I took a box of matches from the mantelpiece and lit the gas at the pendant that hung in the middle of the bare little room. Then I saw that he was a youth of nineteen or so, narrow at the temples, with thin, pinched-looking brows. He was not ugly, nor did he look ill-fed. But he evidently came of a low breed. His hair had been cut close to his skull, leaving a tussocky fringe over his forehead to provide him with a ‘topping’, and to show that it was no prison crop which had bared him.
‘I wasn’t doin’ no harm,’ he whined resentfully, with still an attempt at a threat in his tones. ‘I ’aven’t done nuffin’ to you; you leave me alone. What harm have I done?’
‘Be quiet,’ I said. ‘You’ll wake the children and the people.’
I went to the door and listened. No one was disturbed. Then I closed the door and pulled down the wide-opened window, which was, letting in the cold night air. As I did so I shivered, noting how ugly and shapeless the mangle looked in the yard, with the moonlight on its frosty cover.
The fellow was standing abjectly in the same place. He had evidently been rickety as a child. I sat down in the rocking-chair.
‘What did you come in here for?’ I asked, almost pleading.
‘Well,’ he retorted insolently. ‘An’ wouldn’t you go somewhere if you ’edn’t a place to go to of a night like this?’
‘Look here,’ I said coldly, a flash of hate in my blood; ‘None of your chelp.’
‘Well, I only come in for a warm,’ he said, afraid not to appear defiant.
‘No you didn’t,’ I replied. ‘You came to take something. What did you want from here?’ I looked round the kitchen unhappily. He looked back at me uneasily, then at his dirty hands, then at me again. He had brown eyes, in which low cunning floated like oil on the top of much misery.
‘I might ’a took some boots’ he said, with a little vaunt.
My heart sank. I hoped he would say ‘food’. And I was responsible for him. I hated him.
‘You want your neck breaking,’ I said. ‘We can hardly afford boots as it is.’
‘I ain’t never done it before! This is the first time —’
‘You miserable swine!’ I said. He looked at me with a flash of rat-fury.
‘Where do you live?’ I asked.
‘Exeter Road.’
‘And you don’t do any work?’
‘I couldn’t never get a job — except — I used to deliver laundry —’
‘And they turned you off for thieving?’
He shifted and stirred uneasily in his chair. As he was so manifestly uncomfortable, I did not press him.
‘Who do you live with?’
‘I live at ’ome.’
‘What does your father do?’
But he sat stubborn and would not answer. I thought of the gangs of youths who stood at the corner of the mean streets near the school, there all day long, month after month, fooling with the laundry girls and insulting passers-by.
‘But,’ I said, ‘what are you going to do?’
He hung his head again and fidgeted in his chair. Evidently what little thought he gave to the subject made him uncomfortable. He could not answer.
‘Get a laundry girl to marry you and live on her?’ I asked sarcastically.
He smiled sicklily, evidently even a little bit flattered. What was the good of talking to him?
‘And loaf at the street corners till you go rotten?’ I said.
He looked up at me sullenly.
‘Well, I can’t get a job,’ he replied with insolence. He was not hopeless, but like a man born without expectations, apathetic, looking to be provided for, sullenly allowing everything.
‘No,’ I said, ‘if a man is worthy of his hire, the hire is worthy of a man — and I’m damned if you are a man!’
He grinned at me with sly insolence.
‘And would any woman have you?’ I asked.
Then he grinned slyly to himself, ducking his head to hide the joke. And I thought of the coloured primroses and of Muriel’s beautiful, pensive face. Then of him with his dirty clothes and his nasty skin! Then that, given a woman, he would be a father.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s a knock-out.’
He gave me a narrow, sleering look.
‘You don’t know everyfing,’ he said in contempt.
I sat and wondered. And I knew I could not understand him, that I had no fellow feeling with him. He was something beyond me.
‘Well,’ I said helplessly, ‘you’d better go.’
I rose, feeling he had beaten me. He could affect and alter me: I could not affect nor alter him. He shambled off down the path. I watched him skulk under the lamp-posts, afraid of the police. Then I shut the door.
