Meanwhile the declaration of war drew nearer, and became inevitable. She knew Ciccio would go. And with him went the chance of her escape. She steeled herself to bear the agony of the knowledge that he would go, and she would be left alone in this place, which sometimes she hated with a hatred unspeakable. After a spell of hot, intensely dry weather she felt she would die in this valley, wither and go to powder as some exposed April roses withered and dried into dust against a hot wall. Then the cool wind came in a storm, the next day there was grey sky and soft air. The rose-coloured wild gladioli among the young green corn were a dream of beauty, the morning of the world. The lovely, pristine morning of the world, before our epoch began. Rose-red gladioli among corn, in among the rocks, and small irises, black-purple and yellow blotched with brown, like a wasp, standing low in little desert places, that would seem forlorn but for this weird, dark-lustrous magnificence. Then there were the tiny irises, only one finger tall, growing in dry places, frail as crocuses, and much tinier, and blue, blue as the eye of the morning heaven, which was a morning earlier, more pristine than ours. The lovely translucent pale irises, tiny and morning-blue, they lasted only a few hours. But nothing could be more exquisite, like gods on earth. It was the flowers that brought back to Alvina the passionate nostalgia for the place. The human influence was a bit horrible to her. But the flowers that came out and uttered the earth in magical expression, they cast a spell on her, bewitched her and stole her own soul away from her.
She went down to Ciccio where he was weeding armfuls of rose-red gladioli from the half-grown wheat, and cutting the lushness of the first weedy herbage. He threw down his sheaves of gladioli, and with his sickle began to cut the forest of bright yellow corn-marigolds. He looked intent, he seemed to work feverishly.
“Must they all be cut?” she said, as she went to him.
He threw aside the great armful of yellow flowers, took off his cap, and wiped the sweat from his brow. The sickle dangled loose in his hand.
“We have declared war,” he said.
In an instant she realized that she had seen the figure of the old post-carrier dodging between the rocks. Rose-red and gold-yellow of the flowers swam in her eyes. Ciccio’s dusk-yellow eyes were watching her. She sank on her knees on a sheaf of corn-marigolds. Her eyes, watching him, were vulnerable as if stricken to death. Indeed she felt she would die.
“You will have to go?” she said.
“Yes, we shall all have to go.” There seemed a certain sound of triumph in his voice. Cruel!
She sank lower on the flowers, and her head dropped. But she would not be beaten. She lifted her face.
“If you are very long,” she said, “I shall go to England. I can’t stay here very long without you.”
“You will have Pancrazio — and the child,” he said.
“Yes. But I shall still be myself. I can’t stay here very long without you. I shall go to England.”
He watched her narrowly.
“I don’t think they’ll let you,” he said.
“Yes they will.”
At moments she hated him. He seemed to want to crush her altogether. She was always making little plans in her mind — how she could get out of that great cruel valley and escape to Rome, to English people. She would find the English Consul and he would help her. She would do anything rather than be really crushed. She knew how easy it would be, once her spirit broke, for her to die and be buried in the cemetery at Pescocalascio.
And they would all be so sentimental about her — just as Pancrazio was. She felt that in some way Pancrazio had killed his wife — not consciously, but unconsciously, as Ciccio might kill her. Pancrazio would tell Alvina about his wife and her ailments. And he seemed always anxious to prove that he had been so good to her. No doubt he had been good to her, also. But there was something underneath — malevolent in his spirit, some caged-in sort of cruelty, malignant beyond his control. It crept out in his stories. And it revealed itself in his fear of his dead wife. Alvina knew that in the night the elderly man was afraid of his dead wife, and of her ghost or her avenging spirit. He would huddle over the fire in fear. In the same way the cemetery had a fascination of horror for him — as, she noticed, for most of the natives. It was an ugly, square place, all stone slabs and wall-cupboards, enclosed in foursquare stone walls, and lying away beneath Pescocalascio village obvious as if it were on a plate.
“That is our cemetery,” Pancrazio said, pointing it out to her, “where we shall all be carried some day.”
And there was fear, horror in his voice. He told her how the men had carried his wife there — a long journey over the hill-tracks, almost two hours.
These were days of waiting — horrible days of waiting for Ciccio to be called up. One batch of young men left the village — and there was a lugubrious sort of saturnalia, men and women alike got rather drunk, the young men left amid howls of lamentation and shrieks of distress. Crowds accompanied them to Ossona, whence they were marched towards the railway. It was a horrible event.
A shiver of horror and death went through the valley. In a lugubrious way, they seemed to enjoy it.
“You’ll never be satisfied till you’ve gone,” she said to Ciccio. “Why don’t they be quick and call you?”
“It will be next week,” he said, looking at her darkly. In the twilight he came to her, when she could hardly see him.
“Are you sorry you came here with me, Allaye?” he asked. There was malice in the very question.
She put down the spoon and looked up from the fire. He stood shadowy, his head ducked forward, the firelight faint on his enigmatic, timeless, half-smiling face.
