“Oh but Louise is wicked!” said Johanna, between the sips of her coffee. “She’s wicked.”
“Why?” he asked. When he was quiet and happy in his heart he did not pay much attention.
“She’s wicked. She’d like to injure us. She’d like to damage our love, now she thinks it is really there. Oh, she’s a wicked one. I shall beware of her in the future.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I shan’t let her play her tricks with me again. She thinks me a fool. But I’ve found her out.”
It was an unwelcome letter which arrived from Everard that morning. This time it was abuse — and warning. “And what kind of life do you hope to have with that lout?” wrote the husband. “He will not treat you as I have done. He will not give you what I have given you. Take care, or before you have finished he will beat you. Men of that sort are not to be trusted.”
Johanna threw these letters aside rather easily. But for Gilbert they were a sore trial. They seemed to insult him in his soul. And he felt in the wrong, confronted with them. For which, once more, he was a fool. But centuries of insistence have contrived to put him in the wrong — and he was a child of the old culture. It took some time for him to roll the centuries and their tablets of stone out of his spirit.
They walked in the woods, where the shade was grateful. The little birds, tree-creepers, ran up and down the trunks of the beeches like odd flies, and squirrels came, with their snaky, undulating leap running from tree to tree, darting up a round trunk, and peeping from the edge at our friends. Gilbert nodded at them, and they chatter-chatter-chattered at him.
Gilbert finished his book of songs, and posted it off to London. The correspondence with Everard continued. August was drawing near — and then Ommerbach was no longer a place of refuge. After two more weeks, what were they to do, he and Johanna? They did not know.
As they were walking homewards in the lovely warm July evening, they heard a motor-car behind them, running out from Munich. They stood aside on the grass to let it pass, when, to their surprise, the face of Louise appeared in the window. She waved to them, and immediately called to the driver to stop.
“Yes,” she said, “from here I will walk on.” She paid the driver, and turned to Gilbert.
“I want,” she said, “to have a talk with you. You will walk with me? — yes?”
She was in her dark-green silk town dress, and was looking very beautiful and rich.
“No,” said Johanna. “He has a cold, and is tired.”
“You are too tired? Yes? Oh, I can walk alone.”
“No, I am not tired,” he said.
“Are you sure?” said Louise.
“He is tired, and he’s got a cold,” said Johanna.
“Oh, Johanna — er ist doch ein Mann — he really is a man, and can speak for himself,” said Louise.
“Will you go?” said Johanna.
“Yes, I will walk along. I shan’t be very long,” he said.
“Goodbye,” cried Johanna. And she went into the house in a fury. Gilbert wondered at her unkindness.
He and Louise continued along the evening road together. And she had a heart to heart with him. She was very nice — very sweet — very kind: and so thoughtful for him, so thoughtful for him. He expanded and opened to her, and spread out his soul for her and his thoughts like a dish of hors d’ceuvres for her. And she tasted these hors d’ceuvres of him, and found them rather piquant, although he was a naive youngling, of course, compared to the all-knowing professors of Germany.
And so she talked seriously to him — about Johanna and his future and her future. And she said she believed that Johanna loved him, but oh, oh it would be so hard, and did he really think love was so important.
And, yes he did, said naive Gilbert. What else mattered. And “Yes. Yes. I know,” replied Louise — but what of all the other difficulties. And Gilbert said they couldn’t be helped. And Louise asked did he want to marry Johanna, if the divorce could be brought about. And he said he did. And she asked him, ah, life was so complicated — might he not change: he was young, he was fresh to life: might he not love some other woman? Johanna was older than he, and mother of two children. Would he not find it a burden, later, and wish to love some young girl, some young creature fresh to life — whom he could make all his own: a little like Marta — came the wicked suggestion. Johanna could never be all his, for had not twelve years of her life belonged to another man! — etc. etc.
