All seemed quiet. She slipped to the back door and pushed away the bar. Closing the door behind her, she sauntered down the front path with all her leisurely assurance and bravado. The sense of danger was salt to her. The rain was now only very slight. Glancing over the hedge on the left, she could see, through the clearing darkness, the far-off lamps of the station and the junction sidings where her father would by now be safely occupied. So much for him.
She reached the gate and peered down the dark twitchel.
“Coo-ee!” she called, very softly.
And the dark shadow of Gilbert was approaching.
“Think I was never coming?” she said.
“I wondered,” he answered.
They stood for a moment with the gate between them.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“All right. Coming out?”
“No, you come in.” And she opened the gate for him to enter the dark garden.
“Ma’s put her light out. Sleeping the sleep of the nagged by now, I bet. My Dad’s gone.”
“I’m not going in the house,” said Gilbert suspiciously.
“Nobody asked you.”
She led him down the little winding side-path, in the wintry garden, between the currant bushes, to a little greenhouse. The door was locked, but the key was on the nail. She knew the greenhouse of old. It was pretty small, but she knew how to move the plants and arrange things. Luckily there were not many plants to move.
“Hold on a bit,” she whispered to Gilbert, who hung in the doorway whilst she made a place.
Meanwhile, we are sorry to say, the enemy was on their tracks. Alf Bostock should not have been a railwayman, but a policeman. Now that he was a reformed character, the policeman in him had no rest. Before Emmie arrived home, at a quarter to ten, he had been in the back yard listening for her. He had heard her voice speaking to Mr Noon, though he had not caught what she said. But he had smelled a rat. And he was a very keen rat-catcher these days.
Therefore he did nothing that could betray his suspicions, and he set off to work a few minutes earlier than he need in order that he might turn back and do a bit of spying. When he passed the more-than-doubtful figure of Mr Noon in the field the smell of the rat was very hot in his nostrils. Like the wicked, he exulted, and said Ha — Ha! He let Gilbert return towards the cottage.
And then the reformed parent swerved from his way to his work, made a bend over the sodden field in the black darkness, and came to the big hedge at the bottom of his garden, near the summer-house. There, among the old nettle-stalks, he crouched and watched. He heard Gilbert champing in the twitchel and away on the high-road, and prepared the net for the bird. He saw his wife’s candle go upstairs, and at once supposed that she, poor thing, was conniving at her daughter’s shame. He saw his wife’s candle go out — heard Mr Gilbert champ and chafe and light a pipe — and at last, Ah-ha! — saw the kitchen go suddenly dark.
Yes, there she was, the little bitch, prancing her shadowy, leisurely way towards the gate, and staring at the hedge where he crouched as if she too could smell a rat. He ducked low, and watched.
“Coo-ee!”
He heard it, and his veins tingled. He’d give her Coo-ee, else his name wasn’t Alfred.
Up comes the Johnny to the gate. Who could he be? But wait a bit. Wait a bit. He’d follow soon and find out.
Hush! He strained his ears in vain to hear what they were murmuring. He rose to his feet, and cracked a stick. He would stalk them. Then all at once he ducked again under the hedge. Inside the garden, they were coming towards him. His nerves were keen on the alert, to gather if they had heard him.
But they, poor darlings, were all unsuspecting. Alf Bostock crouched on his heels. His greenhouse! His little glass-house. She was opening the door with the key. Well of all the evil, low little bitches, if she wasn’t a sly one. For a second his mind reverted to his own youthful escapades, and the girls he despised so much for escapading with him. For it is a peculiarity of his type, that the more they run after sin, the more contempt they feel for their partner in sinning, the more insufferably superior they rise in their own esteem. Till nowadays, he would spoon with nobody but his Saviour. In religion he was still oh, so spoony. So spoony, listening to the sermon, so spoony saying his prayers. Ah, such relish! With women he had always been rather gross. No wonder he hated Emmie for bringing it home to him again, now that his higher nature had triumphed.
