“‘They will kill you,’ she whispered.
“‘No,’ I answered.
“And she wept softly. She took my head in her arms and kissed me, wetting me with her tears, brushing me with her keen hair, warming me through.
“‘I will not go away from here,’ I said. ‘Bring me a knife, and I will defend myself.’
“‘No,’ she wept. ‘Ah, no!’
“When she went I lay down, pressing my chest where she had rested on the earth, lest being alone were worse emptiness than hunger.
“Later she came again. I saw her bend in the doorway, a lanthorn hanging in front. As she peered under the redness of her falling hair, I was afraid of her. But she came with food. We sat together in the dull light. Sometimes still I shivered and my throat would not swallow.
“‘If,’ said I, ‘I eat all this you have brought me, I shall sleep till somebody finds me.’
“Then she took away the rest of the meat.
“‘Why,’ said I, ‘should I not eat?’ She looked at me in tears of fear.
“‘What?’ I said, but still she had no answer. I kissed her, and the hurt of my wounded mouth angered me.
“‘Now there is my blood,’ said I, ‘on your mouth.’ Wiping her smooth hand over her lips, she looked thereat, then at me.
“‘Leave me,’ I said, ‘I am tired.’ She rose to leave me.
“‘But bring a knife,’ I said. Then she held the lanthorn near my face, looking as at a picture.
“‘You look to me,’ she said, ‘like a stirk that is roped for the axe. Your eyes are dark, but they are wide open.’
“‘Then I will sleep,’ said I, ‘but will not wake too late.’
“‘Do not stay here,’ she said.
“‘I will not sleep in the wood,’ I answered, and it was my heart that spoke, ‘for I am afraid. I had better be afraid of the voice of man and dogs, than the sounds in the woods. Bring me a knife, and in the morning I will go. Alone will I not go now.’
“‘The searchers will take you,’ she said.
“‘Bring me a knife,’ I answered.
“‘Ah, go,’ she wept.
“‘Not now — I will not — ’
“With that she lifted the lanthorn, lit up her own face and mine. Her blue eyes dried of tears. Then I took her to myself, knowing she was mine.
“‘I will come again,’ she said.
“She went, and I folded my arms, lay down and slept.
“When I woke, she was rocking me wildly to rouse me.
“‘I dreamed,’ said I, ‘that a great heap, as if it were a hill, lay on me and above me.’
“She put a cloak over me, gave me a hunting-knife and a wallet of food, and other things I did not note. Then under her own cloak she hid the lanthorn.
“‘Let us go,’ she said, and blindly I followed her.
“When I came out into the cold someone touched my face and my hair.
“‘Ha!’ I cried, ‘who now — ?’ Then she swiftly clung to me, hushed me.
“‘Someone has touched me,’ I said aloud, still dazed with sleep.
“‘Oh hush!’ she wept. ‘‘Tis snowing.’ The dogs within the house began to bark. She fled forward, I after her. Coming to the ford of the stream she ran swiftly over, but I broke through the ice. Then I knew where I was. Snowflakes, fine and rapid, were biting at my face. In the wood there was no wind nor snow.
“‘Listen,’ said I to her, ‘listen, for I am locked up with sleep.’
“‘I hear roaring overhead,’ she answered. ‘I hear in the trees like great bats squeaking.’
“‘Give me your hand,’ said I.
“We heard many noises as we passed. Once as there uprose a whiteness before us, she cried aloud.
“‘Nay,’ said I, ‘do not untie thy hand from mine,’ and soon we were crossing fallen snow. But ever and again she started back from fear.
“‘When you draw back my arm,’ I said, angry, ‘you loosed a weal on my shoulder.’
“Thereafter she ran by my side, like a fawn beside its mother.
“‘We will cross the valley and gain the stream,’ I said. ‘That will lead us on its ice as on a path deep into the forest. There we can join the outlaws. The wolves are driven from this part. They have followed the driven deer.’
“We came directly on a large gleam that shaped itself up among flying grains of snow.