To all of which our hero, strutting very heroic and confidential and like a warbling Minnesinger beside the beautiful, expensive woman, along the twilight road, replied in extenso, giving his reasons and his ideas and his deductions, and all he thought upon the matter, all he had thought in the past, all he would think in the future, and he sounded very sweet, a soul of honey and fine steel, of course. And Louise sipped it all, and estimated the honey for what it was worth, and the steel for what it also was worth, and found him a naive babbler, of course, compared to a German professor, but none the less, not unsympathetic to herself.
So they parted at last, at the entrance to Wolfratsberg, both in a whoosh of wonderful sympathetic understanding, after their Rausch of soul-communion. And he walked back the long five miles with a prancing step, fancying himself somewhat, and intensely flattered by the attentive Louise: and she went on to her house, brooding and feeling triumphant that she had still got her finger in Johanna’s pie.
Meanwhile Johanna sat at home gnawing her wrath, her anxiety, and her fingers. When our bright-eyed Gilbert landed back at last, she broke out on him.
“You must have been all the way.”
“To the beginning of the village.”
“The more fool you. You know you are dead tired.”
“No I’m not. And how could I refuse to go with her?”
“Easily enough. She could have gone on in the taxi. But you are a simple fool. Any woman who likes to give you a flattering look, or ask you for something, can dangle you after her at the end of a piece of string. Interfering minx that she is! And you to be taken in, after the other day. I bet you poured yourself out to her.”
“No I didn’t. We only talked.”
“What else should you do! I know what talk means, with folks like you and her. Nasty soul messing, that’s what! What did she want? What had she got up her sleeve?”
“Nothing. She only talked about how we should manage — and what there was to consider.”
“You are a fool — I hate you. Talking it over with her — everything — everything — I know. How much you love me and are ready to sacrifice for me. I hate you. I hate you. You are always ready for a soul mess with one of her sort. Don’t come near me.”
“But it wasn’t a soul mess.”
“It was. I can see it in your face. I hate you when you look like that. And after the other day too. You know what she wants. You know what she’s after. She wants to make mischief between us.”
Gilbert didn’t feel guilty of the mischief part of it — perhaps a little ashamed of the deep, soulful confidence — his dish of hors d’auvres. But in one respect he was not like Johanna. Talk, sympathy, soul-truck had very little influence on his actions. He did not act from the same centres as he talked from, and sympathised from, and soul-communed from. — Whereas Johanna was very risky to meddle with. Set a cycle of ideas and emotions going in her, and heaven knows how fatally logical she might be in her resultant action. Hence his unreasoning horror of her loss the other day. And hence her not unwarranted anxiety this evening. But the same logic did not apply to him as to her.
However, this storm blew over also, though not without a certain damage done.
It was necessary to decide what move to make. Louise had become suddenly quite friendly. She came to tea.
“Have you never been to Italy? Oh but it is lovely! Why not go there? Why not go, and walk some of the distance!”
“But money?” said Gilbert.
“Ach money! Money will come.”
Again
she said it. And he was all his life grateful to her for the laconic indifference with which she said it. For some reason, he believed her. “Money will come.”
Then why not go to Italy? Why not act on Louise’s suggestion?
Our pair of finches grew wildly excited, ready for flight.
Money would come. It didn’t mean that Louise, or anyone else, was ready to give it, for all that. However, Gilbert had nine pounds, and Johanna six.
To Italy, then. Why not?
To Italy!
Chapter XX.
Over the Hills.
Johanna’s rather ricketty trunk and Gilbert’s rather flimsy bags were put on the railway to travel by themselves to Kufstein, on the Austrian frontier. Peace go with them.
Our hero and heroine arose at dawn one morning in early August, a little nervous and feeling very strange at setting off on foot to cross the Alps and conquer the south. They had about thirteen pounds between them, and heaven knows what in front of them.
It was nearly seven when they set out. Gilbert called at the little station to see if the bags had gone. They had gone. Then goodbye, Ommerbach! Goodbye little flat, and balcony over the wild road! Goodbye farm-bells that had jangled in so many of the crises of our couple! Goodbye little village of seven houses.
