed in dark clothes
+and a linen coat. She could not move. Seeing his hands, with the ring
+she knew so well upon the little finger, she felt as if she were going
+dazed. The whole world was deranged. She sat unavailing. For his hands,
+her symbols of passionate love, filled her with horror as they rested
+now on his strong thighs.
+
+“May I smoke?” he asked intimately, almost secretly, his hand going to
+his pocket.
+
+She could not answer, but it did not matter, he was in another world.
+She wondered, craving, if he recognized her—if he could recognize her.
+She sat pale with anguish. But she had to go through it.
+
+“I haven’t got any tobacco,” he said thoughtfully.
+
+But she paid no heed to his words, only she attended to him. Could he
+recognize her, or was it all gone? She sat still in a frozen kind of
+suspense.
+
+“I smoke John Cotton,” he said, “and I must economize with it, it is
+expensive. You know, I’m not very well off while these lawsuits are
+going on.”
+
+“No,” she said, and her heart was cold, her soul kept rigid.
+
+He moved, made a loose salute, rose, and went away. She sat motionless.
+She could see his shape, the shape she had loved, with all her passion:
+his compact, soldier’s head, his fine figure now slackened. And it was
+not he. It only filled her with horror too difficult to know.
+
+Suddenly he came again, his hand in his jacket pocket.
+
+“Do you mind if I smoke?” he said. “Perhaps I shall be able to see
+things more clearly.”
+
+He sat down beside her again, filling a pipe. She watched his hands
+with the fine strong fingers. They had always inclined to tremble
+slightly. It had surprised her, long ago, in such a healthy man. Now
+they moved inaccurately, and the tobacco hung raggedly out of the pipe.
+
+“I have legal business to attend to. Legal affairs are always so
+uncertain. I tell my solicitor exactly, precisely what I want, but I
+can never get it done.”
+
+She sat and heard him talking. But it was not he. Yet those were the
+hands she had kissed, there were the glistening, strange black eyes
+that she had loved. Yet it was not he. She sat motionless with horror
+and silence. He dropped his tobacco pouch, and groped for it on the
+ground. Yet she must wait if he would recognize her. Why could she not
+go! In a moment he rose.
+
+“I must go at once,” he said. “The owl is coming.” Then he added
+confidentially: “His name isn’t really the owl, but I call him that. I
+must go and see if he has come.”
+
+She rose too. He stood before her, uncertain. He was a handsome,
+soldierly fellow, and a lunatic. Her eyes searched him, and searched
+him, to see if he would recognize her, if she could discover him.
+
+“You don’t know me?” she asked, from the terror of her soul, standing
+alone.
+
+He looked back at her quizzically. She had to bear his eyes. They
+gleamed on her, but with no intelligence. He was drawing nearer to her.
+
+“Yes, I do know you,” he said, fixed, intent, but mad, drawing his face
+nearer hers. Her horror was too great. The powerful lunatic was coming
+too near to her.
+
+A man approached, hastening.
+
+“The garden isn’t open this morning,” he said.
+
+The deranged man stopped and looked at him. The keeper went to the seat
+and picked up the tobacco pouch left lying there.
+
+“Don’t leave your tobacco, sir,” he said, taking it to the gentleman in
+the linen coat.
+
+“I was just asking this lady to stay to lunch,” the latter said
+politely. “She is a friend of mine.”
+
+The woman turned and walked swiftly, blindly, between the sunny roses,
+out of the garden, past the house with the blank, dark windows, through
+the sea-pebbled courtyard to the street. Hastening and blind, she went
+forward without hesitating, not knowing whither. Directly she came to
+the house she went upstairs, took off her hat, and sat down on the bed.
+It was as if some membrane had been torn in two in her, so that she was
+not an entity that could think and feel. She sat staring across at the
+window, where an ivy spray waved slowly up and down in the sea wind.
+There was some of the uncanny luminousness of the sunlit sea in the
+air. She sat perfectly still, without any being. She only felt she
+might be sick, and it might be blood that was loose in her torn
+entrails. She sat perfectly still and passive.
+
+After a time she heard the hard tread of her husband on the floor
+below, and, without herself changing, she registered his movement. She
+heard his rather disconsolate footsteps go out again, then his voice
+speaking, answering, growing cheery, and his solid tread drawing near.
+
+He entered, ruddy, rather pleased, an air of complacency about his
+alert figure. She moved stiffly. He faltered in his approach.
+
+“What’s the matter?” he asked a tinge of impatience in his voice.
+“Aren’t you feeling well?”
+
+This was torture to her.
+
+“Quite,” she replied.
+
+His brown eyes became puzzled and angry.
+
+“What is the matter?” he said.
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+He took a few strides, and stood obstinately, looking out of the
+window.
+
+“Have you run up against anybody?” he asked.
+
+“Nobody who knows me,” she said.
+
+His hands began to twitch. It exasperated him, that she was no more
+sensible of him than if he did not exist. Turning on her at length,
+driven, he asked:
+
+“Something has upset you hasn’t it?”
+
+“No, why?” she said neutral. He did not exist for her, except as an
+irritant.
+
+His anger rose, filling the veins in his throat.
+
+“It seems like it,” he said, making an effort not to show his anger,
+because there seemed no reason for it. He went away downstairs. She sat
+still on the bed, and with the residue of feeling left to her, she
+disliked him because he tormented her. The time went by. She could
+smell the dinner being served, the smoke of her husband’s pipe from the
+garden. But she could not move. She had no being. There was a tinkle of
+the bell. She heard him come indoors. And then he mounted the stairs
+again. At every step her heart grew tight in her. He opened the door.
+
+“Dinner is on the table,” he said.
+
+It was difficult for her to endure his presence, for he would interfere
+with her. She could not recover her life. She rose stiffly and went
+down. She could neither eat nor talk during the meal. She sat absent,
+torn, without any being of her own. He tried to go on as if nothing
+were the matter. But at last he became silent with fury. As soon as it
+was possible, she went upstairs again, and locked the bedroom door. She
+must be alone. He went with his pipe into the garden. All his
+suppressed anger against her who held herself superior to him filled
+and blackened his heart. Though he had not known it, yet he had never
+really won her, she had never loved him. She had taken him on
+sufference. This had foiled him. He was only a labouring electrician in
+the mine, she was superior to him. He had always given way to her. But
+all the while, the injury and ignominy had been working in his soul
+because she did not hold him seriously. And now all his rage came up
+against her.
+
+He turned and went indoors. The third time, she heard him mounting the
+stairs. Her heart stood still. He turned the catch and pushed the
+door—it was locked. He tried it again, harder. Her heart was standing
+still.
+
+“Have you fastened the door?” he asked quietly, because of the
+landlady.
+
+“Yes. Wait a minute.”
+
+She rose and turned the lock, afraid he would burst it. She felt hatred
+towards him, because he did not leave her free. He entered, his pipe
+between his teeth, and she returned to her old position on the bed. He
+closed the door and stood with his back to it.
+
+“What’s the matter?” he asked determinedly.
+
+She was sick with him. She could not look at him.
+
+“Can’t you leave me alone?” she replied, averting her face from him.
+
+He looked at her quickly, fully, wincing with ignominy. Then he seemed
+to consider for a moment.
+
+“There’s something up with you, isn’t there?” he asked definitely.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “but that’s no reason why you should torment me.”
+
+“I don’t torment you. What’s the matter?”
+
+“Why should you know?” she cried, in hate and desperation.
+
+Something snapped. He started and caught his pipe as it fell from his
+mouth. Then he pushed forward the bitten-off mouth-piece with his
+tongue, took it from off his lips, and looked at it. Then he put out
+his pipe, and brushed the ash from his waistcoat. After which he raised
+his head.
+
+“I want to know,” he said. His face was greyish pale, and set uglily.
+
+Neither looked at the other. She knew he was fired now. His heart was
+pounding heavily. She hated him, but she could not withstand him.
+Suddenly she lifted her head and turned on him.
+
+“What right have you to know?” she asked.
+
+He looked at her. She felt a pang of surprise for his tortured eyes and
+his fixed face. But her heart hardened swiftly. She had never loved
+him. She did not love him now.
+
+But suddenly she lifted her head again swiftly, like a thing that tries
+to get free. She wanted to be free of it. It was not him so much, but
+it, something she had put on herself, that bound her so horribly. And
+having put the bond on herself, it was hardest to take it off. But now
+she hated everything and felt destructive. He stood with his back to
+the door, fixed, as if he would oppose her eternally, till she was
+extinguished. She looked at him. Her eyes were cold and hostile. His
+workman’s hands spread on the panels of the door behind him.
+
+“You know I used to live here?” she began, in a hard voice, as if
+wilfully to wound him. He braced himself against her, and nodded.
+
+“Well, I was companion to Miss Birch of Torril Hall—she and the rector
+were friends, and Archie was the rector’s son.” There was a pause. He
+listened without knowing what was happening. He stared at his wife. She
+was squatted in her white dress on the bed, carefully folding and
+refolding the hem of her skirt. Her voice was full of hostility.
+
+“He was an officer—a sub-lieutenant—then he quarrelled with his colonel
+and came out of the army. At any rate”—she plucked at her skirt hem,
+her husband stood motionless, watching her movements which filled his
+veins with madness—“he was awfully fond of me, and I was of
+him—awfully.”
+
+“How old was he?” asked the husband.
+
+“When—when I first knew him? Or when he went away?——”
+
+“When you first knew him.”
+
+“When I first knew him, he was twenty-six—now—he’s thirty-one—nearly
+thirty-two—because I’m twenty-nine, and he is nearly three years
+older——”
+
+She lifted her head and looked at the opposite wall.
+
+“And what then?” said her husband.
+
+She hardened herself, and said callously:
+
+“We were as good as engaged for nearly a year, though nobody knew—at
+least—they talked—but—it wasn’t open. Then he went away——”
+
+“He chucked you?” said the husband brutally, wanting to hurt her into
+contact with himself. Her heart rose wildly with rage. Then “Yes”, she
+said, to anger him. He shifted from one foot to the other, giving a
+“Ph!” of rage. There was silence for a time.
+
+“Then,” she resumed, her pain giving a mocking note to her words, “he
+suddenly went out to fight in Africa, and almost the very day I first
+met you, I heard from Miss Birch he’d got sunstroke—and two months
+after, that he was dead——”
+
+“That was before you took on with me?” said the husband.
+
+There was no answer. Neither spoke for a time. He had not understood.
+His eyes were contracted uglily.
+
+“So you’ve been looking at your old courting places!” he said. “That
+was what you wanted to go out by yourself for this morning.”
+
+Still she did not answer him anything. He went away from the door to
+the window. He stood with his hands behind him, his back to her. She
+looked at him. His hands seemed gross to her, the back of his head
+paltry.
+
+At length, almost against his will, he turned round, asking:
+
+“How long were you carrying on with him?”
+
+“What do you mean?” she replied coldly.
+
+“I mean how long were you carrying on with him?”
+
+She lifted her head, averting her face from him. She refused to answer.
+Then she said:
+
+“I don’t know what you mean, by carrying on. I loved him from the first
+days I met him—two months after I went to stay with Miss Birch.”
+
+“And do you reckon he loved you?” he jeered.
+
+“I know he did.”
+
+“How do you know, if he’d have no more to do with you?”
+
+There was a long silence of hate and suffering.
+
+“And how far did it go between you?” he asked at length, in a
+frightened, stiff voice.
+
+“I hate your not-straightforward questions,” she cried, beside herself
+with his baiting. “We loved each other, and we _were_ lovers—we were. I
+don’t care what _you_ think: what have you got to do with it? We were
+lovers before ever I knew you——”
+
+“Lovers—lovers,” he said, white with fury. “You mean you had your fling
+with an army man, and then came to me to marry you when you’d done——”
+
+She sat swallowing her bitterness. There was a long pause.
+
+“Do you mean to say you used to go—the whole hogger?” he asked, still
+incredulous.
+
+“Why, what else do you think I mean?” she cried brutally.
+
+He shrank, and became white, impersonal. There was a long, paralysed
+silence. He seemed to have gone small.
+
+“You never thought to tell me all this before I married you,” he said,
+with bitter irony, at last.
+
+“You never asked me,” she replied.
+
+“I never thought there was any need.”
+
+“Well, then, you _should_ think.”
+
+He stood with expressionless, almost childlike set face, revolving many
+thoughts, whilst his heart was mad with anguish.
+
+Suddenly she added:
+
+“And I saw him today,” she said. “He is not dead, he’s mad.”
+
+Her husband looked at her, startled.
+
+“Mad!’ he said involuntarily.
+
+“A lunatic,” she said. It almost cost her her reason to utter the word.
+There was a pause.
+
+“Did he know you?” asked the husband in a small voice.
+
+“No,” she said.
+
+He stood and looked at her. At last he had learned the width of the
+breach between them. She still squatted on the bed. He could not go
+near her. It would be violation to each of them to be brought into
+contact with the other. The thing must work itself out. They were both
+shocked so much, they were impersonal, and no longer hated each other.
+After some minutes he left her and went out.
+
+
+
+Goose Fair
+
+I
+
+Through the gloom of evening, and the flare of torches of the night
+before the fair, through the still fogs of the succeeding dawn came
+paddling the weary geese, lifting their poor feet that had been dipped
+in tar for shoes, and trailing them along the cobble-stones into the
+town. Last of all, in the afternoon, a country girl drove in her dozen
+birds, disconsolate because she was so late. She was a heavily built
+girl, fair, with regular features, and yet unprepossessing. She needed
+chiselling down, her contours were brutal. Perhaps it was weariness
+that hung her eyelids a little lower than was pleasant. When she spoke
+to her clumsily lagging birds it was in a snarling nasal tone. One of
+the silly things sat down in the gutter and refused to move. It looked
+very ridiculous, but also rather pitiful, squat there with its head up,
+refusing to be urged on by the ungentle toe of the girl. The latter
+swore heavily, then picked up the great complaining bird, and fronting
+her road stubbornly, drove on the lamentable eleven.
+
+No one had noticed her. This afternoon the women were not sitting
+chatting on their doorsteps, seaming up the cotton hose, or swiftly
+passing through their fingers the piled white lace; and in the high
+dark houses the song of the hosiery frames was hushed: “Shackety-boom,
+Shackety-shackety-boom, Z—zzz!” As she dragged up Hollow Stone, people
+returned from the fair chaffed her and asked her what o’clock it was.
+She did not reply, her look was sullen. The Lace Market was quiet as
+the Sabbath: even the great brass plates on the doors were dull with
+neglect. There seemed an afternoon atmosphere of raw discontent. The
+girl stopped a moment before the dismal prospect of one of the great
+warehouses that had been gutted with fire. She looked at the lean,
+threatening walls, and watched her white flock waddling in reckless
+misery below, and she would have laughed out loud had the wall fallen
+flat upon them and relieved her of them. But the wall did not fall, so
+she crossed the road, and walking on the safe side, hurried after her
+charge. Her look was even more sullen. She remembered the state of
+trade—Trade, the invidious enemy; Trade, which thrust out its hand and
+shut the factory doors, and pulled the stockingers off their seats, and
+left the web half-finished on the frame; Trade, which mysteriously
+choked up the sources of the rivulets of wealth, and blacker and more
+secret than a pestilence, starved the town. Through this morose
+atmosphere of bad trade, in the afternoon of the first day of the fair,
+the girl strode down to the Poultry with eleven sound geese and one
+lame one to sell.
+
+The Frenchmen were at the bottom of it! So everybody said, though
+nobody quite knew how. At any rate, they had gone to war with the
+Prussians and got beaten, and trade was ruined in Nottingham!
+
+A little fog rose up, and the twilight gathered around. Then they
+flared abroad their torches in the fair, insulting the night. The girl
+still sat in the Poultry, and her weary geese unsold on the stones,
+illuminated by the hissing lamp of a man who sold rabbits and pigeons
+and such-like assorted live-stock.
+
+II
+
+In another part of the town, near Sneinton Church, another girl came to
+the door to look at the night. She was tall and slender, dressed with
+the severe accuracy which marks the girl of superior culture. Her hair
+was arranged with simplicity about the long, pale, cleanly cut face.
+She leaned forward very slightly to glance down the street, listening.
+She very carefully preserved the appearance of having come quite
+casually to the door, yet she lingered and lingered and stood very
+still to listen when she heard a footstep, but when it proved to be
+only a common man, she drew herself up proudly and looked with a small
+smile over his head. He hesitated to glance into the open hall, lighted
+so spaciously with a scarlet-shaded lamp, and at the slim girl in brown
+silk lifted up before the light. But she, she looked over his head. He
+passed on.
+
+Presently she started and hung in suspense. Somebody was crossing the
+road. She ran down the steps in a pretty welcome, not effuse, saying in
+quick, but accurately articulated words: “Will! I began to think you’d
+gone to the fair. I came out to listen to it. I felt almost sure you’d
+gone. You’re coming in, aren’t you?” She waited a moment anxiously. “We
+expect you to dinner, you know,” she added wistfully.
+
+The man, who had a short face and spoke with his lip curling up on one
+side, in a drawling speech with ironically exaggerated intonation,
+replied after a short hesitation:
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, I am, straight, Lois. It’s a shame. I’ve got to go
+round to the biz. Man proposes—the devil disposes.” He turned aside
+with irony in the darkness.
+
+“But surely, Will!” remonstrated the girl, keenly disappointed.
+
+“Fact, Lois!—I feel wild about it myself. But I’ve got to go down to
+the works. They may be getting a bit warm down there, you know”—he
+jerked his head in the direction of the fair. “If the Lambs get
+frisky!—they’re a bit off about the work, and they’d just be in their
+element if they could set a lighted match to something——”
+
+“Will, you don’t think——!” exclaimed the girl, laying her hand on his
+arm in the true fashion of romance, and looking up at him earnestly.
+
+“Dad’s not sure,” he replied, looking down at her with gravity. They
+remained in this attitude for a moment, then he said:
+
+“I might stop a bit. It’s all right for an hour, I should think.”
+
+She looked at him earnestly, then said in tones of deep disappointment
+and of fortitude: “No, Will, you must go. You’d better go——”
+
+“It’s a shame!” he murmured, standing a moment at a loose end. Then,
+glancing down the street to see he was alone, he put his arm round her
+waist and said in a difficult voice: “How goes it?”
+
+She let him keep her for a moment, then he kissed her as if afraid of
+what he was doing. They were both uncomfortable.
+
+“Well——!” he said at length.
+
+“Good night!” she said, setting him free to go.
+
+He hung a moment near her, as if ashamed. Then “Good night,” he
+answered, and he broke away. She listened to his footsteps in the
+night, before composing herself to turn indoors.
