The gipsy came down the steps, having closed the door of the caravan.
“You want to put your hat on,” he said to her.
Obediently she went to the stool by the fire, and took up her hat. He sat down by the cart-wheel, darkly, and took up his tools. The rapid tap-tap-tap of his hammer, rapid and angry now like the sound of a tiny machine-gun, broke out just as the voice of the woman was heard crying:
“May we warm our hands at the camp fire?”
She advanced, dressed in a sleek but bulky coat of sable fur. A man followed, in a blue great-coat; pulling off his fur gloves and pulling out a pipe.
“It looked so tempting,” said the woman in the coat of many dead little animals, smiling a broad, half-condescending, half-hesitant simper, around the company.
No one said a word.
She advanced to the fire, shuddering a little inside her coat, with the cold. They had been driving in an open car.
She was a very small woman, with a rather large nose: probably a Jewess. Tiny almost as a child, in that sable coat she looked much more bulky than she should, and her wide, rather resentful brown eyes of a spoilt Jewess gazed oddly out of her expensive get-up.
She crouched over the low fire, spreading her little hands, on which diamonds and emeralds glittered.
“Ugh!” she shuddered. “Of course we ought not to have come in an open car! But my husband won’t even let me say I’m cold!” She looked round at him with her large, childish, reproachful eyes, that had still the canny shrewdness of a bourgeois Jewess: a rich one, probably.
Apparently she was in love, in a Jewess’s curious way, with the big, blond man. He looked back at her with his abstracted blue eyes, that seemed to have no lashes, and a small smile creased his smooth, curiously naked cheeks. The smile didn’t mean anything at all.
He was a man one connects instantly with winter sports, skiing and skating. Athletic, unconnected with life, he slowly filled his pipe, pressing in the tobacco with long, powerful reddened finger.
The Jewess looked at him to see if she got any response from him. Nothing at all, but that odd, blank smile. She turned again to the fire, tilting her eyebrows and looking at her small, white, spread hands.
He slipped off his heavily lined coat, and appeared in one of the handsome, sharp-patterned knitted jerseys, in yellow and grey and black, over well-cut trousers, rather wide. Yes, they were both expensive! And he had a magnificent figure, an athletic, prominent chest. Like an experienced camper, he began building the fire together, quietly: like a soldier on campaign.
“D’you think they’d mind if we put some fir-cones on, to make a blaze?” he asked of Yvette, with a silent glance at the hammering gipsy.
“Love it, I should think,” said Yvette, in a daze, as the spell of the gipsy slowly left her, feeling stranded and blank.
The man went to the car, and returned with a little sack of cones, from which he drew a handful.
“Mind if we make a blaze?” he called to the gipsy.
“Eh?”
“Mind if we make a blaze with a few cones?”
“You go ahead!” said the gipsy.
The man began placing the cones lightly, carefully on the red embers. And soon, one by one, they caught fire, and burned like roses of flame, with a sweet scent.
“Ah lovely! lovely!” cried the little Jewess, looking up at her man again. He looked down at her quite kindly, like the sun on ice. “Don’t you love fire! Oh, I love it!” the little Jewess cried to Yvette, across the hammering.
The hammering annoyed her. She looked round with a slight frown on her fine little brows, as if she would bid the man stop. Yvette looked round too. The gipsy was bent over his copper bowl, legs apart, head down, lithe arm lifted. Already he seemed so far from her.
The man who accompanied the little Jewess strolled over to the gipsy, and stood in silence looking down on him, holding his pipe to his mouth. Now they were two men, like two strange male dogs, having to sniff one another.
“We’re on our honeymoon,” said the little Jewess, with an arch, resentful look at Yvette. She spoke in a rather high, defiant voice, like some bird, a jay, or a crook, calling.
“Are you really?” said Yvette.
“Yes! Before we’re married! Have you heard of Simon Fawcett?” — she named a wealthy and well-known engineer of the north country. “Well, I’m Mrs. Fawcett, and he’s just divorcing me!” She looked at Yvette with curious defiance and wistfulness.
