“You know you are most awfully nagging and irritable, Lucille,” said Yvette, standing as if on hot bricks.
“Now Yvette!” cried Lucille, her eyes suddenly flashing in her sister’s face, with wild flashes. “Stop it at once! Why should everybody put up with your abominable and overbearing temper!”
“Well, I don’t know about my temper,” said Yvette, writhing slowly out of the half-made frock, and slipping into her dress again.
Then, with an obstinate little look on her face, she sat down again at the table, in the gloomy afternoon, and began to sew at the blue stuff. The room was littered with blue clippings, the scissors were lying on the floor, the work-basket was spilled in chaos all over the table, and a second mirror was perched perilously on the piano.
Granny, who had been in a semi-coma, called a doze, roused herself on the big, soft couch and put her cap straight.
“I don’t get much peace for my nap,” she said, slowly feeling her thin white hair, to see that it was in order. She had heard vague noises.
Aunt Cissie came in, fumbling in a bag for a chocolate.
“I never saw such a mess!” she said. “You’d better clear some of that litter away, Yvette.”
“All right,” said Yvette. “I will in a minute.”
“Which means never!” sneered Aunt Cissie, suddenly darting and picking up the scissors.
There was silence for a few moments, and Lucille slowly pushed her hands in her hair, as she read a book.
“You’d better clear away, Yvette,” persisted Aunt Cissie.
“I will, before tea,” replied Yvette, rising once more and pulling the blue dress over her head, flourishing her long, naked arms through the sleeveless armholes. Then she went between the mirrors, to look at herself once more.
As she did so, she sent the second mirror, that she had perched carelessly on the piano, sliding with a rattle to the floor. Luckily it did not break. But everybody started badly.
“She’s smashed the mirror!” cried Aunt Cissie.
“Smashed a mirror! Which mirror! Who’s smashed it?” came Granny’s sharp voice.
“I haven’t smashed anything,” came the calm voice of Yvette. “It’s quite all right.”
“You’d better not perch it up there again,” said Lucille.
Yvette, with a little impatient shrug at all the fuss, tried making the mirror stand in another place. She was not successful.
“If one had a fire in one’s own room,” she said crossly, “one needn’t have a lot of people fussing when one wants to sew.”
“Which mirror are you moving about?” asked Granny.
“One of our own, that came from the Vicarage,” said Yvette rudely.
“Don’t break it in this house, wherever it came from,” said Granny.
There was a sort of family dislike for the furniture that had belonged to She-who-was-Cynthia. It was most of it shoved into the kitchen, and the servants’ bedrooms.
“Oh, I’m not superstitious,” said Yvette, “about mirrors or any of that sort of thing.”
“Perhaps you’re not,” said Granny. “People who never take the responsibility for their own actions usually don’t care what happens.”
“After all,” said Yvette, “I may say it’s my own looking-glass, even if I did break it.”
“And I say,” said Granny, “that there shall be no mirrors broken in this house, if we can help it; no matter who they belong to, or did belong to. Cissie, have I got my cap straight?”
Aunt Cissie went over and straightened the old lady. Yvette loudly and irritatingly trilled a tuneless tune.
“And now, Yvette, will you please clear away,” said Aunt Cissie.
“Oh bother!” cried Yvette angrily. “It’s simply awful to live with a lot of people who are always nagging and fussing over trifles.”
“What people, may I ask?” said Aunt Cissie ominously.
Another row was imminent. Lucille looked up with a queer cast in her eyes. In the two girls, the blood of She-who-was-Cynthia was roused.
“Of course you may ask! You know quite well I mean the people in this beastly house,” said the outrageous Yvette.
“At least,” said Granny, “we don’t come of half-depraved stock.”
There was a second’s electric pause. Then Lucille sprang from her low seat, with sparks flying from her.
“You shut up!” she shouted, in a blast full upon the mottled majesty of the old lady.
The old woman’s breast began to heave with heaven knows what emotions. The pause this time, as after the thunderbolt, was icy.
