We returned, panting, sweating, our eyes flashing, to the edge of the standing corn. I heard Lettie calling, and turning round saw Emily and the two children entering the field as they passed from school.
“There’s another!” shouted Leslie.
I saw the oat-tops quiver. “Here! Here!” I yelled. The animal leaped out, and made for the hedge. George and Leslie, who were on that side, dashed off, turned him, and he coursed back our way. I headed him off to the father who swept in pursuit for a short distance, but who was too heavy for the work. The little beast made towards the gate, but this time Mollie, with her hat in her hand and her hair flying, whirled upon him, and she and the little fragile lad sent him back again. The rabbit was getting tired. It dodged the sheaves badly, running towards the top hedge. I went after it. If I could have let myself fall on it I could have caught it, but this was impossible to me, and I merely prevented its dashing through the hole into safety. It raced along the hedge bottom. George tore after it. As he was upon it, it darted into the hedge. He fell flat, and shot his hand into the gap. But it had escaped. He lay there, panting in great sobs, and looking at me with eyes in which excitement and exhaustion struggled like flickering light and darkness. When he could speak, he said, “Why didn’t you fall on top of it?”
“I couldn’t,” said I.
We returned again. The two children were peering into the thick corn also. We thought there was nothing more. George began to mow. As I walked round I caught sight of a rabbit skulking near the bottom corner of the patch. Its ears lay pressed against its back; I could see the palpitation of the heart under the brown fur, and I could see the shining dark eyes looking at me. I felt no pity for it, but still I could not actually hurt it. I beckoned to the father. He ran up, and aimed a blow with the rake. There was a sharp little cry which sent a hot pain through me as if I had been cut. But the rabbit ran out, and instantly I forgot the cry, and gave pursuit, fairly feeling my fingers stiffen to choke it. It was all lame. Leslie was upon it in a moment, and he almost pulled its head off in his excitement to kill it.
I looked up. The girls were at the gate, just turning away. “There are no more,” said the father.
At that instant Mollie shouted.
“There’s one down this hole.”
The hole was too small for George to get his hand in, so we dug it out with the rake-handle. The stick went savagely down the hole, and there came a squeak.
“Mice!” said George, and as he said it the mother slid out. Somebody knocked her on the back, and the hole was opened out. Little mice seemed to swarm everywhere. It was like killing insects. We counted nine little ones lying dead.
“Poor brute,” said George, looking at the mother. “What a job she must have had rearing that lot!” He picked her up, handled her curiously and with pity. Then he said, “Well, I may as well finish this tonight!”
His father took another scythe from off the hedge, and together they soon laid the proud, quivering heads low. Leslie and I tied up as they mowed, and soon all was finished.
The beautiful day was flushing to die. Over in the west the mist was gathering bluer. The intense stillness was broken by the rhythmic hum of the engines at the distant coal-mine, as they drew up the last bantles of men. As we walked across the fields the tubes of stubble tinkled like dulcimers. The scent of the corn began to rise gently. The last cry of the pheasants came from the wood, and the little clouds of birds were gone.
I carried a scythe, and we walked, pleasantly weary, down the hill towards the farm. The children had gone home with the rabbits.
When we reached the mill, we found the girls just rising from the table. Emily began to carry away the used pots, and to set clean ones for us. She merely glanced at us and said her formal greeting. Lettie picked up a book that lay in the ingle seat, and went to the window. George dropped into a chair. He had flung off his coat, and had pushed back his hair. He rested his great brown arms on the table and was silent for a moment.
“Running like that,” he said to me, passing his hand over his eyes, “makes you more tired than a whole day’s work. I don’t think I shall do it again.”
“The sport’s exciting while it lasts,” said Leslie.
“It does you more harm than the rabbits do us good,” said Mrs Saxton.
“Oh, I don’t know, Mother,” drawled her son, “it’s a couple of shillings.”
“And a couple of days off your life.”
“What be that!” he replied, taking a piece of bread and butter, and biting a large piece from it.
“Pour us a drop of tea,” he said to Emily.
“I don’t know that I shall wait on such brutes,” she replied, relenting, and flourishing the teapot.
“Oh,” said he, taking another piece of bread and butter, “I’m not all alone in my savageness this time.”
“Men are all brutes,” said Lettie hotly, without looking up from her book.
“You can tame us,” said Leslie, in mighty good humour. She did not reply. George, began, in that deliberate voice that so annoyed Emily:
“It does make you mad, though, to touch the fur, and not be able to grab him” — he laughed quietly.
Emily moved off in disgust. Lettie opened her mouth sharply to speak, but remained silent.
“I don’t know,” said Leslie. “When it comes to killing it goes against the stomach.”
“If you can run,” said George, “you should be able to run to death. When your blood’s up, you don’t hang half-way.”
“I think a man is horrible,” said Lettie, “who can tear the head off a little mite of a thing like a rabbit, after running it in torture over a field.”
“When he is nothing but a barbarian to begin with — ” said Emily.
“If you began to run yourself — you’d be the same,” said George.
“Why, women are cruel enough,” said Leslie, with a glance at Lettie. “Yes,” he continued, “they’re cruel enough in their way” — another look, and a comical little smile.
