With an inward groan he gave way, and let his heart yield towards her. A sudden gentle smile came on his face. And her eyes, which never left his face, slowly, slowly filled with tears. He watched the strange water rise in her eyes, like some slow fountain coming up. And his heart seemed to burn and melt away in his breast.
He could not bear to look at her any more. He dropped on his knees and caught her head with his arms and pressed her face against his throat. She was very still. His heart, which seemed to have broken, was burning with a kind of agony in his breast. And he felt her slow, hot tears wetting his throat. But he could not move.
He felt the hot tears wet his neck and the hollows of his neck, and he remained motionless, suspended through one of man’s eternities. Only now it had become indispensable to him to have her face pressed close to him; he could never let her go again. He could never let her head go away from the close clutch of his arm. He wanted to remain like that for ever, with his heart hurting him in a pain that was also life to him. Without knowing, he was looking down on her damp, soft brown hair.
Then, as it were suddenly, he smelt the horrid stagnant smell of that water. And at the same moment she drew away from him and looked at him. Her eyes were wistful and unfathomable. He was afraid of them, and he fell to kissing her, not knowing what he was doing. He wanted her eyes not to have that terrible, wistful, unfathomable look.
When she turned her face to him again, a faint delicate flush was glowing, and there was again dawning that terrible shining of joy in her eyes, which really terrified him, and yet which he now wanted to see, because he feared the look of doubt still more.
‘You love me?’ she said, rather faltering.
‘Yes.’ The word cost him a painful effort. Not because it wasn’t true. But because it was too newly true, the saying seemed to tear open again his newly-torn heart. And he hardly wanted it to be true, even now.
She lifted her face to him, and he bent forward and kissed her on the mouth, gently, with the one kiss that is an eternal pledge. And as he kissed her his heart strained again in his breast. He never intended to love her. But now it was over. He had crossed over the gulf to her, and all that he had left behind had shrivelled and become void.
After the kiss, her eyes again slowly filled with tears. She sat still, away from him, with her face drooped aside, and her hands folded in her lap. The tears fell very slowly. There was complete silence. He too sat there motionless and silent on the hearthrug. The strange pain of his heart that was broken seemed to consume him. That he should love her? That this was love! That he should be ripped open in this way! — Him, a doctor! — How they would all jeer if they knew! — It was agony to him to think they might know.
In the curious naked pain of the thought he looked again to her. She was sitting there drooped into a muse. He saw a tear fall, and his heart flared hot. He saw for the first time that one of her shoulders was quite uncovered, one arm bare, he could see one of her small breasts; dimly, because it had become almost dark in the room.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked, in an altered voice.
She looked up at him, and behind her tears the consciousness of her situation for the first time brought a dark look of shame to her eyes.
‘I’m not crying, really,’ she said, watching him half frightened.
He reached his hand, and softly closed it on her bare arm.
‘I love you! I love you!’ he said in a soft, low vibrating voice, unlike himself.
She shrank, and dropped her head. The soft, penetrating grip of his hand on her arm distressed her. She looked up at him.
‘I want to go,’ she said. ‘I want to go and get you some dry things.’
‘Why?’ he said. ‘I’m all right.’
‘But I want to go,’ she said. ‘And I want you to change your things.’
He released her arm, and she wrapped herself in the blanket, looking at him rather frightened. And still she did not rise.
‘Kiss me,’ she said wistfully.
He kissed her, but briefly, half in anger.
Then, after a second, she rose nervously, all mixed up in the blanket. He watched her in her confusion, as she tried to extricate herself and wrap herself up so that she could walk. He watched her relentlessly, as she knew. And as she went, the blanket trailing, and as he saw a glimpse of her feet and her white leg, he tried to remember her as she was when he had wrapped her in the blanket. But then he didn’t want to remember, because she had been nothing to him then, and his nature revolted from remembering her as she was when she was nothing to him.