“I’m not sorry,” she answered slowly, using all her courage. “Because I love you — ”
She crouched quite still on the hearth. He turned aside his face. After a moment or two he went out. She stirred her pot slowly and sadly. She had to go downstairs for something.
And there on the landing she saw him standing in the darkness with his arm over his face, as if fending a blow.
“What is it?” she said, laying her hand on him. He uncovered his face.
“I would take you away if I could,” he said.
“I can wait for you,” she answered.
He threw himself in a chair that stood at a table there on the broad landing, and buried his head in his arms.
“Don’t wait for me! Don’t wait for me!” he cried, his voice muffled. “Why not?” she said, filled with terror. He made no sign. “Why not?” she insisted. And she laid her fingers on his head.
He got up and turned to her.
“I love you, even if it kills me,” she said.
But he only turned aside again, leaned his arm against the wall, and hid his face, utterly noiseless.
“What is it?” she said. “What is it? I don’t understand.” He wiped his sleeve across his face, and turned to her.
“I haven’t any hope,” he said, in a dull, dogged voice.
She felt her heart and the child die within her.
“Why?” she said.
Was she to bear a hopeless child?
“You have hope. Don’t make a scene,” she snapped. And she went downstairs, as she had intended.
And when she got into the kitchen, she forgot what she had come for. She sat in the darkness on the seat, with all life gone dark and still, death and eternity settled down on her. Death and eternity were settled down on her as she sat alone. And she seemed to hear him moaning upstairs — ”I can’t come back. I can’t come back.” She heard it. She heard it so distinctly, that she never knew whether it had been an actual utterance, or whether it was her inner ear which had heard the inner, unutterable sound. She wanted to answer, to call to him. But she could not. Heavy, mute, powerless, there she sat like a lump of darkness, in that doomed Italian kitchen. “I can’t come back.” She heard it so fatally.
She was interrupted by the entrance of Pancrazio.
“Oh!” he cried, startled when, having come near th
e fire, he caught sight of her. And he said something, frightened, in Italian.
“Is it you? Why are you in the darkness?” he said.
“I am just going upstairs again.”
“You frightened me.”
She went up to finish the preparing of the meal. Ciccio came down to Pancrazio. The latter had brought a newspaper. The two men sat on the settle, with the lamp between them, reading and talking the news.
Ciccio’s group was called up for the following week, as he had said. The departure hung over them like a doom. Those were perhaps the worst days of all: the days of the impending departure. Neither of them spoke about it.
But the night before he left she could bear the silence no more.
“You will come back, won’t you?” she said, as he sat motionless in his chair in the bedroom. It was a hot, luminous night. There was still a late scent of orange blossom from the garden, the nightingale was shaking the air with his sound. At times other, honey scents wafted from the hills.
“You will come back?” she insisted.
“Who knows?” he replied.
“If you make up your mind to come back, you will come back. We have our fate in our hands,” she said.
He smiled slowly.
“You think so?” he said.
“I know it. If you don’t come back it will be because you don’t want to — no other reason. It won’t be because you can’t. It will be because you don’t want to.”
“Who told you so?” he asked, with the same cruel smile. “I know it,” she said.
“All right,” he answered.
But he still sat with his hands abandoned between his knees. “So make up your mind,” she said.
He sat motionless for a long while: while she undressed and brushed her hair and went to bed. And still he sat there unmoving, like a corpse. It was like having some unnatural, doomed, unbearable presence in the room. She blew out the light, that she need not see him. But in the darkness it was worse.
At last he stirred — he rose. He came hesitating across to her.
“I’ll come back, Allaye,” he said quietly. “Be damned to them all.” She heard unspeakable pain in his voice.
“To whom?” she said, sitting up.
He did not answer, but put his arms round her.
“I’ll come back, and we’ll go to America,” he said.
“You’ll come back to me,” she whispered, in an ecstasy of pain and relief. It was not her affair, where they should go, so long as he really returned to her.
“I’ll come back,” he said.
“Sure?” she whispered, straining him to her.
MR NOON
This unfinished novel was drafted between 1920 and 1921 and then abandoned by Lawrence. It now exists in two parts. The first part was published posthumously by Martin Secker as a long short story titled A Modern Lover in 1934. The second fragment was finally published in 1984 and describes the experiences of the main character during his elopement to the continent. The novel is believed to be autobiographical in places.
The 1984 first edition of Lawrence’s ‘lost novel’
CONTENTS
PART I.
Chapter I.
Attack on Mr Noon.
Chapter II.
Spoon.
Chapter III.
Gilbert Licks the Spoon.
Chapter IV.
Aphrodite and the Cow.
Chapter V.
Choir Correspondence.
Chapter VI.
The Sack.
Chapter VII.
Jaw.
Chapter VIII.
His Might-have-been Mother-in-law.
Chapter IX.
Emmie at Eakrast.
Chapter X.
Introduces Walter George.
Chapter XI.
Lovers’ Meeting.
Chapter XII.
The Interloper.
PART II.
Chapter XIII.
High Germany.
Chapter XIV.
Snowflower.
Chapter XV.
Jupiter Tonans.
Chapter XVI.
Detsch.
Chapter XVII.
Lily of the Valley.
