‘I will indeed! I will! It always was a doomed house, to my thinking: a depressing place.’
‘And of course one can’t blame poor Sir Clifford. Paralysed like that, he can’t help being selfish, and thinking of himself first. — Yet it’s a dreadful thing for a young woman — a husband who can never really be a husband — and no hope of a cure, nothing to look forward to—’
‘Oh, yes! It’s terrible I I only had my husband for three years and a bit. But my word! While I’d got him I did have a good husband, if ever a woman did —’
So Ivy Bolton appeared at Wragby, and for the first two or three days was very nervous, feeling her way about. Her rather bossy, open, talkative, coaxing manner, that she had with the colliers, would never do at the Hall. She was extremely circumspect and subdued. However, Clifford let her do things for him, though his resentment amounted almost to hatred of her. She felt this through all his extreme politeness, and it was, curiously enough, not surprising to her: so different to the colliers. They were shy with her, when she had to bandage their legs or wash their bodies, but they always trusted her with a childish sort of trust. And that made her proud and pleased.
But Sir Clifford only coldly resented her, and disliked having to submit to her. She knew it at once, and kept very quiet, never trying to coax him, or command him for his’ own good, as she did the colliers. She kept herself quiet and a bit mysterious, with her long, handsome face, and her grey eyes rather downcast.
‘Shall I do this, Sir Clifford, or would you rather I didn’t bother you?’
‘Do you mind if we leave it for half an hour?’
‘Oh, not at all! It is just as you prefer.’
‘Very well then! Half an hour!’
‘All right, Sir Clifford!’
And she would retire again. But in her heart she was saying: ‘Very well, Sir Bossy! if you must show that you’re master!’
Hilda went, and the house took on a new rhythm. The old tense intimacy between Clifford. and Constance was gone. Mrs Bolton was always there, a curious link between the world of the servants and Clifford’s rooms. Before, the servants had lived and acted far-off, off the stage. Now, they all seemed to come nearer.
Mrs Bolton helped Clifford to bed at night, and slept across the passage, so that she came in the night if he rang for her. She also helped him in the morning, and even shaved him when he was not feeling well. All the heavy, intimate jobs that had fallen to Constance now fell to her. And she was very good.
Clifford, however, resented it deeply, and never felt quite the same again to Connie. It made a cleavage through his feeling for her, that she had relinquished his wrecked body into the hands of a stranger. He never any more felt the close oneness between himself and his wife.
Constance knew, but did not really mind. It was a relief to her. That other oneness had almost destroyed her. Sometimes, upstairs, she would sing to herself the song: ‘Touch not the nettle!’ It has a refrain: ‘for the bonds of love are ill to loose.’ She had never quite understood that, till lately, when she was trying to extricate herself from the intense personal love that was between her and Clifford.
She found that it was as if thousands of little roots and threads of consciousness between her and him were entangled and utterly grown together in a mass, and all these roots went unnourished, they devitalized the plant itself. Now she was quietly and subtly trying to break these threads and roots of consciousness, with patience and impatience. The coming of the nurse had torn, quite a lot free. But there were others. And the bonds of love are ill to loose: like any other bonds.
He would still read to her in the evenings: Mrs Bolton was free after dinner, till ten o’clock. Mrs Bolton took her meals with Mrs Marshall and the others in the kitchen.
‘Oh, I’m not proud! I should look well, shouldn’t I, thinking myself too proud to have my meals with Mrs Marshall, my word! No thank you, my lady, I’ll eat with them in the kitchen, if I may. It’s no good putting on any pretences, is it?’
So that, after dinner, Constance and Clifford were still alone. He was still harping, with an insistency that Constance felt was purely destructive, on the problem of immortality, and on the reality of mystical experiences. He had had mystical experiences — sort of exaltations and experience of identification with the One. Constance mistrusted these experiences terribly. They always seemed to her conceited, egoistic, anti-life. But he insisted on them: and insisted that the necessity for everyone was to have this mystical experience of identification with the One — which seemed to him like pure Light — and to bring this experience with them down into life again. So that a bit of his mystical experience of the great Oneness had to enter into his dealings with Connie — even with Mrs Bolton.
