The rector laughed aloud, and Uncle Fred said:
“The family feels itself highly honoured.”
Both the elderly men were quite gallant, which was what Yvette wanted.
“Come and let me feel your dresses, do!” said Granny. “Are they your best? It is a shame I can’t see them.”
“Tonight, Mater,” said Uncle Fred, “we shall have to take the young ladies in to dinner, and live up to the honour. Will you go with Cissie?”
“I certainly will,” said Granny. “Youth and beauty must come first.”
“Well, tonight Mater!” said the rector, pleased.
And he offered his arm to Lucille, while Uncle Fred escorted Yvette.
But it was a draggled, dull meal, all the same. Lucille tried to be bright and sociable, and Yvette really was most amiable, in her vague, cobwebby way. Dimly, at the back of her mind, she was thinking: Why are we all only like mortal pieces of furniture? Why is nothing important?
That was her constant refrain, to herself: Why is nothing important? Whether she was in church, or at a party of young people, or dancing in the hotel in the city, the same little bubble of a question rose repeatedly on her consciousness: Why is nothing important?
There were plenty of young men to make love to her: even devotedly. But with impatience she had to shake them off. Why were they so unimportant? — so irritating!
She never even thought of the gipsy. He was a perfectly negligible incident. Yet the approach of Friday loomed strangely significant. “What are we doing on Friday?” she said to Lucille. To which Lucille replied that they were doing nothing. And Yvette was vexed.
Friday came, and in spite of herself she thought all day of the quarry off the road up high Bonsall Head. She wanted to be there. That was all she was conscious of. She wanted to be there. She had not even a dawning idea of going there. Besides, it was raining again. But as she sewed the blue dress, finishing it for the party up at Lambley Close, tomorrow, she just felt that her soul was up there, at the quarry, among the caravans, with the gipsies. Like one lost, or whose soul was stolen, she was not present in her body, the shell of her body. Her intrinsic body was away, at the quarry, among the caravans.
The next day, at the party, she had no idea that she was being sweet to Leo. She had no idea that she was snatching him away from the tortured Ella Framley. Not until, when she was eating her pistachio ice, he said to her:
“Why don’t you and me get engaged, Yvette? I’m absolutely sure it’s the right thing for us both.”
Leo was a bit common, but good-natured, and well-off. Yvette quite liked him. But engaged! How perfectly silly! She felt like offering him a set of her silk underwear, to get engaged to.
“But I thought it was Ella!” she said, in wonder.
“Well! It might ha’ been, but for you. It’s your doings, you know! Ever since those gipsies told your fortune, I felt it was me or nobody, for you, and you or nobody, for me.”
“Really!” said Yvette, simply lost in amazement. “Really!”
“Didn’t you feel a bit the same?” he asked.
“Really!” Yvette kept on gasping softly, like a fish.
“You felt a bit the same, didn’t you?” he said.
“What? About what?” she asked, coming to.
“About me, as I feel about you.”
“Why? What? Getting engaged, you mean? I? no! Why how could I? I could never have dreamed of such an impossible thing.”
She spoke with her usual heedless candour, utterly unoccupied with his feelings.
“What was to prevent you?” he said, a bit nettled. “I thought you did.”
“Did you really now?” she breathed in amazement, with that soft, virgin, heedless candour which made her her admirers and her enemies.
She was so completely amazed, there was nothing for him to do but twiddle his thumbs in annoyance.
The music began, and he looked at her.
“No! I won’t dance any more,” she said, drawing herself up and gazing away rather loftily over the assembly, as if he did not exist. There was a touch of puzzled wonder on her brow, and her soft, dim virgin face did indeed suggest the snowdrop of her father’s pathetic imagery.
“But of course you will dance,” she said, turning to him with young condescension. “Do ask somebody to have this with you.”
He rose, angry, and went down the room.
