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diff --git a/78189-0.txt b/78189-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5d861fb --- /dev/null +++ b/78189-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3932 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78189 *** + + + + + THE VIRGIN AND THE GIPSY + + + + + THE VIRGIN AND THE GIPSY + + BY D. H. LAWRENCE + + + LONDON + MARTIN SECKER + NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI + + + + + LONDON: MARTIN SECKER LTD. 1930 + NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI + + + + + TO + FRIEDA + + + _This novel lacks the author’s final + revision, and has been printed from + the manuscript exactly as it stands._ + + + + +I + + +When the vicar’s wife went off with a young and penniless man the +scandal knew no bounds. Her two little girls were only seven and nine +years old respectively. And the vicar was such a good husband. True, +his hair was grey. But his moustache was dark, he was handsome, and +still full of furtive passion for his unrestrained and beautiful wife. + +Why did she go? Why did she burst away with such an _éclat_ of +revulsion, like a touch of madness? + +Nobody gave any answer. Only the pious said she was a bad woman. While +some of the good women kept silent. They knew. + +The two little girls never knew. Wounded, they decided that it was +because their mother found them negligible. + +The ill wind that blows nobody any good swept away the vicarage +family on its blast. Then lo and behold! the vicar, who was somewhat +distinguished as an essayist and a controversialist, and whose case +had aroused sympathy among the bookish men, received the living of +Papplewick. The Lord had tempered the wind of misfortune with a +rectorate in the north country. + +The rectory was a rather ugly stone house down by the river Papple, +before you come into the village. Further on, beyond where the road +crosses the stream, were the big old stone cotton-mills, once driven +by water. The road curved up-hill, into the bleak stone streets of the +village. + +The vicarage family received decided modification, upon its +transference into the rectory. The vicar, now the rector, fetched up +his old mother and his sister, and a brother from the city. The two +little girls had a very different milieu from the old home. + +The rector was now forty-seven years old; he had displayed an intense +and not very dignified grief after the flight of his wife. Sympathetic +ladies had stayed him from suicide. His hair was almost white, and he +had a wild-eyed, tragic look. You had only to look at him, to know how +dreadful it all was, and how he had been wronged. + +Yet somewhere there was a false note. And some of the ladies, who had +sympathised most profoundly with the vicar, secretly rather disliked +the rector. There was a certain furtive self-righteousness about him, +when all was said and done. + +The little girls, of course, in the vague way of children, accepted +the family verdict. Granny, who was over seventy and whose sight was +failing, became the central figure in the house. Aunt Cissie, who was +over forty, pale, pious, and gnawed by an inward worm, kept house. +Uncle Fred, a stingy and grey-faced man of forty, who just lived +dingily for himself, went into town every day. And the rector, of +course, was the most important person, after Granny. + +They called her the Mater. She was one of those physically vulgar, +clever old bodies who had got her own way all her life by buttering +the weaknesses of her men-folk. Very quickly she took her cue. The +rector still “loved” his delinquent wife, and would “love her” till he +died. Therefore hush! The rector’s feeling was sacred. In his heart was +enshrined the pure girl he had wedded and worshipped. + +Out in the evil world, at the same time, there wandered a disreputable +woman who had betrayed the rector and abandoned his little children. +She was now yoked to a young and despicable man, who no doubt would +bring her the degradation she deserved. Let this be clearly understood, +and then hush! For in the pure loftiness of the rector’s heart still +bloomed the pure white snow-flower of his young bride. This white +snow-flower did not wither. That other creature, who had gone off with +that despicable young man, was none of his affair. + +The Mater, who had been somewhat diminished and insignificant as a +widow in a small house, now climbed into the chief arm-chair in the +rectory, and planted her old bulk firmly again. She was not going to be +dethroned. Astutely she gave a sigh of homage to the rector’s fidelity +to the pure white snow-flower, while she pretended to disapprove. In +sly reverence for her son’s great love, she spoke no word against +that nettle which flourished in the evil world, and which had once +been called Mrs. Arthur Saywell. Now, thank heaven, having married +again, she was no more Mrs. Arthur Saywell. No woman bore the rector’s +name. The pure white snow-flower bloomed _in perpetuum_, without +nomenclature. The family even thought of her as She-who-was-Cynthia. + +All this was water on the Mater’s mill. It secured her against Arthur’s +ever marrying again. She had him by his feeblest weakness, his skulking +self-love. He had married an imperishable white snow-flower. Lucky +man! He had been injured. Unhappy man! He had suffered. Ah, what a +heart of love! And he had--forgiven! Yes, the white snow-flower was +forgiven. He even had made provision in his will for her, when that +other scoundrel--But hush! Don’t even _think_ too near to that horrid +nettle in the rank outer world! She-who-was-Cynthia. Let the white +snow-flower bloom inaccessible on the heights of the past. The present +is another story. + +The children were brought up in this atmosphere of cunning +self-sanctification and of unmentionability. They too, saw the +snow-flower on inaccessible heights. They too knew that it was throned +in lone splendour aloft their lives, never to be touched. + +At the same time, out of the squalid world sometimes would come a +rank, evil smell of selfishness and degraded lust, the smell of that +awful nettle, She-who-was-Cynthia. This nettle actually contrived at +intervals, to get a little note through to the girls, her children. +And at this the silver-haired Mater shook inwardly with hate. For if +She-who-was-Cynthia ever came back, there wouldn’t be much left of the +Mater. A secret gust of hate went from the old granny to the girls, +children of that foul nettle of lust, that Cynthia who had had such an +affectionate contempt for the Mater. + +Mingled with all this, was the children’s perfectly distinct +recollection of their real home, the vicarage in the south, and their +glamorous but not very dependable mother, Cynthia. She had made a +great glow, a flow of life, like a swift and dangerous sun in the +home, forever coming and going. They always associated her presence +with brightness, but also with danger; with glamour, but with fearful +selfishness. + +Now the glamour was gone, and the white snow-flower, like a porcelain +wreath, froze on its grave. The danger of instability, the peculiarly +_dangerous_ sort of selfishness, like lions and tigers, was also gone. +There was now a complete stability, in which one could perish safely. + +But they were growing up. And as they grew, they became more definitely +confused, more actively puzzled. The Mater, as she grew older, grew +blinder. Somebody had to lead her about. She did not get up till +towards midday. Yet blind or bed-ridden, she held the house. + +Besides, she wasn’t bed-ridden. Whenever the _men_ were present, +the Mater was in her throne. She was too cunning to court neglect. +Especially as she had rivals. + +Her great rival was the younger girl, Yvette. Yvette had some of the +vague, careless blitheness of She-who-was-Cynthia. But this one was +more docile. Granny perhaps had caught her in time. Perhaps! + +The rector adored Yvette, and spoiled her with a doting fondness; as +much as to say: am I not a soft-hearted, indulgent old boy! He liked +to have this opinion of himself, and the Mater knew his weaknesses to +a hair’s-breadth. She knew them, and she traded on them by turning +them into decorations for him, for his character. He wanted, in his +own eyes, to have a fascinating character, as women want to have +fascinating dresses. And the Mater cunningly put beauty-spots over +his defects and deficiencies. Her mother-love gave her the clue to +his weaknesses, and she hid them for him with decorations. Whereas +She-who-was-Cynthia--! But don’t mention _her_, in this connection. In +her eyes, the rector was almost hump-backed and an idiot. + +The funny thing was, Granny secretly hated Lucille, the elder girl, +more than the pampered Yvette. Lucille, the uneasy and irritable, was +more conscious of being under Granny’s power, than was the spoilt and +vague Yvette. + +On the other hand, Aunt Cissie hated Yvette. She hated her very name. +Aunt Cissie’s life had been sacrificed to the Mater, and Aunt Cissie +knew it, and the Mater knew she knew it. Yet as the years went on, it +became a convention. The convention of Aunt Cissie’s sacrifice was +accepted by everybody, including the self-same Cissie. She prayed a +good deal about it. Which also showed that she had her own private +feelings somewhere, poor thing. She had ceased to be Cissie, she had +lost her life and her sex. And now, she was creeping towards fifty, +strange green flares of rage would come up in her, and at such times, +she was insane. + +But Granny held her in her power. And Aunt Cissie’s one object in life +was to look after the Mater. + +Aunt Cissie’s green flares of hellish hate would go up against all +young things, sometimes. Poor thing, she prayed and tried to obtain +forgiveness from heaven. But what had been done to her, _she_ could not +forgive, and the vitriol would spurt in her veins sometimes. + +It was not as if the Mater were a warm, kindly soul. She wasn’t. She +only seemed it, cunningly. And the fact dawned gradually on the girls. +Under her old-fashioned lace cap, under her silver hair, under the +black silk of her stout, short, forward-bulging body, this old woman +had a cunning heart, seeking forever her own female power. And through +the weakness of the unfresh, stagnant men she had bred, she kept her +power, as her years rolled on, from seventy to eighty, and from eighty +on the new lap, towards ninety. + +For in the family there was a whole tradition of “loyalty”; loyalty to +one another, and especially to the Mater. The Mater, of course, was the +pivot of the family. The family was her own extended ego. Naturally +she covered it with her power. And her sons and daughters, being weak +and disintegrated, naturally were loyal. Outside the family, what was +there for them but danger and insult and ignominy? Had not the rector +experienced it, in his marriage? So now, caution! Caution and loyalty, +fronting the world! Let there be as much hate and friction _inside_ the +family, as you like. To the outer world, a stubborn fence of unison. + + + + +II + + +But it was not until the girls finally came home from school that they +felt the full weight of Granny’s dead old hand on their lives. Lucille +was now nearly twenty-one, and Yvette nineteen. They had been to a good +girls’ school, and had had a finishing year in Lausanne, and were quite +the usual thing, tall young creatures with fresh, sensitive faces and +bobbed hair and young-manly, deuce-take-it manners. + +“What’s so awfully _boring_ about Papplewick,” said Yvette, as they +stood on the Channel boat watching the grey, grey cliffs of Dover draw +near, “is that there are no _men_ about. Why doesn’t Daddy have some +good old sports for friends? As for Uncle Fred, he’s the limit!” + +“Oh, you never know what will turn up,” said Lucille, more philosophic. + +“You jolly well know what to expect,” said Yvette. “Choir on Sundays, +and I hate mixed choirs. Boys’ voices are _lovely_, when there are +no women. And Sunday School and Girls’ Friendly, and socials, all the +dear old souls that enquire after Granny! Not a decent young fellow for +miles.” + +“Oh I don’t know!” said Lucille. “There’s always the Framleys. And you +know Gerry Somercotes _adores_ you.” + +“Oh but I _hate_ fellows who adore me!” cried Yvette, turning up her +sensitive nose. “They _bore_ me. They hang on like lead.” + +“Well what _do_ you want, if you can’t stand being adored? _I_ think +it’s perfectly all right to be adored. You know you’ll never marry +them, so why not let them go on adoring, if it amuses them.” + +“Oh but I _want_ to get married,” cried Yvette. + +“Well in that case, let them go on adoring you till you find one that +you can _possibly_ marry.” + +“I never should, that way. Nothing puts me off like an adoring fellow. +They _bore_ me so! They make me feel beastly.” + +“Oh, so they do me, if they get pressing. But at a distance, I think +they’re rather nice.” + +“I should like to fall _violently_ in love.” + +“Oh, very likely! I shouldn’t! I should hate it. Probably so would you, +if it actually happened. After all, we’ve got to settle down a bit, +before we know what we want.” + +“But don’t you _hate_ going back to Papplewick?” cried Yvette, turning +up her young, sensitive nose. + +“No, not particularly. I suppose we shall be rather bored. I wish Daddy +would get a car. I suppose we shall have to drag the old bikes out. +Wouldn’t you like to get up to Tansy Moor?” + +“Oh, _love_ it! Though it’s an awful _strain_, shoving an old push-bike +up those hills.” + +The ship was nearing the grey cliffs. It was summer, but a grey day. +The two girls wore their coats with fur collars turned up, and little +_chic_ hats pulled down over their ears. Tall, slender, fresh-faced, +naïve, yet confident, too confident, in their school-girlish arrogance, +they were so terribly English. They seemed so free, and were as a +matter of fact so tangled and tied up, inside themselves. They seemed +so dashing and unconventional, and were really so conventional, so, +as it were, shut up indoors inside themselves. They looked like bold, +tall young sloops, just slipping from the harbour into the wide seas +of life. And they were, as a matter of fact, two poor young rudderless +lives, moving from one chain anchorage to another. + +The rectory struck a chill into their hearts as they entered. It seemed +ugly, and almost sordid, with the dank air of that middle-class, +degenerated comfort which has ceased to be comfortable and has turned +stuffy, unclean. The hard, stone house struck the girls as being +unclean, they could not have said why. The shabby furniture seemed +somehow sordid, nothing was fresh. Even the food at meals had that +awful dreary sordidness which is so repulsive to a young thing coming +from abroad. Roast beef and wet cabbage, cold mutton and mashed +potatoes, sour pickles, inexcusable puddings. + +Granny, who “loved a bit of pork,” also had special dishes, beef-tea +and rusks, or a small savoury custard. The grey-faced Aunt Cissie ate +nothing at all. She would sit at table, and take a single lonely and +naked boiled potato on to her plate. She never ate meat. So she sat in +sordid durance, while the meal went on, and Granny quickly slobbered +her portion--lucky if she spilled nothing on her protuberant stomach. +The food was not appetising in itself: how could it be, when Aunt +Cissie hated food herself, hated the fact of eating, and never could +keep a maid-servant for three months? The girls ate with repulsion, +Lucille bravely bearing up, Yvette’s tender nose showing her disgust. +Only the rector, white-haired, wiped his long grey moustache with his +serviette, and cracked jokes. He too was getting heavy and inert, +sitting in his study all day, never taking exercise. But he cracked +sarcastic little jokes all the time, sitting there under the shelter of +the Mater. + +The country, with its steep hills and its deep, narrow valleys, was +dark and gloomy, yet had a certain powerful strength of its own. Twenty +miles away was the black industrialism of the north. Yet the village of +Papplewick was comparatively lonely, almost lost, the life in it stony +and dour. Everything was stone, with a hardness that was almost poetic, +it was so unrelenting. + +It was as the girls had known: they went back into the choir, they +helped in the parish. But Yvette struck absolutely against Sunday +School, the Band of Hope, the Girls’ Friendlies--indeed against all +those functions that were conducted by determined old maids and +obstinate, stupid elderly men. She avoided church duties as much +as possible, and got away from the rectory whenever she could. The +Framleys, a big, untidy, jolly family up at the Grange, were an +enormous stand-by. And if anybody asked her out to a meal, even if a +woman in one of the workmen’s houses asked her to stay to tea, she +accepted at once. In fact, she was rather thrilled. She liked talking +to the working men, they had often such fine, hard heads. But of +course they were in another world. + +So the months went by. Gerry Somercotes was still an adorer. There were +others, too, sons of farmers or mill-owners. Yvette really ought to +have had a good time. She was always out to parties and dances, friends +came for her in their motor-cars, and off she went to the city, to the +afternoon dance in the chief hotel, or in the gorgeous new Palais de +Danse, called the Pally. + +Yet she always seemed like a creature mesmerised. She was never free +to be quite jolly. Deep inside her worked an intolerable irritation, +which she thought she _ought_ not to feel, and which she hated feeling, +thereby making it worse. She never understood at all whence it arose. + +At home, she truly was irritable, and outrageously rude to Aunt Cissie. +In fact, Yvette’s awful temper became one of the family by-words. + +Lucille, always more practical, got a job in the city as private +secretary to a man who needed somebody with fluent French and +shorthand. She went back and forth every day, by the same train as +Uncle Fred. But she never travelled with him, and wet or fine, bicycled +to the station, while he went on foot. + +The two girls were both determined that what they wanted was a really +jolly social life. And they resented with fury that the rectory was, +for their friends, impossible. There were only four rooms downstairs: +the kitchen, where lived the two discontented maid-servants: the +dark dining-room: the rector’s study: and the big, “homely,” dreary +living-room or drawing-room. In the dining-room there was a gas fire. +Only in the living-room was a good hot fire kept going. Because, of +course, here Granny reigned. + +In this room the family was assembled. At evening, after dinner, Uncle +Fred and the rector invariably played cross-word puzzles with Granny. + +“Now, Mater, are you ready? N blank blank blank blank W: a Siamese +functionary.” + +“Eh? Eh? M blank blank blank blank W?” + +Granny was hard of hearing. + +“No Mater. Not M! N blank blank blank blank W: a Siamese functionary.” + +“N blank blank blank blank W: a Chinese functionary.” + +“SIAMESE.” + +“Eh?” + +“SIAMESE! SIAM!” + +“A Siamese functionary! Now what can that be?” said the old lady +profoundly, folding her hands on her round stomach. Her two sons +proceeded to make suggestions, at which she said Ah! Ah! The rector +was amazingly clever at cross-word puzzles. But Fred had a certain +technical vocabulary. + +“This certainly is a hard nut to crack,” said the old lady, when they +were all stuck. + +Meanwhile Lucille sat in a corner with her hands over her ears, +pretending to read, and Yvette irritably made drawings, or hummed loud +and exasperating tunes, to add to the family concert. Aunt Cissie +continually reached for a chocolate, and her jaws worked ceaselessly. +She literally lived on chocolates. Sitting in the distance, she put +another into her mouth, then looked again at the parish magazine. Then +she lifted her head, and saw it was time to fetch Granny’s cup of +Horlicks. + +While she was gone, in nervous exasperation Yvette would open the +window. The room was never fresh, she imagined it smelt: smelt of +Granny. And Granny, who was hard of hearing, heard like a weasel when +she wasn’t wanted to. + +“Did you open the window, Yvette? I think you might remember there are +older people than yourself in the room,” she said. + +“It’s stifling! It’s unbearable! No wonder we’ve all of us always got +colds.” + +“I’m sure the room is large enough, and a good fire burning.” The old +lady gave a little shudder. “A draught to give us all our death.” + +“Not a draught at all,” roared Yvette. “A breath of fresh air.” + +The old lady shuddered again, and said: + +“Indeed!” + +The rector, in silence, marched to the window and firmly closed it. He +did not look at his daughter meanwhile. He hated thwarting her. But she +must know what’s what! + +The cross-word puzzles, invented by Satan himself, continued till +Granny had had her Horlicks, and was to go to bed. Then came the +ceremony of Goodnight! Everybody stood up. The girls went to be kissed +by the blind old woman, the rector gave his arm, and Aunt Cissie +followed with a candle. + +But this was already nine o’clock, although Granny was really getting +old, and should have been in bed sooner. But when she was in bed, she +could not sleep, till Aunt Cissie came. + +“You see,” said Granny, “I have _never_ slept alone. For fifty-four +years I never slept a night without the Pater’s arm round me. And when +he was gone I tried to sleep alone. But as sure as my eyes closed +to sleep, my heart nearly jumped out of my body, and I lay in a +palpitation. Oh, you may think what you will, but it was a fearful +experience, after fifty-four years of perfect married life! I would +have prayed to be taken first, but the Pater, well, no I don’t think he +would have been able to bear up.” + +So Aunt Cissie slept with Granny. And she hated it. She said _she_ +could never sleep. And she grew greyer and greyer, and the food in the +house got worse, and Aunt Cissie had to have an operation. + +But the Mater rose as ever, towards noon, and at the midday meal, she +presided from her arm-chair, with her stomach protruding; her reddish, +pendulous face, that had a sort of horrible majesty, dropping soft +under the wall of her high brow, and her blue eyes peering unseeing. +Her white hair was getting scanty, it was altogether a little indecent. +But the rector jovially cracked his jokes to her, and she pretended to +disapprove. But she was perfectly complacent, sitting in her ancient +obesity, and after meals, getting the wind from her stomach, pressing +her bosom with her hand as she “rifted” in gross physical complacency. + +What the girls minded most was that, when they brought their young +friends to the house, Granny always was there, like some awful idol of +old flesh, consuming all the attention. There was only the one room +for everybody. And there sat the old lady, with Aunt Cissie keeping +an acrid guard over her. Everybody must be presented first to Granny: +she was ready to be genial, she liked company. She had to know who +everybody was, where they came from, every circumstance of their +lives. And then, when she was _au fait_, she could get hold of the +conversation. + +Nothing could be more exasperating to the girls. “Isn’t old Mrs. +Saywell wonderful! She takes _such_ an interest in life, at nearly +ninety!” + +“She does take an interest in people’s affairs, if that’s life,” said +Yvette. + +Then she would immediately feel guilty. After all, it _was_ wonderful +to be nearly ninety, and have such a clear mind! And Granny never +_actually_ did anybody any harm. It was more that she was in the way. +And perhaps it was rather awful to hate somebody because they were old +and in the way. + +Yvette immediately repented, and was nice. Granny blossomed forth +into reminiscences of when she was a girl, in the little town in +Buckinghamshire. She talked and talked away, and was _so_ entertaining. +She really _was_ rather wonderful. + +Then in the afternoon Lottie and Ella and Bob Framley came, with Leo +Wetherell. + +“Oh, come in!”