‘Yes! Thursday morning.’
‘And how long does she propose to stay here?’
‘Just for lunch. She says we may as well go straight on.’
‘The same afternoon?’
‘Yes.’
Then he said ironically:
‘She stoops to pick up the pet lamb, and away!’
‘If there is any pet lamb,’ said Constance.
‘Surely you are that, to your family—’ he said.
But she refused to be drawn.
‘And you will be back, when?’
‘In a month or five weeks, as I said.’
‘That is, if you come back at all.’
‘Why? Why should I not come back?’
‘The hand of God, I suppose. There might be an earthquake.’
‘There might,’ said Constance.
‘Or a heart-quake! Is your sister Hilda going to look for new husband for herself, as well as for you?’
‘I haven’t asked her.’
‘Ah! The plot only concerns yourself?’
‘There is no plot.’
‘You dear innocent! Do you think you are going to trust to luck? Not while your sister Hilda is about.’
‘Luck for what?’
‘Don’t you remember, you were going to pick up a baby —the wherewithal of a baby — on the trip — by family advice, and with your sister’s assistance.’
Constance was silent.
‘It depends,’ she said at last.
‘I should say so!’ he replied. ‘Do you mind hearing my stipulations?’
‘Why should you stipulate anything?’
‘I shall be the legal and acting father of the babe. Had it slipped your mind?’
She did not answer this. But she said roughly:
‘What stipulation?’
‘The child shall be English by both parents: and of at least decent descent on the father’s side.’.
She pondered a moment, then replied:
‘I have never been able to fathom your idea of decency.’
‘That, no doubt, is because you are a deep-sea fish. It is just the commonplace idea.’
‘Very well!’ she said coldly. Clifford continued to be ironical and superior. A change had taken place in him, for good. He was always inwardly watchful, suspicious, and resentful. Perhaps he had got what is called an inferiority complex, a very subtle and deep-reaching disease. He had somewhere inside him a deep, compelling grudge, a grudge against the entire creation.
Being clever, he was more or less aware of it; and more or less aware, now he was nearly forty, that he had always been so. He had bluffed himself for a long time. He was clever, subtle, and with keen aesthetic perceptions. He had managed for many years to persuade himself that he was happy, and successful, one of fortune’s favourites. Even after the war, he had- tried to keep up this idea of himself. But gradually, it had become too great an effort.
He felt that, in the Universe, he was a thing apart, and that all the other things in the universe were probably taking away a portion of life he himself might have had. The expansive yellow face of the dandelion irritated him, with its crude yellowness and its exposed foolishness. He preferred the nipped bud, in the rain. Mrs Bolton’s slightly effusive good will annoyed him, and he wanted to hurt her. Parkin’s fresh, out-of-door healthiness and solitary perkiness, like a cock chaffinch, exasperated him. The fellow ought to be put down. And Constance’s vague unawareness, added to the freshening of her beauty and her look of maidenliness, filled him with rancour. He himself was at a disadvantage, while all these others, all inferior to himself, flourished sickeningly.
He felt superior to them all. Secretly, inside himself, he felt superior to everything on earth. He could not help it. It was part of his psychic condition. It was deeper almost than instinct. He just felt superior, and there it was. And he had a shrewd idea that everybody else, in their private mind, felt the same. Even Mrs Bolton! Even the housemaid Alice! Every individual is to himself a non-such, and the supreme pearl of existence.
This was Clifford’s idea, arguing from his own experience. And the idea is certainly not entirely fallacious. Nearly every man, and still more nearly every woman, is to himself or herself the supreme pearl of human life, incomparable, and subtly superior. It is the illness of the housemaid as much as of the duchess. And in a world of such abounding superiority, Clifford was determined not only to hold his own, but to win out.