“Are you really!” said Yvette.
She understood now the look of resentment and defiance in the little Jewess’ big, childlike brown eyes. She was an honest little thing, but perhaps her honesty was too rational. Perhaps it partly explained the notorious unscrupulousness of the well-known Simon Fawcett.
“Yes! As soon as we get the divorce, I’m going to marry Major Eastwood.”
Her cards were now all on the table. She was not going to deceive anybody.
Behind her, the two men were talking briefly. She glanced round, and fixed the gipsy with her big brown eyes.
He was looking up, as if shyly, at the big fellow in the sparkling jersey, who was standing pipe in mouth, man to man, looking down.
“With the horses back of Arras,” said the gipsy, in a low voice.
They were talking war. The gipsy had served with the artillery teams, in the Major’s own regiment.
“Ein schöner Mensch!” said the Jewess. “A handsome man, eh?”
For her, too, the gipsy was one of the common men, the Tommies.
“Quite handsome!” said Yvette.
“You are cycling?” asked the Jewess in a tone of surprise.
“Yes! Down to Papplewick. My father is rector of Papplewick: Mr. Saywell!”
“Oh!” said the Jewess. “I know! A clever writer! Very clever! I have read him.”
The fir-cones were all consumed already, the fire was a tall pile now of crumbling, shattering fire-roses. The sky was clouding over for afternoon. Perhaps towards evening it would snow.
The Major came back, and slung himself into his coat.
“I thought I remembered his face,” he said. “One of our grooms, A. 1. man with horses.”
“Look!” cried the Jewess to Yvette. “Why don’t you let us motor you down to Normanton. We live in Scoresby. We can tie the bicycle on behind.”
“I think I will, “said Yvette.
“Come!” called the Jewess to the peeping children, as the blond man wheeled away the bicycle. “Come! Come here!” and taking out her little purse, she held out a shilling.
“Come!” she cried. “Come and take it!”
The gipsy had laid down his work, and gone into his caravan. The old woman called hoarsely to the children, from the enclosure. The two elder children came stealing forward. The Jewess gave them the two bits of silver, a shilling and a florin, which she had in her purse, and again the hoarse voice of the unseen old woman was heard.
The gipsy descended from his caravan and strolled to the fire. The Jewess searched his face with the peculiar bourgeois boldness of her race.
“You were in the war, in Major Eastwood’s regiment!” she said.
“Yes, lady!”
“Imagine you both being here now! — It’s going to snow — ” she looked up at the sky.
“Later on,” said the man, looking at the sky.
He too had gone inaccessible. His race was very old, in its peculiar battle with established society, and had no conception of winning. Only now and then it could score.
But since the war, even the old sporting chance of scoring now and then, was pretty well quenched. There was no question of yielding. The gipsy’s eyes still had their bold look: but it was hardened and directed far away, the touch of insolent intimacy was gone. He had been through the war.
He looked at Yvette.
“You’re going back in the motor-car?” he said.
“Yes!” she replied, with a rather mincing mannerism. “The weather is so treacherous!”
�
�Treacherous weather!” he repeated, looking at the sky.
She could not tell in the least what his feelings were. In truth, she wasn’t very much interested. She was rather fascinated, now, by the little Jewess, mother of two children, who was taking her wealth away from the well-known engineer and transferring it to the penniless, sporting young Major Eastwood, who must be five or six years younger than she. Rather intriguing!
The blond man returned.
“A cigarette, Charles!” cried the little Jewess, plaintively.
He took out his case, slowly, with his slow, athletic movement. Something sensitive in him made him slow, cautious, as if he had hurt himself against people. He gave a cigarette to his wife, then one to Yvette, then offered the case, quite simply, to the gipsy. The gipsy took one.
“Thank you sir!”
And he went quietly to the fire, and stooping, lit it at the red embers. Both women watched him.
“Well goodbye!” said the Jewess, with her odd bourgeois free-masonry. “Thank you for the warm fire.”
“Fire is everybody’s,” said the gipsy.
The young child came toddling to him.