“‘Ah!’ she cried, and she stood amazed.
“Then I thought we had gone through the bounds into faery realm, and I was no more a man. How did I know what eyes were gleaming at me between the snow, what cunning spirits in the draughts of air? So I waited for what would happen, and I forgot her, that she was there. Only I could feel the spirits whirling and blowing about me.
“Whereupon she clung upon me, kissing me lavishly, and, were dogs or men or demons come upon us at that moment, she had let us be stricken down, nor heeded not. So we moved forward to the shadow that shone in colours upon the passing snow. We found ourselves under a door of light which shed its colours mixed with snow. This Martha had never seen, nor I, this door open for a red and brave issuing like fires. We wondered.
“‘It is faery,’ she said, and after a while, ‘Could one catch such — Ah, no!’
“Through the snow shone bunches of red and blue.
“‘Could one have such a little light like a red flower — only a little, like a rose-berry scarlet on one’s breast! — then one were singled out as Our Lady.’
“I flung off my cloak and my burden to climb up the face of the shadow. Standing on rims of stone, then in pockets of snow, I reached upward. My hand was red and blue, but I could not take the stuff. Like colour of a moth’s wing it was on my hand, it flew on the increasing snow. I stood higher on the head of a frozen man, reached higher my hand. Then I felt the bright stuff cold. I could not pluck it off. Down below she cried to me to come again to her. I felt a rib that yielded, I struck at it with my knife. There came a gap in the redness. Looking through I saw below as it were white stunted angels, with sad faces lifted in fear. Two faces they had each, and round rings of hair. I was afraid. I grasped the shining red, I pulled. Then the cold man under me sank, so I fell as if broken on to the snow.
“Soon I was risen again, and we were running downwards towards the stream. We felt ourselves eased when the smooth road of ice was beneath us. For a while it was resting, to travel thus evenly. But the wind blew round us, the snow hung upon us, we leaned us this way and that, towards the storm. I drew her along, for she came as a bird that stems lifting and swaying against the wind. By and by the snow came smaller, there was not wind in the wood. Then I felt nor labour, nor cold. Only I knew the darkness drifted by on either side, that overhead was a lane of paleness where a moon fled us before. Still, I can feel the moon fleeing from me, can feel the trees passing round me in slow dizzy reel, can feel the hurt of my shoulder and my straight arm torn with holding her. I was following the moon and the stream, for I knew where the water peeped from its burrow in the ground there were shelters of the outlaw. But she fell, without sound or sign.
“I gathered her up and climbed the bank. There all round me hissed the larchwood, dry beneath, and laced with its dry-fretted cords. For a little way I carried her into the trees. Then I laid her down till I cut flat hairy boughs. I put her in my bosom on this dry bed, so we swooned together through the night. I laced her round and covered her with myself, so she lay like a nut within its shell.
“Again, when morning came, it was pain of cold that woke me. I groaned, but my heart was warm as I saw the heap of red hair in my arms. As I looked at her, her eyes opened into mine. She smiled — from out of her smile came fear. As if in a trap she pressed back her head.
“‘We have no flint,’ said I.
“‘Yes — in the wallet, flint and steel and tinder box,’ she answered.
“‘God yield you blessing,’ I said.
“In a place a little open I kindled a fire of larch boughs. She was afrai
d of me, hovering near, yet never crossing a space.
“‘Come,’ said I, ‘let us eat this food.’
“‘Your face,’ she said, ‘is smeared with blood.’
“I opened out my cloak.
“‘But come,’ said I, ‘you are frosted with cold.’
“I took a handful of snow in my hand, wiping my face with it, which then I dried on my cloak.
“‘My face is no longer painted with blood, you are no longer afraid of me. Come here then, sit by me while we eat.’
