During the next two weeks we were busy preparing for Christmas, ranging the woods for the reddest holly, and pulling the gleaming ivy-bunches from the trees. From the farms around came the cruel yelling of pigs, and in the evening later, was a scent of pork-pies. Far off on the high-way could be heard the sharp trot of ponies hastening with Christmas goods.
There the carts of the hucksters dashed by to the expectant villagers, triumphant with great bunches of light foreign mistletoe, gay with oranges peeping through the boxes, and scarlet intrusion of apples, and wild confusion of cold, dead poultry. The hucksters waved their whips triumphantly, the little ponies rattled bravely under the sycamores, towards Christmas.
In the late afternoon of the 24th, when dust was rising under the hazel brake, I was walking with Lettie. All among the mesh of twigs overhead was tangled a dark red sky. The boles of the trees grew denser — almost blue.
Tramping down the riding we met two boys, fifteen or sixteen years old. Their clothes were largely patched with tough cotton moleskin; scarves were knotted round their throats, and in their pockets rolled tin bottles full of tea, and the white knobs of their knotted snap-bags.
“Why!” said Lettie. “Are you going to work on Christmas eve?”
“It looks like it, don’t it?” said the elder.
“And what time will you be coming back?”
“About ‘alf-past tow.”
“Christmas morning!”
“You’ll be able to look out for the herald Angels and the Star,” said I.
“They’d think we was two dirty little ‘uns,” said the younger lad, laughing.
“They’ll ‘appen ‘a done before we get up ter th’ top,” added the elder boy, “an’ they’ll none venture down th’ shaft.”
“If they did,” put in the other, “you’d ha’e ter bath ‘em after. I’d gi’e ‘em a bit o’ my pasty.”
“Come on,” said the elder sulkily.
They tramped off, slurring their heavy boots.
“Merry Christmas!” I called after them.
“In th’ mornin’,” replied the elder.
“Same to you,” said the younger, and he began to sing with a tinge of bravado.
“In the fields with their flocks abiding.
They lay on the dewy ground — ”
“Fancy,” said Lettie, “those boys are working for me!” We were all going to the party at Highclose. I happened to go into the kitchen about half-past seven. The lamp was turned low, and Rebecca sat in the shadows. On the table, in the light of the lamp, I saw a glass vase with five or six very beautiful Christmas roses.
“Hullo, Becka, who’s sent you these?” said I.
“They’re not sent,”. replied Rebecca from the depth of the shadow, with suspicion of tears in her voice.
“Why! I never saw them in the garden.”
“Perhaps not. But I’ve watched them these three weeks, and kept them under glass.”
“For Christmas? They are beauties. I thought someone must have sent them to you.”
“It’s little as ‘as ever been sent me,” replied Rebecca, “an’ less as will be.”
“Why — what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Who’m I, to have anything the matter! Nobody — nor ever was, nor ever will be. And I’m getting old as well.”
“Something’s upset you, Becky.”
“What does it matter if it has? What are my feelings? A bunch o’ fal-de-rol flowers as a gardener clips off wi’ never a thought is preferred before mine as I’ve fettled after this three-week. I can sit at home to keep my flowers company — nobody wants ‘em.”
I remembered that Lettie was wearing hot-house flowers; she was excited and full of the idea of the party at Highclose; I could imagine her quick “Oh no, thank you, Rebecca. I have had a spray sent to me — ”
“Never mind, Becky,” said I, “she is excited tonight.”
“An’ I’m easy forgotten.”
“So are we all, Becky — tant mieux.”
At Highclose Lettie made a stir. Among the little belles of the countryside, she was decidedly the most distinguished. She was brilliant, moving as if in a drama. Leslie was enraptured, ostentatious in his admiration, proud of being so well infatuated. They looked into each other’s eyes when they met, both triumphant, excited, blazing arch looks at one another. Lettie was enjoying her public demonstration immensely; it exhilarated her into quite a vivid love for him. He was magnificent in response. Meanwhile, the honoured lady of the house, pompous and ample, sat aside with my mother conferring her patronage on the latter amiable little woman, who smiled sardonically and watched Lettie. It was a splendid party; it was brilliant, it was dazzling.
