She knew that, when at last he roused and drew away from her. It was like an abandonment. He drew her dress in the darkness down over her knees and stood a few moments, apparently adjusting his own clothing. Then he quietly opened the door and went out.
She saw a very brilliant little moon shining above the afterglow over the oaks. Quickly she got up and arranged herself she was tidy. Then she went to the door of the hut.
All the lower wood was in shadow, almost darkness. Yet the sky overhead was crystal. But it shed hardly any light. He came through the lower shadow towards her, his face lifted like a pale blotch.
‘Shall we go then?’ he said.
‘Where?’
‘I’ll go with you to the gate.’
He arranged things his own way. He locked the door of the hut and came after her.
‘You aren’t sorry, are you?’ he asked, as he went at her side.
‘No! No! Are you?’ she said.
‘For that! No!’ he said. Then after a while he added: ‘But there’s the rest of things.’
‘What rest of things?’ she said.
‘Sir Clifford. Other folks. All the complications.’
‘Why complications?’ she said, disappointed.
‘It’s always so. For you as well as for me. There’s always complications.’ He walked on steadily in the dark.
‘And are you sorry?’ she said.
‘In a way!’ he replied, looking up at the sky. ‘I thought I’d done with it all. Now I’ve begun again.’
‘Begun what?’
‘Life.’
‘Life!’ she re-echoed, with a queer thrill.
‘It’s life,’ he said. ‘There’s no keeping clear. And if you do keep clear you might almost as well die. So if I’ve got to be broken open again, I have.’
She did not quite see it that way, but still ‘It’s just love,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Whatever that may be,’ he replied.
They went on through the darkening wood in silence, till they were almost at the gate.
‘But you don’t hate me, do you?’ she said wistfully.
‘Nay, nay,’ he replied. And suddenly he held her fast against his breast again, with the old connecting passion. ‘Nay, for me it was good, it was good. Was it for you?’
‘Yes, for me too,’ she answered, a little untruthfully, for she had not been conscious of much.
He kissed her softly, softly, with the kisses of warmth.
‘If only there weren’t so many other people in the world,’ he said lugubriously.
She laughed. They were at the gate to the park. He opened it for her.
‘I won’t come any further,’ he said.
‘No!’ And she held out her hand, as if to shake hands. But he took it in both his.
‘Shall I come again?’ she asked wistfully.
‘Yes! Yes!’
She left him and went across the park.
He stood back and watched her going into the dark, against the pallor of the horizon. Almost with bitterness he watched her go. She had connected him up again, when he had wanted to be alone. She had cost him that bitter privacy of a man who at last wants only to be alone.
He turned into the dark of the wood. All was still, the moon had set. But he was aware of the noises of the night, the engines at Stacks Gate, the traffic on the main road. Slowly he climbed the denuded knoll. And from the top he could see the country, bright rows of lights at Stacks Gate, smaller lights at Tevershall pit, the yellow lights of Tevershall and lights everywhere, here and there, on the dark country, with the distant blush of furnaces, faint and rosy, since the night was clear, the rosiness of the outpouring of white-hot metal. Sharp, wicked electric lights at Stacks Gate! An undefinable quick of evil in them! And all the unease, the ever-shifting dread of the industrial night in the Midlands. He could hear the winding-engines at Stacks Gate turning down the seven-o’clock miners. The pit worked three shifts.
He went down again into the darkness and seclusion of the wood. But he knew that the seclusion of the wood was illusory. The industrial noises broke the solitude, the sharp lights, though unseen, mocked it. A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits. And now he had taken the woman, and brought on himself a new cycle of pain and doom. For he knew by experience what it meant.
It was not woman’s fault, nor even love’s fault, nor the fault of sex. The fault lay there, out there, in those evil electric lights and diabolical rattlings of engines. There, in the world of the mechanical greedy, greedy mechanism and mechanized greed, sparkling with lights and gushing hot metal and roaring with traffic, there lay the vast evil thing, ready to destroy whatever did not conform. Soon it would destroy the wood, and the bluebells would spring no more. All vulnerable things must perish under the rolling and running of iron.
