Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 10

  One afternoon Lettie walked over to Eberwich. Leslie had not been to see us for a fortnight. It was a grey, dree afternoon. The wind drifted a clammy fog across the hills, and the roads were black and deep with mud. The trees in the wood slouched sulkily. It was a day to be shut out and ignored if possible. I heaped up the fire, and went to draw the curtains and make perfect the room. Then I saw Lettie coming along the path quickly, very erect. When she came in her colour was high.

  “Tea not laid?” she said briefly.

  “Rebecca has just brought in the lamp,” said I.

  Lettie took off her coat and furs, and flung them on the couch. She went to the mirror, lifted her hair, all curled by the fog, and stared haughtily at herself. Then she swung round, looked at the bare table, and rang the bell.

  It was so rare a thing for us to ring the bell from the dining-room, that Rebecca went first to the outer door. Then she came in the room saying:

  “Did you ring?”

  “I thought tea would have been ready,” said Lettie coldly. Rebecca looked at me, and at her, and replied:

  “It is but half-past four. I can bring it in.”

  Mother came down hearing the clink of the tea-cups. “Well,” she said to Lettie, who was unlacing her boots, “and did you find it a pleasant walk?”

  “Except for the mud,” was the reply.

  “Ah, I guess you wished you had stayed at home. What a state for your boots! — and your skirts too, I know. Here, let me take them into the kitchen.”

  “Let Rebecca take them,” said Lettie — but Mother was out of the room.

  When Mother had poured out the tea, we sat silently at table. It was on the tip of our tongues to ask Lettie what ailed her, but we were experienced and we refrained, After a while she said:

  “Do you know, I met Leslie Tempest.”

  “Oh,” said Mother tentatively. “Did he come along with you?”

  “He did not look at me.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Mother, and it was speaking volumes; then, after a moment, she resumed:

  “Perhaps he did not see you.”

  “Or was it a stony Britisher?” I asked.

  “He saw me,” declared Lettie, “or he wouldn’t have made such a babyish show of being delighted with Margaret Raymond.”

  “It may have been no show — he still may not have seen you.”

  “I felt at once that he had; I could see his animation was extravagant. He need not have troubled himself. I was not going to run after him.”

  “You seem very cross,” said I.

  “Indeed I am not. But he knew I had to walk all this way home, and he could take up Margaret, who has only half the distance.”

  “Was he driving?”

  “In the dog-cart.” She cut her toast into strips viciously. We waited patiently.

  “It was mean of him, wasn’t it, Mother?”

  “Well, my girl, you have treated him badly.”

  “What a baby! What a mean, manly baby! Men are great infants.”

  “And girls,” said Mother, “do not know what they want.”

  “A grown-up quality,” I added.

  “Nevertheless,” said Lettie, “he is a mean fop, and I detest him.”

  She rose and sorted out some stitchery. Lettie never stitched unless she was in a bad humour. Mother smiled at me, sighed, and proceeded to Mr Gladstone for comfort; her breviary and missal were Morley’s Life of Gladstone.

  I had to take a letter to Highclose to Mrs Tempest — from my mother, concerning a bazaar in process at the church. “I will bring Leslie back with me,” said I to myself.

  The night was black and hateful. The lamps by the road from Eberwich ended at Nethermere; their yellow blur on the water made the cold, wet inferno of the night more ugly.

  Leslie and Marie were both in the library — half a library, half a business office; used also as a lounge room, being cosy. Leslie lay in a great arm-chair by the fire, immune among clouds of blue smoke. Marie was perched on the steps, a great volume on her knee. Leslie got up in his cloud, shook hands, greeted me curtly, and vanished again. Marie smiled me a quaint, vexed smile, saying:

  “Oh, Cyril, I’m so glad you’ve come. I’m so worried, and Leslie says he’s not a pastry-cook, though I’m sure I don’t want him to be one, only he need not be a bear.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  She frowned, gave the big volume a little smack and said:

  “Why, I do so much want to make some of those Spanish tartlets of your mother’s that are so delicious, and of course Mabel knows nothing of them, and they’re not in my cookery book, and I’ve looked through page upon page of the encyclopaedia, right through ‘Spain’, and there’s nothing yet, and there are fifty pages more, and Leslie won’t help me, though I’ve got a headache, because he’s frabous about something.” She looked at me in comical despair.

  “Do you want them for the bazaar?”

  “Yes — for tomorrow. Cook has done the rest, but I had fairly set my heart on these. Don’t you think they are lovely?”

  “Exquisitely lovely. Suppose I go and ask Mother.”

  “If you would. But no, oh no, you can’t make all that journey this terrible night. We are simply besieged by mud. The men are both out — William has gone to meet Father — and Mother has sent George to carry some things to the vicarage. I can’t ask one of the girls on a night like this. I shall have to let it go — and the cranberry tarts too — it cannot be helped. I am so miserable.”

  “Ask Leslie,” said I.

  “He is too cross,” she replied, looking at him.

  He did not deign a remark.

  “Will you, Leslie?”

  “What?”

  “Go across to Woodside for me?”

  “What for?”

  “A recipe. Do, there’s a dear boy.”