In the silence of the sleeping house I stood quite still for some minutes, up against the impassable fact of this man, beyond which I could not get. I could not accept him. I simply hated him. Then I climbed the stairs. It was like a nightmare. I thought he was a blot, like a blot fallen on my mind, something black and heavy out of which I could not extricate myself.
As I hung up my coat I felt Muriel’s fat letter in my pocket. It made me a trifle sick. ‘No!’ I said, with a flush of rage against her perfect, serene purity, ‘I don’t want to think of her.’ And I wound my watch up sullenly, feeling alone and wretched.
THE OLD ADAM
The maid who opened the door was just developing into a handsome womanhood. Therefore she seemed to have the insolent pride of one newly come to an inheritance. She would be a splendid woman to look at, having just enough of Jewish blood to enrich her comeliness into beauty. At nineteen her fine grey eyes looked challenge, and her warm complexion, her black hair looped up slack, enforced the sensuous folding of her mouth.
She wore no cap nor apron, but a well-looking sleeved overall such as even very ladies don.
The man she opened to was tall and thin, but graceful in his energy. He wore white flannels, carried a tennis-racket. With a light bow to the maid he stepped beside her on the threshold. He was one of those who attract by their movement, whose movement is watched unconsciously, as we watch the flight of a sea-bird waving its wing leisurely. Instead of entering the house, the young man stood beside the maid-servant and looked back into the blackish evening. When in repose, he had the diffident, ironic bearing so remarkable in the educated youth of to-day, the very reverse of that traditional aggressiveness of youth.
“It is going to thunder, Kate,” he said.
“Yes, I think it is,” she replied, on an even footing.
The young man stood a moment looking at the trees across the road, and on the oppressive twilight.
“Look,” he said, “there’s not a trace of colour in the atmosphere, though it’s sunset; all a dark, lustrous grey; and those oaks kindle green like a low fire — see!”
“Yes,” said Kate, rather awkwardly.
“A troublesome sort of evening; must be, because it’s your last with us.”
“Yes,” said the girl, flushing and hardening.
There was another pause; then:
“Sorry you’re going?” he asked, with a faint tang of irony.
“In some ways,” she replied, rather haughtily.
He laughed, as if he understood what was not said, then, with an “Ah well!” he passed along the hall.
The maid stood for a few moments clenching her young fists, clenching her very breast in revolt. Then she closed the door.
Edward Severn went into the dining-room. It was eight o’clock, very dark for a June evening; on the dusk-blue walls only the gilt frames of the pictures glinted pale. The clock occupied the room with its delicate ticking.
The door opened into a tiny conservatory that was lined with a grapevine. Severn could hear, from the garden beyond, the high prattling of a child. He went to the glass door.
Running down the grass by the flower-border was a little girl of three, dressed in white. She was very bonny, very quick and intent in her movements; she reminded him of a fieldmouse whic
h plays alone in the corn, for sheer joy. Severn lounged in the doorway, watching her. Suddenly she perceived him. She started, flashed into greeting, gave a little gay jump, and stood quite still again, as if pleading.
“Mr. Severn,” she cried, in wonderfully coaxing tones: “Come and see this.”
“What?” he asked.
“Com’ and see it,” she pleaded.
He laughed, knowing she only wanted to coax him into the garden; and he went.
“Look,” she said, spreading out her plump little arm.
“What?” he asked.
The baby was not going to admit that she had tricked him thither for her amusement.
“All gone up to buds,” she said, pointing to the closed marigolds. Then “See!” she shrieked, flinging herself at his legs, grasping the flannel of his trousers, and tugging at him wildly. She was a wild little Mænad. She flew shrieking like a revelling bird down the garden, glancing back to see if he were coming. He had not the heart to desist, but went swiftly after her. In the obscure garden, the two white figures darted through the flowering plants, the baby, with her full silk skirts, scudding like a ruffled bird, the man, lithe and fleet, snatching her up and smothering his face in hers. And all the time her piercing voice reechoed from his low calls of warning and of triumph as he hunted her. Often she was really frightened of him; then she clung fast round his neck, and he laughed and mocked her in a low, stirring voice, whilst she protested.