--and in they all trooped to the sitting-room, where +Granny, in her white cap, sat by the fire. + +“Granny, this is Mr. Wetherell.” + +“Mr. What-did-you-say? You must excuse me, I’m a little deaf!” + +Granny gave her hand to the uncomfortable young man, and gazed silently +at him, sightlessly. + +“You are not from our parish?” she asked him. + +“Dinnington!” he shouted. + +“We want to go a picnic tomorrow, to Bonsall Head, in Leo’s car. We can +all squeeze in,” said Ella, in a low voice. + +“Did you say Bonsall Head?” asked Granny. + +“Yes!” + +There was a blank silence. + +“Did you say you were going in a car?” + +“Yes! In Mr. Wetherell’s.” + +“I hope he’s a good driver. It’s a very dangerous road.” + +“He’s a _very_ good driver.” + +“Not a very good driver?” + +“Yes! He _is_ a very good driver.” + +“If you go to Bonsall Head, I think I must send a message to Lady +Louth.” + +Granny always dragged in this miserable Lady Louth, when there was +company. + +“Oh, we shan’t go that way,” cried Yvette. + +“Which way?” said Granny. “You must go by Heanor.” + +The whole party sat, as Bob expressed it, like stuffed ducks, fidgeting +on their chairs. + +Aunt Cissie came in--and then the maid with the tea. There was the +eternal and everlasting piece of bought cake. Then appeared a plate of +little fresh cakes. Aunt Cissie had actually sent to the baker’s. + +“Tea, Mater!” + +The old lady gripped the arms of her chair. Everybody rose and stood, +while she waded slowly across, on Aunt Cissie’s arm, to her place at +table. + +During tea Lucille came in from town, from her job. She was simply worn +out, with black marks under her eyes. She gave a cry, seeing all the +company. + +As soon as the noise had subsided, and the awkwardness was resumed, +Granny said: + +“You have never mentioned Mr. Wetherell to me, have you, Lucille?” + +“I don’t remember,” said Lucille. + +“You can’t have done. The name is strange to me.” + +Yvette absently grabbed another cake, from the now almost empty +plate. Aunt Cissie, who was driven almost crazy by Yvette’s vague and +inconsiderate ways, felt the green rage fuse in her heart. She picked +up her own plate, on which was the one cake she allowed herself, and +said with vitriolic politeness, offering it to Yvette: + +“Won’t you have mine?” + +“Oh thanks!” said Yvette, starting in her angry vagueness. And with an +appearance of the same insouciance, she helped herself to Aunt Cissie’s +cake also, adding as an afterthought: “If you’re sure you don’t want +it.” + +She now had two cakes on her plate. Lucille had gone white as a ghost, +bending to her tea. Aunt Cissie sat with a green look of poisonous +resignation. The awkwardness was an agony. + +But Granny, bulkily enthroned and unaware, only said, in the centre of +the cyclone: + +“If you are motoring to Bonsall Head tomorrow, Lucille, I wish you +would take a message from me to Lady Louth.” + +“Oh!” said Lucille, giving a queer look across the table at the +sightless old woman. Lady Louth was the King Charles’ Head of the +family, invariably produced by Granny for the benefit of visitors. +“Very well!” + +“She was so very kind last week. She sent her chauffeur over with a +Cross-word Puzzle book for me.” + +“But you thanked her then,” cried Yvette. + +“I should like to send her a note.” + +“We can post it,” cried Lucille. + +“Oh no! I should like you to take it. When Lady Louth called last +time....” + +The young ones sat like a shoal of young fishes dumbly mouthing at +the surface of the water, while Granny went on about Lady Louth. Aunt +Cissie, the two girls knew, was still helpless, almost unconscious in a +paroxysm of rage about the cake. Perhaps, poor thing, she was praying. + +It was a mercy when the friends departed. But by that time the two +girls were both haggard-eyed. And it was then that Yvette, looking +round, suddenly saw the stony, implacable will-to-power in the old and +motherly-seeming Granny. She sat there bulging backwards in her chair, +impassive, her reddish, pendulous old face rather mottled, almost +unconscious, but implacable, her face like a mask that hid something +stony, relentless. It was the static inertia of her unsavoury power. +Yet in a minute she would open her ancient mouth to find out every +detail about Leo Wetherell. For the moment she was hibernating in her +oldness, her agedness. But in a minute her mouth would open, her mind +would flicker awake and with her insatiable greed for life, other +people’s life, she would start on her quest for every detail. She was +like the old toad which Yvette had watched, fascinated, as it sat on +the ledge of the beehive, immediately in front of the little entrance +by which the bees emerged, and which, with a demonish lightning-like +snap of its pursed jaws, caught every bee as it came out to launch into +the air, swallowed them one after the other, as if it could consume the +whole hive-full, into its aged, bulging, purse-like wrinkledness. It +had been swallowing bees as they launched into the air of spring, year +after year, year after year, for generations. + +But the gardener, called by Yvette, was in a rage, and killed the +creature with a stone. + +“’Appen tha _art_ good for th’ snails,” he said, as he came down with +the stone. “But tha ’rt none goin’ ter emp’y th’ bee-’ive into thy +guts.” + + + + +III + + +The next day was dull and low, and the roads were awful, for it had +been raining for weeks, yet the young ones set off on their trip, +without taking Granny’s message either. They just slipped out while +she was making her slow trip upstairs after lunch. Not for anything +would they have called at Lady Louth’s house. That widow of a knighted +doctor, a harmless person indeed, had become an obnoxity in their lives. + +Six young rebels, they sat very perkily in the car as they swished +through the mud. Yet they had a peaked look too. After all, they had +nothing really to rebel against, any of them. They were left so very +free in their movements. Their parents let them do almost entirely as +they liked. There wasn’t really a fetter to break, nor a prison-bar to +file through, nor a bolt to shatter. The keys of their lives were in +their own hands. And there they dangled inert. + +It is very much easier to shatter prison bars than to open undiscovered +doors to life. As the younger generation finds out somewhat to its +chagrin. True, there was Granny. But poor old Granny, you couldn’t +actually say to her: “Lie down and die, you old woman!” She might be an +old nuisance, but she never really _did_ anything. It wasn’t fair to +hate her. + +So the young people set off on their jaunt, trying to be very full of +beans. They could really do as they liked. And so, of course, there was +nothing to do but sit in the car and talk a lot of criticism of other +people, and silly flirty gallantry that was really rather a bore. If +there had only been a few “strict orders” to be disobeyed! But nothing: +beyond the refusal to carry the message to Lady Louth, of which the +rector would approve because he didn’t encourage King Charles’ Head +either. + +They sang, rather scrappily, the latest would-be comic songs, as they +went through the grim villages. In the great park the deer were in +groups near the road, roe deer and fallow, nestling in the gloom of +the afternoon under the oaks by the road, as if for the stimulus of +human company. + +Yvette insisted on stopping and getting out to talk to them. The girls, +in their Russian boots, tramped through the damp grass, while the deer +watched them with big, unfrightened eyes. The hart trotted away mildly, +holding back his head, because of the weight of the horns. But the doe, +balancing her big ears, did not rise from under the tree, with her +half-grown young ones, till the girls were almost in touch. Then she +walked light-foot away, lifting her tail from her spotted flanks, while +the young ones nimbly trotted. + +“Aren’t they awfully dainty and nice!” cried Yvette. “You’d wonder they +could lie so cosily in this horrid wet grass.” + +“Well I suppose they’ve got to lie down _sometime_,” said Lucille. “And +it’s _fairly_ dry under the tree.” She looked at the crushed grass, +where the deer had lain. + +Yvette went and put her hand down, to feel how it felt. + +“Yes!” she said doubtfully, “I believe it’s a bit warm.” + +The deer had bunched again a few yards away, and were standing +motionless in the gloom of the afternoon. Away below the slopes of +grass and trees, beyond the swift river with its balustraded bridge, +sat the huge ducal house, one or two chimneys smoking bluely. Behind it +rose purplish woods. + +The girls, pushing their fur collars up to their ears, dangling +one long arm, stood watching in silence, their wide Russian boots +protecting them from the wet grass. The great house squatted square and +creamy-grey below. The deer, in little groups, were scattered under the +old trees close by. It all seemed so still, so unpretentious, and so +sad. + +“I wonder where the Duke is now,” said Ella. + +“Not here, wherever he is,” said Lucille. “I expect he’s abroad where +the sun shines.” + +The motor horn called from the road, and they heard Leo’s voice: + +“Come on, boys! If we’re going to get to the Head and down to Amberdale +for tea, we’d better move.” + +They crowded into the car again, with chilled feet, and set off through +the park, past the silent spire of the church, out through the great +gates and over the bridge, on into the wide, damp, stony village of +Woodlinkin, where the river ran. And thence, for a long time, they +stayed in the mud and dark and dampness of the valley, often with sheer +rock above them; the water brawling on one hand, the steep rock or dark +trees on the other. + +Till, through the darkness of overhanging trees, they began to climb, +and Leo changed the gear. Slowly the car toiled up through the +whitey-grey mud, into the stony village of Bolehill, that hung on the +slope, round the old cross, with its steps, that stood where the road +branched, on past the cottages whence came a wonderful smell of hot +tea-cakes, and beyond, still upwards, under dripping trees and past +broken slopes of bracken, always climbing. Until the cleft became +shallower, and the trees finished, and the slopes on either side were +bare, gloomy grass, with low dry-stone walls. They were emerging on to +the Head. + +The party had been silent for some time. On either side the road +was grass, then a low stone fence, and the swelling curve of the +hill-summit, traced with the low, dry stone walls. Above this, the low +sky. + +The car ran out, under the low, grey sky, on the naked tops. + +“Shall we stay a moment?” called Leo. + +“Oh yes!” cried the girls. + +And they scrambled out once more, to look around. They knew the place +quite well. But still, if one came to the Head, one got out to look. + +The hills were like the knuckles of a hand, the dales were below, +between the fingers, narrow, steep, and dark. In the deeps a train was +steaming, slowly pulling north: a small thing of the underworld. The +noise of the engine re-echoed curiously upwards. Then came the dull, +familiar sound of blasting in a quarry. + +Leo, always on the go, moved quickly. + +“Shall we be going?” he said. “Do we _want_ to get down to Amberdale +for tea? Or shall we try somewhere nearer?” + +They all voted for Amberdale, for the Marquis of Grantham. + +“Well, which way shall we go back? Shall we go by Codnor and over +Crosshill, or shall we go by Ashbourne?” + +There was the usual dilemma. Then they finally decided on the Codnor +top road. Off went the car, gallantly. + +They were on the top of the world, now, on the back of the fist. It +was naked, too, as the back of your fist, high under heaven, and dull, +heavy green. Only it was veined with a network of old stone walls, +dividing the fields, and broken here and there with ruins of old +lead-mines and works. A sparse stone farm bristled with six naked sharp +trees. In the distance was a patch of smoky grey stone, a hamlet. In +some fields grey, dark sheep fed silently, sombrely. But there was not +a sound nor a movement. It was the roof of England, stony and arid as +any roof. Beyond, below, were the shires. + +“‘And see the coloured counties,’” said Yvette to herself. Here anyhow +they were not coloured. A stream of rooks trailed out from nowhere. +They had been walking, pecking, on a naked field that had been manured. +The car ran on between the grass and the stone walls of the upland +lane, and the young people were silent, looking out over the far +network of stone fences, under the sky, looking for the curves downward +that indicated a drop to one of the underneath, hidden dales. + +Ahead was a light cart, driven by a man, and trudging along at the side +was a woman, sturdy and elderly, with a pack on her back. The man in +the cart had caught her up, and now was keeping pace. + +The road was narrow. Leo sounded the horn sharply. The man on the cart +looked round, but the woman on foot only trudged steadily, rapidly +forward, without turning her head. + +Yvette’s heart gave a jump. The man on the cart was a gipsy, one of the +black, loose-bodied, handsome sort. He remained seated on his cart, +turning round and gazing at the occupants of the motor-car, from under +the brim of his cap. And his pose was loose, his gaze insolent in its +indifference. He had a thin black moustache under his thin, straight +nose, and a big silk handkerchief of red and yellow tied round his +neck. He spoke a word to the woman. She stood a second, solid, to turn +round and look at the occupants of the car, which had now drawn quite +close. Leo honked the horn again, imperiously. The woman, who had a +grey-and-white kerchief tied round her head, turned sharply, to keep +pace with the cart, whose driver also had settled back, and was lifting +the reins, moving his loose, light shoulders. But still he did not pull +aside. + +Leo made the horn scream, as he put the brakes on and the car slowed +up near the back of the cart. The gipsy turned round at the din, +laughing in his dark face under his dark-green cap, and said something +which they did not hear, showing white teeth under the line of black +moustache, and making a gesture with his dark, loose hand. + +“Get out o’ the way then!” yelled Leo. + +For answer, the man delicately pulled the horse to a standstill, as it +curved to the side of the road. It was a good roan horse and a good, +natty, dark-green cart. + +Leo, in a rage, had to jam on the brake and pull up too. + +“Don’t the pretty young ladies want to hear their fortunes?” said the +gipsy on the cart, laughing except for his dark, watchful eyes, which +went from face to face, and lingered on Yvette’s young, tender face. + +She met his dark eyes for a second, their level search, their +insolence, their complete indifference to people like Bob and Leo, and +something took fire in her breast. She thought: “He is stronger than I +am! He doesn’t care!” + +“Oh yes! let’s!” cried Lucille at once. + +“Oh yes!” chorused the girls. + +“I say! What about the time?” cried Leo. + +“Oh bother the old time! Somebody’s always dragging in time by the +forelock,” cried Lucille. + +“Well, if you don’t mind _when_ we get back, _I_ don’t!” said Leo +heroically. + +The gipsy man had been sitting loosely on the side of his cart, +watching the faces. He now jumped softly down from the shaft, his +knees a bit stiff. He was apparently a man something over thirty, and +a beau in his way. He wore a sort of shooting-jacket, double-breasted, +coming only to the hips, of dark green-and-black frieze; rather tight +black trousers, black boots, and a dark-green cap; with the big +yellow-and-red bandanna handkerchief round his neck. His appearance +was curiously elegant, and quite expensive in its gipsy style. He was +handsome, too, pressing in his chin with the old, gipsy conceit, and +now apparently not heeding the strangers any more, as he led his good +roan horse off the road, preparing to back his cart. + +The girls saw for the first time a deep recess in the side of the road, +and two caravans smoking. Yvette got quickly down. They had suddenly +come upon a disused quarry, cut into the slope of the road-side, +and in this sudden lair, almost like a cave, were three caravans, +dismantled for the winter. There was also deep at the back, a shelter +built of boughs, as a stable for the horse. The grey, crude rock rose +high above the caravans, and curved round towards the road. The floor +was heaped chips of stone, with grasses growing among. It was a hidden, +snug winter camp. + +The elderly woman with the pack had gone into one of the caravans, +leaving the door open. Two children were peeping out, shewing black +heads. The gipsy man gave a little call, as he backed his cart into the +quarry, and an elderly man came out to help him untackle. + +The gipsy himself went up the steps into the newest caravan, that had +its door closed. Underneath, a tied-up dog ranged forth. It was a +white hound spotted liver-coloured. It gave a low growl as Leo and Bob +approached. + +At the same moment, a dark-faced gipsy-woman with a pink shawl or +kerchief round her head and big gold ear-rings in her ears, came down +the steps of the newest caravan, swinging her flounced, voluminous +green skirt. She was handsome in a bold, dark, long-faced way, just a +bit wolfish. She looked like one of the bold, loping Spanish gipsies. + +“Good-morning, my ladies and gentlemen,” she said, eyeing the girls +from her bold, predative eyes. She spoke with a certain foreign +stiffness. + +“Good afternoon!” said the girls. + +“Which beautiful little lady like to hear her fortune? Give me her +little hand?” + +She was a tall woman, with a frightening way of reaching forward her +neck like a menace. Her eyes went from face to face, very active, +heartlessly searching out what she wanted. Meanwhile the man, +apparently her husband, appeared at the top of the caravan steps +smoking a pipe, and with a small, black-haired child in his arms. He +stood on his limber legs, casually looking down on the group, as if +from a distance, his long black lashes lifted from his full, conceited, +impudent black eyes. There was something peculiarly transfusing in +his stare. Yvette felt it, felt it in her knees. She pretended to be +interested in the white-and-liver-coloured hound. + +“How much do you want, if we all have our fortunes told?” asked Lottie +Framley, as the six fresh-faced young Christians hung back rather +reluctantly from this pagan pariah woman. + +“All of you? ladies and gentlemen, all?” said the woman shrewdly. + +“I don’t want mine told! You go ahead!” cried Leo. + +“Neither do I,” said Bob. “You four girls.” + +“The four ladies?” said the gipsy woman, eyeing them shrewdly, after +having looked at the boys. And she fixed her price. “Each one give me +a sheeling, and a little bit more for luck? a little bit!” She smiled +in a way that was more wolfish than cajoling, and the force of her will +was felt, heavy as iron beneath the velvet of her words. + +“All right,” said Leo. “Make it a shilling a head. Don’t spin it out +too long.” + +“Oh, _you_!” cried Lucille at him. “We want to hear it _all_.” + +The woman took two wooden stools, from under a caravan, and placed them +near the wheel. Then she took the tall, dark Lottie Framley by the +hand, and bade her sit down. + +“You don’t care if everybody hear?” she said, looking up curiously into +Lottie’s face. + +Lottie blushed dark with nervousness, as the gipsy woman held her hand, +and stroked her palm with hard, cruel-seeming fingers. + +“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. + +The