  “Where are the men?”

  “They are both engaged — they are out.”

  “Send a girl, then.”

  “At night like this? Who would go?”

  “Cissy.”

  “I shall not ask her. Isn’t he mean, Cyril? Men are mean.”

  “I will come back,” said I. “There is nothing at home to do. Mother is reading, and Lettie is stitching. The weather disagrees with her, as it does with Leslie.”

  “But it is not fair — ” she said, looking at me softly. Then she put away the great book and climbed down.

  “Won’t you go, Leslie?” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder.

  “Women!” he said, rising as if reluctantly. “There’s no end to their wants and their caprices.”

  “I thought he would go,” said she warmly. She ran to fetch his overcoat. He put one arm slowly in the sleeve, and then the other, but he would not lift the coat on to his shoulders.

  “Well!” she said, struggling on tiptoe, “you are a great creature. Can’t you get it on, naughty child?”

  “Give her a chair to stand on,” he said.

  She shook the collar of the coat sharply, but he stood like a sheep, impassive.

  “Leslie, you are too bad. I can’t get it on, you stupid boy.” I took the coat and jerked it on.

  “There,” she said, giving him his cap. “Now don’t be long.”

  “What a damned dirty night!” said he, when we were out.

  “It is,” said I.

  “The town, anywhere’s better than this hell of a country.”

  “Ha! How did you enjoy yourself?”

  He began a long history of three days in the metropolis. I listened, and heard little. I heard more plainly the cry of some night birds over Nethermere, and the peevish, wailing, yarling cry of some beast in the wood. I was thankful to slam the door behind me, to stand in the light of the hall.

  “Leslie!” exclaimed Mother, “I am glad to see you.”

  “Thank you,” he said, turning to Lettie, who sat with her lap full of work, her head busily bent.

  “You see I can’t get up,” she said, giving him her hand,
adorned as it was by the thimble. “How nice of you to come! We did not know you were back.”

  “But...!” he exclaimed, then he stopped.

  “I suppose you enjoyed yourself,” she went on calmly. “Immensely, thanks.”

  Snap, snap, snap went her needle through the new stuff. Then, without looking up, she said:

  “Yes, no doubt. You have the air of a man who has been enjoying himself.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “A kind of guilty — or shall I say embarrassed — look. Don’t you notice it, Mother?”

  “I do!” said my mother.

  “I suppose it means we may not ask him questions,” Lettie concluded, always very busily sewing.

  He laughed. She had broken her cotton, and was trying to thread the needle again.

  “What have you been doing this miserable weather?” he enquired awkwardly.

  “Oh, we have sat at home desolate. ‘Ever of thee I’m fo-o-ondly dreaming’ — and so on. Haven’t we, Mother?”

  “Well,” said Mother, “I don’t know. We imagined him all sorts of lions up there.”

  “What a shame we may not ask him to roar his old roars over for us,” said Lettie.

  “What are they like?” he asked.

  “How should I know? Like a sucking dove, to judge from your present voice. ‘A monstrous little voice.’“

  He laughed uncomfortably.

  She went on sewing, suddenly beginning to sing to herself:

  “Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been?

  I’ve been up to London to see the fine queen:

  Pussy cat, Pussy cat, what did you there —

  I frightened a little mouse under a stair.”

  “I suppose,” she added, “that may be so. Poor mouse! — but I guess she’s none the worse. You did not see the queen, though?”

  “She was not in London,” he replied sarcastically.

  “You don’t — ” she said, taking two pins from between her teeth. “I suppose you don’t mean by that, she was in Eberwich — your queen?”

  “I don’t know where she was,” he answered angrily.

  “Oh!” she said, very sweetly, “I thought perhaps you had met her in Eberwich. When did you come back?”

  “Last night,” he replied.

  “Oh — why didn’t you come and see us before?”

  “I’ve been at the offices all day.”

  “I’ve been up to Eberwich,” she said innocently.

  “Have you?”

  “Yes. And I feel so cross because of it. I thought I might see you. I felt as if you were at home.”

  She stitched a little, and glanced up secretly to watch his face redden, then she continued innocently, “Yes — I felt you had come back. It is funny how one has a feeling occasionally that someone is near; when it is someone one has a sympathy with.” She continued to stitch, then she took a pin from her bosom, and fixed her work, all without the least suspicion of guile.

  “I thought I might meet you when I was out — ” another pause, another fixing, a pin to be taken from her lips — ”but I didn’t.”

  “I was at the office till rather late,” he said quickly. She stitched away calmly, provokingly.

  She took the pin from her mouth again, fixed down a fold of stuff, and said softly:

  “You little liar.”

  Mother had gone out of the room for her recipe book.

  He sat on his chair dumb with mortification. She stitched swiftly and unerringly. There was silence for some moments. Then he spoke:

  “I did not know you wanted me for the pleasure of plucking this crow,” he said.

  “I wanted you!” she exclaimed, looking up for the first time. “Who said I wanted you?”

  “No one. If you didn’t want me I may as well go.”

  The sound of stitching alone broke the silence for some moments, then she said deliberately:

  “What made you think I wanted you?”

