To this stage, however, Constance had not reached. She was in the wild turmoil of passion, and had not yet fixed upon any one aspect or phase of the passion, with which to identify herself.
She came home flushed and panting, and, although it was still bright day, not much after six o’clock, she immediately began her explanations.
‘I walked over to Marehay and went in to see the baby. Mrs Flint made me have tea, with her: Flint was gone to market. It’s such a bonny baby, such a dear, with hair like cobwebs: but such a dear! — Did you wonder where I was?’
‘Well, we wondered! But we didn’t think of sending round to the police-station just yet,’ said Clifford, eyeing her curiously.
‘I saw you go across the park to the iron gate, my lady,’ said Mrs Bolton. ‘So I thought you’d perhaps gone over and called at the rectory, and had tea there.’
‘I nearly did,’ said Constance, looking round at the nurse. ‘Then I changed my mind and went round by Marehay.’
The eyes of the two women met, Mrs Bolton’s, grey and bright and cool, Constance’s, bright and burning. And with the infernal instinct of her kind, Mrs Bolton knew that Constance had a lover of some sort. She had suspected it before. Tonight she was sure. And a curious pleasure, a satisfaction almost as if it had been her own lover, leaped up inside her. Only the question began to burn in her mind, who was he?
‘Well it’s good you did!’ she said, in reply to Constance. ‘I was telling Sir Clifford, we ought only to be too glad if her ladyship will go out and find a bit of company among the ladies round about. — You don’t get out enough, really you know, your ladyship. If only you would go out to tea sometimes, it would be so good for you.’
Mrs Bolton was presuming on her rights as nurse. Clifford and Constance were silent for a moment. Then Constance said:
‘Yes, I’m glad I went, I like Mrs Flint, she’s a dear creature. And the baby is really adorable, Clifford, really adorable. Its hair is just like spider-webs, so fine, and bright orange! — and it has the oddest, queer cheeky blue eyes! Adorable!’
She spoke with a new, hot passion of maternity, strange in her. It made Clifford very uneasy.
‘Curious how red-haired people breed their own type!’ he said.
‘But wouldn’t you like to see it? — the baby? — I asked Mrs Flint to bring it one day,’ she said.
Clifford looked at her curiously.
‘You can have a mothers’ tea-party yourself that day, up in your room,’ he said, not unamiably though.
‘Why? Don’t you want to see it?’ she cried in resentment.
‘Oh, I’ll see it. I’ll kiss it too, if you like. I’m sure it’s a cute little thing, right enough. But you must let me off a whole tea-time with it.’
‘Very well,’ said Constance. ‘Then when she comes, Mrs Bolton, we’ll have tea in my room.’
‘You’re quite right, my lady! Then you can have a nice woman’s talk all to yourselves,’ said Mrs Bolton.
But in her mind she was thinking: Who can he be? Is there any man over Marehay way? It would never be Luke Flint, no! Then who? Who? — She could not hit upon any man that would do for Constance’s lover. Yet she exulted within herself, and pined for a demonstrable proof. And she exulted with queer malice over Sir Clifford. There, Sir Clifford. Now who is the gentleman, and Sir Bossy Benjamin! Now what about the grand Chatterleys! My lady’s got a lover somewhere about. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
She forgot that Clifford smoked no more.
After dinner, Constance asked Clifford to read to her, so that she needn’t listen. And for some reason, he chose Racine. She heard his voice going on and on, in the grand manner of the French. She bent her head over her sewing and heard mere sounds. She was full of a strange triumph, and a sort of glory of new pleasure. She could still feel the echoes of the thrill of passion in her blood, ebbing away down all her veins like the rich after-humming of deep bells. The whole of her life had a new throb, in which she exulted. And she remembered the soft, moist mouth of the man kissing her in a soft, straying, absent manner, after he had loved her, and she triumphed.
Clifford made some comment to her about Racine. She caught the words even after they had gone.
‘Yes! Yes!’ she said, looking up with glowing eyes. ‘It’s very splendid, even the sound of it.’