A tumbling, muffled noise from within the dark house startled him. Then he heard her voice: — ’There are clothes.’ He rose and went to the foot of the stairs, and gathered up the garments she had thrown down. Then he came back to the fire, to rub himself down and dress. He grinned at his own appearance when he had finished.
The fire was sinking, so he put on coal. The house was now quite dark, save for the light of a street-lamp that shone in faintly from beyond the holly trees. He lit the gas with matches he found on the mantel-piece. Then he emptied the pockets of his own clothes, and threw all his wet things in a heap into the scullery. After which he gathered up her sodden clothes, gently, and put them in a separate heap on the copper-top in the scullery.
It was six o’clock on the clock. His own watch had stopped. He ought to go back to the surgery. He waited, and still she did not come down. So he went to the foot of the stairs and called:
‘I shall have to go.’
Almost immediately he heard her coming down. She had on her best dress of black voile, and her hair was tidy, but still damp. She looked at him — and in spite of herself, smiled.
‘I don’t like you in those clothes,’ she said.
‘Do I look a sight?’ he answered.
They were shy of one another.
‘I’ll make you some tea,’ she said.
‘No, I must go.’
‘Must you?’ And she looked at him again with the wide, strained, doubtful eyes. And again, from the pain of his breast, he knew how he loved her. He went and bent to kiss her, gently, passionately, with his heart’s painful kiss.
‘And my hair smells so horrible,’ she murmured in distraction. ‘And I’m so awful, I’m so awful! Oh, no, I’m too awful.’ And she broke into bitter, heart-broken sobbing. ‘You can’t want to love me, I’m horrible.’
‘Don’t be silly, don’t be silly,’ he said, trying to comfort her, kissing her, holding her in his arms. ‘I want you, I want to marry you, we’re going to be married, quickly, quickly — to-morrow if I can.’
But she only sobbed terribly, and cried:
‘I feel awful. I feel awful. I feel I’m horrible to you.’
‘No, I want you, I want you,’ was all he answered, blindly, with that terrible intonation which frightened her almost more than her horror lest he should not want her.
THE PRIMROSE PATH
A young man came out of the Victoria station, looking undecidedly at the taxi-cabs, dark-red and black, pressing against the kerb under the glass-roof. Several men in greatcoats and brass buttons jerked themselves erect to catch his attention, at the same time keeping an eye on the other people as they filtered through the open doorways of the station. Berry, however, was occupied by one of the men, a big, burly fellow whose blue eyes glared back and whose red-brown moustache bristled in defiance.
‘Do you want a cab, sir?’ the man asked, in a half-mocking, challenging voice.
Berry hesitated still.
‘Are you Daniel Sutton?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ replied the other defiantly, with uneasy conscience.
‘Then you are my uncle,’ said Berry.
They were alike in colouring, and somewhat in features, but the taxi driver was a powerful, well-fleshed man who glared at the world aggressively, being really on the defensive against his own heart. His nephew, of the same height, was thin, well-dressed, quiet and indifferent in his manner. And yet th
ey were obviously kin.
‘And who the devil are you?’ asked the taxi driver.
‘I’m Daniel Berry,’ replied the nephew.
‘Well, I’m damned — never saw you since you were a kid.’
Rather awkwardly at this late hour the two shook hands.
‘How are you, lad?’
‘All right. I thought you were in Australia.’
‘Been back three months — bought a couple of these damned things’ — he kicked the tyre of his taxi-cab in affectionate disgust. There was a moment’s silence.
‘Oh, but I’m going back out there. I can’t stand this cankering, rotten-hearted hell of a country any more; you want to come out to Sydney with me, lad. That’s the place for you — beautiful place, oh, you could wish for nothing better. And money in it, too. — How’s your mother?’
‘She died at Christmas,’ said the young man.
‘Dead! What! — our Anna!’ The big man’s eyes stared, and he recoiled in fear. ‘God, lad,’ he said, ‘that’s three of ‘em gone!’
The two men looked away at the people passing along the pale grey pavements, under the wall of Trinity Church.