He had now forgotten the other condition of grace, wherein neither superiority nor inferiority enters. So long as the heart retains its warmth and its gentleness, the question of superiority or inferiority does not enter. The hateful discord of superiority and inferiority only arises upon challenge, and upon some assertion or some defection of the individual ego. •
But now the madness of secret superiority infects the world, and carries with it the rabies-germ of secret inferiority. Because, a man who is really a man, and not a sterile assertive ego, is no more conscious of superiority or inferiority than a thrust is.
Superiority and inferiority are a disease of the consciousness, an illness of the soul.
But Clifford now saw nothing else. He was, of course, a gentleman, and had his code of honour as far as behaviour went. But his feelings were beyond his control, and they were a private anarchy all his own.
Constance instinctively avoided him, and avoided even sounding her feelings with regard to him. She had a secret dread of him, and of his inner anarchy. If it was a conservative anarchy, then she would be aware only of the conservative behaviour part of it, and she would let the anarchy remain unknown and unfathomed.
Yet at times, the anarchy of his feelings poked out a serpent head, and struck at her.
‘You entertain, of course,’ he said to her two days before she was leaving, ‘the possibility of your being swept away by love?’
He said it with complete ironical contempt.
She looked at him with her wide blue eyes, frightened, but subtle and guarded as he was.
‘Swept away where to?’ she said.
‘The answer is obvious! The arms, and the bed, of the man who is going to make a mother of you.’
‘What man?’ she said.
‘You are going to find out,’ he said. ‘You take a flight into Egypt to get a babe—’
‘I don’t!’ she said.
‘You mean you don’t intend to find a lover, nor to allow yourself a lover, nor even to have a lover thrust upon you? Why, isn’t that the purpose of your journey? Or is there a volte face?’
She looked at him steadily.
‘I don’t want you to talk to me like this, Clifford,’ she said. ‘Have you no proper feelings at all?’
‘A great many, I assure you. One of them is a serious concern for you in this little adventure.’
‘You needn’t think about it.’
‘Need I not? Are, you the absolute power that dictates the necessity f thought? Or shall I say, I have very substantial feelings about the matter, since feelings appeal to you? — and that therefore I must think!’
‘But you needn’t talk at me.’
‘I only wish to warn you. May not the tide of sexual love sweep you away, not only to the arms and bed, but even to the permanent domicile of some other man?’
She had to unravel what he said. When she had got it, she replied:
‘And what if it did?’
‘Exactly! That is the point we must consider. You would expect a divorce, no doubt—’
‘Yes.’
‘Quite! Then I have to look what cards I have in my hand —’
‘Why don’t you wait till I ask you for a divorce, before you talk about it?’
‘Because I don’t care to be jumped into anything. I am a reasoning human being, and like to use my reason —’
There was a pause.
‘Well! I suppose you would divorce me if I really wanted you to,’ she said.
‘I am not so sure,’ he replied, with a faint smile.
‘W
hy? What good would it do you—?’
‘Not to divorce you? That is not the aspect I shall consider. I shall have to figure out what harm it would do me if I did divorce you.’
‘It couldn’t do you any harm.’
‘You really think so! What a charming idea you have of our innocent marriage! But I want you to look before you leap! That is all! Count the costs before you make the bargain.’
‘Do you mean, count the costs with you? — Then tell me what the costs are.’
‘I have not made out the entire bill. But I should probably not consent to divorce you, upon request.’
‘Very well! Wait till you are asked! And what else? Perhaps you will take the initiative, and divorce me if you think I don’t want you to?’
‘No! Perhaps not!’ he said slowly. ‘Yet I wouldn’t promise, even that. It depends on how you play about with my name.’
‘I’d better travel incognito,’ she said. ‘But I wish only one thing of you—’
‘And what is that?’
‘That you wouldn’t think about me at all in these connections. It is just indecent.’
‘My dear child, the wind bloweth where it listeth, especially through the mind. Do you want me to promise not to dream of you?’
‘Do as you like!’ she said. ‘Think what you like, dream what you like. And if you drive me away, do what you like.’
‘I drive you away! I see myself in the stern role.’
