The Greatest Works of D. H. Lawrence. D. H. Lawrence

thought she was a fairy who had bewitched him. He would stand and watch her, and one day, when she came near to him telling him a tale that set the tears swimming in her eyes, he took hold of her and kissed her and kept her. They used to tryst in the poplar spinney. She would come with her arms full of flowers, for she always kept to her fairy part. One morning she came early through the mists. He was out shooting. She wanted to take him unawares, like a fairy. Her arms were full of peonies. When she was moving beyond the trees he shot her, not knowing. She stumbled on, and sank down in their tryst place. He found her lying there among the red pyeenocks, white and fallen. He thought she was just lying talking to the red flowers, so he stood waiting. Then he went up, and bent over her, and found the flowers full of blood. It was he set the garden here with these pyeenocks.”

      The eyes of the girls were round with pity of the tale and Hilda turned away to hide her tears.

      “It is a beautiful ending,” said Lettie, in a low tone, looking at the floor.

      “It’s all a tale,” said Leslie, soothing the girls.

      George waited till Lettie looked at him. She lifted her eyes to him at last. Then each turned aside, trembling.

      Marie asked for some of the peonies.

      “Give me just a few — and I can tell the others the story — it is so sad — I feel so sorry for him, it was so cruel for him And Lettie says it ends beautifully —”

      George cut the flowers with his great clasp-knife, and Marie took them, carefully, treating their romance with great tenderness. Then all went out of the garden and he turned to the cowshed.

      “Good-bye for the present,” said Lettie, afraid to stay near him.

      “Good-bye,” he laughed.

      “Thank you so much for the flowers — and the story — it was splendid,” said Marie, “— but so sad!”

      Then they went, and we did not see them again.

      Later, when all had gone to bed at the mill, George and I sat together on opposite sides of the fire, smoking, saying little. He was casting up the total of discrepancies, and now and again he ejaculated one of his thoughts.

      “And all day,” he said, “Blench has been ploughing his wheat in, because it was that bitten off by the rabbits it was no manner of use, so he’s ploughed it in: an’ they say with idylls, eating peaches in our close.”

      Then there was silence, while the clock throbbed heavily, and outside a wild bird called, and was still; softly the ashes rustled lower in the grate.

      “She said it ended well — but what’s the good of death — what’s the good of that?” He turned his face to the ashes in the grate, and sat brooding.

      Outside, among the trees, some wild animal set up a thin, wailing cry.

      “Damn that row!” said I, stirring, looking also into the grey fire.

      “It’s some stoat or weasel, or something. It’s been going on like that for nearly a week. I’ve shot in the trees ever so many times. There were two — one’s gone.”

      Continuously, through the heavy, chilling silence, came the miserable crying from the darkness among the trees.

      “You know,” he said, “she hated me this afternoon, and I hated her —”

      It was midnight, full of sick thoughts.

      “It is no good,” said I. “Go to bed — it will be morning in a few hours.”

      PART THREE

       Table of Contents

      Chapter 1

       A New Start in Life

       Table of Contents

      Lettie was wedded, as I had said, before Leslie lost all the wistful traces of his illness. They had been gone away to France five days before we recovered anything like the normal tone in the house. Then, though the routine was the same, everywhere was a sense of loss, and of change. The long voyage in the quiet home was over; we had crossed the bright sea of our youth, and already Lettie had landed and was travelling to a strange destination in a foreign land. It was time for us all to go, to leave the valley of Nethermere whose waters and whose woods were distilled in the essence of our veins. We were the children of the valley of Nethermere, a small nation with language and blood of our own, and to cast ourselves each one into separate exile was painful to us.

      “I shall have to go now,” said George. “It is my nature to linger an unconscionable time, yet I dread above all things this slow crumbling away from my foundations by which I free myself at last. I must wrench myself away now —”

      It was the slack time between the hay and the corn harvest, and we sat together in the grey, still morning of August pulling the stack. My hands were sore with tugging the loose wisps from the lower part of the stack, so I waited for the touch of rain to send us indoors. It came at last, and we hurried into the barn. We climbed the ladder into the loft that was strewn with farming implements and with carpenters’ tools. We sat together on the shavings that littered the bench before the high gable window, and looked out over the brooks and the woods and the ponds. The tree-tops were very near to us, and we felt ourselves the centre of the waters and the woods that spread down the rainy valley.

      “In a few years,” I said, “we shall be almost strangers.”

      He looked at me with fond, dark eyes and smiled incredulously.

      “It is as far,” said I, “to the ‘Ram’ as it is for me to London — farther.”

      “Don’t you want me to go there?” he asked, smiling quietly.

      “It’s all as one where you go, you will travel north, and I east, and Lettie south. Lettie has departed. In seven weeks I go. — And you?”

      “I must be gone before you,” he said decisively.

      “Do you know —” and he smiled timidly in confession, “I feel alarmed at the idea of being left alone on a loose end. I must not be the last to leave —” he added almost appealingly.

      “And you will go to Meg?” I asked.

      He sat tearing the silken shavings into shreds, and telling me in clumsy fragments all he could of his feelings:

      “You see, it’s not so much what you call love. I don’t know. You see, I built on Lettie”— he looked up at me shamefacedly, then continued tearing the shavings —“you must found your castles on something, and I founded mine on Lettie. You see, I’m like plenty of folks, I have nothing definite to shape my life to. I put brick upon brick, as they come, and if the whole topples down in the end, it does. But you see, you and Lettie have made me conscious, and now I’m at a dead loss. I have looked to marriage to set me busy on my house of life, something whole and complete, of which it will supply the design. I must marry or be in a lost lane. There are two people I could marry — and Lettie’s gone. I love Meg just as well, as far as love goes. I’m not sure I don’t feel better pleased at the idea of marrying her. You know I should always have been second to Lettie, and the best part of love is being made much of, being first and foremost in the whole world for somebody. And Meg’s easy and lovely. I can have her without trembling, she’s full of soothing and comfort. I can stroke her hair and pet her, and she looks up at me, full of trust and lovingness, and there is no flaw, all restfulness in one another —”

      Three weeks later, as I lay in the August sunshine in a deck-chair on the lawn, I heard the sound of wheels along the gravel path. It was George calling for me to accompany him to his marriage. He pulled up the dog-cart near the door and came up the steps to me on the lawn. He was dressed as if for the