‘You are quite right about its being beautiful,’ said Clifford. ‘It is so amazingly. What is quite so lovely as an English spring!’
Connie thought it sounded as if even the spring bloomed by act of Parliament. An English spring! Why not an Irish one? or Jewish? The chair moved slowly ahead, past tufts of sturdy bluebells that stood up like wheat and over grey burdock leaves. When they came to the open place where the trees had been felled, the light flooded in rather stark. And the bluebells made sheets of bright blue colour, here and there, sheering off into lilac and purple. And between, the bracken was lifting its brown curled heads, like legions of young snakes with a new secret to whisper to Eve. Clifford kept the chair going till he came to the brow of the hill; Connie followed slowly behind. The oak-buds were opening soft and brown. Everything came tenderly out of the old hardness. Even the snaggy craggy oak-trees put out the softest young leaves, spreading thin, brown little wings like young bat-wings in the light. Why had men never any newness in them, any freshness to come forth with! Stale men!
Clifford stopped the chair at the top of the rise and looked down. The bluebells washed blue like flood-water over the broad riding, and lit up the downhill with a warm blueness.
‘It’s a very fine colour in itself,’ said Clifford, ‘but useless for making a painting.’
‘Quite!’ said Connie, completely uninterested.
‘Shall I venture as far as the spring?’ said Clifford.
‘Will the chair get up again?’ she said.
‘We’ll try; nothing venture, nothing win!’
And the chair began to advance slowly, joltingly down the beautiful broad riding washed over with blue encroaching hyacinths. O last of all ships, through the hyacinthian shallows! O pinnace on the last wild waters, sailing in the last voyage of our civilization! Whither, O weird wheeled ship, your slow course steering. Quiet and complacent, Clifford sat at the wheel of adventure: in his old black hat and tweed jacket, motionless and cautious. O Captain, my Captain, our splendid trip is done! Not yet though! Downhill, in the wake, came Constance in her grey dress, watching the chair jolt downwards.
They passed the narrow track to the hut. Thank heaven it was not wide enough for the chair: hardly wide enough for one person. The chair reached the bottom of the slope, and swerved round, to disappear. And Connie heard a low whistle behind her. She glanced sharply round: the keeper was striding downhill towards her, his dog keeping behind him.
‘Is Sir Clifford going to the cottage?’ he asked, looking into her eyes.
‘No, only to the well.’
‘Ah! Good! Then I can keep out of sight. But I shall see you tonight. I shall wait for you at the park-gate about ten.’
He looked again direct into her eyes.
‘Yes,’ she faltered.
They heard the Papp! Papp! of Clifford’s horn, tooting for Connie. She ‘Coo-eed!’ in reply. The keeper’s face flickered with a little grimace, and with his hand he softly brushed her breast upwards, from underneath. She looked at him, frightened, and started running down the hill, calling Coo-ee! again to Clifford. The man above watched her, then turned, grinning faintly, back into his path.
She found Clifford slowly mounting to the spring, which was halfway up the slope of the dark larch-wood. He was there by the time she caught him up.
‘She did that all right,’ he said, referring to the chair.
Connie looked at the great grey leaves of burdock that grew out ghostly from the edge of the larch-wood. The people call it Robin Hood’s Rhubarb. How silent and gloomy it seemed by the well! Yet the water bubbled so bright, wonderful! And there were bits of eye-bright and strong blue bugle...And there, under the bank, the yellow earth was moving. A mole! It emerged, rowing its pink hands, and waving its blind gimlet of a face, with the tiny pink nose-tip uplifted.
‘It seems to see with the end of its nose,’ said Connie.
‘Better than with its eyes!’ he said. ‘Will you drink?’
‘Will you?’
She took an enamel mug from a twig on a tree, and stooped to fill it for him. He drank in sips. Then she stooped again, and drank a little herself.
‘So icy!’ she said gasping.
‘Good, isn’t it! Did you wish?’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes, I wished. But I won’t tell.’
She was aware of the rapping of a woodpecker, then of the wind, soft and eerie through the larches. She looked up. White clouds were crossing the blue.
