Complete Works. D. H. Lawrence

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СКАЧАТЬ said he calmly, but turning away to watch the people below on the pavement, ‘you certainly ought not to be out.’

      ‘I ought not,’ she said, ‘for I’m totally unprovided.’

      Neither, however, had the slightest intention of turning back.

      Presently they descended from the car, and took a road leading uphill off the highway. Trees hung over one side, whilst on the other side stood a few villas with lawns upraised. Upon one of these lawns two great sheep-dogs rushed and stood at the brink of the, grassy declivity, at some height above the road, barking and urging boisterously. Helena and Byrne stood still to watch them. One dog was grey, as is usual, the other pale fawn. They raved extravagantly at the two pedestrians. Helena laughed at them.

      ‘They are —’ she began, in her slow manner.

      ‘Villa sheep-dogs baying us wolves,’ he continued.

      ‘No,’ she said, ‘they remind me of Fafner and Fasolt.’

      ‘Fasolt? They are like that. I wonder if they really dislike us.’

      ‘It appears so,’ she laughed.

      ‘Dogs generally chum up to me,’ he said.

      Helena began suddenly to laugh. He looked at her inquiringly.

      ‘I remember,’ she said, still laughing, ‘at Knockholt — you — a half-grown lamb — a dog — in procession.’ She marked the position of the three with her finger.

      ‘What an ass I must have looked!’ he said.

      ‘Sort of silent Pied Piper,’ she laughed.

      ‘Dogs do follow me like that, though,’ he said.

      ‘They did Siegmund,’ she said.

      ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed.

      ‘I remember they had for a long time a little brown dog that followed him home.’

      ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed.

      ‘I remember, too,’ she said, ‘a little black-and-white kitten that followed me. Mater would not have it in — she would not. And I remember finding it, a few days after, dead in the road. I don’t think I ever quite forgave my mater that.’

      ‘More sorrow over one kitten brought to destruction than over all the sufferings of men,’ he said.

      She glanced at him and laughed. He was smiling ironically.

      ‘For the latter, you see,’ she replied, ‘I am not responsible.’

      As they neared the top of the hill a few spots of rain fell.

      ‘You know,’ said Helena, ‘if it begins it will continue all night. Look at that!’

      She pointed to the great dark reservoir of cloud ahead.

      ‘Had we better go back?’ he asked.

      ‘Well, we will go on and find a thick tree; then we can shelter till we see how it turns out. We are not far from the cars here.’

      They walked on and on. The raindrops fell more thickly, then thinned away.

      ‘It is exactly a year today,’ she said, as they-walked on the round shoulder of the down with an oak-wood on the left hand. ‘Exactly!’

      ‘What anniversary is it, then?’ he inquired.

      ‘Exactly a year today, Siegmund and I walked here — by the day, Thursday. We went through the larch-wood. Have you ever been through the larch-wood?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘We will go, then,’ she said.

      ‘History repeats itself,’ he remarked.

      ‘How?’ she asked calmly.

      He was pulling at the heads of the cocksfoot grass as he walked.

      ‘I see no repetition,’ she added.

      ‘No,’ he exclaimed bitingly; ‘you are right!’

      They went on in silence. As they drew near a farm they saw the men unloading a last wagon of hay on to a very brown stack. He sniffed the air. Though he was angry, he spoke.

      ‘They got that hay rather damp,’ he said. ‘Can’t you smell it — like hot tobacco and sandal-wood?’

      ‘What, is that the stack?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes, it’s always like that when it’s picked damp.’

      The conversation was restarted, but did not flourish. When they turned on to a narrow path by the side of the field he went ahead. Leaning over the hedge, he pulled three sprigs of honeysuckle, yellow as butter, full of scent; then he waited for her. She was hanging her head, looking in the hedge-bottom. He presented her with the flowers without speaking. She bent forward, inhaled the rich fragrance, and looked up at him over the blossoms with her beautiful, beseeching blue eyes. He smiled gently to her.

      ‘Isn’t it nice?’ he said. ‘Aren’t they fine bits?’

      She took them without answering, and put one piece carefully in her dress. It was quite against her rule to wear a flower. He took his place by her side.

      ‘I always like the gold-green of cut fields,’ he said. ‘They seem to give off sunshine even when the sky’s greyer than a tabby cat.’

      She laughed, instinctively putting out her hand towards the glowing field on her right.

      They entered the larch-wood. There the chill wind was changed into sound. Like a restless insect he hovered about her, like a butterfly whose antennae flicker and twitch sensitively as they gather intelligence, touching the aura, as it were, of the female. He was exceedingly delicate in his handling of her.

      The path was cut windingly through the lofty, dark, and closely serried trees, which vibrated like chords under the soft bow of the wind. Now and again he would look down passages between the trees — narrow pillared corridors, dusky as if webbed across with mist. All round was a twilight, thickly populous with slender, silent trunks. Helena stood still, gazing up at the tree-tops where the bow of the wind was drawn, causing slight, perceptible quivering. Byrne walked on without her. At a bend in the path he stood, with his hand on the roundness of a larch-trunk, looking back at her, a blue fleck in the brownness of congregated trees. She moved very slowly down the path.

      ‘I might as well not exist, for all she is aware of me,’ he said to himself bitterly. Nevertheless, when she drew near he said brightly:

      ‘Have you noticed how the thousands of dry twigs between the trunks make a brown mist, a brume?’

      She looked at him suddenly as if interrupted.

      ‘H’m? Yes, I see what you mean.’

      She smiled СКАЧАТЬ