“Goodbye!” said Yvette. “I hope it won’t snow for you.”
“We don’t mind a bit of snow,” said the gipsy.
“Don’t you?” said Yvette. “I should have thought you would!”
“No!” said the gipsy.
She flung her scarf royally over her shoulder, and followed the fur coat of the Jewess, which seemed to walk on little legs of its own.
SEVEN
Yvette was rather thrilled by the Eastwoods, as she called them. The little Jewess had only to wait three months now, for the final decree. She had boldly rented a small summer cottage, by the moors up at Scoresby, not far from the hills. Now it was dead winter, and she and the Major lived in comparative isolation, without any maid-servant. He had already resigned his commission in the regular army, and called himself Mr. Eastwood. In fact, they were already Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood, to the common world.
The little Jewess was thirty-six, and her two children were both over twelve years of age. The husband had agreed that she should have the custody, as soon as she was married to Eastwood.
So there they were, this queer couple, the tiny, finely-formed little Jewess with her big, resentful, reproachful eyes, and her mop of carefully-barbered black, curly hair, an elegant little thing in her way, and the big, pale-eyed young man, powerful and wintry, the remnant surely of some old uncanny Danish stock: living together in a small modern house near the moors and the hills, and doing their own housework.
It was a funny household. The cottage was hired furnished, but the little Jewess had brought along her dearest pieces of furniture. She had an odd little taste for the rococco, strange curving cupboards inlaid with mother of pearl, tortoiseshell, ebony, heaven knows what; strange tall flamboyant chairs, from Italy, with sea-green brocade: astonishing saints with wind-blown, richly-coloured carven garments and pink faces: shelves of weird old Saxe and Capo di Monte figurines: and finally, a strange assortment of astonishing pictures painted on the back of glass, done, probably in the early years of the nineteenth century, or in the late eighteenth.
In this crowded and extraordinary interior she received Yvette, when the latter made a stolen visit. A whole system of stoves had been installed into the cottage, every corner was warm, almost hot. And there was the tiny rococco figurine of the Jewess herself, in a perfect little frock, and an apron, putting slices of ham on the dish, while the great snow-bird of a major, in a white sweater and grey trousers, cut bread, mixed mustard, prepared coffee, and did all the rest. He had even made the dish of jugged hare which followed the cold meats and caviare.
The silver and the china were really valuable, part of the bride’s trousseau. The Major drank beer from a silver mug, the little Jewess and Yvette had champagne in lovely glasses, the Major brought in coffee. They talked away. The little Jewess had a burning indignation against her first husband. She was intensely moral, so moral, that she was a divorcée. The Major too, strange wintry bird, so powerful, handsome, too, in his way, but pale round the eyes as if he had no eyelashes, like a bird, he too had a curious indignation against life, because of the false morality. That powerful, athletic chest hid a strange, snowy sort of anger. And his tenderness for the little Jewess was based on his sense of outraged justice, the abstract morality of the north blowing him, like a strange wind, into isolation.
As the afternoon drew on, they went to the kitchen, the Major pushed back his sleeves, showing his powerful athletic white arms, and carefully, deftly washed the dishes, while the woman wiped. It was not for nothing his muscles were trained. Then he went round attending to the stoves of the small house, which only needed a moment or two of care each day. And after this, he brought out the small, closed car and drove Yvette home, in the rain, depositing her at the back gate, a little wicket among the larches, through which the earthen steps sloped downwards to the house.
She was really amazed by this couple.
“Really, Lucille!” she said. “I do meet the most extraordinary people!” And she gave a detailed description.
“I think they sound rather nice!” said Lucille. “I like the Major doing the housework, and looking so frightfully Bond-streety with it all. I should think, when they’re married, it would be rather fun knowing them.”
“Yes!” said Yvette vaguely. “Yes! Yes, it would!”
The very strangeness of the connection between the tiny Jewess and that pale-eyed, athletic young officer made her think again of her gipsy, who had been utterly absent from her consciousness, but who now returned with sudden painful force.
