‘You don’t think there might be a mutual understanding between the working classes and the owning classes?’ she persisted.
‘Ah Connie!’ he said. ‘Don’t go back over old ground. It’s no good. — Any pretence at mutual understanding is just a bluff, to cover the tug of war. Somebody’s got to be boss of the show.’
She plodded in silence by the chair.
‘It seems hateful,’ she said at length, ‘that somebody must boss and somebody be bossed.’
‘It’s a law of nature. You, as it happens, are born into the class that bosses—’
‘But I don’t boss!’ she said vehemently.
‘No! Because your servants know they’ve got to fulfil your requests. — It’s a quibble, Connie! You belong to the bossing class, and you boss: even Mrs Bolton.’
‘I’m sure I don’t boss her.’
‘Ah well! You ask her to do things, and she doesn’t ask you to do things — put it that way. Bossing is a sacred responsibility, like fatherhood and motherhood. And if we don’t boss the miners, the country will be brought to starvation. We mustn’t let it be brought to starvation. Therefore we must boss the miners — wisely, but firmly.’
In spite of herself, in spite of the fact that she knew there was a great deal of sound sense in what Clifford said, Connie felt her temper rise, and she hated the very sound of his voice.
‘But is there no other way? — nothing but bossing or being bossed, and owning Wragby or living in a miner’s dwelling? Can’t there be something else?’ she persisted.
‘There can if you’ll tell me what. Frankly, in this issue, I see nothing. The ownership of property has now become a religious question. Neither St Francis nor Jesus settled it. I own Wragby, and I have to square it with my own conscience. And I know I must and ought to own Wragby. Supposing I give it to the colliers for a sort of club for Tevershall! — and I myself go and live down Beggarlee! Who’s the better for it? Anybody? Isn’t everybody the worse? Don’t I still stand for a higher level of life? Hasn’t Wragby stood to Tevershall as a higher level of life, for two hundred years? Wragby is the ship that sails on ahead in the voyage of discovery, ahead of all the rag tag and bobtail small craft of Tevershall. And by God, she still sails on, and is going to!’
‘And what does she discover?’ asked Connie, awed for a moment.
‘What has she discovered in the past? Who first emerged into the open waters of liberty: Wragby! Who sailed the high seas of poetry, of art, of thought? Wragby, houses like Wragby. No Tevershall dwellings. Who gradually invented the piano? Wragby! And now every collier must have his piano. Everything the collier has, Wragby has given him, really. And all he has done is to dig in the ground. Left to himself, the collier could dig himself blind as a mole, and nothing would come of it. There’s no inspiration in mere hewing of coal. Where has the inspiration come from, for centuries? Where does it come from now? Wragby! Wragby! Wragby! The homes of the aristocrat and of the enlightened middle class, the owners. What stands for all the decency, dignity, and beauty that is left in life? Wragby, and places like it.’
‘Then why is Tevershall so hideous?’
‘Because the colliers have hideous souls, and can’t follow the lead even of the inspiration that’s given them.’
‘Perhaps they could if they had the money.’
‘Then let them get the money.’
‘Everybody can’t.’
‘Then let them make some sort of an effort after decency, and dignity, and beauty.’
‘Perhaps they do.’
‘Damned little, as far as I see.’
‘And perhaps you don’t want them to make the real effort after decency, and dignity, and beauty. After all, where would you be, if they made that their effort?’
‘Where would I be? In Wragby! And with a handsome instead of a hideous Tevershall outside my park gates.’
‘But Clifford, you know that men who were making a real effort after dignity and decency and beauty wouldn’t consent to work for you all their lives, down a pit. Would you consent to it?’
‘The question is artificial. It is no question.’
‘But can colliers know they are condemned to work all their lives down pit, for very little money, after all, and still make an effort after dignity and beauty? Why Clifford, you know that as soon as they realized that they must make an effort after beauty and dignity, they’d throw you down the mine. Therefore, perhaps, they’d better not realize it.’