He’d kill her. He’d flay her. He’d torture her. Wouldn’t he! My word wouldn’t he! What? Was she going to shame him, her father? Was he going to be shamed and disgraced by her. His indignation rose to an inquisitorial pitch. At the thought of the shame and disgrace he might incur through her, he could have burnt her at the stake cheerfully, over a slow fire. Him to be shamed and disgraced by a daughter of his! Was anything on earth more monstrous? The strumpet. The bitch. Hark at her clicking the flower-pots, shifting the plants. He’d give her shift the plants. He’d show her. He longed to torture her. Back went his mind over past events. Now he knew. Now he knew how the pink primulas had been smashed and re-potted before he got home. Now he knew a thousand things. If his daughter had been the Whore of Babylon herself her father could not have painted her with a more lurid striping of sin. She was a marvel of lust and degradation, and defamation of his fair repute. But he’d show her. He’d show her.
They had gone into the greenhouse and shut the door on themselves. Well and good — they had fastened themselves in their own trap. He straightened his creaking knees and drew himself upright. He was cold, damp, and cramped: and all this added venom to his malignancy.
Lurching awkwardly, he shambled along the grass to the stile, climbed, and went along the twitchel to his own gate. If it cost him his job once more, he’d settle this little game. Wouldn’t he just. He’d show them. He’d show them.
He was in such a rage, as he drew near the greenhouse, he went so slowly, on tiptoe, that he seemed to emanate in hate, rather than to walk to the threshold of the poor little place. He got there, and stood still. He stood evilly and malignantly still, and listened: listened, with all his ‘cute attention and shameful old knowledge.
Poor Emmie. She thought she’d got a demon inside the greenhouse: she little suspected a devil outside. Gilbert did not make her happy any more. Instead of being nice and soft and spoony, and pleasant in his coming on, he was rough and hard. She was startled, jarred in her rather melty mood. She hadn’t bargained for this. If she had not possessed a rather catty courage, she would have cried out. But her soul rose against him, and she hated him.
And then, at an awful moment, the door slowly opened, and she gave an awful, stifled yell.
“What’s going on in there?” came a beastly, policeman’s voice.
Emmie heard it, and seemed to fall for a moment into a fit, paralysed. Gilbert was arrested, perfectly still.
“You’re coming out there, aren’t you?” said the voice. “Come on, let’s see who you are.”
And there was a little rattling sound of a box of matches. He was going to strike a light. Emmie was making a funny little sound, as if she had fallen into icy water. Gilbert, on his knees, turned. He saw the stooping figure, stooping policeman-like in the doorway, and black rage burst his head like a bomb. He crouched and leapt like a beast, but aimed too high, and only caught the cap and hair of his assailant. The two men went with a crash down upon a gooseberry bush.
Emmie had leaped to her feet with another hoarse cry. The men were a confused heap. She heard gurgling curses from her father. She gave a third, raven-like cry, and sped straight down the garden, through the gate, and away into the night.
A window had opened, and a frightened voice was saying:
“What’s amiss? Who is it? Is it you Emmie? Who is it?”
Children’s voices were calling “Mother! Mother!”
Gilbert had risen to his feet, but the other man clung after him, determined not to let him go, frenzied like some lurking creature o
f prey. In a convulsion of revolt, Gilbert flung the gripping horror from him, madly: flung himself free, and turned blindly to escape. He was through the gate, down the twitchel and over the stile in one moment, making for the dark country, whereas Emmie had made for the lights of Woodhouse.
The disorder of his clothing impeded his running. He heard the other man rushing to the stile. He turned, in the darkness of the open field, and said loudly:
“Come on, and I’ll kill you.”
By the sound of his voice, he probably would have done so.
Women and children were screaming from the house. The other man thought better of it, and turned back. Gilbert, standing there on the defensive, adjusted himself and waited. No one came. He walked away into the night. He had lost his cap in the fray.
Chapter IV.
Aphrodite and the Cow.
During the week that followed, Gilbert heard nothing of Emmie or of the Sunday-night affair. He was busy at Haysfall during the day, and during some of the evenings. He might have made an opportunity for running over to Woodhouse: but he didn’t.
