‘Eh, my lady, what else is there to last, if it’s the right man?’ replied the nurse, almost mocking.
Constance looked at her.
‘I think you’re right!’ she said. ‘It’s when he touches you —’
Mrs Bolton’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.
‘And even that they’d kill if they could,’ she said fiercely. ‘They’d like to kill his very touch that he left inside you. If they could!’
It was spring, a warm day, with a perfume of earth and auriculas, and yellow flowers down the garden, and many things in bud, and a blue sky.
In the afternoon, she felt she must go and speak to Parkin. The first dandelions were wide-open, giving themselves off in yellow rays. The hazel-thicket was a lace-work of half-open leaves, green, and purplish stems, and the last dusky catkins. Yellow celandines in myriads were flat open, pressed back in, urgency and the yellow glitter of themselves. They were in myriads, in the abundance of May. And primroses were broad and full of a pale abandon, broad, thick-clustered primroses. And the bluebells were a thick, lush dark green, with buds rising, like pale corn, while in the riding the forget-me-nots were fluffing up, and the purple ruches of the columbine leaves were getting wider, and showing a bud-knot.
He was not at the hut. She walked on slowly, hoping to find him, on towards the cottage, where he so rarely was. The double daffodils stood in tufts near the door, and the red double daisies were all out. The door was open and he was sitting at table, in his shirt-sleeves, eating.
‘May I come in?’ she said, as he rose and came to the door.
‘Come in!’ he said, wiping his mouth, still chewing.
The sun shone into the room, which still smelled of a mutton chop done on the grid-iron. The black potato-saucepan was on a piece of paper by the white hearth, the fire was red, rather low, the bar dropped, the kettle singing.
And he had his plate with potatoes and the remains of the chop on the table, that was covered with dark chocolate oil-cloth. He had also bread and salt, a mug of beer, and a piece of cheese on a blue plate. The place was tidy, but rather comfortless. All the nick-nacks and little cloths and things that delight a woman, were gone, the yellow-painted little dresser was bare, the sofa had no soft cushions, only the same oil-cloth, dark chocolate, as covered the table.
She sat down in the Windsor arm-chair by the cupboard.
‘You are very late!’ she said. ‘Do finish eating.’
‘Yes! I had to go to Uthwaite,’ he replied, wiping his mouth again on his red handkerchief, and sitting down at table, but not taking up the black-handled knife and fork.
‘Do eat!’ she said.
‘Shall yer have something?’ he said. ‘Shall yer have a cup o’ tea? — th’ kettle’s on t’boil.’ He half rose from his chair.
‘May I make it myself?’ she said, rising.
‘If you like! — Tea-pot’s in the cupboard, an’ th’ tea’s on mantel over your head.’
She got the black tea-pot, and the tea-canister from the mantel-shelf. Putting water to rinse the tea-pot, she went to the door and threw the rinse water down the path. How lovely it was! So still, the wood seeming so primeval, the oak-trees ochreous-gold with spring. She looked at the big, hollow sandstone of the threshold, that was now crossed by so few feet.
He had begun to eat again, rather hurriedly and unwillingly. But he knew perfectly well how to use his knife and fork, and how to behave. As a matter of fact, he knew how to behave in most ways, and even how to speak correctly, at least much more correctly than the way in which he usually spoke. His broadness was wilful. So were his manners.
She made the tea, in silence, and he pushed his plate aside, and cut bread, eating large mouthfuls, chewing steadily, and eating the cheese simply, taking it with his fingers.
‘Shall I take your plate away?’ she said, leaning over and lifting his plate from the table.
He looked up at her with an amused little laugh.
‘If you’ve a mind,’ he said.
And she tramped across the uneven brick floor, to the dark scullery at the back.
‘You’ll see milk i’ t’ pantry,’ he called.
She opened another door, and in the white-washed narrow pantry found a little milk-jug. The place was clean and bare. But there was a barrel of beer.
‘How do you get your milk?’ she said.
