The stars were very brilliant. Clear as crystal, the beam from the lighthouse under the cliffs struck rhythmically on the night. Dazed, the man walked along the road past the churchyard. Then he stood leaning up against a wall, for a long time.
He was roused because his feet were so cold. So he pulled himself together, and turned again in the silent night, back towards the inn.
The bar was in darkness. But there was a light in the kitchen. He hesitated. Then very quietly he tried the door.
He was surprised to find it open. He entered, and quietly closed it behind him. Then he went down the step past the bar-counter, and through to the lighted doorway of the kitchen. There sat his wife, planted in front of the range, where a furze fire was burning. She sat in a chair full in front of the range, her knees wide apart on the fender. She looked over her shoulder at him as he entered, but she did not speak. Then she stared in the fire again.
It was a small, narrow kitchen. He dropped his cap on the table that was covered with yellowish American cloth, and took a seat with his back to the wall, near the oven. His wife still sat with her knees apart, her feet on the steel fender and stared into the fire, motionless. Her skin was smooth and rosy in the firelight. Everything in the house was very clean and bright. The man sat silent, too, his head dropped. And thus they remained.
It was a question who would speak first. The woman leaned forward and poked the ends of the sticks in between the bars of the range. He lifted his head and looked at her.
‘Others gone to bed, have they?’ he asked.
But she remained closed in silence.
‘‘S a cold night, out,’ he said, as if to himself.
And he laid his large, yet well-shapen workman’s hand on the top of the stove, that was polished black and smooth as velvet. She would not look at him, yet she glanced out of the corners of her eyes.
His eyes were fixed brightly on her, the pupils large and electric like those of a cat.
‘I should have picked you out among thousands,’ he said. ‘Though you’re bigger than I’d have believed. Fine flesh you’ve made.’
She was silent for some time. Then she turned in her chair upon him.
‘What do you think of yourself,’ she said, ‘coming back on me like this after over fifteen years? You don’t think I’ve not heard of you, neither, in Butte City and elsewhere?’
He was watching her with his clear, translucent, unchallenged eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Chaps comes an’ goes — I’ve heard tell of you from time to time.’
She drew herself up.
‘And what lies have you heard about me?’ she demanded superbly.
‘I dunno as I’ve heard any lies at all — ’cept as you was getting on very well, like.’
His voice ran warily and detached. Her anger stirred again in her violently. But she subdued it, because of the danger there was in him, and more, perhaps, because of the beauty of his head and his level drawn brows, which she could not bear to forfeit.
‘That’s more than I can say of you,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard more harm than good about you.’
‘Ay, I dessay,’ he said, looking in the fire. It was a long time since he had seen the furze burning, he said to himself. There was a silence, during which she watched his face.
‘Do you call yourself a man?’ she said, more in contemptuous reproach than in anger. ‘Leave a woman as you’ve left me, you don’t care to what! — and then to turn up in this fashion, without a word to say for yourself.’
He stirred in his chair, planted his feet apart, and resting his arms on his knees, looked steadily into the fire, without answering. So near to her was his head, and the close black hair, she could scarcely refrain from starting away, as if it would bite her.
‘Do you call that the action of a man?’ she repeated.
‘No,’ he said, reaching and poking the bits of wood into the fire with his fingers. ‘I didn’t call it anything, as I know of. It’s no good calling things by any names whatsoever, as I know of.’
She watched him in his actions. There was a longer and longer pause between each speech, though neither knew it.
‘I wonder what you think of yourself!’ she exclaimed, with vexed emphasis. ‘I wonder what sort of a fellow you take yourself to be!’ She was really perplexed as well as angry.
‘Well,’ he said, lifting his head to look at her, ‘I guess I’ll answer for my own faults, if everybody else’ll answer for theirs.’
Her heart beat fiery hot as he lifted his face to her. She breathed heavily, averting her face, almost losing her self-control.
‘And what do you take me to be?’ she cried, in real helplessness.
His face was lifted watching her, watching her soft, averted face, and the softly heaving mass of her breasts.