The garden was large for a London suburb. It was shut in by a high dark embankment, that rose above a row of black poplar trees. And over the spires of the trees, high up, slid by the golden-lighted trains, with the soft movement of caterpillars and a hoarse, subtle noise.
Mrs. Thomas stood in the dark doorway watching the night, the trains, the flash and run of the two white figures.
“And now we must go in,” she heard Severn say.
“No,” cried the baby, wild and defiant as a bacchanal. She clung to him like a wild-cat.
“Yes,” he said. “Where’s your mother?”
“Give me a swing,” demanded the child.
He caught her up. She strangled him hard with her young arms.
“I said, where’s your mother?” he persisted, half smothered.
“She’s op’tairs,” shouted the child. “Give me a swing.”
“I don’t think she is,” said Severn.
“She is. Give me a swing, a swi-i-ing!”
He bent forward, so that she hung from his neck like a great pendant. Then he swung her, laughing low to himself while she shrieked with fear. As she slipped he caught her to his breast.
“Mary!” called Mrs. Thomas, in that low, songful tone of a woman when her heart is roused and happy.
“Mary!” she called, long and sweet.
“Oh, no!” cried the child quickly.
But Severn bore her off. Laughing, he bowed his head and offered to the mother the baby who clung round his neck.
“Come along here,” said Mrs. Thomas roguishly, clasping the baby’s waist with her hands.
“Oh, no,” cried the child, tucking her head into the young man’s neck.
“But it’s bed-time,” said the mother. She laughed as she drew at the child to pull her loose from Severn. The baby clung tighter, and laughed, feeling no determination in her mother’s grip. Severn bent his head to loosen the child’s hold, bowed, and swung the heavy baby on his neck. The child clung to him, bubbling with laughter; the mother drew at her baby, laughing low, while the man swung gracefully, giving little jerks of laughter.
“Let Mr. Severn undress me,” said the child, hugging close to the young man, who had come to lodge with her parents when she was scarce a month old.
“You’re in high favour to-night,” said the mother to Severn. He laughed, and all three stood a moment watching the trains pass and repass in the sky beyond the garden-end. Then they went indoors, and Severn undressed the child.
She was a beautiful girl, a bacchanal with her wild, dull-gold hair tossing about like a loose chaplet, her hazel eyes shining daringly, her small, spaced teeth glistening in little passions of laughter within her red, small mouth. The young man loved her. She was such a little bright wave of wilfulness, so abandoned to her impulses, so white and smooth as she lay at rest, so startling as she flashed her naked limbs about. But she was growing too old for a young man to undress.
She sat on his knee in her high-waisted night-gown, eating her piece of bread-and-butter with savage little bites of resentment: she did not want to go to bed. But Severn made her repeat a Pater Noster. She lisped over the Latin, and Mrs. Thomas, listening, flushed with pleasure; although she was a Protestant, and although she deplored the unbelief of Severn, who had been a Catholic.
The mother took the baby to carry her to bed. Mrs. Thomas was thirty-four years old, full-bosomed and ripe. She had dark hair that twined lightly round her low, white brow. She had a clear complexion, and beautiful brows, and dark-blue eyes. The lower part of her face was heavy.
“Kiss me,” said Severn to the child.
He raised his face as he sat in the rocking-chair. The mother stood beside, looking down at him, and holding the laughing rogue of a baby against her breast. The man’s face was uptilted, his heavy brows set back from the laughing tenderness of his eyes, which looked dark, because the pupil was dilated. He pursed up his handsome mouth, his thick close-cut moustache roused.
He was a man who gave tenderness, but who did not ask for it. All his own troubles he kept, laughingly, to himself. But his eyes were very sad when quiet, and he was too quick to understand sorrow, not to know it.
Mrs. Thomas watched his fine mouth lifted for kissing. She leaned forward, lowering the baby, and suddenly, by a quick change in his eyes, she knew he was aware of her heavy woman’s breasts approaching down to him. The wild rogue of a baby bent her face to his, and then, instead of kissing him, suddenly licked his cheek with her wet, soft tongue. He started back in aversion, and his eyes and his teeth flashed with a dangerous laugh.