He thought with infinite tenderness of the woman. Poor forlorn thing, she was nicer than she knew, and oh! so much too nice for the tough lot she was in contact with. Poor thing, she too had some of the vulnerability of the wild hyacinths, she wasn’t all tough rubber-goods and platinum, like the modern girl. And they would do her in! As sure as life, they would do her in, as they do in all naturally tender life. Tender! Somewhere she was tender, tender with a tenderness of the growing hyacinths, something that has gone out of the celluloid women of today. But he would protect her with his heart for a little while. For a little while, before the insentient iron world and the Mammon of mechanized greed did them both in, her as well as him.
He went home with his gun and his dog, to the dark cottage, lit the lamp, started the fire, and ate his supper of bread and cheese, young onions and beer. He was alone, in a silence he loved. His room was clean and tidy, but rather stark. Yet the fire was bright, the hearth white, the petroleum lamp hung bright over the table, with its white oil-cloth. He tried to read a book about India, but tonight he could not read. He sat by the fire in his shirt-sleeves, not smoking, but with a mug of beer in reach. And he thought about Connie.
To tell the truth, he was sorry for what had happened, perhaps most for her sake. He had a sense of foreboding. No sense of wrong or sin; he was troubled by no conscience in that respect. He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society, or fear of oneself. He was not afraid of himself. But he was quite consciously afraid of society, which he knew by instinct to be a malevolent, partly-insane beast.
The woman! If she could be there with him, and there were nobody else in the world! The desire rose again, his penis began to stir like a live bird. At the same time an oppression, a dread of exposing himself and her to that outside Thing that sparkled viciously in the electric lights, weighed down his shoulders. She, poor young thing, was just a young female creature to him; but a young female creature whom he had gone into and whom he desired again.
Stretching with the curious yawn of desire, for he had been alone and apart from man or woman for four years, he rose and took his coat again, and his gun, lowered the lamp and went out into the starry night, with the dog. Driven by desire and by dread of the malevolent Thing outside, he made his round in the wood, slowly, softly. He loved the darkness and folded himself into it. It fitted the turgidity of his desire which, in spite of all, was like a riches; the stirring restlessness of his penis, the stirring fire in his loins! Oh, if only there were other men to be with, to fight that sparkling electric Thing outside there, to preserve the tenderness of life, the tenderness of women, and the natural riches of desire. If only there were men to fight side by side with! But the men were all outside there, glorying in the Thing, triumphing or being trodden down in the rush of mechanized greed or of greedy mechanism.
Constance, for her part, had hurried across the park, home, almost without thinking. As yet she had no afterthought. She would be in time for dinner.
She was annoyed to find the doors fastened, however, so that she had to ring. Mrs Bolton opened.
‘Why there you are, your Ladyship! I was beginning to wonder if you’d gone lost!’
she said a little roguishly. ‘Sir Clifford hasn’t asked for you, though; he’s got Mr Linley in with him, talking over something. It looks as if he’d stay to dinner, doesn’t it, my Lady?’
‘It does rather,’ said Connie.
‘Shall I put dinner back a quarter of an hour? That would give you time to dress in comfort.’
‘Perhaps you’d better.’
Mr Linley was the general manager of the collieries, an elderly man from the north, with not quite enough punch to suit Clifford; not up to post-war conditions, nor post-war colliers either, with their ‘ca’ canny’ creed. But Connie liked Mr Linley, though she was glad to be spared the toadying of his wife.
Linley stayed to dinner, and Connie was the hostess men liked so much, so modest, yet so attentive and aware, with big, wide blue eyes and a soft repose that sufficiently hid what she was really thinking. Connie had played this woman so much, it was almost second nature to her; but still, decidedly second. Yet it was curious how everything disappeared from her consciousness while she played it.