Then Aunt Cissie, livid, sprang upon Lucille, pushing her like a fury.
“Go to your room!” she cried hoarsely. “Go to your room!”
And she proceeded to push the white but fiery-eyed Lucille from the room. Lucille let herself be pushed, while Aunt Cissie vociferated:
“Stay in your room till you’ve apologised for this! — till you’ve apologised to the Mater for this!”
“I shan’t apologise!” came the clear voice of Lucille, from the passage, while Aunt Cissie shoved her.
Aunt Cissie drove her more wildly upstairs.
Yvette stood tall and bemused in the sitting-room, with the air of offended dignity, at the same time bemused, which was so odd on her. She still was bare-armed, in the half-made blue dress. And even she was half-aghast at Lucille’s attack on the majesty of age. But also, she was coldly indignant against Granny’s aspersion of the maternal blood in their veins.
“Of course I meant no offense,” said Granny.
“Didn’t you!” said Yvette coolly.
“Of course not. I only said we’re not depraved, just because we happen to be superstitious about breaking mirrors.”
Yvette could hardly believe her ears. Had she heard right? Was it possible! Or was Granny, at her age, just telling a barefaced lie?
Yvette knew that the old woman was telling a cool, barefaced lie. But already, so quickly, Granny believed her own statement.
The rector appeared, having left time for a lull.
“What’s wrong?” he asked cautiously, genially.
“Oh, nothing!” drawled Yvette. “Lucille told Granny to shut up, when she was saying something. And Aunt Cissie drove her up to her room. Tant de bruit pour une omelette! Though Lucille was a bit over the mark, that time.”
The old lady couldn’t quite catch what Yvette said.
“Lucille really will have to learn to control her nerves,” said the old woman. “The mirror fell down, and it worried me. I said so to Yvette, and she said something about superstitions and the people in the beastly house. I told her the people in the house were not depraved, if they happened to mind when a mirror was broken. And at that Lucille flew at me and told me to shut up. It really is disgraceful how these children give way to their nerves. I know it’s nothing but nerves.”
Aunt Cissie had come in during this speech. At first even she was dumb. Then it seemed to her, it was as Granny had said.
“I have forbidden her to come down until she comes to apologise to the Mater,” she said.
“I doubt if she’ll apologise,” said the calm, queenly Yvette, holding her bare arms.
“And I don’t want any apology,” said the old lady. “It is merely nerves. I don’t know what they’ll come to, if they have nerves like that, at their age! She must take Vibrofat. — I am sure Arthur would like his tea, Cissie!”
Yvette swept her sewing together, to go upstairs. And again she trilled her tune, rather shrill and tuneless. She was trembling inwardly.
“More glad rags!” said her father to her, genially.
“More glad rags!” she re-iterated sagely, as she sauntered upstairs, with her day dress over one arm. She wanted to console Lucille, and ask her how the blue stuff hung now.
At the first landing, she stood as she nearly always did, to gaze through the window that looked to the road and the bridge. Like the Lady of Shalott, she seemed always to imagine that someone
would come along singing Tirra-lirra! or something equally intelligent, by the river.
FIVE
It was nearly tea-time. The snowdrops were out by the short drive going to the gate from the side of the house, and the gardener was pottering at the round, damp flower-beds, on the wet grass that sloped to the stream. Past the gate went the whitish muddy road, crossing the stone bridge almost immediately, and winding in a curve up to the steep, clustering, stony, smoking northern village, that perched over the grim stone mills which Yvette could see ahead down the narrow valley, their tall chimney long and erect.
The rectory was on one side the Papple, in the rather steep valley, the village was beyond and above, further down, on the other side the swift stream. At the back of the rectory the hill went up steep, with a grove of dark, bare larches, through which the road disappeared. And immediately across stream from the rectory, facing the house, the river-bank rose steep and bushy, up to the sloping, dreary meadows, that sloped up again to dark hillsides of trees, with grey rock cropping out.