gipsy woman peered into the palm tracing the lines of the hand with +a hard, dark forefinger. But she seemed clean. + +And slowly she told the fortune, while the others, standing listening, +kept on crying out: “Oh, that’s Jim Baggaley! Oh, I don’t believe +it! Oh, that’s not true! A fair woman who lives beneath a tree! Why, +whoever’s that?” until Leo stopped them with a manly warning: + +“Oh, hold on, girls! You give everything away.” + +Lottie retired blushing and confused, and it was Ella’s turn. She was +much more calm and shrewd, trying to read the oracular words. Lucille +kept breaking out with: “Oh, I say!” The gipsy man at the top of the +steps stood imperturbable, without any expression at all. But his bold +eyes kept staring at Yvette, she could feel them on her cheek, on her +neck, and she dared not look up. But Framley would sometimes look up +at him, and got a level stare back from the handsome face of the male +gipsy, from the dark conceited proud eyes. It was a peculiar look, in +the eyes that belonged to the tribe of the humble: the pride of the +pariah, the half-sneering challenge of the outcast, who sneered at +law-abiding men, and went his own way. All the time, the gipsy man +stood there, holding his child in his arms, looking on without being +concerned. + +Lucille was having her hand read--“You have been across the sea, and +there you met a man--a brown-haired man--but he was too old----” + +“Oh, I _say_!” cried Lucille, looking round at Yvette. + +But Yvette was abstracted, agitated, hardly heeding: in one of her +mesmerised states. + +“You will marry in a few years--not now, but a few years--perhaps +four--and you will not be rich, but you will have plenty--enough--and +you will go away, a long journey.” + +“With my husband, or without?” cried Lucille. + +“With him----.” + +When it came to Yvette’s turn, and the woman looked up boldly, cruelly, +searching for a long time in her face, Yvette said nervously: + +“I don’t think I want mine told. No, I won’t have mine told! No I +won’t, really!” + +“You are afraid of something?” said the gipsy woman cruelly. + +“No, it’s not that----” Yvette fidgeted. + +“You have some secret? You are afraid I shall say it? Come, would you +like to go in the caravan, where nobody hears?” + +The woman was curiously insinuating; while Yvette was always wayward, +perverse. The look of perversity was on her soft, frail young face now, +giving her a queer hardness. + +“Yes!” she said suddenly. “Yes! I might do that!” + +“Oh, I say!” cried the others. “Be a sport!” + +“I don’t think you’d _better_!” cried Lucille. + +“Yes!” said Yvette, with that hard little way of hers. “I’ll do that. +I’ll go in the caravan.” + +The gipsy woman called something to the man on the steps. He went into +the caravan for a moment or two, then reappeared, and came down the +steps, setting the small child on its uncertain feet, and holding it by +the hand. A dandy, in his polished black boots, tight black trousers +and tight dark-green jersey, he walked slowly across with the toddling +child to where the elderly gipsy was giving the roan horse a feed of +oats, in the bough shelter between pits of grey rock, with dry bracken +upon the stone chip floor. He looked at Yvette as he passed, staring +her full in the eyes, with his pariah’s bold yet dishonest stare. +Something hard inside her met his stare. But the surface of her body +seemed to turn to water. Nevertheless, something hard in her registered +the peculiar pure lines of his face, of his straight, pure nose, of his +cheeks and temples. The curious dark, suave purity of all his body, +outlined in the green jersey: a purity like a living sneer. + +And as he loped slowly past her, on his flexible hips, it seemed to her +still that he was stronger than she was. Of all the men she had ever +seen, this one was the only one who was stronger than she was, in her +own kind of strength, her own kind of understanding. + +So, with curiosity, she followed the woman up the steps of the +caravan, the skirts of her well-cut tan coat swinging and almost +showing her knees, under the pale-green cloth dress. She had long, +long-striding, fine legs, too slim rather than too thick, and she wore +curiously-patterned pale-and-fawn stockings of fine wool, suggesting +the legs of some delicate animal. + +At the top of the steps she paused and turned, debonair, to the others, +saying in her naïve, lordly way, so off-hand: + +“I won’t let her be long.” + +Her grey fur collar was open, showing her soft throat and pale green +dress, her little plaited tan-coloured hat came down to her ears, round +her soft, fresh face. There was something soft and yet overbearing, +unscrupulous, about her. She knew the gipsy man had turned to look at +her. She was aware of the pure dark nape of his neck, the black hair +groomed away. He watched as she entered his house. + +What the gipsy told her, no one ever knew. It was a long time to wait, +the others felt. Twilight was deepening on the gloom, and it was +turning raw and cold. From the chimney on the second caravan came smoke +and a smell of rich food. The horse was fed, a yellow blanket strapped +round him, and two gipsy men talked together in the distance, in low +tones. There was a peculiar feeling of silence and secrecy in that +lonely, hidden quarry. + +At last the caravan door opened, and Yvette emerged, bending forward +and stepping with long, witch-like slim legs down the steps. There was +a stooping, witch-like silence about her as she emerged on the twilight. + +“Did it seem long?” she said vaguely, not looking at anybody and +keeping her own counsel hard within her soft, vague waywardness. “I +hope you weren’t bored! Wouldn’t tea be nice! Shall we go?” + +“You get in!” said Bob. “I’ll pay.” + +The gipsy-woman’s full, metallic skirts of jade-green alpaca +came swinging down the steps. She rose to her height, a big, +triumphant-looking woman with a dark-wolf face. The pink cashmere +kerchief stamped with red roses, was slipping to one side over her +black and crimped hair. She gazed at the young people in the twilight +with bold arrogance. + +Bob put two half-crowns in her hand. + +“A little bit more, for luck, for your young lady’s luck,” she +wheedled, like a wheedling wolf. “Another bit of silver, to bring you +luck.” + +“You’ve got a shilling for luck, that’s enough,” said Bob calmly and +quietly, as they moved away to the car. + +“A little bit of silver! Just a little bit, for your luck in love!” + +Yvette, with the sudden long, startling gestures of her long +limbs, swung round as she was entering the car, and with long arm +outstretched, strode and put something into the gipsy’s hand, then +stepped, bending her height, into the car. + +“Prosperity to the beautiful young lady, and the gipsy’s blessing on +her,” came the suggestive, half-sneering voice of the woman. + +The engine _birred!_ then _birred!_ again more fiercely, and started. +Leo switched on the lights, and immediately the quarry with the gipsies +fell back into the blackness of night. + +“Goodnight!” called Yvette’s voice, as the car started. But hers was +the only voice that piped up, chirpy and impudent in its nonchalance. +The headlights glared down the stone lane. + +“Yvette, you’ve got to tell us what she said to you,” cried Lucille, in +the teeth of Yvette’s silent will _not_ to be asked. + +“Oh, nothing at _all_ thrilling,” said Yvette, with false warmth. “Just +the usual old thing: a dark man who means good luck, and a fair one who +means bad: and a death in the family, which if it means Granny, won’t +be so _very_ awful: and I shall marry when I’m twenty-three, and have +heaps of money and heaps of love, and two children. All sounds very +nice, but it’s a bit too much of a good thing, you know.” + +“Oh, but why did you give her more money?” + +“Oh well, I wanted to! You _have_ to be a bit lordly with people like +that----.” + + + + +IV + + +There was a terrific rumpus down at the rectory, on account of Yvette +and the Window Fund. After the war, Aunt Cissie had set her heart +on a stained glass window in the church, as a memorial for the men +of the parish who had fallen. But the bulk of the fallen had been +non-conformists, so the memorial took the form of an ugly little +monument in front of the Wesleyan chapel. + +This did not vanquish Aunt Cissie. She canvassed, she had bazaars, +she made the girls get up amateur theatrical shows, for her precious +window. Yvette, who quite liked the acting and showing-off part of it, +took charge of the farce called _Mary in the Mirror_, and gathered in +the proceeds, which were to be paid to the Window Fund when accounts +were settled. Each of the girls was supposed to have a money-box for +the Fund. + +Aunt Cissie, feeling that the united sums must now almost suffice, +suddenly called in Yvette’s box. It contained fifteen shillings. There +was a moment of green horror. + +“Where is all the rest?” + +“Oh!” said Yvette casually. “I just borrowed it. It wasn’t so awfully +much.” + +“What about the three pounds thirteen for _Mary in the Mirror_?” asked +Aunt Cissie, as if the jaws of Hell were yawning. + +“Oh quite! I just borrowed it. I can pay it back.” + +Poor Aunt Cissie! The green tumour of hate burst inside her, and there +was a ghastly, abnormal scene, which left Yvette shivering with fear +and nervous loathing. + +Even the rector was rather severe. + +“If you needed money, why didn’t you tell me?” he said coldly. “Have +you ever been refused anything in reason?” + +“I--I thought it didn’t matter,” stammered Yvette. + +“And what have you done with the money?” + +“I suppose I’ve spent it,” said Yvette, with wide distraught eyes and +a peaked face. + +“Spent it, on what?” + +“I can’t remember everything: stockings and things, and I gave some of +it away.” + +Poor Yvette! Her lordly airs and ways were already hitting back at her, +on the reflex. The rector was angry: his face had a snarling, doggish +look, a sort of sneer. He was afraid his daughter was developing some +of the rank, tainted qualities of She-who-was-Cynthia. + +“You _would_ do the large with somebody else’s money, wouldn’t you?” he +said, with a cold, mongrel sort of sneer, which showed what an utter +unbeliever he was, at the heart. The inferiority of a heart which has +no core of warm belief in it, no pride in life. He had utterly no +belief in her. + +Yvette went pale, and very distant. Her pride, that frail, precious +flame which everybody tried to quench, recoiled like a flame blown far +away, on a cold wind, as if blown out, and her face, white now and +still like a snowdrop, the white snow-flower of his conceit, seemed to +have no life in it, only this pure, strange abstraction. + +“He has no belief in me!” she thought in her soul. “I am really nothing +to him. I am nothing, only a shameful thing. Everything is shameful, +everything is shameful!” + +A flame of passion or rage, while it might have overwhelmed or +infuriated her, would not have degraded her as did her father’s +unbelief, his final attitude of a sneer against her. + +He became a little afraid, in the silence of sterile thought. After +all, he needed the _appearance_ of love and belief and bright life, he +would never dare to face the fat worm of his own unbelief, that stirred +in his heart. + +“What have you to say for yourself?” he asked. + +She only looked at him from that senseless snowdrop face which haunted +him with fear, and gave him a helpless sense of guilt. That other one, +She-who-was-Cynthia, she had looked back at him with the same numb, +white fear, the fear of his degrading unbelief, the worm which was his +heart’s core. He _knew_ his heart’s core was a fat, awful worm. His +dread was lest anyone else should know. His anguish of hate was against +anyone who knew, and recoiled. + +He saw Yvette recoiling, and immediately his manner changed to the +worldly old good-humoured cynic which he affected. + +“Ah well!” he said. “You have to pay it back, my girl, that’s all. I +will advance you the money out of your allowance. But I shall charge +you four per cent. a month’s interest. Even the devil himself must pay +a percentage on his debts. Another time, if you can’t trust yourself, +don’t handle money which isn’t your own. Dishonesty isn’t pretty.” + +Yvette remained crushed, and deflowered and humiliated. She crept +about, trailing the rays of her pride. She had a revulsion even from +herself. Oh, why had she ever touched the leprous money! Her whole +flesh shrank as if it were defiled. Why was that? Why, why was that? + +She admitted herself wrong in having spent the money. “Of course I +shouldn’t have done it. They are quite right to be angry,” she said to +herself. + +But where did the horrible wincing of her flesh come from? Why did she +feel she had caught some physical contagion? + +“Where you’re so _silly_, Yvette,” Lucille lectured her: poor Lucille +was in great distress--“is that you give yourself away to them all. +You might _know_ they’d find out. I could have raised the money for +you, and saved all this bother. It’s perfectly awful! But you never +will think beforehand where your actions are going to land you! Fancy +Aunt Cissie saying all those things to you! How _awful_! Whatever would +Mamma have said, if she’d heard it?” + +When things went very wrong, they thought of their mother, and despised +their father and all the low brood of the Saywells. Their mother, of +course, had belonged to a higher, if more dangerous and “immoral” +world. More selfish, decidedly. But with a showier gesture. More +unscrupulous and more easily moved to contempt: but not so humiliating. + +Yvette always considered that she got her fine, delicate flesh from +her mother. The Saywells were all a bit leathery, and grubby somewhere +inside. But then the Saywells never let you down. Whereas the fine +She-who-was-Cynthia had let the rector down with a bang, and his little +children along with him. Her little children! They could not quite +forgive her. + +Only dimly, after the row, Yvette began to realise the other sanctity +of herself, the sanctity of her sensitive, clean flesh and blood, which +the Saywells with their so-called morality succeeded in defiling. They +always wanted to defile it. They were the life unbelievers. Whereas, +perhaps She-who-was-Cynthia had only been a moral unbeliever. + +Yvette went about dazed and peaked and confused. The rector paid in the +money to Aunt Cissie, much to that lady’s rage. The helpless tumour +of her rage was still running. She would have liked to announce her +niece’s delinquency in the parish magazine. It was anguish to the +destroyed woman that she could not publish the news to all the world. +The selfishness! The selfishness! The selfishness! + +Then the rector handed his daughter a little account with himself: +her debt to him, interest thereon, the amount deducted from her small +allowance. But to her credit he had placed a guinea, which was the fee +he had to pay for complicity. + +“As father of the culprit,” he said humorously, “I am fined one guinea. +And with that I wash the ashes out of my hair.” + +He was always generous about money. But somehow, he seemed to think +that by being free about money he could absolutely call himself a +generous man. Whereas he used money, even generosity, as a hold over +her. + +But he let the affair drop entirely. He was by this time more amused +than anything, to judge from appearances. He thought still he was safe. + +Aunt Cissie, however, could not get over her convulsion. One night +when Yvette had gone rather early, miserably, to bed, when Lucille was +away at a party, and she was lying with soft, peaked limbs aching with +a sort of numbness and defilement, the door softly opened, and there +stood Aunt Cissie, pushing her grey-green face through the opening of +the door. Yvette started up in terror. + +“Liar! Thief! Selfish little beast!” hissed the maniacal face of Aunt +Cissie. “You little hypocrite! You liar! You selfish beast! You greedy +little beast!” + +There was such extraordinary impersonal hatred in that grey-green mask, +and those frantic words, that Yvette opened her mouth to scream with +hysterics. But Aunt Cissie shut the door as suddenly as she had opened +it, and disappeared. Yvette leaped from her bed and turned the key. +Then she crept back, half demented with fear of the squalid abnormal, +half numbed with paralysis of damaged pride. And amid it all, up came a +bubble of distracted laughter. It _was_ so filthily ridiculous! + +Aunt Cissie’s behaviour did not hurt the girl so very much. It was +after all somewhat fantastic. Yet hurt she was: in her limbs, in her +body, in her sex, hurt. Hurt, numbed, and half destroyed, with only +her nerves vibrating and jangled. And still so young, she could not +conceive what was happening. + +Only she lay and wished she were a gipsy. To live in a camp, in a +caravan, and never set foot in a house, not know the existence of a +parish, never look at a church. Her heart was hard with repugnance +against the rectory. She loathed these houses with their indoor +sanitation and their bathrooms, and their extraordinary repulsiveness. +She hated the rectory, and everything it implied. The whole stagnant, +sewerage sort of life, where sewerage is never mentioned, but where it +seems to smell from the centre to every two-legged inmate, from Granny +to the servants, was foul. If gipsies had no bathrooms, at least they +had no sewerage. There was fresh air. In the rectory there was _never_ +fresh air. And in the souls of the people, the air was stale till it +stank. + +Hate kindled her heart, as she lay with numbed limbs. And she thought +of the words of the gipsy woman: “There is a dark man who never lived +in a house. He loves you. The other people are treading on your heart. +They will tread on your heart till you think it is dead. But the dark +man will blow the one spark up into fire again, good fire. You will see +what good fire.” + +Even as the woman was saying it, Yvette felt there was some duplicity +somewhere. But she didn’t mind. She hated with the cold, acrid hatred +of a child the rectory interior, the sort of putridity in the life. +She liked that big, swarthy, wolf-like gipsy-woman, with the big gold +rings in her ears, the pink scarf over her wavy black hair, the tight +bodice of brown velvet, the green, fan-like skirt. She liked her dusky, +strong, relentless hands, that had pressed so firm, like wolf’s paws, +in Yvette’s own soft palm. She liked her. She liked the danger and +the covert fearlessness of her. She liked her covert, unyielding sex, +that was immoral, but with a hard, defiant pride of its own. Nothing +would ever get that woman under. She would despise the rectory and the +rectory morality, utterly! She would strangle Granny with one hand. And +she would have the same contempt for Daddy and for Uncle Fred, as men, +as she would have for fat old slobbery Rover, the Newfoundland dog. A +great, sardonic female contempt, for such domesticated dogs, calling +themselves men. + +And the gipsy man himself! Yvette quivered suddenly, as if she had seen +his big, bold eyes upon her, with the naked insinuation of desire in +them. The absolutely naked insinuation of desire made her lie prone and +powerless in the bed, as if a drug had cast her in a new, molten mould. + +She never confessed to anybody that two of the ill-starred Window Fund +pounds had gone to the gipsy woman. What if Daddy and Aunt Cissie +knew _that_! Yvette stirred luxuriously in the bed. The thought of +the gipsy had released the life of her limbs, and crystallised in her +heart the hate of the rectory: so that now she felt potent, instead of +impotent. + +When, later, Yvette told Lucille about Aunt Cissie’s dramatic interlude +in the bedroom doorway, Lucille was indignant. + +“Oh, hang it all!” cried she. “She might let it drop now. I should +think we’ve heard enough about it by now! Good heavens, you’d think +Aunt Cissie was a perfect bird of paradise! Daddy’s dropped it, and +after all, it’s his business if it’s anybody’s. Let Aunt Cissie shut +up!” + +It was the very fact that the rector had dropped it, and that he +again treated the vague and inconsiderate Yvette as if she were some +specially-licensed being, that kept Aunt Cissie’s bile flowing. The +fact that Yvette really was most of the time unaware of other people’s +feelings, and being unaware, couldn’t care about them, nearly sent Aunt +Cissie mad. Why should that young creature, with a delinquent mother, +go through life as a privileged being, even unaware of other people’s +existence, though they were under her nose? + +Lucille at this time was very irritable. She seemed as if she simply +went a little unbalanced, when she entered the rectory. Poor Lucille, +she was so thoughtful and responsible. She did all the extra troubling, +thought about doctors, medicines, servants, and all that sort of +thing. She slaved conscientiously at her job all day in town, working +in a room with artificial light from ten till five. And she came home +to have her nerves rubbed almost to frenzy by Granny’s horrible and +persistent inquisitiveness and parasitic agedness. + +The affair of the Window Fund had apparently blown over, but there +remained a stuffy tension in the atmosphere. The weather continued bad. +Lucille stayed at home on the afternoon of her half holiday, and did +herself no good by it. The rector was in his study, she and Yvette were +making a dress for the latter young woman, Granny was resting on the +couch. + +The dress was of blue silk velours, French material, and was going +to be very becoming. Lucille made Yvette try it on again: she was +nervously uneasy about the hang, under the arms. + +“Oh bother!” cried Yvette, stretching her long, tender, childish arms, +that tended to go bluish with the cold. “Don’t be so frightfully +_fussy_, Lucille! It’s quite all right.” + +“If that’s all