On days like this, when she came down and saw Clifford so patient and just a tiny bit smug, sitting up in his bed or in his chair, she would think: You! You! What are you doing there, hugging your half-a-life and thinking it matters? Can’t you see you’re half dead, and you’d be much better wholly dead? You miserable thing! You may well gloat over being alive! That’s all the half-dead are fit for, gloating on the fact that they’re still hanging on, when so many have gone down in the ship-wreck. Hanging on to the raft in a dead weight, making it clogged and unable to move! Oh, how miserable and despicable you are! —
At the same time, though the mood was on her like an insanity, and had possession of her so that she could not shake it off, she had a vague suspicion that her deepest hatred was of herself. She loathed herself, her life, her body and being. She was just another carcase, horrible.
And though she felt so terribly, felt even that the leaves ought to wilt and blacken if she came near them, she behaved just as quietly and mildly as ever. In this mood, she would not kill a wasp that got stuck in the jam, even the daddy-long-legs which she disliked so much in the windows, and usually killed with the flip of a cloth, these days she dare not kill them. She left them alone. And with Clifford, instead of being a little impatient with him, as she often was on her good days, in her evil days she was heavily, almost slavishly patient and attentive, going round him ponderously, and waiting on him like a servant, though in her soul she would be wondering that he did not fall dead under the waves of destruction she was sending out against him. He didn’t fall dead, however. On the contrary, during her evil days, when her own existence was torture to her like the rack, he seemed often rather bucked. But at last he flagged. In the end he seemed to collapse like a heap of ashes. And when he began to collapse, she began to recover. So it was!
But her evil days were like some ghastly nightmare. It seemed to her she breathed evil out of the air. It seemed to her that something ghastly and deathly blew in on the air, from the North Pole. The park and the wood seemed just the same, to be going grey and lifeless in the strangle-hold of the death-breathing air. She saw it in the servants too, even in the very sheep of the park, though them she always disliked. Gone, from Wragby, were the days of deer. But sheep were a humiliation even then. And on the awful corpse-days, they huddled and hopped like the greyest of corpse-lumps. The sight of them revolted her innermost marrow. Of all animals, she loathed sheep most. Pigs were poetic in comparison.
Then, when the bad days and the intensity of her wild yet cold rage passed, she forgot it all. She thought of herself as always patient and always having a good will to everything. She forgot— as everybody forgets — particularly women. The woman of the evil moods was not herself to her. It was some other, unreal, abstract personage. She herself always had a good will. So she fixed it in her mind.
But nevertheless, the terrible cold rage that blasted all life for her, never really thawed. She was like the earth in Labrador. The surface thawed and had brief blossoms. But a little way down, only a little way, it remained eternally frozen. So it was with her heart and her deeper self, they were bound in a dead, iron frost that never yielded.
On one of her bad days, she hurried out to walk alone in the wood, ponderously, semi-conscious. In the distance she heard the report of a gun, and that angered her. Why must some fool man be letting off a gun at that hour — But she walked on, oblivious of everything.
She did not know how far she had gone, nor how long she had been going, when suddenly she heard the sound of voices. She stood to listen, on the rebound. It was a child crying, sobbing! Instantly the dull rage that was thundering away down in her rose with a rush to her heart. Someone was ill-treating a child! This thought was enough to bring all her evil rage into her suffocated heart. Someone was ill-treating a child. She heard the snarl of a man’s voice. She strode down the wet drive, over the dead and sodden leaves, her face hot, her eyes burning, her body surging as if from a catapult.
Down the narrow path she saw two figures, a little girl in a purple coat and moleskin cap, crying, and Parkin, in his velveteens, bending over her. What had the brute been doing to the child? She could hear his snarling, irritable voice:
‘Shut it up, now, shut it up! Enough on it! If Ah dunna kill ’im, ’e kills th’ bods an’ th’ rabbits, so what’s thee got to scraight at? Are ter goin’ ter stop it, eh?’
The voice was becoming a menace, now, the child blubbered louder, in anticipation of the clout that would soon come. Constance strode nearer, with blazing face and eyes. The man heard her, for he drew himself erect and alert on the sudden, as if expecting some attack. He looked into her face, and his eyes too were bright with anger.
‘What’s the matter? Why is she crying?’ demanded Constance peremptorily.
The man’s eyes narrowed, and for some moments he did not deign to answer, but looked into Constance’s blazing eyes with a narrow, glittering look of derision.
‘Yo’ mun ask ’er!’ he said, curt and decisive.
Constance started as if he had smacked her in the face, his lack of respect was so complete. For some moments she could find nothing to say. Then she exclaimed, rather breathless:
‘I asked you!’
Her voice was still peremptory. And still the man looked back at her with that narrowed, glittering look of insolence.
‘Ay! Ah know yo’ did! But ’er’s none towd me why ’er’s scraightin’, so ‘appen yo’d better ax ’er.’
Constance gave him one glare of contempt, because of his boorish insolence. How she hated the dialect in his mouth. That alone was a mark of disrespect, as if the fellow threw it in one’s face. — She turned her back on him, and crouched before the child, which blubbered on mechanically.