+
+“Helloa!” said her father, glancing over his paper as she entered the
+dining-room. “What’s up, then?”
+
+“Oh, nothing,” she replied, in her calm tones. “Will won’t be here to
+dinner tonight.”
+
+“What, gone to the fair?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Oh! What’s got him then?”
+
+Lois looked at her father, and answered:
+
+“He’s gone down to the factory. They are afraid of the hands.”
+
+Her father looked at her closely.
+
+“Oh, aye!” he answered, undecided, and they sat down to dinner.
+
+III
+
+Lois retired very early. She had a fire in her bedroom. She drew the
+curtains and stood holding aside a heavy fold, looking out at the
+night. She could see only the nothingness of the fog; not even the
+glare of the fair was evident, though the noise clamoured small in the
+distance. In front of everything she could see her own faint image. She
+crossed to the dressing-table, and there leaned her face to the mirror,
+and looked at herself. She looked a long time, then she rose, changed
+her dress for a dressing-jacket, and took up _Sesame and Lilies._
+
+Late in the night she was roused from sleep by a bustle in the house.
+She sat up and heard a hurrying to and fro and the sound of anxious
+voices. She put on her dressing-gown and went out to her mother’s room.
+Seeing her mother at the head of the stairs, she said in her quick,
+clean voice:
+
+“Mother, what it it?”
+
+“Oh, child, don’t ask me! Go to bed, dear, do! I shall surely be
+worried out of my life.”
+
+“Mother, what is it?” Lois was sharp and emphatic.
+
+“I hope your father won’t go. Now I do hope your father won’t go. He’s
+got a cold as it is.”
+
+“Mother, tell me what is it?” Lois took her mother’s arm.
+
+“It’s Selby’s. I should have thought you would have heard the
+fire-engine, and Jack isn’t in yet. I hope we’re safe!” Lois returned
+to her bedroom and dressed. She coiled her plaited hair, and having put
+on a cloak, left the house.
+
+She hurried along under the fog-dripping trees towards the meaner part
+of the town. When she got near, she saw a glare in the fog, and closed
+her lips tight. She hastened on till she was in the crowd. With peaked,
+noble face she watched the fire. Then she looked a little wildly over
+the fire-reddened faces in the crowd, and catching sight of her father,
+hurried to him.
+
+“Oh, Dadda—is he safe? Is Will safe——?”
+
+“Safe, aye, why not? You’ve no business here. Here, here’s Sampson,
+he’ll take you home. I’ve enough to bother me; there’s my own place to
+watch. Go home now, I can’t do with you here.”
+
+“Have you seen Will?” she asked.
+
+“Go home—Sampson, just take Miss Lois home—now!”
+
+“You don’t really know where he is—father?”
+
+“Go home now—I don’t want you here——” her father ordered peremptorily.
+
+The tears sprang to Lois’ eyes. She looked at the fire and the tears
+were quickly dried by fear. The flames roared and struggled upward. The
+great wonder of the fire made her forget even her indignation at her
+father’s light treatment of herself and of her lover. There was a
+crashing and bursting of timber, as the first floor fell in a mass into
+the blazing gulf, splashing the fire in all directions, to the terror
+of the crowd. She saw the steel of the machines growing white-hot and
+twisting like flaming letters. Piece after piece of the flooring gave
+way, and the machines dropped in red ruin as the wooden framework
+burned out. The air became unbreathable; the fog was swallowed up;
+sparks went rushing up as if they would burn the dark heavens;
+sometimes cards of lace went whirling into the gulf of the sky, waving
+with wings of fire. It was dangerous to stand near this great cup of
+roaring destruction.
+
+Sampson, the grey old manager of Buxton and Co’s, led her away as soon
+as she would turn her face to listen to him. He was a stout, irritable
+man. He elbowed his way roughly through the crowd, and Lois followed
+him, her head high, her lips closed. He led her for some distance
+without speaking, then at last, unable to contain his garrulous
+irritability, he broke out:
+
+“What do they expect? What can they expect? They can’t expect to stand
+a bad time. They spring up like mushrooms as big as a house-side, but
+there’s no stability in ’em. I remember William Selby when he’d run on
+my errands. Yes, there’s some as can make much out of little, and
+there’s some as can make much out of nothing, but they find it won’t
+last. William Selby’s sprung up in a day, and he’ll vanish in a night.
+You can’t trust to luck alone. Maybe he thinks it’s a lucky thing this
+fire has come when things are looking black. But you can’t get out of
+it as easy as that. There’s been a few too many of ’em. No, indeed, a
+fire’s the last thing I should hope to come to—the very last!”
+
+Lois hurried and hurried, so that she brought the old manager panting
+in distress up the steps of her home. She could not bear to hear him
+talking so. They could get no one to open the door for some time. When
+at last Lois ran upstairs, she found her mother dressed, but all
+unbuttoned again, lying back in the chair in her daughter’s room,
+suffering from palpitation of the heart, with _Sesame and Lilies_
+crushed beneath her. Lois administered brandy, and her decisive words
+and movements helped largely to bring the good lady to a state of
+recovery sufficient to allow of her returning to her own bedroom.
+
+Then Lois locked the door. She glanced at her fire-darkened face, and
+taking the flattened Ruskin out of the chair, sat down and wept. After
+a while she calmed herself, rose, and sponged her face. Then once more
+on that fatal night she prepared for rest. Instead, however, or
+retiring, she pulled a silk quilt from her disordered bed and wrapping
+it round her, sat miserably to think. It was two o’clock in the
+morning.
+
+IV
+
+The fire was sunk to cold ashes in the grate, and the grey morning was
+creeping through the half-opened curtains like a thing ashamed, when
+Lois awoke. It was painful to move her head: her neck was cramped. The
+girl awoke in full recollection. She sighed, roused herself and pulled
+the quilt closer about her. For a little while she sat and mused. A
+pale, tragic resignation fixed her face like a mask. She remembered her
+father’s irritable answer to her question concerning her lover’s
+safety—“Safe, aye—why not?” She knew that he suspected the factory of
+having been purposely set on fire. But then, he had never liked Will.
+And yet—and yet—Lois’ heart was heavy as lead. She felt her lover was
+guilty. And she felt she must hide her secret of his last communication
+to her. She saw herself being cross-examined—“When did you last see
+this man?” But she would hide what he had said about watching at the
+works. How dreary it was—and how dreadful. Her life was ruined now, and
+nothing mattered any more. She must only behave with dignity, and
+submit to her own obliteration. For even if Will were never accused,
+she knew in her heart he was guilty. She knew it was over between them.
+
+It was dawn among the yellow fog outside, and Lois, as she moved
+mechanically about her toilet, vaguely felt that all her days would
+arrive slowly struggling through a bleak fog. She felt an intense
+longing at this uncanny hour to slough the body’s trammelled weariness
+and to issue at once into the new bright warmth of the far Dawn where a
+lover waited transfigured; it is so easy and pleasant in imagination to
+step out of the chill grey dampness of another terrestrial daybreak,
+straight into the sunshine of the eternal morning! And who can escape
+his hour? So Lois performed the meaningless routine of her toilet,
+which at last she made meaningful when she took her black dress, and
+fastened a black jet brooch at her throat.
+
+Then she went downstairs and found her father eating a mutton chop. She
+quickly approached and kissed him on the forehead. Then she retreated
+to the other end of the table. Her father looked tired, even haggard.
+
+“You are early,” he said, after a while. Lois did not reply. Her father
+continued to eat for a few moments, then he said:
+
+“Have a chop—here’s one! Ring for a hot plate. Eh, what? Why not?”
+
+Lois was insulted, but she gave no sign. She sat down and took a cup of
+coffee, making no pretence to eat. Her father was absorbed, and had
+forgotten her.
+
+“Our Jack’s not come home yet,” he said at last.
+
+Lois stirred faintly. “Hasn’t he?” she said.
+
+“No.” There was silence for a time. Lois was frightened. Had something
+happened also to her brother? This fear was closer and more irksome.
+
+“Selby’s was cleaned out, gutted. We had a near shave of it——”
+
+“You have no loss, Dadda?”
+
+“Nothing to mention.” After another silence, her father said:
+
+“I’d rather be myself than William Selby. Of course it may merely be
+bad luck—you don’t know. But whatever it was, I wouldn’t like to add
+one to the list of fires just now. Selby was at the ‘George’ when it
+broke out—I don’t know where the lad was——!”
+
+“Father,” broke in Lois, “why do you talk like that? Why do you talk as
+if Will had done it?” She ended suddenly. Her father looked at her
+pale, mute face.
+
+“I don’t talk as if Will had done it,” he said. “I don’t even think
+it.”
+
+Feeling she was going to cry, Lois rose and left the room. Her father
+sighed, and leaning his elbows on his knees, whistled faintly into the
+fire. He was not thinking about her.
+
+Lois went down to the kitchen and asked Lucy, the parlour-maid, to go
+out with her. She somehow shrank from going alone, lest people should
+stare at her overmuch: and she felt an overpowering impulse to go to
+the scene of the tragedy, to judge for herself.
+
+The churches were chiming half-past eight when the young lady and the
+maid set off down the street. Nearer the fair, swarthy, thin-legged men
+were pushing barrels of water towards the market-place, and the gipsy
+women, with hard brows, and dressed in tight velvet bodices, hurried
+along the pavement with jugs of milk, and great brass water ewers and
+loaves and breakfast parcels. People were just getting up, and in the
+poorer streets was a continual splash of tea-leaves, flung out on to
+the cobble-stones. A teapot came crashing down from an upper story just
+behind Lois, and she, starting round and looking up, thought that the
+trembling, drink-bleared man at the upper window, who was stupidly
+staring after his pot, had had designs on her life; and she went on her
+way shuddering at the grim tragedy of life.
+
+In the dull October morning the ruined factory was black and ghastly.
+The window-frames were all jagged, and the walls stood gaunt. Inside
+was a tangle of twisted _débris_, the iron, in parts red with bright
+rust, looking still hot; the charred wood was black and satiny; from
+dishevelled heaps, sodden with water, a faint smoke rose dimly. Lois
+stood and looked. If he had done that! He might even be dead there,
+burned to ash and lost for ever. It was almost soothing to feel so. He
+would be safe in the eternity which now she must hope in.
+
+At her side the pretty, sympathetic maid chatted plaintively. Suddenly,
+from one of her lapses into silence, she exclaimed:
+
+“Why if there isn’t Mr Jack!”
+
+Lois turned suddenly and saw her brother and her lover approaching her.
+Both looked soiled, untidy and wan. Will had a black eye, some ten
+hours old, well coloured. Lois turned very pale as they approached.
+They were looking gloomily at the factory, and for a moment did not
+notice the girls.
+
+“I’ll be jiggered if there ain’t our Lois!” exclaimed Jack, the
+reprobate, swearing under his breath.
+
+“Oh, God!” exclaimed the other in disgust.
+
+“Jack, where have you been?” said Lois sharply, in keen pain, not
+looking at her lover. Her sharp tone of suffering drove her lover to
+defend himself with an affectation of comic recklessness.
+
+“In quod,” replied her brother, smiling sickly.
+
+“Jack!” cried his sister very sharply.
+
+“Fact.”
+
+Will Selby shuffled on his feet and smiled, trying to turn away his
+face so that she should not see his black eye. She glanced at him. He
+felt her boundless anger and contempt, and with great courage he looked
+straight at her, smiling ironically. Unfortunately his smile would not
+go over his swollen eye, which remained grave and lurid.
+
+“Do I look pretty?” he inquired with a hateful twist of his lip.
+
+“Very!” she replied.
+
+“I thought I did,” he replied. And he turned to look at his father’s
+ruined works, and he felt miserable and stubborn. The girl standing
+there so clean and out of it all! Oh, God, he felt sick. He turned to
+go home.
+
+The three went together, Lois silent in anger and resentment. Her
+brother was tired and overstrung, but not suppressed. He chattered on
+blindly.
+
+“It was a lark we had! We met Bob Osborne and Freddy Mansell coming
+down Poultry. There was a girl with some geese. She looked a tanger
+sitting there, all like statues, her and the geese. It was Will who
+began it. He offered her three-pence and asked her to begin the show.
+She called him a—she called him something, and then somebody poked an
+old gander to stir him up, and somebody squirted him in the eye. He
+upped and squawked and started off with his neck out. Laugh! We nearly
+killed ourselves, keeping back those old birds with squirts and
+teasers. Oh, Lum! Those old geese, oh, scrimmy, they didn’t know where
+to turn, they fairly went off their dots, coming at us right an’ left,
+and such a row—it was fun, you never knew! Then the girl she got up and
+knocked somebody over the jaw, and we were right in for it. Well, in
+the end, Billy here got hold of her round the waist——”
+
+“Oh, dry it up!” exclaimed Will bitterly.
+
+Jack looked at him, laughed mirthlessly, and continued: “An’ we said
+we’d buy her birds. So we got hold of one goose apiece—an’ they took
+some holding, I can tell you—and off we set round the fair, Billy
+leading with the girl. The bloomin’ geese squawked an’ pecked. Laugh—I
+thought I should a’ died. Well, then we wanted the girl to have her
+birds back—and then she fired up. She got some other chaps on her side,
+and there was a proper old row. The girl went tooth and nail for Will
+there—she was dead set against him. She gave him a black eye, by gum,
+and we went at it, I can tell you. It was a free fight, a beauty, an’
+we got run in. I don’t know what became of the girl.”
+
+Lois surveyed the two men. There was no glimmer of a smile on her face,
+though the maid behind her was sniggering. Will was very bitter. He
+glanced at his sweetheart and at the ruined factory.
+
+“How’s dad taken it?” he asked, in a biting, almost humble tone.
+
+“I don’t know,” she replied coldly. “Father’s in an awful way. I
+believe everybody thinks you set the place on fire.”
+
+Lois drew herself up. She had delivered her blow. She drew herself up
+in cold condemnation and for a moment enjoyed her complete revenge. He
+was despicable, abject in his dishevelled, disfigured, unwashed
+condition.
+
+“Aye, well, they made a mistake for once,” he replied, with a curl of
+the lip.
+
+Curiously enough, they walked side by side as if they belonged to each
+other. She was his conscience-keeper. She was far from forgiving him,
+but she was still farther from letting him go. And he walked at her
+side like a boy who had to be punished before he can be exonerated. He
+submitted. But there was a genuine bitter contempt in the curl of his
+lip.
+
+
+
+The White Stocking
+
+I
+
+“I’m getting up, Teddilinks,” said Mrs Whiston, and she sprang out of
+bed briskly.
+
+“What the Hanover’s got you?” asked Whiston.
+
+“Nothing. Can’t I get up?” she replied animatedly.
+
+It was about seven o’clock, scarcely light yet in the cold bedroom.
+Whiston lay still and looked at his wife. She was a pretty little
+thing, with her fleecy, short black hair all tousled. He watched her as
+she dressed quickly, flicking her small, delightful limbs, throwing her
+clothes about her. Her slovenliness and untidiness did not trouble him.
+When she picked up the edge of her petticoat, ripped off a torn string
+of white lace, and flung it on the dressing-table, her careless abandon
+made his spirit glow. She stood before the mirror and roughly scrambled
+together her profuse little mane of hair. He watched the quickness and
+softness of her young shoulders, calmly, like a husband, and
+appreciatively.
+
+“Rise up,” she cried, turning to him with a quick wave of her arm—“and
+shine forth.”
+
+They had been married two years. But still, when she had gone out of
+the room, he felt as if all his light and warmth were taken away, he
+became aware of the raw, cold morning. So he rose himself, wondering
+casually what had roused her so early. Usually she lay in bed as late
+as she could.
+
+Whiston fastened a belt round his loins and went downstairs in shirt
+and trousers. He heard her singing in her snatchy fashion. The stairs
+creaked under his weight. He passed down the narrow little passage,
+which she called a hall, of the seven and sixpenny house which was his
+first home.
+
+He was a shapely young fellow of about twenty-eight, sleepy now and
+easy with well-being. He heard the water drumming into the kettle, and
+she began to whistle. He loved the quick way she dodged the supper cups
+under the tap to wash them for breakfast. She looked an untidy minx,
+but she was quick and handy enough.
+
+“Teddilinks,” she cried.
+
+“What?”
+
+“Light a fire, quick.”
+
+She wore an old, sack-like dressing-jacket of black silk pinned across
+her breast. But one of the sleeves, coming unfastened, showed some
+delightful pink upper-arm.
+
+“Why don’t you sew your sleeve up?” he said, suffering from the sight
+of the exposed soft flesh.
+
+“Where?” she cried, peering round. “Nuisance,” she said, seeing the
+gap, then with light fingers went on drying the cups.
+
+The kitchen was of fair size, but gloomy. Whiston poked out the dead
+ashes.
+
+Suddenly a thud was heard at the door down the passage.
+
+“I’ll go,” cried Mrs Whiston, and she was gone down the hall.
+
+The postman was a ruddy-faced man who had been a soldier. He smiled
+broadly, handing her some packages.
+
+“They’ve not forgot you,” he said impudently.
+
+“No—lucky for them,” she said, with a toss of the head. But she was
+interested only in her envelopes this morning. The postman waited
+inquisitively, smiling in an ingratiating fashion. She slowly,
+abstractedly, as if she did not know anyone was there, closed the door
+in his face, continuing to look at the addresses on her letters.
+
+She tore open the thin envelope. There was a long, hideous, cartoon
+valentine. She smiled briefly and dropped it on the floor. Struggling
+with the string of a packet, she opened a white cardboard box, and
+there lay a white silk handkerchief packed neatly under the paper lace
+of the box, and her initial, worked in heliotrope, fully displayed. She
+smiled pleasantly, and gently put the box aside. The third envelope
+contained another white packet—apparently a cotton handkerchief neatly
+folded. She shook it out. It was a long white stocking, but there was a
+little weight in the toe. Quickly, she thrust down her arm, wriggling
+her fingers into the toe of the stocking, and brought out a small box.
+She peeped inside the box, then hastily opened a door on her left hand,
+and went into the little, cold sitting-room. She had her lower lip
+caught earnestly between her teeth.
+
+With a little flash of triumph, she lifted a pair of pearl ear-rings
+from the small box, and she went to the mirror. There, earnestly, she
+began to hook them through her ears, looking at herself sideways in the
+glass. Curiously concentrated and intent she seemed as she fingered the
+lobes of her ears, her head bent on one side.
