“St. Mawr’s all right, if you don’t do nothing to him,” Lewis replied.
“I’m sure he is! — But how is one to know when one is doing something to him? — Tell Mr. Jones to come here, please,” she concluded, on a changed tone.
Mr. Jones, a man of forty-five, thick-set, with a fresh complexion and rather foolish brown eyes, and a big brown moustache, came prancing down the path, smiling rather fatuously, and doffing his straw hat with a gorgeous bow the moment he saw Lou sitting in her slim white frock on the coloured swing bed under the trees with their hard green apples.
“Good-morning, Mr. Jones!”
“Good-morning, Lady Carrington. — If I may say so, what a picture you make — a beautiful picture — ”
He beamed under his big brown moustache like the greatest lady-killer.
“Do I! — Did Sir Henry say he was all right?”
“He didn’t say exactly, but I should expect he is all right — ” and Mr. Jones delivered his message, in the mayonnaise of his own unction.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Jones. It’s awfully good of you to come and tell me. Now I shan’t worry about Sir Henry at all.”
“It’s a great pleasure to come and deliver a satisfactory message to Lady Carrington. But it won’t be kind to Sir Henry if you don’t worry about him at all in his absence. We all enjoy being worried about by those we love — so long as there is nothing to worry about, of course!”
“Quite!” said Lou. “Now won’t you take a glass of port and a biscuit, or a whisky and soda? And thank you ever so much.”
“Thank you, my Lady. I might drink a whisky and soda, since you are so good.”
And he beamed fatuously.
“Let Mr. Jones mix himself a whisky and soda, Lewis,” said Lou.
“Heavens!” she thought, as the postmaster retreated a little uncomfortably down the garden path, his bald spot passing in and out of the sun, under the trees: “How ridiculous everything is, how ridiculous, ridiculous!” Yet she didn’t really dislike Mr. Jones and his interlude.
Phoenix was melting away out of the garden. He had to follow the fun.
“Phoenix!” Lou called. “Bring me a glass of water, will you? Or send somebody with it.”
He stood in the path looking round at her.
“All right!” he said
And he turned away again.
She did not like being alone in the garden. She liked to have the men working somewhere near. Curious how pleasant it was to sit there in the garden when Phoenix was about, or Lewis. It made her feel she could never be lonely or jumpy. But when Rico was there, she was all aching nerve.
Phoenix came back with a glass of water, lemon juice, sugar, and a small bottle of brandy. He knew Lou liked a spoonful of brandy in her iced lemonade.
“How thoughtful of you, Phoenix!” she said. “Did Mr. Jones get his whisky?”
“He was just getting it.”
“That’s right. — By the way, Phoenix, I wish you wouldn’t get mad if Sir Henry speaks to you. He is really so kind.”
She looked up at the man. He stood there watching her in silence, the invisible smile on his face, and the inscrutable Indian glint moving in his eyes. What was he thinking? There was something passive and almost submissive about him, but underneath this, an unyielding resistance and cruelty: yes, even cruelty. She felt that, on top, he was submissive and attentive, bringing her her lemonade as she liked it, without being told: thinking for her quite subtly. But underneath there was an unchanging hatred. He submitted circumstantially, he worked for a wage. And even circumstantially, he liked his mistress — la patrona — and her daughter. But much deeper than any circumstance or any circumstantial liking, was the categorical hatred upon which he was founded, and with which he was powerless. His liking for Lou and for Mrs. Witt, his serving them and working for a wage, was all side-tracking his own nature, which was grounded on hatred of their very existence. But what was he to do? He had to live. Therefore he had to serve, to work for a wage, and even to be faithful.
And yet their existence made his own existence negative. If he was to exist, positively, they would have to cease to exist. At the same time, a fatal sort of tolerance made him serve these women, and go on serving.
“Sir Henry is so kind to everybody,” Lou insisted.
The half-breed met her eyes, and smiled uncomfortably. “Yes, he’s a kind man,” he replied, as if sincerely. “Then why do you mind if he speaks to you?”
“I don’t mind,” said Phoenix glibly.
“But you do. Or else you wouldn’t make him so angry.”
“Was he angry? I don’t know,” said Phoenix.