“What is it, Lucille,” she asked, “that brings people together? People like the Eastwoods, for instance? and Daddy and Mamma, so frightfully unsuitable? — and that gipsy woman who told my fortune, like a great horse, and the gipsy man, so fine and delicately cut? What is it?”
“I suppose it’s sex, whatever that is,” said Lucille.
“Yes, what is it? It’s not really anything common, like common sensuality, you know, Lucille. It really isn’t!”
“No, I suppose not,” said Lucille. “Anyhow I suppose it needn’t be.”
“Because you see, the common fellows, you know, who make a girl feel low: nobody cares much about them. Nobody feels any connection with them. Yet they’re supposed to be the sexual sort.”
“I suppose,” said Lucille, “there’s the low sort of sex, and there’s the other sort, that isn’t low. It’s frightfully complicated, really! I loathe common fellows. And I never feel anything sexual — ” she laid a rather disgusted stress on the word — ”for fellows who aren’t common. Perhaps I haven’t got any sex.”
“That’s just it!” said Yvette. “Perhaps neither of us has. Perhaps we haven’t really got any sex, to connect us with men.”
“How horrible it sounds: connect us with men!” cried Lucille, with revulsion. “Wouldn’t you hate to be connected with men that way? Oh I think it’s an awful pity there has to be sex! It would be so much better if we could still be men and women, without that sort of thing.”
Yvette pondered. Far in the background was the image of the gipsy as he had looked round at her, when she had said: The weather is so treacherous. She felt rather like Peter when the cock crew, as she denied him. Or rather, she did not deny the gipsy; she didn’t care about his part in the show, anyhow. It was some hidden part of herself which she denied: that part which mysteriously and unconfessedly responded to him. And it was a strange, lustrous black cock which crew in mockery of her.
“Yes!” she said vaguely. “Yes! Sex is an awful bore, you know Lucille. When you haven’t got it, you feel you ought to have it, somehow. And when you’ve got it — or if you have it — ” she lifted her head and wrinkled her nose disdainfully — ”you hate it.”
“Oh I don’t know!” cried Lucille. “I think I should like to be awfully in love with a man.”
“Y
ou think so!” said Yvette, again wrinkling her nose. “But if you were you wouldn’t.”
“How do you know?” asked Lucille.
“Well, I don’t really,” said Yvette. “But I think so! Yes, I think so!”
“Oh, it’s very likely!” said Lucille disgustedly. “And anyhow one would be sure to get out of love again, and it would be merely disgusting.”
“Yes,” said Yvette. “It’s a problem.” She hummed a little tune.
“Oh hang it all, it’s not a problem for us two, yet. We’re neither of us really in love, and we probably never shall be, so the problem is settled that way.”
“I’m not so sure!” said Yvette sagely. “I’m not so sure. I believe, one day, I shall fall awfully in love.”
“Probably you never will,” said Lucille brutally. “That’s what most old maids are thinking all the time.”
Yvette looked at her sister from pensive but apparently insouciant eyes.
“Is it?” she said. “Do you really think so, Lucille? How perfectly awful for them, poor things! Why ever do they care?”
“Why do they?” said Lucille. “Perhaps they don’t, really. — Probably it’s all because people say: Poor old girl, she couldn’t catch a man.”
“I suppose it is!” said Yvette. “They get to mind the beastly things people always do say about old maids. What a shame!”
“Anyhow we have a good time, and we do have lots of boys who make a fuss of us,” said Lucille.
“Yes!” said Yvette. “Yes! But I couldn’t possibly marry any of them.”
“Neither could I,” said Lucille. “But why shouldn’t we! Why should we bother about marrying, when we have a perfectly good time with the boys who are awfully good sorts, and you must say, Yvette, awfully sporting and decent to us.”
“Oh, they are!” said Yvette absently.
“I think it’s time to think of marrying somebody,” said Lucille, “when you feel you’re not having a good time any more. Then marry, and just settle down.”
“Quite!” said Yvette.
But now, under all her bland, soft amiability, she was annoyed with Lucille. Suddenly she wanted to turn her back on Lucille.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 561