“Perhaps mother would like to go,” said Lou softly, plaintively.
“Well, we shall see,” said the Dean. “Good-bye for the present!”
Mother and daughter stood at the window watching the two cross the churchyard. Dean and wife knew it, but daren’t look round, and daren’t admit the fact to one another.
Lou was grinning with a complete grin that gave her an odd, dryad or faun look, intensified.
“It was almost as good as pouring tea into her hat,” said Mrs. Witt serenely. “People like that tire me out. I shall take a glass of sherry.”
“So will I, mother. — It was even better than pouring tea in her hat. — You meant, didn’t you, if you poured tea in her hat, to put cream and sugar in first?”
“I did,” said Mrs. Witt.
But after the excitement of the encounter had passed away, Lou felt as if her life had passed away too. She went to bed, feeling she could stand no more.
In the morning she found her mother sitting at a window watching a funeral. It was raining heavily, so that some of the mourners even wore mackintosh coats. The funeral was in the poorer corner of the churchyard, where another new grave was covered with wreaths of sodden, shrivelling flowers. The yellowish coffin stood on wet earth in the rain: the curate held his hat, in a sort of permanent salute, above his head, like a little umbrella, as he hastened on with the service. The people seemed too wet to weep more wet.
It was a long coffin.
“Mother, do you really like watching?” asked Lou irritably, as Mrs. Witt sat in complete absorption.
“I do, Louise, I really enjoy it.”
“Enjoy, mother!” — Lou was almost disgusted.
“I’ll tell you why. I imagine I’m the one in the coffin — this is a girl of eighteen, who died of consumption — and those are my relatives, and I’m watching them put me away. And, you know, Louise, I’ve come to the conclusion that hardly anybody in the world really lives, and so hardly anybody really dies. They may well say: ‘Oh, Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling?’ Even Death can’t sting those that have never really lived. — I always used to want that — to die without death stinging me. — And I’m sure the girl in the coffin is saying to herself: ‘Fancy Aunt Emma putting on a drab slicker, and wearing it while they bury me. Doesn’t show much respect. But then my mother’s family always were common!’ I feel there should be a solemn burial of a roll of newspapers containing the account of the death and funeral next week. It would be just as serious: the grave of all the world’s remarks — ”
“I don’t want to think about it, mother. One ought to be able to laugh at it. I want to laugh at it.”
“Well, Louise, I think it’s just as great a mistake to laugh at everything as to cry at everything. Laughter’s not the one panacea, either. I should really like, before I do come to be buried in a box, to know where I am. That young girl in that coffin never was anywhere — any more than the newspaper remarks on her death and burial. And I begin to wonder if I’ve ever been anywhere. I seem to have been a daily sequence of newspaper remarks myself. I’m sure I never really conceived you and gave you birth. It all happened in newspaper notices. It’s a newspaper fact that you are my child, and that’s about all there is to it.”
Lou smiled as she listened.
“I always knew you were philosophic, mother. But I never dreamed at would come to elegies in a country churchyard, written to your motherhood.”
“Exactly, Louise! Here I sit and sing the elegy to my own motherhood. I never had any motherhood, except in newspaper fact. I never was a wife, except in newspaper notices. I never was a young girl, except in newspaper remarks. Bury everything I ever said or that was said about me, and you’ve buried me. But since Kind Words Can Never Die, I can’t be buried, and death has no sting-a-ling-a-ling for me! — Now listen to me, Louise: I want death to be real to me — not as it was to that young girl. I want it to hurt me, Louise. If it hurts me enough, I shall know I was alive.”
She set her face and gazed under half-dropped lids at the funeral, stoic, fate-like, and yet, for the first time, with a certain pure wistfulness of a young, virgin girl. This frightened Lou very much. She was so used to the matchless Amazon in her mother, that when she saw her sit there, still, wistful, virginal, tender as a girl who has never taken armour, wistful at the window that only looked on graves, a serious terror took hold of the young woman. The terror of too late!
Lou felt years, centuries older than her mother at that moment, with the tiresome responsibility of youth to protect and guide their elders.