“He was very angry. And you do know.”
“No, I don’t know if he’s angry. I don’t know,” the fellow persisted. And there was a glib sort of satisfaction in his tone.
“That’s awfully unkind of you, Phoenix,” she said, growing offended in her turn.
“No, I don’t know if he’s angry. I don’t want to make him angry. I don’t know — ”
He had taken on a tone of naïve ignorance, which at once gratified her pride as a woman, and deceived her.
“Well, you believe me when I tell you you did make him angry, don’t you?”
“Yes, I believe when you tell me.”
“And you promise me, won’t you, not to do it again? It’s so bad for him — so bad for his nerves, and for his eyes. It makes them inflamed, and injures his eyesight. And you know, as an artist, it’s terrible if anything happens to his eyesight — ”
Phoenix was watching her closely, to take it in. He still was not good at understanding continuous, logical statement. Logical connection in speech seemed to stupefy him, make him stupid. He understood in disconnected assertions of fact. But he had gathered what she said. “He gets mad at you. When he gets mad, it hurts his eyes. His eyes hurt him. He can’t see, because his eyes hurt him. He wants to paint a picture, he can’t. He can’t paint a picture, he can’t see clear — ”
Yes, he had understood. She saw he had understood. The bright glint of satisfaction moved in his eyes.
“So now promise me, won’t you, you won’t make him mad again: you won’t make him angry?”
“No, I won’t make him angry. I don’t do anything to make him angry,” Phoenix answered, rather glibly.
“And you do understand, don’t you? You do know how kind he is: how he’d do a good, turn to anybody?”
“Yes, he’s a kind man,” said Phoenix.
“I’m so glad you realise. There, that’s luncheon! How nice It is to sit here in the garden, when everybody is nice to you! No, I can carry the tray, don’t you bother.”
But he took the tray from her hand and followed her to the house. And as he walked behind her, he watched the slim white nape of her neck, beneath the clustering of her bobbed hair, something as a stoat watches a rabbit he is following.
In the afternoon Lou retreated once more to her place in the garden. There she lay, sitting with a bunch of pillows behind her, neither reading nor working, just musing. She had learned the new joy: to do absolutely nothing, but to lie and let the sunshine filter through the leaves, to see the bunch of red-hot-poker flowers pierce scarlet into the afternoon, beside the comparative neutrality of some foxgloves. The mere colour of hard red, like the big Oriental poppies that had fallen, and these poker flowers, lingered in her consciousness like a communication.
Into this peaceful indolence, when even the big, dark-grey tower of the church beyond the wall and the yew trees was keeping its bells in silence, advanced Mrs. Witt, in a broad Panama hat and a white dress.
“Don’t you want to ride, or do something, Louise?” she asked ominously.
“Don’t you want to be peaceful, mother?” retorted Louise.
“Yes — an active peace. — I can’t believe that my daughter can be content to lie on a hammock and do nothing, not even read or improve her mind, the greater part of the day.”
“Well, your daught
er is content to do that. It’s her greatest pleasure.”
“I know it. I can see it. And it surprises me very much. When I was your age, I was never still. I had so much go — ”
“Those maids, thank God,
Are ‘neath the sod,
And all the generation.”
“No, but, mother, I only take life differently. Perhaps you used up that sort of go. I’m the harem type, mother: only I never want the men inside the lattice.”
“Are you really my daughter? — Well! A woman never knows what will happen to her. I’m an American woman, and I suppose I’ve got to remain one, no matter where I am. — What did you want, Lewis?”
The groom had approached down the path.
“If I am to saddle Poppy?” said Lewis.
“No, apparently not!” replied Mrs. Witt. “Your mistress prefers the hammock to the saddle.”
“Thank you, Lewis. What mother says is true this afternoon, at least.” And she gave him a peculiar little cross-eyed smile.
“Who,” said Mrs. Witt to the man, “has been cutting at your hair?”
There was a moment of silent resentment.
“I did it myself, Mam! Sir Henry said it was too long.”
“He certainly spoke the truth. But I believe there’s a barber in the village on Saturdays — or you could ride over to Shrewsbury. Just turn round, and let me look at the back. Is it the money?”
