Two evenings after, Louisa tapped at the door of the Quarry Cottage, at
half-pas six. He had finished dinner, the woman had washed up and gone
away, but still he sat in his pit dirt. He was going later to the New
Inn. He had begun to go there because he must go somewhere. The mere
contact with other men was necessary to him, the noise, the warmth, the
forgetful flight of the hours. But still he did not move. He sat alone
in the empty house till it began to grow on him like something
unnatural.
He was in his pit dirt when he opened the door.
“I have been wanting to call—I thought I would,” she said, and she went
to the sofa. He wondered why she wouldn’t use his mother’s round
armchair. Yet something stirred in him, like anger, when the
housekeeper placed herself in it.
“I ought to have been washed by now,” he said, glancing at the clock,
which was adorned with butterflies and cherries, and the name of “T.
Brooks, Mansfield.” He laid his black hands along his mottled dirty
arms. Louisa looked at him. There was the reserve, and the simple
neutrality towards her, which she dreaded in him. It made it impossible
for her to approach him.
“I am afraid,” she said, “that I wasn’t kind in asking you to supper.”
“I’m not used to it,” he said, smiling with his mouth, showing the
interspaced white teeth. His eyes, however, were steady and unseeing.
“It’s not _that_,” she said hastily. Her repose was exquisite and her
dark grey eyes rich with understanding. He felt afraid of her as she
sat there, as he began to grow conscious of her.
“How do you get on alone?” she asked.
He glanced away to the fire.
“Oh——” he answered, shifting uneasily, not finishing his answer.
Her face settled heavily.
“How close it is in this room. You have such immense fires. I will take
off my coat,” she said.
He watched her take off her hat and coat. She wore a cream cashmir
blouse embroidered with gold silk. It seemed to him a very fine
garment, fitting her throat and wrists close. It gave him a feeling of
pleasure and cleanness and relief from himself.
“What were you thinking about, that you didn’t get washed?” she asked,
half intimately. He laughed, turning aside his head. The whites of his
eyes showed very distinct in his black face.
“Oh,” he said, “I couldn’t tell you.”
There was a pause.
“Are you going to keep this house on?” she asked.
He stirred in his chair, under the question.
“I hardly know,” he said. “I’m very likely going to Canada.”
Her spirit became very quiet and attentive.
“What for?” she asked.
Again he shifted restlessly on his seat.
“Well”—he said slowly—“to try the life.”
“But which life?”
“There’s various things—farming or lumbering or mining. I don’t mind
much what it is.”
“And is that what you want?”
He did not think in these times, so he could not answer.
“I don’t know,” he said, “till I’ve tried.”
She saw him drawing away from her for ever.
“Aren’t you sorry to leave this house and garden?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered reluctantly. “I suppose our Fred would come
in—that’s what he’s wanting.”
“You don’t want to settle down?” she asked.
He was leaning forward on the arms of his chair. He turned to her. Her
face was pale and set. It looked heavy and impassive, her hair shone
richer as she grew white. She was to him something steady and immovable
and eternal presented to him. His heart was hot in an anguish of
suspense. Sharp twitches of fear and pain were in his limbs. He turned
his whole body away from her. The silence was unendurable. He could not
bear her to sit there any more. It made his heart go hot and stifled in
his breast.
“Were you going out tonight?” she asked.
“Only to the New Inn,” he said.
Again there was silence.
She reached for her hat. Nothing else was suggested to her. She _had_
to go. He sat waiting for her to be gone, for relief. And she knew that
if she went out of that house as she was, she went out a failure. Yet
she continued to pin on her hat; in a moment she would have to go.
Something was carrying her.
Then suddenly a sharp pang, like lightning, seared her from head to
foot, and she was beyond herself.
“Do you want me to go?” she asked, controlled, yet speaking out of a
fiery anguish, as if the words were spoken from her without her
intervention.
He went white under his dirt.
“Why?” he asked, turning to her in fear, compelled.
“Do you want me to go?” she repeated.
“Why?” he asked again.
“Because I wanted to stay with you,” she said, suffocated, with her
lungs full of fire.
His face worked, he hung forward a little, suspended, staring straight
into her eyes, in torment, in an agony of chaos, unable to collect
himself. And as if turned to stone, she looked back into his eyes.
Their souls were exposed bare for a few moments. It was agony. They
could not bear it. He dropped his head, whilst his body jerked with
little sharp twitchings.
She turned away for her coat. Her soul had gone dead in her. Her hands
trembled, but she could not feel any more. She drew on her coat. There
was a cruel suspense in the room. The moment had come for her to go. He
lifted his head. His eyes were like agate, expressionless, save for the
black points of torture. They held her, she had no will, no life any
more. She felt broken.
“Don’t you want me?” she said helplessly.
A spasm of torture crossed his eyes, which held her fixed.
“I—I——” he began, but he could not speak. Something drew him from his
chair to her. She stood motionless, spellbound, like a creature given
up as prey. He put his hand tentatively, uncertainly, on her arm. The
expression of his face was strange and inhuman. She stood utterly
motionless. Then clumsily he put his arms round her, and took her,
cruelly, blindly, straining her till she nearly lost consciousness,
till he himself had almost fallen.
Then, gradually, as he held her gripped, and his brain reeled round,
and he felt himself falling, falling from himself, and whilst she,
yielded up, swooned to a kind of death of herself, a moment of utter
darkness came over him, and they began to wake up again as if from a
long sleep. He was himself.
After a while his arms slackened, she loosened herself a little, and
put her arms round him, as he held her. So they held each other close,
and hid each against the other for assurance, helpless in speech. And
it was ever her hands that trembled more closely upon him, drawing him
nearer into her, with love.
And at last she drew back her face and looked up at him, her eyes wet,
and shining with light. His heart, which saw, was silent with fear. He
was with her. She saw his face all sombre and inscrutable, and he
seemed eternal to her. And all the echo of pain came back into the
rarity of bliss, and all her tears came up.
“I love you,” she said, her lips drawn and sobbing. He put down his
head against her, unable to hear her, unable to bear the sudden coming
of the peace and passion that almost broke his heart. They stood
together in silence whilst the thing moved away a little.
At last she wanted to see him. She looked up. His eyes were strange and
glowing, with a tiny black pupil. Strange, they were, and powerful over
her. And his mouth came to hers, and slowly her eyelids closed, as his
mouth sought hers closer and closer, and took possession of her.
They were silent for a long time, too much mixed up with passion and
grief and death to do anything but hold each other in pain and kiss
with long, hurting kisses wherein fear was transfused into desire. At
last she disengaged herself. He felt as if his heart were hurt, but
glad, and he scarcely dared look at her.
“I’m glad,” she said also.
He held her hands in passionate gratitude and desire. He had not yet
the presence of mind to say anything. He was dazed with relief.
“I ought to go,” she said.
He looked at her. He could not grasp the thought of her going, he knew
he could never be separated from her any more. Yet he dared not assert
himself. He held her hands tight.
“Your face is black,” she said.
He laughed.
“Yours is a bit smudged,” he said.
They were afraid of each other, afraid to talk. He could only keep her
near to him. After a while she wanted to wash her face. He brought her
some warm water, standing by and watching her. There was something he
wanted to say, that he dared not. He watched her wiping her face, and
making tidy her hair.
“They’ll see your blouse is dirty,” he said.
She looked at her sleeves and laughed for joy.
He was sharp with pride.
“What shall you do?” he asked.
“How?” she said.
He was awkward at a reply.
“About me,” he said.
“What do you want me to do?” she laughed.
He put his hand out slowly to her. What did it matter!
“But make yourself clean,” she said.