But from the end of the house, Yvette could only see the road curving round past the wall with its laurel hedge, down to the bridge, then up again round the shoulder to that first hard cluster of houses in Papplewick village, beyond the dry-stone walls of the steep fields.
She always expected something to come down the slant of the road from Papplewick, and she always lingered at the landing window. Often a cart came, or a motor-car, or a lorry with stone, or a laborer, or one of the servants. But never anybody who sang Tirra-lirra! by the river. The tirra-lirraing days seemed to have gone by.
This day, however, round the corner on the white-grey road, between the grass and the low stone walls, a roan horse came stepping bravely and briskly down-hill, driven by a man in a cap, perched on the front of his light cart. The man swayed loosely to the swing of the cart, as the horse stepped down-hill, in the silent sombreness of the afternoon. At the back of the cart, long duster-brooms of reed and feather stuck out, nodding on their stalks of cane.
Yvette stood close to the window, and put the casement-cloth curtains behind her, clutching her bare upper arms with the hands.
At the foot of the slope the horse started into a brisk trot to the bridge. The cart rattled on the stone bridge, the brooms bobbed and flustered, the driver sat as if in a kind of dream, swinging along. It was like something seen in a sleep.
But as he crossed the end of the bridge, and was passing along the rectory wall, he looked up at the grim stone house that seemed to have backed away from the gate, under the hill. Yvette moved her hands quickly on her arms. And as quickly from under the peak of his cap, he had seen her, his swarthy predative face was alert.
He pulled up suddenly at the white gate, still gazing upwards at the landing window; while Yvette, always clasping her cold and mottled arms, still gazed abstractedly down at him, from the window.
His head gave a little, quick jerk of signal, and he led his horse well aside, on to the grass. Then, limber and alert, he turned back the tarpaulin of the cart, fetched out various articles, pulled forth two or three of the long brooms of reed or turkey-feathers, covered the cart, and turned towards the house, looking up at Yvette as he opened the white gate.
She nodded to him, and flew to the bathroom to put on her dress, hoping she had disguised her nod so that he wouldn’t be sure she had nodded. Meanwhile she heard the hoarse deep roaring of that old fool, Rover, punctuated by the yapping of that young idiot, Trixie.
She and the housemaid arrived at the same moment at the sitting-room door.
“Was it the man selling brooms?” said Yvette to the maid. “All right!” and she opened the door. “Aunt Cissie, there’s a man selling brooms. Shall I go?”
“What sort of a man?” said Aunt Cissie, who was sitting at tea with the rector and the Mater: the girls having been excluded for once from the meal.
“A man with a cart,” said Yvette.
“A gipsy,” said the maid.
Of course Aunt Cissie rose at once. She had to look at him.
The gipsy stood at the back door, under the steep dark bank where the larches grew. The long brooms flourished from one hand, and from the other hung various objects of shining copper and brass: a saucepan, a candlestick, plates of beaten copper. The man himself was neat and dapper, almost rakish, in his dark green cap and double-breasted green check coat. But his manner was subdued, very quiet: and at the same time proud, with a touch of condescension and aloofness.
“Anything today, lady?” he said, looking at Aunt Cissie with dark, shrewd, searching eyes, but putting a very quiet tenderness into his voice.
Aunt Cissie saw how handsome he was, saw the flexible curve of his lips under the line of black moustache, and she was fluttered. The merest hint of roughness or aggression on the man’s part would have made her shut the door contemptuously in his face. But he managed to insinuate such a subtle suggestion of submission into his male bearing, that she began to hesitate.
“The candlestick is lovely!” said Yvette. “Did you make it?”
And she looked up at the man with her naïve, childlike eyes, that were as capable of double meanings as his own.
“Yes lady!” He looked back into her eyes for a second, with that naked suggestion of desire which acted on her like a spell, and robbed her of her will. Her tender face seemed to go into a sleep.
“It’s awfully nice!” she murmured vaguely.
Aunt Cissie began to bargain for the candlestick: which was a low, thick stem of copper, rising from a double bowl. With patient aloofness the man attended to her, without ever looking at Yvette, who leaned against the doorway and watched in a muse.
