In the perfect soft, grey loneliness of the winter afternoon there was Parkin washing himself to go out on his Saturday evening. He had stripped to the waist, as the colliers do. His velveteen breeches sagged low on his hips. And he was ducking his head repeatedly into the warm, steamy, soapy water, rubbing his hands over his brown hair and over the reddened back of his neck, while the water ran from his face and over his close-shut eyes. He was so near, Constance could have touched him.
She withdrew in haste and in silence, back to the wood. There, she hastened through the wet trees, to be safely out of sight of the cottage. Then suddenly, a weakness came over her, and she sat down on a low bank, oblivious of the wet, oblivious of the dripping gloom of the forest.
The white torso of the man had seemed so beautiful to her, opening on the gloom. The white, firm, divine body, with its silky ripple, the white arch of life, as it bent forward over the water, seemed, she could not help it, of the world of gods. There still was a world that gleamed pure and with power, where the silky firm skin of the man’s body glistened broad upon the dull afternoon. Never mind who he was! Never mind what he was! She had seen beauty, and beauty alive. That body was of the world of the gods, cleaving through the gloom like a revelation. And she felt again there was God on earth; or gods.
A great soothing came over her heart, along with the feeling of worship. The sudden sense of pure beauty, beauty that was active and alive, had put worship in her heart again. Not that she worshipped the man, nor his body. But worship had come into her, because she had seen a pure loveliness, that was alive, and that had touched the quick in her. It was as if she had touched God, and been restored to life. The broad, gleaming whiteness!
It was the vision she cherished, because it had touched her soul. She knew it was only the gamekeeper, a common man. That did not matter. He did not own his own body. His body was among the beautiful gods. She thought of it, as it arched over in an arch of aliveness and power, rippling then with movements of life, from the fallen sheath of those dead breeches, and her whole life paused and changed. How beautiful. How beautiful! And with what power of pure white, rippling, rapid life!
She quivered in all her fibres as she sat. Were all men like that? Had Clifford been like that?
Again her life stumbled and halted. Clifford? No! Clifford had been handsome and well-made, but there had been something clayey or artificial in his body, at his best. No, not that silky quick shimmer and power, the real god-beauty that had no clay, no dross! Clifford had never had that. There had always been some deadness in his flesh.
Ah well! She rose to her feet. It was no doubt all illusion: just the effect of the grey day, and the complete unexpectedness.
And still she felt an ache in herself, as if she were moving a cramped limb. There was an ache, and a vague, heavy yearning like a stream, started to flow in her. She was afraid of this yearning, so she suppressed it quickly from her consciousness. She would be matter-of-fact.
She hurried now towards the cottage, to get there before he should have gone out. And she wondered if he would think it queer, her coming to speak to him, in the absolute loneliness of the afternoon. At once she caught herself up. Such a thought had never even vaguely occurred to her, before. Now she was angry with herself, and confused. The gamekeeper!
She stood on the threshold of the cottage, flushing and quivering inwardly. She was very angry with herself! A mere gamekeeper! Didn’t he always have a body! If it had really been anything wonderful, of course she would have sensed it through his clothes. Which she hadn’t done, she had never given him a thought. So that obviously it was all the effect of her disordered imagination.
But it seemed to her wrong, that, being a commonplace individual, he should have that pure body, that arch of white, living power.
She knocked. And then she heard him coming downstairs. Almost she fled away. Yet when he opened the door, she was there on the threshold. She looked up into his face, and stammered:
‘Oh! Sir Clifford wanted to send a message—’
He held the door open.
‘Shall yer come in? — Have yer bin afore?’
‘No!’ she said, making big round eyes.
‘I sort of wondered if I’d ’eered somebody knock.’
He stood there in a clean shirt, and navy-blue Sunday trousers and pink braces. His damp hair was carefully parted on one side, his ruddy face shone with soap and with shaving. He was getting ready to go out. He had on his Sunday necktie, of shot silk. And his hard, rather hostile eyes examined her keenly as she stammered her message. She stammered uncontrollably to her rage and despair. And he just listened and watched her.
