“Ay,” said Aaron, standing mute and obstinate.
“Did you want anything?” Robert enquired once more.
“Eh?” Aaron looked up. “Me? No, not me.” A sort of inertia kept him rooted. The young people looked at one another and began to laugh, rather embarrassed.
“Another!” said Cyril Scott cynically.
They wished he would go away. There was a pause.
“What do you reckon stars are?” asked the sepulchral voice of Jim. He still lay flat on his back on the grass.
Josephine went to him and pulled at his coat.
“Get up,” she said. “You’ll take cold. Get up now, we’re going indoors.”
“What do you reckon stars are?” he persisted.
Aaron Sisson stood on the edge of the light, smilingly staring at the scene, like a boy out of his place, but stubbornly keeping his ground.
“Get up now,” said Josephine. “We’ve had enough.” But Jim would not move.
Robert went with the bicycle lamp and stood at Aaron’s side.
“Shall I show you a light to the road — you’re off your track,” he said. “You’re in the grounds of Shottle House.”
“I can find my road,” said Aaron. “Thank you.”
Jim suddenly got up and went to peer at the stranger, poking his face close to Aaron’s face.
“Right-o,” he replied. “You’re not half a bad sort of chap — Cheery-o! What’s your drink?”
“Mine — whiskey,” said Aaron.
“Come in and have one. We’re the only sober couple in the bunch — what?” cried Jim.
Aaron stood unmoving, static in everything. Jim took him by the arm affectionately. The stranger looked at the flickering tree, with its tiers of lights.
“A Christmas tree,” he said, jerking his head and smiling.
“That’s right, old man,” said Jim, seeming thoroughly sober now. “Come indoors and have a drink.”
Aaron Sisson negatively allowed himself to be led off. The others followed in silence, leaving the tree to flicker the night through. The stranger stumbled at the open window-door.
“Mind the step,” said Jim affectionately.
They crowded to the fire, which was still hot. The newcomer looked round vaguely. Jim took his bowler hat and gave him a chair. He sat without looking round, a remote, abstract look on his face. He was very pale, and seemed-inwardly absorbed.
The party threw off their wraps and sat around. Josephine turned to Aaron Sisson, who sat with a glass of whiskey in his hand, rather slack in his chair, in his thickish overcoat. He did not want to drink. His hair was blond, quite tidy, his mouth and chin handsome but a little obstinate, his eyes inscrutable. His pallor was not natural to him. Though he kept the appearance of a smile, underneath he was hard and opposed. He did not wish to be with these people, and yet, mechanically, he stayed.
“Do you feel quite well?” Josephine asked him.
He looked at her quickly.
“Me?” he said. He smiled faintly. “Yes, I’m all right.” Then he dropped his head again and seemed oblivious.
“Tell us your name,” said Jim affectionately.
The stranger looked up.
“My name’s Aaron Sisson, if it’s anything to you,” he said.
Jim began to grin.
“It’s a name I don’t know,” he said. Then he named all the party present. But the stranger hardly heeded, though his eyes looked curiously from one to the other, slow, shrewd, clairvoyant.
“Were you on your way home?” asked Robert, huffy.
The stranger lifted his head and looked at him.
“Home!” he repeated. “No. The other road — ” He indicated the direction with his head, and smiled faintly.
“Beldover?” inquired Robert.
“Yes.”
He had dropped his head again, as if he did not want to look at them.
To Josephine, the pale, impassive, blank-seeming face, the blue eyes with the smile which wasn’t a smile, and the continual dropping of the well-shaped head was curiously affecting. She wanted to cry.
“Are you a miner?” Robert asked, de haute en bas.
“No,” cried Josephine. She had looked at his hands.
“Men’s checkweighman,” replied Aaron. He had emptied his glass. He put it on the table.
“Have another?” said Jim, who was attending fixedly, with curious absorption, to the stranger.
“No,” cried Josephine, “no more.”
Aaron looked at Jim, then at her, and smiled slowly, with remote bitterness. Then he lowered his head again. His hands were loosely clasped between his knees.