She waited patiently till she could go upstairs and think her own thoughts. She was always waiting, it seemed to be her forte.
Once in her room, however, she felt still vague and confused. She didn’t know what to think. What sort of a man was he, really? Did he really like her? Not much, she felt. Yet he was kind. There was something, a sort of warm naive kindness, curious and sudden, that almost opened her womb to him. But she felt he might be kind like that to any woman. Though even so, it was curiously soothing, comforting. And he was a passionate man, wholesome and passionate. But perhaps he wasn’t quite individual enough; he might be the same with any woman as he had been with her. It really wasn’t personal. She was only really a female to him.
But perhaps that was better. And after all, he was kind to the female in her, which no man had ever been. Men were very kind to the person she was, but rather cruel to the female, despising her or ignoring her altogether. Men were awfully kind to Constance Reid or to Lady Chatterley; but not to her womb they weren’t kind. And he took no notice of Constance or of Lady Chatterley; he just softly stroked her loins or her breasts.
She went to the wood next day. It was a grey, still afternoon, with the dark-green dogs-mercury spreading under the hazel copse, and all the trees making a silent effort to open their buds. Today she could almost feel it in her own body, the huge heave of the sap in the massive trees, upwards, up, up to the bud-tips, there to push into little flamey oak-leaves, bronze as blood. It was like a ride running turgid upward, and spreading on the sky.
She came to the clearing, but he was not there. She had only half expected him. The pheasant chicks were running lightly abroad, light as insects, from the coops where the fellow hens clucked anxiously. Connie sat and watched them, and waited. She only waited. Even the chicks she hardly saw. She waited.
The time passed with dream-like slowness, and he did not come. She had only half expected him. He never came in the afternoon. She must go home to tea. But she had to force herself to leave.
As she went home, a fine drizzle of rain fell.
‘Is it raining again?’ said Clifford, seeing her shake her hat.
‘Just drizzle.’
She poured tea in silence, absorbed in a sort of obstinacy. She did want to see the keeper today, to see if it were really real. If it were really real.
‘Shall I read a little to you afterwards?’ said Clifford.
She looked at him. Had he sensed something?
‘The spring makes me feel queer — I thought I might rest a little,’ she said.
‘Just as you like. Not feeling really unwell, are you?’
‘No! Only rather tired — with the spring. Will you have Mrs Bolton to play something with you?’
‘No! I think I’ll listen in.’
She heard the curious satisfaction in his voice. She went upstairs to her bedroom. There she heard the loudspeaker begin to bellow, in an idiotically velveteen-genteel sort of voice, something about a series of street-cries, the very cream of genteel affectation imitating old criers. She pulled on her old violet coloured mackintosh, and slipped out of the house at the side door.
The drizzle of rain was like a veil over the world, mysterious, hushed, not cold. She got very warm as she hurried across the park. She had to open her light waterproof.
The wood was silent, still and secret in the evening drizzle of rain, full of the mystery of eggs and half-open buds, half unsheathed flowers. In the dimness of it all trees glistened naked and dark as if they had unclothed themselves, and the green things on earth seemed to hum with greenness.
There was still no one at the clearing. The chicks had nearly all gone under the mother-hens, only one or two last adventurous ones still dibbed about in the dryness under the straw roof shelter. And they were doubtful of themselves.
So! He still had not been. He was staying away on purpose. Or perhaps something was wrong. Perhaps she should go to the cottage and see.
But she was born to wait. She opened the hut with her key. It was all tidy, the corn put in the bin, the blankets folded on the shelf, the straw neat in a corner; a new bundle of straw. The hurricane lamp hung on a nail. The table and chair had been put back where she had lain.
She sat down on a stool in the doorway. How still everything was! The fine rain blew very softly, filmily, but the wind made no noise. Nothing made any sound. The trees stood like powerful beings, dim, twilit, silent and alive. How alive everything was!
Night was drawing near again; she would have to go. He was avoiding her.