‘Flints leaves me a pint in a bottle, at th’ warren gate, an’ I fetch it when I can. That’s what I was goin’ for that time — you know—’
She remembered the time he met her, but she did not speak.
‘Ay —, he said; laughing at her. ‘You thought I shouldn’t catch you, didn’t you? Yet that was the first time you come, wi’ me—’
It was not a question, but a reminder that he had heard her short, sharp cries of passion. He was watching her curiously, to see if she resented it.
‘Will you have a cup of tea too?’ she asked him.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said, finishing the beer.
She found two cups in the cupboard, and the sugar, but no spoons.
‘Where are spoons?’ she said.
He reached and pulled open the table drawer in front of her —he was sitting with his back to the wall, the light of the window falling sideways on him. She took the spoons, and put herself a chair at the table, facing the window and the open door.
‘Ay!’ he said. ‘That’s where my wife sat. I can fancy I’m set up again, can’t I? Not so much to your fancy, though, I’ll be bound.’
His eyes were laughing at her tauntingly all the time.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, puzzled.
‘I’m sayin’ it looks like you was my wife, sittin’ there! You’d hardly fancy it, would you?’
‘I should like it sometimes,’ she said, simply.
A quick laugh went over his face.
‘Ay — sometimes!’ he said. ‘You’re about right! Sometimes!— I say though’ he added, more seriously, ‘if anybody did happen to come an’ see you — I don’t know who it would be, but you never know —’ He glanced at the open door.
‘It wouldn’t matter. They wouldn’t think anything,’ she said.
‘They mightn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s but a cup o’ tea, when all’s said an’ done. — An’ you like it, you say, to be my wife sometimes?’
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Do you?’
‘It suits me down to the ground — as long as it lasts,’ he added, less good-humouredly, apprehensively.
‘Why do you say, as long as it lasts?’ she reproached him. He looked at her a long time, into her eyes, and she lowered her lids.
‘Ay! Why do I?’ he said at last, with vague melancholy. He drank his tea, and sat with his hands in his pockets, in silence, while she gazed out into the sunshine. Suddenly he lifted his head, and pressed back his shoulders, stretching his body in the quiver of desire.
‘Shall we go upstairs?’ he asked softly.
She looked at him really startled.
‘No! Not today! Not that today!’ she cried.
He looked searchingly into her eyes, searching for the latent desire in her. Today he didn’t find it — there was another sort of wistfulness in her look. His shoulders gradually relaxed, and the tension slowly subsided in the muscles of his body. He sank into silence again.
‘Will you-have some more tea?’ she asked him.
He pushed forward his cup without looking at her. She poured out the rather strong tea, and watched him pour in the milk. Then at last he drank, wetting his sticking-out brown moustache, and wiping it automatically on his fingers.
‘Do you like having a moustache?’ she asked him.
‘Me !’ — and he looked at his wetted fingers. ‘I usually have that other cup,’ he said.
‘It hides your mouth — one can’t see what sort of mouth you’ve got,’ she said to him.
He looked up at her, smiling ironically.
‘Why? Do you think it’s a bad one?’ he said. And wi
th a queer face, he took his moustache in both hands and lifted it aside, sticking his mouth out a little as he did so. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s what it is!’
There was something infinitely sad in the still, mute, rather pushed-out lips.
‘Kiss me!’ she whispered. ‘Kiss me because you like me, not because you want me.’
And she looked at him pathetically.
He pushed back his chair and opened his arms, with a little gesture half of command.
‘Come then !’ he said.
She went over to his arms, and he bent his head over her, kissing her tenderly, and with a sort of grief, and holding her fast to his breast.
‘If it’s but for a minute,’ he said, ‘it’s there while it lasts.’
‘What lasts?’ she said, looking up into his thoughtful face.
But he did not answer.
‘Tha’rt but a lass,’ he said gently. ‘How old ar ter?’
‘I’m twenty-seven, which isn’t so young at all. — How old are you?’
‘Are you as much as that? I’m eleven years older.’
“Thirty-eight — nearly forty—!’
‘Ay!’