“What about the wife?” said Robert — the young lieutenant.
“What about the wife and kiddies? You’re a married man, aren’t you?”
The sardonic look of the stranger rested on the subaltern.
“Yes,” he said.
“Won’t they be expecting you?” said Robert, trying to keep his temper and his tone of authority.
“I expect they will — ”
“Then you’d better be getting along, hadn’t you?”
The eyes of the intruder rested all the time on the flushed subaltern. The look on Aaron’s face became slowly satirical.
“Oh, dry up the army touch,” said Jim contemptuously, to Robert. “We’re all civvies here. We’re all right, aren’t we?” he said loudly, turning to the stranger with a grin that showed his pointed teeth.
Aaron gave a brief laugh of acknowledgement.
“How many children have you?” sang Julia from her distance.
“Three.”
“Girls or boys?”
“Girls.”
“All girls? Dear little things! How old?”
“Oldest eight — youngest nine months — ”
“So small!” sang Julia, with real tenderness now — Aaron dropped his head. “But you’re going home to them, aren’t you?” said Josephine, in whose eyes the tears had already risen. He looked up at her, at her tears. His face had the same pale perverse smile.
“Not tonight,” he said.
“But why? You’re wrong!” cried Josephine.
He dropped his head and became oblivious.
“Well!” said Cyril Scott, rising at last with a bored exclamation. “I think I’ll retire.”
“Will you?” said Julia, also rising. “You’ll find your candle outside.”
She went out. Scott bade good night, and followed her. The four people remained in the room, quite silent. Then Robert rose and began to walk about, agitated.
“Don’t you go back to ‘em. Have a night out. You stop here tonight,” Jim said suddenly, in a quiet intimate tone.
The stranger turned his head and looked at him, considering.
“Yes?” he said. He seemed to be smiling coldly.
“Oh, but!” cried Josephine. “Your wife and your children! Won’t they be awfully bothered? Isn’t it awfully unkind to them?”
She rose in her eagerness. He sat turning up his face to her. She could not understand his expression.
“Won’t you go home to them?” she said, hysterical.
“Not tonight,” he replied quietly, again smiling.
“You’re wrong!” she cried. “You’re wrong!” And so she hurried out of the room in tears.
“Er — what bed do you propose to put him in?” asked Robert rather officer-like.
“Don’t propose at all, my lad,” replied Jim, ironically — he did not like Robert. Then to the stranger he said:
“You’ll be all right on the couch in my room? — it’s a good couch, big enough, plenty of rugs — ” His voice was easy and intimate.
Aaron looked at him, and nodded.
They had another drink each, and at last the two set off, rather stumbling, upstairs. Aaron carried his bowler hat with him.
Robert remained pacing in the drawing-room for some time. Then he went out, to return in a little while. He extinguished the lamps and saw that the fir
e was safe. Then he went to fasten the window-doors securely. Outside he saw the uncanny glimmer of candles across the lawn. He had half a mind to go out and extinguish them — but he did not. So he went upstairs and the house was quiet. Faint crumbs of snow were falling outside.
When Jim woke in the morning Aaron had gone. Only on the floor were two packets of Christmas-tree candles, fallen from the stranger’s pockets. He had gone through the drawing-room door, as he had come. The housemaid said that while she was cleaning the grate in the dining-room she heard someone go into the drawing-room: a parlour-maid had even seen someone come out of Jim’s bedroom. But they had both thought it was Jim himself, for he was an unsettled house mate.
There was a thin film of snow, a lovely Christmas morning.
CHAPTER IV. “THE PILLAR OF SALT”
Our story will not yet see daylight. A few days after Christmas, Aaron sat in the open shed at the bottom of his own garden, looking out on the rainy darkness. No one knew he was there. It was some time after six in the evening.
