“I think so. What good are they?”
“Yes, what good is anything, if you talk so! What good is your coming with Johanna? Much bad, surely: and what good? Yes?”
Gilbert looked back at her. She could not get over a certain distant untouchedness in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “Nothing’s any good unless you feel it is good.”
“But your studies! Do you then feel they are no good?”
“Yes.”
“Ach! But what will your life be?”
“I don’t know.”
“No! You don’t know. You don’t know! — And poor Johanna! I am afraid it will be a tragedy for both of you.”
He seemed to listen to what she said: and then to listen to something inside himself. It was curious, how indifferent he felt about it.
“Oh,” he said, “I’m not tragical. I don’t believe in tragedy.”
“You don’t believe — But that is good! Can there be no tragedy without a belief in tragedy?” She laughed hollowly and ironical.
“Perhaps not,” he said. He had never thought of it.
Johanna came forward with a rather loud sigh.
“Ha-a! Poor Everard! Er ist doch so schwer.”
And she gave the letter to Louise.
“Shall I read?” said Louise, looking up at Johanna. Then she knitted her brows.
“Ach, I remember this writing so well, Hannele: so tidy, so neat and tidy! Is it not good to write so plainly!”
And she curled her voice mockingly. She had hated Everard, fourteen years before.
“Ja, aber er ist dumm — ” she broke out in ejaculations as she read. “That is good! Ha! Ha! But he is so stupid — so stu-upid! One does not write such things to a woman. — What does he mean — when you accost him in Piccadilly he will hand you over to the police? What does he mean — Piccadilly?”
“When I am a prostitute — ” laughed Johanna.
“Ach nein! Ach nein! Das ist Frechheit. The man is impudent. Ach, I have no patience! — But do not trouble, Hannele — it is words, words, words — ! — No, to such a man thou canst not go back. No, that is impossible. No, we must not think of it. Thou canst depend on me. No, to such a person one does not give one’s life. But see what he says — the dustman! The dustman! To his own wife — ”
“But he is mad just now, Louise. We mustn’t mind what he says,” replied Johanna.
“Is he mad? Or is he not only bourgeois? Oh, he is impudent, with his rights of a husband. Ach, you poor Johanna, to give your life to such a man.”
“But poor Everard!” said Johanna. “Think what he must feel.”
“Ach!” cried Louise impatiently. “Is this the letter of a man? Does he call himself man?”
“No, he’s a mad beast just now,” said Johanna.
“Ja, du gute Hannele! A mad beast!” Louise laughed her hollow little laugh. “He is not mad but he makes himself so. Ach, men are not mad, but showing off. Oh yea, all Englishmen are Hamlets, they are so self-conscious over their feelings, and they are therefore so false. Ah, so false! They flatter themselves they feel so much that they are mad. It is a self- flattery, this madness.”
“Not all of it,” said Johanna. “And it is dangerous, I know.”
“Yes — yes! Sometimes! Sometimes! Sometimes they make themselves so mad, in their fine frenzy, that they kill someone. But not often. Not often, you good Hannele. Ach, you are such a good simple soul. — If I have hysterics I am not going to jump in the river. It is too cold. — And these men with their tragical man-hysterics! — ach, es ist so saudumm. — It is words, words, words — ”
She concluded with her hollow, mocking laugh. Gilbert, who was at the book-shelves, looking over the books, listened with one wide ear open. He had found a book of folk-songs, a collection he had never seen. These he was studying. But more, he was attending inwardly to the two women.
“Would you like to read the letter?” said Johanna to him.
“But Johanna! Why will you do such a thing? Why trouble him with such a — such a — ” cried Louise.
But Gilbert had taken the letter. As he read it he turned pale. It was indeed a frenzy, full of abuse, madness, hate, and various other things. “I am going mad, and my children will be left fatherless to a depraved mother.”
His eyes darkened as he read. A certain anger filled his soul.
“He is a fool!” he said bitterly, as he handed back the sheets. But poor Gilbert, he was white to the lips.