‘But you love me?’ she asked.
He frowned a little.
‘It looks like it,’ he said. ‘But who knows!’
‘And don’t you care whether I love you or not?’ she said.
His eyes came back to hers, with that swift, searching look.
‘Nay!’ he said with a faint smile. ‘What’s the good o’ carin’?’
She did not understand him.
‘Why not?’
He pulled himself together.
‘You an’ me!’ he said. ‘It’s not as if we could think o’ marryin’.’
‘Couldn’t you think of it?’ she asked, searching his face.
Back came his eyes to her, always giving her heart a shock.
‘Why, could you?’ he said.
She thought about it in a wavering fashion.
‘I feel married to you in a way,’ she said.
His eyes began to look amused.
‘Ay — sometimes!’ he said.
‘Yes! Why shouldn’t I be your wife sometimes, as long as we live? Why must it be a regular marriage?’
He pondered her words.
‘And you think it could be like that?’ he said slowly. ‘Off and on, while we live?’
‘Why not?’ she said, pushing back his moustache with her fingers, and kissing him on those hidden lips and quivering at her own temerity.
‘Ay, why not, if it could be so?’ he said, taking no notice of her.
‘Why couldn’t it? You wouldn’t want me always in this cottage, always, always, always, till doomsday, would you?’
‘I know you wouldn’t want it yourself,’ he said.
‘But you wouldn’t want me to want it!’ she insisted.
‘No! I don’t want you to want it,’ he repeated, smiling. ‘It’d be nice if you could be my wife sometimes, while we live: while ever we wanted it! If it could be done.’
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Off and on!’
She was sitting on his knee, and still stroking his moustache, and touching his lips, teasing him.
‘We’ll see!’ he said.
‘Yes!’ she said, clinging to him suddenly. ‘Let us see! Let me be your wife off and on. And you be my husband. Will you? Will you be my husband, like now: off and on?’
‘Yes!’ he said in good English. ‘I will! I will while ever we can.’
‘Why not always!’ she said, pressing herself to his breast.
‘Sometimes always, always sometimes,’ he said, smiling.
‘Yes! Why not? Why not?’
‘We’ll see!’
‘And you’ll like me, won’t you?’ she said. ‘You won’t always just want me!’
‘Ay, I’ll like you,’ he said, with peculiar acquiescence, as she rested against the unconscious rise and fall of his breast
‘And what will you call me?’ she said.
‘Call you?’
‘Will you always call me my-lady?’ she teased.
‘Back your life I shall!’
‘Call me Connie!’
‘Connie!’
‘What is your name?’
‘Oliver.’
‘Shall I call you Oliver?’
‘If you like.’
‘Oliver! How queer that you should be Oliver!’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t. know. It just seems queer. Give me your hand, Oliver, will you?’
He began to laugh.
‘Why do you laugh? It does sound queer, doesn’t it? Speak to me, call me by my name.’
‘What am I to say to you, Connie?’ he said, in a funny artificial way.
‘It does sound not quite right, somehow,’ she said.
‘We’ll call one another by no names,’ he said hastily.
‘Perhaps not. But give me your hand. Hold my hand fast!’
He clasped her hand fast in his right hand.
‘There I’ she said. ‘Now I feel safe.’
He was silent for some time, as she sat on his lap, leaning her head against his chest, and holding his hand clasped. It was a moment of perfect peace.
‘Ay!’ he said at last. ‘But th’ door is wide open, an’ if anybody chanced to come afore we ’eered ’em!’
She rose suddenly and closed the door. Then she said:
‘Then sit here in the arm-chair, and hold me still, will you? Will you? Or don’t you want to?’
He rose silently, and went over to the arm-chair. She stood troubled, near the table a little forlorn.
‘Come then!’ he said, with a queer, sipping movement of the head. ‘Come then, be a little lass, an’ we’ll be quiet.’