“What can we do about it, mother?” she asked protectively.
“Do nothing, Louise. I’m not going to have anybody wisely steering my canoe, now I feel the rapids are near. I shall go with the river. Don’t you pretend to do anything for me. I’ve done enough mischief myself, that way. I’m going down the stream at last.”
There was a pause.
“But in actuality, what?” asked Lou, a little ironically. “I don’t quite know. Wait a while.”
“Go back to America?”
“That is possible.”
“I may come too.”
“I’ve always waited for you to go back of your own will.”
Lou went away, wandering round the house. She was so unutterably tired of everything — weary of the house, the graveyard, weary of the thought of Rico. She would have to go back to him to-morrow, to nurse him. Poor old Rico, going on like an amiable machine from day to day. It wasn’t his fault. But his life was a rattling nullity, and her life rattled in null correspondence. She had hardly strength enough to stop rattling and be still. Perhaps she had not strength enough.
She did not know. She felt so weak that unless something carried her away she would go on rattling her bit in the great machine of human life till she collapsed and her rattle rattled itself out, and there was a sort of barren silence where the sound of her had been.
She wandered out in the rain to the coach-house, where Lewis and Phoenix were sitting facing one another, one on a bin, the other on the inner doorstep.
“Well,” she said, smiling oddly. “What’s to be done?”
The two men stood up. Outside the rain fell steadily on the flagstones of the yard, past the leaves of trees. Lou sat down on the little iron step of the dog-cart.
“That’s cold,” said Phoenix. “You sit here.” And he threw a yellow horse-blanket on the box where he had been sitting. “I don’t want to take your seat,” she said.
“All right, you take it.”
He moved across and sat gingerly on the shaft of the dogcart. Lou seated herself and loosened her soft tartan shawl. Her face was pink and fresh, and her dark hair curled almost merrily in the damp. But under her eyes were the finger-prints of deadly weariness.
She looked up at the two men, again smiling in her odd fashion.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
They looked at her closely, seeking her meaning.
“What about?” said Phoenix, a faint smile reflecting on his face, merely because she smiled.
“Oh, everything,” she said, hugging her shawl again. “You know what they want? They want to shoot St. Mawr.” The two men exchanged glances.
“Who want it?” said Phoenix.
“Why — all our friends!” She made a little moue. “Dean Vyner does.”
Again the men exchanged glances. There was a pause. Then Phoenix said, looking aside:
“The boss is selling him.”
“Who?”
“Sir Henry.” — The half-breed always spoke the title with difficulty, and with a sort of sneer. “He sell him to Miss Manby.”
“How do you know?”
“The man from Corrabach told me last night. Flora, she say it.”
Lou’s eyes met the sardonic, empty-seeing eyes of Phoenix direct. There was too much sarcastic understanding. She looked aside.
“What else did he say?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” s
aid Phoenix evasively. “He say they cut him — else shoot him. Think they cut him — and if he die, he die.”
Lou understood. He meant they would geld St. Mawr — at his age.
She looked at Lewis. He sat with his head down, so she could not see his face.
“Do you think it is true?” she asked. “Lewis? Do you think they would try to geld St. Mawr — to make him a gelding?” Lewis looked up at her. There was a faint deadly glimmer of contempt on his face.
“Very likely, Mam,” he said.
She was afraid of his cold, uncanny pale eyes, with their uneasy grey dawn of contempt. These two men, with their silent, deadly inner purpose, were not like other men. They seemed like two silent enemies of all the other men she knew. Enemies in the great white camp, disguised as servants, waiting the incalculable opportunity. What the opportunity might be, none knew.
“Sir Henry hasn’t mentioned anything to me about selling St. Mawr to Miss Manby,” she said.
The derisive flicker of a smile came on Phoenix’s face.
“He sell him first, and tell you then,” he said, with his deadly impassive manner.
“But do you really think so?” she asked.
It was extraordinary how much corrosive contempt Phoenix could convey, saying nothing. She felt it almost as an insult. Yet it was a relief to her.