‘Well! Don’t talk to me about it. I loathe talk.’
‘You are all for deeds and derring-do! — What shall we call the child? Eureka? Bentrovato? Little Benny —?’
But Constance went away from him. She was really afraid of him, though she would not admit it to herself. He dominated her in some way: perhaps in her mind, or her will. She was afraid, if he really set his will against her going away with Hilda on Thursday, probably she would defer to him, and not go. And perhaps, if he had resolutely set his face against her having a lover, she would never have had one. She would not have made the one supreme effort of going dead against him, against his final will and wish.
Why? She asked herself why? Why would she not have made the one last effort of opposition?
She did not answer the question. She evaded it. But she knew, in her heart, that it was because she did not want finally to break with him. If ever she deliberately broke through his wish and will concerning her, and acted dead against him, their relationship would be broken, finished. And she did not want it finished.
That was why she did not go, for several days, to see Parkin. To be sure, the gamekeeper had been away in Uthwaite one day, and a timber-man had been in the wood another day. But, when she might have gone, she did not. Because she did not want finally to break with Clifford. And she did not want to have to tell Parkin so. For her instinct made her know that she would have to tell him this.
‘In your present frame of mind, you do intend to come back to Wragby, after your jaunt? don’t you?’ Clifford asked at tea-time.
‘Yes!’ she said, looking at him. ‘I shall come back.’
‘That is at present your intention?’
‘Yes! Of course! Of course I shall come back! Don’t you want me to?’
‘Yes! I think I do. But I am such a cynic about feminine freedom. When lovely woman stoops to freedom — And finds she’s safely got away — Anyhow, I’ll finish that couplet later.’
She listened without heeding very closely. Then she asked:
‘Do you want me not to go?’
She looked at him openly. And he moved uneasily on his chair.
‘No!’ he said. ‘I don’t want you not to go. I don’t want to play dog-in-the-manger, as your family think I do.’
‘With me? They don’t think it! But you don’t really want me to go, do you?’
Again he hesitated uneasily.
‘If it only depended on me,’ he said. ‘I should say, I don’t want you to go. But since I believe every individual must live his own life: and since the dog in the manger will have to eat the hay himself, if he won’t let the hee-haws and the jack-asses and that sort of cattle come near it: and since it would stick in his throat: I think, on the whole, the hay had better get out of the manger, and walk towards the young bulls, or the old asses —’
‘And I’m the hay?’ she said, laughing.
‘You’re the hay — The wench is a bundle of hay
Mankind are the asses that pull,
Each pulls it a different way —
And that quatrain I’ll finish when you get back.’
‘Very well!’ she said. ‘It’ll give you something to think about.’
But somehow, she felt she had scored. And he, because he was pleased with his own wit, felt that he had scored. So they could both be in a good humour.
Also, she felt he really wanted her to go. He wanted to think all sorts of things about her.
And further, she was really more afraid of Parkin, or of herself under Parkin’s influence, than she was of Clifford. Therefore, she left it till the very day before she was leaving, before she went to find him in the wood.
It was raining, though the wood glowed with flowers. The bluebells were intensely blue, the guelder-rose spread its circles of cream. In places, forget-me-nots were knee-deep, all with wet faces, and the pink campion was showing its touch of rose. It was beautiful, still and mysterious in the quick pattering of June rain.
The hut was silent, closed. She went indoors. It was tidy and vacant-seeming, as if one had been busy there for a time. She took the hatchet, and chopped a piece of wood on the block. It was a good exercise, so she went on chopping. There was a little fireplace in a corner of the hut, she could even make herself a fire. This amused her.
Just as her fire was crackling up in the little grate, Flossie ran in at the door, and he followed, in a short oilskin coat, like a chauffeur. She smiled at him as he entered. And he said, rather restrained:
‘I thought you’d gone lost.’
He eyed her with a queer sort of suspicion.
‘No, not lost!’ she said. ‘But I’ve been busy. I’m going away for a month to France, with my father and sister.’