From where he sat, he looked straight up the garden to the house. The blind was not drawn in the middle kitchen, he could see the figures of his wife and one child. There was a light also in the upstairs window. His wife was gone upstairs again. He wondered if she had the baby ill. He could see her figure vaguely behind the lace curtains of the bedroom. It was like looking at his home through the wrong end of a telescope. Now the little girls had gone from the middle room: only to return in a moment.
His attention strayed. He watched the light falling from the window of the next-door house. Uneasily, he looked along the whole range of houses. The street sloped down-hill, and the backs were open to the fields. So he saw a curious succession of lighted windows, between which jutted the intermediary back premises, scullery and outhouse, in dark little blocks. It was something like the keyboard of a piano: more still, like a succession of musical notes. For the rectangular planes of light were of different intensities, some bright and keen, some soft, warm, like candle-light, and there was one surface of pure red light, one or two were almost invisible, dark green. So the long scale of lights seemed to trill across the darkness, now bright, now dim, swelling and sinking. The effect was strange.
And thus the whole private life of the street was threaded in lights. There was a sense of indecent exposure, from so many backs. He felt himself almost in physical contact with this contiguous stretch of back premises. He heard the familiar sound of water gushing from the sink in to the grate, the dropping of a pail outside the door, the clink of a coal shovel, the banging of a door, the sound of voices. So many houses cheek by jowl, so many squirming lives, so many back yards, back doors giving on to the night. It was revolting.
Away in the street itself, a boy was calling the newspaper: “ — ’NING POST! — ’NING PO-O-ST!” It was a long, melancholy howl, and seemed to epitomise the whole of the dark, wet, secretive, thickly-inhabited night. A figure passed the window of Aaron’s own house, entered, and stood inside the room talking to Mrs. Sisson. It was a young woman in a brown mackintosh and a black hat. She stood under the incandescent light, and her hat nearly knocked the globe. Next door a man had run out in his shirt sleeves: this time a young, dark-headed collier running to the gate for a newspaper, running bare-headed, coatless, slippered in the rain. He had got his news-sheet, and was returning. And just at that moment the young man’s wife came out, shading her candle with a lading tin. She was going to the coal-house for some coal. Her husband passed her on the threshold. She could be heard breaking the bits of coal and placing them on the dustpan. The light from her candle fell faintly behind her. Then she went back, blown by a swirl of wind. But again she was at the door, hastily standing her iron shovel against the wall. Then she shut the back door with a bang. These noises seemed to scrape and strike the night.
In Aaron’s own house, the young person was still talking to Mrs. Sisson. Millicent came out, sheltering a candle with her hand. The candle blew out. She ran indoors, and emerged again, her white pinafore fluttering. This time she performed her little journey safely. He could see the faint glimmer of her candle emerging secretly from the closet.
The young person was taking her leave. He could hear her sympathetic — ”Well — good night! I hope she’ll be no worse. Good night Mrs. Sisson!” She was gone — he heard the windy bang of the street-gate. Presently Millicent emerged again, flitting indoors.
So he rose to his feet, balancing, swaying a little before he started into motion, as so many colliers do. Then he moved along the path towards the house, in the rain and darkness, very slowly edging forwards.
Suddenly the door opened. His wife emerged with a pail. He stepped quietly aside, on to his side garden, among the sweet herbs. He could smell rosemary and sage and hyssop. A low wall divided his garden from his neighbour’s. He put his hand on it, on its wetness, ready to drop over should his wife come forward. But she only threw the contents of her pail on the garden and retired again. She might have seen him had she looked. He remained standing where he was, listening to the trickle of rain in the water-butt. The hollow countryside lay beyond him. Sometimes in the windy darkness he could see the red burn of New Brunswick bank, or the brilliant jewels of light clustered at Bestwood Colliery. Away in the dark hollow, nearer, the glare of the electric power-station disturbed the night. So again the wind swirled the rain across all these hieroglyphs of the countryside, familiar to him as his own breast.
A motor-car was labouring up the hill. His trained ear attended to it unconsciously. It stopped with a jar. There was a bang of the yard-gate. A shortish dark figure in a bowler hat passed the window. Millicent was drawing down the blind. It was the doctor. The blind was drawn, he could see no more.