She remained soft and remote in her amazement. Expect Leo to propose to her! She might as well have expected old Rover the Newfoundland dog to propose to her. Get engaged, to any man on earth? No, good heavens, nothing more ridiculous could be imagined!
It was then, in a fleeting side-thought, that she realised that the gipsy existed. Instantly, she was indignant. Him, of all things! Him! Never!
“Now why?” she asked herself, again in hushed amazement. “Why? It’s absolutely impossible: absolutely! So why is it?”
This was a nut to crack. She looked at the young men dancing, elbows out, hips prominent, waists elegantly in. They gave her no clue to her problem. Yet she did particularly dislike the forced elegance of the waists and the prominent hips, over which the well-tailored coats hung with such effeminate discretion.
“There is something about me which they don’t see and never would see,” she said angrily to herself. And at the same time, she was relieved that they didn’t and couldn’t. It made life so very much simpler.
And again, since she was one of the people who are conscious in visual images, she saw the dark-green jersey rolled on the black trousers of the gipsy, his fine, quick hips, alert as eyes. They were elegant. The elegance of these dancers seemed so stuffed, hips merely wadded with flesh. Leo the same, thinking himself such a fine dancer! and a fine figure of a fellow!
Then she saw the gipsy’s face; the straight nose, the slender mobile lips, and the level, significant stare of the black eyes, which seemed to shoot her in some vital, undiscovered place, unerring.
She drew herself up angrily. How dared he look at her like that! So she gazed glaringly at the insipid beaux on the dancing floor. And she despised them. Just as the raggle-taggle gipsy women despise men who are not gipsies, despise their dog-like walk down the streets, she found herself despising this crowd. Where among them was the subtle, lonely, insinuating challenge that could reach her?
She did not want to mate with a house-dog.
Her sensitive nose turned up, her soft brown hair fell like a soft sheath round her tender, flowerlike face, as she sat musing. She seemed so virginal. At the same time, there was a touch of the tall young virgin witch about her, that made the house-dog men shy off. She might metamorphose into something uncanny before you knew where you were.
This made her lonely, in spite of all the courting. Perhaps the courting only made her lonelier.
Leo, who was a sort of mastiff among the house-dogs, returned after his dance, with fresh cheery-O! courage.
“You’ve had a little think about it, haven’t you?” he said, sitting down beside her: a comfortable, well-nourished, determined sort of fellow. She did not know why it irritated her so unreasonably, when he hitched up his trousers at the knee, over his good-sized but not very distinguished legs, and lowered himself assuredly on to a chair.
“Have I?” she said vaguely. “About what?”
“You know what about,” he said. “Did you make up your mind?”
“Make up my mind about what?” she asked, innocently.
In her upper consciousness, she truly had forgotten.
“Oh!” said Leo, settling his trousers again. “About me and you getting engaged, you know.” He was almost as off-hand as she.
“Oh that’s absolutely impossible,” she said, with mild amiability, as if it were some stray question among the rest. “Why, I never even thought of it again. Oh, don’t talk about that sort of nonsense! That sort of thing is absolutely impossible,” she re-iterated like a child.
“That sort of thing is, is it?” he said, with an odd smile
at her calm, distant assertion. “Well what sort of thing is possible, then? You don’t want to die an old maid, do you?”
“Oh I don’t mind,” she said absently.
“I do,” he said.
She turned round and looked at him in wonder.
“Why?” she said. “Why should you mind if I was an old maid?”
“Every reason in the world,” he said, looking up at her with a bold, meaningful smile, that wanted to make its meaning blatant, if not patent.
But instead of penetrating into some deep, secret place, and shooting her there, Leo’s bold and patent smile only hit her on the outside of the body, like a tennis ball, and caused the same kind of sudden irritated reaction.
“I think this sort of thing is awfully silly,” she said, with minx-like spite. “Why, you’re practically engaged to — to — ” she pulled herself up in time — ”probably half a dozen other girls. I’m not flattered by what you’ve said. I should hate it if anybody knew! — Hate it! — I shan’t breathe a word of it, and I hope you’ll have the sense not to. — There’s Ella!”