+
+Then the pearl ear-rings dangled under her rosy, small ears. She shook
+her head sharply, to see the swing of the drops. They went chill
+against her neck, in little, sharp touches. Then she stood still to
+look at herself, bridling her head in the dignified fashion. Then she
+simpered at herself. Catching her own eye, she could not help winking
+at herself and laughing.
+
+She turned to look at the box. There was a scrap of paper with this
+posy:
+
+“Pearls may be fair, but thou art fairer.
+Wear these for me, and I’ll love the wearer.”
+
+
+She made a grimace and a grin. But she was drawn to the mirror again,
+to look at her ear-rings.
+
+Whiston had made the fire burn, so he came to look for her. When she
+heard him, she started round quickly, guiltily. She was watching him
+with intent blue eyes when he appeared.
+
+He did not see much, in his morning-drowsy warmth. He gave her, as
+ever, a feeling of warmth and slowness. His eyes were very blue, very
+kind, his manner simple.
+
+“What ha’ you got?” he asked.
+
+“Valentines,” she said briskly, ostentatiously turning to show him the
+silk handkerchief. She thrust it under his nose. “Smell how good,” she
+said.
+
+“Who’s that from?” he replied, without smelling.
+
+“It’s a valentine,” she cried. “How do I know who it’s from?”
+
+“I’ll bet you know,” he said.
+
+“Ted!—I don’t!” she cried, beginning to shake her head, then stopping
+because of the ear-rings.
+
+He stood still a moment, displeased.
+
+“They’ve no right to send you valentines, now,” he said.
+
+“Ted!—Why not? You’re not jealous, are you? I haven’t the least idea
+who it’s from. Look—there’s my initial”—she pointed with an emphatic
+finger at the heliotrope embroidery—
+
+“E for Elsie,
+Nice little gelsie,”
+
+
+she sang.
+
+“Get out,” he said. “You know who it’s from.”
+
+“Truth, I don’t,” she cried.
+
+He looked round, and saw the white stocking lying on a chair.
+
+“Is this another?” he said.
+
+“No, that’s a sample,” she said. “There’s only a comic.” And she
+fetched in the long cartoon.
+
+He stretched it out and looked at it solemnly.
+
+“Fools!” he said, and went out of the room.
+
+She flew upstairs and took off the ear-rings. When she returned, he was
+crouched before the fire blowing the coals. The skin of his face was
+flushed, and slightly pitted, as if he had had small-pox. But his neck
+was white and smooth and goodly. She hung her arms round his neck as he
+crouched there, and clung to him. He balanced on his toes.
+
+“This fire’s a slow-coach,” he said.
+
+“And who else is a slow-coach?” she said.
+
+“One of us two, I know,” he said, and he rose carefully. She remained
+clinging round his neck, so that she was lifted off her feet.
+
+“Ha!—swing me,” she cried.
+
+He lowered his head, and she hung in the air, swinging from his neck,
+laughing. Then she slipped off.
+
+“The kettle is singing,” she sang, flying for the teapot. He bent down
+again to blow the fire. The veins in his neck stood out, his shirt
+collar seemed too tight.
+
+“Doctor Wyer,
+Blow the fire,
+Puff! puff! puff!”
+
+
+she sang, laughing.
+
+He smiled at her.
+
+She was so glad because of her pearl ear-rings.
+
+Over the breakfast she grew serious. He did not notice. She became
+portentous in her gravity. Almost it penetrated through his steady
+good-humour to irritate him.
+
+“Teddy!” she said at last.
+
+“What?” he asked.
+
+“I told you a lie,” she said, humbly tragic.
+
+His soul stirred uneasily.
+
+“Oh aye?” he said casually.
+
+She was not satisfied. He ought to be more moved.
+
+“Yes,” she said.
+
+He cut a piece of bread.
+
+“Was it a good one?” he asked.
+
+She was piqued. Then she considered—_was_ it a good one? Then she
+laughed.
+
+“No,” she said, “it wasn’t up to much.”
+
+“Ah!” he said easily, but with a steady strength of fondness for her in
+his tone. “Get it out then.”
+
+It became a little more difficult.
+
+“You know that white stocking,” she said earnestly. “I told you a lie.
+It wasn’t a sample. It was a valentine.”
+
+A little frown came on his brow.
+
+“Then what did you invent it as a sample for?” he said. But he knew
+this weakness of hers. The touch of anger in his voice frightened her.
+
+“I was afraid you’d be cross,” she said pathetically.
+
+“I’ll bet you were vastly afraid,” he said.
+
+“I _was_, Teddy.”
+
+There was a pause. He was resolving one or two things in his mind.
+
+“And who sent it?” he asked.
+
+“I can guess,” she said, “though there wasn’t a word with it—except——”
+
+She ran to the sitting-room and returned with a slip of paper.
+
+“Pearls may be fair, but thou art fairer.
+Wear these for me, and I’ll love the wearer.”
+
+
+He read it twice, then a dull red flush came on his face.
+
+“And _who_ do you guess it is?” he asked, with a ringing of anger in
+his voice.
+
+“I suspect it’s Sam Adams,” she said, with a little virtuous
+indignation.
+
+Whiston was silent for a moment.
+
+“Fool!” he said. “An’ what’s it got to do with pearls?—and how can he
+say ‘wear these for me’ when there’s only one? He hasn’t got the brain
+to invent a proper verse.”
+
+He screwed the sup of paper into a ball and flung it into the fire.
+
+“I suppose he thinks it’ll make a pair with the one last year,” she
+said.
+
+“Why, did he send one then?”
+
+“Yes. I thought you’d be wild if you knew.”
+
+His jaw set rather sullenly.
+
+Presently he rose, and went to wash himself, rolling back his sleeves
+and pulling open his shirt at the breast. It was as if his fine,
+clear-cut temples and steady eyes were degraded by the lower, rather
+brutal part of his face. But she loved it. As she whisked about,
+clearing the table, she loved the way in which he stood washing
+himself. He was such a man. She liked to see his neck glistening with
+water as he swilled it. It amused her and pleased her and thrilled her.
+He was so sure, so permanent, he had her so utterly in his power. It
+gave her a delightful, mischievous sense of liberty. Within his grasp,
+she could dart about excitingly.
+
+He turned round to her, his face red from the cold water, his eyes
+fresh and very blue.
+
+“You haven’t been seeing anything of him, have you?” he asked roughly.
+
+“Yes,” she answered, after a moment, as if caught guilty. “He got into
+the tram with me, and he asked me to drink a coffee and a Benedictine
+in the Royal.”
+
+“You’ve got it off fine and glib,” he said sullenly. “And did you?”
+
+“Yes,” she replied, with the air of a traitor before the rack.
+
+The blood came up into his neck and face, he stood motionless,
+dangerous.
+
+“It was cold, and it was such fun to go into the Royal,” she said.
+
+“You’d go off with a nigger for a packet of chocolate,” he said, in
+anger and contempt, and some bitterness. Queer how he drew away from
+her, cut her off from him.
+
+“Ted—how beastly!” she cried. “You know quite well——” She caught her
+lip, flushed, and the tears came to her eyes.
+
+He turned away, to put on his necktie. She went about her work, making
+a queer pathetic little mouth, down which occasionally dripped a tear.
+
+He was ready to go. With his hat jammed down on his head, and his
+overcoat buttoned up to his chin, he came to kiss her. He would be
+miserable all the day if he went without. She allowed herself to be
+kissed. Her cheek was wet under his lips, and his heart burned. She
+hurt him so deeply. And she felt aggrieved, and did not quite forgive
+him.
+
+In a moment she went upstairs to her ear-rings. Sweet they looked
+nestling in the little drawer—sweet! She examined them with voluptuous
+pleasure, she threaded them in her ears, she looked at herself, she
+posed and postured and smiled, and looked sad and tragic and winning
+and appealing, all in turn before the mirror. And she was happy, and
+very pretty.
+
+She wore her ear-rings all morning, in the house. She was
+self-conscious, and quite brilliantly winsome, when the baker came,
+wondering if he would notice. All the tradesmen left her door with a
+glow in them, feeling elated, and unconsciously favouring the
+delightful little creature, though there had been nothing to notice in
+her behaviour.
+
+She was stimulated all the day. She did not think about her husband. He
+was the permanent basis from which she took these giddy little flights
+into nowhere. At night, like chickens and curses, she would come home
+to him, to roost.
+
+Meanwhile Whiston, a traveller and confidential support of a small
+firm, hastened about his work, his heart all the while anxious for her,
+yearning for surety, and kept tense by not getting it.
+
+II
+
+She had been a warehouse girl in Adams’s lace factory before she was
+married. Sam Adams was her employer. He was a bachelor of forty,
+growing stout, a man well dressed and florid, with a large brown
+moustache and thin hair. From the rest of his well-groomed, showy
+appearance, it was evident his baldness was a chagrin to him. He had a
+good presence, and some Irish blood in his veins.
+
+His fondness for the girls, or the fondness of the girls for him, was
+notorious. And Elsie, quick, pretty, almost witty little thing—she
+_seemed_ witty, although, when her sayings were repeated, they were
+entirely trivial—she had a great attraction for him. He would come into
+the warehouse dressed in a rather sporting reefer coat, of fawn colour,
+and trousers of fine black-and-white check, a cap with a big peak and a
+scarlet carnation in his button-hole, to impress her. She was only half
+impressed. He was too loud for her good taste. Instinctively perceiving
+this, he sobered down to navy blue. Then a well-built man, florid, with
+large brown whiskers, smart navy blue suit, fashionable boots, and
+manly hat, he was the irreproachable. Elsie was impressed.
+
+But meanwhile Whiston was courting her, and she made splendid little
+gestures, before her bedroom mirror, of the constant-and-true sort.
+
+“True, true till death——”
+
+
+That was her song. Whiston was made that way, so there was no need to
+take thought for him.
+
+Every Christmas Sam Adams gave a party at his house, to which he
+invited his superior work-people—not factory hands and labourers, but
+those above. He was a generous man in his way, with a real warm feeling
+for giving pleasure.
+
+Two years ago Elsie had attended this Christmas-party for the last
+time. Whiston had accompanied her. At that time he worked for Sam
+Adams.
+
+She had been very proud of herself, in her close-fitting, full-skirted
+dress of blue silk. Whiston called for her. Then she tripped beside
+him, holding her large cashmere shawl across her breast. He strode with
+long strides, his trousers handsomely strapped under his boots, and her
+silk shoes bulging the pockets of his full-skirted overcoat.
+
+They passed through the park gates, and her spirits rose. Above them
+the Castle Rock loomed grandly in the night, the naked trees stood
+still and dark in the frost, along the boulevard.
+
+They were rather late. Agitated with anticipation, in the cloak-room
+she gave up her shawl, donned her silk shoes, and looked at herself in
+the mirror. The loose bunches of curls on either side her face danced
+prettily, her mouth smiled.
+
+She hung a moment in the door of the brilliantly lighted room. Many
+people were moving within the blaze of lamps, under the crystal
+chandeliers, the full skirts of the women balancing and floating, the
+side-whiskers and white cravats of the men bowing above. Then she
+entered the light.
+
+In an instant Sam Adams was coming forward, lifting both his arms in
+boisterous welcome. There was a constant red laugh on his face.
+
+“Come late, would you,” he shouted, “like royalty.”
+
+He seized her hands and led her forward. He opened his mouth wide when
+he spoke, and the effect of the warm, dark opening behind the brown
+whiskers was disturbing. But she was floating into the throng on his
+arm. He was very gallant.
+
+“Now then,” he said, taking her card to write down the dances, “I’ve
+got _carte blanche_, haven’t I?”
+
+“Mr Whiston doesn’t dance,” she said.
+
+“I am a lucky man!” he said, scribbling his initials. “I was born with
+an _amourette_ in my mouth.”
+
+He wrote on, quietly. She blushed and laughed, not knowing what it
+meant.
+
+“Why, what is that?” she said.
+
+“It’s you, even littler than you are, dressed in little wings,” he
+said.
+
+“I should have to be pretty small to get in your mouth,” she said.
+
+“You think you’re too big, do you!” he said easily.
+
+He handed her her card, with a bow.
+
+“Now I’m set up, my darling, for this evening,” he said.
+
+Then, quick, always at his ease, he looked over the room. She waited in
+front of him. He was ready. Catching the eye of the band, he nodded. In
+a moment, the music began. He seemed to relax, giving himself up.
+
+“Now then, Elsie,” he said, with a curious caress in his voice that
+seemed to lap the outside of her body in a warm glow, delicious. She
+gave herself to it. She liked it.
+
+He was an excellent dancer. He seemed to draw her close in to him by
+some male warmth of attraction, so that she became all soft and pliant
+to him, flowing to his form, whilst he united her with him and they
+lapsed along in one movement. She was just carried in a kind of strong,
+warm flood, her feet moved of themselves, and only the music threw her
+away from him, threw her back to him, to his clasp, in his strong form
+moving against her, rhythmically, deliriously.
+
+When it was over, he was pleased and his eyes had a curious gleam which
+thrilled her and yet had nothing to do with her. Yet it held her. He
+did not speak to her. He only looked straight into her eyes with a
+curious, gleaming look that disturbed her fearfully and deliriously.
+But also there was in his look some of the automatic irony of the
+_roué_. It left her partly cold. She was not carried away.
+
+She went, driven by an opposite, heavier impulse, to Whiston. He stood
+looking gloomy, trying to admit that she had a perfect right to enjoy
+herself apart from him. He received her with rather grudging
+kindliness.
+
+“Aren’t you going to play whist?” she asked.
+
+“Aye,” he said. “Directly.”
+
+“I do wish you could dance.”
+
+“Well, I can’t,” he said. “So you enjoy yourself.”
+
+“But I should enjoy it better if I could dance with you.”
+
+“Nay, you’re all right,” he said. “I’m not made that way.”
+
+“Then you ought to be!” she cried.
+
+“Well, it’s my fault, not yours. You enjoy yourself,” he bade her.
+Which she proceeded to do, a little bit irked.
+
+She went with anticipation to the arms of Sam Adams, when the time came
+to dance with him. It _was_ so gratifying, irrespective of the man. And
+she felt a little grudge against Whiston, soon forgotten when her host
+was holding her near to him, in a delicious embrace. And she watched
+his eyes, to meet the gleam in them, which gratified her.
+
+She was getting warmed right through, the glow was penetrating into
+her, driving away everything else. Only in her heart was a little
+tightness, like conscience.
+
+When she got a chance, she escaped from the dancing-room to the
+card-room. There, in a cloud of smoke, she found Whiston playing
+cribbage. Radiant, roused, animated, she came up to him and greeted
+him. She was too strong, too vibrant a note in the quiet room. He
+lifted his head, and a frown knitted his gloomy forehead.
+
+“Are you playing cribbage? Is it exciting? How are you getting on?” she
+chattered.
+
+He looked at her. None of these questions needed answering, and he did
+not feel in touch with her. She turned to the cribbage-board.
+
+“Are you white or red?” she asked.
+
+“He’s red,” replied the partner.
+
+“Then you’re losing,” she said, still to Whiston. And she lifted the
+red peg from the board. “One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—Right
+up there you ought to jump——”
+
+“Now put it back in its right place,” said Whiston.
+
+“Where was it?” she asked gaily, knowing her transgression. He took the
+little red peg away from her and stuck it in its hole.
+
+The cards were shuffled.
+
+“What a shame you’re losing!” said Elsie.
+
+“You’d better cut for him,” said the partner.
+
+She did so, hastily. The cards were dealt. She put her hand on his
+shoulder, looking at his cards.
+
+“It’s good,” she cried, “isn’t it?”
+
+He did not answer, but threw down two cards. It moved him more strongly
+than was comfortable, to have her hand on his shoulder, her curls
+dangling and touching his ears, whilst she was roused to another man.
+It made the blood flame over him.
+
+At that moment Sam Adams appeared, florid and boisterous, intoxicated
+more with himself, with the dancing, than with wine. In his eyes the
+curious, impersonal light gleamed.
+
+“I thought I should find you here, Elsie,” he cried boisterously, a
+disturbing, high note in his voice.
+
+“What made you think so?” she replied, the mischief rousing in her.
+
+The florid, well-built man narrowed his eyes to a smile.
+
+“I should never look for you among the ladies,” he said, with a kind of
+intimate, animal call to her. He laughed, bowed, and offered her his
+arm.
+
+“Madam, the music waits.”
+
+She went almost helplessly, carried along with him, unwilling, yet
+delighted.
+
+That dance was an intoxication to her. After the first few steps, she
+felt herself slipping away from herself. She almost knew she was going,
+she did not even want to go. Yet she must have chosen to go. She lay in
+the arm of the steady, close man with whom she was dancing, and she
+seemed to swim away out of contact with the room, into him. She had
+passed into another, denser element of him, an essential privacy. The
+room was all vague around her, like an atmosphere, like under sea, with
+a flow of ghostly, dumb movements. But she herself was held real
+against her partner, and it seemed she was connected with him, as if
+the movements of his body and limbs were her own movements, yet not her
+own movements—and oh, delicious! He also was given up, oblivious,
+concentrated, into the dance. His eye was unseeing. Only his large,
+voluptuous body gave off a subtle activity. His fingers seemed to
+search into her flesh. Every moment, and every moment, she felt she
+would give way utterly, and sink molten: the fusion point was coming
+when she would fuse down into perfect unconsciousness at his feet and
+knees. But he bore her round the room in the dance, and he seemed to
+sustain all her body with his limbs, his body, and his warmth seemed to
+come closer into her, nearer, till it would fuse right through her, and
+she would be as liquid to him, as an intoxication only.
+
+It was exquisite. When it was over, she was dazed, and was scarcely
+breathing. She stood with him in the middle of the room as if she were
+alone in a remote place. He bent over her. She expected his lips on her
+bare shoulder, and waited. Yet they were not alone, they were not
+alone. It was cruel.
+
+“’Twas good, wasn’t it, my darling?” he said to her, low and delighted.
+There was a strange impersonality about his low, exultant call that
+appealed to her irresistibly. Yet why was she aware of some part shut
+off in her? She pressed his arm, and he led her towards the door.
+
+She was not aware of what she was doing, only a little grain of
+resistant trouble was in her. The man, possessed, yet with a
+superficial presence of mind, made way to the dining-room, as if to
+give her refreshment, cunningly working to his own escape with her. He
+was molten hot, filmed over with presence of mind, and bottomed with
+cold disbelief.
+
+In the dining-room was Whiston, carrying coffee to the plain, neglected
+ladies. Elsie saw him, but felt as if he could not see her. She was
+beyond his reach and ken. A sort of fusion existed between her and the
+large man at her side. She ate her custard, but an incomplete fusion
+all the while sustained and contained her within the being of her
+employer.