‘What is it, my dear? What is it? Tell me, dear, tell me!’ she said in false sweetness. ‘What have they done to you?’
But the child only sobbed more chokingly. Constance took out her handkerchief, to wipe the blubbered face.
‘Don’t cry, then! Don’t you cry! Nobody will hurt you! — Tell me what they did to you, dear! What have they done to you, to make you cry like this?’
Her voice was hot with indignation, though really, she was play-acting. Or if she was not play-acting, if she did really feel a motherly distress at the weeping child, at least she was trying to find some occasion to turn and rend the man.
‘There! Tell me what it is! There! Look, here are some Pennies! Tell me what hurt you!’ — She had found a sixpence in her coat pocket, and she held it up before the child.
The little girl took her fists from her eyes to look if the pennies were in actual evidence. Seeing the whiteness of the sixpence, her black eyes quickly dried, though she hid her face in her coat-sleeve again, and her body went on with mechanical but subsiding sobs. Constance waited.
‘It’s the pussy!’ came in shaking tones.
‘The pussy!’ said Constance.
The child kept her face covered for some moments, then, rather awkwardly, she gave it another wipe with her sleeve, and lowered her arm.
‘What pussy, dear?’ said Constance.
The child darted a wary look in the direction of her father, and almost began to speak.
‘Tell me! Don’t be afraid.’
The little girl now lowered her eye-lids self-consciously.
‘’E shot it!’ she said, in a false sort of plaintiveness.
‘Shot a pussy? Did he shoot your pussy?’
The child gave a bold black glance into Constance’s face, then a shy side-peep at the forgotten sixpence. Then she brisked up and turning, pointed into the brambles.
‘’E shot it there!’ she said.
‘Did he! What did he shoot it for?’
A last convulsive little quiver went over the child.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, with affected plaintive pitifulness.
‘Yi that does!’ came the derisive, contemptuous voice of the man. ‘Tha’rt a little liar, when tha says tha doesn’t know.
’
His voice cut like a whip. The child bridled and drew herself up with an air of injured virtue, cool and defiant even at her young age, and ready with the ‘superior’ trick.
Constance rose to her feet, and faced the man.
‘I don’t think you need use such language to a child,’ she said, in cold rebuff.
‘Is people going to gi’ ’er ’er sixpence for tellin’ ’em lies?’ he asked, with the same glitter of derision and rage.
‘If, she was sorry for the cat — !’ said Constance haughtily.
‘There’s the cat! There! If anybody wants to be sorry for him! He’s fat wi’ Sir Clifford’s young rabbits and bods, if that’s summat to be sorry about!’
Constance involuntarily looked round. There stretched out under the brambles lay a large rusty-black cat with a big head, and amazing flat flanks. Dead, the creature looked like a piece of offal, as alive he must have looked a rather fine, if mongrel poacher. Anyhow Constance didn’t like the look of him. She turned to the child.
‘There; dear, take your sixpence!’ She held out the coin, anda little hand came out readily for it. ‘Tell me what your name is, won’t you?’
The child bridled and twisted and dropped her head, making a display of shyness.
‘Connie Parkin!’ she murmured.
‘Connie Parkin! Well it’s a nice name! And were you going for a walk in the wood? Do you like going for a walk in the wood?’
‘No! My dad made me go!’
‘Did he! And why didn’t you want to?’
‘I wanted to stop with my gran.’
‘Did you, dear! Where is your granny?’
‘She’s at cottage, cleanin’ up.’
‘And would you like to go back to her?’
There was an awkward pause, and more twisting.
‘Would you like to go to your granny now, dear?’
‘Yes!‘ came very faintly.
‘Come along then! Give me your hand!’
The child had to change her sixpence to the other fist, to give Constance her hand. Then the two set off down the narrow path, leaving the man with his dog and gun and dead cat. With female wisdom, neither the child nor her ladyship looked back to see the anger and malice and derision on the man’s face. They walked slowly away, feeling they had scored.
But as soon as they had turned into the long riding, out of sight of Parkin, Constance was bored by the continuance of the excursion. She no longer wanted to hold the hand of Connie Parkin. Connie Parkin was a sly, false, impudent little thing, already full to the brim with tricks. There was a whole mile to go, to the cottage! Constance disengaged her hand from Connie Parkin’s and tried to think of something to say to the little creature. But she could think of nothing, and she needn’t have bothered. Connie Parkin was much more thrilled by the companionship of the sixpence inside her own fist, than of her ladyship.
At the cottage, the door was open — it was Saturday, cleaning day — and a little energetic-seeming woman was making a great rattle, black-leading the fire-place. The child ran in to her:
‘Gran! Gran! Look what I’ve had given me!’
The little old woman, with smuts on her nose, from the black-lead, turned round to the child, saying with the shrewish, exaggerated fondness of a grandmother:
‘Why! ’ave you come back by yourself, love!’
‘Look what I’ve got, Gran!’