The morning was dewy but sunny, and the pale blue chicory had opened its sky-sparkles by the road. Gilbert put a sprig in his coat. He had his brown knapsack on his back, his old brown hat on his head. Johanna had her lighter grey knapsack on her back, her old panama with a cherry ribbon on her head — and she wore her dark cotton voile dress. So they took to the road — feeling rather unsure, but in a mood for going on and on, inevitably.
By eight o’clock they were on the hill above Schloss Wolfratsberg, looking down on that ancient townlet, whose chimneys smoked blue, whose two tall-necked churches lifted their bird-head cupolas, whose river ran hastily under two bridges, whose water-poplar trees were tall and plumy, whose saw-mill made a just audible sound. Touching sight, an ancient, remote little town sending up its morning woodsmoke, down below beside its river.
So they descended, and bought a spirit-machine and a saucepan, methylated spirit, bread, butter and sausage. Then they crept through the long, attractive old street on tip-toe, for fear that Louise should spy them from her villa above, or that Louise’s servants or children should pounce on them.
But heaven be praised, they passed unchallenged, and merged into the water-meadows beyond the town. There they sat down a minute on a bench, and heard the church bells, and watched the women washing linen in the river. Well Goodbye Wolfratsberg! There is a long road ahead, over the mountains and into the unknown.
In the middle of the morning they sat in a pine-wood a little way back from the road and ate bread and sausage and drank Frau Breitgau’s Schnapps from a little bottle. A peasant with his dog, passing along the high-road through the trees, shouted a greeting and wished a pleasant wedding. Whereupon they both felt uneasy, as if he knew their involved circumstances.
They took to the road again. The sky was cloudy, and looked like rain. So when they came to a station on the little railway, they waited for a train, and rode ten miles to the terminus. There they descended, and took the high-road towards Austria. It wound at the very toes of the mountains. The steep slopes and cliffs came down on the right. On the left was a deep wood — and sometimes a marsh flat.
Darker grew the sky — down came the rain, the uncompromising mountain rain. In the grey, disconsolate, Alpine downpour they trudged on, Johanna in her burberry, he in his shower-coat. The cherry ribbon began to run streaks into Johanna’s panama, whose brim drooped into her neck. Drops of water trickled down her back. Gilbert’s trouser-bottoms flapped his wet ankles. The black pine-trees over the road drooped grimly, as if promising rain for ever. And this was the first afternoon.
“Bad luck!” said Gilbert.
“Isn’t it,” she cried.
“But I don’t mind,” said he.
“I rather like it, really,” said she.
“So do I,” he chimed.
In which frame of mind they trudged on to a village. They entered the inn. Farmers and wagoners had been driven in by the rain, and sat with their beer and pipes. Johanna ordered scrambled eggs with ham, and wrung out her skirt-bottoms. Then the two wet ones sat on a bench and waited for their eggs.
One lonely man sat near — one of the odd, rather woebegone figures that always appear in an inn, no matter where. He bowed to the wet finches, and asked them if they came far. Johanna told him. And of course she said, in German:
“We want to walk to Italy.”
“You and your husband?”
“Yes.”
“Ja — that’s famous, now! That is remarkable!”
The other peasants were listening — a handsome, black- eyed man, a large, blond, taciturn Bavarian farmer, and two others.
Then the little unfortunate told his tale of woe. He was a shoemaker and — But there is not space for his tale. Suffice that Johanna gave him a shilling — and he peered at it as if it were the egg of a bird of Paradise in his palm — and suddenly he spat on it, reverently — and tears came to his eyes, and he bowed three times, to Johanna, and once to Gilbert — and disappeared into the rain. And of course Johanna cried — and wiped her eyes and laughed — and the dish of orange-golden eggs appeared smoking. With black beer, thin raw ham, butter, and black bread, scrambled eggs are royal. Johanna and Gilbert ate in wistful sentimental emotion, heartily.
