Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence

by D. H. Lawrence

  “I don’t think she finds it so,” said Gilbert.

  “No I’ll bet she doesn’t,” laughed Lewie, with his goat’s laugh.

  “She doesn’t. She doesn’t,” cried Patty. “But how cruel, that she doesn’t! How cruel for her!”

  “I don’t see it at all. She’s on the look-out for me as much as I am for her,” said Gilbert.

  “Yes probably. Probably. And perhaps even more. And what is her life going to be afterwards? And you, what is your life going to be? What are you going to find in it, when you get tired of your bit of fun, and all women are trivial or dirty amusements to you? What then?”

  “Nay, I’ll tell you when I know,” he answered.

  “You won’t. You won’t. By that time you’ll be as stale as they are, and you’ll have lost everything but your mathematics and science — even if you’ve not lost them. I pity you. I pity you. You may well despise life. But I pity you. Life will despise you, and you’ll know it.”

  “Why, where am I wrong?” asked Gilbert awkwardly.

  “Where? For shame! Isn’t a woman a human being? And isn’t a human being more than your science and stuff?”

  “Not to me, you know,” he said. “Except in one way.”

  “Ay,” laughed Lewie. “There’s always the exception, my boy.”

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “Well,” said Patty, resuming her sewing. “For your mother’s sake, I’m glad she can never hear you, never know. If she was a woman, it would break her heart.”

  But Gilbert could not see it. He smoked obstinately until Lewie reminded him that he must depart for his rendez-vous.

  Patty smiled at him as she shook hands, but rather constrainedly.

  “Come in whenever you are near, and you feel like it,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  Lewie sped his parting guest, and had full sympathy with him, saying:

  “I’m all for a bit of fun, you know.”

  Chapter II.

  Spoon.

  Patty stitched on in silence, angry and bitter. Lewie fidgetted and whistled.

  “He’s got his human side to him right enough,” he said, to make a breach in Patty’s silence, which buzzed inaudibly and angrily on the atmosphere.

  “Human!” she repeated. “Yes, call it human! A yellow dog on the streets has more humanity.”

  “Nay — nay,” said Lewie testily. “Don’t get your hair off, Mrs Goddard. We aren’t angels yet, thank heaven. Besides, there’s no harm in it. A young chap goes out on Sunday night for a bit of a spoon. What is it but natural?”

  He rocked easily and fussily on the hearth-rug, his legs apart. She looked up, quite greenish in her waxen pallor, with anger.

  “You think it natural, do you?” she retorted. “Then I’m sorry for you. Spoon! A bit of a spoon — ” she uttered the word as if it was full of castor-oil.

  Her husband looked down on her with a touch of the old goat’s leer.

  “Don’t forget you’ve been spoony enough in your day, Patty Goddard,” he said.

  She became suddenly still, musing.

  “I suppose I have. I suppose I have,” she mused, with disgust. “And I can’t bear myself when I think of it.”

  “Oh really!” said her husband sarcastically. “It’s hard lines on you all of a sudden, my dear.” He knew that if she had been spoony with anybody, it was with him.

  But yellow-waxy with distaste, she put aside her sewing and went out. He listened, and followed her in a few minutes down to the kitchen, hearing dishes clink.

  “What are you doing?” he asked her.

  “Washing-up.”

  “Won’t Mrs Prince do it tomorrow?”

  And to show his anger, he went away without drying the pots for her.

  Spoon! “You’ve been spoony enough in your day, Patty Goddard.” — Spoony! Spooning! The very mental sound of the word turned her stomach acid. In her anger she felt she could throw all her past, with the dishwater, down the sink. But after all, if Gilbert Noon had been spooning with her instead of with some girl, some bit of fluff, she might not have felt such gall in her veins.

  She knew all about it, as Lewie had said. She knew exactly what Sunday night meant, in the dark, wintry, rainy Midlands. It meant all the young damsels coming out of chapel or of church, brazen young things from fifteen upwards, and being accompanied or met by young louts who would touch their exaggerated caps awkwardly: it meant strolling off to some dark and sheltered corner, passage, entry, porch, shop-door, shed, anywhere where two creatures might stand and squeeze together and spoon. Yes, spoon. Not even kiss and cuddle, merely: spoon. Spooning was a fine art, whereas kissing and cuddling are calf-processes.