‘Clouds!’ she said.
‘White lambs only,’ he replied.
A shadow crossed the little clearing. The mole had swum out on to the soft yellow earth.
‘Unpleasant little beast, we ought to kill him,’ said Clifford.
‘Look! he’s like a parson in a pulpit,’ she said.
She gathered some sprigs of woodruff and brought them to him.
‘New-mown hay!’ he said. ‘Doesn’t it smell like the romantic ladies of the last century, who had their heads screwed on the right way after all!’
She was looking at the white clouds.
‘I wonder if it will rain,’ she said.
‘Rain! Why! Do you want it to?’
They started on the return journey, Clifford jolting cautiously downhill. They came to the dark bottom of the hollow, turned to the right, and after a hundred yards swerved up the foot of the long slope, where bluebells stood in the light.
‘Now, old girl!’ said Clifford, putting the chair to it.
It was a steep and jolty climb. The chair pugged slowly, in a struggling unwilling fashion. Still, she nosed her way up unevenly, till she came to where the hyacinths were all around her, then she balked, struggled, jerked a little way out of the flowers, then stopped
‘We’d better sound the horn and see if the keeper will come,’ said Connie. ‘He could push her a bit. For that matter, I will push. It helps.’
‘We’ll let her breathe,’ said Clifford. ‘Do you mind putting a scotch under the wheel?’
Connie found a stone, and they waited. After a while Clifford started his motor again, then set the chair in motion. It struggled and faltered like a sick thing, with curious noises.
‘Let me push!’ said Connie, coming up behind.
‘No! Don’t push!’ he said angrily. ‘What’s the good of the damned thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone under!’
There was another pause, then another start; but more ineffectual than before.
‘You must let me push,’ said she. ‘Or sound the horn for the keeper.’
‘Wait!’
She waited; and he had another try, doing more harm than good.
‘Sound the horn then, if you won’t let me push,’ she said.
‘Hell! Be quiet a moment!’
She was quiet a moment: he made shattering efforts with the little motor.
‘You’ll only break the thing down altogether, Clifford,’ she remonstrated; ‘besides wasting your nervous energy.’
‘If I could only get out and look at the damned thing!’ he said, exasperated. And he sounded the horn stridently. ‘Perhaps Mellors can see what’s wrong.’
They waited, among the mashed flowers under a sky softly curdling with cloud. In the silence a wood-pigeon began to coo roo-hoo hoo! roo-hoo hoo! Clifford shut her up with a blast on the horn.
The keeper appeared directly, striding inquiringly round the corner. He saluted.
‘Do you know anything about motors?’ asked Clifford sharply.
‘I am afraid I don’t. Has she gone wrong?’
‘Apparently!’ snapped Clifford.
The man crouched solicitously by the wheel, and peered at the little engine.
‘I’m afraid I know nothing at all about these mechanical things, Sir Clifford,’ he said calmly. ‘If she has enough petrol and oil — ’
‘Just look carefully and see if you can see anything broken,’ snapped Clifford.
The man laid his gun against a tree, took off his coat, and t
hrew it beside it. The brown dog sat guard. Then he sat down on his heels and peered under the chair, poking with his finger at the greasy little engine, and resenting the grease-marks on his clean Sunday shirt.
‘Doesn’t seem anything broken,’ he said. And he stood up, pushing back his hat from his forehead, rubbing his brow and apparently studying.
‘Have you looked at the rods underneath?’ asked Clifford. ‘See if they are all right!’
The man lay flat on his stomach on the floor, his neck pressed back, wriggling under the engine and poking with his finger. Connie thought what a pathetic sort of thing a man was, feeble and small-looking, when he was lying on his belly on the big earth.
‘Seems all right as far as I can see,’ came his muffled voice.
‘I don’t suppose you can do anything,’ said Clifford.
‘Seems as if I can’t!’ And he scrambled up and sat on his heels, collier fashion. ‘There’s certainly nothing obviously broken.’
Clifford started his engine, then put her in gear. She would not move.
