“I think so,” he said.
“Yes, you think so,” she replied quietly, walking on. He followed in silence.
“Why?” he said. “Don’t you?”
She stopped and turned round to him, smiling suddenly her face seeming to flicker all over with a strange, ivory- coloured flame, amid which her eyes showed dark.
“Ah!” she said. “What a difference there is between what you think now and what you’ll think afterwards!”
She was usually rather uncouth in expressing herself, and he, for the moment, was dazzled, had lost his feet. He only looked at her, at her strange, changed, almost uncanny face, so tense in its laughing. Something stirred in his veins. Something completely unusual awoke in him.
He had never had any real contact with a woman: only with tarts and bits of girls and sports like Emmie. Other women, such as Patty, had always been to him dresses with faces. And now, to his terror, something else seemed to be emerging from her face, a new Aphrodite from the stiff dark sea of middle-aged matronliness, an Aphrodite drenched with knowledge, rising in a full, ivory-soft nudity, infinitely more alluring than anything flapperdom could offer. Some veil was rent in his consciousness, and he remained a moment lost, open-mouthed. Patty dropped her eyes, and her smile became small and a little weary.
She had had to try to beat the flappers and the sports. She had had to try to break the spoon spell: which was the spell of her marriage, alas. And she saw the beginnings of victory. But she was frightened. After all, she too was very fixed in her old way of life, up to the neck in the stiff wave of her fine serge dress. And to rise like Aphrodite — ah, after all — ! There were so many considerations. Perhaps she was more frightened even than he.
He remained bemused, suddenly realising the soft, full Aphrodite steeped in the old sea of matrimony, and ready to rise, perhaps: rise from the correct, wine-coloured coat and skirt of fine serge in all her exquisite fulness and softness of forty years, and all the darkness of a finished past in her eyes. A finished past. The sense of it came over him with a shock. He looked at her — but she was walking slowly, with bent head. He saw the outline of her forty-year-old cheek, full and ivory-white: he saw the bowed head. And in the flame that ran from his heels to his head all the Emmies of the world withered and were gone like so many shavings.
“What do you think of marriage yourself?” he blurted out.
“Ah!” — she only half looked at him, funking the question, and answering archly: “I don’t think about it, for myself. I have it behind me. You have it ahead of you. There’s a difference.”
He watched her, puzzling over her. She would not look at him, except with a screwed-up, baffling sort of smile. He pondered in his logical way.
“But what you have behind you, have I got that in front of me?” he asked, putting himself in Lewie’s place for all the past years, and not feeling himself fit.
Patty was caught in the net of her own words.
“No,” she said, seriously, becoming again the clumsy, thinking-woman. “No! You’re a generation younger than that. You’re bound to start different from where we started. But you’ve got to start somewhere.”
Her phrases came out clumsily.
“Perhaps where you left off,” he said, inspired.
She flushed suddenly like a red camellia flower. She was very like a camellia flower: usually creamy-white, now rose.
“Yes,” she said, in her suffragette voice now. “Very probably where we leave off! Very probably.” She was retreating on to safe ground: the platform of Woman. He felt it: and still, in his one-sighted way, was looking for the full, soft, pale Aphrodite.
“Then I should want a woman who’s been through it all,” he said, logically infallible.
She winced, and retreated further on to the dry boards of the theoretic platform.
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t like to be so sure. There are many kinds of women in the world: many more than you have ever dreamed of. You don’t see them — but they’re there. You see little — remarkably little, if I may have the impudence to say so.”
And she smiled at him in the old, matronly, woman-who- thinks fashion. But it had no effect this time, because, between the blinkers of his logical concentration, he was looking ahead along his own road.
“Yes — I think that’s true. I think that’s true. But you won’t get me to believe that you can find me a girl, a woman under thirty, who can start where a woman of your age and experience leaves off. You won’t get me to believe it.”
“Why not?” she cried. “Can you judge, now? Can you, of all men judge? Can you even have any idea where it is that a woman of my age and experience leaves off? How do you know?”