‘Your conclusion does not follow from your premise,’ he said. But, as they went down the red-gravelled path, on which the weeds were again encroaching, in barer places of the tussocky grass she noticed cottony young cowslips still tangled in their cotton-wool, in small bud. Something stirred strongly in her. They were so tender and unprotected. Yet they would swing their little yellow bells.
‘No Clifford!’ she said. ‘You can’t ask men to live for beauty and dignity and even decency, and go down a mine every day in order to earn fifty shillings a week. They wouldn’t be men if they did it.’
‘Well, they are not men, in the beautiful or truly dignified sense of the word. They are the masses. And the masses live to eat. Therefore they must work.’
‘No wonder they hate you,’ she said.
‘They don’t hate me. They know it as well as I do. Where is their sense of beauty? where oh where? — And where is their dignity? Get Mrs Bolton to gossip Tevershall gossip to you, and you’ll know. What it comes to, is that they are another race, the; plebs, and they’ve got to be ruled and we’ve got to be content to rule them,’ he said, ‘however much we may dislike it.’
‘I hope you think you’ll be able to do it,’ she said.
‘I know I can do it! And give me a child, and I’ll train him up to do it too.’
‘Even if it’s not your own child?’
‘What difference does that make? It doesn’t matter who begot you. What matters is, who brought you up!’
‘Then the common people aren’t a race, and it’s all an accident of up-bringing.’
‘Whatever it is, we can’t alter it. The thing is thousands of years old: old as man himself. We can only carry on the best of it to the best of our advantage.’
‘It sounds almost worse than starving.’
‘You’ve never tried starving, I believe,’ he said.
They had come to the gate of the wood. Inside the wood, Connie was determined not to argue. She opened, and let Clifford through. In front of them ran the open cleft of the riding, between the dense hazel walls and the gay grey trees. The chair plugged slowly on, slowly surging through the forget-me-nots that crowded the drive as if they were there, with their alert little eyes, to see the procession. Clifford steered as far as possible clear of the flowers. But Connie watched the wheels go over the wood-ruff, and the dark-blue bugle, the creeping-jenny of the soft clayey place, with yellow little cups, and the still unopened columbines. All the flowers were there, and the first -bluebells in blue pools, like standing water blue with heaven.
‘You’re quite right about its being beautiful,’ Clifford said. ‘It is amazingly beautiful. What is quite as lovely as an English spring!’
Connie thought he spoke as if even the spring bloomed by act of Parliament! An English spring! The chair moved slowly ahead, over dead catkins of the hazel. And between the suave brown chords of hazel stems, clumps of sturdy bluebells, like wheat, stood up, and other great grey leaves spread themselves from their rosettes.
At a cross-path they left the hazel thicket and came to the open wood, and to the up-hill slope, where the trees had gone, and the light flooded in rather stark. But there the bluebells made bright blue places, shearing off over the curves in lilac colour and deep purple. And between, the bracken was lifting its many curled heads, like many drowsy snakes coming awake in the sun. Sheets and patches of living purplish blue swept away in pure clarity between the wreckage of old roots and ricketty young trees. The brow of the hill was sheer blue, and virgin.
Clifford had kept the chair going till he got to the top of the slope, for fear of getting stuck. Constance followed slowly behind, to be alone. The oak-buds had opened soft little brown hands. Everything was so tender and full of life. Why oh why need man be so tough, always tough and insentient, hard as iron gripping the wrong things, and missing everything! Why could human life never be soft and tenderly coming unfolded into leaf and blossom? If men were leaves of grass, why was it never tender young green grass, new and soft with spring! Even the Oaks, with all their craggy hardness, that had fought so many winters, even they took off their myriad myriad gloves, and spread their tender little brown paws to the sun Why couldn’t men be like that? Why not come out of the hard sheathing and into soft new leaf?
Clifford at the top of the hill sat and looked downwards, at the green interlacing boughs, and the lovely blue of bluebells that flooded right over the broad riding, on the down slope. Downhill, downhill, it lit up like a deep sky, and warmed the heart with warm blueness.
‘It’s a very fine colour in itself,’ he said, as Connie came up. ‘But absolutely no good to paint.’
That too, might be true for him. So many things are true and not true, in this composite world.
