And he stuck a pink campion-bud among the hair.
“There! That’s me where you won’t forget me! That’s Moses in the bulrushes.”
“You don’t mind, do you, that I’m going away?” she asked wistfully, looking up into his face.
But his face was inscrutable, under the heavy brows. He kept it quite blank.
“You do as you wish,” he said.
And he spoke in good English.
“But I won’t go if you don’t wish it,” she said, clinging to him.
There was silence. He leaned and put another piece of wood on the fire. The flame glowed on his silent, abstracted face. She waited, but he said nothing.
“Only I thought it would be a good way to begin a break with Clifford. I do want a child. And it would give me a chance to, to—” she resumed.
“To let them think a few lies,” he said.
“Yes, that among other things. Do you want them to think the truth?”
“I don’t care what they think.”
“I do! I don’t want them handling me with their unpleasant cold minds, not while I’m still at Wragby. They can think what they like when I’m finally gone.”
He was silent.
“But Sir Clifford expects you to come back to him?”
“Oh, I must come back,” she said: and there was silence.
“And would you have a child in Wragby?” he asked.
She closed her arm round his neck.
“If you wouldn’t take me away, I should have to,” she said.
“Take you where to?”
“Anywhere! away! But right away from Wragby.”
“When?”
“Why, when I come back.”
“But what’s the good of coming back, doing the thing twice, if you’re once gone?” he said.
“Oh, I must come back. I’ve promised! I’ve promised so faithfully. Besides, I come back to you, really.”
“To your husband’s gamekeeper?”
“I don’t see that that matters,” she said.
“No?” He mused a while. “And when would you think of going away again, then; finally? When exactly?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’d come back from Venice. And then we’d prepare everything.”
“How prepare?”
“Oh, I’d tell Clifford. I’d have to tell him.”
“Would you!”
He remained silent. She put her arms fast round his neck.
“Don’t make it difficult for me,” she pleaded.
“Make what difficult?”
“For me to go to Venice and arrange things.”
A little smile, half a grin, flickered on his face.
“I don’t make it difficult,” he said. “I only want to find out just what you are after. But you don’t really know yourself. You want to take time: get away and look at it. I don’t blame you. I think you’re wise. You may prefer to stay mistress of Wragby. I don’t blame you. I’ve no Wragbys to offer. In fact, you know what you’ll get out of me. No, no, I think you’re right! I really do! And I’m not keen on coming to live on you, being kept by you. There’s that too.”
She felt, somehow, as if he were giving her tit for tat.
“But you want me, don’t you?” she asked.
“Do you want me?”
“You know I do. That’s evident.”
“Quite! And when do you want me?”
“You know we can arrange it all when I come back. Now I’m out of breath with you. I must get calm and clear.”
“Quite! Get calm and clear!”
She was a little offended.
“But you trust me, don’t you?” she said.
“Oh, absolutely!”
She heard the mockery in his tone.
“Tell me, then,” she said flatly, “do you think it would be better if I don’t go to Venice?”
“I’m sure it’s better if you do go to Venice,” he replied in the cool, slightly mocking voice.
“You know it’s next Thursday?” she said.
“Yes!”
She now began to muse. At last she said:
“And we shall know better where we are when I come back, shan’t we?”
“Oh, surely!”
The curious gulf of silence between them!
“I’ve been to the lawyer about my divorce,” he said, a little constrainedly.
She gave a slight shudder.
“Have you!” she said. “And what did he say?”
“He said I ought to have done it before; that may be a difficulty. But since I was in the army, he thinks it will go through all right. If only it doesn’t bring her down on my head!”
“Will she have to know?”
“Yes! she is served with a notice: so is the man she lives with, the co-respondent.”
“Isn’t it hateful, all the performances! I suppose I’d have to go through it with Clifford.”
There was a silence.
“And of course,” he said, “I have to live an exemplary life for the next six or eight months. So if you go to Venice, there’s temptation removed for a week or two, at least.”