“You know, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe Sir Henry would want to have St. Mawr mutilated. I believe he’d rather shoot him.”
“You think so?” said Phoenix, with a faint grin.
Lou turned to Lewis.
“Lewis, will you tell me what you truly think?”
Lewis looked at her with a hard, straight, fearless British stare.
“That man Philips was in the ‘Moon and Stars’ last night. He said Miss Manby told him she was buying St. Mawr, and she asked him if he thought it would be safe to cut him and make a horse of him. He said it would be better, take some of the nonsense out of him. He’s no good for a sire, anyhow — ”
Lewis dropped his head again, and tapped a tattoo with the toe of his rather small foot.
“And what do you think?” said Lou. It occurred to her how sensible and practical Miss Manby was, so much more so than the Dean.
Lewis looked up at her with his pale eyes.
“It won’t have anything to do with me,” he said. “I shan’t go to Corrabach Hall.”
“What will you do, then?”
Lewis did not answer. He looked at Phoenix.
“Maybe him and me go to America,” said Phoenix, looking at the void.
“Can he get in?” said Lou.
“Yes, he can. I know how,” said Phoenix.
“And the money?” she said.
“We got money.”
There was a silence, after which she asked of Lewis: “You’d leave St. Mawr to his fate?”
“I can’t help his fate,” said Lewis. “There’s too many people In the world for me to help anything.”
“Poor St. Mawr!”
She went indoors again and up to her room: then higher, to the top rooms of the tall Georgian house. From one window she could see the fields in the rain. She could see St. Mawr himself, alone as usual, standing with his head up, looking across the fences. He was streaked dark with rain. Beautiful, with his poised head and massive neck and his supple hindquarters. He was neighing to Poppy. Clear on the wet wind came the sound of his bell-like, stallion’s calling, that Mrs. Vyner called cruel. It was a strange noise, with a splendour that belonged to another world age. The mean cruelty of Mrs. Vyner’s humanitarianism, the barren cruelty of Flora Manby, the eunuch cruelty of Rico. Our whole eunuch civilisation, nasty-minded as eunuchs are, with their kind of sneaking, sterilising cruelty.
Yet even she herself, seeing St. Mawr’s conceited march along the fence, could not help addressing him:
“Yes, my boy! If you knew what Miss Flora Manby was preparing for you! She’ll sharpen a knife that will settle you.” And Lou called her mother.
The two American women stood high at the window, overlooking the wet, close, hedged-and-fenced English landscape. Everything enclosed, enclosed, to stifling. The very apples on the trees looked so shut in, it was impossible to imagine any speck of ‘Knowledge’ lurking inside them. Good to eat, good to cook, good even for show. But the wild sap of untameable and inexhaustible knowledge — no! Bred out of them. Geldings, even the apples.
Mrs. Witt listened to Lou’s half-humorous statements. “You must admit, mother, Flora is a sensible girl,” she said.
“I admit it, Louise.”
“She goes straight to the root of the matter.”
“And eradicates the root. Wise girl! And what is your answer?”
“I don’t know, mother. What would you say?”
“I know what I should say.”
“Tell me.”
“I should say: ‘Miss Manby, you may have my husband, but not my horse. My husband won’t need emasculating, and my horse I won’t have you meddle, with. I’ll preserve one last male thing in the museum of this world, if I can.’“
Lou listened, smiling faintly.
“That’s what I will say,” she replied at length. “The funny thing is, mother, they think all their men with their bare faces or their little quotation-mark moustaches are so tremendously male. That fox-hunting one!”
“I know it. Like little male motor-cars. Give him a little gas, and start him on the low gear, and away he goes: all his male gear rattling, like a cheap motor-car.”
“I’m afraid I dislike men altogether, mother.”
“You may, Louise. Think of Flora Manby, and how you love the fair sex.”
“After all, St. Mawr is better. And I’m glad if he gives them a kick in the face.”
