‘I hated it. And she hated me. My God, how she hated me before that child was born! I often think she conceived it out of hate. Anyhow, after the child was born I left her alone. And then came the war, and I joined up. And I didn’t come back till I knew she was with that fellow at Stacks Gate.’
He broke off, pale in the face.
‘And what is the man at Stacks Gate like?’ asked Connie.
‘A big baby sort of fellow, very low-mouthed. She bullies him, and they both drink.’
‘My word, if she came back!’
‘My God, yes! I should just go, disappear again.’
There was a silence. The pasteboard in the fire had turned to grey ash.
‘So when you did get a woman who wanted you,’ said Connie, ‘you got a bit too much of a good thing.’
‘Ay! Seems so! Yet even then I’d rather have her than the never-never ones: the white love of my youth, and that other poison-smelling lily, and the rest.’
‘What about the rest?’ said Connie.
‘The rest? There is no rest. Only to my experience the mass of women are like this: most of them want a man, but don’t want the sex, but they put up with it, as part of the bargain. The more old-fashioned sort just lie there like nothing and let you go ahead. They don’t mind afterwards: then they like you. But the actual thing itself is nothing to them, a bit distasteful. Add most men like it that way. I hate it. But the sly sort of women who are like that pretend they’re not. They pretend they’re passionate and have thrills. But it’s all cockaloopy. They make it up. Then there’s the ones that love everything, every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off, every kind except the natural one. They always make you go off when you’re not in the only place you should be, when you go off. — Then there’s the hard sort, that are the devil to bring off at all, and bring themselves off, like my wife. They want to be the active party. — Then there’s the sort that’s just dead inside: but dead: and they know it. Then there’s the sort that puts you out before you really “come”, and go on writhing their loins till they bring themselves off against your thighs. But they’re mostly the Lesbian sort. It’s astonishing how Lesbian women are, consciously or unconsciously. Seems to me they’re nearly all Lesbian.’
‘And do you mind?’ asked Connie.
‘I could kill them. When I’m with a woman who’s really Lesbian, I fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her.’
‘And what do you do?’
‘Just go away as fast as I can.’
‘But do you think Lesbian women any worse than homosexual men?’
‘ I do! Because I’ve suffered more from them. In the abstract, I’ve no idea. When I get with a Lesbian woman, whether she knows she’s one or not, I see red. No, no! But I wanted to have nothing to do with any woman any more. I wanted to keep to myself: keep my privacy and my decency.’
He looked pale, and his brows were sombre.
‘And were you sorry when I came along?’ she asked.
‘I was sorry and I was glad.’
‘And what are you now?’
‘I’m sorry, from the outside: all the complications and the ugliness and recrimination that’s bound to come, sooner or later. That’s when my blood sinks, and I’m low. But when my blood comes up, I’m glad. I’m even triumphant. I was really getting bitter. I thought there was no real sex left: never a woman who’d really “come” naturally with a man: except black women, and somehow, well, we’re white men: and they’re a bit like mud.’
‘And now, are you glad of me?’ she asked.
‘Yes! When I can forget the rest. When I can’t forget the rest, I want to get under the table and die.’
‘Why under the table?’
‘Why?’ he laughed. ‘Hide, I suppose. Baby!’
‘You do seem to have had awful experiences of women,’ she said.
‘You see, I couldn’t fool myself. That’s where most men manage. They take an attitude, and accept a lie. I could never fool myself. I knew what I wanted with a woman, and I could never say I’d got it when I hadn’t.’
‘But have you got it now?’
‘Looks as if I might have.’
‘Then why are you so pale and gloomy?’
‘Bellyful of remembering: and perhaps afraid of myself.’
She sat in silence. It was growing late.
‘And do you think it’s important, a man and a woman?’ she asked him.
‘For me it is. For me it’s the core of my life: if I have a right relation with a woman.’
‘And if you didn’t get it?’
‘Then I’d have to do without.’
Again she pondered, before she asked:
‘And do you think you’ve always been right with women?’
‘God, no! I let my wife get to what she was: my fault a good deal. I spoilt her. And I’m very mistrustful. You’ll have to expect it. It takes a lot to make me trust anybody, inwardly. So perhaps I’m a fraud too. I mistrust. And tenderness is not to be mistaken.’
She looked at him.
‘You don’t mistrust with your body, when your blood comes up,’ she said. ‘You don’t mistrust then, do you?’