She did not like him. He seemed hard and’ impudent. She did not like his ruddy, vermilion face. She did not like his pink braces, nor his shot-silk necktie. And she did not like his shirt of grey and pinkish-striped flannelette. All very well, having a pure body under that striped flannelette shirt! And with that red, common face!
‘All right, my lady! I’ll see to it, as Sir Clifford wants.’
‘Oh, thank you! Good-afternoon!’
‘Good-afternoon to your ladyship.’
She was always flattered when he said that. But how curiously he looked at her, as if he wanted to say something else! She hurried away. And as she went, she knew he stood in the doorway looking after her, and she felt her dark-blue mackintosh was ugly.
No matter! No uglier than his cheap navy-blue trousers and his cheap shot-silk tie! No uglier than his damp, carefully-parted hair! And his red, impudent face. She realized that she was weary of people’s faces. They were always so full of small conceit, and of the monotonous, impertinent things they always thought. Did he really have that white, curving lovely body she had seen? Ah, no, it was an effect of her imagination. He was what his face was; and his grating voice.
She wondered if he were still watching her. But she did not turn round. She felt him looking after her, as she went forward to the gloom. He would be thinking something stupid and mean. Ah well, let him think! People were all like that. The hidden loveliness of his body, even if it were there under the flannelette shirt, was not his. He knew nothing of it. He was too common and stupid. She was bitterly bored by common, stupid people.
Yet once she was among the trees, she looked back. The door was shut. And she was disappointed. She even resented the fact that he was going to the village for the evening — leaving the estate. The red fire in the cottage had seemed so cheerful. And he was alone. And ahead, towards Wragby, seethed such gloom, such encircling gloom. Lead kindly light, amid the encircling gloom! — She saw the red twinkle of fire in the cottage. And the beautiful body of the man. Those were her kindly lights, for the moment. But she was going away from them.
When she was home again, she seemed to be haunted by another self inside herself. It was a self which had seen powerful beauty, seen it alive, and in motion, seen it as the greatest vision of her life. She was well accustomed to beauty in the world of art, and from this she had derived, truly, the deepest satisfactions of her life: from beauty and from knowledge. Human contact, love, sex, marriage had all meant little to her, strictly, compared to the curious rapture and fulfilment she had got from certain Beethoven symphonies, or from a book like Les Liaisons Dangereuses, from some poetry, from some pictures, from the sight of Florence in the sunshine: or even from a course of philosophy lectures. Life! they talked about life! But what was life, except experiencing the beautiful experience of works of art or works of nature, or acquiring the never-ending gleaming bits of knowledge that came to one? What was life, besides that? What point was there in being Mistress of Wragby, unless Wragby was beautiful to her? What did she care about being ‘her ladyship’, unless it stood for something fine in life, above the ignoble? What was her marriage with Clifford, save the sharing of the evanescent raptures of some poetry, some picture, some landscape, the joy of making some critical analysis of life or of some work of art, the thrill of acquiring through him, or, alone with him,
some new idea, some glimpse of new reality, what one might call a discovery of truth? What was life, beyond this? Nothing! And she was sure it would go on being nothing.
Love, that mysterious fetish-idea, what did it amount to? In her own case, nothing. The word was a portmanteau-word, and inside the portmanteau was little or nothing. Her feeling of clannish attachment to her father and sister! — her thoughtful and aesthetic companionship with Clifford! — What were these? If Clifford had not been able to read to her, talk to her, keep her critical and appreciative faculties sharp and alert, what would -Clifford have been to her? Nothing.
As for sex, what she had known of it — and she had had brief experience of other men, before Clifford — what had it meant to her? Not much! Sex in itself didn’t mean a great deal. Even -her father knew that. But perhaps it was a function necessary to the health of the young. Leave it at that. Clifford was right in what he said.