the thanks I get, slaving my half-day away making +dresses for you, I might as well do something for myself!” + +“Well, Lucille! You know I never _asked_ you! You know you can’t bear +it unless you _do_ supervise,” said Yvette, with that irritating +blandness of hers, as she raised her naked elbows and peered over her +shoulder into the long mirror. + +“Oh yes! you never _asked_ me!” cried Lucille. “As if I didn’t know +what you meant, when you started sighing and flouncing about.” + +“I!” said Yvette, with vague surprise. “Why, when did I start sighing +and flouncing about?” + +“Of course you know you did.” + +“Did I? No, I didn’t know! When was it?” Yvette could put a peculiar +annoyance into her mild, straying questions. + +“I shan’t do another thing to this frock, if you don’t stand still and +_stop_ it,” said Lucille, in her rather sonorous, burning voice. + +“You know you are most awfully nagging and irritable, Lucille,” said +Yvette, standing as if on hot bricks. + +“Now Yvette!” cried Lucille, her eyes suddenly flashing in her sister’s +face, with wild flashes. “Stop it at once! Why should everybody put up +with your abominable and overbearing temper?” + +“Well, I don’t know about _my_ temper,” said Yvette, writhing slowly +out of the half-made frock, and slipping into her dress again. + +Then, with an obstinate little look on her face, she sat down again at +the table, in the gloomy afternoon, and began to sew at the blue stuff. +The room was littered with blue clippings, the scissors were lying on +the floor, the workbasket was spilled in chaos all over the table, and +a second mirror was perched perilously on the piano. + +Granny, who had been in a semi-coma, called a doze, roused herself on +the big, soft couch and put her cap straight. + +“I don’t get much peace for my nap,” she said, slowly feeling her thin +white hair, to see that it was in order. She had heard vague noises. + +Aunt Cissie came in, fumbling in a bag for a chocolate. + +“I never saw such a mess!” she said. “You’d better clear some of that +litter away, Yvette.” + +“All right,” said Yvette. “I will in a minute.” + +“Which means never!” sneered Aunt Cissie, suddenly darting and picking +up the scissors. + +There was silence for a few moments, and Lucille slowly pushed her +hands in her hair, as she read a book. + +“You’d better clear away, Yvette,” persisted Aunt Cissie. + +“I will, before tea,” replied Yvette, rising once more and pulling the +blue dress over her head, flourishing her long, naked arms through the +sleeveless armholes. Then she went between the mirrors, to look at +herself once more. + +As she did so, she sent the second mirror, that she had perched +carelessly on the piano, sliding with a rattle to the floor. Luckily it +did not break. But everybody started badly. + +“She’s smashed the mirror!” cried Aunt Cissie. + +“Smashed a mirror! Which mirror! Who’s smashed it?” came Granny’s sharp +voice. + +“I haven’t smashed anything,” came the calm voice of Yvette. “It’s +quite all right.” + +“You’d better not perch it up there again,” said Lucille. + +Yvette, with a little impatient shrug at all the fuss, tried making the +mirror stand in another place. She was not successful. + +“If one had a fire in one’s own room,” she said crossly, “one needn’t +have a lot of people fussing when one wants to sew.” + +“Which mirror are you moving about?” asked Granny. + +“One of our own that came from the vicarage,” said Yvette rudely. + +“Don’t break it in _this_ house, wherever it came from,” said Granny. + +There was a sort of family dislike for the furniture that had belonged +to She-who-was-Cynthia. It was most of it shoved into the kitchen, and +the servants’ bedrooms. + +“Oh, _I’m_ not superstitious,” said Yvette, “about mirrors or any of +that sort of thing.” + +“Perhaps you’re not,” said Granny. “People who never take the +responsibility for their own actions usually don’t care what happens.” + +“After all,” said Yvette, “I may say it’s my own looking-glass, even if +I did break it.” + +“And I say,” said Granny, “that there shall be no mirrors broken in +_this_ house, if we can help it; no matter who they belong to, or did +belong to. Cissie, have I got my cap straight?” + +Aunt Cissie went over and straightened the old lady. Yvette loudly and +irritatingly trilled a tuneless tune. + +“And now, Yvette, will you please clear away?” said Aunt Cissie. + +“Oh bother!” cried Yvette angrily. “It’s simply _awful_ to live with a +lot of people who are always nagging and fussing over trifles.” + +“What people, may I ask?” said Aunt Cissie ominously. + +Another row was imminent. Lucille looked up with a queer cast in her +eyes. In the two girls, the blood of She-who-was-Cynthia was roused. + +“Of course you may ask! You know quite well I mean the people in this +beastly house,” said the outrageous Yvette. + +“At least,” said Granny, “we don’t come of half-depraved stock.” + +There was a second’s electric pause. Then Lucille sprang from her low +seat, with sparks flying from her. + +“You shut up!” she shouted, in a blast full upon the mottled majesty of +the old lady. + +The old woman’s breast began to heave with heaven knows what emotions. +The pause this time, as after the thunderbolt, was icy. + +Then Aunt Cissie, livid, sprang upon Lucille, pushing her like a fury. + +“Go to your room!” she cried hoarsely. “Go to your room!” + +And she proceeded to push the white but fiery-eyed Lucille from the +room. Lucille let herself be pushed, while Aunt Cissie vociferated: + +“Stay in your room till you’ve apologised for this!--till you’ve +apologised to the Mater for this!” + +“I shan’t apologise!” came the clear voice of Lucille, from the +passage, while Aunt Cissie shoved her. + +Aunt Cissie drove her more wildly upstairs. + +Yvette stood tall and bemused in the sitting-room, with the air of +offended dignity, at the same time bemused, which was so odd on her. +She still was bare-armed, in the half-made blue dress. And even _she_ +was half-aghast at Lucille’s attack on the majesty of age. But also, +she was coldly indignant against Granny’s aspersion of the maternal +blood in their veins. + +“Of course I meant no offence,” said Granny. + +“Didn’t you?” said Yvette coolly. + +“Of course not. I only said we’re not depraved, just because we happen +to be superstitious about breaking mirrors.” + +Yvette could hardly believe her ears. Had she heard right? Was it +possible! Or was Granny, at her age, just telling a barefaced lie? + +Yvette knew that the old woman was telling a cool, barefaced lie. But +already, so quickly, Granny believed her own statement. + +The rector appeared, having left time for a lull. + +“What’s wrong?” he asked cautiously, genially. + +“Oh nothing!” drawled Yvette. “Lucille told Granny to shut up, when +she was saying something. And Aunt Cissie drove her up to her room. +_Tant de bruit pour une omelette!_ Though Lucille _was_ a bit over the +mark, that time.” + +The old lady couldn’t quite catch what Yvette said. + +“Lucille really will have to learn to control her nerves,” said the old +woman. “The mirror fell down, and it worried me. I said so to Yvette, +and she said something about superstitions and the people in the +beastly house. I told her the people in the house were not depraved, +if they happened to mind when a mirror was broken. And at that Lucille +flew at me and told me to shut up. It really is disgraceful how these +children give way to their nerves. I know it’s nothing but nerves.” + +Aunt Cissie had come in during this speech. At first even she was dumb. +Then it seemed to her, it was as Granny had said. + +“I have forbidden her to come down until she comes to apologise to the +Mater,” she said. + +“I doubt if she’ll apologise,” said the calm, queenly Yvette, holding +her bare arms. + +“And I don’t want any apology,” said the old lady. “It is merely +nerves. I don’t know what they’ll come to, if they have nerves like +that, at their age! She must take Vibrofat.--I am sure Arthur would +like his tea, Cissie.” + +Yvette swept her sewing together, to go upstairs. And again she trilled +her tune, rather shrill and tuneless. She was trembling inwardly. + +“More glad rags!” said her father to her, genially. + +“More glad rags!” she reiterated sagely, as she sauntered upstairs, +with her day dress over one arm. She wanted to console Lucille, and ask +her how the blue stuff hung now. + +At the first landing she stood as she nearly always did, to gaze +through the window that looked to the road and the bridge. Like the +Lady of Shalott, she seemed always to imagine that someone would come +along singing _Tirra-lirra!_ or something equally intelligent, by the +river. + + + + +V + + +It was nearly tea-time. The snowdrops were out by the short drive going +to the gate from the side of the house, and the gardener was pottering +at the round, damp flower-beds, on the wet grass that sloped to the +stream. Past the gate went the whitish muddy road, crossing the stone +bridge almost immediately, and winding in a curve up to the steep, +clustering, stony, smoking northern village, that perched over the grim +stone mills which Yvette could see ahead down the narrow valley, their +tall chimneys long and erect. + +The rectory was on one side the Papple, in the rather steep valley, +the village was beyond and above, further down, on the other side the +swift stream. At the back of the rectory the hill went up steep, with +a grove of dark, bare larches, through which the road disappeared. +And immediately across stream from the rectory, facing the house, the +river-bank rose steep and bushy, up to the sloping, dreary meadows, +that sloped up again to dark hillsides of trees, with grey rock +cropping out. + +But from the end of the house, Yvette could only see the road curving +round past the wall with its laurel hedge, down to the bridge, then +up again round the shoulder to that first hard cluster of houses in +Papplewick village, beyond the dry-stone walls of the steep fields. + +She always expected _something_ to come down the slant of the road from +Papplewick, and she always lingered at the landing window. Often a cart +came, or a motor-car, or a lorry with stone, or a labourer, or one of +the servants. But never anybody who sang _Tirra-lirra!_ by the river. +The tirralirraing days seem to have gone by. + +This day, however, round the corner on the white-grey road, between the +grass and the low stone walls, a roan horse came stepping bravely and +briskly downhill, driven by a man in a cap, perched on the front of his +light cart. The man swayed loosely to the swing of the cart, as the +horse stepped down-hill, in the silent sombreness of the afternoon. At +the back of the cart, long duster-brooms of reed and feather stuck out, +nodding on their stalks of cane. + +Yvette stood close to the window, and put the casement-cloth curtains +behind her, clutching her bare upper arms with her hands. + +At the foot of the slope the horse started into a brisk trot to the +bridge. The cart rattled on the stone bridge, the brooms bobbed and +flustered, the driver sat as if in a kind of dream, swinging along. It +was like something seen in a sleep. + +But as he crossed the end of the bridge, and was passing along the +rectory wall, he looked up at the grim stone house that seemed to have +backed away from the gate, under the hill. Yvette moved her hands +quickly on her arms. And as quickly, from under the peak of his cap, he +had seen her, his swarthy predative face was alert. + +He pulled up suddenly at the white gate, still gazing upwards at the +landing window; while Yvette, always clasping her cold and mottled +arms, still gazed abstractedly down at him, from the window. + +His head gave a little, quick jerk of signal, and he led his horse well +aside, on to the grass. Then, limber and alert, he turned back the +tarpaulin of the cart, fetched out various articles, pulled forth two +or three of the long brooms of reed or turkey-feathers, covered the +cart, and turned towards the house, looking up at Yvette as he opened +the white gate. + +She nodded to him, and flew to the bathroom to put on her dress, hoping +she had disguised her nod so that he wouldn’t be sure she had nodded. +Meanwhile she heard the hoarse deep roaring of that old fool, Rover, +punctuated by the yapping of that young idiot, Trixie. + +She and the housemaid arrived at the same moment at the sitting-room +door. + +“Was it the man selling brooms?” said Yvette to the maid. “All right!” +and she opened the door. “Aunt Cissie, there’s a man selling brooms. +Shall I go?” + +“What sort of a man?” said Aunt Cissie, who was sitting at tea with the +rector and the Mater: the girls having been excluded for once from the +meal. + +“A man with a cart,” said Yvette. + +“A gipsy,” said the maid. + +Of course Aunt Cissie rose at once. She had to look at him. + +The gipsy stood at the back door, under the steep dark bank where the +larches grew. The long brooms flourished from one hand, and from the +other hung various objects of shining copper and brass: a saucepan, +a candlestick, plates of beaten copper. The man himself was neat and +dapper, almost rakish, in his dark green cap and double-breasted green +check coat. But his manner was subdued, very quiet: and at the same +time proud, with a touch of condescension and aloofness. + +“Anything today, lady?” he said, looking at Aunt Cissie with dark, +shrewd, searching eyes, but putting a very quiet tenderness into his +voice. + +Aunt Cissie saw how handsome he was, saw the flexible curve of his lips +under the line of black moustache, and she was fluttered. The merest +hint of roughness or aggression on the man’s part would have made her +shut the door contemptuously in his face. But he managed to insinuate +such a subtle suggestion of submission into his male bearing, that she +began to hesitate. + +“The candlestick is lovely!” said Yvette. “Did you make it?” + +And she looked up at the man with her naïve, childlike eyes, that were +as capable of double meanings as his own. + +“Yes lady!” He looked back into her eyes for a second, with that naked +suggestion of desire which acted on her like a spell, and robbed her of +her will. Her tender face seemed to go into a sleep. + +“It’s awfully nice!” she murmured vaguely. + +Aunt Cissie began to bargain for the candlestick: which was a low, +thick stem of copper, rising from a double bowl. With patient aloofness +the man attended to her, without ever looking at Yvette, who leaned +against the doorway and watched in a muse. + +“How is your wife?” she asked him suddenly, when Aunt Cissie had gone +indoors to show the candlestick to the rector, and ask him if he +thought it was worth it. + +The man looked fully at Yvette, and a scarcely discernible smile curled +his lips. His eyes did not smile: the insinuation in them only hardened +to a glare. + +“She’s all right. When are you coming that way again?” he murmured, in +a low, caressive, intimate voice. + +“Oh, I don’t know,” said Yvette vaguely. + +“You come Fridays, when I’m there,” he said. + +Yvette gazed over his shoulder as if she had not heard him. Aunt Cissie +returned, with the candlestick and the money to pay for it. Yvette +turned nonchalant away, trilling one of her broken tunes, abandoning +the whole affair with a certain rudeness. + +Nevertheless, hiding this time at the landing window, she stood to +watch the man go. What she wanted to know, was whether he really had +any power over her. She did not intend him to see her this time. + +She saw him go down to the gate, with his brooms and pans, and out to +the cart. He carefully stowed away his pans and his brooms, and fixed +down the tarpaulin over the cart. Then with a slow, effortless spring +of his flexible loins, he was on the cart again, and touching the +horse with the reins. The roan horse was away at once, the cart-wheels +grinding uphill, and soon the man was gone, without looking round. Gone +like a dream which was only a dream, yet which she could not shake off. + +“No, he hasn’t any power over me!” she said to herself: rather +disappointed really, because she wanted somebody, or something, to have +power over her. + +She went up to reason with the pale and overwrought Lucille, scolding +her for getting into a state over nothing. + +“What does it _matter_,” she expostulated, “if you told Granny to shut +up! Why, everybody ought to be told to shut up, when they’re being +beastly. But she didn’t mean it, you know. No, she didn’t mean it. And +she’s quite sorry she said it. There’s absolutely no reason to make a +fuss. Come on, let’s dress ourselves up and sail down to dinner like +duchesses. Let’s have our own back that way. Come on, Lucille!” + +There was something strange and mazy, like having cobwebs over one’s +face, about Yvette’s vague blitheness; her queer, misty side-stepping +from an unpleasantness. It was cheering too. But it was like walking in +one of those autumn mists, when gossamer strands blow over your face. +You don’t quite know where you are. + +She succeeded, however, in persuading Lucille, and the girls got out +their best party frocks: Lucille in green and silver, Yvette in a pale +lilac colour with turquoise chenille threading. A little rouge and +powder, and their best slippers, and the gardens of paradise began to +blossom. Yvette hummed and looked at herself, and put on her most +_dégagé_ airs of one of the young marchionesses. She had an odd way +of slanting her eyebrows and pursing her lips, and to all appearances +detaching herself from every earthly consideration, and floating +through the cloud of her own pearl-coloured reserves. It was amusing, +and not quite convincing. + +“Of course I am beautiful, Lucille,” she said blandly. “And you’re +perfectly lovely, now you look a bit reproachful. Of course you’re the +most aristocratic of the two of us, with your nose! And now your eyes +look reproachful, that adds an appealing look, and you’re perfect, +perfectly lovely. But I’m more _winning_, in a way.--Don’t you agree?” +She turned with arch, complicated simplicity to Lucille. + +She was truly simple in what she said. It was just what she thought. +But it gave no hint of the very different feeling that also preoccupied +her: the _feeling_ that she had been looked upon, not from the outside, +but from the inside, from her secret female self. She was dressing +herself up and looking her most dazzling, just to counteract the +effect that the gipsy had had on her, when he had looked at her, and +seen none of her pretty face and her pretty ways, but just the dark, +tremulous potent secret of her virginity. + +The two girls started downstairs in state when the dinner-gong rang: +but they waited till they heard the voices of the men. Then they sailed +down and into the sitting-room, Yvette preening herself in her vague, +debonair way, always a little bit absent; and Lucille shy, ready to +burst into tears. + +“My goodness gracious!” exclaimed Aunt Cissie, who was still wearing +her dark-brown knitted sports coat. “What an apparition! Wherever do +you think you’re going?” + +“We’re dining with the family,” said Yvette naïvely, “and we’ve put on +our best gewgaws in honour of the occasion.” + +The rector laughed aloud, and Uncle Fred said: + +“The family feels itself highly honoured.” + +Both the elderly men were quite gallant, which was what Yvette wanted. + +“Come and let me feel your dresses, do!” said Granny. “Are they your +best? It _is_ a shame I can’t see them.” + +“Tonight, Mater,” said Uncle Fred, “we shall have to take the young +ladies in to dinner, and live up to the honour. Will you go with +Cissie?” + +“I certainly will,” said Granny. “Youth and beauty must come first.” + +“Well, tonight, Mater!” said the rector, pleased. + +And he offered his arm to Lucille, while Uncle Fred escorted Yvette. + +But it was a draggled, dull meal, all the same. Lucille tried to be +bright and sociable, and Yvette really was most amiable, in her vague, +cobwebby way. Dimly, at the back of her mind, she was thinking: Why are +we all only like mortal pieces of furniture? Why is nothing _important_? + +That was her constant refrain to herself: Why is nothing important? +Whether she was in church, or at a party of young people, or dancing +in the hotel in the city, the same little bubble of a question rose +repeatedly on her consciousness: Why is nothing important? + +There were plenty of young men to make love to her: even devotedly. +But with impatience she had to shake them off. Why were they so +unimportant?