He worked quietly, troubled. His instinct told him she had come to be near him, nearer and nearer she would want to come. And he wanted nobody to come near him, never any more while he lived. He had never, all his life, felt at ease and free with other people. The war had made it worse. He recoiled from contact more than ever. And his wife had been worst of all for him. He had, somehow, been mistaken, and had made a fool of himself with her. Now he was humiliated, and the one real gratification he had in life was in being alone, always alone.
Especially he did not want to be mixed up with a woman again. His nature was passionate and inflammable. But he had had the lesson of his life with his wife. The feeling of shame was deep and permanent.
Like all really passionate people, he was born solitary, and born incapable of vulgar, promiscuous contacts. There were so few women he could touch. ‘The mass seemed to him repellent, when not repulsive. Yet the true sex desire was strong in him, and very deep. It had been balked and humiliated in his wife. Now he hoped to be alone for ever, apart from women altogether.
The common sexuality of most men, and of his wife among women, was now repulsive. When he was young, and incapable himself of that cheap and nasty sexuality most people seem capable of, he had almost envied other men their squalid sexual facility. But in his wife he had met the vulgar sexuality —which is so utterly different from the true, silent stream of sex — and he knew its worth for ever. It was humiliating and repulsive. He wanted to be left alone, only that.
And as sure as he had reached this point: not to think any more about women, nor to lust steadily after them, nor even to dream of them at night, came this woman seeking him. There she sat in the hut, with her eyes shut, thin, and with shadows under her eyes, at last a fugitive too from the nasty world of people; and the unconscious stream of her sex flowed towards him. Already he could feel the stirring of his bowels, and the hot fusing of his knees.
Did she know? Did she know what she meant’? Did she know? If she knew, then — ! The sudden irrepressible flames of desire ran up his body. She remained so still, and for such a long time. He had finished the one coop, and took another. But he glanced at her. Poor thing! There was a touch of death in her face! But she was breathing softly with peace and with life. Was she waiting? Was she waiting for him?
The strange, soothing flood of peace, the sense that all is well which goes with the true sex, flooded him now. But the damaged human being in him dreaded more than ever exposing itself to the false thing, the false sexuality, which is of a rasping egoism, and the false social virtue, which is utter humiliation. The man in him, the natural male man inherent in life, wanted her to open her eyes and look at him in the softness of desire, so that they could enter that soothing flame of peace which is true sex. But the maimed human being which had only suffered from, human contacts, wanted her to go away, to go away and leave him uninsulted.
She was a woman: and he doubted if women had any left of the genuine, deep sex of womanhood. They all had the modern self-sexuality which rasps a man raw. He loathed them, the self-sexuality women: and most of the young collier lasses were that way. But this one was a lady who knows what she wanted! Anyhow it would be just her own hard, female pleasure, at the best. No, and he was not going to fall for that! Was she coming after him out of brutal feminine curiosity? Ah well! he would not fall for it! No no! How much better to be alone, than to entangle oneself in endless humiliation, just for the sake of a moment’s bad gratification!
Let her go to her own class! Let her find a lover among the gentlemen. What was she after? Let her go home! There had been enough young men in Wragby at Christmas, and enough fooling about! He hated them, the gentry, with their callous pleasures and their inward selfish brutality. Let her go home. Let her leave his wood, like any other trespasser.
No, he could not turn her out. She was my lady, and the wood belonged to her and to Sir Clifford. Himself, he was only a servant, they could turn him off, run out like a stray dog, if he displeased them for a moment. The wood was not his own. He knew in his bones he would have to leave it. He would be jockeyed out into the world again before long. And they, the gentry, they would go on and on, there in Wragby, selfish, empty, pleasant-spoken and cruel in their will. They cared about nothing, and yet they kept all the best places on the earth. They did nothing, yet they gave all the orders, and took all the fruits. They ate the pheasants Parkin reared. And why? Why? Were they good people, good, fine people who should have the best?
