“Ah!” she said, “you like to show me how strong you area veritable Samson!”— she mocked, although she had invited him with her eyes to take her in his arms.
We were entering the spinney of black poplar. In the hedge was an elm tree, with myriads of dark dots pointed against the bright sky, myriads of clusters of flaky green fruit.
“Look at that elm,” she said, “you’d think it was in full leaf, wouldn’t you? Do you know why it’s so prolific?”
“No,” he said, with a curious questioning drawl of the monosyllable.
“It’s casting its bread upon the winds — no, it is dying, so it puts out all its strength and loads its boughs with the last fruit It’ll be dead next year. If you’re here then, come and see. Look at the ivy, the suave smooth ivy, with its fingers in the trees’ throat. Trees know how to die, you see — we don’t.”
With her whimsical moods she tormented him. She was at the bottom a seething confusion of emotion, and she wanted to make him likewise.
“If we were trees with ivy — instead of being fine humans with free active life — we should hug our thinning lives, shouldn’t we?”
“I suppose we should.”
“You, for instance — fancy your sacrificing yourself — for the next generation — that reminds you of Schopenhauer, doesn’t it? — for the next generation, or love, or anything!”
He did not answer her; she was too swift for him. They passed on under the poplars, which were hanging strings of green beads above them. There was a little open space, with tufts of bluebells. Lettie stooped over a wood-pigeon that lay on the ground on its breast, its wings half spread. She took it up — its eyes were bursten and bloody; she felt its breast, ruffling the dimming iris on its throat.
“It’s been fighting,” he said.
“What for — a mate?” she asked, looking at him.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“Cold — he’s quite cold, under the feathers! I think a wood-pigeon must enjoy being fought for — and being won; especially if the right one won. It would be a fine pleasure to see them fighting — don’t you think?” she said, torturing him.
“The claws are spread — it fell dead off the perch,” he replied.
“Ah, poor thing — it was wounded — and sat and waited for death — when the other had won. Don’t you think life is very cruel, George — and love the cruellest of all?”
He laughed bitterly under the pain of her soft, sad tones. “Let me bury him — and have done with the beaten lover. But we’ll make him a pretty grave.”
She scooped a hole in the dark soil, and snatching a handful of bluebells, threw them in on top of the dead bird. Then she smoothed the soil over all, and pressed her white hands on the black loam.
“There,” she said, knocking her hands one against the other to shake off the soil, “He’s done with. Come on.”
He followed her, speechless with his emotion.
The spinney opened out; the ferns were serenely uncoiling, the bluebells stood grouped with blue curls mingled. In the freer spaces forget-me-nots flowered in nebulae, and dog-violets gave an undertone of dark purple, with primroses for planets in the night. There was a slight drift of woodruff, sweet new-mown hay, scenting the air under the boughs. On a wet bank was the design of golden saxifrage, glistening unholily as if varnished by its minister, the snail. George and Lettie crushed the veined belles of wood-sorrel and broke the silken mosses. What did it matter to them what they broke or crushed?
Over the fence of the spinney was the hill-side, scattered with old thorn trees. There the little grey lichens held up ruby balls to us unnoticed. What did it matter, when all the great red apples were being shaken from the Tree to be left to rot.
“If I were a man,” said Lettie, “I would go out west and be free. I should love it.”
She took the scarf from her head and let it wave out on the wind; the colour was warm in her face with climbing, and her curls were freed by the wind, sparkling and rippling.
“Well — you’re not a man,” he said, looking at her, and speaking with timid bitterness.
“No,” she laughed, “if I were, I would shape things — oh, wouldn’t I have my own way!”
“And don’t you now?”
“Oh — I don’t want it particularly — when I’ve got it. When I’ve had my way, I do want somebody to take it back from me.”
She put her head back and looked at him sideways, laughing through the glitter of her hair.
They came to the kennels. She sat down on the edge of the great stone water-trough, and put her hands in the water, moving them gently like submerged flowers through the clear pool.
“I love to see myself in the water,” she said, “I don’t mean on the water, Narcissus — but that’s how I should like to be out west, to have a little lake of my own, and swim with my limbs quite free in the water.”
“Do you swim well?” he asked.
“Fairly.”
“I would race you — in your little lake.”
She laughed, took her hands out of the water, and watched the clear drops trickle off. Then she lifted her head suddenly, at some thought or other. She looked across the valley, and saw the red roofs of the Mill.
“Ilion, Ilion Fatalis incestusque judex Et mulier peregrina vertit. In pulverem ——”
“What’s that?” he said.
“Nothing.”
“That’s a private trough,” exclaimed a thin voice, high like a peewit’s cry. We started in surprise to see a tall, black-bearded man looking at us and away from us nervously, fidgeting uneasily some ten yards off.
“Is it?” said Lettie, looking at her wet hands, which she proceeded to dry on a fragment of a handkerchief.
“You mustn’t meddle with it,” said the man in the same reedy, oboe voice. Then he turned his head away, and his pale grey eyes roved the country-side — when he had courage, he turned his back to us, shading his eyes to continue his scrutiny. He walked hurriedly, a few steps, then craned his neck, peering into the valley, and hastened a dozen yards in another direction, again stretching and peering about. Then he went indoors.
“He is pretending to look for somebody,” said Lettie, “but it’s only because he’s afraid we shall think he came out just to look at us”— and they laughed.
Suddenly a woman appeared at the gate; she had pale eyes like the mouse-voiced man.
“You’ll get Bright’s disease sitting on that there damp stone,” she said to Lettie, who at once rose apologetically.
“I ought to know,” continued the mouse-voiced woman, “my own mother died of it.”
“Indeed,” murmured Lettie, “I’m sorry.”
“Yes,” continued the woman, “it behooves you to be careful. Do you come from Strelley Mill Farm?” she asked suddenly of George, surveying his shameful deshabille with bitter reproof.
He admitted the imputation.
“And you’re going to leave, aren’t you?”
Which also he admitted.
“Humph! — we s’ll ‘appen get some neighbours. It’s a dog’s life for loneliness. I suppose you knew the last lot that was here.”
Another brief admission.
“A dirty lot — a dirty beagle she must have been. You