“I’m so sorry,” said Lou. “Mother went on horseback to see some friends, and Lewis went with her on St. Mawr. He knows the road.”
“She’ll be back this evening?” said Flora.
“I don’t know. Mother is so uncertain. She may be away a day or two.”
“Well, here’s the cheque for St. Mawr.”
“No, I won’t take it now — no, thank you — not till mother comes back with the goods.”
Flora was chagrined. The two women knew they hated one another. The visit was a brief one.
Mrs. Witt rode on in the rain, which abated as the afternoon wore down, and the evening came without rain, and with a suffusion of pale yellow light. All the time she had trotted in silence, with Lewis just behind her. And she scarcely saw the heather-covered hills with the deep clefts between them, nor the oak woods, nor the lingering foxgloves, nor the earth at all. Inside herself she felt a profound repugnance for the English country: she preferred even the crudeness of Central Park in New York.
And she felt an almost savage desire to get away from Europe, from everything European. Now she was really en route, she cared not a straw for St. Mawr or for Lewis or anything. Something just writhed inside her, all the time, against Europe. That closeness, that sense of cohesion, that sense of being fused into a lump with all the rest — no matter how much distance you kept — this drove her mad. In America the cohesion was a matter of choice and will. But in Europe it was organic, like the helpless particles of one sprawling body. And the great body in a state of incipient decay.
She was a woman of fifty-one: and she seemed hardly to have lived a day. She looked behind her — the thin trees and swamps of Louisiana, the sultry, sub-tropical excitement of decaying New Orleans, the vast bare dryness of Texas, with mobs of cattle in an illumined dust! The half-European thrills of New York! The false stability of Boston! A clever husband, who was a brilliant lawyer, but who was far more thrilled by his cattle ranch than by his law: and who drank heavily and died. The years of first widowhood in Boston, consoled by a self-satisfied sort of intellectual courtship from clever men. — For curiously enough, while she wanted it, she had always been able to compel men to pay court to her. All kinds of men. — Then a rather dashing time in New York — when she was in her early forties. Then the long visual, philandering in Europe. She left off ‘loving’, save through the eye, when she came to Europe. And when she made her trips to America, she found it was finished there also, her ‘loving’.
What was the matter? Examining herself, she had long ago decided that her nature was a destructive force. But then, she justified herself, she had only destroyed that which was destructible. If she could have found something indestructible, especially in men, though she would have fought against it, she would have been glad at last to be defeated by it.
That was the point. She really wanted to be defeated, in her own eyes. And nobody had ever defeated her. Men were never really her match. A woman of terrible strong health, she felt even that in her strong limbs there was far more electric power than in the limbs of any man she had met. That curious fluid electric force, that could make any man kiss her hand, if she so willed it. A queen, as far as she wished. And not having been very clever at school, she always had the greatest respect for the mental powers. Her own were not mental powers. Rather electric, as of some strange physical dynamo within her. So she had been ready to bow before Mind.
But alas! After a brief time, she had found Mind, at least the man who was supposed to have the mind, bowing before her. Her own peculiar dynamic force was stronger than the force of Mind. She could make Mind kiss her hand.
And not by any sensual tricks. She did not really care about sensualities, especially as a younger woman. Sex was a mere adjunct. She cared about the mysterious, intense, dynamic sympathy that could flow between her and some ‘live’ man — a man who was highly conscious, a real live wire. That she cared about.
But she had never rested until she had made the man she admired — and admiration was the roots of her attraction to any man — made him kiss her hand. In both cases, actual and metaphorical. Physical and metaphysical. Conquered his country.
She had always succeeded. And she believed that, if she cared, she always would succeed. In the world of living men. Because of the power that was in her, in her arms, in her strong, shapely, but terrible hands, in all the great dynamo of her body.
For this reason she had been so terribly contemptuous of Rico, and of Lou’s infatuation. Ye gods! what was Rico in the scale of men!