‘Well, strike me lucky!’ said the taxi driver at last, out of breath. ‘She wor th’ best o’ th’ bunch of ‘em. I see nowt nor hear nowt from any of ‘em — they’re not worth it, I’ll be damned if they are — our sermon-lapping Adela and Maud,’ he looked scornfully at his nephew. ‘But she was the best of ‘em, our Anna was, that’s a fact.’
He was talking because he was afraid.
‘An’ after a hard life like she’d had. How old was she, lad?’
‘Fifty-five.’
‘Fifty-five ...’ He hesitated. Then, in a rather hushed voice, he asked the question that frightened him:
‘And what was it, then?’
‘Cancer.’
‘Cancer again, like Julia! I never knew there was cancer in our family. Oh, my good God, our poor Anna, after the life she’d had! — What, lad, do you see any God at the back of that? — I’m damned if I do.’
He was glaring, very blue-eyed and fierce, at his nephew. Berry lifted his shoulders slightly.
‘God?’ went on the taxi driver, in a curious intense tone, ‘You’ve only to look at the folk in the street to know there’s nothing keeps it going but gravitation. Look at ‘em. Look at him!’ — A mongrel-looking man was nosing past. ‘Wouldn’t he murder you for your watch-chain, but that he’s afraid of society. He’s got it in him.... Look at ‘em.’
Berry watched the towns-people go by, and, sensitively feeling his uncle’s antipathy, it seemed he was watching a sort of danse macabre of ugly criminals.
‘Did you ever see such a God-forsaken crew creeping about! It gives you the very horrors to look at ‘em. I sit in this damned car and watch ‘em till, I can tell you, I feel like running the cab amuck among ‘em, and running myself to kingdom come — ’
Berry wondered at this outburst. He knew his uncle was the black-sheep, the youngest, the darling of his mother’s family. He knew him to be at outs with respectability, mixing with the looser, sporting type, all betting and drinking and showing dogs and birds, and racing. As a critic of life, however, he did not know him. But the young man felt curiously understanding. ‘He uses words like I do, he talks nearly as I talk, except that I shouldn’t say those things. But I might feel like that, in myself, if I went a certain road.’
‘I’ve got to go to Watmore,’ he said. ‘Can you take me?’
‘When d’you want to go?’ asked the uncle fiercely.
‘Now.’
‘Come on, then. What d’yer stand gassin’ on th’ causeway for?’
The nephew took his seat beside the driver. The cab began to quiver, then it started forward with a whirr. The uncle, his hands and feet acting mechanically, kept his blue eyes fixed on the highroad into whose traffic the car was insinuating its way. Berry felt curiously as if he were sitting beside an older development of himself. His mind went back to his mother. She had been twenty years older than this brother of hers whom she had loved so dearly. ‘He was one of the most affectionate little lads, and such a curly head! I could never have believed he would grow into the great, coarse bully he is — for he’s nothing else. My father made a god of him — well, it’s a good thing his father is dead. He got in with that sporting gang, that’s what did it. Things were made too easy for him, and so he thought of no one but himself, and this is the result.’
Not that ‘Joky’ Sutton was so very black a sheep. He had lived idly till he was eighteen, then had suddenly married a young, beautiful girl with clear brows and dark grey eyes, a factory girl. Having taken her to live with his parents he, lover of dogs and pigeons, went on to the staff of a sporting paper. But his wife was without uplift or warmth. Though they made money enough, their house was dark and cold and uninviting. He had two or three dogs, and the whole attic was turned into a great pigeon-house. He and his wife lived together roughly, with no warmth, no refinement, no touch of beauty anywhere, except that she was beautiful. He was a blustering, impetuous man, she was rather cold in her soul, did not care about anything very much, was rather capable and close with money. And she had a common accent in her speech. He outdid her a thousand times in coarse language, and yet that cold twang in her voice tortured him with shame that he stamped down in bullying and in becoming more violent in his own speech.