“Well,” said George, “what’s the good finicking! If you feel like doing a thing — you’d better do it.”
“Unless you haven’t courage,” said Emily, bitingly.
He Hooked up at her with dark eyes, suddenly full of anger.
“But,” said Lettie — she could not hold herself from asking, “Don’t you think it’s brutal, now — now that you do think — isn’t it degrading and mean to run the poor little things down?”
“Perhaps it is,” he replied, “but it wasn’t an hour ago.”
“You have no feeling,” she said bitterly.
He laughed deprecatingly, but said nothing.
We finished tea in silence, Lettie reading, Emily moving about the house. George got up and went out at the end. A moment or two after we heard him across the yard with the milk-buckets, singing “The Ash Grove”.
“He doesn’t care a scrap for anything,” said Emily with accumulated bitterness. Lettie looked out of the window across the yard, thinking. She looked very glum.
After a while we went out also, before the light faded altogether from the pond. Emily took us into the lower garden to get some ripe plums. The old garden was very low. The soil was black. The cornbind and goosegrass were clutching at the ancient gooseberry bushes, which sprawled by the paths. The garden was not very productive, save of weeds, and, perhaps, tremendous lank artichokes or swollen marrows. But at the bottom, where the end of the farm buildings rose high and grey, there was a plum tree which had been crucified to the wall, and which had broken away and leaned forward from bondage. Now under the boughs were hidden great mist-bloomed, crimson treasures, splendid globes. I shook the old, ragged trunk, green, with even the fresh gum dulled over, and the treasures fell heavily, thudding down among the immense rhubarb leaves below. The girls laughed, and we divided the spoil, and turned back to the yard. We went down to the edge of the garden, which skirted the bottom pond, a pool chained in a heavy growth of weeds. It was moving with r
ats, the father had said. The rushes were thick below us; opposite, the great bank fronted us, with orchard trees climbing it like a hillside. The lower pond received the overflow from the upper by a tunnel from the deep black sluice.
Two rats ran into the black culvert at our approach. We sat on some piled, mossy stones to watch. The rats came out again, ran a little way, stopped, ran again, listened, were reassured, and slid about freely, dragging their long naked tails. Soon six or seven grey beasts were playing round the mouth of the culvert, in the gloom. They sat and wiped their sharp faces, stroking their whiskers. Then one would give a little rush and a little squirm of excitement and would jump vertically into the air, alighting on four feet, running, sliding into the black shadow. One dropped with an ugly plop into the water, and swam towards us, the hoary imp, his sharp snout and his wicked little eyes moving at us. Lettie shuddered. I threw a stone into the dead pool, and frightened them all. But we had frightened ourselves more, so we hurried away, and stamped our feet in relief on the free pavement of the yard.
Leslie was looking for us. He had been inspecting the yard and the stock under Mr Saxton’s supervision.
“Were you running away from me?” he asked.
“No,” she replied. “I have been to fetch you a plum. Look!” And she showed him two in a leaf.
“They are too pretty to eat!” said he.
“You have not tasted yet,” she laughed.
“Come,” he said, offering her his arm. “Let us go up to the water.” She took his arm.
It was a splendid evening, with the light all thick and yellow lying on the smooth pond. Lettie made him lift her on to a leaning bough of willow. He sat with his head resting against her skirts. Emily and I moved on. We heard him murmur something, and her voice reply, gently, caressingly:
“No — let us be still — it is all so still — I love it best of all now.”
Emily and I talked, sitting at the base of the alders, a little way on. After an excitement, and in the evening, especially in autumn, one is inclined to be sad and sentimental. We had forgotten that the darkness was weaving. I heard in the little distance Leslie’s voice begin to murmur like a flying beetle that comes not too near. Then, away down in the yard, George began singing the old song, “I sowed the seeds of love”.
This interrupted the flight of Leslie’s voice, and as the singing came nearer, the hum of low words ceased. We went forward to meet George. Leslie sat up, clasping his knees, and did not speak. George came nearer, saying:
“The moon is going to rise.”
“Let me get down,” said Lettie, lifting her hands to him to help her. He, mistaking her wish, put his hands under her arms, and set her gently down, as one would a child. Leslie got up quickly, and seemed to hold himself separate, resenting the intrusion.
“I thought you were all four together,” said George quietly. Lettie turned quickly at the apology:
“So we were. So we are — five now. Is it there the moon will rise?”
“Yes — I like to see it come over the wood. It lifts slowly up to stare at you. I always think it wants to know something, and I always think I have something to answer, only I don’t know what it is,” said Emily.
Where the sky was pale in the east over the rim of wood came the forehead of the yellow moon. We stood and watched in silence. Then, as the great disc, nearly full, lifted and looked straight upon us, we were washed off our feet in a vague sea of moonlight. We stood with the light like water on our faces. Lettie was glad, a little bit exalted; Emily was passionately troubled; her lips were parted, almost beseeching; Leslie was frowning, oblivious, and George was thinking, and the terrible, immense moonbeams braided through his feeling. At length Leslie said softly, mistakenly:
“Come along, dear” — and he took her arm.