  “I don’t care a damn whether you wanted me or whether you didn’t.”

  “It seems to upset you! And don’t use bad language. It is the privilege of those near and dear to one.”

  “That’s why you begin it, I suppose.”

  “I cannot remember — ” she said loftily.

  He laughed sarcastically.

  “Well — if you’re so beastly cut up about it — ” He put this tentatively, expecting the soft answer. But she refused to speak, and went on stitching. He fidgeted about, twisted his cap uncomfortably, and sighed. At last he said:

  “Well — you — have we done then?”

  She had the vast superiority, in that she was engaged in ostentatious work. She could fix the cloth, regard it quizzically, rearrange it, settle down and begin to sew before she replied. This humbled him. At last she said:

  “I thought so this afternoon.”

  “But, good God, Lettie, can’t you drop it?”

  “And then?” — the question startled him.

  “Why! — forget it,” he replied.

  “Well?” — she spoke softly, gently. He answered to the call like an eager hound. He crossed quickly to her side as she sat sewing, and said, in a low voice:

  “You do care something for me, don’t you, Lettie?”

  “Well” — it was modulated kindly, a sort of promise of assent.

  “You have treated me rottenly, you know, haven’t you? You know I — well, I care a good bit.”

  “It is a queer way of showing it.” Her voice was now a gentle reproof, the sweetest of surrenders and forgiveness. He leaned forward, took her face in his hands, and kissed her, murmuring:

  “You are a little tease.”

  She laid her sewing in her lap, and looked up.

  The next day, Sunday, broke wet and dreary. Breakfast was late, and about ten o’clock we stood at the window looking upon the impossibility of our going to church.

  There was a driving drizzle of rain, like a dirty curtain before the landscape. The nasturtium leaves by the garden walk had gone rotten in a frost, and the gay green discs had given place to the first black flags of winter, hung on flaccid stalks, pinched at the neck. The grass plot was strewn with fallen leaves, wet and brilliant: scarlet splashes of Virginia creeper, golden drift from the limes, ruddy brown shawls under the beeches, and away back in the corner, the black mat of maple leaves, heavy soddened; they ought to have been a vivid lemon colour. Occasionally one of these great black leaves would loose its hold, and zigzag down, staggering in the dance of death.

  “There now!” said Lettie suddenly.

  I looked up in time to see a crow close his wings and clutch the topmost bough of an old grey holly tree on the edge of the clearing. He flapped again, recovered his balance, and folded himself up in black resignation to the detestable weather.

  “Why has the old wretch settled just over our noses,” said Lettie petulantly. “Just to blot the promise of a sorrow.”

  “Yours or mine?” I asked.

  “He is looking at me, I declare.”

  “You can see the wicked pupil of his eye at this distance,” I insinuated.

  “Well,” she replied, determined to take this omen unto herself, “I saw him first.”

  “‘One for sorrow, two for joy,

  Three for a letter, four for a boy,

  Five for silver, six for gold,

  And seven for a secret never told.’

  “ — You may bet he’s only a messenger in advance. There’ll be three more shortly, and you’ll have your four,” said I, comforting.

  “Do you know,” she said, “it is very funny, but whenever I’ve particularly noticed one crow, I’ve had some sorrow or other.”

  “And when you notice four?” I asked.

  “You should have heard old Mrs Wagstaffe,” was her reply. “She declares an old crow croaked in their apple tree every day for a week before Jerry got drowned.”

  “Great sorrow for her,” I remarked.

  “Oh, but she wept abundantly.
I felt like weeping too, but somehow I laughed. She hoped he had gone to heaven — but I’m sick of that word ‘but’ — it is always tangling one’s thoughts.”

  “But, Jerry!” I insisted.

  “Oh, she lifted up her forehead, and the tears dripped off her nose. He must have been an old nuisance, Syb. I can’t understand why women marry such men. I felt downright glad to think of the drunken old wretch toppling into the canal out of the way.”

  She pulled the thick curtain across the window, and nestled down in it, resting her cheek against the edge, protecting herself from the cold window-pane. The wet, grey wind shook the half-naked trees, whose leaves dripped and shone sullenly. Even the trunks were blackened, trickling with the rain which drove persistently.

  Whirled down the sky like black maple leaves caught up aloft, came two more crows. They swept down and clung hold of the trees in front of the house, staying near the old forerunner. Lettie watched them, half amused, half melancholy. One bird was carried past. He swerved round and began to battle up the wind, rising higher, and rowing laboriously against the driving wet current.

  “Here comes your fourth,” said I.

  She did not answer, but continued to watch. The bird wrestled heroically, but the wind pushed him aside, tilted him, caught under his broad wings and bore him down. He swept in level flight down the stream, outspread and still, as if fixed in despair. I grieved for him. Sadly two of his fellows rose and were carried away after him, like souls hunting for a body to inhabit, and despairing. Only the first ghoul was left on the withered, silver-grey skeleton of the holly.

  “He won’t even say ‘Nevermore’,” I remarked.

  “He has more sense,” replied Lettie. She looked a trifle lugubrious. Then she continued: “Better say ‘Nevermore’ than ‘Evermore’.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Fancy this ‘Evermore’.”