She went straight to his arms, and he held her close, in silence, in the still, warm little room, with all the wild sunshine of spring outside. And clinging close like a child, she went to sleep. And he, his head drooping above her, passed also into doze, infinitely soothing and still. He was vaguely conscious, and conscious of the passage of time, and of the dog at the door. But Flossie lay down to sleep outside the door, and Connie slept heavy and still, in his lap, indoors, and his consciousness flowed vague and still and warm, like the pouring of sunshine.
And the sun moved slowly, slowly across the room, shortening, lingering, gathering itself to depart. And the dog roused outside, and settled down again with a sigh in the shade from the sun. But the woman curled heavy in the man’s lap, lay still, and did not move, and his arms softly held her, as she lay against him. And he too was motionless, in a stillness, only faintly, faintly conscious of the outside world, as the soft heavy weight of the woman lay full on his life. Sometimes, at long intervals, she woke and looked up at him, and saw him looking down at her, as he lifted her and moved her a little, upon his thighs. But she quickly nestled down to him again, for fear she should have to leave him. And he leaned his face down against her hair, and lapsed into semi-consciousness, in the pure forgetfulness which is perhaps the best experience of life.
As the sun left the room, however, she began to stir, to wake. And when it was gone, she lay against his breast with her eyes open. On the wall by the door was a big enlarged photograph of himself and his wife, at the time of their marriage: he, young and alert and defiant, the woman with curled black hair and a black satin blouse with a big brooch, rather common, vulgar.
She opened her lips after what had been an eternity, and said:
‘Why do you have that there?’
‘Eh?’ he said, startled, not knowing she was awake and thinking.
‘Why do you have that horrid enlarged photograph of yourself and your wife? — Was it when you were married?’
He looked at the framed carbon enlargement.
‘Just after!’ he said. And he looked again. It was years since he had even seen the thing.
‘Why do you have it?’ she persisted.
‘I don’t know! Folks doe
s have ’em!’ he said.
‘I think they’re horrid. They always look like dead people,’ she said.
‘I don’t suppose it’s got much of either of us now,’ he said. ‘It’s neither me nor her.’
‘It’s hideous!’ she said. ‘Did you like her when that was taken?’
‘I expect I must ha’ done, some way or other,’ he said.
‘And do you still?’
‘Me? Like her? Christ, no! I never did like her,’ he said, roused.
‘But you loved her?’
‘She was the only woman I had — an’ I never wanted another, after her, I can tell you. — No, don’t make me think about her, if you want me to feel — as I could iver like a woman.’
He spoke with some violence of feeling.
‘Why don’t you burn it?’ she said.
‘Burn the likeness?’
‘Yes! It’s so ugly.’
‘I’ll burn it, if you’ve a mind,’ he said.
‘When? Now?’
‘Ay! Now! If I’d ever looked at the thing I’d a’ done it long enough ago.’
She rose from his lap.
‘Do burn it now!’ she said.
He rose rather stiffly, stood on a chair, and lifted down the heavy, dusty picture.
‘Not worth while dusting it now!’ he said.
‘You can save the frame if you like,’ she said, ‘though that’s ugly too!’ It was! — a chocolate-coloured moulding with a gilt pattern.
‘We’ll save th’ glass,’ he said, ‘an’ that’s a’!’
He tore off the brown paper from the back of the picture, an put it in the grate, where the fire was nearly out. He was very tidy, putting all the bits in the fire as he went. Then he inserted his fingers in a crack of the back-board, and pulled that out too, with a tearing noise, breaking it small and putting it on the fire, which had begun to blaze up. Then he pulled out the huge crayon portrait, that was mounted on very thick cardboard. He looked at it, with a queer expression on his face:
‘A man’s a fool!’ he said quietly.
And putting the huge square of cardboard over his knee, he broke it across, and broke it again and again. Then he waited for the fire to sink again, so as not to set the chimney on fire. But the first bits he picked up to burn were the pieces showing his own face, and hers. When these were blazing, he fetched the pincers and pulled the sprigs out of the frame, so that he could remove the glass. The glass he carried away. Then he stoked the fire with more bits of the portrait, and went out with the frame. She followed him.
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 21