‘No, alas! That’s how I’ve got into all the trouble. And that’s why my mind mistrusts so thoroughly.’
‘Let your mind mistrust. What does it matter!’
The dog sighed with discomfort on the mat. The ash-clogged fire sank.
‘We are a couple of battered warriors,’ said Connie.
‘Are you battered too?’ he laughed. ‘And here we are returning to the fray!’
‘Yes! I feel really frightened.’
‘Ay!’
He got up, and put her shoes to dry, and wiped his own and set them near the fire. In the morning he would grease them. He poked the ash of pasteboard as much as possible out of the fire. ‘Even burnt, it’s filthy,’ he said. Then he brought sticks and put them on the hob for the morning. Then he went out awhile with the dog.
When he came back, Connie said:
‘I want to go out too, for a minute.’
She went alone into the darkness. There were stars overhead. She could smell flowers on the night air. And she could feel her wet shoes getting wetter again. But she felt like going away, right away from him and everybody.
It was chilly. She shuddered, and returned to the house. He was sitting in front of the low fire.
‘Ugh! Cold!’ she shuddered.
He put the sticks on the fire, and fetched more, till they had a good crackling chimneyful of blaze. The rippling running yellow flame made them both happy, warmed their faces and their souls.
‘Never mind!’ she said, taking his hand as he sat silent and remote. ‘One does one’s best.’
‘Ay!’ He sighed, with a twist of a smile.
She slipped over to him, and into his arms, as he sat there before the fire.
‘Forget then!’ she whispered. ‘Forget!’
He held her close, in the running warmth of the fire. The flame itself was like a forgetting. And her soft, warm, ripe weight! Slowly his blood turned, and began to ebb back into strength and reckless vigour again.
‘And perhaps the women really wanted to be there and love you properly, only perhaps they couldn’t. Perhaps it wasn’t all their fault,’ she said.
‘I know it. Do you think I don’t know what a broken-backed snake that’s been trodden on I was myself!’
She clung to him suddenly. She had not wanted to start all this again. Yet some perversity had made her.
‘But you’re not now,’ she said. ‘You’re not that now: a broken-backed snake that’s been trodden on.’
‘I don’t know what I am. There’s black days ahead.’
‘No!’ she protested, clinging to him. ‘Why? Why?’
‘There’s black days coming for us all and for everybody,’ he repeated with a prophetic gloom.
‘No! You’re not to say it!’
He was silent. But she could feel the black void of despair insi
de him. That was the death of all desire, the death of all love: this despair that was like the dark cave inside the men, in which their spirit was lost.
‘And you talk so coldly about sex,’ she said. ‘You talk as if you had only wanted your own pleasure and satisfaction.’
She was protesting nervously against him.
‘Nay!’ he said. ‘I wanted to have my pleasure and satisfaction of a woman, and I never got it: because I could never get my pleasure and satisfaction of her unless she got hers of me at the same time. And it never happened. It takes two.’
‘But you never believed in your women. You don’t even believe really in me,’ she said.
‘I don’t know what believing in a woman means.’
‘That’s it, you see!’
She still was curled on his lap. But his spirit was grey and absent, he was not there for her. And everything she said drove him further.
‘But what do you believe in?’ she insisted.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Nothing, like all the men I’ve ever known,’ she said.
They were both silent. Then he roused himself and said:
‘Yes, I do believe in something. I believe in being warm-hearted. I believe especially in being warm-hearted in love, in fucking with a warm heart. I believe if men could fuck with warm hearts, and the women take it warm-heartedly, everything would come all right. It’s all this cold-hearted fucking that is death and idiocy.’
‘But you don’t fuck me cold-heartedly,’ she protested.
‘I don’t want to fuck you at all. My heart’s as cold as cold potatoes just now.’
‘Oh!’ she said, kissing him mockingly. ‘Let’s have them sautes.’
He laughed, and sat erect.
‘It’s a fact!’ he said. ‘Anything for a bit of warm-heartedness. But the women don’t like it. Even you don’t really like it. You like good, sharp, piercing cold-hearted fucking, and then pretending it’s all sugar. Where’s your tenderness for me? You’re as suspicious of me as a cat is of a dog. I tell you it takes two even to be tender and warm-hearted. You love fucking all right: but you want it to be called something grand and mysterious, just to flatter your own self-importance. Your own self-importance is more to you, fifty times more, than any man, or being together with a man.’
‘But that’s what I’d say of you. Your own self-importance is everything to you.’