Now she was fencing with other weapons, trying to flirt with him. But she had reckoned without her host. She was not prepared for the blinkers of concentration which shut out from this Balaam’s ass of a mathematician all the side-tracks into which she would cajole him, and sent him straight ahead with his nose against the opposing angel.
He looked straight down on her, with full, dark blue eye. And she, suddenly caught as by an apparition, was so startled that she let the crinkly smile fall from her face, and the fencing cunning drop like a mask from her eyes. For a second she met his look of strange inquiry, and it was more than she could bear. Her heart ceased beating, she wilted backwards. Mercifully, he began to speak.
“I’ve just realised something,” he said. “And you can’t make me believe different till I realise something else.”
What she heard in this speech was that he loved her: loved not the girl in her, nor the independent, modern, theorising woman Lewie had loved; not that, but the soft, full, strange, unmated Aphrodite of forty, who had been through all the ideal raptures of love and marriage and modern motherhood, through it all, and through the foam of the fight for freedom, the sea of ideal right and wrong, and now was emerging, slowly, mysteriously, ivory-white and soft, woman still, leaving the sea of all her past, nay, the sea of all the extant human world behind her, and rising with dark eyes of age and experience, and a few grey hairs among the dark; soft, full- bodied, mature, and woman still, unpossessed, unknown of men, unfathomed, unexplored, belonging nowhere and to no one, only to the unknown distance, the untrodden shore of all the sea of all the unknown knowledge. Aphrodite, mistress, mother of all the worlds of unknown knowledge that lie over our horizon, she felt him looking at her with strange full eyes, seeing her in her unguessed ivory-soft nudity, the darkness of her promise in her eyes, the woman of forty, and desiring her with a profound desire that seemed like a deep, far-off bell booming, or a sea coming up.
And her strength ebbed, it was too much for her.
“Hadn’t we better be turning home?” she asked, wide-eyed and pathetic.
“Ay, I suppose we had,” he answered automatic.
And they veered on the wintry grass, in the pale-coloured wintry afternoon. They had walked to the far end of the park, where it was open like a wide, rough meadow. At this end some rather shaggy cattle were out to pasture, winter-rough creatures. Some rough horses were in a far corner, by the fence.
Patty was looking round her, with a sort of anxious look on her face. She wanted to get back, back on to the road: above all, back into her own pleasant room, with her feet on her own hassock.
“You don’t mind cows, do you?” asked Gilbert, noticing her anxiety.
“No. I don’t like them though — not too near. I didn’t know these were here.”
“They’re all right,” said Gilbert.
“Oh yes, I’m sure they are,” she said. But she hurried rather nervously. Glancing round, she said anxiously:
“Do you think that one means mischief?”
He saw a heifer putting her head down.
“No,” he said negligently. He had no natural fear of cattle.
“She does,” said Patty vehemently. “She’s coming.”
“Not she,” said Gilbert easily.
But Patty was looking ro
und in fear.
“Where can I go?” she cried.
“Don’t bother,” he said.
But she glanced round and gave a cry.
“She’s coming.” And she started running forward, blindly, with little, frightened steps. Patty was making for the brook, as the nearest safety.
Gilbert turned round. And sure enough, the heifer, with her head down, was running forward in that straight line of vicious intent which cows have when they do mean mischief. Gilbert was startled. Patty’s nervousness unnerved him also. His instinct was to take to his heels. But he remained where he was, in a moment of stupefaction.
The heifer was going for Mrs Goddard. She was a dark- red creature with sharp horns. Gilbert gave a shout, and running forwards to the vicious, disagreeable-tempered beast, he flung his cherry-wood walking-stick at her. It caught her on the neck and rattled in her horns. She wavered, shook her head, and stopped. Gilbert took off his overcoat, and whirling it by the sleeve, walked towards her. She watched — snorted — suddenly with a round swerve made off, galloping into the distance, her tail in the air, female and defiant.
“She’s gone. Don’t run. She’s all right,” he called to the speeding Patty.
Patty glanced round with a white face of anguish.