+
+But she was growing cooler. Whiston came up. She looked at him, and saw
+him with different eyes. She saw his slim, young man’s figure real and
+enduring before her. That was he. But she was in the spell with the
+other man, fused with him, and she could not be taken away.
+
+“Have you finished your cribbage?” she asked, with hasty evasion of
+him.
+
+“Yes,” he replied. “Aren’t you getting tired of dancing?”
+
+“Not a bit,” she said.
+
+“Not she,” said Adams heartily. “No girl with any spirit gets tired of
+dancing.—Have something else, Elsie. Come—sherry. Have a glass of
+sherry with us, Whiston.”
+
+Whilst they sipped the wine, Adams watched Whiston almost cunningly, to
+find his advantage.
+
+“We’d better be getting back—there’s the music,” he said. “See the
+women get something to eat, Whiston, will you, there’s a good chap.”
+
+And he began to draw away. Elsie was drifting helplessly with him. But
+Whiston put himself beside them, and went along with them. In silence
+they passed through to the dancing-room. There Adams hesitated, and
+looked round the room. It was as if he could not see.
+
+A man came hurrying forward, claiming Elsie, and Adams went to his
+other partner. Whiston stood watching during the dance. She was
+conscious of him standing there observant of her, like a ghost, or a
+judgment, or a guardian angel. She was also conscious, much more
+intimately and impersonally, of the body of the other man moving
+somewhere in the room. She still belonged to him, but a feeling of
+distraction possessed her, and helplessness. Adams danced on, adhering
+to Elsie, waiting his time, with the persistence of cynicism.
+
+The dance was over. Adams was detained. Elsie found herself beside
+Whiston. There was something shapely about him as he sat, about his
+knees and his distinct figure, that she clung to. It was as if he had
+enduring form. She put her hand on his knee.
+
+“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked.
+
+“_Ever_ so,” she replied, with a fervent, yet detached tone.
+
+“It’s going on for one o’clock,” he said.
+
+“Is it?” she answered. It meant nothing to her.
+
+“Should we be going?” he said.
+
+She was silent. For the first time for an hour or more an inkling of
+her normal consciousness returned. She resented it.
+
+“What for?” she said.
+
+“I thought you might have had enough,” he said.
+
+A slight soberness came over her, an irritation at being frustrated of
+her illusion.
+
+“Why?” she said.
+
+“We’ve been here since nine,” he said.
+
+That was no answer, no reason. It conveyed nothing to her. She sat
+detached from him. Across the room Sam Adams glanced at her. She sat
+there exposed for him.
+
+“You don’t want to be too free with Sam Adams,” said Whiston
+cautiously, suffering. “You know what he is.”
+
+“How, free?” she asked.
+
+“Why—you don’t want to have too much to do with him.”
+
+She sat silent. He was forcing her into consciousness of her position.
+But he could not get hold of her feelings, to change them. She had a
+curious, perverse desire that he should not.
+
+“I like him,” she said.
+
+“What do you find to like in him?” he said, with a hot heart.
+
+“I don’t know—but I like him,” she said.
+
+She was immutable. He sat feeling heavy and dulled with rage. He was
+not clear as to what he felt. He sat there unliving whilst she danced.
+And she, distracted, lost to herself between the opposing forces of the
+two men, drifted. Between the dances, Whiston kept near to her. She was
+scarcely conscious. She glanced repeatedly at her card, to see when she
+would dance again with Adams, half in desire, half in dread. Sometimes
+she met his steady, glaucous eye as she passed him in the dance.
+Sometimes she saw the steadiness of his flank as he danced. And it was
+always as if she rested on his arm, were borne along, upborne by him,
+away from herself. And always there was present the other’s antagonism.
+She was divided.
+
+The time came for her to dance with Adams. Oh, the delicious closing of
+contact with him, of his limbs touching her limbs, his arm supporting
+her. She seemed to resolve. Whiston had not made himself real to her.
+He was only a heavy place in her consciousness.
+
+But she breathed heavily, beginning to suffer from the closeness of
+strain. She was nervous. Adams also was constrained. A tightness, a
+tension was coming over them all. And he was exasperated, feeling
+something counteracting physical magnetism, feeling a will stronger
+with her than his own, intervening in what was becoming a vital
+necessity to him.
+
+Elsie was almost lost to her own control. As she went forward with him
+to take her place at the dance, she stooped for her
+pocket-handkerchief. The music sounded for quadrilles. Everybody was
+ready. Adams stood with his body near her, exerting his attraction over
+her. He was tense and fighting. She stooped for her
+pocket-handkerchief, and shook it as she rose. It shook out and fell
+from her hand. With agony, she saw she had taken a white stocking
+instead of a handkerchief. For a second it lay on the floor, a twist of
+white stocking. Then, in an instant, Adams picked it up, with a little,
+surprised laugh of triumph.
+
+“That’ll do for me,” he whispered—seeming to take possession of her.
+And he stuffed the stocking in his trousers pocket, and quickly offered
+her his handkerchief.
+
+The dance began. She felt weak and faint, as if her will were turned to
+water. A heavy sense of loss came over her. She could not help herself
+anymore. But it was peace.
+
+When the dance was over, Adams yielded her up. Whiston came to her.
+
+“What was it as you dropped?” Whiston asked.
+
+“I thought it was my handkerchief—I’d taken a stocking by mistake,” she
+said, detached and muted.
+
+“And he’s got it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What does he mean by that?”
+
+She lifted her shoulders.
+
+“Are you going to let him keep it?” he asked.
+
+“I don’t let him.”
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+“Am I to go and have it out with him?” he asked, his face flushed, his
+blue eyes going hard with opposition.
+
+“No,” she said, pale.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“No—I don’t want to say anything about it.”
+
+He sat exasperated and nonplussed.
+
+“You’ll let him keep it, then?” he asked.
+
+She sat silent and made no form of answer.
+
+“What do you mean by it?” he said, dark with fury. And he started up.
+
+“No!” she cried. “Ted!” And she caught hold of him, sharply detaining
+him.
+
+It made him black with rage.
+
+“Why?” he said.
+
+Then something about her mouth was pitiful to him. He did not
+understand, but he felt she must have her reasons.
+
+“Then I’m not stopping here,” he said. “Are you coming with me?”
+
+She rose mutely, and they went out of the room. Adams had not noticed.
+
+In a few moments they were in the street.
+
+“What the hell do you mean?” he said, in a black fury.
+
+She went at his side, in silence, neutral.
+
+“That great hog, an’ all,” he added.
+
+Then they went a long time in silence through the frozen, deserted
+darkness of the town. She felt she could not go indoors. They were
+drawing near her house.
+
+“I don’t want to go home,” she suddenly cried in distress and anguish.
+“I don’t want to go home.”
+
+He looked at her.
+
+“Why don’t you?” he said.
+
+“I don’t want to go home,” was all she could sob.
+
+He heard somebody coming.
+
+“Well, we can walk a bit further,” he said.
+
+She was silent again. They passed out of the town into the fields. He
+held her by the arm—they could not speak.
+
+“What’s a-matter?” he asked at length, puzzled.
+
+She began to cry again.
+
+At last he took her in his arms, to soothe her. She sobbed by herself,
+almost unaware of him.
+
+“Tell me what’s a-matter, Elsie,” he said. “Tell me what’s a-matter—my
+dear—tell me, then——”
+
+He kissed her wet face, and caressed her. She made no response. He was
+puzzled and tender and miserable.
+
+At length she became quiet. Then he kissed her, and she put her arms
+round him, and clung to him very tight, as if for fear and anguish. He
+held her in his arms, wondering.
+
+“Ted!” she whispered, frantic. “Ted!”
+
+“What, my love?” he answered, becoming also afraid.
+
+“Be good to me,” she cried. “Don’t be cruel to me.”
+
+“No, my pet,” he said, amazed and grieved. “Why?”
+
+“Oh, be good to me,” she sobbed.
+
+And he held her very safe, and his heart was white-hot with love for
+her. His mind was amazed. He could only hold her against his chest that
+was white-hot with love and belief in her. So she was restored at last.
+
+III
+
+She refused to go to her work at Adams’s any more. Her father had to
+submit and she sent in her notice—she was not well. Sam Adams was
+ironical. But he had a curious patience. He did not fight.
+
+In a few weeks, she and Whiston were married. She loved him with
+passion and worship, a fierce little abandon of love that moved him to
+the depths of his being, and gave him a permanent surety and sense of
+realness in himself. He did not trouble about himself any more: he felt
+he was fulfilled and now he had only the many things in the world to
+busy himself about. Whatever troubled him, at the bottom was surety. He
+had found himself in this love.
+
+They spoke once or twice of the white stocking.
+
+“Ah!” Whiston exclaimed. “What does it matter?”
+
+He was impatient and angry, and could not bear to consider the matter.
+So it was left unresolved.
+
+She was quite happy at first, carried away by her adoration of her
+husband. Then gradually she got used to him. He always was the ground
+of her happiness, but she got used to him, as to the air she breathed.
+He never got used to her in the same way.
+
+Inside of marriage she found her liberty. She was rid of the
+responsibility of herself. Her husband must look after that. She was
+free to get what she could out of her time.
+
+So that, when, after some months, she met Sam Adams, she was not quite
+as unkind to him as she might have been. With a young wife’s new and
+exciting knowledge of men, she perceived he was in love with her, she
+knew he had always kept an unsatisfied desire for her. And, sportive,
+she could not help playing a little with this, though she cared not one
+jot for the man himself.
+
+When Valentine’s day came, which was near the first anniversary of her
+wedding day, there arrived a white stocking with a little amethyst
+brooch. Luckily Whiston did not see it, so she said nothing of it to
+him. She had not the faintest intention of having anything to do with
+Sam Adams, but once a little brooch was in her possession, it was hers,
+and she did not trouble her head for a moment how she had come by it.
+She kept it.
+
+Now she had the pearl ear-rings. They were a more valuable and a more
+conspicuous present. She would have to ask her mother to give them to
+her, to explain their presence. She made a little plan in her head. And
+she was extraordinarily pleased. As for Sam Adams, even if he saw her
+wearing them, he would not give her away. What fun, if he saw her
+wearing his ear-rings! She would pretend she had inherited them from
+her grandmother, her mother’s mother. She laughed to herself as she
+went down town in the afternoon, the pretty drops dangling in front of
+her curls. But she saw no one of importance.
+
+Whiston came home tired and depressed. All day the male in him had been
+uneasy, and this had fatigued him. She was curiously against him,
+inclined, as she sometimes was nowadays, to make mock of him and jeer
+at him and cut him off. He did not understand this, and it angered him
+deeply. She was uneasy before him.
+
+She knew he was in a state of suppressed irritation. The veins stood
+out on the backs of his hands, his brow was drawn stiffly. Yet she
+could not help goading him.
+
+“What did you do wi’ that white stocking?” he asked, out of a gloomy
+silence, his voice strong and brutal.
+
+“I put it in a drawer—why?” she replied flippantly.
+
+“Why didn’t you put it on the fire back?” he said harshly. “What are
+you hoarding it up for?”
+
+“I’m not hoarding it up,” she said. “I’ve got a pair.”
+
+He relapsed into gloomy silence. She, unable to move him, ran away
+upstairs, leaving him smoking by the fire. Again she tried on the
+ear-rings. Then another little inspiration came to her. She drew on the
+white stockings, both of them.
+
+Presently she came down in them. Her husband still sat immovable and
+glowering by the fire.
+
+“Look!” she said. “They’ll do beautifully.”
+
+And she picked up her skirts to her knees, and twisted round, looking
+at her pretty legs in the neat stockings.
+
+He filled with unreasonable rage, and took the pipe from his mouth.
+
+“Don’t they look nice?” she said. “One from last year and one from
+this, they just do. Save you buying a pair.”
+
+And she looked over her shoulders at her pretty calves, and the
+dangling frills of her knickers.
+
+“Put your skirts down and don’t make a fool of yourself,” he said.
+
+“Why a fool of myself?” she asked.
+
+And she began to dance slowly round the room, kicking up her feet half
+reckless, half jeering, in a ballet-dancer’s fashion. Almost fearfully,
+yet in defiance, she kicked up her legs at him, singing as she did so.
+She resented him.
+
+“You little fool, ha’ done with it,” he said. “And you’ll backfire them
+stockings, I’m telling you.” He was angry. His face flushed dark, he
+kept his head bent. She ceased to dance.
+
+“I shan’t,” she said. “They’ll come in very useful.”
+
+He lifted his head and watched her, with lighted, dangerous eyes.
+
+“You’ll put ’em on the fire back, I tell you,” he said.
+
+It was a war now. She bent forward, in a ballet-dancer’s fashion, and
+put her tongue between her teeth.
+
+“I shan’t backfire them stockings,” she sang, repeating his words, “I
+shan’t, I shan’t, I shan’t.”
+
+And she danced round the room doing a high kick to the tune of her
+words. There was a real biting indifference in her behaviour.
+
+“We’ll see whether you will or not,” he said, “trollops! You’d like Sam
+Adams to know you was wearing ’em, wouldn’t you? That’s what would
+please you.”
+
+“Yes, I’d like him to see how nicely they fit me, he might give me some
+more then.”
+
+And she looked down at her pretty legs.
+
+He knew somehow that she _would_ like Sam Adams to see how pretty her
+legs looked in the white stockings. It made his anger go deep, almost
+to hatred.
+
+“Yer nasty trolley,” he cried. “Put yer petticoats down, and stop being
+so foul-minded.”
+
+“I’m not foul-minded,” she said. “My legs are my own. And why shouldn’t
+Sam Adams think they’re nice?”
+
+There was a pause. He watched her with eyes glittering to a point.
+
+“Have you been havin’ owt to do with him?” he asked.
+
+“I’ve just spoken to him when I’ve seen him,” she said. “He’s not as
+bad as you would make out.”
+
+“Isn’t he?” he cried, a certain wakefulness in his voice. “Them who has
+anything to do wi’ him is too bad for me, I tell you.”
+
+“Why, what are you frightened of him for?” she mocked.
+
+She was rousing all his uncontrollable anger. He sat glowering. Every
+one of her sentences stirred him up like a red-hot iron. Soon it would
+be too much. And she was afraid herself; but she was neither conquered
+nor convinced.
+
+A curious little grin of hate came on his face. He had a long score
+against her.
+
+“What am I frightened of him for?” he repeated automatically. “What am
+I frightened of him for? Why, for you, you stray-running little bitch.”
+
+She flushed. The insult went deep into her, right home.
+
+“Well, if you’re so dull——” she said, lowering her eyelids, and
+speaking coldly, haughtily.
+
+“If I’m so dull I’ll break your neck the first word you speak to him,”
+he said, tense.
+
+“Pf!” she sneered. “Do you think I’m frightened of you?” She spoke
+coldly, detached.
+
+She was frightened, for all that, white round the mouth.
+
+His heart was getting hotter.
+
+“You _will_ be frightened of me, the next time you have anything to do
+with him,” he said.
+
+“Do you think _you’d_ ever be told—ha!”
+
+Her jeering scorn made him go white-hot, molten. He knew he was
+incoherent, scarcely responsible for what he might do. Slowly,
+unseeing, he rose and went out of doors, stifled, moved to kill her.
+
+He stood leaning against the garden fence, unable either to see or
+hear. Below him, far off, fumed the lights of the town. He stood still,
+unconscious with a black storm of rage, his face lifted to the night.
+
+Presently, still unconscious of what he was doing, he went indoors
+again. She stood, a small stubborn figure with tight-pressed lips and
+big, sullen, childish eyes, watching him, white with fear. He went
+heavily across the floor and dropped into his chair.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+“_You’re_ not going to tell me everything I shall do, and everything I
+shan’t,” she broke out at last.
+
+He lifted his head.
+
+“I tell you _this_,” he said, low and intense. “Have anything to do
+with Sam Adams, and I’ll break your neck.”
+
+She laughed, shrill and false.
+
+“How I hate your word ‘break your neck’,” she said, with a grimace of
+the mouth. “It sounds so common and beastly. Can’t you say something
+else——”
+
+There was a dead silence.
+
+“And besides,” she said, with a queer chirrup of mocking laughter,
+“what do you know about anything? He sent me an amethyst brooch and a
+pair of pearl ear-rings.”
+
+“He what?” said Whiston, in a suddenly normal voice. His eyes were
+fixed on her.
+
+“Sent me a pair of pearl ear-rings, and an amethyst brooch,” she
+repeated, mechanically, pale to the lips.
+
+And her big, black, childish eyes watched him, fascinated, held in her
+spell.
+
+He seemed to thrust his face and his eyes forward at her, as he rose
+slowly and came to her. She watched transfixed in terror. Her throat
+made a small sound, as she tried to scream.
+
+Then, quick as lightning, the back of his hand struck her with a crash
+across the mouth, and she was flung back blinded against the wall. The
+shock shook a queer sound out of her. And then she saw him still coming
+on, his eyes holding her, his fist drawn back, advancing slowly. At any
+instant the blow might crash into her.
+
+Mad with terror, she raised her hands with a queer clawing movement to
+cover her eyes and her temples, opening her mouth in a dumb shriek.
+There was no sound. But the sight of her slowly arrested him. He hung
+before her, looking at her fixedly, as she stood crouched against the
+wall with open, bleeding mouth, and wide-staring eyes, and two hands
+clawing over her temples. And his lust to see her bleed, to break her
+and destroy her, rose from an old source against her. It carried him.
+He wanted satisfaction.
+
+But he had seen her standing there, a piteous, horrified thing, and he
+turned his face aside in shame and nausea. He went and sat heavily in
+his chair, and a curious ease, almost like sleep, came over his brain.
+
+She walked away from the wall towards the fire, dizzy, white to the
+lips, mechanically wiping her small, bleeding mouth. He sat motionless.
+Then, gradually, her breath began to hiss, she shook, and was sobbing
+silently, in grief for herself. Without looking, he saw. It made his
+mad desire to destroy her come back.
+
+At length he lifted his head. His eyes were glowing again, fixed on
+her.
+
+“And what did he give them you for?” he asked, in a steady, unyielding
+voice.
+
+Her crying dried up in a second. She also was tense.
+
+“They came as valentines,” she replied, still not subjugated, even if
+beaten.
+
+“When, today?”
+
+“The pearl ear-rings today—the amethyst brooch last year.”
+
+“You’ve had it a year?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She felt that now nothing would prevent him if he rose to kill her. She
+could not prevent him any more. She was yielded up to him. They both
+trembled in the balance, unconscious.