--so irritating! + +She never even thought of the gipsy. He was a perfectly negligible +incident. Yet the approach of Friday loomed strangely significant. +“What are we doing on Friday?” she said to Lucille. To which Lucille +replied that they were doing nothing. And Yvette was vexed. + +Friday came, and in spite of herself she thought all day of the quarry +off the road up high Bonsall Head. She wanted to be there. That was +all she was conscious of. She wanted to be there. She had not even a +dawning idea of going there. Besides, it was raining again. But as she +sewed the blue dress, finishing it for the party up at Lambley Close +tomorrow, she just felt that her soul was up there, at the quarry, +among the caravans, with the gipsies. Like one lost, or whose soul was +stolen, she was not present in her body, the shell of her body. Her +intrinsic body was away at the quarry, among the caravans. + +The next day, at the party, she had no idea that she was being sweet to +Leo. She had no idea that she was snatching him away from the tortured +Ella Framley. Not until, when she was eating her pistachio ice, he said +to her: + +“Why don’t you and me get engaged, Yvette? I’m absolutely sure it’s the +right thing for us both.” + +Leo was a bit common, but good-natured and well-off. Yvette quite liked +him. But engaged! How perfectly silly! She felt like offering him a set +of her silk underwear, to get engaged to. + +“But I thought it was Ella!” she said, in wonder. + +“Well! It might ha’ been, but for you. It’s your doings, you know! Ever +since those gipsies told your fortune, I felt it was me or nobody, for +you, and you or nobody, for me.” + +“Really!” said Yvette, simply lost in amazement. “Really!” + +“Didn’t you feel a bit the same?” he asked. + +“Really!” Yvette kept on gasping softly, like a fish. + +“You felt a bit the same, didn’t you?” he said. + +“What? About what?” she asked, coming to. + +“About me, as I feel about you.” + +“Why? What? Getting engaged, you mean? I? no! Why how _could_ I? I +could never have dreamed of such an impossible thing.” + +She spoke with her usual heedless candour, utterly unoccupied with his +feelings. + +“What was to prevent you?” he said, a bit nettled. “I thought you did.” + +“Did you _really now_?” she breathed in amazement, with that soft, +virgin, heedless candour which made her her admirers and her enemies. + +She was so completely amazed, there was nothing for him to do but +twiddle his thumbs in annoyance. + +The music began, and he looked at her. + +“No! I won’t dance any more,” she said, drawing herself up and gazing +away rather loftily over the assembly, as if he did not exist. There +was a touch of puzzled wonder on her brow, and her soft, dim virgin +face did indeed suggest the snowdrop of her father’s pathetic imagery. + +“But of course _you_ will dance,” she said, turning to him with young +condescension. “Do ask somebody to have this with you.” + +He rose, angry, and went down the room. + +She remained soft and remote in her amazement. Expect Leo to propose +to her! She might as well have expected old Rover the Newfoundland dog +to propose to her. Get engaged, to any man on earth? No, good heavens, +nothing more ridiculous could be imagined! + +It was then, in a fleeting side-thought, that she realised that the +gipsy existed. Instantly, she was indignant. Him, of all things! Him! +Never! + +“Now why?” she asked herself, again in hushed amazement. “Why? It’s +_absolutely_ impossible: absolutely! So why is it?” + +This was a nut to crack. She looked at the young men dancing, elbows +out, hips prominent, waists elegantly in. They gave her no clue to her +problem. Yet she did particularly dislike the forced elegance of the +waists and the prominent hips, over which the well-tailored coats hung +with such effeminate discretion. + +“There is something about me which they don’t see and never would see,” +she said angrily to herself. And at the same time, she was relieved +that they didn’t and couldn’t. It made life so very much simpler. + +And again, since she was one of the people who are conscious in visual +images, she saw the dark-green jersey rolled on the black trousers of +the gipsy, his fine, quick hips, alert as eyes. They were elegant. The +elegance of these dancers seemed so stuffed, hips merely wadded with +flesh. Leo the same, thinking himself such a fine dancer! and a fine +figure of a fellow! + +Then she saw the gipsy’s face; the straight nose, the slender mobile +lips, and the level, significant stare of the black eyes, which seemed +to shoot her in some vital, undiscovered place, unerring. + +She drew herself up angrily. How dared he look at her like that? So +she gazed glaringly at the insipid beaux on the dancing floor. And she +despised them. Just as the raggle-taggle gipsy women despise men who +are not gipsies, despise their dog-like walk down the streets, she +found herself despising this crowd. Where among them was the subtle, +lonely, insinuating challenge that could reach her? + +She did not want to mate with a housedog. + +Her sensitive nose turned up, her soft brown hair fell like a soft +sheath round her tender, flower-like face, as she sat musing. She +seemed so virginal. At the same time, there was a touch of the tall +young virgin _witch_ about her, that made the housedog men shy off. She +might metamorphose into something uncanny before you knew where you +were. + +This made her lonely, in spite of all the courting. Perhaps the +courting only made her lonelier. + +Leo, who was a sort of mastiff among the housedogs, returned after his +dance, with fresh cheery-o! courage. + +“You’ve had a little think about it, haven’t you?” he said, sitting +down beside her: a comfortable, well-nourished, determined sort of +fellow. She did not know why it irritated her so unreasonably, when he +hitched up his trousers at the knee, over his good-sized but not very +distinguished legs, and lowered himself assuredly on to a chair. + +“Have I?” she said vaguely. “About what?” + +“You know what about,” he said. “Did you make up your mind?” + +“Make up my mind about what?” she asked, innocently. + +In her upper consciousness, she truly had forgotten. + +“Oh!” said Leo, settling his trousers again. “About me and you getting +engaged, you know.” He was almost as off-hand as she. + +“Oh that’s _absolutely_ impossible,” she said, with mild amiability, +as if it were some stray question among the rest. “Why I never even +thought of it again. Oh, don’t talk about that sort of nonsense! That +sort of thing is _absolutely_ impossible,” she reiterated like a child. + +“That sort of thing is, is it?” he said, with an odd smile at her calm, +distant assertion. “Well what sort of thing is possible, then? You +don’t want to die an old maid, do you?” + +“Oh I don’t mind,” she said absently. + +“I do,” he said. + +She turned round and looked at him in wonder. + +“Why?” she said. “Why should you mind if I was an old maid?” + +“Every reason in the world,” he said, looking up at her with a bold, +meaningful smile, that wanted to make its meaning blatant, if not +patent. + +But instead of penetrating into some deep, secret place, and shooting +her there, Leo’s bold and patent smile only hit her on the outside +of the body, like a tennis ball, and caused the same kind of sudden +irritated reaction. + +“I think this sort of thing is awfully silly,” she said, with minx-like +spite. “Why, you’re practically engaged to--to----” she pulled herself +up in time--“probably half a dozen other girls. I’m not flattered by +what you’ve said. I should hate it if anybody knew!--Hate it!--I shan’t +breathe a word of it, and I hope you’ll have the sense not to.--There’s +Ella!” + +And keeping her face averted from him, she sailed away like a tall, +soft flower, to join poor Ella Framley. + +Leo flapped his white gloves. + +“Catty little bitch!” he said to himself. But he was of the mastiff +type, he rather liked the kitten to fly in his face. He began +definitely to single her out. + + + + +VI + + +The next week it poured again with rain. And this irritated Yvette +with strange anger. She had intended it should be fine. Especially she +insisted it should be fine towards the week-end. Why, she did not ask +herself. + +Thursday, the half-holiday, came with a hard frost, and sun. Leo +arrived with his car, the usual bunch. Yvette disagreeably and +unaccountably refused to go. + +“No thanks, I don’t feel like it,” she said. + +She rather enjoyed being Mary-Mary-quite-contrary. + +Then she went for a walk by herself, up the frozen hills, to the Black +Rocks. + +The next day also came sunny and frosty. It was February, but in the +north country the ground did not thaw in the sun. Yvette announced that +she was going for a ride on her bicycle, and taking her lunch as she +might not be back till afternoon. + +She set off, not hurrying. In spite of the frost, the sun had a touch +of spring. In the park, the deer were standing in the distance, in the +sunlight, to be warm. One doe, white spotted, walked slowly across the +motionless landscape. + +Cycling, Yvette found it difficult to keep her hands warm, even when +bodily she was quite hot. Only when she had to walk up the long hill, +to the top, and there was no wind. + +The upland was very bare and clear, like another world. She had climbed +on to another level. She cycled slowly, a little afraid of taking the +wrong lane, in the vast maze of stone fences. As she passed along the +lane she thought was the right one, she heard a faint tapping noise, +with a slight metallic resonance. + +The gipsy man was seated on the ground with his back to the cart-shaft, +hammering a copper bowl. He was in the sun, bare-headed, but wearing +his green jersey. Three small children were moving quietly round, +playing in the horse’s shelter: the horse and cart were gone. An old +woman, bent, with a kerchief round her head, was cooking over a fire +of sticks. The only sound was the rapid, ringing tap-tap-tap! of the +small hammer on the dull copper. + +The man looked up at once, as Yvette stepped from her bicycle, but +he did not move, though he ceased hammering. A delicate, barely +discernible smile of triumph was on his face. The old woman looked +round, keenly, from under her dirty grey hair. The man spoke a +half-audible word to her, and she turned again to her fire. He looked +up at Yvette. + +“How are you all getting on?” she asked politely. + +“All right, eh! You sit down a minute?” He turned as he sat, and pulled +a stool from under the caravan for Yvette. Then, as she wheeled her +bicycle to the side of the quarry, he started hammering again, with +that bird-like, rapid light stroke. + +Yvette went to the fire to warm her hands. + +“Is this the dinner cooking?” she asked childishly, of the old gipsy, +as she spread her long tender hands, mottled red with the cold, to the +embers. + +“Dinner, yes!” said the old woman. “For him! And for the children.” + +She pointed with the long fork at the three black-eyed, staring +children, who were staring at her from under their black fringes. But +they were clean. Only the old woman was not clean. The quarry itself +they had kept perfectly clean. + +Yvette crouched in silence, warming her hands. The man rapidly hammered +away with intervals of silence. The old hag slowly climbed the steps +to the third, oldest caravan. The children began to play again, like +little wild animals, quiet and busy. + +“Are they your children?” asked Yvette, rising from the fire and +turning to the man. + +He looked her in the eyes, and nodded. + +“But where’s your wife?” + +“She’s gone out with the basket. They’ve all gone out, cart and all, +selling things. I don’t go selling things. I make them, but I don’t go +selling them. Not often. I don’t often.” + +“You make all the copper and brass things?” she said. + +He nodded, and again offered her the stool. She sat down. + +“You said you’d be here on Fridays,” she said. “So I came this way, as +it was so fine.” + +“Very fine day!” said the gipsy, looking at her cheek, that was still a +bit blanched by the cold, and the soft hair over her reddened ear, and +the long, still mottled hands on her knee. + +“You get cold, riding a bicycle?” he asked. + +“My hands!” she said, clasping them nervously. + +“You didn’t wear gloves?” + +“I did, but they weren’t much good.” + +“Cold comes through,” he said. + +“Yes!” she replied. + +The old woman came slowly, grotesquely down the steps of the caravan, +with some enamel plates. + +“The dinner cooked, eh?” he called softly. + +The old woman muttered something, as she spread the plates near the +fire. Two pots hung from a long iron horizontal bar, over the embers of +the fire. A little pan seethed on a small iron tripod. In the sunshine, +heat and vapour wavered together. + +He put down his tools and the pot, and rose from the ground. + +“You eat something along of us?” he asked Yvette, not looking at her. + +“Oh, I brought my lunch,” said Yvette. + +“You eat some stew?” he said. And again he called quietly, secretly to +the old woman, who muttered in answer, as she slid the iron pot towards +the end of the bar. + +“Some beans, and some mutton in it,” he said. + +“Oh thanks awfully!” said Yvette. Then, suddenly taking courage, added: +“Well yes, just a very little, if I may.” + +She went across to untie her lunch from her bicycle, and he went up +the steps to his own caravan. After a minute, he emerged, wiping his +hands on a towel. + +“You want to come up and wash your hands?” he said. + +“No, I think not,” she said. “They are clean.” + +He threw away his wash-water, and set off down the road with a high +brass jug, to fetch clean water from the spring that trickled into a +small pool, taking a cup to dip it with. + +When he returned, he set the jug and the cup by the fire, and fetched +himself a short log, to sit on. The children sat on the floor, by +the fire, in a cluster, eating beans and bits of meat with spoon or +fingers. The man on the log ate in silence, absorbedly. The woman made +coffee in the black pot on the tripod, hobbling upstairs for the cups. +There was silence in the camp. Yvette sat on her stool, having taken +off her hat and shaken her hair in the sun. + +“How many children have you?” Yvette asked suddenly. + +“Say five,” he replied slowly, as he looked up into her eyes. + +And again the bird of her heart sank down and seemed to die. Vaguely, +as in a dream, she received from him the cup of coffee. She was aware +only of his silent figure, sitting like a shadow there on the log, with +an enamel cup in his hand, drinking his coffee in silence. Her will had +departed from her limbs, he had power over her: his shadow was on her. + +And he, as he blew his hot coffee, was aware of one thing only, the +mysterious fruit of her virginity, her perfect tenderness in the body. + +At length he put down his coffee-cup by the fire, then looked round at +her. Her hair fell across her face, as she tried to sip from the hot +cup. On her face was that tender look of sleep, which a nodding flower +has when it is full out. Like a mysterious early flower, she was full +out, like a snowdrop which spreads its three white wings in a flight +into the waking sleep of its brief blossoming. The waking sleep of her +full-opened virginity, entranced like a snowdrop in the sunshine, was +upon her. + +The gipsy, supremely aware of her, waited for her like the substance of +shadow, as shadow waits and is there. + +At length his voice said, without breaking the spell: + +“You want to go in my caravan now, and wash your hands?” + +The childlike, sleep-waking eyes of her moment of perfect virginity +looked into his, unseeing. She was only aware of the dark strange +effluence of him bathing her limbs, washing her at last purely +will-less. She was aware of _him_, as a dark, complete power. + +“I think I might,” she said. + +He rose silently, then turned to speak, in a low command, to the old +woman. And then again he looked at Yvette, and putting his power over +her, so that she had no burden of herself, or of action. + +“Come!” he said. + +She followed simply, followed the silent, secret, overpowering motion +of his body in front of her. It cost her nothing. She was gone in his +will. + +He was at the top of the steps, and she at the foot, when she became +aware of an intruding sound. She stood still, at the foot of the steps. +A motor-car was coming. He stood at the top of the steps, looking round +strangely. The old woman harshly called something, as with rapidly +increasing sound, a car rushed near. It was passing. + +Then they heard the cry of a woman’s voice, and the brakes on the car. +It had pulled up, just beyond the quarry. + +The gipsy came down the steps, having closed the door of the caravan. + +“You want to put your hat on,” he said to her. + +Obediently she went to the stool by the fire, and took up her hat. He +sat down by the cart-wheel, darkly, and took up his tools. The rapid +tap-tap-tap of his hammer, rapid and angry now like the sound of a tiny +machine-gun, broke out just as the voice of the woman was heard crying: + +“May we warm our hands at the camp fire?” + +She advanced, dressed in a sleek but bulky coat of sable fur. A man +followed, in a blue great-coat; pulling off his fur gloves and pulling +out a pipe. + +“It looked so tempting,” said the woman in the coat of many dead little +animals, smiling a broad, half-condescending, half-hesitant simper, +around the company. + +No one said a word. + +She advanced to the fire, shuddering a little inside her coat, with the +cold. They had been driving in an open car. + +She was a very small woman, with a rather large nose: probably a +Jewess. Tiny almost as a child, in that sable coat she looked much more +bulky than she should, and her wide, rather resentful brown eyes of a +spoilt Jewess gazed oddly out of her expensive get-up. + +She crouched over the low fire, spreading her little hands, on which +diamonds and emeralds glittered. + +“Ugh!” she shuddered. “Of course we ought not to have come in an open +car! But my husband won’t even let me say I’m cold!” She looked round +at him with her large, childish, reproachful eyes, that had still the +canny shrewdness of a bourgeois Jewess: a rich one, probably. + +Apparently she was in love, in a Jewess’s curious way, with the big, +blond man. He looked back at her with his abstracted blue eyes, that +seemed to have no lashes, and a small smile creased his smooth, +curiously naked cheeks. The smile didn’t mean anything at all. + +He was a man one connects instantly with winter sports, ski-ing and +skating. Athletic, unconnected with life, he slowly filled his pipe, +pressing in the tobacco with long, powerful, reddened finger. + +The Jewess looked at him to see if she got any response from him. +Nothing at all, but that odd, blank smile. She turned again to the +fire, tilting her eyebrows and looking at her small, white, spread +hands. + +He slipped off his heavily-lined coat, and appeared in one of the +handsome, sharp-patterned knitted jerseys, in yellow and grey and +black, over well-cut trousers, rather wide. Yes, they were both +expensive! And he had a magnificent figure, an athletic, prominent +chest. Like an experienced camper, he began building the fire together, +quietly: like a soldier on campaign. + +“D’you think they’d mind if we put some fir-cones on, to make a blaze?” +he asked of Yvette, with a silent glance at the hammering gipsy. + +“Love it, I should think,” said Yvette, in a daze, as the spell of the +gipsy slowly left her, feeling stranded and blank. + +The man went to the car, and returned with a little sack of cones, from +which he drew a handful. + +“Mind if we make a blaze?” he called to the gipsy. + +“Eh?” + +“Mind if we make a blaze with a few cones!” + +“You go ahead!” said the gipsy. + +The man began placing the cones lightly, carefully on the red embers. +And soon, one by one, they caught fire, and burned like roses of +flame, with a sweet scent. + +“Ah lovely! lovely!” cried the little Jewess, looking up at her man +again. He looked down at her quite kindly, like the sun on ice. “Don’t +you love fire? Oh, I love it!” the little Jewess cried to Yvette, +across the hammering. + +The hammering annoyed her. She looked round with a slight frown on her +fine little brows, as if she would bid the man stop. Yvette looked +round too. The gipsy was bent over his copper bowl, legs apart, head +down, lithe arm lifted. Already he seemed so far from her. + +The man who accompanied the little Jewess strolled over to the gipsy, +and stood in silence looking down on him, holding his pipe to his +mouth. Now they were two men, like two strange male dogs, having to +sniff one another. + +“We’re on our honeymoon,” said the little Jewess, with an arch, +resentful look at Yvette. She spoke in a rather high, defiant voice, +like some bird, a jay, or a rook, calling. + +“Are you really?” said Yvette. + +“Yes! Before we’re married! Have you heard of Simon Fawcett?”--she +named a wealthy and well-known engineer of the north country. “Well, +I’m Mrs. Fawcett, and he’s just divorcing me!” She looked at Yvette +with curious defiance and wistfulness. + +“Are you really!” said Yvette. + +She understood now the look of resentment and defiance in the little +Jewess’s big, childlike brown eyes. She was an honest little thing, but +perhaps her honesty was _too_ rational. Perhaps it partly explained the +notorious unscrupulousness of the well-known Simon Fawcett. + +“Yes! As soon as we get the divorce, I’m going to marry Major Eastwood.” + +Her cards were now all on the table. She was not going to deceive +anybody. + +Behind her, the two men were talking briefly. She glanced round, and +fixed the gipsy with her big brown eyes. + +He was looking up, as if shyly, at the big fellow in the sparkling +jersey, who was standing pipe in mouth, man to man, looking down. + +“With the horses back of Arras,” said the gipsy, in a low voice. + +They were talking war. The gipsy had served with the artillery teams, +in the Major’s own regiment. + +“Ein schöner Mensch!” said the Jewess. “A handsome man, eh?” + +For her, too, the gipsy was one of the common men, the Tommies. + +“Quite handsome!” said Yvette. + +“You are cycling?” asked the Jewess in a tone of surprise. + +“Yes! Down to Papplewick. My father is rector of Papplewick: Mr. +Saywell!” + +“Oh!” said the Jewess. “I know! A clever writer! Very clever! I have +read him.” + +The fir-cones were all consumed already, the fire was a tall pile now +of crumbling, shattering fire-roses. The sky was clouding over for +afternoon. Perhaps towards evening it would snow. + +The Major came back, and slung himself into his coat. + +“I thought I remembered his face!” he said. “One of our grooms, A1 man +with horses.” + +“Look!” cried the Jewess to Yvette. “Why don’t you let us motor you +down to Normanton. We live in Scoresby. We can tie the bicycle on +behind.” + +“I think I will,” said Yvette. + +“Come!” called the Jewess to the peeping children, as the blond man +wheeled away the bicycle. “Come! Come here!” and taking out her little +purse, she held out a shilling. + +“Come!” she cried. “Come and take it!” + +The gipsy had laid down his work, and gone into his caravan. The old +woman called hoarsely to the children, from her enclosure. The two +elder children came stealing forward. The Jewess gave them the two bits +of silver, a shilling and a florin, which she had in her purse, and +again the hoarse voice of the unseen old woman was heard. + +The gipsy descended from his caravan and strolled to the fire. The +Jewess searched his face with the peculiar bourgeois boldness of her +race. + +“You were in the war, in Major Eastwood’s regiment?” she said. + +“Yes, lady!” + +“Imagine you both being here now!