Sunday came again: a fine day for once, dim-blue and wintry. Gilbert looked out of his window upon it when he got up, and after breakfast went out into the woodyard. Tall yellow timbers reared up into the sky, leaning to one another and crossing in the air. Planks, correctly arranged in squares, with a space between each plank, stood seasoning. In the shed were planks and poles in solid piles. Near a chopping-block was a pile of split faggots, while huge trunks of trees, oak and elm, stripped of branches, lay aside like swathed corpses. Gilbert noticed the star-shaped cracks that ran from the centres of the trunk-bottoms, thought of the plant-histology, and in a dim sort of way calculated the combination of forces that had brought about the fissures. He ran his finger over a heavy-grained oak surface, and to him it was an exquisite pleasure, vibrating in his veins like music, to realise the flexible but grandly-based rhythm in the morphological structure of the tree, right from the root-tip through the sound trunk, right out to a leaf-tip: wonderful concatenation and association of cells, incalculable and yet so genetic in their rhythm, unfolding the vast unsymmetrical symmetry of the tree. What he loved so much in plant morphology was, that given a fixed mathematical basis, the final evolution was so incalculable. It pleased him to trace inherent individual qualities in each separate organic growth, qualities which were over and above the fixed qualities belonging to the genus and the species, and which could not really be derived by a chain of evolutionary cause-and-effect. Could they? Could the individual peculiarities all derive from the chain of cause and effect? He mused abstractedly. The question piqued him. He had almost decided not. The one little element of individuality, not attributable to any cause, fascinated him always in plants and trees. He longed to make quite sure of it. He longed to feel it musically. In plants it seemed to him so profoundly suggestive, the odd aloneness of the separate self in each specimen. He longed to hear the new note of this in music. But his longing was vague, far removed from the intensity of action.
He dawdled the morning away, with his pipe. There were things he ought to do. But he could not begin. He sat in the kitchen by the fire, glancing over the large pages of Lloyd’s Weekly, the lurid Sunday paper, whilst the woman made pies and an apple dumpling, and continually pushed past him to the oven: whilst the saucepans bubbled and sent off first a smell of pudding-cloth, then a scent of vegetable steam: whilst the meat sizzled in the oven, and his father came and went, fidgetty, and drank a glass of beer between-whiles.
Between father and son there was not much correspondence. The old man was mean, and he kept his heart also to himself. He looked with a jealous eye on his son, half-scorning him because he did no real work, nothing in the woodyard, for example, and in the other half admiring him for being so clever. At the bottom he was domineeringly gratified to have the lad at home, though he found every manner of fault with him. His only other child, a girl, a woman now, was married with children of her own, and because she needed a little more money, the old man was secredy determined to leave all to Gilbert.
A few instincts Gilbert had of a gentleman so-called. He could not bear to sit down to dinner unshaven and with no collar on, as his father did. So, judging from the smell of the sirloin that it was nearly done, he went upstairs to his room and shaved and dressed. His bedroom was bare and tidy. There was not a picture, not a book. From the window he looked down on the woodyard. But next to his bedroom was a sort of study, with many books, and a piano, a violin and music-stand, piles and sheets of music. This room too was tidy and clean, though Gilbert tidied and cleaned it all himself.
Being dressed, he went and touched his violin: but he did not want to play. He turned over a sheet of music: but did not want to look at it. He waited for the woman to call him to dinner.
After dinner, he had still his mind to make up. He went out to his motor-cycle and got it ready. He went indoors and put on his rubbers. He pushed off, and was running noiselessly down Whetstone’s steep main street, past tram-cars and saunterers, before he knew where he was going.
And then, after all, he turned towards Woodhouse. In half an hour he was there, and had put up his cycle. Coming out brushed and tidy on to the Knarborough Road, he hesitated which way to turn. Therefore he did not turn, but walked forward.