They were not. They were fools, who did nothing and cared for nothing except their own importance and their own luxury. Parkin hated them. He hated the well-spoken fools who came to shoot in the autumn. Some of them were mere Ha-has! ‘Here, I say, come here!’ they would call to him, as if he were a dog. The others were perhaps affable, and pretended to be man to man with him. Man to man! He knew what a bluff it was, and he smiled with contempt, to himself. They’d be man to man with him, would they? Ah well, he wasn’t having any! They could keep their man-to-manliness for one another. He noticed they did very little of that. They were cat-wary with one another. Bah! Call them men!
He hated them, and hated the gentry altogether. He found himself gazing fixedly, with hate, at Constance, as she sat in the hut. She opened her eyes, anxiously, as if she had lost something. And the strained look came on his face again.
She rose, looking at Parkin. But he was bending over his work. She went across to him. He glanced up at her quickly. Her face was stiff and tired again.
‘It’s nice here,’ she said. ‘So restful!’
He did not answer, not seeing anything to reply to.
‘I should like to come to the hut sometimes, to sit awhile.’ He still did not answer, only looked at her, and she found it rather difficult to finish what she had to say.
‘You lock the door when you’re not here, don’t you?’
‘Ay!’ The monosyllable was abrupt and hard.
‘Are there two keys?’
‘No! There’s no other but the one I’ve got.’
‘Could you get me another one?’
Her voice was soft, but underneath was the well-known ring of a determined wonman speaking to a man who would have to obey.
‘Another key for th’ hut?’ he said, looking at her with the remembered sparkle of derision in his eyes.
This made her angry.
‘Yes! Don’t you understand what I say?’
‘I understand, my lady, what you say. But where am I to find another key, if Sir Clifford hasn’t got one?’
‘Has Sir Clifford another?’
‘He might have.’
‘‘Very well!’ she said. ‘I’ll ask him. And if he hasn’t got one, you will have another made, from the one you’ve got.’
He looked away into the wood, with anger.
‘I suppose it would only take a day or two to have one made?’ she insisted.
‘I couldn’t tell yer, my lady. I know nobody as makes key round here.’
‘Then I’ll take yours to Uthwaite, and get one like it.’
Their eyes met, in silent hostility. How small and piggish his eyes could look, when he was acting up.
‘If you’ll let me know when you want it!’ he said, with the last sparkle of derision upon his rising anger.
‘I’ll let you know,’ she said. ‘Good-afternoon!’
‘’Afternoon, my lady!’ he said, saluting and turning away.
Constance walked home again, feeling unhappy and angry. She could not bear to be thwarted.
He resumed his work in silent, cold anger. It had begun. He would be driven away. The day was not far off, when he would have to leave the wood. He saw it. She knew he was quiet by himself, so she could not rest till she had disturbed him and ousted him. He knew it. It was so like his own wife. To show her power! Her power! An impotent rage took hold of his soul again. He was impotent, under the power even of that woman. With anger and the sense of impotence, came the idea of death. To die, and to be free at last! Or
else to fight! If a man could but fight, and tear them out of Wragby, the Chatterleys, and make an end of the gentry! Either that, or die, and be rid of it all!
Constance was late for tea. She found Mrs Bolton out under the great beech tree on the knoll in front of the house, looking for her.
‘I just wanted to see if you were coming, my lady. Sir Clifford was asking for his tea.’
There was the subtlest smile of indulgence and mockery of Clifford’s petulance, in the woman’s face. He did so hate to be kept waiting. And how his nurse knew him already!
‘Am I late?’ said Constance. ‘I was sitting in the wood, and it seemed so quiet. Why didn’t you make the tea, Mrs Bolton?’
‘It’s not my place, my lady. I don’t think Sir Clifford would like it at all.’
‘Why not?’ said Constance.
She went in to him with her few wild-flowers in her hand.
‘I’m sorry I’m late, Clifford. Why didn’t you tell Mrs Bolton to make the tea?’