--It’s going to snow.” She looked up +at the sky. + +“Later on,” said the man, looking at the sky. + +He too had gone inaccessible. His race was very old, in its peculiar +battle with established society, and had no conception of winning. Only +now and then it could score. + +But since the war, even the old sporting chance of scoring now and +then, was pretty well quenched. There was no question of yielding. +The gipsy’s eyes still had their bold look: but it was hardened and +directed far away, the touch of insolent intimacy was gone. He had been +through the war. + +He looked at Yvette. + +“You’re going back in the motor-car?” he said. + +“Yes!” she replied, with a rather mincing mannerism. “The weather is so +treacherous!” + +“Treacherous weather!” he repeated, looking at the sky. + +She could not tell in the least what his feelings were. In truth, she +wasn’t very much interested. She was rather fascinated, now, by the +little Jewess, mother of two children, who was taking her wealth away +from the well-known engineer and transferring it to the penniless, +sporting young Major Eastwood, who must be five or six years younger +than she. Rather intriguing! + +The blond man returned. + +“A cigarette, Charles!” cried the little Jewess, plaintively. + +He took out his case, slowly, with his slow, athletic movement. +Something sensitive in him made him slow, cautious, as if he had hurt +himself against people. He gave a cigarette to his wife, then one to +Yvette, then offered the case, quite simply, to the gipsy. The gipsy +took one. + +“Thank you, sir!” + +And he went quietly to the fire, and stooping, lit it at the red +embers. Both women watched him. + +“Well goodbye!” said the Jewess, with her old bourgeois freemasonry. +“Thank you for the warm fire.” + +“Fire is everybody’s,” said the gipsy. + +The young child came toddling to him. + +“Goodbye!” said Yvette. “I hope it won’t snow for you.” + +“We don’t mind a bit of snow,” said the gipsy. + +“Don’t you?” said Yvette. “I should have thought you would!” + +“No!” said the gipsy. + +She flung her scarf royally over her shoulder, and followed the fur +coat of the Jewess, which seemed to walk on little legs of its own. + + + + +VII + + +Yvette was rather thrilled by the Eastwoods, as she called them. The +little Jewess had only to wait three months now, for the final decree. +She had boldly rented a small summer cottage, by the moors up at +Scoresby, not far from the hills. Now it was dead winter, and she and +the Major lived in comparative isolation, without any maid-servant. He +had already resigned his commission in the regular army, and called +himself Mr. Eastwood. In fact, they were already Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood, +to the common world. + +The little Jewess was thirty-six, and her two children were both over +twelve years of age. The husband had agreed that she should have the +custody, as soon as she was married to Eastwood. + +So there they were, this queer couple, the tiny, finely-formed little +Jewess with her big, resentful reproachful eyes, and her mop of +carefully-barbered black, curly hair, an elegant little thing in +her way; and the big, pale-eyed young man, powerful and wintry, the +remnant, surely of some old uncanny Danish stock: living together in a +small modern house near the moors and the hills, and doing their own +housework. + +It was a funny household. The cottage was hired furnished, but the +little Jewess had brought along her dearest pieces of furniture. She +had an odd little taste for the rococo, strange curving cupboards +inlaid with mother of pearl, tortoiseshell, ebony, heaven knows what; +strange tall flamboyant chairs, from Italy, with sea-green brocade: +astonishing saints with wind-blown, richly-coloured carven garments +and pink faces: shelves of weird old Saxe and Capo di Monte figurines: +and finally, a strange assortment of astonishing pictures painted on +the back of glass, done probably in the early years of the nineteenth +century, or in the late eighteenth. + +In this crowded and extraordinary interior she received Yvette, when +the latter made a stolen visit. A whole system of stoves had been +installed into the cottage, every corner was warm, almost hot. And +there was the tiny rococo figurine of the Jewess herself, in a perfect +little frock, and an apron, putting slices of ham on the dish, while +the great snow-bird of a major, in a white sweater and grey trousers, +cut bread, mixed mustard, prepared coffee, and did all the rest. He had +even made the dish of jugged hare which followed the cold meats and +caviare. + +The silver and the china were really valuable, part of the bride’s +trousseau. The Major drank beer from a silver mug, the little Jewess +and Yvette had champagne in lovely glasses, the Major brought in +coffee. They talked away. The little Jewess had a burning indignation +against her first husband. She was intensely moral, so moral, that +she was a divorcée. The Major too, strange wintry bird, so powerful, +handsome, too, in his way, but pale round the eyes as if he had no +eyelashes, like a bird, he too had a curious indignation against life, +because of the false morality. That powerful, athletic chest hid a +strange, snowy sort of anger. And his tenderness for the little Jewess +was based on his sense of outraged justice, the abstract morality of +the north blowing him, like a strange wind, into isolation. + +As the afternoon drew on, they went to the kitchen, the Major pushed +back his sleeves, showing his powerful athletic white arms, and +carefully, deftly washed the dishes, while the women wiped. It was not +for nothing his muscles were trained. Then he went round attending to +the stoves of the small house, which only needed a moment or two of +care each day. And after this, he brought out the small, closed car +and drove Yvette home, in the rain, depositing her at the back gate, a +little wicket among the larches, through which the earthen steps sloped +downwards to the house. + +She was really amazed by this couple. + +“Really, Lucille!” she said. “I do meet the most extraordinary people!” +And she gave a detailed description. + +“I think they sound rather nice!” said Lucille. “I like the Major doing +the housework, and looking so frightfully Bond-streety with it all. I +should think, _when they’re married_, it would be rather fun knowing +them.” + +“Yes!” said Yvette vaguely. “Yes! Yes, it would!” + +The very strangeness of the connection between the tiny Jewess and +that pale-eyed, athletic young officer made her think again of her +gipsy, who had been utterly absent from her consciousness, but who now +returned with sudden painful force. + +“What is it, Lucille,” she asked, “that brings people together? People +like the Eastwoods, for instance? and Daddy and Mamma, so frightfully +unsuitable?--and that gipsy woman who told my fortune, like a great +horse, and the gipsy man, so fine and delicately cut? What is it?” + +“I suppose it’s sex, whatever that is,” said Lucille. + +“Yes, what is it? It’s not really anything _common_, like common +sensuality, you know, Lucille. It really isn’t.” + +“No, I suppose not,” said Lucille. “Anyhow I suppose it needn’t be.” + +“Because, you see, the _common_ fellows, you know, who make a girl feel +_low_: nobody cares much about them. Nobody feels any connection with +them. Yet they’re supposed to be the sexual sort.” + +“I suppose,” said Lucille, “there’s the low sort of sex, and there’s +the other sort, that isn’t low. It’s frightfully complicated, really! I +_loathe_ common fellows. And I never feel anything _sexual_--” she laid +a rather disgusted stress on the word--“for fellows who aren’t common. +Perhaps I haven’t got any sex.” + +“That’s just it!” said Yvette. “Perhaps neither of us has. Perhaps we +haven’t really _got_ any sex, to connect us with men.” + +“How horrible it sounds: _connect us with men_!” cried Lucille, with +revulsion. “Wouldn’t you hate to be connected with men that way? Oh I +think it’s an awful pity there has to _be_ sex! It would be so much +better if we could still be men and women, without that sort of thing.” + +Yvette pondered. Far in the background was the image of the gipsy as +he had looked round at her, when she had said: “The weather is so +treacherous.” She felt rather like Peter when the cock crew, as she +denied him. Or rather, she did not deny the gipsy; she didn’t care +about his part in the show, anyhow. It was some hidden part of herself +which she denied: that part which mysteriously and unconfessedly +responded to him. And it was a strange, lustrous black cock which crew +in mockery of her. + +“Yes!” she said vaguely. “Yes! Sex is an awful bore, you know, Lucille. +When you haven’t got it, you feel you _ought_ to have it, somehow. And +when you’ve got it--or _if_ you have it--” she lifted her head and +wrinkled her nose disdainfully--“you hate it.” + +“Oh, I don’t know!” cried Lucille. “I think I should _like_ to be +awfully in love with a man.” + +“You think so!” said Yvette, again wrinkling her nose. “But if you were +you wouldn’t.” + +“How do you know?” asked Lucille. + +“Well, I don’t really,” said Yvette. “But I think so! Yes I think so!” + +“Oh, it’s very likely!” said Lucille disgustedly. “And anyhow one would +be sure to get out of love again, and it would be merely disgusting.” + +“Yes,” said Yvette. “It’s a problem.” She hummed a little tune. + +“Oh hang it all, it’s not a problem for us two yet. We’re neither of +us really in love, and we probably never shall be, so the problem is +settled that way.” + +“I’m not so sure!” said Yvette sagely. “I’m not so sure. I believe, one +day, I shall fall _awfully_ in love.” + +“Probably you never will,” said Lucille brutally. “That’s what most old +maids are thinking all the time.” + +Yvette looked at her sister from pensive but apparently insouciant eyes. + +“Is it?” she said. “Do you really think so, Lucille? How perfectly +awful for them, poor things! Why ever do they _care_?” + +“Why do they?” said Lucille. “Perhaps they don’t, really--Probably it’s +all because people say: _Poor old girl, she couldn’t catch a man._” + +“I suppose it is!” said Yvette. “They get to mind the beastly things +people always do say about old maids. What a shame!” + +“Anyhow we have a good time, and we do have lots of boys who make a +fuss of us,” said Lucille. + +“Yes!” said Yvette. “Yes! But I couldn’t possibly marry any of them.” + +“Neither could I,” said Lucille. “But why shouldn’t we? Why should we +bother about marrying, when we have a perfectly good time with the +boys, who are awfully good sorts, and you must say, Yvette, awfully +sporting and _decent_ to us.” + +“Oh, they are!” said Yvette absently. + +“I think it’s time to think of marrying somebody,” said Lucille, “when +you feel you’re _not_ having a good time any more. Then marry, and just +settle down.” + +“Quite!” said Yvette. + +But now, under all her bland, soft amiability, she was annoyed with +Lucille. Suddenly she wanted to turn her back on Lucille. + +Besides, look at the shadows under poor Lucille’s eyes, and the +wistfulness in the beautiful eyes themselves. Oh, if some awfully nice, +kind, protective sort of man would but marry her! And if the sporting +Lucille would let him! + +Yvette did not tell the rector, nor Granny about the Eastwoods. +It would only have started a lot of talk which she detested. The +rector wouldn’t have minded, for himself, privately. But he too knew +the necessity of keeping as clear as possible from that poisonous, +many-headed serpent, the tongue of the people. + +“But I don’t _want_ you to come if your father doesn’t know,” cried the +little Jewess. + +“I suppose I’ll have to tell him,” said Yvette. “I’m sure he doesn’t +mind, really. But if he knew, he’d have to, I suppose.” + +The young officer looked at her with an odd amusement, bird-like and +unemotional, in his keen eyes. He too was by way of falling in love +with Yvette. It was her peculiar virgin tenderness, and her straying, +absent-minded detachment from things, which attracted him. + +She was aware of what was happening, and she rather preened herself. +Eastwood piqued her fancy. Such a smart young officer, awfully good +class, so calm and amazing with a motor-car, and quite a champion +swimmer, it was intriguing to see him quietly, calmly washing dishes, +smoking his pipe, doing his job so alert and skilful. Or, with the +same interested care with which he made his investigation into the +mysterious inside of an automobile, concocting jugged hare in the +cottage kitchen. Then going out in the icy weather and cleaning his +car till it looked like a live thing, like a cat when she has licked +herself. Then coming in to talk so unassumingly and responsively, +if briefly, with the little Jewess. And apparently, never bored. +Sitting at the window with his pipe in bad weather, silent for hours, +abstracted, musing, yet with his athletic body alert in its stillness. + +Yvette did not flirt with him. But she _did_ like him. + +“But what about your future?” she asked him. + +“What about it?” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth, the +unemotional point of a smile in his bird’s eyes. + +“A career! Doesn’t every man have to carve out a career?--like some +huge goose with gravy?” She gazed with odd naïveté into his eyes. + +“I’m perfectly all right today, and I shall be all right tomorrow,” he +said, with a cold, decided look. “Why shouldn’t my future be continuous +todays and tomorrows?” + +He looked at her with unmoved searching. + +“Quite!” she said. “I hate jobs, and all that side of life.” But she +was thinking of the Jewess’s money. + +To which he did not answer. His anger was of the soft, snowy sort, +which comfortably muffles the soul. + +They had come to the point of talking philosophically together. The +little Jewess looked a bit wan. She was curiously naïve, and not +possessive in her attitude to the man. Nor was she at all catty with +Yvette. Only rather wan, and dumb. + +Yvette, on a sudden impulse, thought she had better clear herself. + +“I think life’s _awfully_ difficult,” she said. + +“Life is!” cried the Jewess. + +“What’s so beastly, is that one is supposed to _fall in love_, and get +married!” said Yvette, curling up her nose. + +“Don’t you _want_ to fall in love and get married?” cried the Jewess, +with great glaring eyes of astounded reproach. + +“No, not particularly!” said Yvette. “Especially as one feels there’s +nothing else to do. It’s an awful chicken-coop one has to run into.” + +“But you don’t know what love is?” cried the Jewess. + +“No!” said Yvette. “Do you?” + +“I!” bawled the tiny Jewess. “I! My goodness, don’t I!” She looked with +reflective gloom at Eastwood, who was smoking his pipe, the dimples of +his disconnected amusement showing on his smooth, scrupulous face. +He had a very fine, smooth skin, which yet did not suffer from the +weather, so that his face looked naked as a baby’s. But it was not +a round face: it was characteristic enough, and took queer ironical +dimples, like a mask which is comic but frozen. + +“Do you mean to say you don’t know what love is?” insisted the Jewess. + +“No!” said Yvette, with insouciant candour. “I don’t believe I do! Is +it awful of me, at my age?” + +“Is there never any man that makes you feel quite, quite different?” +said the Jewess, with another big-eyed look at Eastwood. He smoked, +utterly unimplicated. + +“I don’t think there is,” said Yvette. “Unless--yes!--unless it is that +gipsy”--she had put her head pensively sideways. + +“Which gipsy?” bawled the little Jewess. + +“The one who was a Tommy and looked after horses in Major Eastwood’s +regiment in the war,” said Yvette coolly. + +The little Jewess gazed at Yvette with great eyes of stupor. + +“You’re not in love with that _gipsy_!” she said. + +“Well!” said Yvette. “I don’t know. He’s the only one that makes me +feel--different! He really is!” + +“But how? How? Has he ever _said_ anything to you?” + +“No! No!” + +“Then how? What has he done?” + +“Oh, just looked at me!” + +“How?” + +“Well you see, I don’t know. But different! Yes, different! Different, +quite different from the way any man ever looked at me.” + +“But _how_ did he look at you?” insisted the Jewess. + +“Why--as if he really, but _really_, _desired_ me,” said Yvette, her +meditative face looking like the bud of a flower. + +“What a vile fellow! What _right_ had he to look at you like that?” +cried the indignant Jewess. + +“A cat may look at a king,” calmly interposed the Major, and now his +face had the smiles of a cat’s face. + +“You think he oughtn’t to?” asked Yvette, turning to him. + +“Certainly not! A gipsy fellow, with half a dozen dirty women trailing +after him! Certainly not!” cried the tiny Jewess. + +“I wondered!” said Yvette. “Because it _was_ rather wonderful, really! +And it _was_ something quite different in my life.” + +“I think,” said the Major, taking his pipe from his mouth, “that desire +is the most wonderful thing in life. Anybody who can really feel it, is +a king, and I envy nobody else!” He put back his pipe. + +The Jewess looked at him stupefied. + +“But Charles!” she cried. “Every common low man in Halifax feels +nothing else!” + +He again took his pipe from his mouth. + +“That’s merely appetite,” he said. + +And he put back his pipe. + +“You think the gipsy is the real thing?” Yvette asked him. + +He lifted his shoulders. + +“It’s not for me to say,” he replied. “If I were you, I should know, I +shouldn’t be asking other people.” + +“Yes--but----” Yvette trailed out. + +“Charles! You’re wrong! How _could_ it be a real thing! As if she could +possibly marry him and go round in a caravan!” + +“I didn’t say marry him,” said Charles. + +“Or a love affair! Why it’s monstrous! What would she think of +herself!--That’s not love! That’s--that’s prostitution!” + +Charles smoked for some moments. + +“That gipsy was the best man we had, with horses. Nearly died of +pneumonia. I thought he _was_ dead. He’s a resurrected man to me. I’m +a resurrected man myself, as far as that goes.” He looked at Yvette. +“I was buried for twenty hours under snow,” he said. “And not much the +worse for it, when they dug me out.” + +There was a frozen pause in the conversation. + +“Life’s awful!” said Yvette. + +“They dug me out by accident,” he said. + +“Oh!----” Yvette trailed slowly. “It might be destiny, you know.” + +To which he did not answer. + + + + +VIII + + +The rector heard about Yvette’s intimacy with the Eastwoods, and she +was somewhat startled by the result. She had thought he wouldn’t +care. Verbally, in his would-be humorous fashion, he was so entirely +unconventional, such a frightfully good sport. As he said himself, he +was a conservative anarchist; which meant, he was like a great many +more people, a mere unbeliever. The anarchy extended to his humorous +talk, and his secret thinking. The conservatism, based on a mongrel +fear of the anarchy, controlled every action. His thoughts, secretly, +were something to be scared of. Therefore, in his life, he was +fanatically afraid of the unconventional. + +When his conservatism and his abject sort of fear were uppermost, he +always lifted his lip and bared his teeth a little, in a dog-like sneer. + +“I hear your latest friends are the half-divorced Mrs. Fawcett and the +_maquereau_ Eastwood,” he said to Yvette. + +She didn’t know what a _maquereau_ was, but she felt the poison in the +rector’s fangs. + +“I just know them,” she said. “They’re awfully nice, really. And +they’ll be married in about a month’s time.” + +The rector looked at her insouciant face with hatred. Somewhere inside +him, he was cowed, he had been born cowed. And those who are born cowed +are natural slaves, and deep instinct makes them fear with poisonous +fear those who might suddenly snap the slave’s collar round their necks. + +It was for this reason the rector had so abjectly curled up, still +so abjectly curled up before She-who-was-Cynthia: because of his +slave’s fear of her contempt, the contempt of a born-free nature for a +base-born nature. + +Yvette too had a free-born quality. She too, one day, would know him, +and clap the slave’s collar of her contempt round his neck. + +But should she? He would fight to the death, this time, first. The +slave in him was cornered this time, like a cornered rat, and with the +courage of a cornered rat. + +“I suppose they’re your sort!” he sneered. + +“Well, they are, really,” she said, with that blithe vagueness. “I do +like them awfully. They seem so solid, you know, so honest.” + +“You’ve got a peculiar notion of honesty!” he sneered. “A young sponge +going off with a woman older than himself, so that he can live on her +money! The woman leaving her home and her children! I don’t know where +you get your idea of honesty. Not from me, I hope.