“Am I temptation!” she said, stroking his face. “I’m so glad I’m temptation to you! Don’t let’s think about it! You frighten me when you start thinking: you roll me out flat. Don’t let’s think about it. We can think so much when we are apart. That’s the whole point! I’ve been thinking, I must come to you for another night before I go. I must come once more to the cottage. Shall I come on Thursday night?”
“Isn’t that when your sister will be there?”
“Yes! But she said we would start at tea-time. So we could start at tea-time. But she could sleep somewhere else and I could sleep with you.”
“But then she’d have to know.”
“Oh, I shall tell her. I’ve more or less told her already. I must talk it all over with Hilda. She’s a great help, so sensible.”
He was thinking of her plan.
“So you’d start off from Wragby at tea-time, as if you were going to London? Which way were you going?”
“By Nottingham and Grantham.”
“And then your sister would drop you somewhere and you’d walk or drive back here? Sounds very risky, to me.”
“Does it? Well then, Hilda could bring me back. She could sleep at Mansfield, and bring me back here in the evening, and fetch me again in the morning. It’s quite easy.”
“And the people who see you?”
“I’ll wear goggles and a veil.”
He pondered for some time.
“Well,” he said. “You please yourself, as usual.”
“But wouldn’t it please you?”
“Oh, yes! It’d please me all right,” he said a little grimly. “I might as well smite while the iron’s hot.”
“Do you know what I thought?” she said suddenly. “It suddenly came to me. You are the ‘Knight of the Burning Pestle’!”
“Ay! And you? Are you the Lady of the Red-Hot Mortar?”
“Yes!” she said. “Yes! You’re Sir Pestle and I’m Lady Mortar.”
“All right, then I’m knighted. John Thomas is Sir John, to your Lady Jane.”
“Yes! John Thomas is knighted! I’m my-lady-maiden-hair, and you must have flowers too. Yes!”
She threaded two pink campions in the bush of red-gold hair above his penis.
“There!” she said. “Charming! Charming! Sir John!”
And she pushed a bit of forget-me-not in the dark hair of his breast.
“And you won’t forget me there, will you?” she kissed him on the breast, and made two bits of forget-me-not lodge one over each nipple, kissing him again.
“Make a calendar of me!” he said. He laughed and the flowers shook from his breast.
“Wait a bit!” he said.
He rose, and opened the door of the hut. Flossie, lying in the porch, got up and looked at him.
“Ay, it’s me!” he said.
The rain had ceased. There was a we
t, heavy perfumed stillness. Evening was approaching.
He went out and down the little path in the opposite direction from the riding. Connie watched his thin, white figure, and it looked to her like a ghost, an apparition moving away from her.
When she could see it no more, her heart sank. She stood in the door of the hut, with a blanket round her, looking into the drenched motionless silence.
But he was coming back, trotting strangely, and carrying flowers. She was a little afraid of him, as if he were not quite human. And when he came near, his eyes looked into hers, but she could not understand the meaning.
He had brought columbines and campions, and new-mown-hay, and oak-tufts and honeysuckle in small bud. He fastened fluffy young oak-sprays round her breasts, sticking in tufts of bluebells and campion: and in her navel he poised a pink campion flower, and in her maiden-hair were forget-me-nots and woodruff.
“That’s you in all your glory!” he said. “Lady Jane, at her wedding with John Thomas.”
And he stuck flowers in the hair of his own body, and wound a bit of creeping-jenny round his penis, and stuck a single bell of a hyacinth in his navel. She watched him with amusement, his odd intentness. And she pushed a campion flower in his moustache, where it stuck dangling under his nose.
“This is John Thomas marryin’ Lady Jane,” he said. “An’ we mun let Constance an’ Oliver go their ways. Maybe—”
He spread out his hand with a gesture, and then he sneezed, sneezing away the flowers from his nose and his navel. He sneezed again.