+
+“What have you had to do with him?” he asked, in a barren voice.
+
+“I’ve not had anything to do with him,” she quavered.
+
+“You just kept ’em because they were jewellery?” he said.
+
+A weariness came over him. What was the worth of speaking any more of
+it? He did not care any more. He was dreary and sick.
+
+She began to cry again, but he took no notice. She kept wiping her
+mouth on her handkerchief. He could see it, the blood-mark. It made him
+only more sick and tired of the responsibility of it, the violence, the
+shame.
+
+When she began to move about again, he raised his head once more from
+his dead, motionless position.
+
+“Where are the things?” he said.
+
+“They are upstairs,” she quavered. She knew the passion had gone down
+in him.
+
+“Bring them down,” he said.
+
+“I won’t,” she wept, with rage. “You’re not going to bully me and hit
+me like that on the mouth.”
+
+And she sobbed again. He looked at her in contempt and compassion and
+in rising anger.
+
+“Where are they?” he said.
+
+“They’re in the little drawer under the looking-glass,” she sobbed.
+
+He went slowly upstairs, struck a match, and found the trinkets. He
+brought them downstairs in his hand.
+
+“These?” he said, looking at them as they lay in his palm.
+
+She looked at them without answering. She was not interested in them
+any more.
+
+He looked at the little jewels. They were pretty.
+
+“It’s none of their fault,” he said to himself.
+
+And he searched round slowly, persistently, for a box. He tied the
+things up and addressed them to Sam Adams. Then he went out in his
+slippers to post the little package.
+
+When he came back she was still sitting crying.
+
+“You’d better go to bed,” he said.
+
+She paid no attention. He sat by the fire. She still cried.
+
+“I’m sleeping down here,” he said. “Go you to bed.”
+
+In a few moments she lifted her tear-stained, swollen face and looked
+at him with eyes all forlorn and pathetic. A great flash of anguish
+went over his body. He went over, slowly, and very gently took her in
+his hands. She let herself be taken. Then as she lay against his
+shoulder, she sobbed aloud:
+
+“I never meant——”
+
+“My love—my little love——” he cried, in anguish of spirit, holding her
+in his arms.
+
+
+
+A Sick Collier
+
+She was too good for him, everybody said. Yet still she did not regret
+marrying him. He had come courting her when he was only nineteen, and
+she twenty. He was in build what they call a tight little fellow;
+short, dark, with a warm colour, and that upright set of the head and
+chest, that flaunting way in movement recalling a mating bird, which
+denotes a body taut and compact with life. Being a good worker he had
+earned decent money in the mine, and having a good home had saved a
+little.
+
+She was a cook at “Uplands”, a tall, fair girl, very quiet. Having seen
+her walk down the street, Horsepool had followed her from a distance.
+He was taken with her, he did not drink, and he was not lazy. So,
+although he seemed a bit simple, without much intelligence, but having
+a sort of physical brightness, she considered, and accepted him.
+
+When they were married they went to live in Scargill Street, in a
+highly respectable six-roomed house which they had furnished between
+them. The street was built up the side of a long, steep hill. It was
+narrow and rather tunnel-like. Nevertheless, the back looked out over
+the adjoining pasture, across a wide valley of fields and woods, in the
+bottom of which the mine lay snugly.
+
+He made himself gaffer in his own house. She was unacquainted with a
+collier’s mode of life. They were married on a Saturday. On the Sunday
+night he said:
+
+“Set th’ table for my breakfast, an’ put my pit-things afront o’ th’
+fire. I s’ll be gettin’ up at ha’ef pas’ five. Tha nedna shift thysen
+not till when ter likes.”
+
+He showed her how to put a newspaper on the table for a cloth. When she
+demurred:
+
+“I want none o’ your white cloths i’ th’ mornin’. I like ter be able to
+slobber if I feel like it,” he said.
+
+He put before the fire his moleskin trousers, a clean singlet, or
+sleeveless vest of thick flannel, a pair of stockings and his pit
+boots, arranging them all to be warm and ready for morning.
+
+“Now tha sees. That wants doin’ ivery night.”
+
+Punctually at half past five he left her, without any form of
+leave-taking, going downstairs in his shirt.
+
+When he arrived home at four o’clock in the afternoon his dinner was
+ready to be dished up. She was startled when he came in, a short,
+sturdy figure, with a face indescribably black and streaked. She stood
+before the fire in her white blouse and white apron, a fair girl, the
+picture of beautiful cleanliness. He “clommaxed” in, in his heavy
+boots.
+
+“Well, how ’as ter gone on?” he asked.
+
+“I was ready for you to come home,” she replied tenderly. In his black
+face the whites of his brown eyes flashed at her.
+
+“An’ I wor ready for comin’,” he said. He planked his tin bottle and
+snap-bag on the dresser, took off his coat and scarf and waistcoat,
+dragged his armchair nearer the fire and sat down.
+
+“Let’s ha’e a bit o’ dinner, then—I’m about clammed,” he said.
+
+“Aren’t you goin’ to wash yourself first?”
+
+“What am I to wesh mysen for?”
+
+“Well, you can’t eat your dinner——”
+
+“Oh, strike a daisy, Missis! Dunna I eat my snap i’ th’ pit wi’out
+weshin’?—forced to.”
+
+She served the dinner and sat opposite him. His small bullet head was
+quite black, save for the whites of his eyes and his scarlet lips. It
+gave her a queer sensation to see him open his red mouth and bare his
+white teeth as he ate. His arms and hands were mottled black; his bare,
+strong neck got a little fairer as it settled towards his shoulders,
+reassuring her. There was the faint indescribable odour of the pit in
+the room, an odour of damp, exhausted air.
+
+“Why is your vest so black on the shoulders?” she asked.
+
+“My singlet? That’s wi’ th’ watter droppin’ on us from th’ roof. This
+is a dry un as I put on afore I come up. They ha’e gre’t
+clothes-’osses, an’ as we change us things, we put ’em on theer ter
+dry.”
+
+When he washed himself, kneeling on the hearth-rug stripped to the
+waist, she felt afraid of him again. He was so muscular, he seemed so
+intent on what he was doing, so intensely himself, like a vigorous
+animal. And as he stood wiping himself, with his naked breast towards
+her, she felt rather sick, seeing his thick arms bulge their muscles.
+
+They were nevertheless very happy. He was at a great pitch of pride
+because of her. The men in the pit might chaff him, they might try to
+entice him away, but nothing could reduce his self-assured pride
+because of her, nothing could unsettle his almost infantile
+satisfaction. In the evening he sat in his armchair chattering to her,
+or listening as she read the newspaper to him. When it was fine, he
+would go into the street, squat on his heels as colliers do, with his
+back against the wall of his parlour, and call to the passers-by, in
+greeting, one after another. If no one were passing, he was content
+just to squat and smoke, having such a fund of sufficiency and
+satisfaction in his heart. He was well married.
+
+They had not been wed a year when all Brent and Wellwood’s men came out
+on strike. Willy was in the Union, so with a pinch they scrambled
+through. The furniture was not all paid for, and other debts were
+incurred. She worried and contrived, he left it to her. But he was a
+good husband; he gave her all he had.
+
+The men were out fifteen weeks. They had been back just over a year
+when Willy had an accident in the mine, tearing his bladder. At the pit
+head the doctor talked of the hospital. Losing his head entirely, the
+young collier raved like a madman, what with pain and fear of hospital.
+
+“Tha s’lt go whoam, Willy, tha s’lt go whoam,” the deputy said.
+
+A lad warned the wife to have the bed ready. Without speaking or
+hesitating she prepared. But when the ambulance came, and she heard him
+shout with pain at being moved, she was afraid lest she should sink
+down. They carried him in.
+
+“Yo’ should ’a’ had a bed i’ th’ parlour, Missis,” said the deputy,
+“then we shouldna ha’ had to hawkse ’im upstairs, an’ it ’ud ’a’ saved
+your legs.”
+
+But it was too late now. They got him upstairs.
+
+“They let me lie, Lucy,” he was crying, “they let me lie two mortal
+hours on th’ sleck afore they took me outer th’ stall. Th’ peen, Lucy,
+th’ peen; oh, Lucy, th’ peen, th’ peen!”
+
+“I know th’ pain’s bad, Willy, I know. But you must try an’ bear it a
+bit.”
+
+“Tha munna carry on in that form, lad, thy missis’ll niver be able ter
+stan’ it,” said the deputy.
+
+“I canna ’elp it, it’s th’ peen, it’s th’ peen,” he cried again. He had
+never been ill in his life. When he had smashed a finger he could look
+at the wound. But this pain came from inside, and terrified him. At
+last he was soothed and exhausted.
+
+It was some time before she could undress him and wash him. He would
+let no other woman do for him, having that savage modesty usual in such
+men.
+
+For six weeks he was in bed, suffering much pain. The doctors were not
+quite sure what was the matter with him, and scarcely knew what to do.
+He could eat, he did not lose flesh, nor strength, yet the pain
+continued, and he could hardly walk at all.
+
+In the sixth week the men came out in the national strike. He would get
+up quite early in the morning and sit by the window. On Wednesday, the
+second week of the strike, he sat gazing out on the street as usual, a
+bullet-headed young man, still vigorous-looking, but with a peculiar
+expression of hunted fear in his face.
+
+“Lucy,” he called, “Lucy!”
+
+She, pale and worn, ran upstairs at his bidding.
+
+“Gi’e me a han’kercher,” he said.
+
+“Why, you’ve got one,” she replied, coming near.
+
+“Tha nedna touch me,” he cried. Feeling his pocket, he produced a white
+handkerchief.
+
+“I non want a white un, gi’e me a red un,” he said.
+
+“An’ if anybody comes to see you,” she answered, giving him a red
+handkerchief.
+
+“Besides,” she continued, “you needn’t ha’ brought me upstairs for
+that.”
+
+“I b’lieve th’ peen’s commin’ on again,” he said, with a little horror
+in his voice.
+
+“It isn’t, you know, it isn’t,” she replied. “The doctor says you
+imagine it’s there when it isn’t.”
+
+“Canna I feel what’s inside me?” he shouted.
+
+“There’s a traction-engine coming downhill,” she said. “That’ll scatter
+them. I’ll just go an’ finish your pudding.”
+
+She left him. The traction-engine went by, shaking the houses. Then the
+street was quiet, save for the men. A gang of youths from fifteen to
+twenty-five years old were playing marbles in the middle of the road.
+Other little groups of men were playing on the pavement. The street was
+gloomy. Willy could hear the endless calling and shouting of men’s
+voices.
+
+“Tha’rt skinchin’!”
+
+“I arena!”
+
+“Come ’ere with that blood-alley.”
+
+“Swop us four for’t.”
+
+“Shonna, gie’s hold on’t.”
+
+He wanted to be out, he wanted to be playing marbles. The pain had
+weakened his mind, so that he hardly knew any self-control.
+
+Presently another gang of men lounged up the street. It was pay
+morning. The Union was paying the men in the Primitive Chapel. They
+were returning with their half-sovereigns.
+
+“Sorry!” bawled a voice. “Sorry!”
+
+The word is a form of address, corruption probably of “Sirrah”. Willy
+started almost out of his chair.
+
+“Sorry!” again bawled a great voice. “Art goin’ wi’ me to see Notts
+play Villa?”
+
+Many of the marble players started up.
+
+“What time is it? There’s no treens, we s’ll ha’e ter walk.”
+
+The street was alive with men.
+
+“Who’s goin’ ter Nottingham ter see th’ match?” shouted the same big
+voice. A very large, tipsy man, with his cap over his eyes, was
+calling.
+
+“Com’ on—aye, com’ on!” came many voices. The street was full of the
+shouting of men. They split up in excited cliques and groups.
+
+“Play up, Notts!” the big man shouted.
+
+“Plee up, Notts!” shouted the youths and men. They were at kindling
+pitch. It only needed a shout to rouse them. Of this the careful
+authorities were aware.
+
+“I’m goin’, I’m goin’!” shouted the sick man at his window.
+
+Lucy came running upstairs.
+
+“I’m goin’ ter see Notts play Villa on th’ Meadows ground,” he
+declared.
+
+“You—_you_ can’t go. There are no trains. You can’t walk nine miles.”
+
+“I’m goin’ ter see th’ match,” he declared, rising.
+
+“You know you can’t. Sit down now an’ be quiet.”
+
+She put her hand on him. He shook it off.
+
+“Leave me alone, leave me alone. It’s thee as ma’es th’ peen come, it’s
+thee. I’m goin’ ter Nottingham to see th’ football match.”
+
+“Sit down—folks’ll hear you, and what will they think?”
+
+“Come off’n me. Com’ off. It’s her, it’s her as does it. Com’ off.”
+
+He seized hold of her. His little head was bristling with madness, and
+he was strong as a lion.
+
+“Oh, Willy!” she cried.
+
+“It’s ’er, it’s ’er. Kill her!” he shouted, “kill her.”
+
+“Willy, folks’ll hear you.”
+
+“Th’ peen’s commin’ on again, I tell yer. I’ll kill her for it.”
+
+He was completely out of his mind. She struggled with him to prevent
+his going to the stairs. When she escaped from him, he was shouting and
+raving, she beckoned to her neighbour, a girl of twenty-four, who was
+cleaning the window across the road.
+
+Ethel Mellor was the daughter of a well-to-do check-weighman. She ran
+across in fear to Mrs Horsepool. Hearing the man raving, people were
+running out in the street and listening. Ethel hurried upstairs.
+Everything was clean and pretty in the young home.
+
+Willy was staggering round the room, after the slowly retreating Lucy,
+shouting:
+
+“Kill her! Kill her!”
+
+“Mr Horsepool!” cried Ethel, leaning against the bed, white as the
+sheets, and trembling. “Whatever are you saying?”
+
+“I tell yer it’s ’er fault as th’ peen comes on—I tell yer it is! Kill
+’er—kill ’er!”
+
+“Kill Mrs Horsepool!” cried the trembling girl. “Why, you’re ever so
+fond of her, you know you are.”
+
+“The peen—I ha’e such a lot o’ peen—I want to kill ’er.”
+
+He was subsiding. When he sat down his wife collapsed in a chair,
+weeping noiselessly. The tears ran down Ethel’s face. He sat staring
+out of the window; then the old, hurt look came on his face.
+
+“What ’ave I been sayin’?” he asked, looking piteously at his wife.
+
+“Why!” said Ethel, “you’ve been carrying on something awful, saying,
+‘Kill her, kill her!’”
+
+“Have I, Lucy?” he faltered.
+
+“You didn’t know what you was saying,” said his young wife gently but
+coldly.
+
+His face puckered up. He bit his lip, then broke into tears, sobbing
+uncontrollably, with his face to the window.
+
+There was no sound in the room but of three people crying bitterly,
+breath caught in sobs. Suddenly Lucy put away her tears and went over
+to him.
+
+“You didn’t know what you was sayin’, Willy, I know you didn’t. I knew
+you didn’t, all the time. It doesn’t matter, Willy. Only don’t do it
+again.”
+
+In a little while, when they were calmer, she went downstairs with
+Ethel.
+
+“See if anybody is looking in the street,” she said.
+
+Ethel went into the parlour and peeped through the curtains.
+
+“Aye!” she said. “You may back your life Lena an’ Mrs Severn’ll be out
+gorping, and that clat-fartin’ Mrs Allsop.”
+
+“Oh, I hope they haven’t heard anything! If it gets about as he’s out
+of his mind, they’ll stop his compensation, I know they will.”
+
+“They’d never stop his compensation for _that_,” protested Ethel.
+
+“Well, they _have_ been stopping some——”
+
+“It’ll not get about. I s’ll tell nobody.”
+
+“Oh, but if it does, whatever shall we do?...”
+
+
+
+The Christening
+
+The mistress of the British School stepped down from her school gate,
+and instead of turning to the left as usual, she turned to the right.
+Two women who were hastening home to scramble their husbands’ dinners
+together—it was five minutes to four—stopped to look at her. They stood
+gazing after her for a moment; then they glanced at each other with a
+woman’s little grimace.
+
+To be sure, the retreating figure was ridiculous: small and thin, with
+a black straw hat, and a rusty cashmere dress hanging full all round
+the skirt. For so small and frail and rusty a creature to sail with
+slow, deliberate stride was also absurd. Hilda Rowbotham was less than
+thirty, so it was not years that set the measure of her pace; she had
+heart disease. Keeping her face, that was small with sickness, but not
+uncomely, firmly lifted and fronting ahead, the young woman sailed on
+past the market-place, like a black swan of mournful, disreputable
+plumage.
+
+She turned into Berryman’s, the baker’s. The shop displayed bread and
+cakes, sacks of flour and oatmeal, flitches of bacon, hams, lard and
+sausages. The combination of scents was not unpleasing. Hilda Rowbotham
+stood for some minutes nervously tapping and pushing a large knife that
+lay on the counter, and looking at the tall, glittering brass scales.
+At last a morose man with sandy whiskers came down the step from the
+house-place.
+
+“What is it?” he asked, not apologizing for his delay.
+
+“Will you give me six-pennyworth of assorted cakes and pastries—and put
+in some macaroons, please?” she asked, in remarkably rapid and nervous
+speech. Her lips fluttered like two leaves in a wind, and her words
+crowded and rushed like a flock of sheep at a gate.
+
+“We’ve got no macaroons,” said the man churlishly.
+
+He had evidently caught that word. He stood waiting.
+
+“Then I can’t have any, Mr Berryman. Now I do feel disappointed. I like
+those macaroons, you know, and it’s not often I treat myself. One gets
+so tired of trying to spoil oneself, don’t you think? It’s less
+profitable even than trying to spoil somebody else.” She laughed a
+quick little nervous laugh, putting her hand to her face.
+
+“Then what’ll you have?” asked the man, without the ghost of an
+answering smile. He evidently had not followed, so he looked more glum
+than ever.
+
+“Oh, anything you’ve got,” replied the schoolmistress, flushing
+slightly. The man moved slowly about, dropping the cakes from various
+dishes one by one into a paper bag.
+
+“How’s that sister o’ yours getting on?” he asked, as if he were
+talking to the flour scoop.
+
+“Whom do you mean?” snapped the schoolmistress.
+
+“The youngest,” answered the stooping, pale-faced man, with a note of
+sarcasm.
+
+“Emma! Oh, she’s very well, thank you!” The schoolmistress was very
+red, but she spoke with sharp, ironical defiance. The man grunted. Then
+he handed her the bag and watched her out of the shop without bidding
+her “Good afternoon”.
