Produced by Doug Levy
AARON'S ROD
by D. H. Lawrence
CONTENTS
I. THE BLUE BALL
II. ROYAL OAK
III. “THE LIGHTED TREE”
IV. “THE PILLAR OF SALT”
V. AT THE OPERA
VI. TALK
VII. THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN
VIII. A PUNCH IN THE WIND
IX. LOW-WATER MARK
X. THE WAR AGAIN
XI. MORE PILLAR OF SALT
XII. NOVARA
XIII. WIE ES IHNEN GEFAELLT
XIV. XX SETTEMBRE
XV. A RAILWAY JOURNEY
XVI. FLORENCE
XVII. HIGH UP OVER THE CATHEDRAL SQUARE
XVIII. THE MARCHESA
XIX. CLEOPATRA, BUT NOT ANTHONY
XX. THE BROKEN ROD
XXI. WORDS
CHAPTER I. THE BLUE BALL
There was a large, brilliant evening star in the early twilight, and
underfoot the earth was half frozen. It was Christmas Eve. Also the War
was over, and there was a sense of relief that was almost a new menace.
A man felt the violence of the nightmare released now into the general
air. Also there had been another wrangle among the men on the pit-bank
that evening.
Aaron Sisson was the last man on the little black railway-line climbing
the hill home from work. He was late because he had attended a meeting
of the men on the bank. He was secretary to the Miners Union for his
colliery, and had heard a good deal of silly wrangling that left him
nettled.
He strode over a stile, crossed two fields, strode another stile, and
was in the long road of colliers' dwellings. Just across was his own
house: he had built it himself. He went through the little gate, up past
the side of the house to the back. There he hung a moment, glancing down
the dark, wintry garden.
“My father--my father's come!” cried a child's excited voice, and two
little girls in white pinafores ran out in front of his legs.
“Father, shall you set the Christmas Tree?” they cried. “We've got one!”
“Afore I have my dinner?” he answered amiably.
“Set it now. Set it now.--We got it through Fred Alton.”
“Where is it?”
The little girls were dragging a rough, dark object out of a corner of
the passage into the light of the kitchen door.
“It's a beauty!” exclaimed Millicent.
“Yes, it is,” said Marjory.
“I should think so,” he replied, striding over the dark bough. He went
to the back kitchen to take off his coat.
“Set it now, Father. Set it now,” clamoured the girls.
“You might as well. You've left your dinner so long, you might as well
do it now before you have it,” came a woman's plangent voice, out of the
brilliant light of the middle room.
Aaron Sisson had taken off his coat and waistcoat and his cap. He stood
bare-headed in his shirt and braces, contemplating the tree.
“What am I to put it in?” he queried. He picked up the tree, and held
it erect by the topmost twig. He felt the cold as he stood in the yard
coatless, and he twitched his shoulders.
“Isn't it a beauty!” repeated Millicent.
“Ay!--lop-sided though.”
“Put something on, you two!” came the woman's high imperative voice,
from the kitchen.
“We aren't cold,” protested the girls from the yard.
“Come and put something on,” insisted the voice. The man started off
down the path, the little girls ran grumbling indoors. The sky was
clear, there was still a crystalline, non-luminous light in the under
air.
Aaron rummaged in his shed at the bottom of the garden, and found a
spade and a box that was suitable. Then he came out to his neat, bare,
wintry garden. The girls flew towards him, putting the elastic of their
hats under their chins as they ran. The tree and the box lay on the
frozen earth. The air breathed dark, frosty, electric.
“Hold it up straight,” he said to Millicent, as he arranged the tree in
the box. She stood silent and held the top bough, he filled in round the
roots.
When it was done, and pressed in, he went for the wheelbarrow. The girls
were hovering excited round the tree. He dropped the barrow and stooped
to the box. The girls watched him hold back his face--the boughs pricked
him.
“Is it very heavy?” asked Millicent.
“Ay!” he replied, with a little grunt. Then the procession set off--the
trundling wheel-barrow, the swinging hissing tree, the two excited
little girls. They arrived at the door. Down went the legs of the
wheel-barrow on the yard. The man looked at the box.
“Where are you going to have it?” he called.
“Put it in the back kitchen,” cried his wife.
“You'd better have it where it's going to stop. I don't want to hawk it
about.”
“Put it on the floor against the dresser, Father. Put it there,” urged
Millicent.
“You come and put some paper down, then,” called the mother hastily.
The two children ran indoors, the man stood contemplative in the cold,
shrugging his uncovered shoulders slightly. The open inner door showed a
bright linoleum on the floor, and the end of a brown side-board on which
stood an aspidistra.
Again with a wrench Aaron Sisson lifted the box. The tree pricked and
stung. His wife watched him as he entered staggering, with his face
averted.
“Mind where you make a lot of dirt,” she said.