‘I never thought of it,’ he said ironically. ‘Wouldn’t you have been surprised if you’d come in and found Mrs Bolton sitting behind the tea-pot?’
‘No! Not really! Why should I? There’s nothing sacrosanct about a silver tea-pot, is there?’
He glanced at her curiously.
‘What did you do?’ he asked.
‘Look! I walked right across the wood! Aren’t the daffodils fresh and lovely! Isn’t it wonderful, what comes out of the earth?’
‘Just as much out of the sky and air,’ he said.
‘But modelled in the earth. Anyhow, it’ doesn’t matter. Oh Clifford, is there another key to the wood-hut?’
She had laid her gloves and flowers on the small round tea-table — they always took tea in Clifford’s study — and was pouring the boiling water from the silver kettle into the old silver tea-pot. Clifford watched her, wondering if he could bear to let Mrs Bolton do it. But Constance was so unconcerned. Her gloves and the few flowers lying there were much more on her mind than the sacred process of making tea. In fact, as soon as she had popped the silvery-grey tea-cosy over the tea-pot, for the tea to mash, she rose and found a little glass bowl for her flowers, arranging them lightly, the few daffodils and primroses, the odd violets and drooping wild-flowers, the two bits of pussy-willow. She touched the rather wilted flowers lightly.
‘They’ll come up again,’ she said.
And she put them down on the tea-table.
Clifford watched her narrowly. She irritated him. He was not there for her at all.
‘What did you want a key to the hut for?’
‘It’s so nice there. I sat still and listened to the wind. Parkin was mending coops for the hens and the young pheasants. I thought I might rest there sometimes. I asked Parkin about a key, but he said he hadn’t another, and perhaps you had one.’
‘I doubt it. But we can look.’
She brought him his tea, and the bread and butter.
‘I thought Parkin wasn’t very keen for me to have a key. Do you think he’d mind?’ she said.
‘Possibly! I think he likes to feel that that is his private reserve.’
‘But there’s no reason why it should be, is there? He only does carpentering and little jobs there. Why shouldn’t I have somewhere where I can rest, and still be in shelter, in the wood?’
‘Quite! He feels that the hut is his private lair, where he sleeps sometimes and keeps watch.’
‘But do you think I oughtn’t to go there, then?’
‘Ought! There’s no ought about it. You do as you wish. You may as well be prepared for Parkin to be offended, though. He’s easily offended.’
‘And shouldn’t I offend him?’
‘I tell you, that is as you wish.’
‘But surely, he shouldn’t be offended!’
‘Quite! You have a perfect right to go into the hut. It isn’t his private house. But I think he’s none too pleased even if we go into the wood.’
‘But really— !’
‘Oh, I know! But that’s how the lower orders are. You put them in charge, and they think they’re in possession. I suppose he’ll find some way or other of getting even with me, if you take to sitting in the hut.’
‘Why, what could he do?’
‘He knows, better than I do. Raise about half the number of pheasants he might raise — or never hunt up the nests — or feed them in some place apart, so we could never find out how many there are — and maybe sell them sub rosa to his Tevershall friends.’
Constance held her breath.
‘He wouldn’t be so treacherous!’
Clifford laughed.
‘He wouldn’t call it treachery. He’d say he had a right to the birds he’d raised himself.’
She still held her breath.
‘Do you hate him?’ she asked at length.
He laughed.
‘Hate him? I’m not personal about him at all. He’s an excellent gamekeeper. But he’s also a malcontent, and none too civil, as you’ll no doubt find out, if you insist on using his hut.’
‘But is it his hut?’
He smiled at her with fine malice.
‘Why not ask him?’ he said.
Clifford had touched a sore spot in her. Nothing made her more angry than when servants or poor people treated her merely as a member of the possessive class. She wanted to be herself, not a member of any class. Any demagogic display, or any show of the vulgar class grudge and class spite, on either side, made her nerves run the wrong way.
