The Complete Novels. D. H. Lawrence

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СКАЧАТЬ poor thing — it was wounded — and sat and waited for death — when the other had won. Don’t you think life is very cruel, George — and love the cruellest of all?”

      He laughed bitterly under the pain of her soft, sad tones. “Let me bury him — and have done with the beaten lover. But we’ll make him a pretty grave.”

      She scooped a hole in the dark soil, and snatching a handful of bluebells, threw them in on top of the dead bird. Then she smoothed the soil over all, and pressed her white hands on the black loam.

      “There,” she said, knocking her hands one against the other to shake off the soil, “He’s done with. Come on.”

      He followed her, speechless with his emotion.

      The spinney opened out; the ferns were serenely uncoiling, the bluebells stood grouped with blue curls mingled. In the freer spaces forget-me-nots flowered in nebulae, and dog-violets gave an undertone of dark purple, with primroses for planets in the night. There was a slight drift of woodruff, sweet new-mown hay, scenting the air under the boughs. On a wet bank was the design of golden saxifrage, glistening unholily as if varnished by its minister, the snail. George and Lettie crushed the veined belles of wood-sorrel and broke the silken mosses. What did it matter to them what they broke or crushed?

      Over the fence of the spinney was the hill-side, scattered with old thorn trees. There the little grey lichens held up ruby balls to us unnoticed. What did it matter, when all the great red apples were being shaken from the Tree to be left to rot.

      “If I were a man,” said Lettie, “I would go out west and be free. I should love it.”

      She took the scarf from her head and let it wave out on the wind; the colour was warm in her face with climbing, and her curls were freed by the wind, sparkling and rippling.

      “Well — you’re not a man,” he said, looking at her, and speaking with timid bitterness.

      “No,” she laughed, “if I were, I would shape things — oh, wouldn’t I have my own way!”

      “And don’t you now?”

      “Oh — I don’t want it particularly — when I’ve got it. When I’ve had my way, I do want somebody to take it back from me.”

      She put her head back and looked at him sideways, laughing through the glitter of her hair.

      They came to the kennels. She sat down on the edge of the great stone water-trough, and put her hands in the water, moving them gently like submerged flowers through the clear pool.

      “I love to see myself in the water,” she said, “I don’t mean on the water, Narcissus — but that’s how I should like to be out west, to have a little lake of my own, and swim with my limbs quite free in the water.”

      “Do you swim well?” he asked.

      “Fairly.”

      “I would race you — in your little lake.”

      She laughed, took her hands out of the water, and watched the clear drops trickle off. Then she lifted her head suddenly, at some thought or other. She looked across the valley, and saw the red roofs of the Mill.

      “Ilion, Ilion Fatalis incestusque judex Et mulier peregrina vertit. In pulverem ——”

      “What’s that?” he said.

      “Nothing.”

      “That’s a private trough,” exclaimed a thin voice, high like a peewit’s cry. We started in surprise to see a tall, black-bearded man looking at us and away from us nervously, fidgeting uneasily some ten yards off.

      “Is it?” said Lettie, looking at her wet hands, which she proceeded to dry on a fragment of a handkerchief.

      “You mustn’t meddle with it,” said the man in the same reedy, oboe voice. Then he turned his head away, and his pale grey eyes roved the country-side — when he had courage, he turned his back to us, shading his eyes to continue his scrutiny. He walked hurriedly, a few steps, then craned his neck, peering into the valley, and hastened a dozen yards in another direction, again stretching and peering about. Then he went indoors.

      “He is pretending to look for somebody,” said Lettie, “but it’s only because he’s afraid we shall think he came out just to look at us”— and they laughed.

      Suddenly a woman appeared at the gate; she had pale eyes like the mouse-voiced man.

      “You’ll get Bright’s disease sitting on that there damp stone,” she said to Lettie, who at once rose apologetically.

      “I ought to know,” continued the mouse-voiced woman, “my own mother died of it.”

      “Indeed,” murmured Lettie, “I’m sorry.”

      “Yes,” continued the woman, “it behooves you to be careful. Do you come from Strelley Mill Farm?” she asked suddenly of George, surveying his shameful deshabille with bitter reproof.

      He admitted the imputation.

      “And you’re going to leave, aren’t you?”

      Which also he admitted.

      “Humph! — we s’ll ‘appen get some neighbours. It’s a dog’s life for loneliness. I suppose you knew the last lot that was here.”

      Another brief admission.

      “A dirty lot — a dirty beagle she must have been. You should just ha’ seen these grates.”

      “Yes,” said Lettie. “I have seen them.”

      “Faugh — the state! But come in-come in, you’ll see a difference.”

      They entered, out of curiosity.

      The kitchen was indeed different. It was clean and sparkling, warm with bright red chintzes on the sofa and on every chair cushion. Unfortunately the effect was spoiled by green and yellow antimaccassars, and by a profusion of paper and woollen flowers. There were three cases of woollen flowers, and on the wall, four fans stitched over with ruffled green and yellow paper, adorned with yellow paper roses, carnations, arum lilies, and poppies; there were also wall pockets full of paper flowers; while the wood outside was loaded with blossom.

      “Yes,” said Lettie, “there is a difference.”

      The woman swelled, and looked round. The black-bearded man peeped from behind the Christian Herald — those long blaring trumpets! — and shrank again. The woman darted at his pipe, which he had put on a piece of newspaper on the hob, and blew some imaginary ash from it. Then she caught sight of something — perhaps some dust — on the fireplace.

      “There!” she cried, “I knew it; I couldn’t leave him one second! I haven’t work enough burning wood, but he must be poke — poke —”

      “I only pushed a piece in between the bars,” complained the mouse voice from behind the paper.

      “Pushed a piece in!” she re-echoed, with awful scorn, СКАЧАТЬ