“No. She’ll come again,” she said, in a stifled voice. And she pressed forward.
“She won’t. You needn’t hurry,” said Gilbert, hastening after the dark little form of the woman, who pressed forward blindly, with hurried steps. He followed at some distance behind her, having recovered his stick.
The cow had stopped, and was watching. When he looked again, she had her head down and was coming on again.
“Damn the thing!” he exclaimed, in nervousness and anger. And stick in one hand, overcoat in the other, he started walking towards the animal, like some nervous toreador.
The cow ran at him. He threw his overcoat right in her face, and turned and ran also for a few paces. When he looked round, the cow was galloping in a funny, jerky zigzag, with his overcoat hanging on one horn, stumbling, snorting, shaking her head. There went his overcoat.
Patty was at the brook, climbing down among the bushes. The cow was prancing and jerking in the near distance, floundering with the black overcoat. He stood with his stick, and waited. He wanted his coat.
So he set off after the cow. She was a rare scarecrow, plunging and ducking in fear and fury. He pursued her as she dodged, shouting after her. At last she trod on the coat and got it off her horn, and went galloping away. He recovered his garment and returned after Patty.
She had scrambled through the deep brook and up the other bank, and was leaning against a tree with her eyes shut, faint. Her feet were full of water, there was brown earth on her skirt at the knee, where she had scrambled, and her breast was heaving, she could not speak.
When he came up he was filled with consternation.
“Has it upset you?” he asked, not knowing what to do.
“Frightened me,” she murmured, gasping. She was ill. She could not stand up. She subsided at the foot of the tree, with her head dropped.
He stood near, looking on in distress and anxiety. He did not know in the least what to do. He wanted to put his coat for her to sit on, but did not like to disturb her. Her head was dropped as if she was unconscious, but her bosom laboured.
He waited, in nervous, irritable suspense. Her breathing seemed to be quieter. At last she lifted her head. Her face was paper-white, there were dark lines under her eyes, her eyes seemed dimmed.
“I’m sorry to give you so much trouble,” she said, rather ghosdily. “But it’s my heart. It gives way — on these occasions.”
She seemed a shattered, elderly woman. He felt pity, distress, shame, and irritation.
At last she put her hand on the earth to rise. He assisted her, and steadied her. He had seen her overshoes full of water.
“Let me take off your goloshes,” he said.
She leaned against the tree as he did so. He saw her nice shoes were wet too. And he wiped her skirt with his handkerchief where it was soiled.
“Thank you! Thank you!” she said. “It’s awfully weak of me. But I can’t help it.” She closed her eyes, haggardly.
“Don’t you bother. Let me do what I can for you,” he answered kindly.
“Thank you. I’m feeling better now.”
He waited still for her, as she leaned against the tree.
“If it weren’t for my heart — ” she said, looking at him with an abstract, hopeless smile. She was scarcely aware who he was.
“Yes, you can do nothing when your heart goes,” he said sympathetically.
At last she drew herself together, haggard-looking.
“I’ll see if I can walk,” she said, her mouth thin and pinched and frightened. He held her by the arm to support her, and wished they were both out of the situation.
So they crossed the meadow, crept through a fence into a bit of an orchard, and through the orchard gate into the road. She suffered agonies of self-consciousness because people saw them, and agonies of self-consciousness all the way home, because of her appearance. It seemed a cruel long way. And Gilbert at her side took step after step, and thought to himself his luck was out as regards women. As a matter of fact, the accident of the cow was rather a bitter blow to him, though he formulated nothing in his consciousness. Still, he felt that his heart had wakened and risen, and been knocked back again with a mallet-stroke. But he took it rather for granted that life was like that.
As for poor Patty, she felt humiliated, and was rather petulant. She recovered from her shock as she walked home, but her face did not lose all its haggardness and its broken look. And she wanted Lewie. She badly wanted Lewie to come home. She wanted him to be there. The presence of this other man was a strain on her. She wanted her husband.
Chapter V.
Choir Correspondence.