She let him lead her along the bank of the pond, and across the plank over the sluice.
“Do you know,” she said, as we were carefully descending the steep bank of the orchard, “I feel as if I wanted to laugh, or dance — something rather outrageous.”
“Surely not like that now,” Leslie replied in a low voice, feeling really hurt.
“I do though! I will race you to the bottom.”
“No, no, dear!” He held her back. When he came to the wicket leading on to the front lawns, he said something to her softly, as he held the gate.
I think he wanted to utter his half-finished proposal, and so bind her.
She broke free, and, observing the long lawn which lay in grey shadow between the eastern and western glows, she cried:
“Polka! — a polka — one can dance a polka when the grass is smooth and short — even if there are some fallen leaves. Yes, yes — how jolly!”
She held out her hands to Leslie, but it was too great a shock to his mood. So she called to me, and there was a shade of anxiety in her voice, lest after all she should be caught in the toils of the night’s sentiment.
“Pat — you’ll dance with me — Leslie hates a polka.” I danced with her. I do not know the time when I could not polka — it seems innate in one’s feet, to dance that dance. We went flying round, hissing through the dead leaves. The night, the low-hung yellow moon, the pallor of the west, the blue cloud of evening overhead went round and through the fantastic branches of the old laburnum, spinning a little madness. You cannot tire Lettie; her feet are wings that beat the air. When at last I stayed her she laughed as fresh as ever, as she bound her hair.
“There!” she said to Leslie, in tones of extreme satisfaction. “That was lovely. Do you come and dance now.”
“Not a polka,” said he, sadly, feeling the poetry in his heart insulted by the jigging measure.
“But one cannot dance anything else on wet grass, and through shuffling dead leaves. You, George?”
“Emily says I jump,” he replied.
“Come on — come on” — and in a moment they were bounding across the grass. After a few steps she fell in with him, and they spun round the grass. It was true, he leaped, sprang with large strides, carrying her with him. It was a tremendous, irresistible dancing. Emily and I must join, making an inner ring. Now and again there was a sense of something white flying near, and wild rustle of draperies, and a swish of disturbed leaves as they whirled past us. Long after we were tired they danced on.
At the end, he looked big, erect, nerved with triumph, and she was exhilarated like a Bacchante.
“Have you finished?” Leslie asked.
She knew she was safe from his question that day.
“Yes,” she panted. “You should have danced. Give me my hat, please. Do I look very disgraceful?”
He took her hat and gave it to her.
“Disgraceful?” he repeated.
“Oh, you are solemn tonight! What is it?”
“Yes, what is it?” he repeated ironically.
“It must be the moon. Now, is my hat straight? Tell me now — you’re not looking. Then put it level. Now then! Why, your hands are quite cold, and mine so hot! I feel so impish,” and she laughed.
“There — now I’m ready. Do you notice those little chrysanthemums trying to smell sadly; when the old moon is laughing and winking through those boughs. What business have they with their sadness!” She took a handful of petals and flung them into the air: “There — if they sigh they ask for sorrow — I like things to wink and look wild.”
CHAPTER VI
THE EDUCATION OF GEORGE
As I have said, Strelley Mill lies at the north end of the long Nethermere valley. On the northern slopes lay its pasture and arable lands. The shaggy common, now closed, and the cultivated land was bounded on the east by the sharp dip of the brook course, a thread of woodland broadening into a spinney and ending at the upper pond; beyond this, on the east, rose the sharp, wild, grassy hillside, scattered with old trees, ruinous with the gaunt, ragged bones of old hedge-rows, grown into thorn trees. Along the rim of the hills, beginning in the north-west, were dark woodlands, which swept round eas
t and south till they raced down in riot to the very edge of southern Nethermere, surrounding our house. From the eastern hill-crest, looking straight across, you could see the spire of Selsby church, and a few roofs, and the head-stocks of the pit.
So on three sides the farm was skirted by woods, the dens of rabbits, and the common held another warren.
Now the squire of the estate, head of an ancient, once even famous, but now decayed house, loved his rabbits. Unlike the family fortunes, the family tree flourished amazingly; Sherwood could show nothing comparable. Its ramifications were stupendous; it was more like a banyan than a British oak. How was the good squire to nourish himself and his lady, his name, his tradition, and his thirteen lusty branches on his meagre estates? An evil fortune discovered to him that he could sell each of his rabbits, those bits of furry vermin, for a shilling or thereabout in Nottingham; since which time the noble family subsisted by rabbits.
Farms were gnawed away; corn and sweet grass departed from the face of the hills; cattle grew lean, unable to eat the defiled herbage. Then the farm became the home of a keeper, and the country was silent, with no sound of cattle, no clink of horses, no barking of lusty dogs.
But the squire loved his rabbits. He defended them against the snares of the despairing farmer, protected them with gun and notices to quit. How he glowed with thankfulness as he saw the dishevelled hillside heave when the gnawing hosts moved on!
“Are they not quails and manna?” said he to his sporting guest, early one Monday morning, as the high meadow broke into life at the sound of his gun. “Quails and manna — in this wilderness?”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 7