“Indeed he is a fool! How can a man write such things — ach! — and post it on a steamer to travel across the many- many miles of sea! — No, I have not patience — ”
Louise made a gesture of dismissal.
“But Louise, think how he must suffer!” said Johanna.
“Ach, yes! And think how much, how very much he thinks about his sufferings! So self-conscious and self-pitying! Does he think of you, of his own real self? — or of anything? — only his own foolish feelings.”
“Feelings aren’t so foolish.”
“Yes — yes! Yes — yes! When people have feelings and must think about them — ach, I have not patience to hear another word. Enough! Enough! Basta! Take thy letter and thy husband away. — Mr Noon, what book have you found?”
He brought her the volume of songs.
“I am glad,” she said, glancing at him winsomely and mischievously, “that you are not a tragical man. You have said it. Oh, you must not forget it. Johanna will be so very tragic, if you will let her.”
Poor Gilbert tried to smile — but it was a pale effort. The other man’s letter upset him profoundly.
Louise had decided that the best thing would be for Gilbert and Johanna to go to Kloster Schaeftlarn, some few stations further up the line, and stay there for a while, since they were determined to live openly together. Evening saw them setting off once more. It was raining. They stood with their baggage on the station and waited in the dark and the wet, to carry them to the unknown destination. It was the last train.
When it arrived, it was nearly empty. So they sat in the bare third-class carriage, and Gilbert felt rather wan. They rattled through the night, and arrived at Kloster Schaeftlarn. They descended at a tiny station, in the midst of profound darkness and pouring rain. Complete and staggering darkness enveloped the fragment of a railway-station.
“Where is the village? Where is the Post Hotel?” Johanna asked of the porter.
It was about eight minutes away. There was no such thing as a carriage. If they would wait while he put out the lights and shut the station, he would accompany them and carry the bags.
They waited. Out went the station lights. Bang went the door. And into the night they plunged, in the pouring rain. They walked across a stone-flagged track through deep, dark, wet meadow-land: then past the white gable and black balcony of a farm. Then there was a glimmer of light — and a big building. It was the Inn of the Post — a country public-house.
They found themselves in a big room where peasants sat at the tables with huge mugs of beer. A sort of tramp was devouring food, his head in his plate, in a corner. The landlady was a hard, large, cross woman.
Yes, they could have a bedroom with two beds — yes, for two shillings a night. This was Whitsuntide charge. So Gilbert and Johanna followed up the broad stairs, to a vast, dim passage or upper hall, a great place full of varying smells — straw and beans among them. They were given a large, rather bare room, with huge feather beds that seemed inflated.
And here the newly-wed, if we may use the adjective, couple stood and looked at one another. A big, bare, farm- bedroom. A lurid oleograph of Mary with seven swords in her heart. Darkness and rain outside. And down below, heavy voices of the highland peasants.
“Well, here we are!” said Johanna, not very cheerfully.
“And here we’re going to stop for a time,” he answered, a little gruesomely.
“We may as well change our shoes,” she commented.
They went down and had dinner
in the big public-room, that had tables round the walls. Farmers and peasants stared fixedly. Two huge dogs, and one little one, came prancing in and began to mouth Johanna and Gilbert. A boy entered with a lantern. And then a young woman brought a huge tureen of soup, spread a little cloth, and in the near corner of the common room the young couple sat alone and ate their meal, while the great dogs pranced round, and the big men shouted to the creatures, and wiped the beer from their big moustaches with the two front fingers.
Johanna was happy — it was adventure she wanted — and now she had got it. She was free. As she sat in the great, old Gasthaus, the handsome farmer men of Bavaria looking over their pot-lids at her with the half-hostile, challenging mountain stare, and as she heard the uncouth dialect, felt the subdued catholic savageness in the indomitable atmosphere about her, she spread her wings and took a new breath. She had escaped. She had escaped. From Boston and her house and servants, from her husband and his social position, from all the horror of that middle-class milieu, she had broken free, and she sat in a big, common room in a half deserted old inn at the foot of the Bavarian Alps, and breathed the ancient, half-savage tang of snow and passion in the air. The old, catholic, untamed spirit of the Tyrolese! How handsome and how fierce these men could be! She was happy.