But to Connie, this was both boring and irritating. When he insisted on his unification with the One, it seemed as if he insisted that, he was the One, the great I Am: and to Mrs Bolton, though she knew nothing of it openly, as yet, it came as a new sort of subtle, sublimated arrogance, superiority, and bossiness: a queer sort of bossiness and arrogance she wasn’t used to.
Clifford, however, insisted on it. Connie once said to him: ‘Surely, Clifford, if the mystical experience were real, you needn’t bother other people about it. You sound as if you had to convince yourself.’ But that only offended him deeply. So she just held her tongue and let him insist on his immortality, and let him inflict his immortality on, her. For that was what it amounted to. This Mystic One was like a great pompom on the top of his cap, to show his personal superiority and importance.
He read her again Plato’s Phaedrus. She never minded listening to Plato, because, though she felt that he too was on the exalted ecstatic track — a line she hated, personally — still, he started from such a strange old world, where so many deep things were still alive and potent, which in our world have been falsified to death, that there was always a thrill in him. Even the ecstasy had a touch of the Bacchic in it, for her.
And the Phaedrus myth had a certain fascination for her: the glimpse of another world. She didn’t care about the progress of the soul, nor for pure Truth nor pure knowledge, nor the Philosophers’ heaven. But the imagery still fascinated her. At the end, however, when it came to criticizing the meaning of the thing, she could only say:
‘I do think Socrates seems awfully stupid and overbearing with his black horse. I do dislike men who treat a horse like that.’
‘But my dear child, the black horse is merely a symbol!’
‘Oh, I know! — is the black horse Passion and the white one Desire? Or vice versa? Anyhow, it’s the only team the philosopher’s got, so he might learn how to handle it. If he’s such a bad driver, he should try walking up to heaven on foot: he’d still have his precious charioteer Nous to keep him company.’
Clifford looked at her in wonder. She was really in revolt.
‘And when the grasshopper has become a burden, and desire has failed, I don’t think even a philosopher will get far,’ she added.
‘You don’t agree that desire and passion must be curbed?’ he said.
‘Oh, curbed! Philosophers and their curbings! What will curb desire except desire, and how can you handle passion except with another passion? Oh Clifford, I am sick to death of your philosophy and your immortality! It deadens everything out of existence. Look at you, how dead you are! Your black horse and your white one are dead. And now you can chuff up to heaven in your bath chair — with not even a gamekeeper to give you a push!’
Clifford watched her with eyes that glowed with cold hate! The strangest of strange things, was how a speech like this, which seemed to her only rather natural, made him full of cold rage. However, at length he controlled himself to smile a rather sickly smile of frustrated superiority.
‘Ah yes!’ he said. ‘We know what a woman is after.’
‘She doesn’t want a philosopher’s heaven, nor his immortality either. And if I had a black horse to drive, I’d learn to drive him, no matter how bloodshot his eyes were. �
�� Are they both supposed to be stallions?’ she added suddenly.
‘Plato wasn’t a woman, so he doesn’t specify.’
‘And philosophers don’t notice such things,’ she said, laughing.
But she felt wave after wave of revulsion going over him, revulsion away from her. She felt great masses of the roots that bound them together tearing asunder. And she was glad. A queer joy came over her.
‘It is all conceit,’ she said. ‘Plato isn’t even a good black horse, he’s a conceited mule, sterile. That’s what they all are, full of the conceit of their own Nous and their own immortality. Loathsome conceit! And they all use petrol: all the white and black horses are dead. The intelligent kippers have killed them all. — I wish I could find one.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself that you’ll find any black horse willing to let you ride him,’ he said.
At which she looked at the mystic Clifford in astonishment. Was it all sham?
She went up to her room, even before Mrs Bolton came. Why drag out the evening with him? At last she was in rebellion. But she was not yet free of him. Who could tell, how many of her roots, perhaps even mortal ones, were entangled with roots of his, roots of men of his kind? The bonds of love are ill to loose. And when they are the bonds of a whole civilisation, they are very, very ill. One can only make a good start.