And whom should he see but Patty Goddard walking down the rather empty street: it was too soon for the afternoon chapel people, and the men were having a last drink before half-past two. Patty, in a dark, wine-coloured coat and skirt and dark silk hat, with grey gloves and very carefully-chosen shoes, walking by herself with her pale, full, ivory face towards the afternoon sun! She smiled across the road to him, and nodded. He strode over to her.
“Oh — ! I thought you might come this afternoon or evening,” she said, and he felt a touch of significance in her voice, and was uncomfortable.
“Is Lewie there?” he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the house.
“No. He’s gone to an I. L. P. meeting in Knarborough. I expect him back about six. Did you want him?”
Again her dark eyes seemed to glance up at him with a certain mocking spite.
“No — no,” said Gilbert.
“Another appointment, perhaps?” smiled Patty maliciously.
“No, I haven’t. I’ve got nothing to do.”
“Oh well then, if you’d care to take a walk. I’m just enjoying the sun while it lasts.”
“Yes, if you don’t mind.”
And he took his place at her side. She was pleased. But today her pleasure was qualified, though she kept the qualification a secret. She made no more mention of the previous Sunday, and the conversation between them was rather lame.
They descended the hill in the pleasant afternoon, and came to the damp, mossy old park wall, under the trees. Patty stopped before the unimposing, wooden park gate.
“I thought I’d walk across the park,” she said. “Lewie has managed to get the key.”
So Gilbert opened the gate, and they walked along the pink-coloured drive, between the greenish winter grass. The old hall was shut up, everywhere seemed abandoned in the wintry sunshine of the afternoon. Just before they came to the second gate, the gate of the forlorn garden, Patty went to a huge beech-tree, and smilingly took out a pair of rubber overshoes.
“We keep all kinds of surprises here,” she said. “But I love to walk across the grass past the brook. I love the sound of water so much, and the berries are so beautiful this year.”
It was true. The dark, shaggy, hairy hawthorn-trees had a purplish-burning look, they were still so heavy with haws. They stood about fairly numerous in the near part of the park. Gilbert and Patty walked along the crest of the stagnant, artificial ponds, that lay melancholy in their abandon below the old house. Then Patty led the way across the rough grass, to the brook which ratded and clucked under deep hedges. Gilbert helped her to pick scarlet rose-berries, and black privet berries, and white snow-berries from the bushes that gre
w rampant down by the brook. Patty flushed with exercise and pleasure. She was happy gathering the wet, bright, cold berries on their twigs and branches, she was excited being helped by the young man near her. It was such a pungent chill isolation, this of theirs down in the hollow of the forsaken park, the open country, pathless, stretching the dim beyond.
“Aren’t they beautiful! Aren’t they lovely!” said Patty, holding out the bunch between her white hands. The scarlet and black and white-heavy berries looked well in her hands. Her pale face was almost like an ivory snow-berry itself, set with dark, half-tired, half-malicious eyes. Her mouth set in an odd way, a slight grimace of malice against life. She had had such a happy married life, such a perfect love with Lewie.
She stepped forward over the grass, a cloud on her flushed, strange face of a woman of forty who has been married for twenty years in what she considers an ideal happiness.
“Tell me now,” she said to him, with her intensive seriousness of a franchised woman, “how you look on marriage.” And she glanced at him furtively, a touch of unconscious, general malevolence between her brows.
“Marriage? Me? Why I don’t know,” came Gilbert’s gruff voice. Then he stood still, to ponder. She watched his face. He looked forwards and upwards, into space. “I shall marry some day,” he said.
“You will? But what sort of woman? What sort of marriage will it be?”
He pondered still.
“Why,” he said, “a woman with brains, I think. A woman who could stand on her own feet, not one who would cling to me. I shouldn’t mind, you know, what she did. If she liked another man, all right. We could be good pals. Oh, I should want a woman to do as she liked.”
Patty watched him sardonically, then strode on a few paces.
“You would? You think you would?” she replied, and the sardonic touch sounded in her voice. She was thinking how young he was, and how full of mental conceit. He glanced down at her, and his full, dark blue eye met her brown, onyx- bright eye. A flush came over her face, and a doubt over his mind, or his spirit, rather.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 271