She and Gilbert crowded into one of the beds, under one of the great feather overbolsters, which rode upon them like a cumulous cloud. The darkness was intensely dark. There was a wild, strange scent in the air, a strange thrill. They held fast together like children in the darkness, and spent part of the night capturing the cumulous cloud, which showed a disposition to float away and leave some portion either of her or of him exposed to the cool air.
The morning was a dream of beauty. If you do not know the Tyrol in Spring, gentle reader, you don’t, and there’s an end of it. But Gilbert and Johanna stood at their window in the early morning and looked out in bliss. The mountains in the distance sparkled blue with snow and ice. The foot-hills were green-golden, and the wonderful meadows, a sea of blue and yellow flowers, surged nearer in the pure, transcendent light. The magic of it! A few great trees by the road, and two farm-houses with enormous sweeping roofs, white gables and black balconies! And then a pond, and a bridge downhill, and most lovely birch-trees standing translucent and gleaming along the wet, white way between the river-meadows. And everything crystal-pure, having the magic of snow-Alpine perfection. The crystal, paradisal calm of everything on such a morning is such as only the great snow-radiant north can offer: the sheer heavenliness that is in gentian flowers and the curve-horned chamois.
Ah the abundance, the wonderful abundance of those days — heaven and earth abundant. The various new little breads that smell so sweet with coffee, the hard clear butter, the mountain honey. For a moment of perfection, give me such a morning, such a world, and my new little breads.
Outside the inn-door was the village green — or village square. There was the high-necked white church, like a bird, with the black cupola in heaven. There was the white convent, where a few nuns still taught the children and young women. There were three or four great farm-houses: and opposite the inn-door, big trees and little wooden tables. It was all uplifted with pure morning-shine, warm, strong sunshine of heaven’s fountain. Three bullock wagons came slowly along the white road through the open square, the drivers cracked long whips, and looked with their sharp blue eyes at the two strangers. Softly swung the necks of the pale cattle. It was morning in the world.
The village was tiny — just a few farms — no shop at all. It was very still, now the convent was suppressed. It had had active mediaeval days.
Gilbert suddenly found himself almost transportedly happy. It was a god-world: but strange northern gods. Nay, it was so wonderful, crystal, high, and gentian-flowered! Was it not almost superhuman? It went to the soul like a god-madness.
The river flowed full and swift, white-green, hissing from the glaciers. The flat meadows from Schaeftlarn to Maierhof were a miracle: deep, waist-deep in flowers, where the pale- gold spheres of the great ranunculus floated like marvellous bubbles, lovely, heaven-pale globe-flowers. It was hard not to believe in the old, white-skinned muscular gods, whom Wagner travestied. Surely Siegfried tramped through such spring meadows, breaking the god-blond globe-flowers against his fierce, naked knees. Surely for him the birch-trees shook their luminous green fleece in heaven, poised on a trunk- beam of icy light.
How lovely the birch-trees were, on either side the road, and loitering in clusters in the ice-shimmering distance! They cannot be themselves beyond the smell of ice. Here they were glamorous with the heroic light of the sagas, shaking and communing in the magical, north-seeming air, flashing the ice-white brand of their stems.
And then the foot-hills were tangled with bell-flowers, tresses and tresses of myriad weightless blue bell-flowers among the gold and green of the grass, the white and gold of great daisies, the pink of evanescent flowers. Blue, blue, tangled, aerial blue, and white and gold, among an evanescence of liquid green and pink. MacWhirter’s picture in the Tate, of Spring in the Tyrol, would be correct if it had only a little more of the sense of lightness, transfusion of cold luminousness, nothing heavy: ice-colours gleaming in blossom.
Gilbert and Johanna would sit together in the sun, talking, watching the flash of the mountains, hearing the magical tong-tong of the cow-bells, and finding themselves outside the world, in the confines of a northern heaven. Johanna wore a smoke-blue gauze dress and a white hat, and was like the landscape. Gilbert watched and wondered, with his soul unfolded and his mind asleep. A wonderful deep peace flowed underneath his consciousness, like a river.