  Mr Gilbert had gone off for his Sunday-night’s spoon, and her veins, the veins of a woman of forty, tingled with rage against him. She knew so much more.

  But Sunday night, oh Sunday night: how she loathed it. There was a sort of Last Day suspense about it. Monday, and Monday morning’s work-day grip, was very near. The iron hand was open to seize its subjects. And the emotional luxury and repletion of Sunday deepened into a sort of desperation as the hour of sleep and Monday approached. There must be a climax — there must be a consummation. Chapel did not finish it off sufficiently. The elder men dashed off for a drink, the women went to each other’s houses for an intense gossip and a bit of supper, the young people went off for a spoon. It was the recognised thing to do — only very stiff-necked parents found any fault. The iron grip of Monday was closing. Meanwhile, dear young things, while the frisson of approaching captivity goes through you to add an intenser sting to your bliss, spoon, dears, spoon.

  Mr Noon waited on the edge of the kerb, on the side of the road opposite the chapel. They were late coming out. The big but rather flimsy stained-glass window shed its colours on the muddy road, and Gilbert impassively contemplated the paucity of the geometric design of the tracery. He had contemplated it before. He contemplated it again as he stood in the rain with his coat-collar turned up and listened to the emotional moan of the vesper-verse which closed the last prayer. He objected to the raspberry-juice aerated-water melody and harmony, but had heard it before. Other louts were lurking in the shelter like spiders down the road, ready to pounce on the emerging female flies.

  Yes, the congregation was beginning to filter out: the spider-youths who scorned to go to chapel emerged from their lairs. Their cigarette-ends, before only smellable, now became visible. The young dogs waited to snap up their fluffy rabbits.

  People oozed through the chapel gateway, expanded into umbrellas, and said, of the rain: “Well I never, it’s as hard as ever!” — and called “Goodnight then. So long! See you soon! Too-ra-loo! Keep smiling! — ” and so on. Brave young dogs of fellows sniffed across the road. Sanctioned young hussies seized the arm of the “boy,” who had his cap over his nose and his cigarette under his nose, his coat-collar turned up, and they set off down the road. Trickling dark streams of worshippers ebbed in opposite directions down the rainy night.

  Mr Noon was a stranger, and really too old for this business of waiting at the chapel gate. But since he had never got fixed up with a permanent girl, what was he to do? And he had the appointment. So, feeling rather self-conscious, he loitered like a pale ghost on the edge of the chapel stream.

  She did not appear. It suddenly occurred to him that young people were emerging from the darkness of the tiny gateway at the other end of the chapel shrubbery, where there was no light. Sure enough, through that needle’s eye the choir were being threaded out; and he remembered she was in the choir. He strolled along on the pavement opposite.

  Of course he heard her voice.

  “It’s fair sickening. You’d think the Lord liked rain, for it pours every blessed Sunday. There comes Freddy! Oh Agatha, you are short-sighted, can’t see your own boy. Hello Fred.”

  A tall youth in a bowler hat had stalked up to the two girls, who were dim under the trees on the wet pavement.

  “
Hello you two! How’s things?”

  “Oh swimming,” came Emmie’s voice.

  “You don’t mean to say you’re on the shelf tonight, Emmie?” sounded the young man’s resonant voice.

  “‘Pears as if I am: though it’s not the oven shelf this time, my lad. What?”

  “But aren’t you expecting anybody?”

  “Shut up. — Well, Goodnight Agatha — see you Wednesday. Goodnight Freddy. Lovely night for ducks.”

  “Ay, an’ tad-poles,” came Freddy’s guffaw. “So long.”

  She had caught sight of Gilbert on the opposite pavement, and came prancing across the muddy road to him, saying in a guarded voice:

  “Hello! Thought you hadn’t come.”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Hold on a minute.”

  She darted from him and went to speak to another girl. In a moment she was back at his side.

  “Come on,” she said. “I don’t want our Dad to see me. I just said to our Sis I was going to Hackett’s for a book. Come on.”