‘I take you,’ he said, with that laconic truthfulness which exercised such power over her, ‘to be the deuce of a fine woman — darn me if you’re not as fine a built woman as I’ve seen, handsome with it as well. I shouldn’t have expected you to put on such handsome flesh: ‘struth I shouldn’t.’
Her heart beat fiery hot, as he watched her with those bright agate eyes, fixedly.
‘Been very handsome to you, for fifteen years, my sakes!’ she replied.
He made no answer to this, but sat with his bright, quick eyes upon her.
Then he rose. She started involuntarily. But he only said, in his laconic, measured way:
‘It’s warm in here now.’
And he pulled off his overcoat, throwing it on the table. She sat as if slightly cowed, whilst he did so.
‘Them ropes has given my arms something, by Ga-ard,’ he drawled, feeling his arms with his hands.
Still she sat in her chair before him, slightly cowed.
‘You was sharp, wasn’t you, to catch me like that, eh?’ he smiled slowly. ‘By Ga-ard, you had me fixed proper, proper you had. Darn me, you fixed me up proper — proper, you did.’
He leaned forwards in his chair towards her.
‘I don’t think no worse of you for it, no, darned if I do. Fine pluck in a woman’s what I admire. That I do, indeed.’
She only gazed into the fire.
‘We fet from the start, we did. And, my word, you begin again quick the minute you see me, you did. Darn me, you was too sharp for me. A darn fine woman, puts up a darn good fight. Darn me if I could find a woman in all the darn States as could get me down like that. Wonderful fine woman you be, truth to say, at this minute.’
She only sat glowering into the fire.
‘As grand a pluck as a man could wish to find in a woman, true as I’m here,’ he said, reaching forward his hand and tentatively touching her between her full, warm breasts, quietly.
She started, and seemed to shudder. But his hand insinuated itself between her breasts, as she continued to gaze in the fire.
‘And don’t you think I’ve come back here a-begging,’ he said. ‘I’ve more than one thousand pounds to my name, I have. And a bit of a fight for a how-de-do pleases me, that it do. But that doesn’t mean as you’re going to deny as you’re my Missis....’
ADOLF
WHEN we were children our father often worked on the night-shift. Once it was spring-time, and he used to arrive home, black and tired, just as we were downstairs in our night-dresses. Then night met morning face to face, and the contact was not always happy. Perhaps it was painful to my father to see us gaily entering upon the day into which he dragged himself soiled and weary. He didn’t like going to bed in the spring morning sunshine.
But sometimes he was happy, because of his long walk through the dewy fields in the first daybreak. He loved the open morning, the crystal and the space, after a night down pit. He watched every bird, every stir in the trembling grass, answered the whinneying of the pee-wits and tweeted to the wrens. If he could, he also would have whinnied and tweeted and whistled, in a native language that was not human. He liked non-human things best.
One sunny morning
we were all sitting at table when we heard his heavy slurring walk up the entry. We became uneasy. His was always a disturbing presence, trammeling. He passed the window darkly, and we heard him go into the scullery and put down his tin bottle. But directly he came into the kitchen. We felt at once that he had something to communicate. No one spoke. We watched his black face for a second.
‘Give me a drink,’ he said.
My mother hastily poured out his tea. He went to pour it out into the saucer. But instead of drinking, he suddenly put something on the table, among the tea-cups. A tiny brown rabbit! A small rabbit, a mere morsel, sitting against the bread as still as if it were a made thing.
‘A rabbit! A young one! Who gave it you, father?’
But he laughed enigmatically, with a sliding motion of his yellow-grey eyes, and went to take off his coat. We pounced on the rabbit.
‘Is it alive? Can you feel its heart beat?’
My father came back and sat down heavily in his arm-chair. He dragged his saucer to him, and blew his tea, pushing out his red lips under his black moustache.
‘Where did you get it, father?’
‘I picked it up,’ he said, wiping his naked forearm over his mouth and beard.
‘Where?’