“But as I cut the cold bread for her, she clasped me suddenly, kissing me. She fell before me, clasped my knees to her breast, weeping. She laid her face down to my feet, so that her hair spread like a fire before me. I wondered at the woman. ‘Nay,’ I cried. At that she lifted her face to me from below. ‘Nay,’ I cried, feeling my tears fall. With her head on my breast, my own tears rose from their source, wetting my cheek and her hair, which was wet with the rain of my eyes.
“Then I remembered and took from my bosom the coloured light of that night before. I saw it was black and rough.
“‘Ah,’ said I, ‘this is magic.’
“‘The black stone!’ she wondered.
“‘It is the red light of the night before,’ I said.
“‘It is magic,’ she answered.
“‘Shall I throw it?’ said I, lifting the stone, ‘shall I throw it away, for fear?’
“‘It shines!’ she cried, looking up. ‘It shines like the eye of a creature at night, the eye of a wolf in the doorway.’
“‘‘Tis magic,’ I said, ‘let me throw it from us.’ But nay, she held my arm.
“‘It is red and shining,’ she cried.
“‘It is a bloodstone,’ I answered. ‘It will hurt us, we shall die in blood.’
“‘But give it to me,’ she answered.
“‘It is red of blood,’ I said.
“‘Ah, give it to me,’ she called.
“‘It is my blood,’ I said.
“‘Give it,’ she commanded, low.
“‘It is my life-stone,’ I said.
“‘Give it me,’ she pleaded.
“‘I gave it her. She held it up, she smiled, she smiled in my face, lifting her arms to me. I took her with my mouth, her mouth, her white throat. Nor she ever shrank, but trembled with happiness.
“What woke us, when the woods were filling again with shadow, when the fire was out, when we opened our eyes and looked up as if drowned, into the light which stood bright and thick on the tree-tops, what woke us was the sound of wolves. . . .”
“Nay,” said the vicar, suddenly rising, “they lived happily ever after.”
“No,” I said.
DAUGHTERS OF THE VICAR
I
Mr Lindley was first vicar of Aldecross. The cottages of this tiny hamlet had nestled in peace since their beginning, and the country folk had crossed the lanes and farm-lands, two or three miles, to the parish church at Greymeed, on the bright Sunday mornings.
But when the pits were sunk, blank rows of dwellings started up beside the high roads, and a new population, skimmed from the floating scum of workmen, was filled in, the cottages and the country people almost obliterated.
To suit the convenience of these new collier-inhabitants, a church must be built at Aldecross. There was not too much money. And so the little building crouched like a humped stone-and-mortar mouse, with two little turrets at the west corners for ears, in the fields near the cottages and the apple trees, as far as possible from the dwellings down the high road. It had an uncertain, timid look about it. And so they planted big-leaved ivy, to hide its shrinking newness. So that now the little church stands buried in its greenery, stranded and sleeping among the fields, while the brick houses elbow nearer and nearer, threatening to crush it down. It is already obsolete.
The Reverend Ernest Lindley, aged twenty-seven, and newly married, came from his curacy in Suffolk to take charge of his church. He was just an ordinary young man, who had been to Cambridge and taken orders. His wife was a self-assured young woman, daughter of a Cambridgeshire rector. Her father had spent the whole of his thousand a year, so that Mrs Lindley had nothing of her own. Thus the young married people came to Aldecross to live on a stipend of about a hundred and twenty pounds, and to keep up a superior position.
They were not very well received by the new, raw, disaffected population of colliers. Being accustomed to farm labourers, Mr Lindley had considered himself as belonging indisputably to the upper or ordering classes. He had to be humble to the county families, but still, he was of their kind, whilst the common people were something different. He had no doubts of himself.
He found, however, that the collier population refused to accept this arrangement. They had no use for him in their lives, and they told him so, callously. The women merely said, “they were throng,” or else, “Oh, it’s no good you coming here, we’re Chapel.” The men were quite good-humoured so long as he did not touch them too nigh, they were cheerfully contemptuous of him, with a preconceived contempt he was powerless against.
