The Greatest Works of D. H. Lawrence. D. H. Lawrence

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ a person: she was only to him then a woman. She was afraid.

      He stood against a pine-tree trunk and took her in his arms. She relinquished herself to him, but it was a sacrifice in which she felt something of horror. This thick-voiced, oblivious man was a stranger to her.

      Later it began to rain. The pine-trees smelled very strong. Paul lay with his head on the ground, on the dead pine needles, listening to the sharp hiss of the rain—a steady, keen noise. His heart was down, very heavy. Now he realised that she had not been with him all the time, that her soul had stood apart, in a sort of horror. He was physically at rest, but no more. Very dreary at heart, very sad, and very tender, his fingers wandered over her face pitifully. Now again she loved him deeply. He was tender and beautiful.

      “The rain!” he said.

      “Yes—is it coming on you?”

      She put her hands over him, on his hair, on his shoulders, to feel if the raindrops fell on him. She loved him dearly. He, as he lay with his face on the dead pine-leaves, felt extraordinarily quiet. He did not mind if the raindrops came on him: he would have lain and got wet through: he felt as if nothing mattered, as if his living were smeared away into the beyond, near and quite lovable. This strange, gentle reaching-out to death was new to him.

      “We must go,” said Miriam.

      “Yes,” he answered, but did not move.

      To him now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow; night, and death, and stillness, and inaction, this seemed like BEING. To be alive, to be urgent and insistent—that was NOT-TO-BE. The highest of all was to melt out into the darkness and sway there, identified with the great Being.

      “The rain is coming in on us,” said Miriam.

      He rose, and assisted her.

      “It is a pity,” he said.

      “What?”

      “To have to go. I feel so still.”

      “Still!” she repeated.

      “Stiller than I have ever been in my life.”

      He was walking with his hand in hers. She pressed his fingers, feeling a slight fear. Now he seemed beyond her; she had a fear lest she should lose him.

      “The fir-trees are like presences on the darkness: each one only a presence.”

      She was afraid, and said nothing.

      “A sort of hush: the whole night wondering and asleep: I suppose that's what we do in death—sleep in wonder.”

      She had been afraid before of the brute in him: now of the mystic. She trod beside him in silence. The rain fell with a heavy “Hush!” on the trees. At last they gained the cartshed.

      “Let us stay here awhile,” he said.

      There was a sound of rain everywhere, smothering everything.

      “I feel so strange and still,” he said; “along with everything.”

      “Ay,” she answered patiently.

      He seemed again unaware of her, though he held her hand close.

      “To be rid of our individuality, which is our will, which is our effort—to live effortless, a kind of curious sleep—that is very beautiful, I think; that is our after-life—our immortality.”

      “Yes?”

      “Yes—and very beautiful to have.”

      “You don't usually say that.”

      “No.”

      In a while they went indoors. Everybody looked at them curiously. He still kept the quiet, heavy look in his eyes, the stillness in his voice. Instinctively, they all left him alone.

      About this time Miriam's grandmother, who lived in a tiny cottage in Woodlinton, fell ill, and the girl was sent to keep house. It was a beautiful little place. The cottage had a big garden in front, with red brick walls, against which the plum trees were nailed. At the back another garden was separated from the fields by a tall old hedge. It was very pretty. Miriam had not much to do, so she found time for her beloved reading, and for writing little introspective pieces which interested her.

      At the holiday-time her grandmother, being better, was driven to Derby to stay with her daughter for a day or two. She was a crotchety old lady, and might return the second day or the third; so Miriam stayed alone in the cottage, which also pleased her.

      Paul used often to cycle over, and they had as a rule peaceful and happy times. He did not embarrass her much; but then on the Monday of the holiday he was to spend a whole day with her.

      It was perfect weather. He left his mother, telling her where he was going. She would be alone all the day. It cast a shadow over him; but he had three days that were all his own, when he was going to do as he liked. It was sweet to rush through the morning lanes on his bicycle.

      He got to the cottage at about eleven o'clock. Miriam was busy preparing dinner. She looked so perfectly in keeping with the little kitchen, ruddy and busy. He kissed her and sat down to watch. The room was small and cosy. The sofa was covered all over with a sort of linen in squares of red and pale blue, old, much washed, but pretty. There was a stuffed owl in a case over a corner cupboard. The sunlight came through the leaves of the scented geraniums in the window. She was cooking a chicken in his honour. It was their cottage for the day, and they were man and wife. He beat the eggs for her and peeled the potatoes. He thought she gave a feeling of home almost like his mother; and no one could look more beautiful, with her tumbled curls, when she was flushed from the fire.

      The dinner was a great success. Like a young husband, he carved. They talked all the time with unflagging zest. Then he wiped the dishes she had washed, and they went out down the fields. There was a bright little brook that ran into a bog at the foot of a very steep bank. Here they wandered, picking still a few marsh-marigolds and many big blue forget-me-nots. Then she sat on the bank with her hands full of flowers, mostly golden water-blobs. As she put her face down into the marigolds, it was all overcast with a yellow shine.

      “Your face is bright,” he said, “like a transfiguration.”

      She looked at him, questioning. He laughed pleadingly to her, laying his hands on hers. Then he kissed her fingers, then her face.

      The world was all steeped in sunshine, and quite still, yet not asleep, but quivering with a kind of expectancy.

      “I have never seen anything more beautiful than this,” he said. He held her hand fast all the time.

      “And the water singing to itself as it runs—do you love it?” She looked at him full of love. His eyes were very dark, very bright.

      “Don't you think it's a great day?” he asked.

      She murmured her assent. She WAS happy, and he saw it.

      “And our day—just between us,” he said.

      They lingered a little while. Then they stood up upon the sweet thyme, and he looked down at her simply.

      “Will СКАЧАТЬ