‘Is it a wild one?’ came my mother’s quick voice.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Then why did you bring it?’ cried my mother.
‘Oh, we wanted it,’ came our cry.
‘Yes, I’ve no doubt you did —’ retorted my mother. But she was drowned in our clamour of questions.
On the field path, my father had found a dead mother rabbit and three dead little ones — this one alive, but unmoving.
‘But what had killed them, Daddy?’
‘I couldn’t say, my child. I s’d think she’d eaten something.’
‘Why did you bring it!’ again my mother’s voice of condemnation. ‘You know what it will be.’
My father made no answer, but we were loud in protest.
‘He must bring it. It’s not big enough to live by itself. It would die,’ we shouted.
‘Yes, and it will die now. And then there’ll be another outcry.’
My mother set her face against the tragedy of dead pets. Our hearts sank.
‘It won’t die, father, will it? Why will it? It won’t.’
‘I s’d think not,’ said my father.
‘You know well enough it will. Haven’t we had it all before — !’ said my mother.
‘They dunna always pine,’ replied my father testily.
But my mother reminded him of other little wild animals he had brought, which had sulked and refused to live, and brought storms of tears and trouble in our house of lunatics.
Trouble fell on us. The little rabbit sat on our lap, unmoving, its eye wide and dark. We brought it milk, warm milk, and held it to its nose. It sat as still as if it was far away, retreated down some deep burrow, hidden, oblivious. We wetted its mouth and whiskers with drops of milk. It gave no sign, did not even shake off the wet white drops. Somebody began to shed a few secret tears.
‘What did I say?’ cried my mother. ‘Take it and put it down the field.’
Her command was in vain. We were driven to get dressed for school. There sat the rabbit. It was like a tiny obscure cloud. Watching it, the emotions died out of our breast. Useless to love it, to yearn over it. Its little feelings were all ambushed. They must be circumvented. Love and affection were a trespass upon it. A little wild thing, it became more mute and asphyxiated still in its own arrest, when we approached with love. We must not love it. We must circumvent it, for its own existence.
So I passed the order to my sister and my mother. The rabbit was not to be spoken to, nor even looked at. Wrapping it in a piece of flannel, I put it in an obscure corner of the cold parlour, and put a saucer of milk before its nose. My mother was forbidden to enter the parlour whilst we were at school.
‘As if I should take any notice of your nonsense,’ she cried, affronted. Yet I doubt if she ventured into that parlour.
At midday, after school, creeping into the front room, there we saw the rabbit still and unmoving in the piece of flannel. Strange grey-brown neutralization of life, still living! It was a sore problem to us.
‘Why won’t it drink its milk, mother?’ we whispered. Our father was asleep.
‘It prefers to sulk its life away, silly little thing.’ A profound problem. Prefers to sulk its life away! We put young dandelion leaves to its nose. The sphinx was not more oblivious.
At tea-time, however, it had hopped a few inches, out of its flannel, and there it sat again, uncovered, a little solid cloud of muteness, brown, with unmoving whiskers. Only its side palpitated slightly with life.
Darkness came, my father set off to work. The rabbit was still unmoving. Dumb despair was coming over the sisters, a threat of tears before bedtime. Clouds of my mother’s anger gathered, as she muttered against my father’s wantonness.
Once more the rabbit was wrapped in the old pit-singlet. But now it was carried into the scullery and put under the copper fire-place, that it might think itself inside a burrow. The saucers were placed about, four or five, here and there on the floor, so that if the little creature should chance to hop abroad, it could not fail to come upon some food. After this my mother was allowed to take from the scullery what she wanted and then she was forbidden to open the door.
When morning came, and it was light, I went downstairs. Opening the scullery door I heard a slight scuffle. Then I saw dabbles of milk all over the floor and tiny rabbit-droppings in the saucers. And there the miscreant, the tips of his ears showing behind a pair of boots. I peeped at him. He sat bright-eyed and askance, twitching his nose and looking at me while not looking at me.