‘When are you going?’
‘Tomorrow.’
He stood silent, watching the little flames crackling in the fire. And she felt the peculiar warm power of his presence.
‘Tomorrow!’ he repeated.
‘Yes! My sister will come for me in the morning, and we shall start off in her car in the afternoon.’
He was silent and inscrutable, watching the fire. Then he crouched in front of it, poking in the little red embers with his finger.
‘How wet your knees are!’ she said.
She laid her hand on the hard, bent knee, where the rain had wetted the cloth. And she felt the warmth come through.
‘And where are you going to, like?’ he asked, in a guarded voice.
‘To London, then to Paris. Then to the border of Spain, to Spain.’
‘Nowhere where the war was.’
‘No! Down south, to the sea, to the Bay of Biscay.’
‘And Sir Clifford’s not going?’
‘No.’
‘What does he say, to you leaving him?’
‘He doesn’t mind. Do you?’
He rose, and straightened his shoulders.
‘What’d be the good of me mindin’?’ he said.
His trouser-knees were smoking with damp.
‘You’ll catch rheumatism!’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you change?’
‘Eh no!’ he said contemptuously. And he stared at the fire.
‘But it’s only a month,’ she said.
‘Oh, ay!’ he replied, meaningless.
‘And you’ll be glad to see me back, won’t you?’
He looked at her with his faint, mocking smile.
‘Let’s hope so,’ he said.
She fetched the stool, and sat down.
‘You see I think I ought to go away for a while,’ she said
. ‘I’ve been here for four years without a change.’
‘Ay, it’ll do you good,’ he said.
She could get nothing out of him. She felt hot, from the fire, and from walking in her mackintosh. The rain, which had abated, suddenly came peppering down, as if it had a touch of thunder.
‘I want to run in the rain!’ she said, her eyes glowing.
‘To get wet?’ he asked ironically.
‘With nothing on! I want to feel it!’ she said.
And in an instant, she was stripping off her stockings from her ivory coloured legs, then her dress and her underclothes, and he saw her long, pointed, keen animal breasts tipping and stirring as she moved, while he stood motionless by the little fire. Then naked and wild, ivory coloured, she slipped on her rubber shoes and ran out with a wild laugh into the sharp rain. He watched her run with her arms extended, queer and pale and bright, in the sharp rain, across the open space and to the trees, her soft waist full and yielding, her haunches bright and wet with rain, leaping with queer life of their own, as she became more shimmery and indistinct in the rain. Flossie ran after her, with a sudden, wild little bark, and she turned, holding off the brown dog with her naked arms, visionary and bright in the distant rain.
The wonder changed to a faint, defiant smile on his face. He unfastened his boots, and threw off his clothes in a heap on the floor, and as she was running breathless back to the hut, he ran out naked and white. She gave a little shriek, and fled, Flossie gave a yelp, jumping at him, and he, catching his breath in the sharp rain, ran barefoot after the naked woman, in a wild game She could not run for glancing in wild apprehension over her shoulder, seeing the ruddy face, almost upon her, the white male figure gleaming in pursuit just behind her. The strength to run seemed to leave her. And suddenly his naked arm went round her soft, naked-wet middle, and she fell back against him. He laughed an uncanny little laugh, feeling the heap of soft, chill flesh come up against his body. But he gathered it in, voluptuously, pressed it all up against him, the heap of soft, female flesh, that became warm in an instant, and his hands pressed in on her lovely, heavy posteriors.
She for the moment was unconscious, in the beating overtone and the streaming privacy of the rain. He glanced at the ground, tipped her over on a grassy place, and there in the middle of the path, in the pouring rain, went into her, in a sharp, short embrace, keen as a dagger thrust, that was over in a minute. He got up almost instantly, drawing her up by the hands, and snatching a handful of forget-me-nots, to wipe the smeared earth off her back, as they went to the hut. And she too, abstractedly, caught at the campions and the forget-me- nots.
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 29