+
+She had the whole length of the main street to traverse, a half-mile of
+slow-stepping torture, with shame flushing over her neck. But she
+carried her white bag with an appearance of steadfast unconcern. When
+she turned into the field she seemed to droop a little. The wide valley
+opened out from her, with the far woods withdrawing into twilight, and
+away in the centre the great pit streaming its white smoke and chuffing
+as the men were being turned up. A full, rose-coloured moon, like a
+flamingo flying low under the far, dusky east, drew out of the mist. It
+was beautiful, and it made her irritable sadness soften, diffuse.
+
+Across the field, and she was at home. It was a new, substantial
+cottage, built with unstinted hand, such a house as an old miner could
+build himself out of his savings. In the rather small kitchen a woman
+of dark, saturnine complexion sat nursing a baby in a long white gown;
+a young woman of heavy, brutal cast stood at the table, cutting bread
+and butter. She had a downcast, humble mien that sat unnaturally on
+her, and was strangely irritating. She did not look round when her
+sister entered. Hilda put down the bag of cakes and left the room, not
+having spoken to Emma, nor to the baby, not to Mrs Carlin, who had come
+in to help for the afternoon.
+
+Almost immediately the father entered from the yard with a dustpan full
+of coals. He was a large man, but he was going to pieces. As he passed
+through, he gripped the door with his free hand to steady himself, but
+turning, he lurched and swayed. He began putting the coals on the fire,
+piece by piece. One lump fell from his hand and smashed on the white
+hearth. Emma Rowbotham looked round, and began in a rough, loud voice
+of anger: “Look at you!” Then she consciously moderated her tones.
+“I’ll sweep it up in a minute—don’t you bother; you’ll only be going
+head first into the fire.”
+
+Her father bent down nevertheless to clear up the mess he had made,
+saying, articulating his words loosely and slavering in his speech:
+
+“The lousy bit of a thing, it slipped between my fingers like a fish.”
+
+As he spoke he went tilting towards the fire. The dark-browed woman
+cried out: he put his hand on the hot stove to save himself; Emma swung
+round and dragged him off.
+
+“Didn’t I tell you!” she cried roughly. “Now, have you burnt yourself?”
+
+She held tight hold of the big man, and pushed him into his chair.
+
+“What’s the matter?” cried a sharp voice from the other room. The
+speaker appeared, a hard well-favoured woman of twenty-eight. “Emma,
+don’t speak like that to father.” Then, in a tone not so cold, but just
+as sharp: “Now, father, what have you been doing?”
+
+Emma withdrew to her table sullenly.
+
+“It’s nöwt,” said the old man, vainly protesting. “It’s nöwt at a’. Get
+on wi’ what you’re doin’.”
+
+“I’m afraid ’e’s burnt ’is ’and,” said the black-browed woman, speaking
+of him with a kind of hard pity, as if he were a cumbersome child.
+Bertha took the old man’s hand and looked at it, making a quick
+tut-tutting noise of impatience.
+
+“Emma, get that zinc ointment—and some white rag,” she commanded
+sharply. The younger sister put down her loaf with the knife in it, and
+went. To a sensitive observer, this obedience was more intolerable than
+the most hateful discord. The dark woman bent over the baby and made
+silent, gentle movements of motherliness to it. The little one smiled
+and moved on her lap. It continued to move and twist.
+
+“I believe this child’s hungry,” she said. “How long is it since he had
+anything?”
+
+“Just afore dinner,” said Emma dully.
+
+“Good gracious!” exclaimed Bertha. “You needn’t starve the child now
+you’ve got it. Once every two hours it ought to be fed, as I’ve told
+you; and now it’s three. Take him, poor little mite—I’ll cut the
+bread.” She bent and looked at the bonny baby. She could not help
+herself: she smiled, and pressed its cheek with her finger, and nodded
+to it, making little noises. Then she turned and took the loaf from her
+sister. The woman rose and gave the child to its mother. Emma bent over
+the little sucking mite. She hated it when she looked at it, and saw it
+as a symbol, but when she felt it, her love was like fire in her blood.
+
+“I should think ’e canna be comin’,” said the father uneasily, looking
+up at the clock.
+
+“Nonsense, father—the clock’s fast! It’s but half-past four! Don’t
+fidget!” Bertha continued to cut the bread and butter.
+
+“Open a tin of pears,” she said to the woman, in a much milder tone.
+Then she went into the next room. As soon as she was gone, the old man
+said again: “I should ha’e thought he’d ’a’ been ’ere by now, if he
+means comin’.”
+
+Emma, engrossed, did not answer. The father had ceased to consider her,
+since she had become humbled.
+
+“’E’ll come—’e’ll come!” assured the stranger.
+
+A few minutes later Bertha hurried into the kitchen, taking off her
+apron. The dog barked furiously. She opened the door, commanded the dog
+to silence, and said: “He will be quiet now, Mr Kendal.”
+
+“Thank you,” said a sonorous voice, and there was the sound of a
+bicycle being propped against a wall. A clergyman entered, a big-boned,
+thin, ugly man of nervous manner. He went straight to the father.
+
+“Ah—how are you?” he asked musically, peering down on the great frame
+of the miner, ruined by locomotor ataxy.
+
+His voice was full of gentleness, but he seemed as if he could not see
+distinctly, could not get things clear.
+
+“Have you hurt your hand?” he said comfortingly, seeing the white rag.
+
+“It wor nöwt but a pestered bit o’ coal as dropped, an’ I put my hand
+on th’ hub. I thought tha worna commin’.”
+
+The familiar ‘tha’, and the reproach, were unconscious retaliation on
+the old man’s part. The minister smiled, half wistfully, half
+indulgently. He was full of vague tenderness. Then he turned to the
+young mother, who flushed sullenly because her dishonoured breast was
+uncovered.
+
+“How are _you_?” he asked, very softly and gently, as if she were ill
+and he were mindful of her.
+
+“I’m all right,” she replied, awkwardly taking his hand without rising,
+hiding her face and the anger that rose in her.
+
+“Yes—yes”—he peered down at the baby, which sucked with distended mouth
+upon the firm breast. “Yes, yes.” He seemed lost in a dim musing.
+
+Coming to, he shook hands unseeingly with the woman.
+
+Presently they all went into the next room, the minister hesitating to
+help his crippled old deacon.
+
+“I can go by myself, thank yer,” testily replied the father.
+
+Soon all were seated. Everybody was separated in feeling and isolated
+at table. High tea was spread in the middle kitchen, a large, ugly room
+kept for special occasions.
+
+Hilda appeared last, and the clumsy, raw-boned clergyman rose to meet
+her. He was afraid of this family, the well-to-do old collier, and the
+brutal, self-willed children. But Hilda was queen among them. She was
+the clever one, and had been to college. She felt responsible for the
+keeping up of a high standard of conduct in all the members of the
+family. There _was_ a difference between the Rowbothams and the common
+collier folk. Woodbine Cottage was a superior house to most—and was
+built in pride by the old man. She, Hilda, was a college-trained
+schoolmistress; she meant to keep up the prestige of her house in spite
+of blows.
+
+She had put on a dress of green voile for this special occasion. But
+she was very thin; her neck protruded painfully. The clergyman,
+however, greeted her almost with reverence, and, with some assumption
+of dignity, she sat down before the tray. At the far end of the table
+sat the broken, massive frame of her father. Next to him was the
+youngest daughter, nursing the restless baby. The minister sat between
+Hilda and Bertha, hulking his bony frame uncomfortably.
+
+There was a great spread on the table, of tinned fruits and tinned
+salmon, ham and cakes. Miss Rowbotham kept a keen eye on everything:
+she felt the importance of the occasion. The young mother who had given
+rise to all this solemnity ate in sulky discomfort, snatching sullen
+little smiles at her child, smiles which came, in spite of her, when
+she felt its little limbs stirring vigorously on her lap. Bertha, sharp
+and abrupt, was chiefly concerned with the baby. She scorned her
+sister, and treated her like dirt. But the infant was a streak of light
+to her. Miss Rowbotham concerned herself with the function and the
+conversation. Her hands fluttered; she talked in little volleys
+exceedingly nervous. Towards the end of the meal, there came a pause.
+The old man wiped his mouth with his red handkerchief, then, his blue
+eyes going fixed and staring, he began to speak, in a loose, slobbering
+fashion, charging his words at the clergyman.
+
+“Well, mester—we’n axed you to come her ter christen this childt, an’
+you’n come, an’ I’m sure we’re very thankful. I can’t see lettin’ the
+poor blessed childt miss baptizing, an’ they aren’t for goin’ to church
+wi’t—” He seemed to lapse into a muse. “So,” he resumed, “we’v axed you
+to come here to do the job. I’m not sayin’ as it’s not ’ard on us, it
+is. I’m breakin’ up, an’ mother’s gone. I don’t like leavin’ a girl o’
+mine in a situation like ’ers is, but what the Lord’s done, He’s done,
+an’ it’s no matter murmuring.... There’s one thing to be thankful for,
+an’ we _are_ thankful for it: they never need know the want of bread.”
+
+Miss Rowbotham, the lady of the family, sat very stiff and pained
+during this discourse. She was sensitive to so many things that she was
+bewildered. She felt her young sister’s shame, then a kind of swift
+protecting love for the baby, a feeling that included the mother; she
+was at a loss before her father’s religious sentiment, and she felt and
+resented bitterly the mark upon the family, against which the common
+folk could lift their fingers. Still she winced from the sound of her
+father’s words. It was a painful ordeal.
+
+“It is hard for you,” began the clergyman in his soft, lingering,
+unworldly voice. “It is hard for you today, but the Lord gives comfort
+in His time. A man child is born unto us, therefore let us rejoice and
+be glad. If sin has entered in among us, let us purify out hearts
+before the Lord....”
+
+He went on with his discourse. The young mother lifted the whimpering
+infant, till its face was hid in her loose hair. She was hurt, and a
+little glowering anger shone in her face. But nevertheless her fingers
+clasped the body of the child beautifully. She was stupefied with anger
+against this emotion let loose on her account.
+
+Miss Bertha rose and went to the little kitchen, returning with water
+in a china bowl. She placed it there among the tea-things.
+
+“Well, we’re all ready,” said the old man, and the clergyman began to
+read the service. Miss Bertha was godmother, the two men godfathers.
+The old man sat with bent head. The scene became impressive. At last
+Miss Bertha took the child and put it in the arms of the clergyman. He,
+big and ugly, shone with a kind of unreal love. He had never mixed with
+life, and women were all unliving, Biblical things to him. When he
+asked for the name, the old man lifted his head fiercely. “Joseph
+William, after me,” he said, almost out of breath.
+
+“Joseph William, I baptize thee....” resounded the strange, full,
+chanting voice of the clergyman. The baby was quite still.
+
+“Let us pray!” It came with relief to them all. They knelt before their
+chairs, all but the young mother, who bent and hid herself over her
+baby. The clergyman began his hesitating, struggling prayer.
+
+Just then heavy footsteps were heard coming up the path, ceasing at the
+window. The young mother, glancing up, saw her brother, black in his
+pit dirt, grinning in through the panes. His red mouth curved in a
+sneer; his fair hair shone above his blackened skin. He caught the eye
+of his sister and grinned. Then his black face disappeared. He had gone
+on into the kitchen. The girl with the child sat still and anger filled
+her heart. She herself hated now the praying clergyman and the whole
+emotional business; she hated her brother bitterly. In anger and
+bondage she sat and listened.
+
+Suddenly her father began to pray. His familiar, loud, rambling voice
+made her shut herself up and become even insentient. Folks said his
+mind was weakening. She believed it to be true, and kept herself always
+disconnected from him.
+
+“We ask Thee, Lord,” the old man cried, “to look after this childt.
+Fatherless he is. But what does the earthly father matter before Thee?
+The childt is Thine, he is Thy childt. Lord, what father has a man but
+Thee? Lord, when a man says he is a father, he is wrong from the first
+word. For Thou art the Father, Lord. Lord, take away from us the
+conceit that our children are ours. Lord, Thou art Father of this
+childt as is fatherless here. O God, Thou bring him up. For I have
+stood between Thee and my children; I’ve had _my_ way with them, Lord;
+I’ve stood between Thee and my children; I’ve cut ’em off from Thee
+because they were mine. And they’ve grown twisted, because of me. Who
+is their father, Lord, but Thee? But I put myself in the way, they’ve
+been plants under a stone, because of me. Lord, if it hadn’t been for
+me, they might ha’ been trees in the sunshine. Let me own it, Lord,
+I’ve done ’em mischief. It could ha’ been better if they’d never known
+no father. No man is a father, Lord: only Thou art. They can never grow
+beyond Thee, but I hampered them. Lift ’em up again, and undo what I’ve
+done to my children. And let this young childt be like a willow tree
+beside the waters, with no father but Thee, O God. Aye an’ I wish it
+had been so with my children, that they’d had no father but Thee. For
+I’ve been like a stone upon them, and they rise up and curse me in
+their wickedness. But let me go, an’ lift Thou them up, Lord....”
+
+The minister, unaware of the feelings of a father, knelt in trouble,
+hearing without understanding the special language of fatherhood. Miss
+Rowbotham alone felt and understood a little. Her heart began to
+flutter; she was in pain. The two younger daughters kneeled unhearing,
+stiffened and impervious. Bertha was thinking of the baby; and the
+younger mother thought of the father of her child, whom she hated.
+There was a clatter in the scullery. There the youngest son made as
+much noise as he could, pouring out the water for his wash, muttering
+in deep anger:
+
+“Blortin’, slaverin’ old fool!”
+
+And while the praying of his father continued, his heart was burning
+with rage. On the table was a paper bag. He picked it up and read,
+“John Berryman—Bread, Pastries, etc.” Then he grinned with a grimace.
+The father of the baby was baker’s man at Berryman’s. The prayer went
+on in the middle kitchen. Laurie Rowbotham gathered together the mouth
+of the bag, inflated it, and burst it with his fist. There was a loud
+report. He grinned to himself. But he writhed at the same time with
+shame and fear of his father.
+
+The father broke off from his prayer; the party shuffled to their feet.
+The young mother went into the scullery.
+
+“What art doin’, fool?” she said.
+
+The collier youth tipped the baby under the chin, singing:
+
+“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
+Bake me a cake as fast as you can....”
+
+
+The mother snatched the child away. “Shut thy mouth,” she said, the
+colour coming into her cheek.
+
+“Prick it and stick it and mark it with P,
+And put it i’ th’ oven for baby an’ me....”
+
+
+He grinned, showing a grimy, and jeering and unpleasant red mouth and
+white teeth.
+
+“I s’ll gi’e thee a dab ower th’ mouth,” said the mother of the baby
+grimly. He began to sing again, and she struck out at him.
+
+“Now what’s to do?” said the father, staggering in.
+
+The youth began to sing again. His sister stood sullen and furious.
+
+“Why, does _that_ upset you?” asked the eldest Miss Rowbotham, sharply,
+of Emma the mother. “Good gracious, it hasn’t improved your temper.”
+
+Miss Bertha came in, and took the bonny baby.
+
+The father sat big and unheeding in his chair, his eyes vacant, his
+physique wrecked. He let them do as they would, he fell to pieces. And
+yet some power, involuntary, like a curse, remained in him. The very
+ruin of him was like a lodestone that held them in its control. The
+wreck of him still dominated the house, in his dissolution even he
+compelled their being. They had never lived; his life, his will had
+always been upon them and contained them. They were only
+half-individuals.
+
+The day after the christening he staggered in at the doorway declaring,
+in a loud voice, with joy in life still: “The daisies light up the
+earth, they clap their hands in multitudes, in praise of the morning.”
+And his daughters shrank, sullen.
+
+
+
+Odour of Chrysanthemums
+
+I
+
+The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down
+from Selston with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with
+loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the
+gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon,
+outdistanced it at a canter. A woman, walking up the railway line to
+Underwood, drew back into the hedge, held her basket aside, and watched
+the footplate of the engine advancing. The trucks thumped heavily past,
+one by one, with slow inevitable movement, as she stood insignificantly
+trapped between the jolting black waggons and the hedge; then they
+curved away towards the coppice where the withered oak leaves dropped
+noiselessly, while the birds, pulling at the scarlet hips beside the
+track, made off into the dusk that had already crept into the spinney.
+In the open, the smoke from the engine sank and cleaved to the rough
+grass. The fields were dreary and forsaken, and in the marshy strip
+that led to the whimsey, a reedy pit-pond, the fowls had already
+abandoned their run among the alders, to roost in the tarred
+fowl-house. The pit-bank loomed up beyond the pond, flames like red
+sores licking its ashy sides, in the afternoon’s stagnant light. Just
+beyond rose the tapering chimneys and the clumsy black headstocks of
+Brinsley Colliery. The two wheels were spinning fast up against the
+sky, and the winding-engine rapped out its little spasms. The miners
+were being turned up.
+
+The engine whistled as it came into the wide bay of railway lines
+beside the colliery, where rows of trucks stood in harbour.
+
+Miners, single, trailing and in groups, passed like shadows diverging
+home. At the edge of the ribbed level of sidings squat a low cottage,
+three steps down from the cinder track. A large bony vine clutched at
+the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof. Round the bricked yard
+grew a few wintry primroses. Beyond, the long garden sloped down to a
+bush-covered brook course. There were some twiggy apple trees,
+winter-crack trees, and ragged cabbages. Beside the path hung
+dishevelled pink chrysanthemums, like pink cloths hung on bushes. A
+woman came stooping out of the felt-covered fowl-house, half-way down
+the garden. She closed and padlocked the door, then drew herself erect,
+having brushed some bits from her white apron.
+
+She was a tall woman of imperious mien, handsome, with definite black
+eyebrows. Her smooth black hair was parted exactly. For a few moments
+she stood steadily watching the miners as they passed along the
+railway: then she turned towards the brook course. Her face was calm
+and set, her mouth was closed with disillusionment. After a moment she
+called:
+
+“John!” There was no answer. She waited, and then said distinctly:
+
+“Where are you?”
+
+“Here!” replied a child’s sulky voice from among the bushes. The woman
+looked piercingly through the dusk.
+
+“Are you at that brook?” she asked sternly.
+
+For answer the child showed himself before the raspberry-canes that
+rose like whips. He was a small, sturdy boy of five. He stood quite
+still, defiantly.
+
+“Oh!” said the mother, conciliated. “I thought you were down at that
+wet brook—and you remember what I told you——”
+
+The boy did not move or answer.
+
+“Come, come on in,” she said more gently, “it’s getting dark. There’s
+your grandfather’s engine coming down the line!”