Only his dogs adored him, and to them, and to his pigeons, he talked with rough, yet curiously tender caresses while they leaped and fluttered for joy.
After he and his wife had been married for seven years a little girl was born to them, then later, another. But the husband and wife drew no nearer together. She had an affection for her children almost like a cool governess. He had an emotional man’s fear of sentiment, which helped to nip his wife from putting out any shoots. He treated his children roughly, and pretended to think it a good job when one was adopted by a well-to-do maternal aunt. But in his soul he hated his wife that she could give away one of his children. For after her cool fashion, she loved him. With a chaos of a man such as he, she had no chance of being anything but cold and hard, poor thing. For she did love him.
In the end he fell absurdly and violently in love with a rather sentimental young woman who read Browning. He made his wife an allowance and established a new ménage with the young lady, shortly after emigrating with her to Australia. Meanwhile his wife had gone to live with a publican, a widower, with whom she had had one of those curious, tacit understandings of which quiet women are capable, something like an arrangement for provision in the future.
This was as much as the nephew knew. He sat beside his uncle, wondering how things stood at the present. They raced lightly out past the cemetery and along the boulevard, then turned into the rather grimy country. The mud flew out on either side, there was a fine mist of rain which blew in their faces. Berry covered himself up.
In the lanes the high hedges shone black with rain. The silvery grey sky, faintly dappled, spread wide over the low, green land. The elder man glanced fiercely up the road, then turned his red face to his nephew.
‘And how’re you going on, lad?’ he said loudly. Berry noticed that his uncle was slightly uneasy of him. It made him also uncomfortable. The elder man had evidently something pressing on his soul.
‘Who are you living with in town?’ asked the nephew. ‘Have you gone back to Aunt Maud?’
‘No,’ barked the uncle. ‘She wouldn’t have me. I offered to — I want to — but she wouldn’t.’
‘You’re alone, then?’
‘No, I’m not alone.’
He turned and glared with his fierce blue eyes at his nephew, but said no more for some time. The car ran on through the mud, under the wet wall of the park.
‘That other devil tried to poison me,’ suddenly shouted the elder man. ‘The one I went to Australia with.’ At which, in spite of himself, the younger smiled in secret.
‘How was that?’ he asked.
/>
‘Wanted to get rid of me. She got in with another fellow on the ship.... By Jove, I was bad.’
‘Where? — on the ship?’
‘No,’ bellowed the other. ‘No. That was in Wellington, New Zealand. I was bad, and got lower an’ lower — couldn’t think what was up. I could hardly crawl about. As certain as I’m here, she was poisoning me, to get to th’ other chap — I’m certain of it.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I cleared out — went to Sydney — ’
‘And left her?’
‘Yes, I thought begod, I’d better clear out if I wanted to live.’
‘And you were all right in Sydney?’
‘Better in no time — I know she was putting poison in my coffee.’
‘Hm!’
There was a glum silence. The driver stared at the road ahead, fixedly, managing the car as if it were a live thing. The nephew felt that his uncle was afraid, quite stupefied with fear, fear of life, of death, of himself.
‘You’re in rooms, then?’ asked the nephew.
‘No, I’m in a house of my own,’ said the uncle defiantly, ‘wi’ th’ best little woman in th’ Midlands. She’s a marvel. — Why don’t you come an’ see us?’
‘I will. Who is she?’
‘Oh, she’s a good girl — a beautiful little thing. I was clean gone on her first time I saw her. An’ she was on me. Her mother lives with us — respectable girl, none o’ your....’
‘And how old is she?’
‘ — how old is she? — she’s twenty-one.’
‘Poor thing.’
‘She’s right enough.’
‘You’d marry her — getting a divorce — ?’
‘I shall marry her.’
There was a little antagonism between the two men.
‘Where’s Aunt Maud?’ asked the younger.
‘She’s at the Railway Arms — we passed it, just against Rollin’s Mill Crossing.... They sent me a note this morning to go an’ see her when I can spare time. She’s got consumption.’
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 642