The old woman, looking up and seeing Constance in the doorway, rose hastily from her knees in front of the empty fireplace, as she wiped her face hastily with her soiled white apron:
‘Why whatever!’
‘Good-morning, Mrs Parkin! Don’t bother to get up. I just brought your little girl home, as she was crying.’
The old woman looked round quickly at her grandchild. ‘What has he bin doin’ to yer, love?’ she asked, in shrewish, grand-maternal tenderness.
Connie Parkin hid in her grandmother’s skirts, whence came her chirping repetition:
‘’E shot a pussy!’
‘Only a poaching cat!’ said Constance. ‘I suppose it upset her, so I brought her along.’
‘It’s very kind of you, I’m sure!’
‘Look! Gran!’ The child held out the sixpence.
‘An’ sixpence an’ all! Why, you’ve been doin’ well, you ’ave, this morning! An’ what did you say?’
‘Thank you!’ faintly murmured the child.
‘Thank you, your ladyship! You know what your daddy said, don’t you!’
‘Thank you, your ladyship,’ the child re-echoed very faintly. It was difficult to make the colliery people utter the title as a form of address, but apparently the old woman thought the sixpence was worth it, this time.
Old Mrs Parkin was abstracted. She felt she’d got black-lead smuts on her face. She furtively passed her apron over her. countenance again, but completely missed the dab on her nose., She felt Constance looking at it, though. So she braved it out, and looked her ladyship in the face.
‘I thought as ’ow there’d be a rattle o’ some sort, when ’e, would ’ave ’er go wi’ ’im!’ she said, lapsing again into the vernacular. ‘They never could hit it, them two, though ’e’s her dad, an’ ought to ’ave more patience. But men never ’as no patience with children, ’ave they? They’re best apart.’
‘Oh yes!’ said Constance.
‘’E’s nasty, an’ ever too ready with ’is ’and! An’ she’s a touchy little mortal, as never forgives! So you may fancy how them two gets on together.’
‘Not at all, I suppose!’ said Constance, laughing and drawing away.
‘You’re right! You’ve said it! An’ me as is ’is mother could never get on with ’im any too bright, I can assure you. Ay! Well! Good-morning! an’ thank yer for bringin’ th’ childt’ ’ome, I’m sure.’
As soon as Constance turned into the wood, the old woman rushed to the handbreadth of mirror that hung by the brush-and-comb box near the door, and seeing the smudges on her nose, her already flushed face flushed bright red with anger. She muttered angrily to herself, as she licked her apron and rubbed at the smudges.
Constance walked back to the hall, feeling once more her dislike of the common people. They were not really straightforward. They resented one, just because one was a little different from themselves, they always hid their feelings up their sleeves. And the man had been insolent, insolent! Yet she could forgive him most easily. He might be a bit of a brute, but he was no cringer, and she didn’t mind his temper. How he disliked that brat of his! She could sympathise with him there! It was an unattractive piece of femininity, that one! She could tell his skin simply crawled at the child’s false airs and ways. Crying over a ‘pussy’, and as hard-hearted a little piece of goods as ever emerged!
Constance was glad to get back to her own milieu, and to Clifford. At least he was not so undignified as that squabbling intimacy of the people. Why should the man want to take such a brat with him into the woods? — But then, she was his own child, and perhaps he wanted somebody in his life. He’d had his finger bitten again that time, though.
It was very soothing to sit in Clifford’s room, and hear him read aloud. His voice was cultured, he read well. And one avoided so much vulgar indignity.
The following Saturday, as it happened, Clifford wanted to send a message to the gamekeeper. It had been raining steadily all morning, and though the rain held off after lunch, the world was much too sodden for Clifford’s chair to venture out.
Yet Constance felt she needed to walk. She wanted to go out, away from the house. Though it had rained so much, still it was not a bad day. The air was soft and still, as if all the world were going to sleep. And once out in the park, in the silence and the suspended softness of the Saturday afternoon, it seemed as if the world had gone unpeopled. It was a soft, grey, deep afternoon, as it may have been before mankind became too many for the natural earth.
In the wood was a great stillness. Heavy drops fell from the bare boughs, with a strange loud noise.
Nothing else moved, Life had withdrawn itself, and a deep remoteness had come over the familiar places. Among the trees was depth within depth of untouched silence, as in an old, yet virgin forest.
Constance walked dreamily on. She felt melancholy, but it was the soft, living melancholy of rest, of passivity. She thought she might meet the gamekeeper, to give him Clifford’s message. At the same time, she knew with deep, dim feeling that there was no one in the wood.
When she came to the cottage, it too seemed to have withdrawn into a dim remoteness. There was no one there. Constance knocked, but no one came. She knocked again. She peeped through the window, and saw a red fire. But no one would ever come. In all the world, there were no people. This afternoon, there were no people on the natural earth.
Still she did not want to go back without leaving her message. So she went round the cottage, to the little closed-in yard at the back, under the steep bank of the silent orchard. She was so sure that there was nobody, that she came suddenly into the little open gateway of the yard, and there stopped as if she had been shot.
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 5