To the left, in the thicker forest, ran the path that went the hut. But thank heaven, it was too narrow for the chair, only a one-foot track between trees and guelder-rose bushes.
‘Shall I venture as far as the spring?’ said Clifford.
‘Yes! Try!’ she reassured him.
And the chair began slowly to advance down the long slope, in the broad, noble riding, slowly sailing as down the slope of a wave, and through the blue shine of the hyacinths, slowly downwards. Oh strange ship, surging through the hyacinthine shallows! — last pinnace of adventure, on obscure oceans, steering to the last discoveries of our civilisation! Quiet and proud, like the captain at the wheel of human adventure, Clifford sat and steered: in his old black hat and tweed coat, so motionless and cautious, in his slow ship! Downhill, in the wake, along the wheeltracks, came Constance, watching, going slower than he, in her grey, finely knitted dress, no hat on her brown hair. And the chair softly curved out of sight, as the riding swerved to the right, at the bottom of the slope.
And when it had gone, the keeper came striding with long strides down the hill. She heard his steps, and glanced round in fear. He gave a hasty half-salute.
‘I heard the chair-motor,’ he said, in a soft voice. ‘Shall you come tonight?’
‘Tonight?’ she said, looking bewildered into his eyes.
‘Ay! Come tonight!’ His voice was low and infinitely caressive, and his eyes held her and had power over her.
‘Yes!’ she said faintly.
‘An’ I s’ll wait for you at th’ gate?’
‘Yes!’ she murmured.
He glanced quickly round. Then he put his fingers softly under her breast, and softly pressed her breast in the cup of his hand, smiling into her eyes, his own eyes softly dilating.
‘I must go,’ she whispered.
‘I shan’t come to Sir Clifford,’ he said.
At that moment they heard Clifford’s voice, away beyond the trees in the hollow, calling Coo-ee! Coo-re!
‘Coo-ee!’ called Constance in reply.
Then the keeper said again:
‘I shan’t come unless he shouts for me — I s’ll be at th’ hut.’
She nodded, looking at him over her shoulder as she ran down the hill after Clifford. The keeper watched her running, watched her hair shaking, and felt as if in his own body the shaking of her jolted breasts. Then he turned away down the track.
She found Clifford already at the spring, a little way up the opposite dark slope, where the larch-wood bristled with a burnt-out appearance, and yet was putting out tiny little green bursts, like the tiny emerald flames bursting from the striking of many tiny matches. Great leaves of grey burdock, that they call Robin Hood’s Rhubarb, shoved out from the ghostliness of the larch-wood into the damp riding. Constance hurried up, following Clifford’s wheeltracks.
‘She only just did it!’ he said, looking at his chair. ‘I hope’ she’ll get home all right.’
The spring was pretty, bubbling in its brilliantly clear little well, whose pebbles in the depths always wavered under the crystal. Bits of eyebright and cinquefoil showed among the grass, and oh, if the keeper saw it — a mole actually worked up into the sun.
‘I shall drink, I am thirsty,’ said Constance. ‘Will you?’
‘I will, yes!’
She took the little enamel cup that hung on the tree, and drank, then filled it for him as he sat in his chair.
‘So icy!’she said.
‘Shall we wish?’ said he.
‘Yes, let us!’
‘Have you thought of something? he said.
‘Yes! One mustn’t tell!’
But as a matter of fact she wasn’t thinking of it. She heard the distant tapping of a wood-pecker, and then the cry of a cock-pheasant. Then suddenly she became aware that a wind was blowing, soft but eerie through the larches. She looked up. There were clouds moving through the blue sky. The day was too brilliant. It had to cloud over.
‘The water is so cold,’ he said, sipping, ‘One has to wish in syllables. I guess men have wished queer things, at this well! Don’t you think?’
He handed her the cup.
‘Anymore?’ she said.
‘No more. I put the full-stop after my wish. Now you must drink another drop, to wash your wish down.’
She stooped, rinsed the cup, and filled it. Then she thought to herself. No, I won’t wish. I might spoil my destiny. I’ll leave it to the unseen powers, and not interfere. — And so she drank.
‘Did you wish again? ‘he asked.