Chapter XVIII.
The First Round.
Chapter XIX.
Chapter XX.
Over the Hills.
Chapter XXI.
Over the Gemserjoch.
Chapter XXII.
A Setback.
Chapter XXIII.
MR NOON
PART I.
Chapter I.
Attack on Mr Noon.
Her very stillness, as she sat bent upon her book, gradually made him uncomfortable. He twisted over, sprawling in his arm-chair, and pretended to go on with his perusal of the New Age. But neither Mr Orage nor Miss Tina could carry him on the wings of the spirit this afternoon. He kept glancing at his wife, whose intensified stillness would have told a ‘cuter man that she knew he was fidgetting, and then glancing at the window, and round the room. It was a rainy, dark Sunday afternoon. He ought to be very cosy, in the quiet by the roasting fire. But he was bored, and he wanted to be amused.
He perched his pince-nez on his nose and looked with an intellectual eye on his paper once more. Perhaps the light was fading. He twisted to look at the window. The aspidistras and ferns were not inspiring: it was still far from nightfall. He twisted the other way, to look at the little round clock on the mantel-piece. No use suggesting a meal, yet. He gave a heavy sigh, and rattled the leaves of the New Age.
But no response: no response. The little red metal devils frisked as ever on the mantel-piece, his own pet devils. Having gone back on the Lord, he signified his revolt by establishing a little company of scarlet, tail-flourishing gentry on his sitting-room mantel-piece. But it was only half-past three, and there was nothing to be done. He would not insult himself by nodding off to sleep. So again he perched his pince-nez on his nose, and began to have a grudge against his wife. After all, what was she so absorbed in!
She was a woman of about forty, stoutish, with very dark, glossy brown hair coiled on her head. She sat sunk deep in a chair, with her feet on a little footstool, and her spectacles right away on the tip of her nose. He, of course, did not observe that she never turned the page of her absorbing book.
His blue eye strayed petulantly to the fire. Ah-ha! Here he was in demand. In the well of the grate a mass of fire glowed scarlet like his devils, with a dark, half-burnt coal resting above. He crouched before the curb and took the poker with satisfaction. Biff! A well-aimed blow, he could congratulate himself on it. The excellent coal burst like magic into a bunch of flames.
“That’s better!” he said heartily.
And he remained crouching before the fire, in his loose homespun clothes. He was handsome, with a high forehead and a small beard, a socialist, something like Shakspeare’s bust to look at, but more refined. He had an attractive, boyish nape of the neck, for a man of forty-five, no longer thin.
So he crouched gazing into the hot, spurting, glowing fire. He was a pure idealist, something of a Christ, but with an intruding touch of the goat. His eyelids dropped oddly, goatlike, as he remained abstracted before the fire.
His wife roused, and cleared her throat.
“Were you sleeping, Missis?” he asked her in a jocular manner of accusation, screwing round to look at her. She had a full, soft, ivory-pale face, and dark eyes with heavy shadows under them. She took her spectacles off her nose-tip.
“No,” she said, in the same sparring humour. “I was not.”
“May I ask you what was the last sentence you read?”
“You may ask. But you mayn’t expect me to answer.”
“I’ll bet not,” he laughed. “It would be the tail-end of a dream, if you did.”
“No, it would not,” she said. “Not even a day-dream.”
“What, were you as sound as all that?” he said.
But she began rustling her book,
rather ostentatiously. He crouched watching her. The coil of hair was rust-brown, on her dark, glossy head. Her hair became reddish towards the ends. It piqued him still, after twenty years of marriage. But since the top of her head was all she showed him, he went back to his big chair, and screwed himself in with his legs underneath him, though he was a biggish man, and once again settled his pince-nez. In a man who doesn’t smoke or drink, an eyeglass or a pair of pince-nez can become a vice.
“Ay-y-y!” he sighed to himself, as he tried to find excitement in the well-filled pages of the New Statesman. He kept his quick ears attentive to the outside. The church clock sounded four. Some people passed, voices chattering. He got up to look. Girls going by. He would have liked a chat, a bit of fun with them. With a longing, half-leering eye he looked down from the window.
“It’s about lighting-up time Mrs Goddard, isn’t it?” he said to his wife.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” she said abstractedly.
He bustled round with the matches, lit three gas-jets, drew the curtains, and rocked on his heels with his hands in his pockets and his back to the fire. This was the precious Sunday afternoon. Every week-day he was at the office. Sunday was a treasure-day to the two of them. They were socialists and vegetarians. So, in fine weather they tramped off into the country. In bad weather they got up late, had a substantial meal towards the end of the morning, and another in the early evening. None of the horrors of Sunday joints.
Lewie rocked on his heels on the hearth, with his back to the fire and his hands in his pockets, whistling faintly.
“You might chop some wood,” said Patty.
“I was just thinking so,” he said, with rather a resentful cheerfulness in his acquiescence.
However, off he went to the back yard, and Patty could hear him letting off some of his steam on the wood, whilst he kept up all the time a brilliant whistling. It wouldn’t be Lewie if he didn’t make himself heard wherever he was.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 267