--And you seem to be +very well acquainted with them, considering you say you just know them. +Where did you meet them?” + +“When I was out bicycling. They came along in their car, and we +happened to talk. She told me at once who she was, so that I shouldn’t +make a mistake. She _is_ honest.” + +Poor Yvette was struggling to bear up. + +“And how often have you seen them since?” + +“Oh, I’ve just been over twice.” + +“Over where?” + +“To their cottage in Scoresby.” + +He looked at her in hate, as if he could kill her. And he backed away +from her, against the window-curtains of his study, like a rat at bay. +Somewhere in his mind he was thinking unspeakable depravities about +his daughter, as he had thought them of She-who-was-Cynthia. He was +powerless against the lowest insinuations of his own mind. And these +depravities which he attributed to the still-uncowed but frightened +girl in front of him, made him recoil, showing all his fangs in his +handsome face. + +“So you just know them, do you?” he said. “Lying is in your blood, I +see. I don’t believe you get it from me.” + +Yvette half averted her mute face, and thought of Granny’s bare-faced +prevarication. She did not answer. + +“What takes you creeping round such couples?” he sneered. “Aren’t there +enough decent people in the world for you to know? Anyone would think +you were a stray dog, having to run round indecent couples, because the +decent ones wouldn’t have you. Have you got something worse than lying +in your blood?” + +“What have I got worse than lying in my blood?” she asked. A +cold deadness was coming over her. Was she abnormal, one of the +semi-criminal abnormals? It made her feel cold and dead. + +In his eyes, she was just brazening out the depravity that underlay her +virgin, tender, bird-like face. She-who-was-Cynthia had been like this: +a snow-flower. And he had convulsions of sadistic horror, thinking what +might be the _actual_ depravity of She-who-was-Cynthia. Even his _own_ +love for her, which had been the lust-love of the born cowed, had been +a depravity, in secret, to him. So what must an illegal love be? + +“You know best yourself, what you have got,” he sneered. “But it is +something you had best curb, and quickly, if you don’t intend to +finish in a criminal-lunacy asylum.” + +“Why?” she said, pale and muted, numbed with frozen fear. “Why criminal +lunacy? What have I done?” + +“That is between you and your Maker,” he jeered. “I shall never ask. +But certain tendencies end in criminal lunacy, unless they are curbed +in time.” + +“Do you mean like knowing the Eastwoods?” asked Yvette, after a pause +of numb fear. + +“Do I mean like nosing round such people as Mrs. Fawcett, a Jewess, and +ex-Major Eastwood, a man who goes off with an older woman for the sake +of her money? Why yes, I do!” + +“But you _can’t_ say that,” cried Yvette. “He’s an awfully simple, +straightforward man.” + +“He is apparently one of your sort.” + +“Well.--In a way, I thought he was. I thought you’d like him too,” she +said simply, hardly knowing what she said. + +The rector backed into the curtains, as if the girl menaced him with +something fearful. + +“Don’t say any more,” he snarled, abject. “Don’t say any more. You’ve +said too much, to implicate you. I don’t want to learn any more +horrors.” + +“But what horrors?” she persisted. + +The very naïveté of her unscrupulous innocence repelled him, cowed him +still more. + +“Say no more!” he said, in a low, hissing voice. “But I will kill you +before you shall go the way of your mother.” + +She looked at him, as he stood there backed against the velvet curtains +of his study, his face yellow, his eyes distraught like a rat’s with +fear and rage and hate, and a numb, frozen loneliness came over her. +For her too, the meaning had gone out of everything. + +It was hard to break the frozen, sterile silence that ensued. At last, +however, she looked at him. And in spite of herself, beyond her own +knowledge, the contempt for him was in her young, clear, baffled eyes. +It fell like the slave’s collar over his neck, finally. + +“Do you mean I mustn’t know the Eastwoods?” she said. + +“You can know them if you wish,” he sneered. “But you must not expect +to associate with your Granny, and your Aunt Cissie, and Lucille, if +you do. I cannot have _them_ contaminated. Your Granny was a faithful +wife and a faithful mother, if ever one existed. She has already had +one shock of shame and abomination to endure. She shall never be +exposed to another.” + +Yvette heard it all dimly, half hearing. + +“I can send a note and say you disapprove,” she said dimly. + +“You follow your own course of action. But remember, you have to choose +between clean people, and reverence for your Granny’s blameless old +age, and people who are unclean in their minds and their bodies.” + +Again there was a silence. Then she looked at him, and her face +was more puzzled than anything. But somewhere at the back of her +perplexity was that peculiar calm, virgin contempt of the free-born for +the base-born. He, and all the Saywells, were base-born. + +“All right,” she said. “I’ll write and say you disapprove.” + +He did not answer. He was partly flattered, secretly triumphant, but +abjectly. + +“I have tried to keep this from your Granny and Aunt Cissie,” he +said. “It need not be public property, since you choose to make your +friendship clandestine.” + +There was a dreary silence. + +“All right,” she said. “I’ll go and write.” + +And she crept out of the room. + +She addressed her little note to Mrs. Eastwood. “Dear Mrs. Eastwood, +Daddy doesn’t approve of my coming to see you. So you will understand +if we have to break it off. I’m awfully sorry----.” That was all. + +Yet she felt a dreary blank when she had posted her letter. She was now +even afraid of her own thoughts. She wanted, now, to be held against +the slender, fine-shaped breast of the gipsy. She wanted him to hold +her in his arms, if only for once, for once, and comfort and confirm +her. She wanted to be confirmed by him, against her father, who had +only a repulsive fear of her. + +And at the same time she cringed and winced, so that she could hardly +walk, for fear the thought was obscene, a criminal lunacy. It seemed +to wound her heels as she walked, the fear. The fear, the great cold +fear of the base-born, her father, everything human and swarming. Like +a great bog humanity swamped her, and she sank in, weak at the knees, +filled with repulsion and fear of every person she met. + +She adjusted herself, however, quite rapidly to her new conception of +people. She had to live. It is useless to quarrel with one’s bread and +butter. And to expect a great deal out of life is puerile. So, with the +rapid adaptability of the post-war generation, she adjusted herself +to the new facts. Her father was what he was. He would always play +up to appearances. She would do the same. She too would play up to +appearances. + +So, underneath the blithe, gossamer-straying insouciance, a certain +hardness formed, like rock crystallising in her heart. She lost her +illusions in the collapse of her sympathies. Outwardly, she seemed the +same. Inwardly she was hard and detached, and, unknown to herself, +revengeful. + +Outwardly she remained the same. It was part of her game. While +circumstances remained as they were, she must remain, at least in +appearance, true to what was expected of her. + +But the revengefulness came out in her new vision of people. Under the +rector’s apparently gallant handsomeness, she saw the weak, feeble +nullity. And she despised him. Yet still, in a way, she liked him too. +Feelings are so complicated. + +It was Granny whom she came to detest with all her soul. That obese old +woman, sitting there in her blindness like some great red-blotched +fungus, her neck swallowed between her heaped-up shoulders and her +rolling, ancient chins, so that she was neckless as a double potato, +her Yvette really hated, with that pure, sheer hatred which is almost +a joy. Her hate was so clear, that while she was feeling strong, she +enjoyed it. + +The old woman sat with her big, reddened face pressed a little back, +her lace cap perched on her thin white hair, her stub nose still +assertive, and her old mouth shut like a trap. This motherly old soul, +her mouth gave her away. It always had been one of the compressed +sort. But in her great age, it had gone like a toad’s, lipless, the +jaw pressing up like the lower jaw of a trap. The look Yvette most +hated was the look of that lower jaw pressing relentlessly up, with an +ancient prognathous thrust, so that the snub nose in turn was forced to +press upwards, and the whole face was pressed a little back, beneath +the big, wall-like forehead. The will, the ancient, toad-like, obscene +_will_ in the old woman, was fearful, once you saw it: a toad-like +self-will that was godless, and less than human! It belonged to the +old, enduring race of toads, or tortoises. And it made one feel that +Granny would never die. She would live on like these higher reptiles, +in a state of semi-coma, for ever. + +Yvette dared not even suggest to her father that Granny was not +perfect. He would have threatened his daughter with the lunatic asylum. +That was the threat he always seemed to have up his sleeve: the lunatic +asylum. Exactly as if a distaste for Granny and for that horrible house +of relatives was in itself a proof of lunacy, dangerous lunacy. + +Yet in one of her moods of irritable depression, she did once fling out: + +“How perfectly beastly this house is! Aunt Lucy comes, and Aunt Nell, +and Aunt Alice, and they make a ring like a ring of crows, with Granny +and Aunt Cissie, all lifting their skirts up and warming their legs at +the fire, and shutting Lucille and me out. We’re nothing but outsiders +in this beastly house!” + +Her father glanced at her curiously. But she managed to put a petulance +into her speech, and a mere cross rudeness into her look, so that he +could laugh, as at a childish tantrum. Somewhere, though, he knew that +she coldly, venomously meant what she said, and he was wary of her. + +Her life seemed now nothing but an irritable friction against the +unsavoury household of the Saywells, in which she was immersed. She +loathed the rectory with a loathing that consumed her life, a loathing +so strong that she could not really go away from the place. While it +endured, she was spell-bound to it, in revulsion. + +She forgot the Eastwoods again. After all, what was the revolt of the +little Jewess, compared to Granny and the Saywell bunch! A husband was +never more than a semi-casual thing! But a family!--an awful, smelly +family that would never disperse, stuck half dead round the base of a +fungoid old woman! How was one to cope with that? + +She did not forget the gipsy entirely. But she had no time for him. +She, who was bored almost to agony, and who had nothing at all to do, +she had not time to think even, seriously, of anything. Time being, +after all, only the current of the soul in its flow. + +She saw the gipsy twice. Once he came to the house, with things to +sell. And she, watching him from the landing window, refused to go +down. He saw her too, as he was putting his things back into his +cart. But he too gave no sign. Being of a race that exists only to be +harrying the outskirts of our society, forever hostile and living only +by spoil, he was too much master of himself, and too wary, to expose +himself openly to the vast and gruesome clutch of our law. He had been +through the war. He had been enslaved against his will, that time. + +So now, he showed himself at the rectory, and slowly, quietly busied +himself at his cart outside the white gate, with that air of silent and +forever-unyielding outsideness which gave him his lonely, predative +grace. He knew she saw him. And she should see him unyielding, quietly +hawking his copper vessels, on an old, old war-path against such as +herself. + +Such as herself? Perhaps he was mistaken. Her heart, in its stroke, now +rang hard as his hammer upon his copper, beating against circumstances. +But he struck stealthily on the outside, and she still more secretly +on the inside of the establishment. She liked him. She liked the +quiet, noiseless clean-cut presence of him. She liked that mysterious +endurance in him, which endures in opposition, without any idea +of victory. And she liked that peculiar added relentlessness, the +disillusion in hostility, which belongs to after the war. Yes, if she +belonged to any side, and to any clan, it was to his. Almost she could +have found it in her heart to go with him, and be a pariah gipsy-woman. + +But she was born inside the pale. And she liked comfort, and a certain +prestige. Even as a mere rector’s daughter, one did have a certain +prestige. And she liked that. Also she liked to chip against the +pillars of the temple, from the inside. She wanted to be safe under +the temple roof. Yet she enjoyed chipping fragments off the supporting +pillars. Doubtless many fragments had been whittled away from the +pillars of the Philistine, before Samson pulled the temple down. + +“I’m not sure one shouldn’t have one’s fling till one is twenty-six, +and then give in, and marry!” + +This was Lucille’s philosophy, learned from older women. Yvette was +twenty-one. It meant she had five more years in which to have this +precious fling. And the fling meant, at the moment, the gipsy. The +marriage, at the age of twenty-six, meant Leo or Gerry. + +So, a woman could eat her cake and have her bread and butter. + +Yvette, pitched in gruesome, deadlocked hostility to the Saywell +household, was very old and very wise: with the agedness and the wisdom +of the young, which always overleaps the agedness and the wisdom of the +old, or the elderly. + +The second time she met the gipsy by accident. It was March, and sunny +weather, after unheard-of rains. Celandines were yellow in the hedges, +and primroses among the rocks. But still there came a smell of sulphur +from far-away steel-works, out of the steel-blue sky. + +And yet it was spring! + +Yvette was cycling slowly along by Codnor Gate, past the lime quarries, +when she saw the gipsy coming away from the door of a stone cottage. +His cart stood there in the road. He was returning with his brooms and +copper things, to the cart. + +She got down from her bicycle. As she saw him, she loved with curious +tenderness the slim lines of his body in the green jersey, the turn of +his silent face. She felt she knew him better than she knew anybody on +earth, even Lucille, and belonged to him, in some way, for ever. + +“Have you made anything new and nice?” she asked innocently, looking at +his copper things. + +“I don’t think,” he said, glancing back at her. + +The desire was still there, still curious and naked, in his eyes. +But it was more remote, the boldness was diminished. There was a tiny +glint, as if he might dislike her. But this dissolved again, as he saw +her looking among his bits of copper and brass-work. She searched them +diligently. + +There was a little oval brass plate, with a queer figure like a +palm-tree beaten upon it. + +“I like that,” she said. “How much is it?” + +“What you like,” he said. + +This made her nervous: he seemed off-hand, almost mocking. + +“I’d rather you said,” she told him, looking up at him. + +“You give me what you like,” he said. + +“No!” she said, suddenly. “If you won’t tell me I won’t have it.” + +“All right,” he said. “Two shilling.” + +She found half-a-crown, and he drew from his pocket a handful of +silver, from which he gave her her sixpence. + +“The old gipsy dreamed something about you,” he said, looking at her +with curious, searching eyes. + +“Did she!” cried Yvette, at once interested. “What was it?” + +“She said: Be braver in your heart, or you lose your game. She said it +this way: ‘Be braver in your body, or your luck will leave you.’ And +she said as well: ‘Listen for the voice of water.’” + +Yvette was very much impressed. + +“And what does it mean?” she asked. + +“I asked her,” he said. “She says she don’t know.” + +“Tell me again what it was,” said Yvette. + +“‘Be braver in your body, or your luck will go.’ And: ‘Listen for the +voice of water.’” + +He looked in silence at her soft, pondering face. Something almost +like a perfume seemed to flow from her young bosom direct to him, in a +grateful connection. + +“I’m to be braver in my body, and I’m to listen for the voice of water! +All right!” she said. “I don’t understand, but perhaps I shall.” + +She looked at him with clear eyes. Man or woman is made up of many +selves. With one self, she loved this gipsy man. With many selves, she +ignored him or had a distaste for him. + +“You’re not coming up to the Head no more?” he asked. + +Again she looked at him absently. + +“Perhaps I will,” she said, “some time. Some time.” + +“Spring weather!” he said, smiling faintly and glancing round at the +sun. “We’re going to break camp soon, and go away.” + +“When?” she said. + +“Perhaps next week.” + +“Where to?” + +Again he made a move with his head. + +“Perhaps up north,” he said. + +She looked at him. + +“All right!” she said. “Perhaps I _will_ come up before you go, and say +goodbye to your wife and to the old woman who sent me the message.” + + + + +IX + + +Yvette did not keep her promise. The few March days were lovely, and +she let them slip. She had a curious reluctance, always, towards taking +action, or making any real move of her own. She always wanted someone +else to make a move for her, as if she did not want to play her own +game of life. + +She lived as usual, went out to her friends, to parties, and danced +with the undiminished Leo. She wanted to go up and say goodbye to the +gipsies. She wanted to. And nothing prevented her. + +On the Friday afternoon especially she wanted to go. It was sunny, +and the last yellow crocuses down the drive were in full blaze, wide +open, the first bees rolling in them. The Papple rushed under the stone +bridge, uncannily full, nearly filling the arches. There was the scent +of a mezereon tree. + +And she felt too lazy, too lazy, too lazy. She strayed in the garden +by the river, half dreamy, expecting something. While the gleam of +spring sun lasted, she would be out of doors. Indoors Granny, sitting +back like some awful old prelate, in her bulk of black silk and +her white lace cap, was warming her feet by the fire, and hearing +everything that Aunt Nell had to say. Friday was Aunt Nell’s day. She +usually came for lunch, and left after an early tea. So the mother and +the large, rather common daughter, who was a widow at the age of forty, +sat gossiping by the fire, while Aunt Cissie prowled in and out. Friday +was the rector’s day for going to town: it was also the housemaid’s +half day. + +Yvette sat on a wooden seat in the garden, only a few feet above the +bank of the swollen river, which rolled a strange, uncanny mass of +water. The crocuses were passing in the ornamental beds, the grass was +dark green where it was mown, the laurels looked a little brighter. +Aunt Cissie appeared at the top of the porch steps, and called to ask +if Yvette wanted that early cup of tea. Because of the river just +below, Yvette could not hear what Aunt Cissie said, but she guessed, +and shook her head. An early cup of tea, indoors, when the sun actually +shone? No thanks! + +She was conscious of her gipsy, as she sat there musing in the sun. +Her soul had the half painful, half easing knack of leaving her, +and straying away to some place, to somebody that had caught her +imagination. Some days she would be at the Framleys’, even though +she did not go near them. Some days, she was all the time in spirit +with the Eastwoods. And today it was the gipsies. She was up at their +encampment in the quarry. She saw the man hammering his copper, +lifting his head to look at the road; and the children playing in the +horse-shelter: and the women, the gipsy’s wife and the strong, elderly +woman, coming home with their packs, along with the elderly man. For +this afternoon, she felt intensely that _that_ was home for her: the +gipsy camp, the fire, the stool, the man with the hammer, the old crone. + +It was part of her nature, to get these fits of yearning for some place +she knew; to be in a certain place; with somebody who meant home to +her. This afternoon it was the gipsy camp. And the man in the green +jersey made it home to her. Just to be where he was, that was to be at +home. The caravans, the brats, the other women: everything was natural +to her, her home, as if she had been born there. She wondered if the +gipsy was aware of her: if he could see her sitting on the stool by the +fire; if he would lift his head and see her as she rose, looking at him +slowly and significantly, turning towards the steps of his caravan. Did +he know? Did he know? + +Vaguely she looked up the steep of dark larch trees north of the +house, where unseen the road climbed, going towards the Head. There +was nothing, and her glance strayed down again. At the foot of the +slope the river turned, thrown back harshly, ominously, against the low +rocks across stream, then pouring past the garden to the bridge. It was +unnaturally full, and whitey-muddy, and ponderous, “Listen for the +voice of water,” she said to herself. “No need to listen for it, if the +voice means the noise!” + +And again she looked at the swollen river breaking angrily as it came +round the bend. Above it the black-looking kitchen garden hung, and the +hard-natured fruit trees. Everything was on the tilt, facing south and +south-west, for the sun. Behind, above the house and the kitchen garden +hung the steep little wood of withered-seeming larches. The gardener +was working in the kitchen garden, high up there, by the edge of the +larch-wood. + +She heard a call. It was Aunt Cissie and Aunt Nell. They were on the +drive, waving Goodbye! Yvette waved back. Then Aunt Cissie, pitching +her voice against the waters, called: + +“I shan’t be long. Don’t forget Granny is alone!” + +“All right!” screamed Yvette rather ineffectually. + +And she sat on her bench and watched the two undignified, long-coated +women walk slowly over the bridge and begin the curving climb on the +opposite slope, Aunt Nell carrying a sort of suit-case in which she +brought a few goods for Granny and took back vegetables or whatever +the rectory garden or cupboard was yielding. Slowly the two figures +diminished, on the whitish, up-curving road, labouring