Stealthily he began to approach the house. He stood by the climbing rose of the porch, listening. He heard voices upstairs. Perhaps the children would be downstairs. He listened intently. Voices were upstairs only. He quietly opened the door. The room was empty, save for the baby, who was cooing in her cradle. He crossed to the hall. At the foot of the stairs he could hear the voice of the Indian doctor: “Now little girl, you must just keep still and warm in bed, and not cry for the moon.” He said “de moon,” just as ever. — Marjory must be ill.
So Aaron quietly entered the parlour. It was a cold, clammy room, dark. He could hear footsteps passing outside on the asphalt pavement below the window, and the wind howling with familiar cadence. He began feeling for something in the darkness of the music-rack beside the piano. He touched and felt — he could not find what he wanted. Perplexed, he turned and looked out of the window. Through the iron railing of the front wall he could see the little motorcar sending its straight beams of light in front of it, up the street.
He sat down on the sofa by the window. The energy had suddenly left all his limbs. He sat with his head sunk, listening. The familiar room, the familiar voice of his wife and his children — he felt weak as if he were dying. He felt weak like a drowning man who acquiesces in the waters. His strength was gone, he was sinking back. He would sink back to it all, float henceforth like a drowned man.
So he heard voices coming nearer from upstairs, feet moving. They were coming down.
“No, Mrs. Sisson, you needn’t worry,” he heard the voice of the doctor on the stairs. “If she goes on as she is, she’ll be all right. Only she must be kept warm and quiet — warm and quiet — that’s the chief thing.”
“Oh, when she has those bouts I can’t bear it,” Aaron heard his wife’s voice.
They were downstairs. Their feet click-clicked on the tiled passage. They had gone into the middle room. Aaron sat and listened.
“She won’t have any more bouts. If she does, give her a few drops from the little bottle, and raise her up. But she won’t have any more,” the doctor said.
“If she does, I s’ll go off my head, I know I shall.”
“No, you won’t. No, you won’t do anything of the sort. You won’t go off your head. You’ll keep your
head on your shoulders, where it ought to be,” protested the doctor.
“But it nearly drives me mad.”
“Then don’t let it. The child won’t die, I tell you. She will be all right, with care. Who have you got sitting up with her? You’re not to sit up with her tonight, I tell you. Do you hear me?”
“Miss Smitham’s coming in. But it’s no good — I shall have to sit up. I shall HAVE to.”
“I tell you you won’t. You obey ME. I know what’s good for you as well as for her. I am thinking of you as much as of her.”
“But I can’t bear it — all alone.” This was the beginning of tears. There was a dead silence — then a sound of Millicent weeping with her mother. As a matter of fact, the doctor was weeping too, for he was an emotional sympathetic soul, over forty.
“Never mind — never mind — you aren’t alone,” came the doctor’s matter-of-fact voice, after a loud nose-blowing. “I am here to help you. I will do whatever I can — whatever I can.”
“I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it,” wept the woman.
Another silence, another nose-blowing, and again the doctor:
“You’ll HAVE to bear it — I tell you there’s nothing else for it. You’ll have to bear it — but we’ll do our best for you. I will do my best for you — always — ALWAYS — in sickness or out of sickness — There!” He pronounced there oddly, not quite dhere.
“You haven’t heard from your husband?” he added.
“I had a letter — ” — sobs — ”from the bank this morning.”
“FROM DE BANK?”
“Telling me they were sending me so much per month, from him, as an allowance, and that he was quite well, but he was travelling.”
“Well then, why not let him travel? You can live.”
“But to leave me alone,” there was burning indignation in her voice. “To go off and leave me with every responsibility, to leave me with all the burden.”
“Well I wouldn’t trouble about him. Aren’t you better off without him?”
“I am. I am,” she cried fiercely. “When I got that letter this morning, I said MAY EVIL BEFALL YOU, YOU SELFISH DEMON. And I hope it may.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 307