“No, Mam. I don’t like these fellows touching my head.” He spoke coldly, with a certain hostile reserve that at once piqued Mrs. Witt.
“Don’t you really!” she said. “But it’s quite impossible for you to go about as you are. It gives you a half-witted appearance. Go now into the yard and get a chair and a dust-sheet. I’ll cut your hair.”
The man hesitated, hostile.
“Don’t be afraid, I know how it’s done. I’ve cut the hair of many a poor wounded boy in hospital: and shaved them too. You’ve got such a touch, nurse! Poor fellow, he was dying, though none of us knew it. — Those are the compliments I value, Louise. — Get that chair now, and a dust-sheet, I’ll borrow your hair-scissors from Elena, Louise.”
Mrs. Witt, happily on the war-path, was herself again. She didn’t care for work, actual work. But she loved trimming. She loved arranging unnatural and pretty salads, devising new and piquant-looking ice-creams, having a turkey stuffed exactly as she knew a stuffed turkey in Louisiana, with chestnuts and butter and stuff, or showing a servant how to turn waffles on a waffle-iron, or to bake a ham with brown sugar and cloves and a moistening of rum. She liked pruning rose trees, or beginning to cut a yew hedge into shape. She liked ordering her own and Louise’s shoes, with an exactitude and a knowledge of shoe-making that sent the salesmen crazy. She was a demon in shoes. Reappearing from America, she would pounce on her daughter. “Louise, throw those shoes away. Give them to one of the maids.” — ”But, mother, they are some of the best French shoes. I like them.” — ”Throw them away. A shoe has only two excuses for existing: perfect comfort or perfect appearance. Those have neither. I have brought you some shoes.” — Yes, she had brought ten pairs of shoes from New York. She knew her daughter’s foot as she knew her own.
So now she was in her element, looming behind Lewis as he sat in the middle of the yard swathed in a dust-sheet. She had on an overall and a pair of wash-leather gloves, and she poised a pair of long scissors like one of the Fates. In her big hat she looked curiously young, but with the youth of a bygone generation. Her heavy-lidded, laconic grey eyes were alert, studying the groom’s black mop of hair. Her eyebrows made thin, uptilting black arches on her brow. Her fresh skin was slightly powdered, and she was really handsome in a bold, bygone, eighteenth-century style. Some of the curious, adventurous stoicism of the eighteenth century: and then a Certain blatant American efficiency.
Lou, who had strayed into the yard to see, looked so much younger and so many thousand of years older than her mother, as she stood in her wisp-like diffidence, the clusters of grape-like bobbed hair hanging beside her face, with its fresh colouring and its ancient weariness, her slightly squinting eyes, that were so disillusioned they were becoming faunlike.
“Not too short, mother, not too short!” she remonstrated, as Mrs. Witt, with a terrific flourish of efficiency, darted at the man’s black hair, and the thick flakes fell like black snow.
“Now, Louise, I’m right in this job, please don’t interfere. Two things I hate to see: a man with his wool in his neck and ears: and a bare-faced young man who looks as if he’d bought his face as well as his hair from a men’s beauty-specialist.”
And efficiently she bent down, clip — clip — clipping! while Lewis sat utterly immobile, with sunken head, in a sort of despair.
Phoenix stood against the stable door, with his restless, eternal cigarette. And in the kitchen doorway the maids appeared and fled, appeared and fled in delight. The old gardener, a fixture who went with the house, creaked in and stood with his legs apart, silent in intense condemnation.
“First time I ever see such a thing!” he muttered to himself, as he creaked on into the garden. He was a bad-tempered old soul, who thoroughly disapproved of the household, and would have given notice, but that he knew which side his bread was buttered: and there was butter unstinted on his bread in Mrs. Witt’s kitchen.
Mrs. Witt stood back to survey her handiwork, holding those terrifying shears with their beak erect. Lewis lifted his head and looked stealthily round, like a creature in a trap. “Keep still!” she said. “I haven’t finished.”
And she went for his front hair, with vigour, lifting up long layers and snipping off the ends artistically: till at last he sat with a black aureole upon the floor, and his ears standing out with curious new alertness from the sides of his clean-clipped head.
“Stand up,” she said, “and let me look.”