‘Run her a bit hard, like,’ suggested the keeper.
Clifford resented the interference: but he made his engine buzz like a blue-bottle. Then she coughed and snarled and seemed to go better.
‘Sounds as if she’d come clear,’ said Mellors.
But Clifford had already jerked her into gear. She gave a sick lurch and ebbed weakly forwards.
‘If I give her a push, she’ll do it,’ said the keeper, going behind.
‘Keep off!’ snapped Clifford. ‘She’ll do it by herself.’
‘But Clifford!’ put in Connie from the bank, ‘you know it’s too much for her. Why are you so obstinate!’
Clifford was pale with anger. He jabbed at his levers. The chair gave a sort of scurry, reeled on a few more yards, and came to her end amid a particularly promising patch of bluebells.
‘She’s done!’ said the keeper. ‘Not power enough.’
‘She’s been up here before,’ said Clifford coldly.
‘She won’t do it this time,’ said the keeper.
Clifford did not reply. He began doing things with his engine, running her fast and slow as if to get some sort of tune out of her. The wood re-echoed with weird noises. Then he put her in gear with a jerk, having jerked off his brake.
‘You’ll rip her inside out,’ murmured the keeper.
The chair charged in a sick lurch sideways at the ditch.
‘Clifford!’ cried Connie, rushing forward.
But the keeper had got the chair by the rail. Clifford, however, putting on all his pressure, managed to steer into the riding, and with a strange noise the chair was fighting the hill. Mellors pushed steadily behind, and up she went, as if to retrieve herself.
‘You see, she’s doing it!’ said Clifford, victorious, glancing over his shoulder. There he saw the keeper’s face.
‘Are you pushing her?’
‘She won’t do it without.’
‘Leave her alone. I asked you not.
‘She won’t do it.’
‘Let her try!’ snarled Clifford, with all his emphasis.
The keeper stood back: then turned to fetch his coat and gun. The chair seemed to strangle immediately. She stood inert. Clifford, seated a prisoner, was white with vexation. He jerked at the levers with his hand, his feet were no good. He got queer noises out of her. In savage impatience he moved little handles and got more noises out of her. But she would not budge. No, she would not budge. He stopped the engine and sat rigid with anger.
Constance sat on the bank and looked at the wretched and trampled bluebells. ‘Nothing quite so lovely as an English spring.’ ‘I can do my share of ruling.’ ‘What we need to take up now is whips, not swords.’ ‘The ruling classes!’
The keeper strode up with his coat and gun, Flossie cautiously at his heels. Clifford asked the man to do something or other to the engine. Connie, who understood nothing at all of the technicalities of motors, and who had had experience of breakdowns, sat patiently on the bank as if she were a cipher. The keeper lay on his stomach again. The ruling classes and the serving classes!
He got to his feet and said patiently:
‘Try her again, then.’
He spoke in a quiet voice, almost as if to a child.
Clifford tried her, and Mellors stepped quickly behind and began to push. She was going, the engine doing about half the work, the man the rest.
Clifford glanced round, yellow with anger.
‘Will you get off there!’
The keeper dropped his hold at once, and Clifford added: ‘How shall I know what she is doing!’
The man put his gun down and began to pull on his coat. He’d done.
The chair began slowly to run backwards.
‘Clifford, your brake!’ cried Connie.
She, Mellors, and Clifford moved at once, Connie and the keeper jostling lightly. The chair stood. There was a moment of dead silence.
‘It’s obvious I’m at everybody’s mercy!’ said Clifford. He was yellow with anger.
No one answered. Mellors was slinging his gun over his shoulder, his face queer and expressionless, save for an abstracted look of patience. The dog Flossie, standing on guard almost between her master’s legs, moved uneasily, eyeing the chair with great suspicion and dislike, and very much perplexed between the three human beings. The tableau vivant remained set among the squashed bluebells, nobody proffering a word.
‘I expect she’ll have to be pushed,’ said Clifford at last, with an affectation of sang froid.
No answer. Mellors’ abstracted face looked as if he had heard nothing. Connie glanced anxiously at him. Clifford too glanced round.