The men at the opposite table, under the picture of Franz Joseph, watched with all their eyes. Then the black-eyed one called the usual question:
“But you are not German, lady?”
And she gave the inevitable answer:
“Yes — and my man is English.”
Followed a lively little dialogue in Tyrolese and high German, which Gilbert could not understand. But the men were flirting with all their might with Johanna. Even the taciturn farmer of fifty put up his moustaches and flushed and became handsome. Johanna liked him better than the black- eyed one.
They asked if Gilbert could understand — and when Johanna said, not the dialect, then they began to make rather broad jokes about him, in the dialect. About his not understanding — about his silence and his youth.
“You don’t like a German husband, then, gracious lady?”
“Ja! Ja! Auch!” laughed Johanna. “Also! Also!”
After which there was such a flame of male ardour around in the room, that she was frightened, and rose to go. It had almost ceased raining.
Gilbert watched the men with dark, watchful eyes.
“There are good beds here, good, warm German beds, and everything that such a fine Frauenzimmer can wish. Will you go, then?” cried the farmer.
“Yes, yes! We must go,” cried Johanna, rather scared.
The two swung into their knapsacks. The men got up and shouted Good journey! and various other things, and bade goodbye rather jeeringly to Gilbert. He knew they jeered at him, but he did not care.
So they went in their damp clothes down the wet road to Bad Tollingen. They arrived at this little summer-resort at about half-past six — and wandered looking for a room. They found one in a small house for four shillings. It was quite comfortable, but Johanna declared she smelled stables and a slaughter-house. Gilbert smelled something, but nothing so lurid.
So they changed what they could, ate some food out of their knapsack in their room, to save expense. Then they sallied out. There was a small summer-theatre, so they paid their shilling and listened to a Vienna comedy.
The next day was sunny again. As soon as possible they were out of the house where they had slept and where Johanna had smelled so acutely. Oh the joy of getting out of an hotel, or a lodging-house, in the morning, of clearing out for good! Never to see it again!
They bought food and set out again. Johanna had a pound of peaches — rather hard. They drifted on all day — camping at intervals to make food. In th
e afternoon they were in the high, wild rocky valley of the young Isar. Woodsmen, like wild, sharp men from the Sagas, were busy with the rafts. At five o’clock Johanna and Gilbert decided to climb over the neck of a pass between two valleys, by a footpath. It would save ten miles of road.
So they sat by a waterfall and made tea from the ringing water, under a birch-tree. A grasshopper, a wonderful green war-horse of some tiny mediaeval knight sprang on to Gilbert’s knee, and he watched it with wonder. He felt it musically — it had a certain magic, which he felt as music. Johanna gathered tall, black-blue gentians that stood in the shadow.
Then they started up the path. It was supposed to be eight miles — two hours and a half. They climbed up through the alp-meadows and entered the higher woods, where the whortleberries were bushy. And all at once the path became indefinite. However, they followed a track along the saddle of a hill, among trees and whortleberries.
Then the track fizzled out. What to do? Gilbert thought he saw a path on the opposite hill, in among scattered trees and rocks. So down they went, down to the stream-bed. And Gilbert clambered up the opposite slope. Johanna behind saw him, with his shower-coat dangling, his knapsack a great hump on his back, as he scrambled earnesdy up the steep slope, clinging to rocks.
“The camel! The camel!” she screamed from her opposite bank. “You look such a sight! You look such a sight — like a camel with a hump!” So she screamed from the distance, and she laughed with derision. Perhaps his earnest, anxious haste for a path drove her to ridicule.
However, he got to the top — and found a proper track.
“Come on! Come on!” he called. “It’s getting late.”
She came reluctandy, being in one of her perverse moods. In the thin wood-spaces as she came along she found wild strawberries. “Such lovely ones!” she shouted from the distance.
“Come on!”
“So good!”
“Come on!”
They were on the high saddle of a hill, among trees and rocks. And the dusk was falling — and already it was cold, sharp cold. Yet in the distance he could see her panama hat stooping and stooping.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 296