This same evening, Emmie sat in the choir-loft in chapel and warbled with her pleasant little voice. She was looking rather nipped, having had a bad week of it. But tonight she was on the wing again, and perking up her indomitable little head under her jaunty brown velour hat. Still, it was rather an effort. The enemy sat below, inimical. His stiff, thin figure rose at the end of the family pew, he looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, he sat so meek and still, with such a pietistic look on his face as he gazed up to the pulpit. Anyone would have imagined that the plump minister in a black B.A. gown shed out some mild incandescent light as he fluttered his plump hands, such a wistful effulgence seemed to linger on Alf Bostock’s rapt, black-whiskered face. He looked almost lovely, the demon: he was rather good-looking. Emmie spitefully itched to throw things in his rapt mug. But her hate went deep just now — down to rebellion level. The poor mother sat next the father, rather reddish and mottled in complexion, of no particular expression at all, except that she appeared submissive and seemed to be taking a rest, just sitting still. Her lilac hat looked as if it had been in the weather: a look her hats were apt to get, in spite of all her daughters could do. After the mother came a row of Bostocks, dear little Fra-Angelico-faced girls and rather long-nosed sons. The biggest son sat at the remote end of the pew, a long lad of nineteen, mild-looking, balancing the sermon-imbibing father who sat next the aisle, with his hands folded in his black-trousered lap.
Emmie was struggling hard to spread her game little wings.
But they felt rather numb, after the treatment she had undergone. She watched the little minister. He was very plump, and rather ridiculous, perched on a stool in the pulpit and gyrating his pretty hands, as his voice soared and sank in leisurely, elegant measure. He was rather a comic: but Emmie liked him. He was nothing if not indulgent and good-natured. She would almost have liked to flirt with him. He loved his preaching, seemed to be swimming like some elegant little merman in the waters of his eloquence. A spirit of mischief spread its spoiled, storm-beaten wings in her eyes.
Just in front of her, among the altos,
sat Agatha Sharp, next to Alvina Houghton. Agatha was one of Emmie’s pals, a school-teacher like herself, but much better behaved. Tall and slim, the girl in the altos sat looking her best, her boy being in a pew away below, facing her.
Emmie twitched and fidgetted, glanced bird-like down on the bonnets and parted hair in the chapel, and shifted on her seat like a fidgetty bird on a bough, looking down on a motionless congregation, sermon-drugged. She knocked down her anthem-sheet, and picked it up again: sat with it in her lap: took a hymn book, fished a stump of pencil from her pocket and began to scribble on her anthem-sheet, on the back.
“Lovely spoon last week with G.N. — Eh, what do you think. Wire-whiskers came back from work and caught us. Oh my, Agatha, I nearly had a fit. G.N. and W-W. went for one another and I ran off — thought I was never going back home.”
She folded down the anthem-sheet like a game of consequences, reached over and poked her friend in the back. Agatha looked round. Emmie gave her the paper and pencil. Agatha, flushing and looking demure, bowed her head to read the paper. Then she too put the pencil to her lips, scribbled, and put her hand behind her back without turning round. Emmie fished up the paper and pencil.
“Do you mean after chapel? Wherever did you go?”
Emmie sucked her pencil and scribbled.
“About half-past ten. He caught us in our greenhouse. I’d got no hat on nor anything. I ran without knowing where I was going, to Lewie Goddard’s.”
She poked Agatha in the back. Instead of looking round, Agatha curled her hand behind her. Emmie deposited the paper in the fingers of her friend. Alvina Houghton, who disapproved of Emmie, looked round rather snappily. Emmie turned up her nose.
Back came the paper.
“You bad wench. How did you go home. Have you seen G.N. since.”
Emmie snatched up the paper, sucked her pencil and scribbled hastily.
“I stopped all night at Goddards’. Mrs G. rather snipey. Lewie went down home and told our Dad a thing or two. I was awfully bad — they thought I was going to be really badly. So did I. I didn’t go to school Monday — stopped in bed at Goddards, and went home in the afternoon. Our Dad hasn’t spoken to me since.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 272