And keeping her face averted from him, she sailed away like a tall, soft flower, to join poor Ella Framley.
Leo flapped his white gloves.
“Catty little bitch!” he said to himself. But he was of the mastiff type, he rather liked the kitten to fly in his face. He began definitely to single her out.
SIX
The next week it poured again with rain. And this irritated Yvette with strange anger. She had intended it should be fine. Especially she insisted it should be fine towards the weekend. Why, she did not ask herself.
Thursday, the half-holiday, came with a hard frost, and sun. Leo arrived with his car, the usual bunch. Yvette disagreeably and unaccountably refused to go.
“No thanks, I don’t feel like it,” she said.
She rather enjoyed being Mary-Mary-quite-contrary.
Then she went for a walk by herself, up the frozen hills, to the Black Rocks.
The next day also came sunny and frosty. It was February, but in the north country the ground did not thaw in the sun. Yvette announced that she was going for a ride on her bicycle, and taking her lunch, as she might not be back till afternoon.
She set off, not hurrying. In spite of the frost, the sun had a touch of spring. In the park, the deer were standing in the distance, in the sunlight, to be warm. One doe, white spotted, walked slowly across the motionless landscape.
Cycling, Yvette found it difficult to keep her hands warm, even when bodily she was quite hot. Only when she had to walk up the long hill, to the top, and there was no wind.
The upland was very bare and clear, like another world. She had climbed on to another level. She cycled slowly, a little afraid of taking the wrong lane, in the vast maze of stone fences. As she passed along the lane she thought was the right one, she heard a faint tapping noise, with a slight metallic resonance.
The gipsy man was seated on the ground with his back to the cart-shaft, hammering a copper bowl. He was in the sun, bare-headed, but wearing his green jersey. Three small children were moving quietly round, playing in the horse’s shelter: the horse and cart were gone. An old woman, bent, with a kerchief round her head, was cooking over a fire of sticks. The only sound was the rapid, ringing tap-tap-tap of the small hammer on the dull copper.
The man looked up at once, as Yvette stepped from her bicycle, but he did not move, though he ceased hammering. A delicate, barely discernible smile of triumph was on his face. The old woman looked round, keenly, from under her dirty grey hair. The man spoke a half-audible word to her, and she turned again to her fire. He looked up at Yvette.
“How are you all getting on?” she asked politely.
“All right, eh! You sit down a minute?” He turned as he sat, and pulled a stool from under the caravan for Yvette. Then, as she wheeled her bicycle to the side of the quarry, he started hammering again, with that bird-like, rapid light stroke.
Yvette went to the fire to warm her hands.
“Is this the dinner cooking?” she asked childishly, of the old gipsy, as she spread her long, tender hands, mottled red with the cold, to the embers.
“Dinner, yes!” said the old woman. “For him! And for the children.”
She pointed with the long fork at the three black-eyed, staring children, who were staring at her from under their black fringes. But they were clean. Only the old woman was not clean. The quarry itself they had kept perfectly clean.
Yvette crouched in silence, warming her hands. The man rapidly hammered away with intervals of silence. The old hag slowly climbed the steps to the third, oldest caravan. The children began to play again, like little wild animals, quiet and busy.
“Are they your children?” asked Yvette, rising from the fire and turning to the man.
He looked her in the eyes, and nodded.
“But where’s your wife?”
“She’s gone out with the basket. They’re all gone out, cart and all, selling things. I don’t go selling things. I make them, but I don’t go selling them. Not often. I don’t often.”
“You make all the copper and brass things?” she said.
He nodded, and again offered her the stool. She sat down.
“You said you’d be here on Fridays,” she said. “So I came this way, as it was so fine.”
“Very fine day!” said the gipsy, looking at her cheek, that was still a bit blanched by the cold, and the soft hair over her reddened ear, and the long, still mottled hands on her knee.