“Ah, Louise!” Mrs. Witt suddenly clasped her hands with wicked passion. “Ay, qué gozo! as our Juan used to say, on your father’s ranch in Texas.” She gazed in a sort of wicked ecstasy out of the window.
They heard Lou’s maid softly calling Lady Carrington from below. Lou went to the stairs.
“What is it?”
“Lewis want to speak to you, my Lady.”
“Send him into the sitting-room.”
The two women went down.
“What is it, Lewis?” asked Lou.
“Am I to bring in St. Mawr, in case they send for him from Corrabach?”
“No,” said Lou swiftly.
“Wait a minute,” put in Mrs. Witt. “What makes you think they will send for St. Mawr from Corrabach, Lewis?” she asked, suave as a grey leopard cat.
“Miss Manby went up to Flints Farm with Dean Vyner this morning, and they’ve just come back. They stopped the car, and Miss Manby got out at the field gate to look at St. Mawr. I’m thinking, if she made the bargain with Sir Henry, she’ll be sending a man over this afternoon, and if I’d better brush tit. Mawr down a bit, in case.”
The man stood strangely still, and the words came like shadows of his real meaning. It was a challenge.
“I see,” said Mrs. Witt slowly.
Lou’s face darkened. She, too, saw.
“So that is her game,” she said. “That is why they got me down here.”
“Never mind, Louise,” said Mrs. Witt. Then to Lewis: “Yes, please bring in St. Mawr. You wish it, don’t you, Louise?”
“Yes,” hesitated Lou. She saw by Mrs. Witt’s closed face that a counter-move was prepared.
“And Lewis,” said Mrs. Witt, “my daughter may wish you to ride St. Mawr this afternoon — not to Corrabach Hall.”
“Very good, Mam.”
Mrs. Witt sat silent for some time, after Lewis had gone, gathering inspiration from the wet, grisly grave-stones.
“Don’t you think it’s time we made a move, daughter?” she asked.
“Any move,” said Lou desperately.
“Very well then. My dearest friends, and my only friends, in this country, are in Oxfordshire. I will set off to ride to Merriton this afternoon, and Lewis will rid
e with me on St. Mawr.”
“But you can’t ride to Merriton in an afternoon,” said Lou.
“I know it. I shall ride across country. I shall enjoy it, Louise. — Yes. — I shall consider I am on my way back to America. I am most deadly tired of this country. From Merriton I shall make my arrangements to go to America, and take Lewis and Phoenix and St. Mawr along with me. I think they want to go. — You will decide for yourself.”
“Yes, I’ll come too,” said Lou casually.
“Very well. I’ll start immediately after lunch, for I can’t breathe in this place any longer. Where are Henry’s automobile maps?”
Afternoon saw Mrs. Witt, in a large waterproof cape, mounted on her horse, Lewis, in another cape, mounted on St. Mawr, trotting through the rain, splashing in the puddles, moving slowly southwards. They took the open country, and would pass quite close to Flints Farm. But Mrs. Witt did not care. With great difficulty she had managed to fasten a small waterproof roll behind her, containing her night things. She seemed to breathe the first breath of freedom.
And sure enough, an hour or so after Mrs. Witt’s departure, arrived Flora Manby in a splashed-up motor-car, accompanied by her sister, and bringing a groom and a saddle.
“Do you know, Harry sold me St. Mawr,” she said. “I’ just wild to get that horse in hand.”
“How?” said Lou.
“Oh, I don’t know. There are ways. Do you mind if Philips rides him over now to Corrabach? — 0h, I forgot, Harry sent you a note:
“Dearest Loulina: Have you been gone from here two days or two years? It seems the latter. You are terribly missed. Flora wanted so much to buy St. Mawr, to save us further trouble, that I have sold him to her. She is giving me what we paid: rather, what you paid, so of course the money is yours. I am thankful we are rid of the animal, and that he falls into competent hands — I asked her please to remove him from your charge to-day. And I can’t tell how much easier I am in my mind, to think of him gone. You are coming back to me to-morrow, aren’t you? I shall think of nothing but you, till I see you. Arrivederci, darling dear! R.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 547