  She tripped swiftly along the pavement. She was a little thing, in a mackintosh and a black velvet cap. A lamp’s light showed her escaping fair hair, which curled more in the wet. She carried an umbrella.

  “Coming under?” she said to him, half raking him in with the umbrella. He avoided her.

  “No. I don’t want it all down my neck.”

  “All right. Stop where you are. — Goodness, aren’t we late! I thought father Dixon was never going to dry up. Have you been waiting long?”

  “No. I went to Lewie Goddard’s.”

  “Did you! Isn’t he soft? But I like Lewie.”

  They passed along the pavement for two hundred yards, till they came to the big dark windows of the Co-operative Stores. In the midst of the range of dark buildings was a great closed doorway, where on weekdays the drays entered to the yard and the storehouse.

  Emmie put down her umbrella, and glanced along the road.

  “Half a tick!” she said.

  She went to the big doors, and pushed her finger through a round hole. A latch clicked, and she opened a sort of little wicket in the big doors. It was left open for the bakers.

  “Come on,” she said.

  And stepping through, she disappeared in the darkness. He stepped after her, and she closed the door behind him.

  “All right here,” she whispered, drawing him on.

  He found himself in the wide passage or archway between the two departments of the stores, where the vans unloaded. Beyond was rainy darkness, brilliant lights of a smallish building in the near distance down the yard, lights which emanated and revealed ghosts of old packing cases and crates in the yard’s chaos. Inside the passage it was very dark.

  Emmie piloted him to the further end, then she climbed a step into a doorway recess.

  “Come up,” she said, tugging his arm.

  He came up, and they stowed themselves in the doorway recess, for the spoon.

  He realised, whilst she was stuffing her velvet cap in her pocket, that there were other couples in the entry — he became aware of muffled, small sounds, and then of bits of paleness and deeper darkness in the dark corners and doorway recesses. They were not alone in their spooning, he and Emmie. Lucky they had found an empty corner. He liked the invisible other presences, with their faint, ruffling sounds. The outside light from the street-lamps showed faintly under the great doors, there was a continuous echo of passing feet. Away in the yard, the wind blew the rain, and sometimes the broken packing cases rattled hollowly, and sometimes a wet puff caught him and Emmie. There were sounds from the brilliantly-lighted bakery in the small distance.

  Emmie, in her wet mackintosh, cuddled into his arms. He was famous as a spooner, and she was famous as a sport. They had known each other, off and on, for years. She was a school-teacher, three years his junior; he had seen her first at the Pupil Teacher’s Centre. Both having a sort of reputation to keep up, they were a little bit excited.

  A small, wriggling little thing, she nestled up to him in the darkness, and felt his warm breath on her wet-frizzy hair. She gave a convulsive little movement, and subsided in his embrace. He was slowly, softly kissing her, with prefatory kisses. Yes, his reputation as a spoon would not belie him. He had lovely lips for kissing: soft, hardly touching you, and yet melting you. She quivered with epicurean anticipation.

  As a matter of fact, he had that pouting mouth which is shown in Shelley’s early portraits, and of which the poet, apparently, was rather proud.

  He was continually touching her brow with his mouth, then lifting his face sharply, as a horse does when flies tease it, putting aside her rainy, fine bits of hair. Soft, soft came his mouth towards her brow, then quick he switched his face, as the springy curls tickled him.

  “Half a mo,” she said suddenly.

  She unfastened his wet overcoat, and thrust her hands under his warm jacket. He likewise unfastened her mackintosh, and held her warm and tender. Then his kisses began again, wandering along the roots of her hair, on her forehead, his mouth slowly moving forward in a browsing kind of fashion. She sighed with happiness, and seemed to melt nearer and nearer to him. He settled her in his arms, whilst she clung dreamily to the warmth of his shoulders, like a drowsy fly on the November window-pane.

  Since the spoon is one of the essential mysteries of modern love, particularly English modern love, let us clasp our hands before its grail-like effulgence. For although all readers belonging to the upper classes; and what reader doesn’t belong to the upper classes; will deny any acquaintance with any spoon but the metallic object, we regret to have to implicate the whole of the English race, from princes downwards, in the mystic business.