+
+The lad advanced slowly, with resentful, taciturn movement. He was
+dressed in trousers and waistcoat of cloth that was too thick and hard
+for the size of the garments. They were evidently cut down from a man’s
+clothes.
+
+As they went slowly towards the house he tore at the ragged wisps of
+chrysanthemums and dropped the petals in handfuls along the path.
+
+“Don’t do that—it does look nasty,” said his mother. He refrained, and
+she, suddenly pitiful, broke off a twig with three or four wan flowers
+and held them against her face. When mother and son reached the yard
+her hand hesitated, and instead of laying the flower aside, she pushed
+it in her apron-band. The mother and son stood at the foot of the three
+steps looking across the bay of lines at the passing home of the
+miners. The trundle of the small train was imminent. Suddenly the
+engine loomed past the house and came to a stop opposite the gate.
+
+The engine-driver, a short man with round grey beard, leaned out of the
+cab high above the woman.
+
+“Have you got a cup of tea?” he said in a cheery, hearty fashion.
+
+It was her father. She went in, saying she would mash. Directly, she
+returned.
+
+“I didn’t come to see you on Sunday,” began the little grey-bearded
+man.
+
+“I didn’t expect you,” said his daughter.
+
+The engine-driver winced; then, reassuming his cheery, airy manner, he
+said:
+
+“Oh, have you heard then? Well, and what do you think——?”
+
+“I think it is soon enough,” she replied.
+
+At her brief censure the little man made an impatient gesture, and said
+coaxingly, yet with dangerous coldness:
+
+“Well, what’s a man to do? It’s no sort of life for a man of my years,
+to sit at my own hearth like a stranger. And if I’m going to marry
+again it may as well be soon as late—what does it matter to anybody?”
+
+The woman did not reply, but turned and went into the house. The man in
+the engine-cab stood assertive, till she returned with a cup of tea and
+a piece of bread and butter on a plate. She went up the steps and stood
+near the footplate of the hissing engine.
+
+“You needn’t ’a’ brought me bread an’ butter,” said her father. “But a
+cup of tea”—he sipped appreciatively—“it’s very nice.” He sipped for a
+moment or two, then: “I hear as Walter’s got another bout on,” he said.
+
+“When hasn’t he?” said the woman bitterly.
+
+“I heered tell of him in the ‘Lord Nelson’ braggin’ as he was going to
+spend that b—— afore he went: half a sovereign that was.”
+
+“When?” asked the woman.
+
+“A’ Sat’day night—I know that’s true.”
+
+“Very likely,” she laughed bitterly. “He gives me twenty-three
+shillings.”
+
+“Aye, it’s a nice thing, when a man can do nothing with his money but
+make a beast of himself!” said the grey-whiskered man. The woman turned
+her head away. Her father swallowed the last of his tea and handed her
+the cup.
+
+“Aye,” he sighed, wiping his mouth. “It’s a settler, it is——”
+
+He put his hand on the lever. The little engine strained and groaned,
+and the train rumbled towards the crossing. The woman again looked
+across the metals. Darkness was settling over the spaces of the railway
+and trucks: the miners, in grey sombre groups, were still passing home.
+The winding-engine pulsed hurriedly, with brief pauses. Elizabeth Bates
+looked at the dreary flow of men, then she went indoors. Her husband
+did not come.
+
+The kitchen was small and full of firelight; red coals piled glowing up
+the chimney mouth. All the life of the room seemed in the white, warm
+hearth and the steel fender reflecting the red fire. The cloth was laid
+for tea; cups glinted in the shadows. At the back, where the lowest
+stairs protruded into the room, the boy sat struggling with a knife and
+a piece of whitewood. He was almost hidden in the shadow. It was
+half-past four. They had but to await the father’s coming to begin tea.
+As the mother watched her son’s sullen little struggle with the wood,
+she saw herself in his silence and pertinacity; she saw the father in
+her child’s indifference to all but himself. She seemed to be occupied
+by her husband. He had probably gone past his home, slunk past his own
+door, to drink before he came in, while his dinner spoiled and wasted
+in waiting. She glanced at the clock, then took the potatoes to strain
+them in the yard. The garden and fields beyond the brook were closed in
+uncertain darkness. When she rose with the saucepan, leaving the drain
+steaming into the night behind her, she saw the yellow lamps were lit
+along the high road that went up the hill away beyond the space of the
+railway lines and the field.
+
+Then again she watched the men trooping home, fewer now and fewer.
+
+Indoors the fire was sinking and the room was dark red. The woman put
+her saucepan on the hob, and set a batter pudding near the mouth of the
+oven. Then she stood unmoving. Directly, gratefully, came quick young
+steps to the door. Someone hung on the latch a moment, then a little
+girl entered and began pulling off her outdoor things, dragging a mass
+of curls, just ripening from gold to brown, over her eyes with her hat.
+
+Her mother chid her for coming late from school, and said she would
+have to keep her at home the dark winter days.
+
+“Why, mother, it’s hardly a bit dark yet. The lamp’s not lighted, and
+my father’s not home.”
+
+“No, he isn’t. But it’s a quarter to five! Did you see anything of
+him?”
+
+The child became serious. She looked at her mother with large, wistful
+blue eyes.
+
+“No, mother, I’ve never seen him. Why? Has he come up an’ gone past, to
+Old Brinsley? He hasn’t, mother, ’cos I never saw him.”
+
+“He’d watch that,” said the mother bitterly, “he’d take care as you
+didn’t see him. But you may depend upon it, he’s seated in the ‘Prince
+o’ Wales’. He wouldn’t be this late.”
+
+The girl looked at her mother piteously.
+
+“Let’s have our teas, mother, should we?” said she.
+
+The mother called John to table. She opened the door once more and
+looked out across the darkness of the lines. All was deserted: she
+could not hear the winding-engines.
+
+“Perhaps,” she said to herself, “he’s stopped to get some ripping
+done.”
+
+They sat down to tea. John, at the end of the table near the door, was
+almost lost in the darkness. Their faces were hidden from each other.
+The girl crouched against the fender slowly moving a thick piece of
+bread before the fire. The lad, his face a dusky mark on the shadow,
+sat watching her who was transfigured in the red glow.
+
+“I do think it’s beautiful to look in the fire,” said the child.
+
+“Do you?” said her mother. “Why?”
+
+“It’s so red, and full of little caves—and it feels so nice, and you
+can fair smell it.”
+
+“It’ll want mending directly,” replied her mother, “and then if your
+father comes he’ll carry on and say there never is a fire when a man
+comes home sweating from the pit. A public-house is always warm
+enough.”
+
+There was silence till the boy said complainingly: “Make haste, our
+Annie.”
+
+“Well, I am doing! I can’t make the fire do it no faster, can I?”
+
+“She keeps wafflin’ it about so’s to make ’er slow,” grumbled the boy.
+
+“Don’t have such an evil imagination, child,” replied the mother.
+
+Soon the room was busy in the darkness with the crisp sound of
+crunching. The mother ate very little. She drank her tea determinedly,
+and sat thinking. When she rose her anger was evident in the stern
+unbending of her head. She looked at the pudding in the fender, and
+broke out:
+
+“It is a scandalous thing as a man can’t even come home to his dinner!
+If it’s crozzled up to a cinder I don’t see why I should care. Past his
+very door he goes to get to a public-house, and here I sit with his
+dinner waiting for him——”
+
+She went out. As she dropped piece after piece of coal on the red fire,
+the shadows fell on the walls, till the room was almost in total
+darkness.
+
+“I canna see,” grumbled the invisible John. In spite of herself, the
+mother laughed.
+
+“You know the way to your mouth,” she said. She set the dustpan outside
+the door. When she came again like a shadow on the hearth, the lad
+repeated, complaining sulkily:
+
+“I canna see.”
+
+“Good gracious!” cried the mother irritably, “you’re as bad as your
+father if it’s a bit dusk!”
+
+Nevertheless she took a paper spill from a sheaf on the mantelpiece and
+proceeded to light the lamp that hung from the ceiling in the middle of
+the room. As she reached up, her figure displayed itself just rounding
+with maternity.
+
+“Oh, mother——!” exclaimed the girl.
+
+“What?” said the woman, suspended in the act of putting the lamp glass
+over the flame. The copper reflector shone handsomely on her, as she
+stood with uplifted arm, turning to face her daughter.
+
+“You’ve got a flower in your apron!” said the child, in a little
+rapture at this unusual event.
+
+“Goodness me!” exclaimed the woman, relieved. “One would think the
+house was afire.” She replaced the glass and waited a moment before
+turning up the wick. A pale shadow was seen floating vaguely on the
+floor.
+
+“Let me smell!” said the child, still rapturously, coming forward and
+putting her face to her mother’s waist.
+
+“Go along, silly!” said the mother, turning up the lamp. The light
+revealed their suspense so that the woman felt it almost unbearable.
+Annie was still bending at her waist. Irritably, the mother took the
+flowers out from her apron-band.
+
+“Oh, mother—don’t take them out!” Annie cried, catching her hand and
+trying to replace the sprig.
+
+“Such nonsense!” said the mother, turning away. The child put the pale
+chrysanthemums to her lips, murmuring:
+
+“Don’t they smell beautiful!”
+
+Her mother gave a short laugh.
+
+“No,” she said, “not to me. It was chrysanthemums when I married him,
+and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever
+brought him home drunk, he’d got brown chrysanthemums in his
+button-hole.”
+
+She looked at the children. Their eyes and their parted lips were
+wondering. The mother sat rocking in silence for some time. Then she
+looked at the clock.
+
+“Twenty minutes to six!” In a tone of fine bitter carelessness she
+continued: “Eh, he’ll not come now till they bring him. There he’ll
+stick! But he needn’t come rolling in here in his pit-dirt, for _I_
+won’t wash him. He can lie on the floor—— Eh, what a fool I’ve been,
+what a fool! And this is what I came here for, to this dirty hole, rats
+and all, for him to slink past his very door. Twice last week—he’s
+begun now——”
+
+She silenced herself, and rose to clear the table.
+
+While for an hour or more the children played, subduedly intent,
+fertile of imagination, united in fear of the mother’s wrath, and in
+dread of their father’s home-coming, Mrs Bates sat in her rocking-chair
+making a ‘singlet’ of thick cream-coloured flannel, which gave a dull
+wounded sound as she tore off the grey edge. She worked at her sewing
+with energy, listening to the children, and her anger wearied itself,
+lay down to rest, opening its eyes from time to time and steadily
+watching, its ears raised to listen. Sometimes even her anger quailed
+and shrank, and the mother suspended her sewing, tracing the footsteps
+that thudded along the sleepers outside; she would lift her head
+sharply to bid the children ‘hush’, but she recovered herself in time,
+and the footsteps went past the gate, and the children were not flung
+out of their playing world.
+
+But at last Annie sighed, and gave in. She glanced at her waggon of
+slippers, and loathed the game. She turned plaintively to her mother.
+
+“Mother!”—but she was inarticulate.
+
+John crept out like a frog from under the sofa. His mother glanced up.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “just look at those shirt-sleeves!”
+
+The boy held them out to survey them, saying nothing. Then somebody
+called in a hoarse voice away down the line, and suspense bristled in
+the room, till two people had gone by outside, talking.
+
+“It is time for bed,” said the mother.
+
+“My father hasn’t come,” wailed Annie plaintively. But her mother was
+primed with courage.
+
+“Never mind. They’ll bring him when he does come—like a log.” She meant
+there would be no scene. “And he may sleep on the floor till he wakes
+himself. I know he’ll not go to work tomorrow after this!”
+
+The children had their hands and faces wiped with a flannel. They were
+very quiet. When they had put on their nightdresses, they said their
+prayers, the boy mumbling. The mother looked down at them, at the brown
+silken bush of intertwining curls in the nape of the girl’s neck, at
+the little black head of the lad, and her heart burst with anger at
+their father who caused all three such distress. The children hid their
+faces in her skirts for comfort.
+
+When Mrs Bates came down, the room was strangely empty, with a tension
+of expectancy. She took up her sewing and stitched for some time
+without raising her head. Meantime her anger was tinged with fear.
+
+II
+
+The clock struck eight and she rose suddenly, dropping her sewing on
+her chair. She went to the stairfoot door, opened it, listening. Then
+she went out, locking the door behind her.
+
+Something scuffled in the yard, and she started, though she knew it was
+only the rats with which the place was overrun. The night was very
+dark. In the great bay of railway lines, bulked with trucks, there was
+no trace of light, only away back she could see a few yellow lamps at
+the pit-top, and the red smear of the burning pit-bank on the night.
+She hurried along the edge of the track, then, crossing the converging
+lines, came to the stile by the white gates, whence she emerged on the
+road. Then the fear which had led her shrank. People were walking up to
+New Brinsley; she saw the lights in the houses; twenty yards further on
+were the broad windows of the ‘Prince of Wales’, very warm and bright,
+and the loud voices of men could be heard distinctly. What a fool she
+had been to imagine that anything had happened to him! He was merely
+drinking over there at the ‘Prince of Wales’. She faltered. She had
+never yet been to fetch him, and she never would go. So she continued
+her walk towards the long straggling line of houses, standing blank on
+the highway. She entered a passage between the dwellings.
+
+“Mr Rigley?—Yes! Did you want him? No, he’s not in at this minute.”
+
+The raw-boned woman leaned forward from her dark scullery and peered at
+the other, upon whom fell a dim light through the blind of the kitchen
+window.
+
+“Is it Mrs Bates?” she asked in a tone tinged with respect.
+
+“Yes. I wondered if your Master was at home. Mine hasn’t come yet.”
+
+“’Asn’t ’e! Oh, Jack’s been ’ome an’ ’ad ’is dinner an’ gone out. ’E’s
+just gone for ’alf an hour afore bedtime. Did you call at the ‘Prince
+of Wales’?”
+
+“No——”
+
+“No, you didn’t like——! It’s not very nice.” The other woman was
+indulgent. There was an awkward pause. “Jack never said nothink
+about—about your Mester,” she said.
+
+“No!—I expect he’s stuck in there!”
+
+Elizabeth Bates said this bitterly, and with recklessness. She knew
+that the woman across the yard was standing at her door listening, but
+she did not care. As she turned:
+
+“Stop a minute! I’ll just go an’ ask Jack if e’ knows anythink,” said
+Mrs Rigley.
+
+“Oh, no—I wouldn’t like to put——!”
+
+“Yes, I will, if you’ll just step inside an’ see as th’ childer doesn’t
+come downstairs and set theirselves afire.”
+
+Elizabeth Bates, murmuring a remonstrance, stepped inside. The other
+woman apologized for the state of the room.
+
+The kitchen needed apology. There were little frocks and trousers and
+childish undergarments on the squab and on the floor, and a litter of
+playthings everywhere. On the black American cloth of the table were
+pieces of bread and cake, crusts, slops, and a teapot with cold tea.
+
+“Eh, ours is just as bad,” said Elizabeth Bates, looking at the woman,
+not at the house. Mrs Rigley put a shawl over her head and hurried out,
+saying:
+
+“I shanna be a minute.”
+
+The other sat, noting with faint disapproval the general untidiness of
+the room. Then she fell to counting the shoes of various sizes
+scattered over the floor. There were twelve. She sighed and said to
+herself, “No wonder!”—glancing at the litter. There came the scratching
+of two pairs of feet on the yard, and the Rigleys entered. Elizabeth
+Bates rose. Rigley was a big man, with very large bones. His head
+looked particularly bony. Across his temple was a blue scar, caused by
+a wound got in the pit, a wound in which the coal-dust remained blue
+like tattooing.
+
+“Asna ’e come whoam yit?” asked the man, without any form of greeting,
+but with deference and sympathy. “I couldna say wheer he is—’e’s non
+ower theer!”—he jerked his head to signify the ‘Prince of Wales’.
+
+“’E’s ’appen gone up to th’ ‘Yew’,” said Mrs Rigley.
+
+There was another pause. Rigley had evidently something to get off his
+mind:
+
+“Ah left ’im finishin’ a stint,” he began. “Loose-all ’ad bin gone
+about ten minutes when we com’n away, an’ I shouted, ‘Are ter comin’,
+Walt?’ an’ ’e said, ‘Go on, Ah shanna be but a’ef a minnit,’ so we
+com’n ter th’ bottom, me an’ Bowers, thinkin’ as ’e wor just behint,
+an’ ’ud come up i’ th’ next bantle——”
+
+He stood perplexed, as if answering a charge of deserting his mate.
+Elizabeth Bates, now again certain of disaster, hastened to reassure
+him:
+
+“I expect ’e’s gone up to th’ ‘Yew Tree’, as you say. It’s not the
+first time. I’ve fretted myself into a fever before now. He’ll come
+home when they carry him.”
+
+“Ay, isn’t it too bad!” deplored the other woman.
+
+“I’ll just step up to Dick’s an’ see if ’e _is_ theer,” offered the
+man, afraid of appearing alarmed, afraid of taking liberties.
+
+“Oh, I wouldn’t think of bothering you that far,” said Elizabeth Bates,
+with emphasis, but he knew she was glad of his offer.
+
+As they stumbled up the entry, Elizabeth Bates heard Rigley’s wife run
+across the yard and open her neighbour’s door. At this, suddenly all
+the blood in her body seemed to switch away from her heart.
+
+“Mind!” warned Rigley. “Ah’ve said many a time as Ah’d fill up them
+ruts in this entry, sumb’dy ’ll be breakin’ their legs yit.”
+
+She recovered herself and walked quickly along with the miner.
+
+“I don’t like leaving the children in bed, and nobody in the house,”
+she said.
+
+“No, you dunna!” he replied courteously. They were soon at the gate of
+the cottage.
+
+“Well, I shanna be many minnits. Dunna you be frettin’ now, ’e’ll be
+all right,” said the butty.
+
+“Thank you very much, Mr Rigley,” she replied.
+
+“You’re welcome!” he stammered, moving away. “I shanna be many
+minnits.”
+
+The house was quiet. Elizabeth Bates took off her hat and shawl, and
+rolled back the rug. When she had finished, she sat down. It was a few
+minutes past nine. She was startled by the rapid chuff of the
+winding-engine at the pit, and the sharp whirr of the brakes on the
+rope as it descended. Again she felt the painful sweep of her blood,
+and she put her hand to her side, saying aloud, “Good gracious!—it’s
+only the nine o’clock deputy going down,” rebuking herself.
+
+She sat still, listening. Half an hour of this, and she was wearied
+out.
+
+“What am I working myself up like this for?” she said pitiably to
+herself, “I s’ll only be doing myself some damage.”
+
+She took out her sewing again.