They would walk far off, sometimes up the hills through the woods, sometimes across the bogs that were full of floating flowers, and cut into dark-brown channels. The peat was stored in long dark heaps. In the distance a broad-roofed farm seemed to settle its wings low over its white walls. Sometimes they went by the river with their backs to the mountains, and sat upon the great heaps of logs that had been floated down, and now were piled beside the living birch- trees.
Returning at evening, the glow-worms were shining in the grass, low-down, their strong, electric-green lights seeming to give off a sudden joyous sound. There was a faint scent of birch-trees, and ice-water, and spring in the dusky air. And everywhere, in the forest-tangle of deep grass, the sudden jewel-lamps of the glow-worms, sending a faint, smoky, witchlike gleam upon the surrounding grass-stems. So that one could easily imagine oneself a tiny gnome, down in a jungle of ferocious tall grass. Gilbert would stoop and watch them, sitting crouched on his heels at the silent road-side, watching the living, entangled stars emit their luminous fume, lighting up a tiny, tiny grass-stemmed world of their own. He watched and watched, and was bewitched. Meanwhile Johanna stood talking behind him, and the night stars came out overhead. A half moon was in the sky.
They went slowly towards the dark, tree-clustered village. At the bend of the road was one of the usual crucifixes, with the Christ spread under the hood. Gilbert glanced up at the Christus. He too was pale, lurking spread-eagled in the crucifix shadow.
“Good-evening, Mister,” said the man on the road, looking up and addressing the Christus in the crucified shadow.
“How are you?”
The air was dark and mountain-horrific around. Gilbert’s voice, addressing the Christ on the Cross, terrified Johanna.
“No don’t!” she cried, catching his arm. “Don’t! It frightens me.
“Why?” he said. “Can’t I have a word with him?”
“No,” she said. “Don’t! I was educated in a convent.”
“And I in a Board school.” He turned again to the Christ. “How are you, Mister? Glad to meet you,” he continued. “Shan’t you come down? Come down a bit. You must be stiff. You give me the arm-ache to look at you. Come down! Come and have a drink. You’ve been up there long enough. Come and have a drop.”
“Heilige Maria!” said Johanna, crossing herself. Then to
him: “I won’t hear it. It scares me. No, I’m going.”
And she set off up the dark road.
“What’s the odds!” he said, going after her. “A drop of Dunkels would do him good. He can’t spend all time up there. I don’t begrudge him a century or two — but there’s a time to hang on a cross, and there’s a time to get down and go your ways, it seems to me.”
But Johanna only reiterated:
“It scares me. It scares me. I’m still too catholic.”
At their bedroom window at the Post Johanna stood smoking a cigarette and looking out. The moonlight fell on a great horse-chestnut tree, on its white candles and black, palm- foliage. There was a pond too, with reeds. And the frogs were singing loudly under the great, risen moon. They were whirring and rattling and simmering like a pot on a crackling fire. And Johanna was thinking of her children, as she stood there in her nightdress looking out, and smoking her cigarette. At last Gilbert came and stood by her.
“Think of my little boys!” she said.
“Why think of them!” he said. “They are all right.”
“Are they! Without their mother!”
“But you wouldn’t go back till August, anyhow. You weren’t due to go back till August.”
There was a pleading in his voice. She flung away the end of her cigarette, into the night. The frogs simmered and rattled outside. She turned and threw her arms round his neck, and gave him a hard kiss. And they went to their narrow, passionate bed.
But in the night he woke with a click, to realise she was awake.
“Aren’t you asleep?” he asked, in fear.
“These beds are too small for two,” she answered, in a hard, wounding voice.
“Why, they haven’t been! There’s been room till now.”
“Why should you have everything your way?”
It is amazing how wounding a woman can make her tone, like the cut of a blunt, horrible knife, irrespective of her words.
“My way?” He was a raw hand, and frankly puzzled.
“I can’t stand this,” she said, and with a horrible kick she kicked away the feather overbolster and got out of bed.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 291