I danced with several ladies, and honourably kissed each under the mistletoe — except that two of them kissed me first, it was all done in a most correct manner.
“You wolf,” said Miss Wookey archly. “I believe you are a wolf — a veritable rôdeur des femmes — and you look such a lamb too — such a dear.”
“Even my bleat reminds you of Mary’s pet.”
“But you are not my pet — at least — it is well that my Golaud doesn’t hear you — ”
“If he is so very big — ” said I.
“He is really; he’s beefy. I’ve engaged myself to him, somehow or other. One never knows how one does those things, do they?”
“I couldn’t speak from experience,” said I.
“Cruel man! I suppose I felt Christmasy, and I’d just been reading Maeterlinck — and he really is big.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Oh — He, of course. My Golaud. I can’t help admiring men who are a bit avoirdupoisy. It is unfortunate they can’t dance.”
“Perhaps fortunate,” said I.
“I can see you hate him. Pity I didn’t think to ask him if he danced — before — ”
“Would it have influenced you very much?”
“Well — of course — one can be free to dance all the more with the really nice men whom one never marries.”
“Why not?”
“Oh — you can only marry one — ”
“Of course.”
“There he is — he’s coming for me! Oh, Frank, you leave me to the tender mercies of the world at large. I thought you’d forgotten me, dear.”
“I thought the same,” replied her Golaud, a great fat fellow with a childish bare face. He smiled awesomely, and one never knew what he meant to say.
We drove home in the early Christmas morning. Lettie, warmly wrapped in her cloak, had had a little stroll with her lover in the shrubbery. She was still brilliant, flashing in her movements. He, as he bade her good-bye, was almost beautiful in his grace and his low musical tone. I nearly loved him myself. She was very fond towards him. As we came to the gate where the private road branched from the highroad, we heard John say “Thank you” — and looking out, saw our two boys returning from the pit. They were very grotesque in the dark nights as the lamplight fell on them, showing them grimy, flecked with bits of snow. They shouted merrily, their good wishes. Lettie leaned out and waved to them, and they cried “‘ooray!” Christmas came in with their acclamations.
CHAPTER IX
LETTIE COMES OF AGE
Lettie was twenty-one on the day after Christmas. She woke me in the morning with cries of dismay. There was a great fall of snow, multiplying the cold morning light, startling the slow-footed twilight. The lake was black like the open eyes of a corpse; the woods were black like the beard on the face of a corpse. A rabbit bobbed out, and floundered in much consternation; little birds settled into the depth, and rose in a dusty whirr, much terrified at the universal treachery of the earth. The snow was eighteen inches deep, and drifted in places.
“They will never come!” lamented Lettie, for it was the day of her party.
“At any rate — Leslie will,” said I.
“One!” she exclaimed.
“That one is all, isn’t it?” said I. “And for sure George
will come, though I’ve not seen him this fortnight. He’s not been in one night, they say, for a fortnight.”
“Why not?”
“I cannot say.”
Lettie went away to ask Rebecca for the fiftieth time if she thought they would come. At any rate, the extra woman-help came.
It was not more than ten o’clock when Leslie arrived, ruddy, with shining eyes, laughing like a boy. There was much stamping in the porch, and knocking of leggings with his stick, and crying of Lettie from the kitchen to know who had come, and loud, cheery answers from the porch bidding her come and see. She came, and greeted him with effusion.
“Ha, my little woman!” he said, kissing her. “I declare you are a woman. Look at yourself in the glass now — ”
She did so —
“What do you see?” he asked, laughing.
“You — mighty gay, looking at me.”
“Ah, but look at yourself. There! I declare you’re more afraid of your own eyes than of mine, aren’t you?”