He lowered the box with a little jerk on to the spread-out newspaper on
the floor. Soil scattered.
“Sweep it up,” he said to Millicent.
His ear was lingering over the sudden, clutching hiss of the
tree-boughs.
A stark white incandescent light filled the room and made everything
sharp and hard. In the open fire-place a hot fire burned red. All was
scrupulously clean and perfect. A baby was cooing in a rocker-less
wicker cradle by the hearth. The mother, a slim, neat woman with dark
hair, was sewing a child's frock. She put this aside, rose, and began to
take her husband's dinner from the oven.
“You stopped confabbing long enough tonight,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered, going to the back kitchen to wash his hands.
In a few minutes he came and sat down to his dinner. The doors were shut
close, but there was a draught, because the settling of the mines under
the house made the doors not fit. Aaron moved his chair, to get out of
the draught. But he still sat in his shirt and trousers.
He was a good-looking man, fair, and pleasant, about thirty-two years
old. He did not talk much, but seemed to think about something. His wife
resumed her sewing. She was acutely aware of her husband, but he seemed
not very much aware of her.
“What were they on about today, then?” she said.
“About the throw-in.”
“And did they settle anything?”
“They're going to try it--and they'll come out if it isn't
satisfactory.”
“The butties won't have it, I know,” she said. He gave a short laugh,
and went on with his meal.
The two children were squatted on the floor by the tree. They had a
wooden box, from which they had taken many little newspaper packets,
which they were spreading out like wares.
“Don't open any. We won't open any of them till we've taken them all
out--and then we'll undo one in our turns. Then we s'll both undo
equal,” Millicent was saying.
“Yes, we'll take them ALL out first,” re-echoed Marjory.
“And what are they going to do about Job Arthur Freer? Do they want
him?” A faint smile came on her husband's face.
“Nay, I don't know what they want.--Some of 'em want him--whether
they're a majority, I don't know.”
She watched him closely.
“Majority! I'd give 'em majority. They want to get rid of you, and make
a fool of you, and you want to break your heart over it. Strikes me you
need something to break your heart over.”
He laughed silently.
“Nay,” he said. “I s'll never break my heart.”
“You'll go nearer to it over that, than over anything else: just because
a lot of ignorant monkeys want a monkey of their own sort to do the
Union work, and jabber to them, they want to get rid of you, and you eat
your heart out about it. More fool you, that's all I say--more fool you.
If you cared for your wife and children half what you care about your
Union, you'd be a lot better pleased in the end. But you care about
nothing but a lot of ignorant colliers, who don't know what they want
except it's more money just for themselves. Self, self, self--that's all
it is with them--and ignorance.”
“You'd rather have self without ignorance?” he said, smiling finely.
“I would, if I've got to have it. But what I should like to see is a man
that has thought for others, and isn't all self and politics.”
Her color had risen, her hand trembled with anger as she sewed. A blank
look had come over the man's face, as if he did not hear or heed any
more. He drank his tea in a long draught, wiped his moustache with two
fingers, and sat looking abstractedly at the children.
They had laid all the little packets on the floor, and Millicent was
saying:
“Now I'll undo the first, and you can have the second. I'll take this--”
She unwrapped the bit of newspaper and disclosed a silvery ornament
for a Christmas tree: a frail thing like a silver plum, with deep rosy
indentations on each side.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Isn't it LOVELY!” Her fingers cautiously held the
long bubble of silver and glowing rose, cleaving to it with a curious,
irritating possession. The man's eyes moved away from her. The lesser
child was fumbling with one of the little packets.
“Oh!”--a wail went up from Millicent. “You've taken one!--You didn't
wait.” Then her voice changed to a motherly admonition, and she began to
interfere. “This is the way to do it, look! Let me help you.”
But Marjory drew back with resentment.
“Don't, Millicent!--Don't!” came the childish cry. But Millicent's
fingers itched.
At length Marjory had got out her treasure--a little silvery bell with
a glass top hanging inside. The bell was made of frail glassy substance,
light as air.
“Oh, the bell!” rang out Millicent's clanging voice. “The bell! It's my
bell. My bell! It's mine! Don't break it, Marjory. Don't break it, will
you?”
Marjory was shaking the bell against her ear. But it was dumb, it made
no sound.
“You'll break it, I know you will.--You'll break it. Give it ME--”
cried Millicent, and she began to take away the bell. Marjory set up an
expostulation.
“LET HER ALONE,” said the father.
Millicent let go as if she had been stung, but still her brassy,
impudent voice persisted:
“She'll break it. She'll break it. It's mine--”
“You undo another,” said the mother, politic.
Millicent began with hasty, itching fingers to unclose another package.
“Aw--aw Mother, my peacock--aw, my peacock, my green peacock!” Lavishly
she hovered over a sinuous greenish bird, with wings and tail of spun
glass, pearly, and body of deep electric green.