  Dear reader, have we not all left off believing in positive evil? And therefore is it not true that the seducer, invaluable to fiction, is dead? The seducer and the innocent maid are no more. We live in better days.

  There are only spooners now, a worldful of spoons. Those wicked young society people, those fast young aristocrats, ah, how soft as butter their souls are really, tender as melted butter their sinfulness, in our improved age. Don’t talk of lust, it isn’t fair. How can such creamy feelings be lustful! And those Oxfordly young men with their chorus girls — ah God, how wistful their hearts and pure their faces, really! — not to speak of their minds. Then look at young colliers and factory lasses, they fairly reek with proper sentiment.

  It doesn’t matter what you do — only how you do it. — Isn’t that the sincerest of modern maxims? — And don’t we all do it nicely and con molto espressione? You know we do. So little grossness nowadays, and so much dear reciprocal old-bean- iness! How can there be any real wrong in it? Old wives tales! There is no wrong in it. We are all so perfectly sweet about it all, and on such a sympathetic plane.

  Why bother about spades being spades any more? It isn’t the point. Adam no more delves than Eve spins, in our day. Nous avons changé tout cela. Call a spoon a spoon if you like. But don’t drag in garden implements. It’s almost as bad as the Greeks with their horrid plough metaphor.

  Ah, dear reader, you don’t need me to tell you how to sip love with a spoon, to get the juice out of it. You know well enough. But you will be obliged to me, I am sure, if I pull down that weary old scarecrow of a dark designing seducer, and the alpaca bogey of lust. There is no harm in us any more, is there now? Our ways are so improved: so spiritualised, really. What harm is there in a bit of a spoon? And if it goes rather far: even very far: well, what by that! As we said before, it depends how you go, not where you go. And there is nothing low about our goings, even if we go to great lengths. A spoon isn’t a spade, thank goodness. As for a plough — don’t mention it. No, let us keep the spoon of England bright, between us.

  Mr Noon was a first-rate spoon — the rhyme is unfortunate, though in truth, to be a first-rate spoon a man must be something of a poet. With his mouth he softly moved back the hair from her brow, in slow, dreamy movements, most faintly touching her for
ehead with the red of his lips, hardly perceptible, and then drawing aside her hair with his firmer mouth, slowly, with a long movement. She thrilled delicately, softly tuning up, in the dim, continuous, negligent caress. Innumerable pleasant flushes passed along her arms and breasts, melting her into a sweet ripeness.

  Let us mention that this melting and ripening capacity is one of the first qualities for a good modern daughter of Venus, a perfect sweetness in a love-making girl, the affectionate comradeship of a dear girl deepening to a voluptuous enveloping warmth, a bath for the soft Narcissus, into which he slips with voluptuous innocence.

  His mouth wandered, wandered, almost touched her ear. She felt the first deep flame run over her. But no — he went away again: over her brow, through the sharp roughness of her brows, to her eyes. He closed her eyes, he kissed her eyes shut. She felt her eyes closing, closing, she felt herself falling, falling, as one falls asleep. Only she was falling deeper, deeper than sleep. He was kissing her eyes slowly, drowsily, deeply, soft, deep, deep kisses. And she was sinking backward, and swaying, sinking deep, deep, into the depths beyond vision: and swaying, swaying, as a stone sways as it sinks through deep water. And it was delicious: she knew how delicious it was. She was sunk below vision, she swayed suspended in the depths, like a stone that can sink no more.

  He was kissing her, she hardly knew where. But in her depths she quivered anew, for a new leap, or a deeper plunge. He had found the soft down that lay back beyond her cheeks, near the roots of her ears. And his mouth stirred it delicately, as infernal angels stir the fires with glass rods, or a dog on the scent stirs the grass till the game starts from cover.

  A little shudder ran through her, and she seemed to leap nearer to him, and then to melt in a new fusion. Slowly, slowly she was fusing once more, deeper and deeper, enveloping him all the while with her arms as if she were some iridescent sphere of flame half-enclosing him: a sort of Watts picture.

  A deep pulse beat, a pulse of expectation. She was waiting, waiting for him to kiss her ears. Ah, how she waited for it! Only that. Only let him kiss her ears, and it was a consummation.