He wondered over the deep, blue blaze of her eyes, and was a little afraid. He resumed his reading, and she bent again over her sewing, hearing the throaty sound of the French as if it were the wind in the chimneys. Of the Racine, she heard not one; syllable.
She was absorbed in herself, her own new experience. All her body was alive, and softly vibrating, like the woods under the pulsing of the sap. It was as if passion had swept into her like a new breath, and changed her from her dead wintriness. She was like a forest soughing with the soft glad moan of spring, moving into bud. And she felt sure she would have a child, a baby with soft live limbs, and a little life of its own, ensheathed in her own life. She could feel her body, like the dark interlacing of the boughs of the oak-wood, humming inaudibly with myriad, unfolding buds. Meanwhile the birds of desire had their heads on their shoulders, asleep in delight, in the vast interlaced intricacy of her body.
A baby! The thought thrilled through her like the thrill of coition. What if it had his tight, reddish-brown eyes, with the passionate potency, the flames shut down in them! She hoped it might have: for the sake of some woman in the future. Passion like that was a gift indeed. And his beautiful silky skin, that was finer than her own! But not his mouth, that was rather angry. And not his figure! Taller, more graceful He was not graceful. She could imagine him dancing a Highland reel, but not a fox-trot nor a tango. He would never be elegant. And she wanted her son to be elegant too.
She thought of the man in a detached way now. When she closed her eyes and thought only of his kiss, and the touch of him, she seemed to lose herself in him. But when she had her eyes open, she could detach herself from him. She had got the best of him, got it in her veins and her womb and her soul. For the time being, she needed him no more.
Meanwhile Clifford’s voice went on, clapping and gurgling with unusual sounds. She glanced at him. And she thought, suddenly, what a queer rapacity there was in his naked face and his alert cautious eyes. The rapacity of our civilization, suave but insatiable, cautious and remorseless. He had, in his own soul, got over his accident and now his will was more than a will-to-live. It was the steely flexible but insentient modern will to assert himself. He still was going to make his mark on his environment: even if the mark should only be a scar! But he was no longer personal. He no longer cared about persons. It was the mines that occupied his attention, on them his will was fixed. He was going to pull them out of the depression: he was going to make money.
How he had changed, from the once pale, poem-writing, idealist Clifford! Now he was like some bird with a red beak, that flapped its wings and looked with intent, beady eyes for what it should eat. It was a dangerous face, revealing a fixed, insentient will. She would have to be careful of him. She shuddered a little. But then, she thought she could manage him. Her soul was as astute and steel as his.
She tried to retire again into the sacred and sensitive forest of herself, herself filled with passion, a communication delicate as the scent of young leaves. But she found the sacred grove for some reason violated, or it had lost its virtue. She thought of the other man. Well, of him she need not think. She need not be afraid of him.
The reading finished. She was startled. She looked up, and was more startled still to see Clifford watching her with a faint, cruel smile in his eyes.
‘Thank you so much!’ she said, with a ready instinct of self-preservation. ‘You do read Racine beautifully.’
‘Not more beautifully than you listen to him,’ he said ironically, putting the book away.
She knew it was wisest not to answer.
‘After all,’ he said, ‘you’ve got all the important feelings there in
Racine. The feelings modern novelists and people pretend to feel are only vulgarizations of the classic emotions, just as the curves of the art nouveau furniture are vulgarizations from the true line of the curve.’
She watched him with wide, vague, veiled eyes.
‘Yes!’ she said slowly. ‘I’m sure that’s true.’
‘The modern world has worked emotions up to such a false vulgarity,’ he said, ‘the only way is to have as few emotions as possible: none, for preference.’
‘Yes,’ she said again, with that slowness, as if she were carefully deliberating what he said. As a matter of fact, she was most carefully screening her own new emotions. ‘One does get terribly tired of people’s feelings. They seem as if they stencilled them on for effect, don’t they?’
‘Exactly!’ he laughed, with queer savageness.