Mrs Bolton, however, was an ally, always urging Constance to go out, to take the air, to drive to Uthwaite, to do anything that would get her away from Sir Clifford. While she had been so ill, Constance had hardly walked in the wood at all. But on a blowy day late in March, Mrs Bolton said to her:
‘Now why don’t you take a walk through the wood, my lady, and look at the daffs behind the keeper’s cottage? They’re the prettiest sight you’d see in a day’s march. I’m sure you’d like some in your room.’
Constance did not mind the woman’s semi-professional coaxing. She took it in good part.
Daffodils! and were there daffodils? Behind the keeper’s cottage? Her heart gave a queer little burn. For a long time she had never even thought of the keeper. Even now, she did not think of him. It was the vision of the cottage, the dark cottage on a dark, lonely winter afternoon, that gave her the queer burn on the heart.
But she went! She felt stronger, she could walk better, though still she was weak. But the world was alive! The body of men, and the animals, and the earth! — it could all come alive again. Tommy Dukes had said it. And it was true. If only that hateful pale Spirit which men had in them didn’t prevent it. ‘Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean!’ — But there was to be a resurrection, the earth, the animals, and men.
She didn’t want any more dead things and pale triumphs, no more engines, no more machines, no more riches and luxury. She wanted live things, only live things: grass and trees on the earth, and flowers that looked after themselves; and birds and animals, stoats and rabbits, hawks and linnets, deer and wolves, lambs and foxes. There must be life again on earth, and fewer people. There must be fewer people!
There must be the resurrection of the body, not for ever this tomb-stricken spirit creeping about. It must end. Pallid miners, creeping like caterpillars by the thousand, from under the earth! What for, what for? And gentry in bath chairs and motor-cars! What for? It was all bodiless and ghoulish. The resurrection of the body! Even the true Christian creed insisted on it.
But these dead larval creatures called people had such invulnerable wills. That was what, they wanted immortality and eternity for: to go on exerting their pale cold will for ever. They were like a huge cold death-worm encircling the earth, and letting nothing live. It was Will, the will of dead things to make everything dead. Nothing, nothing must remain free and wild and alive! Men would prevent it. Men and women, millions of carrion-bodied personalities who imagined themselves to be the ideal and the non-such, these would kill off all life, with their relentless wills and their good motives and their determination to be ‘kind’. These, and the other ghastly people with relentless wills and spiteful motives, who were satisfying themselves by knowing better. But they all had a cold, relentless will, and a determination to get the better of life. One thing, and only one, seemed evil in all the world. And that was the unyielding, insistent human Will, cold, anti-life, and insane!
But how to get free? How to get out of the clutches!
She went slowly across the park. It was a blowy day, and she felt weak. But the sunshine blew in sometimes, and the world was bright. It seemed strangely bright. She was glad to flee into the wood, like a stricken thing.
Pale the wood seemed, even, with pallor of wind-flowers sprinkling the shaken floor. Cold draughts of wind came, and overhead there was a rushing of entangled wind among the twigs. It seemed to try to tear itself free, too, the invisible wind! How cold the anemones looked, on their crinoline green skirts! A few primroses, too, by the path, seemed bleached with cold, and hardly could bear to unfurl their little fists.
Yes, there was a rushing and a roaring, as if the black horse were let loose among the cold stagnancy, and the flowers had come out to see him. She was strangely excited, in the wood, in the sound of the wind. She gathered a few violets, and held them in the palm of her hand. Then the scent came out like summer, between her fingers.
She went slowly, slowly, drifting feebly yet gladly, across the mile of woodland towards the cottage. She came to the clearing, and looked at it shyly. It was just the same, silent. But there was a bit of yellow jasmine by the door, in flower, and a few last crocuses.
It was quiet: no sound of a dog. Softly she went round to the back. All was still. Nobody! But on the orchard slope, behind, the little wild daffodils were rustling and fluttering and shivering so bright and alive, but with nowhere to turn their faces to, as the wind pounded on them with its invisible paws.