But suddenly he came striding into the clearing, in his black oilskin jacket like a chauffeur, shining with wet. He glanced quickly at the hut, half-saluted, then veered aside and went on to the coops. There he crouched in silence, looking carefully at everything, then carefully shutting the hens and chicks up safe against the night.
At last he came slowly towards her. She still sat on her stool. He stood before her under the porch.
‘You come then,’ he said, using the intonation of the dialect.
‘Yes,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘You’re late!’
‘Ay!’ he replied, looking away into the wood.
She rose slowly, drawing aside her stool.
‘Did you want to come in?’ she asked.
He looked down at her shrewdly.
‘Won’t folks be thinkin’ somethink, you comin’ here every night?’ he said.
‘Why?’ She looked up at him, at a loss. ‘I said I’d come. Nobody knows.’
‘They soon will, though,’ he replied. ‘An’ what then?’
She was at a loss for an answer.
‘Why should they know?’ she said.
‘Folks always does,’ he said fatally.
Her lip quivered a little.
‘Well I can’t help it,’ she faltered.
‘Nay,’ he said. ‘You can help it by not comin’ — if yer want to,’ he added, in a lower tone.
‘But I don’t want to,’ she murmured.
He looked away into the wood, and was silent.
‘But what when folks finds out?’ he asked at last. ‘Think about it! Think how lowered you’ll feel, one of your husband’s servants.’
She looked up at his averted face.
‘Is it,’ she stammered, ‘is it that you don’t want me?’
‘Think!’ he said. ‘Think what if folks find out Sir Clifford an’ a’ — an’ everybody talkin’ — ’
‘Well, I can go away.’
‘Where to?’
‘Anywhere! I’ve got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand pounds in trust, and I know Clifford can’t touch it. I can go away.’
‘But ‘appen you don’t want to go away.’
‘Yes, yes! I don’t care what happens to me.’
‘Ay, you think that! But you’ll care! You’ll have to care, everybody has. You’ve got to remember your Ladyship is carrying on with a game-keeper. It’s not as if I was a gentlem
an. Yes, you’d care. You’d care.’
‘I shouldn’t. What do I care about my ladyship! I hate it really. I feel people are jeering every time they say it. And they are, they are! Even you jeer when you say it.’
‘Me!’
For the first time he looked straight at her, and into her eyes. ‘I don’t jeer at you,’ he said.
As he looked into her eyes she saw his own eyes go dark, quite dark, the pupils dilating.
‘Don’t you care about a’ the risk?’ he asked in a husky voice. ‘You should care. Don’t care when it’s too late!’
There was a curious warning pleading in his voice.
‘But I’ve nothing to lose,’ she said fretfully. ‘If you knew what it is, you’d think I’d be glad to lose it. But are you afraid for yourself?’
‘Ay!’ he said briefly. ‘I am. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid o’ things.’
‘What things?’ she asked.
He gave a curious backward jerk of his head, indicating the outer world.
‘Things! Everybody! The lot of ‘em.’
Then he bent down and suddenly kissed her unhappy face.
‘Nay, I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Let’s have it, an’ damn the rest. But if you was to feel sorry you’d ever done it — !’
‘Don’t put me off,’ she pleaded.
He put his fingers to her cheek and kissed her again suddenly.
‘Let me come in then,’ he said softly. ‘An’ take off your mackintosh.’
He hung up his gun, slipped out of his wet leather jacket, and reached for the blankets.
‘I brought another blanket,’ he said, ‘so we can put one over us if you like.’
‘I can’t stay long,’ she said. ‘Dinner is half-past seven.’
He looked at her swiftly, then at his watch.
‘All right,’ he said.
He shut the door, and lit a tiny light in the hanging hurricane lamp. ‘One time we’ll have a long time,’ he said.
He put the blankets down carefully, one folded for her head. Then he sat down a moment on the stool, and drew her to him, holding her close with one arm, feeling for her body with his free hand. She heard the catch of his intaken breath as he found her. Under her frail petticoat she was naked.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 490