So that was how Parkin would treat her! It made her very angry.
The next afternoon was sunny with white clouds. She asked Clifford to go to the wood with her. And she walked at the side of the chair, feeling very wifely and true to her own sphere.
The ground was fairly dry, the chair went easily. It was behaving itself. The wind was still rather cold, but light and without buffets, and the sunshine was a wonder. In the hazel copse, the lambs-tails were hanging like a curtain, coming soft in the filtered sunshine. The wind-flowers in the sun-filled places were wide open, wide white little things, exclaiming with the joy of a little life. And they had a faint scent like apple-blossom. Constance gathered a few, and brought them to Clifford. So wide-open with new delight, they were.
He took them and looked at them.
‘“Thou still unravished bride of quietness,”’ he quoted. ‘Spring flowers always seem like that to me, much more than Greek vases.’
Constance’s heart sank. But she had to come back at him.
‘Ravished is such a horrid word!’ she said. ‘And they don’t look like foster-children of silence and slow time, do they?’
‘I think they do,’ he said.
‘But they look so light and alive and quick, and nobody’s foster-child!’ she persisted.
‘“Thou foster-child of silence and slow Time”,’ he quoted. ‘But look! Look at these anemones, and tell me if anything could be more fitting!’
She looked, but only felt immeasurably depressed. And she went away, looking for wide yellow celandines, with their varnished points. And as she gathered them she thought: ‘Nobody ravishes the flowers, bees don’t and beetles don’t — unless we do when we pick them and say things about them.’
She said she was tired. Today the keeper did not come. But the chair performed its duties, and slowly rolled its own way home, Constance walking beside it in silence, feeling tired, and her spirits low, in spite of the sunshine. And the evening with Clifford seemed interminable. She went up to bed at nine o’clock.
The next day was rainy, but in showers. In a sense, Constance felt relieved. When the sun shone, she felt she ought to be alive, to live. The sunshine was a reproach to her half-deadness. But when it rained, it didn’t matter. One might just as well be half-dead.
Nevertheless, in the afternoon she felt stifled. The house weighed on her insufferably, with its heap of old masonry. She must get out. The wood drew her as by some silent magnetic force. In an interval whe
n there was no rain, she put on her old blue waterproof and escaped. That was always how she felt when she got into the park: escape.
She walked slowly, dimly, heeding nothing. The sky was grey, but not cold. One could be still. She determined not to go to the hut. Yet when she was in the wood, there came such a sharp shower of rain, and walking was so clayey and heavy, she turned in the isolation of the rain down the narrow track to the hut clearing.
No one was there. The hut was closed and locked. But there was a little pent-roof over the door, and the rain blew from behind. She sat on the wooden door-step, gathering her mackintosh round her skirts. Yes, and the place was a sacred place, silent and healing. Unravished! Yes, it was one of the unravished places of old stillness.
She sat blindly watching the rain, listening to the subtle manifold noise of it, that sounded apart from the sudden queer soughings of the wind in the forest. Old oak-trees stood around, and the ground was fairly free of undergrowth, the rushy remains of bracken on the floor, purplish ropes of bramble tangled up, and an odd weak elderbush. Then the space of grey old oaks, making the everlasting silence of Britain. This was all in front. Only behind the hut was the dense hazel-copse, through which the path came.
She sat a long time, and was still. It was all she wanted, to be still. But she was growing cold. And the rain was abating. She would go. Yes, the rain was still dripping in trickles off the hut, but it was hardly making ghosts among the oak-trees any more. She would go. She felt it was time to slip away.
Yet she sat on, and did not rise to her feet till the brown, wet dog ran towards her, waving the wet feather of its tail. The keeper followed, in a short oilskin coat, like a chauffeur. She had risen to her feet, and stood vaguely under the hand-breadth of porch roof.
The keeper saluted very hastily, his face red and hot with rain, but he did not speak, Constance moved away from in front of the door.
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 11