“You get cold, riding a bicycle?” he asked.
“My hands!” she said, clasping them nervously.
“You didn’t wear gloves?”
“I did, but they weren’t much good.”
“Cold comes through,” he said.
“Yes!” she replied.
The old woman came slowly, grotesquely down the steps of the caravan, with some enamel plates.
“The dinner cooked, eh?” he called softly.
The old woman muttered something, as she spread the plates near the fire. Two pots hung from a long iron horizontal-bar, over the embers of the fire. A little pan seethed on a small iron tripod. In the sunshine, heat and vapour wavered together.
He put down his tools and the pot, and rose from the ground.
“You eat something along of us?” he asked Yvette, not looking at her.
“Oh, I brought my lunch,” said Yvette.
“You eat some stew?” he said. And again he called quietly, secretly to the old woman, who muttered in answer, as she slid the iron pot towards the end of the bar.
“Some beans, and some mutton in it,” he said.
“Oh thanks awfully!” said Yvette. Then suddenly taking courage, added: “Well yes, just a very little, if I may.”
She went across to untie her lunch from her bicycle, and he went up the steps to his own caravan. After a minute, he emerged, wiping his hands on a towel.
“You want to come up and wash your hands?” he said.
“No, I think not,” she said. “They are clean.”
He threw away his wash-water, and set off down the road with a high brass jug, to fetch clean water from the spring that trickled into a small pool, taking a cup to dip it with.
When he returned, he set the jug and the cup by the fire, and fetched himself a short log, to sit on. The children sat on the floor, by the fire, in a cluster, eating beans and bits of meat with spoon or fingers. The man on the log ate in silence, absorbedly. The woman made coffee in the black pot on the tripod, hobbling upstairs for the cups. There was silence in the camp. Yvette sat on her stool, having taken off her hat and shaken her hair in the sun.
“How many children have you?” Yvette asked suddenly.
“Say five,” he replied slowly, as he looked up into her eyes.
And again the bird of her heart sank down and seemed to die. Vaguely, as in a dream, she received from him the cup of coffee. She was aware only of his silent figure, sitting like
a shadow there on the log, with an enamel cup in his hand, drinking his coffee in silence. Her will had departed from her limbs, he had power over her: his shadow was on her.
And he, as he blew his hot coffee, was aware of one thing only, the mysterious fruit of her virginity, her perfect tenderness in the body.
At length he put down his coffee-cup by the fire, then looked round at her. Her hair fell across her face, as she tried to sip from the hot cup. On her face was that tender look of sleep, which a nodding flower has when it is full out, like a mysterious early flower, she was full out, like a snowdrop which spreads its three white wings in a flight into the waking sleep of its brief blossoming. The waking sleep of her full-opened virginity, entranced like a snowdrop in the sunshine, was upon her.
The gipsy, supremely aware of her, waited for her like the substance of shadow, as shadow waits and is there.
At length his voice said, without breaking the spell:
“You want to go in my caravan, now, and wash your hands?”
The childlike, sleep-waking eyes of her moment of perfect virginity looked into his, unseeing. She was only aware of the dark, strange effluence of him bathing her limbs, washing her at last purely will-less. She was aware of him, as a dark, complete power.
“I think I might,” she said.
He rose silently, then turned to speak, in a low command, to the old woman. And then again he looked at Yvette, and putting his power over her, so that she had no burden of herself, or of action.
“Come!” he said.
She followed simply, followed the silent, secret, overpowering motion of his body in front of her. It cost her nothing. She was gone in his will.
He was at the top of the steps, and she at the foot, when she became aware of an intruding sound. She stood still, at the foot of the steps. A motor-car was coming. He stood at the top of the steps, looking round strangely. The old woman harshly called something, as with rapidly increasing sound, a car rushed near. It was passing.
Then they heard the cry of a woman’s voice, and the brakes on the car. It had pulled up, just beyond the quarry.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 560