slowly up +towards Papplewick village. Aunt Cissie was going as far as the village +for something. + +The sun was yellowing to decline. What a pity! Oh what a pity the sunny +day was going, and she would have to turn indoors, to those hateful +rooms, and Granny! Aunt Cissie would be back directly: it was past +five. And all the others would be arriving from town, rather irritable +and tired, soon after six. + +As she looked uneasily round, she heard, across the running of water, +the sharp noise of a horse and cart rattling on the road hidden in the +larch trees. The gardener was looking up too. Yvette turned away again, +lingering, strolling by the full river a few paces, unwilling to go +in; glancing up the road to see if Aunt Cissie were coming. If she saw +her, she would go indoors. + +She heard somebody shouting, and looked round. Down the path through +the larch trees the gipsy was bounding. The gardener, away beyond, was +also running. Simultaneously she became aware of a great roar, which, +before she could move, accumulated to a vast deafening snarl. The gipsy +was gesticulating. She looked round, behind her. + +And to her horror and amazement, round the bend of the river she saw a +shaggy, tawny wave-front of water advancing like a wall of lions. The +roaring sound wiped out everything. She was powerless, too amazed and +wonder-struck, she wanted to see it. + +Before she could think twice, it was near, a roaring cliff of water. +She almost fainted with horror. She heard the scream of the gipsy, and +looked up to see him bounding upon her, his black eyes starting out of +his head. + +“Run!” he screamed, seizing her arm. + +And in the instant the first wave was washing her feet from under her, +swirling, in the insane noise, which suddenly for some reason seemed +like stillness, with a devouring flood over the garden. The horrible +mowing of water! + +The gipsy dragged her heavily, lurching, plunging, but still keeping +foot-hold both of them, towards the house. She was barely conscious: as +if the flood was in her soul. + +There was one grass-banked terrace of the garden, near the path round +the house. The gipsy clawed his way up this terrace to the dry level of +the path, dragging her after him, and sprang with her past the windows +to the porch steps. Before they got there, a new great surge of water +came mowing, mowing trees down even, and mowed them down too. + +Yvette felt herself gone in an agonising mill-race of icy water, +whirled, with only the fearful grip of the gipsy’s hand on her wrist. +They were both down and gone. She felt a dull but stunning bruise +somewhere. + +Then he pulled her up. He was up, streaming forth water, clinging to +the stem of the great wisteria that grew against the wall, crushed +against the wall by the water. Her head was above water, he held her +arm till it seemed dislocated: but she could not get her footing. With +a ghastly sickness like a dream, she struggled and struggled, and could +not get her feet. Only his hand was locked on her wrist. + +He dragged her nearer till her one hand caught his leg. He nearly went +down again. But the wisteria held him, and he pulled her up to him. She +clawed at him, horribly; and got to her feet, he hanging on like a man +torn in two, to the wisteria trunk. + +The water was above her knees. The man and she looked into each other’s +ghastly streaming faces. + +“Get to the steps!” he screamed. + +It was only just round the corner: four strides! She looked at him: she +could not go. His eyes glared on her like a tiger’s, and he pushed +her from him. She clung to the wall, and the water seemed to abate a +little. Round the corner she staggered, but staggering, reeled and was +pitched up against the cornice of the balustrade of the porch steps, +the man after her. + +They got on to the steps, when another roar was heard amid the roar, +and the wall of the house shook. Up heaved the water round their legs +again, but the gipsy had opened the hall door. In they poured with the +water, reeling to the stairs. And as they did so, they saw the short +but strange bulk of Granny emerge in the hall, away down from the +dining-room door. She had her hands lifted and clawing, as the first +water swirled round her legs, and her coffin-like mouth was opened in a +hoarse scream. + +Yvette was blind to everything but the stairs. Blind, unconscious of +everything save the steps rising beyond the water, she clambered up +like a wet, shuddering cat, in a state of unconsciousness. It was not +till she was on the landing, dripping and shuddering till she could +not stand erect, clinging to the banisters, while the house shook and +the water raved below, that she was aware of the sodden gipsy, in +paroxysms of coughing at the head of the stairs, his cap gone, his +black hair over his eyes, peering between his washed-down hair at the +sickening heave of water below, in the hall. Yvette, fainting, looked +too and saw Granny bob up, like a strange float, her face purple, her +blind blue eyes bolting, spume hissing from her mouth. One old purple +hand clawed at a banister rail, and held for a moment, showing the +glint of a wedding ring. + +The gipsy, who had coughed himself free and pushed back his hair, said +to that awful float-like face below: + +“Not good enough! Not good enough!” + +With a low thud like thunder, the house was struck again, and +shuddered, and a strange cracking, rattling, spitting noise began. Up +heaved the water like a sea. The hand was gone, all sign of anything +was gone, but upheaving water. + +Yvette turned in blind unconscious frenzy, staggering like a wet cat +to the upper staircase, and climbing swiftly. It was not till she was +at the door of her room that she stopped, paralysed by the sound of a +sickening, tearing crash, while the house swayed. + +“The house is coming down!” yelled the green-white face of the gipsy, +in her face. + +He glared into her crazed face. + +“Where is the chimney? the back chimney?--which room? The chimney will +stand----” + +He glared with strange ferocity into her face, forcing her to +understand. And she nodded with a strange, crazed poise, nodded quite +serenely, saying: + +“In here! In here! It’s all right.” + +They entered her room, which had a narrow fire-place. It was a back +room with two windows, one on each side the great chimney-flue. The +gipsy, coughing bitterly and trembling in every limb, went to the +window to look out. + +Below, between the house and the steep rise of the hill, was a wild +mill-race of water rushing with refuse, including Rover’s green +dog-kennel. The gipsy coughed and coughed, and gazed down blankly. Tree +after tree went down, mown by the water, which must have been ten feet +deep. + +Shuddering and pressing his sodden arms on his sodden breast, a look +of resignation on his livid face, he turned to Yvette. A fearful +tearing noise tore the house, then there was a deep, watery explosion. +Something had gone down, some part of the house, the floor heaved and +wavered beneath them. For some moments both were suspended, stupefied. +Then he roused. + +“Not good enough! Not good enough! This will stand. This here will +stand. See that chimney! like a tower. Yes! All right! All right! You +take your clothes off and go to bed. You’ll die of the cold.” + +“It’s all right! It’s quite all right!” she said to him, sitting on a +chair and looking up into his face with her white, insane little face, +round which the hair was plastered. + +“No!” he cried. “No! Take your things off and I rub you with this +towel. I rub myself. If the house falls then die warm. If it don’t +fall, then live, not die of pneumonia.” + +Coughing, shuddering violently, he pulled up his jersey hem and +wrestled with all his shuddering, cold-racked might, to get off his +wet, tight jersey. + +“Help me!” he cried, his face muffled. + +She seized the edge of the jersey, obediently, and pulled with all her +might. The garment came over his head, and he stood in his braces. + +“Take your things off! Rub with this towel!” he commanded ferociously, +the savageness of the war on him. And like a thing obsessed, he pushed +himself out of his trousers, and got out of his wet, clinging shirt, +emerging slim and livid, shuddering in every fibre with cold and shock. + +He seized a towel, and began quickly to rub his body, his teeth +chattering like plates rattling together. Yvette dimly saw it was +wise. She tried to get out of her dress. He pulled the horrible wet +death-gripping thing off her, then, resuming his rubbing, went to the +door, tip-toeing on the wet floor. + +There he stood, naked, towel in hand, petrified. He looked west, +towards where the upper landing window had been, and was looking into +the sunset, over an insane sea of waters, bristling with uptorn trees +and refuse. The end corner of the house where the porch had been, and +the stairs, had gone. The wall had fallen, leaving the floors sticking +out. The stairs had gone. + +Motionless, he watched the water. A cold wind blew in upon him. He +clenched his rattling teeth with a great effort of will, and turned +into the room again, closing the door. + +Yvette, naked, shuddering so much that she was sick, was trying to wipe +herself dry. + +“All right!” he cried. “All right! The water don’t rise no more! All +right!” + +With his towel he began to rub her, himself shaking all over, but +holding her gripped by the shoulder, and slowly, numbedly rubbing her +tender body, even trying to rub up into some dryness the pitiful hair +of her small head. + +Suddenly he left off. + +“Better lie in the bed,” he commanded, “I want to rub myself.” + +His teeth went snap-snap-snap-snap, in great snaps, cutting off his +words. Yvette crept shaking and semi-conscious into her bed. He, making +strained efforts to hold himself still and rub himself warm, went again +to the north window, to look out. + +The water had risen a little. The sun had gone down, and there was a +reddish glow. He rubbed his hair into a black, wet tangle, then paused +for breath, in a sudden access of shuddering, then looked out again, +then rubbed again on his breast, and began to cough afresh, because +of the water he had swallowed. His towel was red: he had hurt himself +somewhere: but he felt nothing. + +There was still the strange huge noise of water, and the horrible bump +of things bumping against the walls. The wind was rising with sundown, +cold and hard. The house shook with explosive thuds, and weird, weird +frightening noises came up. + +A terror creeping over his soul, he went again to the door. The wind, +roaring with the waters, blew in as he opened it. Through the awesome +gap in the house he saw the world, the waters, the chaos of horrible +waters, the twilight, the perfect new moon high above the sunset, +a faint thing, and clouds pushing dark into the sky, on the cold, +blustery wind. + +Clenching his teeth again, fear mingling with resignation, or fatalism, +in his soul, he went into the room and closed the door, picking up her +towel to see if it were drier than his own, and less blood-stained, +again rubbing his head, and going to the window. + +He turned away, unable to control his spasms of shivering. Yvette had +disappeared right under the bedclothes, and nothing of her was visible +but a shivering mound under the white quilt. He laid his hand on this +shivering mound, as if for company. It did not stop shivering. + +“All right!” he said. “All right! Water’s going down!” + +She suddenly uncovered her head and peered out at him from a white +face. She peered into his greenish, curiously calm face, semiconscious. +His teeth were chattering unheeded, as he gazed down at her, his black +eyes still full of the fire of life and a certain vagabond calm of +fatalistic resignation. + +“Warm me!” she moaned, with chattering teeth. “Warm me! I shall die of +shivering.” + +A terrible convulsion went through her curled-up white body, enough +indeed to rupture her and cause her to die. + +The gipsy nodded, and took her in his arms, and held her in a clasp +like a vice, to still his own shuddering. He himself was shuddering +fearfully, and only semiconscious. It was the shock. + +The vice-like grip of his arms round her seemed to her the only stable +point in her consciousness. It was a fearful relief to her heart, +which was strained to bursting. And though his body, wrapped round +her strange and lithe and powerful, like tentacles, rippled with +shuddering as an electric current, still the rigid tension of the +muscles that held her clenched steadied them both, and gradually the +sickening violence of the shuddering, caused by shock, abated, in his +body first, then in hers, and the warmth revived between them. And as +it roused, their tortured, semiconscious minds became unconscious, they +passed away into sleep. + + + + +X + + +The sun was shining in heaven before men were able to get across the +Papple with ladders. The bridge was gone. But the flood had abated, and +the house, that leaned forwards as if it were making a stiff bow to +the stream, stood now in mud and wreckage, with a great heap of fallen +masonry and debris at the south-west corner. Awful were the gaping +mouths of rooms! + +Inside, there was no sign of life. But across-stream the gardener had +come to reconnoitre, and the cook appeared, thrilled with curiosity. +She had escaped from the back door and up through the larches to the +high-road, when she saw the gipsy bound past the house: thinking he was +coming to murder somebody. At the little top gate she had found his +cart standing. The gardener had led the horse away to the Red Lion up +at Darley, when night had fallen. + +This the men from Papplewick learned when at last they got across the +stream with ladders, and to the back of the house. They were nervous, +fearing a collapse of the building, whose front was all undermined and +whose back was choked up. They gazed with horror at the silent shelves +of the rector’s rows of books, in his torn-open study; at the big brass +bedstead of Granny’s room, the bed so deep and comfortably made, but +one brass leg of the bedstead perching tentatively over the torn void; +at the wreckage of the maid’s room upstairs. The housemaid and the +cook wept. Then a man climbed in cautiously through a smashed kitchen +window, into the jungle and morass of the ground floor. He found the +body of the old woman: or at least he saw her foot, in its flat black +slipper, muddily protruding from a mud-heap of debris. And he fled. + +The gardener said he was sure that Miss Yvette was not in the house. He +had seen her and the gipsy swept away. But the policeman insisted on +a search, and the Framley boys rushing up at last, the ladders were +roped together. Then the whole party set up a loud yell. But without +result. No answer from within. + +A ladder was up, Bob Framley climbed, smashed a window, and clambered +into Aunt Cissie’s room. The perfect homely familiarity of everything +terrified him like ghosts. The house might go down any minute. + +They had just got the ladder up to the top floor, when men came running +from Darley, saying the old gipsy had been to the Red Lion for the +horse and cart, leaving word that his son had seen Yvette at the top of +the house. But by that time the policeman was smashing the window of +Yvette’s room. + +Yvette, fast asleep, started from under the bedclothes with a scream, +as the glass flew. She clutched the sheets round her nakedness. The +policeman uttered a startled yell, which he converted into a cry of: +“Miss Yvette! Miss Yvette!” + +He turned round on the ladder and shouted to the faces below: + +“Miss Yvette’s in bed!--in bed!” + +And he perched there on the ladder, an unmarried man, clutching the +window in peril, not knowing what to do. + +Yvette sat up in bed, her hair in a matted tangle, and stared with wild +eyes, clutching up the sheets at her naked breast. She had been so very +fast asleep, that she was still not there. + +The policeman, terrified at the flabby ladder, climbed into the room, +saying: + +“Don’t be frightened, Miss! Don’t you worry any more about it. You’re +safe now.” + +And Yvette, so dazed, thought he meant the gipsy. Where was the gipsy? +This was the first thing in her mind. Where was her gipsy of this +world’s-end night? + +He was gone! He was gone! And a policeman was in the room! A policeman! + +She rubbed her hand over her dazed brow. + +“If you’ll get dressed, Miss, we can get you down to safe ground. The +house is likely to fall. I suppose there’s nobody in the other rooms?” + +He stepped gingerly into the passage and gazed in terror through the +torn-out end of the house, and far-off saw the rector coming down in a +motor-car, on the sun-lit hill. + +Yvette, her face gone numb and disappointed, got up quickly, closing +the bedclothes, and looked at herself a moment, then opened her drawers +for clothing. She dressed herself, then looked in a mirror, and saw +her matted hair with horror. Yet she did not care. The gipsy was gone, +anyhow. + +Her own clothes lay in a sodden heap. There was a great sodden place +on the carpet where his had been, and two blood-stained filthy towels. +Otherwise there was no sign of him. + +She was tugging at her hair when the policeman tapped at her door. She +called him to come in. He saw with relief that she was dressed and in +her right senses. + +“We’d better get out of the house as soon as possible, Miss,” he +reiterated. “It might fall any minute.” + +“Really!” said Yvette calmly. “Is it as bad as that?” + +There were great shouts. She had to go to the window. There, below, was +the rector, his arms wide open, tears streaming down his face. + +“I’m perfectly all right, Daddy!” she said, with the calmness of her +contradictory feelings. She would keep the gipsy a secret from him. At +the same time, tears ran down her face. + +“Don’t you cry, Miss, don’t you cry! The rector’s lost his mother, but +he’s thanking his stars to have his daughter. We all thought you were +gone as well, we did that!” + +“Is Granny drowned?” said Yvette. + +“I’m afraid she is, poor lady!” said the policeman, with a grave face. + +Yvette wept away into her hanky, which she had had to fetch from a +drawer. + +“Dare you go down that ladder, Miss?” said the policeman. + +Yvette looked at the sagging depth of it, and said promptly to herself: +“No! Not for anything!”--But then she remembered the gipsy’s saying: +“Be braver in the body.” + +“Have you been in all the other rooms?” she said, in her weeping, +turning to the policeman. + +“Yes, Miss! But you was the only person in the house, you know, save +the old lady. Cook got away in time, and Lizzie was up at her mother’s. +It was only you and the poor old lady we was fretting about. Do you +think you dare go down that ladder?” + +“Oh yes!” said Yvette, with indifference. The gipsy was gone anyway. + +And now the rector in torment watched his tall, slender daughter slowly +stepping backwards down the sagging ladder, the policeman, peering +heroically from the smashed window, holding the ladder’s top end. + +At the foot of the ladder Yvette appropriately fainted in her father’s +arms, and was borne away with him, in the car, by Bob, to the Framley +home. There the poor Lucille, a ghost of ghosts, wept with relief till +she had hysterics, and even Aunt Cissie cried out among her tears: +“Let the old be taken and the young spared! Oh I _can’t_ cry for the +Mater, now Yvette is spared!” + +And she wept gallons. + +The flood was caused by the sudden bursting of the great reservoir, +up in Papple Highdale, five miles from the rectory. It was found out +later that an ancient, perhaps even a Roman mine tunnel, unsuspected, +undreamed of, beneath the reservoir dam, had collapsed, undermining +the whole dam. That was why the Papple had been, for that last day, so +uncannily full. And then the dam had burst. + +The rector and the two girls stayed on at the Framleys’, till a new +home could be found. Yvette did not attend Granny’s funeral. She stayed +in bed. + +Telling her tale, she only told how the gipsy had got her inside the +porch, and she had crawled to the stairs out of the water. It was known +that he had escaped: the old gipsy had said so, when he fetched the +horse and cart from the Red Lion. + +Yvette could tell little. She was vague, confused, she seemed hardly to +remember anything. But that was just like her. + +It was Bob Framley who said: + +“You know, I think that gipsy deserves a medal.” + +The whole family suddenly was struck. + +“Oh, we _ought_ to thank him!” cried Lucille. + +The rector himself went with Bob in the car. But the quarry was +deserted. The gipsies had lifted camp and gone, no one knew whither. + +And Yvette, lying in bed, moaned in her heart: Oh, I love him! I +love him! I love him! The grief over him kept her prostrate. Yet +practically, she too was acquiescent in the fact of his disappearance. +Her young soul knew the wisdom of it. + +But after Granny’s funeral, she received a little letter, dated from +some unknown place. + +“Dear Miss, I see in the paper you are all right after your ducking, +as is the same with me. I hope I see you again one day, maybe at +Tideswell cattle fair, or maybe we come that way again. I come that day +to say goodbye! and I never said it, well, the water give no time, but +I live in hopes. Your obdt. servant Joe Boswell.” + +And only then she realised that he had a name. + + + _The Botolph Printing Works, Gate Street, Kingsway, W.C.2_ + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes + + + New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the + public domain. + Inconsistent hyphenation has been retained. + p. 41 added comma following “so still” + pp. 84 and 86 italicized the exclamation point in “_Tirra-lirra!_” + p. 131 changed open quote to close quote following “_sexual_--” +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78189 *** |