Even if she had had children, she did not imagine they would really have mattered deeply to her: not to her own, individual life. She knew it was so with her sister Hilda. Hilda wove a lot of importance round her little girls, round herself as a mother. She took her duties terribly seriously. But it was, really, in the same way as Constance took her household duties to Wragby Hall. It was a sort of self-discipline and a sort of self-importance. It was part of the mechanistic activity of life: if that was life. There was nothing at all profound in it. There was even no real experience in it: neither in Hilda’s motherhood nor in her own housewifery. It did not amount to a great deal more than another set of physical and emotional exercises, a sort of drill.
And that was life! And that was all there was to it. Constance accepted it with a certain stoicism, which nevertheless left her exposed to devastating storms from within.
But now! But now! A new flicker of experience had just licked her heart, and had left a burn, an inflamed place which she could not smear with forgetful ointment. What was it? It was nothing, surely, that the portmanteau-word ‘love’ could contain. It was much more like beauty, but beauty come alive and dangerous, something dangerous to touch, like perfect white fire, arched over.
The man’s body! It seemed to live in itself, perfect, powerful, hidden, a life of its own, godly, apart from the man who was vulgar. The man’s mind, and his spirit, were crude, uninformed, vulgar. His body alone was a lovely plunging thing, divinely living on, ignored. It was beauty that rippled and made quick movements, and was dangerously alive, curving in the white arch of life.
Did she wish to touch it? Did she wish it would touch her, and fold the white, clean, warm arms round her? Ah! — and a new misgiving came into her. If she too had a body that was alive with beauty — then yes, yes! But had she? Had she a body of beauty like that, alive like a quick soft flame? Had she? Had she?
She listened to Clifford reading. He had found an old copy of the second part of Hajji Baba and was reading that aloud. He now preferred, usually, to read aloud an amusing book: and they both found Hajji in England very amusing. In it, yes, Constance could feel some of the old Persian delight in the original bodily life, as distinct from the mental and spiritual life. Yes, with all their ridiculousness and cruelty, those Persians had live bodies that glistened, she knew, with aliveness, even when they had grown fat and ungainly. But then, poor Persians, they were so at the mercy of the logic and the mechanism of the west. It made them so helpless and silly. Surely one could live the life of the body, without being so foolishly naïf! Clifford was very much amused when Hajji exclaimed with such loud woe over the nakedness of Englishwomen’s faces. Ah! if only these houris had covered their faces, what fire of passion would have flamed in the Persian’s portly body! But the bold naked indecency of the exposed countenance quenched all Hajji’s fervour, and left him repelled. Oh, if only a little handkerchief had been put over the faces in London, what lovely houris these women would be! But no man, no, could survive the bald sight of the faces of endless women. Every spark of desire left him.
Constance had been silently embroidering. The lamp-light fell on the knot of soft brown hair in her neck. She was so still! But oh! the thoughts that teemed endlessly, endlessly in the small, rounded, womanly skull! Clifford never suspected them.
She lifted her face to him and looked at him with her wide-blue eyes. He seemed so arch and amused. Yes, even Clifford, how tiresome his face was, really, nakedly grimacing and showing all his mind-born feelings.
‘Don’t you think Hajji is right?’ she said. ‘Don’t you think people’s faces are the worst part of them?’
He thought a moment, then he said:
‘No, I don’t exactly see it.’
‘They’re like clocks, to tell the time of their personal feelings by. I rather hate people’s faces. There are so many of them, and they all tell more or less the same time, like clocks.’
‘They express more or less what their owners feel,’ said Clifford. ‘What else can you expect?’
‘I know! That’s just the trouble! Their owners all feel such monotonous, and usually mean things, and usually they’re pretending something else, like clocks that tell the wrong time. I’m tired of people’s faces. I wish there was a law making them all cover them up, like Mohammedan women. If they did that, I wouldn’t mind if they went with all the rest naked so long as one didn’t see their faces.’
‘You’d find their bodies infinitely uglier than their faces,’ said Sir Clifford. ‘You’d soon wish there was the law against nakedness again.’