“Maybe what?” she said, waiting for him to go on.
“Eh?” he said.
“Maybe what? Go on with what you were going to say,” she insisted.
“Ay, what was I going to say?”
He had forgotten. And it was one of the disappointments of her life, that he never finished.
A yellow ray of sun shone over the trees.
“Sun!” he said. “And time you went. Time, my lady, time! What’s that as flies without wings, your ladyship? Time! Time!”
He reached for his shirt.
“Say good night! to John Thomas,” he said, looking down at his penis. “He’s safe in the arms of creeping-jenny! Not much burning pestle about him just now.”
And he put his flannel shirt over his head.
“A man’s most dangerous moment,” he said, when his head emerged, “is when he’s getting into his shirt. Then he puts his head in a bag. That’s why I prefer those American shirts, that you put on like a jacket.” She still stood watching him. He stepped into his short drawers, and buttoned them round his waist.
“Look at Jane!” he said. “In all her blossoms! Who’ll put blossoms on you next year, Jinny? Me, or somebody else? ‘Good-bye my bluebell, farewell to you!’ I hate that song, it’s early war days.” He had sat down, and was pulling on his stockings. She still stood unmoving. He laid his hand on the slope of her buttocks. “Pretty little lady Jane!” he said. “Perhaps in Venice you’ll find a man who’ll put jasmine in your maiden-hair, and a pomegranate flower in your navel. Poor little lady Jane!”
“Don’t say those things!” she said. “You only say them to hurt me.”
He dropped his head. Then he said, in dialect:
“Ay, maybe I do, maybe I do! Well then, I’ll say nowt, an’ ha’ done wi’t. But tha mun dress thysen, an’ go back to thy stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand. Time’s up. Time’s up for Sir John, an’ for little lady Jane! Put thy shimmy on, Lady Chatterley! Tha might be anybody, standin’ there be-out even a shimmy, an’ a few rags o’ flowers. There then, there then, I’ll undress thee, tha bob-tailed young throstle.” And he took the leaves from her hair, kissing her damp hair, and the flowers from her breasts, and kissed her breasts, and kissed her navel, and kissed her maiden-hair, where he left the flowers threaded. “They mun stop while they will,” he said. “So! There th’art bare again, nowt but a bare-arsed lass an’ a bit of a lady Jane! Now put thy shimmy on, for tha mun go, or else Lady Chatterley’s goin’ to be late for dinner, an’ where ’ave yer been to my pretty maid!”
She never knew how to answer him when he was in this condition of the vernacular. So she dressed herself and prepared to go a little ignominiously home to Wragby. Or so she felt it: a little ignominiously home.
He would accompany her to the broad riding. His young pheasants were all right under the shelter.
When he and she came out on to the riding, there was Mrs. Bolton faltering palely towards them.
“Oh, my Lady, we wondered if anything had happened!”
“No! Nothing has happened.”
Mrs. Bolton looked into the man’s face, that was smooth and new-looking with love. She met his half-laughing, half-mocking eyes. He always laughed at mischance. But he looked at her kindly.
“Evening, Mrs. Bolton! Your Ladyship will be all right now, so I can leave you. Good night to your Ladyship! Good night, Mrs. Bolton!”
He saluted and turned away.
Chapter Sixteen
Connie arrived home to an ordeal of cross-questioning. Clifford had been out at tea-time, had come in just before the storm, and where was her ladyship? Nobody knew, only Mrs. Bolton suggested she had gone for a walk into the wood. Into the wood, in such a storm!—Clifford for once let himself get into a state of nervous frenzy. He started at every flash of lightning, and blenched at every roll of thunder. He looked at the icy thunder-rain as if it were the end of the world. He got more and more worked up.
Mrs. Bolton tried to soothe him.
“She’ll be sheltering in the hut, till it’s over. Don’t worry, her ladyship is all right.”