He was alive — very much alive. But still we were afraid to trespass much on his confidence.
‘Father!’ My father was arrested at the door. ‘Father, the rabbit’s alive.’
‘Back your life it is,’ said my father.
‘Mind how you go in.’
By evening, however, the little creature was tame, quite tame. He was christened Adolf. We were enchanted by him. We couldn’t really love him, because he was wild and loveless to the end. But he was an unmixed delight.
We decided he was too small to live in a hutch — he must live at large in the house. My mother protested, but in vain. He was so tiny. So we had him upstairs, and he dropped his tiny pills on the bed and we were enchanted.
Adolf made himself instantly at home. He had the run of the house, and was perfectly happy, with his tunnels and his holes behind the furniture.
We loved him to take meals with us. He would sit on the table humping his back, sipping his milk, shaking his whiskers and his tender ears, hopping off and hobbling back to his saucer, with an air of supreme unconcern. Suddenly he was alert. He hobbled a few tiny paces, and reared himself up inquisitively at the sugar-basin. He fluttered his tiny fore-paws, and then reached and laid them on the edge of the basin, whilst he craned his thin neck and peeped in. He trembled his whiskers at the sugar, then did his best to lift down a lump.
‘Do you think I will have it! Animals in the sugar pot!’ cried my mother, with a rap of her hand on the table.
Which so delighted the electric Adolf that he flung his hind-quarters and knocked over a cup.
‘It’s your own fault, mother. If you left him alone — ’
He continued to take tea with us. He rather liked warm tea. And he loved sugar. Having nibbled a lump, he would turn to the butter. There he was shooed off by our parent. He soon learned to treat her shooing with indifference. Still, she hated him to put his nose in the food. And he loved to do it. And so one day between them they overturned the cream-jug. Adolf deluged his little chest, bounced back in terror, was seized by his little ears by my mother and bounced down on the hearth-rug. There he shivered in momentary discomfort, and suddenly set off in a wild flight to the parlour.
This last was his h
appy hunting ground. He had cultivated the bad habit of pensively nibbling certain bits of cloth in the hearth-rug. When chased from this pasture, he would retreat under the sofa. There he would twinkle in Buddhist meditation until suddenly, no one knew why, he would go off like an alarum clock. With a sudden bumping scuffle he would whirl out of the room, going through the doorway with his little ears flying. Then we would hear his thunder-bolt hurtling in the parlour, but before we could follow, the wild streak of Adolf would flash past us, on an electric wind that swept him round the scullery and carried him back, a little mad thing, flying possessed like a ball round the parlour. After which ebullition he would sit in a corner composed and distant, twitching his whiskers in abstract meditation. And it was in vain we questioned him about his outbursts. He just went off like a gun, and was as calm after it as a gun that smokes placidly.
Alas, he grew up rapidly. It was almost impossible to keep him from the outer door.
One day, as we were playing by the stile, I saw his brown shadow loiter across the road and pass into the field that faced the houses. Instantly a cry of ‘Adolf!’ a cry he knew full well. And instantly a wind swept him away down the sloping meadow, his tail twinkling and zig-zagging through the grass. After him we pelted. It was a strange sight to see him, ears back, his little loins so powerful, flinging the world behind him. We ran ourselves out of breath, but could not catch him. Then somebody headed him off, and he sat with sudden unconcern, twitching his nose under a bunch of nettles.
His wanderings cost him a shock. One Sunday morning my father had just been quarrelling with a pedlar, and we were hearing the aftermath indoors, when there came a sudden unearthly scream from the yard. We flew out. There sat Adolf cowering under a bench, whilst a great black and white cat glowered intently at him, a few yards away. Sight not to be forgotten. Adolf rolling back his eyes and parting his strange muzzle in another scream, the cat stretching forward in a slow elongation.
Ha, how we hated that cat! How we pursued him over the chapel well and across the neighbours’ gardens. Adolf was still only half grown.
‘Cats!’ said my mother. ‘Hideous detestable animals, why do people harbour them!’
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 625