‘I don’t think so. I believe most people might be ugly. But anyhow they’d have to be ashamed of it: which they aren’t now. Truly, Clifford, I’d rather see any portion of people’s anatomy, than their faces.’
‘Even their posteriors !’ he teased.
‘Oh much! — their innocent posteriors! They wouldn’t be like clocks, showing all the mean, stupid personal ideas and thoughts on the dial.’
‘No, I don’t suppose they’d be expressive of much. But still —’ He burst into a loud, jarring laugh.
When Constance went to bed, she did what she had not done for some years. She took off all her things, and looked at herself naked in the huge mirror of the huge mahogany cupboard. She did it almost without thinking, and without knowing what she was looking for. Yet she moved the lamp so that it would shine full on her.
She knew she was supposed to have a good figure. But after all, what does that mean? She was not very tall, a bit stocky, but she had a certain fluid proportion. Her skin was not white, a little tawny, and her limbs were rather full, soft and slow. She should have had a certain voluptuous fulness of body, and a soft, downward-sinking flow.
But somehow, she felt it had not come off. Instead of ripening into a warm, voluptuous, curving fulness, her body was like a fruit still greenish at the end of summer. There had not been enough sun to swell it to its delicate, ripened curves. Her breasts already were sinking a little flat, her belly had lost the young, expectant beauty, and was becoming a little slack, meaningless, her thighs too, that used to glimpse so quick in their odd, female roundness, that looks almost like a subtle, fleet spiral, now were becoming heavy and inert. Inert! Inert! That was what was happening to her body, it was sagging a little and going expressionless. It was not yet deadish, like poor Clifford’s. But neither was it quite alive. Not quite alive!
She twisted to look at her back, her waist, her hips and buttocks. She was not fat. Perhaps she had grown a very little fatter in the years she had been at Wragby. But her body had somehow lost distinction. The crumple of her waist at the back was not so alive, so gay-looking as it used to be, and the long, rich slope of her haunches and her buttocks was not quite, not quite so sensitive in outline.
But this was the part of her that seemed most alive, the beautiful, long-sloping hips and the buttocks. Like long yellow grapes! Like hillocks of sand, as the Arabs say, long and soft and heavy, and downward slipping! The long, full, heavy contour, so rich and full of female life! What did Clifford know about women! But
the front of her body made her miserable. Was it already beginning to slacken, to move towards age and before even it had approached maturity? Was the bloom gone, and the delicate contour, while still it was a green fruit? All she would know in her life, would it be just girlhood and old-woman-hood? Was the body, of an old woman already beginning to steal upon her, invidiously?
She slipped on her nightdress and went to bed, feeling infinitely sad. And in a sort of despair she wept the first tears she had cried for many a long day. Long and bitterly she wept.
But afterwards, she felt that even tears made her younger.
CHAPTER V
Christmas was near, and they were having visitors. Though she did not like the ‘festal season’, and always wished she could disappear to some utterly heathen country for the Christmas fortnight, — or else go to sleep — still she busied herself making preparations, and allowed herself to think of nothing. The approach of Christmas always inspired her with indefinable dread, as if something bad were going to happen. But perhaps that was because Clifford had been wounded on Christmas day. Anyhow, she had to prepare for mild festivities.
In the wood she had seen a holly tree with many red berries. It was very bright, and very gay, with the jolliness of the pre-christian Christmas, the heathen mid winter excitement She sent word for the keeper to bring a few branches to the house, along with a few brace of pheasants. Simpson came to her one morning, to say that Parkin had come with the holly and the birds, and was it as much as her ladyship wanted?
Constance went down to the big kitchen which was also the servants’ hall, since there was no butler or footman. On the huge table was the dark, sparkle of a huge black-and-scarlet bunch of, holly, and the long, brown-gold lines of the pheasants’ tails spread along the board. It gave her a sense of richness and wildness. The gamekeeper, in his dark velveteens and red face, seemed part of the wild outdoors, as he stood and watched.
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 6