“I am,” she said, and he kissed her with rapture.
“It’s your birthday,” he said.
“I know,” she replied.
“So do I. You promised me something.”
“What?” she asked.
“Here — see if you like it” — he gave her a little case. She opened it, and instinctively slipped the ring on her finger. He made a movement of pleasure. She looked up, laughing breathlessly at him.
“Now!” said he, in times of finality.
“Ah!” she exclaimed in a strange, thrilled voice.
He caught her in his arms.
After a while, when they could talk rationally again, she said: “Do you think they will come to my party?”
“I hope not — By Heaven!”
“But — oh yes! We have made all preparations.”
“What does that matter! Ten thousand folks here today — !”
“Not ten thousand — only five or six. I shall be wild if they can’t come.”
“You want them?”
“We have asked them — and everything is ready — and I do want us to have a party one day.”
“But today — damn it all, Lettie!”
“But I did want my party today. Don’t you think they’ll come?”
“They won’t if they’ve any sense!”
“You might help me — ” she pouted.
“Well, I’ll be — ! and you’ve set your mind on having a houseful of people today?”
“You know how we look forward to it — my party. At any rate — I know Tom Smith will come — and I’m almost sure Emily Saxton will.”
He bit his moustache angrily, and said at last:
“Then I suppose I’d better send John round for the lot.”
“It wouldn’t be much trouble, would it?”
“No trouble at all.”
“Do you know,” she said, twisting the ring on her finger, “it makes me feel as if I tied something round my finger to remember by. It somehow remains in my consciousness all the time.”
“At any rate,” said he, “I have got you.”
After dinner, when we were alone, Lettie sat at the table, nervously fingering her ring.
“It is pretty, Mother, isn’t it?” she said a trifle pathetically.
“Yes, very pretty. I have always liked Leslie,” replied my mother.
“But it feels so heavy — it fidgets me. I should like to take it off.”
“You are like me, I never could wear rings. I hated my wedding ring for months.”
“Did you, Mother?”
“I longed to take it off and put it away. But after a while I got used to it.”
“I’m glad this isn’t a wedding ring.”
“Leslie says it is as good,” said I.
“Ah well, yes! But still it is different — ” She put the jewels round under her finger, and looked at the plain gold band — then she twisted it back quickly, saying:
“I’m glad it’s not — not yet. I begin to feel a woman, little Mother — I feel grown up today.”
My mother got up suddenly and went and kissed Lettie fervently.
“Let me kiss my girl good-bye,” she said, and her voice was muffled with tears. Lettie clung to my mother, and sobbed a few quiet sobs, hidden in her bosom. Then she lifted her face, which was wet with tears, and kissed my mother, murmuring:
“No, Mother — no — o — !”
About three o’clock the carriage came with Leslie and Marie. Both Lettie and I were upstairs, and I heard Marie come tripping up to my sister.
“Oh, Lettie, he is in such a state of excitement, you never knew. He took me with him to buy it — let me see it on. I think it’s awfully lovely. Here, let me help you to do your hair — all in those little rolls — it will look charming. You’ve really got beautiful hair — there’s so much life in it — it’s a pity to twist it into a coil as you do. I wish my hair were a bit longer — though really, it’s all the better for this fashion — don’t you like it? — it’s ‘so chic’ — I think these little puffs are just fascinating — it is rather long for them — but it will look ravishing. Really, my eyes, and eyebrows, and eyelashes are my best features, don’t you think?”
Marie, the delightful, charming little creature, twittered on. I went downstairs.
Leslie started when I entered the room, but seeing only me, he leaned forward again, resting his arms on his knees, looking in the fire.
“What the Dickens is she doing?” he asked.
“Dressing.”
“Then we may keep on waiting. Isn’t it a deuced nuisance, these people coming?”
“Well, we generally have a good time.”
“Oh — it’s all very well — we’re not in the same boat, you and me.”