“No, no,” he laughed, in low strangled tones. “No dog-lick, my dear, oh no!”
The baby chuckled with glee, gave one wicked jerk of laughter, that came out like a bubble escaping.
He put up his mouth again, and again his face was horizontal below the face of the young mother. She looked down on him as if by a kind of fascination.
“Kiss me, then,” he said with thick throat.
The mother lowered the baby. She felt scarcely sure of her balance. Again the child, when near to his face, darted out her tongue to lick him. He swiftly averted his face, laughing in his throat.
Mrs. Thomas turned her face aside; she would see no more.
“Come then,” she said to the child. “If you won’t kiss Mr. Severn nicely — ”
The child laughed over the mother’s shoulder like a squirrel crouched there. She was carried to bed.
It was still not quite dark; the clouds had opened slightly. The young man flung himself into an arm-chair, with a volume of French verse. He read one lyric, then he lay still.
“What, all in the dark!” exclaimed Mrs. Thomas, coming in. “And reading by this light.” She rebuked him with timid affectionateness. Then, glancing at his white-flannelled limbs sprawled out in the gloom, she went to the door. There she turned her back to him, looking out.
“Don’t these flags smell strongly in the evening?” she said at length.
He replied with a few lines of the French he had been reading.
She did not understand. There was a peculiar silence.
“A peculiar, brutal, carnal scent, iris,” he drawled at length. “Isn’t it?”
She laughed shortly, saying: “Eh, I don’t know about that.”
“It is,” he asserted calmly.
He rose from his chair, went to stand beside her at the door.
There was a great sheaf of yellow iris near the window. Farther off, in the last twilight, a gang of enormous poppies balanced and flapped the
ir gold-scarlet, which even the darkness could not quite put out.
“We ought to be feeling very sad,” she said after a while.
“Why?” he asked.
“Well — isn’t it Kate’s last night?” she said, slightly mocking.
“She’s a tartar, Kate,” he said.
“Oh, she’s too rude, she is really! The way she criticises the things you do, and her insolence — ”
“The things I do?” he asked.
“Oh no; you can’t do anything wrong. It’s the things I do.” Mrs. Thomas sounded very much incensed.
“Poor Kate, she’ll have to lower her key,” said Severn.
“Indeed she will, and a good thing too.”
There was silence again.
“It’s lightning,” he said at last.
“Where?” she asked, with a suddenness that surprised him. She turned, met his eyes for a second. He sank his head, abashed.
“Over there in the north-east,” he said, keeping his face from her. She watched his hand rather than the sky.
“Oh,” she said uninterestedly.
“The storm will wheel round, you’ll see,” he said.
“I hope it wheels the other way, then.”
“Well, it won’t. You don’t like lightning, do you? You’d even have to take refuge with Kate if I weren’t here.”
She laughed quietly at his irony.
“No,” she said, quite bitterly. “Mr. Thomas is never in when he’s wanted.”
“Well, as he won’t be urgently required, we’ll acquit him, eh?”
At that moment a white flash fell across the blackness. They looked at each other, laughing. The thunder came broken and hesitatingly.
“I think we’ll shut the door,” said Mrs. Thomas, in normal, sufficiently distant tones. A strong woman, she locked and bolted the stiff fastenings easily. Severn pressed on the light. Mrs. Thomas noticed the untidiness of the room. She rang, and presently Kate appeared.
“Will you clear baby’s things away?” she said, in the contemptuous tone of a hostile woman. Without answering, and in her superb, unhastening way, Kate began to gather up the small garments. Both women were aware of the observant, white figure of the man standing on the hearth. Severn balanced with a fine, easy poise, and smiled to himself, exulting a little to see the two women in this state of hostility. Kate moved about with bowed defiant head. Severn watched her curiously; he could not understand her. And she was leaving to-morrow. When she had gone out of the room, he remained still standing, thinking. Something in his lithe, vigorous balance, so alert, and white, and independent, caused Mrs. Thomas to glance at him from her sewing.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 572