Perhaps they liked it! Perhaps it excited them too, when they had to shiver and flutter and try in vain to turn away their faces from the blow. They shook their bright, sunny little rags in such distress. But perhaps they liked it, really.
Constance sat down with her back to a young pine-tree, that swayed against her like an animate creature, so subtly rubbing itself against her, the great, alive thing with its top in the wind! And she watched the daffodils sparkle in a burst of sun, that was warm on her face; and she caught the faint tarry scent of the flowers; and gradually everything went still in her, so still, so still and disentangled!
The shade and the cold roused her again. The daffodils were dipping now in shadow. And so they would dip all through the night! How strong, in their frailty! From the grey slate roof of the chimney a faint waver of smoke whirled. Perhaps someone was at home. She hoped not.
She rose, rather stiff and cold, and took a few daffodils as she went down; although it was always with a pang that she broke off the flowers. They belonged to their own outdoor world. It seemed so unfitting to take them inside the walls of Wragby. Walls! Walls! How weary she was of walls! Yet how she needed their shelter. Even at this minute she would have liked to go into the cottage and sit quite still in the wooden armchair by the fire, safe within the four small walls. She wished she were strong enough to live without walls.
The afternoon was fading. It must be already past four o’clock. She ought to be home for tea with Clifford.
She took the broad riding that swerved round and down to the larch wood, past the pure little spring of water that was called Robin Hood’s Well. It was cold down this hill-side, and there was not a flower on the sombre riding. The well, however, bubbled brilliantly clear, from its bed of red pebbles. The keeper kept it clean. And there was a faint, faint tinkle of water, as the thread of a streamlet ran down-hill past the larches. She could hear the sound even above the hissing boom of the larch wood, that seemed so bristling a twilight spreading away in its own wolfish darkness.
Slowly at last she climbed the up-slope, towards where the timber had been cut away, and the sky was bare. She was tired. As she came near the brow, she heard a faint tapping away on
the right, and she wondered if it were a wood-pecker, or the keeper. It came from the direction of the little clearing where the hut was. Instinctively, she turned down the narrow sidetrack, to see.
The hut and the clearing were in a hidden place among the oak-trees and the remnants of last year’s bracken. It was here the pheasants were raised, when the time came. It seemed one of the old secret places of the forest, very still and remote. But it was from here that the hammering came.
The brown dog, Flossie, came running towards her, but did not bark. She saw the keeper, in his shirt-sleeves, bent over one of the chicken-coops that he was repairing, ready for the nesting time. He lifted his face suddenly having heard some sound, and saw her. By the startled look in his eyes, she knew his instinct was to reach for his gun, as if he were being attacked. For a second he was absolutely still, watching her. Then he rose slowly to his feet, and saluted her, still watching her from his red face, as if she might be an enemy. She approached slowly, her limbs melting as she did so, so that she wanted to sit down, to relax.
‘I wondered what the hammering was!’ she said. ‘I’ll rest a minute before I go on.’
She felt so weak and breathless. He looked at her, and seeing her so thin and so lost-seeming, something stirred in his bowels.
‘Shall yer sit i’ th’ hut a while?’ he asked.
‘I think I will.’
He went before her, and got the rustic stool he had made, brushed aside the lumber, and set the stool facing the door.
‘Should yer like door shut?’ he said.
‘Oh no!’
He looked at her sideways, as if he didn’t want to look at her really. But he was kindly. He felt for her the sympathy one fugitive feels with another. He went back to the coop he was repairing.
She sat with her back to the timber wall of the hut, and leaned back her head closing her eyes. She was so tired, so tired! Fugitives from the social world: that’s what it was. The man had fled too, and now guarded the wood like a wild-cat, against the encroaching of the mongrel population outside. This was at least a little sanctuary. Here she could rest. She closed her eyes, and all her life went still within her, in a true quietness. She heard the soft tapping of the keeper, but that only made her more peaceful. He gave her stillness and rest.
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 10