“Fact,” said I, laughing.
“By Jove, Cyril, you don’t know what it is to be in love. I never thought — I couldn’t ha’ believed I should be like it. And the time when it isn’t at the top of your blood, it’s at the bottom: — ’the Girl, the Girl’.”
He stared into the fire.
“It seems pressing you, pressing you on. Never leaves you alone a moment.”
Again he lapsed into reflection.
“Then, all at once, you remember how she kissed you, and all your blood jumps afire.”
He mused again for a while — or rather, he seemed fiercely to con over his sensations.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t think she feels for me as I do for her.”
“Would you want her to?” said I.
“I don’t know. Perhaps not — but — still I don’t think she feels — ”
At this he lighted a cigarette to soothe his excited feelings, and there was silence for some time. Then the girls came down. We could hear their light chatter. Lettie entered the room. He jumped up and surveyed her. She was dressed in soft, creamy, silken stuff; her neck was quite bare; her hair was, as Marie promised, fascinating; she was laughing nervously. She grew warm, like a blossom in the sunshine, in the glow of his admiration. He went forward and kissed her.
“You are splendid!” he said.
She only laughed for answer. He drew her away to the great arm-chair, and made her sit in it beside him. She was indulgent and he radiant. He took her hand and looked at it, and at his ring which she wore.
“It looks all right!” he murmured.
“Anything would,” she replied.
“What do you mean — sapphires and diamonds — for I don’t know?”
“Nor do I. Blue for hope, because Speranza in ‘Fairy Queen’ had a blue gown — and diamonds for — the crystalline clearness of my nature.”
“Its glitter and hardness, you mean. — You are a hard little mistress. But why hope?”
“Why? — No reason whatever, like most things. No, that’s not right. Hope! Oh — blindfolded — hugging a silly harp with no strings. I wonder why she didn’t drop her harp framework over the edge of the globe, and take the handkerchief off her
eyes, and have a look round! But of course she was a woman — and a man’s woman. Do you know I believe most women can sneak a look down their noses from underneath the handkerchief of hope they’ve tied over their eyes. They could take the whole muffler off — but they don’t do it, the dears.”
“I don’t believe you know what you’re talking about, and I’m sure I don’t. Sapphires reminded me of your eyes — and isn’t it ‘Blue that kept the faith’? I remember something about it.”
“Here,” said she, pulling off the ring, “you ought to wear it yourself, Faithful One, to keep me in constant mind.”
“Keep it on, keep it on. It holds you faster than that fair damsel tied to a tree in Millais’s picture — I believe it’s Millais.”
She sat shaking with laughter.
“What a comparison! Who’ll be the brave knight to rescue me — discreetly — from behind?”
“Ah,” he answered, “it doesn’t matter. You don’t want rescuing, do you?”
“Not yet,” she replied, teasing him.
They continued to talk half nonsense, making themselves eloquent by quick looks and gestures, and communion of warm closeness. The ironical tones went out of Lettie’s voice, and they made love.
Marie drew me away into the dining-room, to leave them alone.
Marie is a charming little maid, whose appearance is neatness, whose face is confident little goodness. Her hair is dark, and lies low upon her neck in wavy coils. She does not affect the fashion in coiffure, and generally is a little behind the fashion in dress. Indeed she is a half-opened bud of a matron, conservative, full of proprieties, and of gentle indulgence. She now smiled at me with a warm delight in the romance upon which she had just shed her grace, but her demureness allowed nothing to be said. She glanced round the room, and out of the window, and observed:
“I always love Woodside, it is restful — there is something about it — oh — assuring — really — it comforts me — I’ve been reading Maxim Gorky.”
“You shouldn’t,” said I.
“Dadda reads them — but I don’t like them — I shall read no more. I like Woodside — it makes you feel — really at home — it soothes one like the old wood does. It seems right — life is proper here — not ulcery — ”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 13