‘Do you mind pushing her home, Mellors!’ he said in a cool superior tone. ‘I hope I have said nothing to offend you,’ he added, in a tone of dislike.
‘Nothing at all, Sir Clifford! Do you want me to push that chair?’
‘If you please.’
The man stepped up to it: but this time it was without effect. The brake was jammed. They poked and pulled, and the keeper took off his gun and his coat once more. And now Clifford said never a word. At last the keeper heaved the back of the chair off the ground and, with an instantaneous push of his foot, tried to loosen the wheels. He failed, the chair sank. Clifford was clutching the sides. The man gasped with the weight.
‘Don’t do it!’ cried Connie to him.
‘If you’ll pull the wheel that way, so!’ he said to her, showing her how.
‘No! You mustn’t lift it! You’ll strain yourself,’ she said, flushed now with anger.
But he looked into her eyes and nodded. And she had to go and take hold of the wheel, ready. He heaved and she tugged, and the chair reeled.
‘For God’s sake!’ cried Clifford in terror.
But it was all right, and the brake was off. The keeper put a stone under the wheel, and went to sit on the bank, his heart beat and his face white with the effort, semi-conscious.
Connie looked at him, and almost cried with anger. There was a pause and a dead silence. She saw his hands trembling on his thighs.
‘Have you hurt yourself?’ she asked, going to him.
‘No. No!’ He turned away almost angrily.
There was dead silence. The back of Clifford’s fair head did not move. Even the dog stood motionless. The sky had clouded over.
At last he sighed, and blew his nose on his red handkerchief.
‘That pneumonia took a lot out of me,’ he said.
No one answered. Connie calculated the amount of strength it must have taken to heave up that chair and the bulky Clifford: too much, far too much! If it hadn’t killed him!
He rose, and again picked up his coat, slinging it through the handle of the chair.
‘Are you ready, then, Sir Clifford?’
‘When you are!’
He stooped and took out the scotch, then put his weight against the chair. He was paler than Connie had ever seen him: and more absent. C
lifford was a heavy man: and the hill was steep. Connie stepped to the keeper’s side.
‘I’m going to push too!’ she said.
And she began to shove with a woman’s turbulent energy of anger. The chair went faster. Clifford looked round.
‘Is that necessary?’ he said.
‘Very! Do you want to kill the man! If you’d let the motor work while it would — ’
But she did not finish. She was already panting. She slackened off a little, for it was surprisingly hard work.
‘Ay! slower!’ said the man at her side, with a faint smile of his eyes.
‘Are you sure you’ve not hurt yourself?’ she said fiercely.
He shook his head. She looked at his smallish, short, alive hand, browned by the weather. It was the hand that caressed her. She had never even looked at it before. It seemed so still, like him, with a curious inward stillness that made her want to clutch it, as if she could not reach it. All her soul suddenly swept towards him: he was so silent, and out of reach! And he felt his limbs revive. Shoving with his left hand, he laid his right on her round white wrist, softly enfolding her wrist, with a caress. And the flame of strength went down his back and his loins, reviving him. And she bent suddenly and kissed his hand. Meanwhile the back of Clifford’s head was held sleek and motionless, just in front of them.
At the top of the hill they rested, and Connie was glad to let go. She had had fugitive dreams of friendship between these two men: one her husband, the other the father of her child. Now she saw the screaming absurdity of her dreams. The two males were as hostile as fire and water. They mutually exterminated one another. And she realized for the first time what a queer subtle thing hate is. For the first time, she had consciously and definitely hated Clifford, with vivid hate: as if he ought to be obliterated from the face of the earth. And it was strange, how free and full of life it made her feel, to hate him and to admit it fully to herself. — ’Now I’ve hated him, I shall never be able to go on living with him,’ came the thought into her mind.
On the level the keeper could push the chair alone. Clifford made a little conversation with her, to show his complete composure: about Aunt Eva, who was at Dieppe, and about Sir Malcolm, who had written to ask would Connie drive with him in his small car, to Venice, or would she and Hilda go by train.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 498