‘Yes!’ she gasped, taking no heed of what she said. She gathered a bit of wood-ruff, and watched the mole rising to the surface, swimming out of the soft earth with its broad little pink hands and waving little pink snout.
‘See the mole?’ she said.
‘Where? Ah there! Wonder Parkin hasn’t had him! What a life, eh, burrowing and worming your way down in that brown earth! Unpleasant little beasts!’
‘You would think he could see with the pink tip of his nose said she. ‘Do you think he smells, or what does he do, waving his nose-end in the air?’
‘Like a parson in a pulpit,’ he said.
She gave him the wood-ruff to smell.
‘New-mown hay!’ he said, with his ironic smile. ‘Oh ghosts of nineteenth century ladies!’
‘Did they like it?’ she said.
‘I remember it in that dull Foguzzaro,’ he said.
She was looking up at the sky.
‘I wonder if it will rain later!’ she said.
They started home, Clifford. steering carefully downhill, over the damp, clayey earth of the uneven riding. Then they came to the bottom of the hollow, and swerved to rise up the long slope, where the bluebells spread out like flood-water that is tilted but stands still.
‘Now old girl!’ said Clifford, starting the motor.
‘I suppose she’ll do it!’ she said.
He did not answer. -
The chair tugged slowly, unevenly up, with palpitating little jerks. She was not doing very well. But she came to the hyacinths that were blue around her, and with more jerks she struggled just beyond them. Then she stopped.
‘You’d better call Parkin!’ said Connie. ‘He will perhaps be at the hut.’
‘We’ll let her breathe,’ said Clifford.
He waited a while, then started his little motor again. The chair made funny coughing noises, and reeled on a few yards, as if it were sick.
‘Call!’ she said.
‘Wait!’ he snapped.
And he had another go. With even worse results.
‘Call!’ she said.
‘Hell! Be quiet a moment!’ he said:
The chair made other efforts, more harmful than useful.
‘You may as well
call, Clifford! Why waste your nervous energy!’ she said.
‘Any other time the fool would have been poking his nose in,’ said Clifford crossly.
‘Coo-ee! Coo-ee!’ she called.
And also in a moment, Parkin came striding down the slope. He saluted as he came close, then walked straight to the chair and stood with feet apart, looking down at it.
‘I thought I heard trouble,’ he said. ‘Won’t she do it?’
‘Appears like it,’ said Clifford shortly.
‘You’re sure there’s enough petrol?’ he asked.
‘Quite! Field filled her up.’
Parkin got up, leaned his gun against a tree, took off his coat, and sat down on his heels at the side of the chair, peering underneath. He touched various parts, poking awkwardly. Then he sat again on his heels, and pushed his hat off his forehead, rubbing his brow.
‘It’s nothing as I can see!’ hesaid.
Then he lay on his stomach on the floor, and with his neck pressed up, fiddled at the engine, poking intently.
‘I don’t suppose you can do anything,’ said Clifford, looking down at the man on the floor.
‘I don’t suppose I can. Connections seems all right!’ Parkin got up till he sat on his heels again, collier fashion. ‘Start her again, Sir Clifford,’ he said.
Clifford tried her again — to no effect.
‘Run her a bit hard, like.’
Clifford made the poor little engine cough and buzz and snarl, then cough more violently; then she seemed to run free.
‘Sounds as if she’d come clear!’ said Parkin. ‘Start her.’
Clifford had already put the chair in motion. She surged feebly forward, as if she were dying.
‘If I give her a push, like!’ said the keeper, going behind.
‘Wait a bit!’ said Clifford. ‘Let her do it! She ought to!’
Constance sat on a bank and watched as the chair gaspingly edged a few inches further. As far as her ladyship was concerned, there was only one course to take in the case of breakdown: just go away and leave the men to it.
But she was amused once more by the busy, interested freemasonry of men, as soon as it was a question of machinery. Then indeed class difference broke down a little. Parkin was no longer a gamekeeper: he was much freer and more active, perhaps when he was in the war, and drove a lorry. And Clifford was the officer, a little impatient with the Tommy, a bit out temper, but not at all the employer.
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 24