‘Ay! Very well then!’ he said, moving as if he wanted to rise. ‘Let’s keep apart then. I’d rather die than do any more cold-hearted fucking.’
She slid away from him, and he stood up.
‘And do you think I want it?’ she said.
‘I hope you don’t,’ he replied. ‘But anyhow, you go to bed an’ I’ll sleep down here.’
She looked at him. He was pale, his brows were sullen, he was as distant in recoil as the cold pole. Men were all alike.
‘I can’t go home till morning,’ she said.
‘No! Go to bed. It’s a quarter to one.’
‘I certainly won’t,’ she said.
He went across and picked up his boots.
‘Then I’ll go out!’ he said.
He began to put on his boots. She stared at him.
‘Wait!’ she faltered. ‘Wait! What’s come between us?’
He was bent over, lacing his boot, and did not reply. The moments passed. A dimness came over her, like a swoon. All her consciousness died, and she stood there wide-eyed, looking at him from the unknown, knowing nothing any more.
He looked up, because of the silence, and saw her wide-eyed and lost. And as if a wind tossed him he got up and hobbled over to her, one shoe off and one shoe on, and took her in his arms, pressing her against his body, which somehow felt hurt right through. And there he held her, and there she remained.
Till his hands reached blindly down and felt for her, and felt under the clothing to where she was smooth and warm.
‘Ma lass!’ he murmured. ‘Ma little lass! Dunna let’s fight! Dunna let’s niver fight! I love thee an’ th’ touch on thee. Dunna argue wi’ me! Dunna! Dunna! Dunna! Let’s be together.’
She lifted her face and looked at him.
‘Don’t be upset,’ she said steadily. ‘It’s no good being upset. Do you really want to be together with me?’
She looked with wide, steady eyes into his face. He stopped, and went suddenly still, turning his face aside. All his body went perfectly still, but did not withdraw.
Then he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, with his odd, faintly mocking grin, saying: ‘Ay-ay! Let’s be together on oath.’
‘But really?’ she said, her eyes filling with tears.
‘Ay really! Heart an’ belly an’ cock.’
He still smiled faintly down at her, with the flicker of irony in his eyes, and a touch of bitterness.
She was silently weeping, and he lay with her and went into her there on the hearthrug, and so they gained a measure of equanimity. And then they went quickly to bed, for it was growing chill, and they had tired each other out. And she nestled up to him, feeling small and enfolded, and they both went to sleep at once, fast in one sleep. And so they lay and never moved, till the sun rose over the wood and day was beginning.
Then he woke up and looked at the light. The curtains were drawn. He listened to the loud wild calling of blackbirds and thrushes in the wood. It would be a brilliant morning, about half past five, his hour for rising. He had slept so fast! It was such a new day! The woman was still curled asleep and tender. His hand moved on her, and she opened her blue wondering eyes, smiling unconsciously into his face.
‘Are you awake?’ she said to him.
He was looking into her eyes. He smiled, and kissed her. And suddenly she roused and sat up.
‘Fancy that I am here!’ she said.
She looked round the whitewashed little bedroom with its sloping ceiling and gable window where the white curtains were closed. The room was bare save for a little yellow-painted chest of drawers, and a chair: and the smallish white bed in which she lay with him.
‘Fancy that we are here!’ she said, looking down at him. He was lying watching her, stroking her breasts with his fingers, under the thin nightdress. When he was warm and smoothed out, he looked young and handsome. His eyes could look so warm. And she was fresh and young like a flower.
‘I want to take this off!’ she said, gathering the thin batiste nightdress and pulling it over her head. She sat there with bare shoulders and longish breasts faintly golden. He loved to make her breasts swing softly, like bells.
‘You must take off your pyjamas too,’ she said.
‘Eh, nay!’
‘Yes! Yes!’ she commanded.
And he took off his old cotton pyjama-jacket, and pushed down the trousers. Save for his hands and wrists and face and neck he was white as milk, with fine slender muscular flesh. To Connie he was suddenly piercingly beautiful again, as when she had seen him that afternoon washing himself.
Gold of sunshine touched the closed white curtain. She felt it wanted to come in.
‘Oh, do let’s draw the curtains! The birds are singing so! Do let the sun in,’ she said.
He slipped out of bed with his back to her, naked and white and thin, and went to the window, stooping a little, drawing the curtains and looking out for a moment. The back was white and fine, the small buttocks beautiful with an exquisite, delicate manliness, the back of the neck ruddy and delicate and yet strong.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 500