Perhaps she despised the younger generation too easily. Because she did not see its sources of power, she concluded it was powerless. Whereas perhaps the power of accommodating oneself to any circumstance and committing oneself to no circumstance is the last triumph of mankind.
Her generation had had its day. She had had her day. The world of her men had sunk into a sort of insignificance. And with a great contempt she despised the world that had come into place instead: the world of Rico and Flora Manby, the world represented, to her, by the Prince of Wales.
In such a world there was nothing even to conquer. It gave everything and gave nothing to everybody and anybody all the time. Dio Benedetto! as Rico would say. A great complicated tangle of nonentities ravelled in nothingness. So it seemed to her.
Great God! This was the generation she had helped to bring into the world.
She had had her day. And, as far as the mysterious battle of life went, she had won all the way. Just as Cleopatra, in the mysterious business of a woman’s life, won all the way. Though that bald, tough Caesar had drawn his iron from the fire without losing much of its temper. And he had gone his way. And Antony surely was splendid to die with.
In her life there had been no tough Caesar to go his way in cold blood, away from her. Her men had gone from her like dogs on three legs, into the crowd. And certainly there was no gorgeous Antony to die for and with.
Almost she was tempted in her heart to cry: “Conquer me, oh God, before I die!’ — But then she had a terrible contempt for the God that was supposed to rule this universe. She felt she could make Him kiss her hand. Here she was a woman of fifty-one, past the change of life. And her great dread was to die an empty, barren death. Oh, if only Death might open dark wings of mystery and consolation. To die an easy, barren death. To pass out as she had passed in, without mystery or the rustling of darkness! That was her last, final, ashy dread.
“Old!” she said to herself. “I am not old! I have lived many years, that is all. But I am as timeless as an hour-glass that turns morning and night, and spills the hours of sleep one way, the hours of consciousness the other way, without itself being affected. Nothing in all my life has ever truly affected me. — I believe Cleopatra only tried the asp, as she tried her pearls in wine, to see if it would really, really have any effect on her. Nothing had ever really had any effect on her, neither Caesar nor Antony nor any of them. Never once had she really been lost, lost to herself. Then try death, see if that trick would work. If she would lose herself to herself that way. — Ah, death — !”
But Mrs. Witt mistrusted death too. She felt she might pass out as a bed of asters passes out in autumn, to mere nothingness. — And something in her longed to die, at least, positively: to be folded then at last into throbbing wings of mystery, like, a hawk that goes to sleep. Not like a thing made into a parcel and put into the last rubbish-heap.
So she rode trotting across the hills, mile after mile, in silence. Avoiding the roads, avoiding everything, avoiding everybody, just trotting forwards, towards night.
And by nightfall they had travelled twenty-five miles. She had motored around this country, and knew the little towns and the inns. She knew where she would sleep.
The morning came beautiful and sunny. A woman so strong in health, why should she ride with the fact of death before her eyes? But she did.
Yet in sunny morning she must do something about it.
“Lewis!” she said. “Come
here and tell me something, please! Tell me,” she said, “do you believe in God?”
“In God!” he said, wondering. “I never think about it.”
“But do you say your prayers?”
“No, Mam!”
“Why don’t you?”
He thought about it for some minutes.
“I don’t like religion. My aunt and uncle were religious.”
“You don’t like religion,” she repeated. “And you don’t believe in God. — Well, then — ”
“Nay!” he hesitated. “I never said I didn’t believe in God. — Only I’m sure I’m not a Methodist. And I feel a fool in a proper church. — And I feel a fool saying my prayers. — And I feel a fool when ministers and parsons come getting at me. — I never think about God, if folks don’t try to make me.” He had a small, sly smile, almost gay.
“And you don’t like feeling a fool?” She smiled rather patronisingly.
“No, Mam.”
“Do I make you feel a fool?” she asked dryly.
He looked at her without answering.
“Why don’t you answer?” she said, pressing.