“How is your wife?” she asked him suddenly, when Aunt Cissie had gone indoors to show the candlestick to the rector, and ask him if he thought it was worth it.
The man looked fully at Yvette, and a scarcely discernible smile curled his lips. His eyes did not smile: the insinuation in them only hardened to a glare.
“She’s all right. When are you coming that way again?” he murmured, in a low, caressive, intimate voice.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Yvette vaguely.
“You come Fridays, when I’m there,” he said. Yvette gazed over his shoulder as if she had not heard him. Aunt Cissie returned, with the candlestick and the money to pay for it. Yvette turned nonchalant away, trilling one of her broken tunes, abandoning the whole affair with a certain rudeness.
Nevertheless, hiding this time at the landing window, she stood to watch the man go. What she wanted to know, was whether he really had any power over her. She did not intend him to see her this time.
She saw him go down to the gate, with his brooms and pans, and out to the cart. He carefully stowed away his pans and his brooms, and fixed down the tarpaulin over the cart. Then with a slow, effortless spring of his flexible loins, he was on the cart again, and touching the horse with the reins. The roan horse was away at once, the cart-wheels grinding uphill, and soon the man was gone, without looking round. Gone like a dream which was only a dream, yet which she could not shake off.
“No, he hasn’t any power over me!” she said to herself: rather disappointed really, because she wanted somebody, or something to have power over her.
She went up to reason with the pale and overwrought Lucille, scolding her for getting into a state over nothing.
“What does it matter,” she expostulated, “if you told Granny to shut up! Why, everybody ought to be told to shut up, when they’re being beastly. But she didn’t mean it, you know. No, she didn’t mean it. And she’s quite sorry she said it. There’s absolutely no reason to make a fuss. Come on, let’s dress ourselves up and sail down to dinner like duchesses. Let’s have our own back that way. Come on, Lucille!”
There was something strange and mazy, like having cobwebs over one’s face, about Yvette’s vague blitheness; her queer, misty side-stepping from an unpleasantness. It was cheering too. But it was like walking in one of those autumn mist
s, when gossamer strands blow over your face. You don’t quite know where you are.
She succeeded, however, in persuading Lucille, and the girls got out their best party frocks: Lucille in green and silver, Yvette in a pale lilac colour with turquoise chenille threading. A little rouge and powder, and their best slippers, and the gardens of paradise began to blossom. Yvette hummed and looked at herself, and put on her most dégagé airs of one of the young marchionesses. She had an odd way of slanting her eyebrows and pursing her lips, and to all appearances detaching herself from every earthly consideration, and floating through the cloud of her own pearl-coloured reserves. It was amusing, and not quite convincing.
“Of course I am beautiful, Lucille,” she said blandly. “And you’re perfectly lovely, now you look a bit reproachful. Of course you’re the most aristocratic of the two of us, with your nose! And now your eyes look reproachful, that adds an appealing look, and you’re perfect, perfectly lovely. But I’m more winning, in a way. — Don’t you agree?” She turned with arch, complicated simplicity to Lucille.
She was truly simple in what she said. It was just what she thought. But it gave no hint of the very different feeling that also preoccupied her: the feeling that she had been looked upon, not from the outside, but from the inside, from her secret female self. She was dressing herself up and looking her most dazzling, just to counteract the effect that the gipsy had had on her, when he had looked at her, and seen none of her pretty face and her pretty ways, but just the dark, tremulous, potent secret of her virginity.
The two girls started downstairs in state when the dinner-gong rang: but they waited till they heard the voice of the men. Then they sailed down and into the sitting-room, Yvette preening herself in her vague, debonair way, always a little bit absent; and Lucille shy, ready to burst into tears.
“My goodness gracious!” exclaimed Aunt Cissie, who was still wearing her dark-brown knitted sports coat. “What an apparition! Wherever do you think you’re going?”
“We’re dining with the family,” said Yvette naïvely, “and we’ve put on our best gewgaws in honour of the occasion.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 559