At last, passing from indignation to silent resentment, even, if he dared have acknowledged it, to conscious hatred of the majority of his flock, and unconscious hatred of himself, he confined his activities to a narrow round of cottages, and he had to submit. He had no particular character, having always depended on his position in society to give him position among men. Now he was so poor, he had no social standing even among the common vulgar tradespeople of the district, and he had not the nature nor the wish to make his society agreeable to them, nor the strength to impose himself where he would have liked to be recognized. He dragged on, pale and miserable and neutral.
At first his wife raged with mortification. She took on airs and used a high hand. But her income was too small, the wrestling with tradesmen’s bills was too pitiful, she only met with general, callous ridicule when she tried to be impressive.
Wounded to the quick of her pride, she found herself isolated in an indifferent, callous population. She raged indoors and out. But soon she learned that she must pay too heavily for her outdoor rages, and then she only raged within the walls of the rectory. There her feeling was so strong, that she frightened herself. She saw herself hating her husband, and she knew that, unless she were careful, she would smash her form of life and bring catastrophe upon him and upon herself. So in very fear, she went quiet. She hid, bitter and beaten by fear, behind the only shelter she had in the world, her gloomy, poor parsonage.
Children were born one every year; almost mechanically, she continued to perform her maternal duty, which was forced upon her. Gradually, broken by the suppressing of her violent anger and misery and disgust, she became an invalid and took to her couch.
The children grew up healthy, but unwarmed and rather rigid. Their father and mother educated them at home, made them very proud and very genteel, put them definitely and cruelly in the upper classes, apart from the vulgar around them. So they lived quite isolated. They were good-looking, and had that curiously clean, semi-transparent look of the genteel, isolated poor.
Gradually Mr and Mrs Lindley lost all hold on life, and spent their hours, weeks and years merely haggling to make ends meet, and bitterly repressing and pruning their children into gentility, urging them to ambition, weighting them with duty. On Sunday morning the whole family, except the mother, went down the lane to church, the long-legged girls in skimpy frocks, the boys in black coats and long, grey, unfitting trousers. They passed by their father’s parishioners with mute, clear faces, childish mouths closed in pride that was like a doom to them, and childish eyes already unseeing. Miss Mary, the eldest, was the leader. She was a long, slim thing with a fine profile and a proud, pure look of submission to a high fate. Miss Louisa, the second, was short and plump and obstinate-looking. She had more enemies than ideals. She looked after the lesser children, Miss Mary after the elder. The collier children watched this pale, distinguished procession of the vicar’s family
pass mutely by, and they were impressed by the air of gentility and distance, they made mock of the trousers of the small sons, they felt inferior in themselves, and hate stirred their hearts.
In her time, Miss Mary received as governess a few little daughters of tradesmen; Miss Louisa managed the house and went among her father’s church-goers, giving lessons on the piano to the colliers’ daughters at thirteen shillings for twenty-six lessons.
II
One winter morning, when his daughter Mary was about twenty years old, Mr Lindley, a thin, unobtrusive figure in his black overcoat and his wideawake, went down into Aldecross with a packet of white papers under his arm. He was delivering the parish almanacs.
A rather pale, neutral man of middle age, he waited while the train thumped over the level-crossing, going up to the pit which rattled busily just along the line. A wooden-legged man hobbled to open the gate, Mr Lindley passed on. Just at his left hand, below the road and the railway, was the red roof of a cottage, showing through the bare twigs of apple trees. Mr Lindley passed round the low wall, and descended the worn steps that led from the highway down to the cottage which crouched darkly and quietly away below the rumble of passing trains and the clank of coal-carts in a quiet little under-world of its own. Snowdrops with tight-shut buds were hanging very still under the bare currant bushes.
The clergyman was just going to knock when he heard a clinking noise, and turning saw through the open door of a black shed just behind him an elderly woman in a black lace cap stooping among reddish big cans, pouring a very bright liquid into a tundish. There was a smell of paraffin. The woman put down her can, took the tundish and laid it on a shelf, then rose with a tin bottle. Her eyes met those of the clergyman.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 581