“I think you’d like to make a fool of me sometimes,” he said. “Now?” she pressed.
He looked at her with that slow, distant look.
“Maybe!” he said, rather unconcernedly.
Curiously, she couldn’t touch him. He always seemed to be watching her from a distance, as if from another country. Even if she made a fool of him, something in him would all the time be far away from her, not implicated.
She caught herself up in the personal game and returned to her own isolated question. A vicious habit made her start the personal tricks. She didn’t want to, really.
There was something about this little man — sometimes, to herself, she called him Little Jack Horner, sat in a corner — that irritated her and made her want to taunt him. His peculiar little inaccessibility, that was so tight and easy.
Then again, there was something, his way of looking at her as if he looked from out of another country, a country of which he was an inhabitant, and where she had never been: this touched her strangely. Perhaps behind this little man was the mystery. In spite of the fact that in actual life, in her world, he was only a groom, almost chétif, with his legs a little bit horsy and bowed; and of no education, saying ‘Yes, Mam!’ and ‘No, Mam!’ and accomplishing nothing, simply nothing at all on the face of the earth. Strictly a nonentity.
And yet, what made him perhaps the only real entity to her, his seeming to inhabit another world than hers. A world dark and still, where language never ruffled the growing leaves and seared their edges like a bad wind.
Was it an illusion, however? Sometimes she thought it was. Just bunkum, which she had faked up, in order to have something to mystify about.
But then, when she saw Phoenix and Lewis silently together, she knew there was another communion, silent, excluding her. And sometimes when Lewis was alone with St. Mawr: and once when she saw him pick up a bird that had stunned itself against a wire: she had realised another world, silent, where each creature is alone in its own aura of silence, the mystery of power: as Lewis had power with St. Mawr, and even with Phoenix.
The visible world and the invisible. Or rather, the audible and the inaudible. She had lived so long, and so completely, in the visible, audible world. She would not easily admit that other, inaudible. She always wanted to jeer as she approached the brink of it.
Even now she wanted to jeer at the little fellow, because of his holding himself inaccessible within the inaudible, silent world. And she knew he knew it.
“Did you never want to be rich, and be a gentleman, like Sir Henry?” she asked.
“I would many times have liked to be rich. But I never exactly wanted to be a gentleman,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I can’t exactly say. I should be uncomfortable if I was like they are.”
“And are you comfortable now?”
“When I’m let alone.”
“And do they let you alone? Does the world let you alone?”
“No, they don’t.”
“Well then — !”
“I keep to myself all I can.”
“And are you comfortable, as you call it, when you keep to yourself?”
“Yes, I am.”
“But when you keep to yourself, what do you keep to? What precious treasure have you to keep to?”
He looked, and saw she was jeering.
“None,” he said. “I’ve got nothing of that sort.”
She rode impatiently on ahead.
And the moment she had done so, she regretted it. She might put the little fellow, with contempt, out of her reckoning. But no, she would not do it.
She had put so much out of her reckoning: soon she would be left in an empty circle, with her empty self at the centre. She reined in again.
“Lewis!” she said. “I don’t want you to take offence at anything I say.”
“No, Mam.”
“I don’t want you to say just ‘No, Mam!’ all the time!” she cried impulsively. “Promise me.”
“Yes, Mam!”
“But really! Promise me you won’t be offended at whatever I say.”
“Yes, Mam!”
She looked at him searchingly. To her surprise, she was almost in tears. A woman of her years! And with a servant!
But his face was blank and stony, with a stony, distant look of pride that made him inaccessible to her emotions. He met her eyes again: with that cold distant look, looking straight into her hot, confused, pained self. So cold and as if merely refuting her. He didn’t believe her, nor trust her, nor like her even. She was an attacking enemy to him. Only he stayed really far away from her, looking down at her from a sort of distant hill where her weapons could not reach: not quite.
And at the same time, it hurt him in a dumb, living way, that she made these attacks on him. She could see the cloud of hurt in his eyes, no matter how distantly he looked at her.