“I don’t like her being in the wood in a storm like this! I don’t like her being in the wood at all! She’s been gone now more than two hours. When did she go out?”
“A little while before you came in.”
“I didn’t see her in the park. God knows where she is and what has happened to her.”
“Oh, nothing’s happened to her. You’ll see, she’ll be home directly after the rain stops. It’s just the rain that’s keeping her.”
But her ladyship did not come home directly the rain stopped. In fact time went by, the sun came out for his last yellow glimpse, and there was still no sign of her. The sun was set, it was growing dark, and the first dinner-gong had rung.
“It’s no good!” said Clifford in a frenzy. “I’m going to send out Field and Betts to find her.”
“Oh, don’t do that!” cried Mrs. Bolton. “They’ll think there’s a suicide or something. Oh, don’t start a lot of talk going—Let me slip over to the hut and see if she’s not there. I’ll find her all right.”
So, after some persuasion, Clifford allowed her to go.
And so Connie had come upon her in the drive, alone and palely loitering.
“You mustn’t mind me coming to look for you, my Lady! But Sir Clifford worked himself up into such a state. He made sure you were struck by lightning, or killed by a falling tree. And he was determined to send Field and Betts to the wood to find the body. So I thought I’d better come, rather than set all the servants agog.”
She spoke nervously. She could still see on Connie’s face the smoothness and the half-dream of passion, and she could feel the irritation against herself.
“Quite!” said Connie. And she could say no more.
The two women plodded on through the wet world, in silence, while great drops splashed like explosions in the wood. When they came to the park, Connie strode ahead, and Mrs. Bolton panted a little. She was getting plumper.
“How foolish of Clifford to make a fuss!” said Connie at length, angrily, really speaking to herself.
“Oh, you know what men are! They like working themselves up. But he’ll be all right as soon as he sees your ladyship.”
Connie was very angry that Mrs. Bolton knew her secret: for certainly she knew it.
Suddenly Constance stood still on the path.
“It’s monstrous
that I should have to be followed!” she said, her eyes flashing.
“Oh, your Ladyship, don’t say that! He’d certainly have sent the two men, and they’d have come straight to the hut. I didn’t know where it was, really.”
Connie flushed darker with rage, at the suggestion. Yet, while her passion was on her, she could not lie. She could not even pretend there was nothing between herself and the keeper. She looked at the other woman, who stood so sly, with her head dropped: yet somehow, in her femaleness, an ally.
“Oh well!” she said. “If it is so, it is so. I don’t mind!”
“Why, you’re all right, my Lady! You’ve only been sheltering in the hut. It’s absolutely nothing.”
They went on to the house. Connie marched into Clifford’s room, furious with him, furious with his pale, overwrought face and prominent eyes.
“I must say, I don’t think you need send the servants after me!” she burst out.
“My God!” he exploded. “Where have you been, woman? You’ve been gone hours, hours, and in a storm like this! What the hell do you go to that bloody wood for? What have you been up to? It’s hours even since the rain stopped, hours! Do you know what time it is? You’re enough to drive anybody mad. Where have you been? What in the name of hell have you been doing?”
“And what if I don’t choose to tell you?” She pulled her hat from her head and shook her hair.
He looked at her with his eyes bulging, and yellow coming into the whites. It was very bad for him to get into these rages: Mrs. Bolton had a weary time with him, for days after. Connie felt a sudden qualm.
“But, really!” she said, milder. “Anyone would think I’d been I don’t know where! I just sat in the hut during all the storm, and made myself a little fire, and was happy.”
She spoke now easily. After all, why work him up any more! He looked at her suspiciously.
“And look at your hair!” he said; “look at yourself.”
“Yes!” she replied calmly. “I ran out into the rain with no clothes on.”
He stared at her speechless.
“You must be mad!” he said.
“Why? To like a shower bath from the rain?”
“And how did you dry yourself?”
“On an old towel and at the fire.”
He still stared at her in a dumbfounded way.
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