Mrs Bolton brought in the tray with a cup of some nourishing hot drink which she had introduced as the night-cap for the two. It helped Clifford to sleep: he slept so badly. And it had been useful to help Constance get fatter, when she was so thin.
Constance was so glad she need no longer help Clifford to bed. Mrs Bolton had taken over the task. It was Connie’s gradual abandonment of all her intimate duties towards him, that had finally hardened Clifford’s heart, and cut him off from her, emotionally. Tonight she lingered queerly, took his cup and put it on the tray, then picked up the tray.
‘Good-night Clifford! Do sleep well! The Racine gets into one like a dream. — Good-night!’
As she spoke, she drifted dreamily nearer the door. She was going without kissing him good-night. He watched her with lynx eyes. Even that she could forget! And he was too proud, too offended to remind her. Though the kiss, indeed, was but a formality. Yet so much of life is just formality. It is these formalities that hold the structure together.
She drifted out vaguely with the tray, and closed the door behind her. He gazed angrily at the door-panels, too angry to ring as yet for Mrs Bolton. Ah well! Let the last vestiges of the old love disappear! He could not make love to her! and therefore she was withdrawing every tiny show of love. She forgot, no doubt. But the forgetfulness was part of her whole intention.
Ah well! He was a man, and asked charity from nobody, not even his wife! He was a net-work of nerves, it is true, and suffered terrible nervous torments of fear and gloom, dread of death, dread of the future. But after all, Mrs Bolton was his best tonic. She did not understand the awfulness of his mental condition, as Connie did, therefore she was the best help.
He was remarkably healthy, considering. And he looked so well, in the face. He was proud of that. He knew he was crippled for life. But the will-to-exist was very powerful in him. It gave his bright light-blue, over-conscious English eyes an odd look, at once secret and assertive: the half-concealed look of the intense will-to-exist and to hold his life and his possessions against all odds. It was the look of the cripple in his eyes, something bright, slightly furtive, almost impudent.
His dread was the nights, when he could not sleep. But now he would ring for Mrs Bolton, and she would come in her dressing-gown, with hair in a plait down her back, strangely girlish and secretive, and talk to him, or play chess or cards with him. She had a queer faculty of playing even chess while she was three parts asleep. And this, and the peculiar intimacy of the silent night, the reading-lamp, the woman with her plait of hair down her back, soothed Clifford and perhaps sent him to -sleep again. If not, she would make a cup of bovril or of some milk food, one for herself and one for him, with a dry biscuit. Tonight, at the back of her mind, she was continually wondering whom her ladyship had found for a lover. There seemed no gentleman possible. And she always went across the park towards the wood. There was even no house in that direction, except Marehay: and surely Marehay was impossible, there was nobody there. — She must enquire if Mrs Flint had a lodger, if it was possible one of the young engineers lodged there. But it was unlikely.
There was Parkin in the wood, of course! — alone too, and living alone! — and a man who could run after a woman, in his common way. Oh, Mrs Bolton knew that! But ,then her ladyship would never stoop to him! — he was so common, and that wife of his had made him commoner. He might be attractive to a low sort of woman, if any one could stand his overbearing, nasty way. But for a refined woman, he was just a snarling nasty -brute.
Still, you never knew! When women did fall, they sometimes liked to fall as low as they could. Refined ladies would fall in love with niggers, so her ladyship might enjoy demeaning herself with that foul-mouthed fellow, who would bully her the moment he got a chance. But there, she’d had her own way so long, she might be asking to be bullied.
In her half-sleep, thoughts like these drowsed through Mr Bolton’s mind, as she rather drearily played cards with Sir Clifford. They gambled mildly, to keep the game alive. It was one of Clifford’s bad nights. He couldn’t go to sleep till dawn Luckily, dawn was fairly early now.
Constance was in bed, and she slept deeply. Parkin, after Constance had left him in the drive, went to the hut, and as night fell, he closed the coops and locked up. Then he we home to the cottage and made his evening meal. But he was unsettled, in a ferment. As darkness deepened into night, in the clear spring evening, be put on his coat again and took his gun. He could not rest. His dog Flossie looked up at him.
‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘We’re best outside.’
It was a starry night, with no moon. His eyes, like a cat’s, dilated in the darkness, and he was at home in the wood. He went his round stealthily, cautiously. But his heart was not in it. The real hunter’s instinct abandoned him tonight. He more or less knew it would be so. A woman always interferes with the true hunting or war-path instinct in a man, if she gets beneath his skin.
And this woman had disoriented him. He did not care vastly if there should be poachers setting silent snares for his hares or for his pheasants. He didn’t really care. He wanted the woman, who had gone away from him.
Nevertheless he made his rounds cautiously and thoroughly, till the night was getting late, beating the bounds of the wood like one in a dream. He wanted really to come to the woman. For some reason she had trailed away with her the thin end of his desire, and it drew him, drew him after her.
But he refused to be conscious of it. He was weary, he knew he was weary. He went at last to the hut, and sat awhile in the doorway, looking out at the stars and the silent darkness of growing trees. Somehow, the stars looked slippery between the boughs of the trees. And for some reason, they were like the body of a woman.
After gazing a long time motionless into the night, becoming again conscious of a certain weariness that was upon him, he shut the door of the hut, and wrapping himself in a khaki blanket, remainder from the war, he went heavily to sleep.
Yet he woke, uneasily, after a while. It was still dark night. He looked at his phosphorescent watch. It was half-past three. He sighed — and got up. It was cold. He put on his coat and his hat, took his gun, and went out, followed by the dog. It was still night, but night towards morning. The stars shone imperturbable. But he was restless and cold. He walked away into the wood, without knowing in which direction, merely going on in the night.
So, with prowling quietness, in the heavy chill at the end of night, he climbed uphill to the knoll, to listen and look out. There was not a sound: and in the distance, scarcely a light, save the electric arc-lamps at the colliery away beyond the park. The world was utterly still and wan and dead, and he felt au unbearable melancholy weighing on his heart. He wanted to come to the woman, to lose, in contact with her body, the sense of dread and of heart-chill. He felt he needed her, needed her infinitely. He needed the contact with her, needed it terribly, to save the life in his heart. Yet he remained for a long time on the knoll, looking out into the hollow of the invisible world, where was nothing except a hollow sort of dread.
At last, he slowly descended, and slowly, as if drawn by a magnet, went across the wood to the park gates. And when he got th
ere, already the faint, ghostly pallor of the outer air announced that dawn would come, though not at once. He stood at the gate, gazing into the outer intangible obscurity. The chill that was on his heart, and the pain of uncertainty that was in his bowels, wanted the woman, if only for one moment, for one touch of re-assurance. The terrible chill sense of being cut off, of not being linked up with life, tortured him blindly. If only he could see the woman, and have one warm touch, one gentle word, the world would be all right again.
He opened the gate, and went slowly into the park, slowly, slowly along the colourless path, that would be pink gravel when the dawn came. Dawn, however, had not come, only a deathly sort of greyness, that became more livid. Not even the first flush of colour. And yet, undoubtedly, the sky was paling, and the trees were detaching themselves darkly from the monotone obscurity of the park. It was like a mist. Yet there was no mist. This was the advance of light.
He went slowly up the incline, towards the house, hoping for the woman. It was a necessity, that he should see her, should come to her, should touch her if only for a moment. If he found his way into the house! — or if he made her know he was there!— or if he waited, waited, waited for naked day.
He came to the top of the knoll, where the great trees were and the lozenge where the two big beeches grew, encircled by the sweep of the drive in front of the house. There was the house, low and vague. He could see it, so it must be nearly day. Nearly day, though the dawn had not even yet flushed into colour, and all was ashen grey.
There was a light burning downstairs, in Sir Clifford’s room. Parkin knew that was his room. But which room was she in, the woman who had carried away with her the frail thread of his life and his desire? He did not know. He stood there on the drive, with his gun in his hand, motionless, as the first flush of day entered the sky. And motionless he remained.
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 16