They bought food in a village shop, and sat under a tree near a field where men were already cutting oats, in a warm valley. Lewis had stabled the horses for a couple of hours to feed and rest. But he came to join her under the tree, to eat. — He sat a little distance from her, with the bread and cheese in his small brown hands, eating silently, and watching the harvesters. She was cross with him, and therefore she was stingy, would give him nothing to eat but dry bread and cheese. Herself, she was not hungry. — So all the time he kept his face a little averted from her. As a matter of fact, he kept his whole being averted from her, away from her. He did not want to touch her, nor to be touched by her. He kept his spirit there, alert, on its guard, but out of contact. It was as if he had unconsciously accepted the battle, the old battle. He was her target, the old object of her deadly weapons. But he refused to shoot back. It was as if he caught all her missiles in full flight before they touched him, and silently threw them on the ground behind him. And in some essential part of himself he ignored her, staying in another world.
That other world! Mere male armour of artificial imperviousness! It angered her.
Yet she knew, by the way he watched the harvesters, and the grasshoppers popping into notice, that it was another world. And when a girl went by, carrying food to the field, it was at him she glanced. And he gave that quick, animal little smile that came from him unawares. Another world.
Yet also there was a sort of meanness about him: a suffisance! A keep-yourself-for-yourself, and don’t give yourself away.
Well! — she rose impatiently.
It was hot in the afternoon, and she was rather tired. She went to the inn and slept, and did not start again till tea-time. Then they had to ride rather late. The sun sank, among a smell of cornfields, clear and yellow-red behind motionless dark trees. Pale smoke rose from cottage chimneys. Not a cloud was in the sky, which held the upward-floating light like a bowl inverted on purpose. A new moon sparkled and was gone. It was beginn
ing of night.
Away in the distance, they saw a curious pinkish glare of fire, probably furnaces. And Mrs. Witt thought she could detect the scent of furnace smoke, or factory smoke. But then she always said that of the English air: it was never quite free of the smell of smoke, coal smoke.
They were riding slowly on a path through fields, down a long slope. Away below was a puther of lights. All the darkness seemed full of half-spent crossing lights, a curious uneasiness. High in the sky a star seemed to be walking. It was an aeroplane with a light. Its buzz rattled above. Not a space, not a speck of this country that wasn’t humanised, occupied by the human claim. Not even the sky.
They descended slowly through a dark wood, which they had entered through a gate. Lewis was all the time dismounting and opening gates, letting her pass, shutting the gate and mounting again.
So, in a while she came to the edge of the wood’s darkness, and saw the open pale concave of the world beyond. The darkness was never dark. It shook with the concussion of many invisible lights, lights of towns, villages, mines, factories, furnaces, squatting in the valleys and behind all the hills.
Yet, as Rachel Witt drew rein at the gate emerging from the wood, a very big, soft star fell in heaven, cleaving the hubbub of this human night with a gleam from the greater world.
“See! a star falling!” said Lewis, as he opened the gate.
“I saw it,” said Mrs. Witt, walking her horse past him.
There was a curious excitement of wonder, or magic, in the little man’s voice. Even in this night something strange had stirred awake in him.
“You ask me about God,” he said to her, walking his horse alongside in the shadow of the wood’s edge, the darkness of the old Pan, that kept our artificially-lit world at bay. “I don’t know about God. But when I see a star fall like that out of long-distance places in the sky: and the moon sinking saying Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye! and nobody listening: I think I hear something, though I wouldn’t call it God.”
“What then?” said Rachel Witt.
“And you smell the smell of oak leaves now,” he said, “now the air is cold. They smell to me more alive than people. The trees hold their bodies hard and still, but they watch and listen with their leaves. And I think they say to me: ‘Is that you passing there, Morgan Lewis? All right, you pass quickly, we shan’t do anything to you. You are like a holly bush.’“
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 548