He stood up, looking absurdly young, with the hair all cut away from his neck and ears, left thick only on top. She surveyed her work with satisfaction.
“You look so much younger,” she said, “you would be surprised. Sit down again.”
She clipped the back of his neck with the shears, and then, with a very slight hesitation, she said:
“Now about the beard!”
But the man rose suddenly from the chair, pulling the dust-cloth from his neck with desperation.
“No, I’ll do that myself,” he said, looking her in the eyes with a cold light in his pale-grey, uncanny eyes.
She hesitated in a kind of wonder at his queer male rebellion.
“Now, listen, I shall do it much better than you — and besides,” she added hurriedly, snatching at the dust-cloth he was flinging on the chair — ”I haven’t quite finished round the ears.”
“I think I shall do,” he said, again looking her in the eyes, with a cold, white gleam of finality. “Thank you for what you’ve done.”
And he walked away to the stable.
“You’d better sweep up here,” Mrs. Witt called.
“Yes, Mam,” he replied, looking round at her again with an odd resentment, but continuing to walk away.
“However!” said Mrs. Witt, “I suppose he’ll do.”
And she divested herself of gloves and overall and walked indoors to wash and to change. Lou went indoors too.
“It is extraordinary what hair that man has!” said Mrs. Witt. “Did I tell you when I was in Paris, I saw a woman’s face in the hotel that I thought I knew? I couldn’t place her, till she was coming towards me. ‘Aren’t you Rachel Fannière?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you Janette Leroy?’ We hadn’t seen each other since we were girls of twelve and thirteen, at school in New Orleans. ‘Oh!’ she said to me. ‘Is every illusion doomed to perish? You had such wonderful golden curls! All my life I’ve said, Oh, if only I had such lovely hair as Rachel Fannière! I’ve seen those beautiful golden curls of yours all my life. And now I meet you, you’re grey!’ Wasn’t that terrible, Louise? Well, that man’s hair made me think of it — so thick and
curious. It’s strange what a difference there is in hair; I suppose it’s because he’s just an animal — no mind! There’s nothing I admire in a man like a good mind. Your father was a very clever man, and all the men I’ve admired have been clever. But isn’t it curious now, I’ve never cared much to touch their hair. How strange life is! If it gives one thing, it takes away another. — And even those poor boys in hospital: I have shaved them, or cut their hair, like a mother, never thinking anything of it. Lovely, intelligent, clean boys, most of them were. Yet it never did anything to me. I never knew before that something could happen to one from a person’s hair! Like to Janette Leroy from my curls when I was a child. And now I’m grey, as she says. — I wonder how old a man Lewis is, Louise! Didn’t he look absurdly young with his ears pricking up?”
“I think Rico said he was forty or forty-one.”
“And never been married?”
“No — not as far as I know.”
“Isn’t that curious now! — just an animal! No mind! A man with no mind! I’ve always thought that the most despicable thing. Yet such wonderful hair to touch. Your Henry has quite a good mind, yet I would simply shrink from touching his hair. I suppose one likes stroking a cat’s fur, just the same. Just the animal in man. Curious that I never seem to have met it, Louise. Now I come to think of it, he has the eyes of a human cat: a human tom-cat. Would you call him stupid? Yes, he’s very stupid.”
“No, mother, he’s not stupid. He only doesn’t care about most things.”
“Like an animal! But what a strange look he has in his eyes! A strange sort of intelligence! and a confidence in himself. Isn’t that curious, Louise, in a man with as little mind as he has? Do you know, I should say he could see through a woman pretty well.”
“Why, mother!” said Lou impatiently. “I think one gets so tired of your men with mind, as you call it. There are so many of that sort of clever men. And there are lots of men who aren’t very clever, but are rather nice: and lots are stupid. It seems to me there’s something else besides mind and cleverness, or niceness or cleanness. Perhaps it is the animal. Just think of St. Mawr! I’ve thought so much about him. We call him an animal, but we never know what it means. He seems a far greater mystery to me than a clever man. He’s a horse. Why can’t one say in the same way of a man: ‘He’s a man?’ There seems no mystery in being a man. But there’s a terrible mystery in St. Mawr.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 542