+
+At a quarter to ten there were footsteps. One person! She watched for
+the door to open. It was an elderly woman, in a black bonnet and a
+black woollen shawl—his mother. She was about sixty years old, pale,
+with blue eyes, and her face all wrinkled and lamentable. She shut the
+door and turned to her daughter-in-law peevishly.
+
+“Eh, Lizzie, whatever shall we do, whatever shall we do!” she cried.
+
+Elizabeth drew back a little, sharply.
+
+“What is it, mother?” she said.
+
+The elder woman seated herself on the sofa.
+
+“I don’t know, child, I can’t tell you!”—she shook her head slowly.
+Elizabeth sat watching her, anxious and vexed.
+
+“I don’t know,” replied the grandmother, sighing very deeply. “There’s
+no end to my troubles, there isn’t. The things I’ve gone through, I’m
+sure it’s enough——!” She wept without wiping her eyes, the tears
+running.
+
+“But, mother,” interrupted Elizabeth, “what do you mean? What is it?”
+
+The grandmother slowly wiped her eyes. The fountains of her tears were
+stopped by Elizabeth’s directness. She wiped her eyes slowly.
+
+“Poor child! Eh, you poor thing!” she moaned. “I don’t know what we’re
+going to do, I don’t—and you as you are—it’s a thing, it is indeed!”
+
+Elizabeth waited.
+
+“Is he dead?” she asked, and at the words her heart swung violently,
+though she felt a slight flush of shame at the ultimate extravagance of
+the question. Her words sufficiently frightened the old lady, almost
+brought her to herself.
+
+“Don’t say so, Elizabeth! We’ll hope it’s not as bad as that; no, may
+the Lord spare us that, Elizabeth. Jack Rigley came just as I was
+sittin’ down to a glass afore going to bed, an’ ’e said, ‘’Appen you’ll
+go down th’ line, Mrs Bates. Walt’s had an accident. ’Appen you’ll go
+an’ sit wi’ ’er till we can get him home.’ I hadn’t time to ask him a
+word afore he was gone. An’ I put my bonnet on an’ come straight down,
+Lizzie. I thought to myself, ‘Eh, that poor blessed child, if anybody
+should come an’ tell her of a sudden, there’s no knowin’ what’ll ’appen
+to ’er.’ You mustn’t let it upset you, Lizzie—or you know what to
+expect. How long is it, six months—or is it five, Lizzie? Ay!”—the old
+woman shook her head—“time slips on, it slips on! Ay!”
+
+Elizabeth’s thoughts were busy elsewhere. If he was killed—would she be
+able to manage on the little pension and what she could earn?—she
+counted up rapidly. If he was hurt—they wouldn’t take him to the
+hospital—how tiresome he would be to nurse!—but perhaps she’d be able
+to get him away from the drink and his hateful ways. She would—while he
+was ill. The tears offered to come to her eyes at the picture. But what
+sentimental luxury was this she was beginning?—She turned to consider
+the children. At any rate she was absolutely necessary for them. They
+were her business.
+
+“Ay!” repeated the old woman, “it seems but a week or two since he
+brought me his first wages. Ay—he was a good lad, Elizabeth, he was, in
+his way. I don’t know why he got to be such a trouble, I don’t. He was
+a happy lad at home, only full of spirits. But there’s no mistake he’s
+been a handful of trouble, he has! I hope the Lord’ll spare him to mend
+his ways. I hope so, I hope so. You’ve had a sight o’ trouble with him,
+Elizabeth, you have indeed. But he was a jolly enough lad wi’ me, he
+was, I can assure you. I don’t know how it is....”
+
+The old woman continued to muse aloud, a monotonous irritating sound,
+while Elizabeth thought concentratedly, startled once, when she heard
+the winding-engine chuff quickly, and the brakes skirr with a shriek.
+Then she heard the engine more slowly, and the brakes made no sound.
+The old woman did not notice. Elizabeth waited in suspense. The
+mother-in-law talked, with lapses into silence.
+
+“But he wasn’t your son, Lizzie, an’ it makes a difference. Whatever he
+was, I remember him when he was little, an’ I learned to understand him
+and to make allowances. You’ve got to make allowances for them——”
+
+It was half-past ten, and the old woman was saying: “But it’s trouble
+from beginning to end; you’re never too old for trouble, never too old
+for that——” when the gate banged back, and there were heavy feet on the
+steps.
+
+“I’ll go, Lizzie, let me go,” cried the old woman, rising. But
+Elizabeth was at the door. It was a man in pit-clothes.
+
+“They’re bringin’ ’im, Missis,” he said. Elizabeth’s heart halted a
+moment. Then it surged on again, almost suffocating her.
+
+“Is he—is it bad?” she asked.
+
+The man turned away, looking at the darkness:
+
+“The doctor says ’e’d been dead hours. ’E saw ’im i’ th’ lamp-cabin.”
+
+The old woman, who stood just behind Elizabeth, dropped into a chair,
+and folded her hands, crying: “Oh, my boy, my boy!”
+
+“Hush!” said Elizabeth, with a sharp twitch of a frown. “Be still,
+mother, don’t waken th’ children: I wouldn’t have them down for
+anything!”
+
+The old woman moaned softly, rocking herself. The man was drawing away.
+Elizabeth took a step forward.
+
+“How was it?” she asked.
+
+“Well, I couldn’t say for sure,” the man replied, very ill at ease. “’E
+wor finishin’ a stint an’ th’ butties ’ad gone, an’ a lot o’ stuff come
+down atop ’n ’im.”
+
+“And crushed him?” cried the widow, with a shudder.
+
+“No,” said the man, “it fell at th’ back of ’im. ’E wor under th’ face,
+an’ it niver touched ’im. It shut ’im in. It seems ’e wor smothered.”
+
+Elizabeth shrank back. She heard the old woman behind her cry:
+
+“What?—what did ’e say it was?”
+
+The man replied, more loudly: “’E wor smothered!”
+
+Then the old woman wailed aloud, and this relieved Elizabeth.
+
+“Oh, mother,” she said, putting her hand on the old woman, “don’t waken
+th’ children, don’t waken th’ children.”
+
+She wept a little, unknowing, while the old mother rocked herself and
+moaned. Elizabeth remembered that they were bringing him home, and she
+must be ready. “They’ll lay him in the parlour,” she said to herself,
+standing a moment pale and perplexed.
+
+Then she lighted a candle and went into the tiny room. The air was cold
+and damp, but she could not make a fire, there was no fireplace. She
+set down the candle and looked round. The candle-light glittered on the
+lustre-glasses, on the two vases that held some of the pink
+chrysanthemums, and on the dark mahogany. There was a cold, deathly
+smell of chrysanthemums in the room. Elizabeth stood looking at the
+flowers. She turned away, and calculated whether there would be room to
+lay him on the floor, between the couch and the chiffonier. She pushed
+the chairs aside. There would be room to lay him down and to step round
+him. Then she fetched the old red tablecloth, and another old cloth,
+spreading them down to save her bit of carpet. She shivered on leaving
+the parlour; so, from the dresser-drawer she took a clean shirt and put
+it at the fire to air. All the time her mother-in-law was rocking
+herself in the chair and moaning.
+
+“You’ll have to move from there, mother,” said Elizabeth. “They’ll be
+bringing him in. Come in the rocker.”
+
+The old mother rose mechanically, and seated herself by the fire,
+continuing to lament. Elizabeth went into the pantry for another
+candle, and there, in the little penthouse under the naked tiles, she
+heard them coming. She stood still in the pantry doorway, listening.
+She heard them pass the end of the house, and come awkwardly down the
+three steps, a jumble of shuffling footsteps and muttering voices. The
+old woman was silent. The men were in the yard.
+
+Then Elizabeth heard Matthews, the manager of the pit, say: “You go in
+first, Jim. Mind!”
+
+The door came open, and the two women saw a collier backing into the
+room, holding one end of a stretcher, on which they could see the
+nailed pit-boots of the dead man. The two carriers halted, the man at
+the head stooping to the lintel of the door.
+
+“Wheer will you have him?” asked the manager, a short, white-bearded
+man.
+
+Elizabeth roused herself and came from the pantry carrying the
+unlighted candle.
+
+“In the parlour,” she said.
+
+“In there, Jim!” pointed the manager, and the carriers backed round
+into the tiny room. The coat with which they had covered the body fell
+off as they awkwardly turned through the two doorways, and the women
+saw their man, naked to the waist, lying stripped for work. The old
+woman began to moan in a low voice of horror.
+
+“Lay th’ stretcher at th’ side,” snapped the manager, “an’ put ’im on
+th’ cloths. Mind now, mind! Look you now——!”
+
+One of the men had knocked off a vase of chrysanthemums. He stared
+awkwardly, then they set down the stretcher. Elizabeth did not look at
+her husband. As soon as she could get in the room, she went and picked
+up the broken vase and the flowers.
+
+“Wait a minute!” she said.
+
+The three men waited in silence while she mopped up the water with a
+duster.
+
+“Eh, what a job, what a job, to be sure!” the manager was saying,
+rubbing his brow with trouble and perplexity. “Never knew such a thing
+in my life, never! He’d no business to ha’ been left. I never knew such
+a thing in my life! Fell over him clean as a whistle, an’ shut him in.
+Not four foot of space, there wasn’t—yet it scarce bruised him.”
+
+He looked down at the dead man, lying prone, half naked, all grimed
+with coal-dust.
+
+“‘’Sphyxiated,’ the doctor said. It _is_ the most terrible job I’ve
+ever known. Seems as if it was done o’ purpose. Clean over him, an’
+shut ’im in, like a mouse-trap”—he made a sharp, descending gesture
+with his hand.
+
+The colliers standing by jerked aside their heads in hopeless comment.
+
+The horror of the thing bristled upon them all.
+
+Then they heard the girl’s voice upstairs calling shrilly: “Mother,
+mother—who is it? Mother, who is it?”
+
+Elizabeth hurried to the foot of the stairs and opened the door:
+
+“Go to sleep!” she commanded sharply. “What are you shouting about? Go
+to sleep at once—there’s nothing——”
+
+Then she began to mount the stairs. They could hear her on the boards,
+and on the plaster floor of the little bedroom. They could hear her
+distinctly:
+
+“What’s the matter now?—what’s the matter with you, silly thing?”—her
+voice was much agitated, with an unreal gentleness.
+
+“I thought it was some men come,” said the plaintive voice of the
+child. “Has he come?”
+
+“Yes, they’ve brought him. There’s nothing to make a fuss about. Go to
+sleep now, like a good child.”
+
+They could hear her voice in the bedroom, they waited whilst she
+covered the children under the bedclothes.
+
+“Is he drunk?” asked the girl, timidly, faintly.
+
+“No! No—he’s not! He—he’s asleep.”
+
+“Is he asleep downstairs?”
+
+“Yes—and don’t make a noise.”
+
+There was silence for a moment, then the men heard the frightened child
+again:
+
+“What’s that noise?”
+
+“It’s nothing, I tell you, what are you bothering for?”
+
+The noise was the grandmother moaning. She was oblivious of everything,
+sitting on her chair rocking and moaning. The manager put his hand on
+her arm and bade her “Sh—sh!!”
+
+The old woman opened her eyes and looked at him. She was shocked by
+this interruption, and seemed to wonder.
+
+“What time is it?”—the plaintive thin voice of the child, sinking back
+unhappily into sleep, asked this last question.
+
+“Ten o’clock,” answered the mother more softly. Then she must have bent
+down and kissed the children.
+
+Matthews beckoned to the men to come away. They put on their caps and
+took up the stretcher. Stepping over the body, they tiptoed out of the
+house. None of them spoke till they were far from the wakeful children.
+
+When Elizabeth came down she found her mother alone on the parlour
+floor, leaning over the dead man, the tears dropping on him.
+
+“We must lay him out,” the wife said. She put on the kettle, then
+returning knelt at the feet, and began to unfasten the knotted leather
+laces. The room was clammy and dim with only one candle, so that she
+had to bend her face almost to the floor. At last she got off the heavy
+boots and put them away.
+
+“You must help me now,” she whispered to the old woman. Together they
+stripped the man.
+
+When they arose, saw him lying in the naïve dignity of death, the women
+stood arrested in fear and respect. For a few moments they remained
+still, looking down, the old mother whimpering. Elizabeth felt
+countermanded. She saw him, how utterly inviolable he lay in himself.
+She had nothing to do with him. She could not accept it. Stooping, she
+laid her hand on him, in claim. He was still warm, for the mine was hot
+where he had died. His mother had his face between her hands, and was
+murmuring incoherently. The old tears fell in succession as drops from
+wet leaves; the mother was not weeping, merely her tears flowed.
+Elizabeth embraced the body of her husband, with cheek and lips. She
+seemed to be listening, inquiring, trying to get some connection. But
+she could not. She was driven away. He was impregnable.
+
+She rose, went into the kitchen, where she poured warm water into a
+bowl, brought soap and flannel and a soft towel.
+
+“I must wash him,” she said.
+
+Then the old mother rose stiffly, and watched Elizabeth as she
+carefully washed his face, carefully brushing the big blond moustache
+from his mouth with the flannel. She was afraid with a bottomless fear,
+so she ministered to him. The old woman, jealous, said:
+
+“Let me wipe him!”—and she kneeled on the other side drying slowly as
+Elizabeth washed, her big black bonnet sometimes brushing the dark head
+of her daughter. They worked thus in silence for a long time. They
+never forgot it was death, and the touch of the man’s dead body gave
+them strange emotions, different in each of the women; a great dread
+possessed them both, the mother felt the lie was given to her womb, she
+was denied; the wife felt the utter isolation of the human soul, the
+child within her was a weight apart from her.
+
+At last it was finished. He was a man of handsome body, and his face
+showed no traces of drink. He was blonde, full-fleshed, with fine
+limbs. But he was dead.
+
+“Bless him,” whispered his mother, looking always at his face, and
+speaking out of sheer terror. “Dear lad—bless him!” She spoke in a
+faint, sibilant ecstasy of fear and mother love.
+
+Elizabeth sank down again to the floor, and put her face against his
+neck, and trembled and shuddered. But she had to draw away again. He
+was dead, and her living flesh had no place against his. A great dread
+and weariness held her: she was so unavailing. Her life was gone like
+this.
+
+“White as milk he is, clear as a twelve-month baby, bless him, the
+darling!” the old mother murmured to herself. “Not a mark on him, clear
+and clean and white, beautiful as ever a child was made,” she murmured
+with pride. Elizabeth kept her face hidden.
+
+“He went peaceful, Lizzie—peaceful as sleep. Isn’t he beautiful, the
+lamb? Ay—he must ha’ made his peace, Lizzie. ’Appen he made it all
+right, Lizzie, shut in there. He’d have time. He wouldn’t look like
+this if he hadn’t made his peace. The lamb, the dear lamb. Eh, but he
+had a hearty laugh. I loved to hear it. He had the heartiest laugh,
+Lizzie, as a lad——”
+
+Elizabeth looked up. The man’s mouth was fallen back, slightly open
+under the cover of the moustache. The eyes, half shut, did not show
+glazed in the obscurity. Life with its smoky burning gone from him, had
+left him apart and utterly alien to her. And she knew what a stranger
+he was to her. In her womb was ice of fear, because of this separate
+stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh. Was this what it
+all meant—utter, intact separateness, obscured by heat of living? In
+dread she turned her face away. The fact was too deadly. There had been
+nothing between them, and yet they had come together, exchanging their
+nakedness repeatedly. Each time he had taken her, they had been two
+isolated beings, far apart as now. He was no more responsible than she.
+The child was like ice in her womb. For as she looked at the dead man,
+her mind, cold and detached, said clearly: “Who am I? What have I been
+doing? I have been fighting a husband who did not exist. _He_ existed
+all the time. What wrong have I done? What was that I have been living
+with? There lies the reality, this man.”—And her soul died in her for
+fear: she knew she had never seen him, he had never seen her, they had
+met in the dark and had fought in the dark, not knowing whom they met
+nor whom they fought. And now she saw, and turned silent in seeing. For
+she had been wrong. She had said he was something he was not; she had
+felt familiar with him. Whereas he was apart all the while, living as
+she never lived, feeling as she never felt.
+
+In fear and shame she looked at his naked body, that she had known
+falsely. And he was the father of her children. Her soul was torn from
+her body and stood apart. She looked at his naked body and was ashamed,
+as if she had denied it. After all, it was itself. It seemed awful to
+her. She looked at his face, and she turned her own face to the wall.
+For his look was other than hers, his way was not her way. She had
+denied him what he was—she saw it now. She had refused him as
+himself.—And this had been her life, and his life.—She was grateful to
+death, which restored the truth. And she knew she was not dead.
+
+And all the while her heart was bursting with grief and pity for him.
+What had he suffered? What stretch of horror for this helpless man! She
+was rigid with agony. She had not been able to help him. He had been
+cruelly injured, this naked man, this other being, and she could make
+no reparation. There were the children—but the children belonged to
+life. This dead man had nothing to do with them. He and she were only
+channels through which life had flowed to issue in the children. She
+was a mother—but how awful she knew it now to have been a wife. And he,
+dead now, how awful he must have felt it to be a husband. She felt that
+in the next world he would be a stranger to her. If they met there, in
+the beyond, they would only be ashamed of what had been before. The
+children had come, for some mysterious reason, out of both of them. But
+the children did not unite them. Now he was dead, she knew how
+eternally he was apart from her, how eternally he had nothing more to
+do with her. She saw this episode of her life closed. They had denied
+each other in life. Now he had withdrawn. An anguish came over her. It
+was finished then: it had become hopeless between them long before he
+died. Yet he had been her husband. But how little!
+
+“Have you got his shirt, ’Lizabeth?”
+
+Elizabeth turned without answering, though she strove to weep and
+behave as her mother-in-law expected. But she could not, she was
+silenced. She went into the kitchen and returned with the garment.
+
+“It is aired,” she said, grasping the cotton shirt here and there to
+try. She was almost ashamed to handle him; what right had she or anyone
+to lay hands on him; but her touch was humble on his body. It was hard
+work to clothe him. He was so heavy and inert. A terrible dread gripped
+her all the while: that he could be so heavy and utterly inert,
+unresponsive, apart. The horror of the distance between them was almost
+too much for her—it was so infinite a gap she must look across.
+
+At last it was finished. They covered him with a sheet and left him
+lying, with his face bound. And she fastened the door of the little
+parlour, lest the children should see what was lying there. Then, with
+peace sunk heavy on her heart, she went about making tidy the kitchen.
+She knew she submitted to life, which was her immediate master. But
+from death, her ultimate master, she winced with fear and shame.
+
+
+
+
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