“It's mine--my green peacock! It's mine, because Marjory's had one wing
off, and mine hadn't. My green peacock that I love! I love it!” She
swung it softly from the little ring on its back. Then she went to her
mother.
“Look, Mother, isn't it a beauty?”
“Mind the ring doesn't come out,” said her mother. “Yes, it's lovely!”
The girl passed on to her father.
“Look, Father, don't you love it!”
“Love it?” he re-echoed, ironical over the word love.
She stood for some moments, trying to force his attention. Then she went
back to her place.
Marjory had brought forth a golden apple, red on one cheek, rather
garish.
“Oh!” exclaimed Millicent feverishly, instantly seized with desire for
what she had not got, indifferent to what she had. Her eye ran quickly
over the packages. She took one.
“Now!” she exclaimed loudly, to attract attention. “Now! What's
this?--What's this? What will this beauty be?”
With finicky fingers she removed the newspaper. Marjory watched her
wide-eyed. Millicent was self-important.
“The blue ball!” she cried in a climax of rapture. “I've got THE BLUE
BALL.”
She held it gloating in the cup of her hands. It was a little globe of
hardened glass, of a magnificent full dark blue color. She rose and went
to her father.
“It was your blue ball, wasn't it, father?”
“Yes.”
“And you had it when you were a little boy, and now I have it when I'm a
little girl.”
“Ay,” he replied drily.
“And it's never been broken all those years.”
“No, not yet.”
“And perhaps it never will be broken.” To this she received no answer.
“Won't it break?” she persisted. “Can't you break it?”
“Yes, if you hit it with a hammer,” he said.
“Aw!” she cried. “I don't mean that. I mean if you just drop it. It
won't break if you drop it, will it?”
“I dare say it won't.”
“But WILL it?”
“I sh'd think not.”
“Should I try?”
She proceeded gingerly to let the blue ball drop, it bounced dully on
the floor-covering.
“Oh-h-h!” she cried, catching it up. “I love it.”
“Let ME drop it,” cried Marjory, and there was a performance of
admonition and demonstration from the elder sister.
But Millicent must go further. She became excited.
“It won't break,” she said, “even if you toss it up in the air.”
She flung it up, it fell safely. But her father's brow knitted slightly.
She tossed it wildly: it fell with a little splashing explosion: it had
smashed. It had fallen on the sharp edge of the tiles that protruded
under the fender.
“NOW what have you done!” cried the mother.
The child stood with her lip between her teeth, a look, half, of pure
misery and dismay, half of satisfaction, on her pretty sharp face.
“She wanted to break it,” said the father.
“No, she didn't! What do you say that for!” said the mother. And
Millicent burst into a flood of tears.
He rose to look at the fragments that lay splashed on the floor.
“You must mind the bits,” he said, “and pick 'em all up.”
He took one of the pieces to examine it. It was fine and thin and hard,
lined with pure silver, brilliant. He looked at it closely. So--this
was what it was. And this was the end of it. He felt the curious soft
explosion of its breaking still in his ears. He threw his piece in the
fire.
“Pick all the bits up,” he said. “Give over! give over! Don't cry any
more.” The good-natured tone of his voice quieted the child, as he
intended it should.
He went away into the back kitchen to wash himself. As he was bending
his head over the sink before the little mirror, lathering to shave,
there came from outside the dissonant voices of boys, pouring out the
dregs of carol-singing.
“While Shep-ep-ep-ep-herds watched--”
He held his soapy brush suspended for a minute. They called this
singing! His mind flitted back to early carol music. Then again he heard
the vocal violence outside.
“Aren't you off there!” he called out, in masculine menace. The noise
stopped, there was a scuffle. But the feet returned and the voices
resumed. Almost immediately the door opened, boys were heard muttering
among themselves. Millicent had given them a penny. Feet scraped on the
yard, then went thudding along the side of the house, to the street.
To Aaron Sisson, this was home, this was Christmas: the unspeakably
familiar. The war over, nothing was changed. Yet everything changed. The
scullery in which he stood was painted green, quite fresh, very clean,
the floor was red tiles. The wash-copper of red bricks was very red, the
mangle with its put-up board was white-scrubbed, the American oil-cloth
on the table had a gay pattern, there was a warm fire, the water in the
boiler hissed faintly. And in front of him, beneath him as he leaned
forward shaving, a drop of water fell with strange, incalculable rhythm
from the bright brass tap into the white enamelled bowl, which was now
half full of pure, quivering water. The war was over, and everything
just the same. The acute familiarity of this house, which he had built
for his marriage twelve years ago, the changeless pleasantness of it all
seemed unthinkable. It prevented his thinking.
When he went into the middle room to comb his hair he found the
Christmas tree sparkling, his wife was making pastry at the table, the
baby was sitting up propped in cushions.
“Father,” said Millicent, approaching him with a flat blue-and-white
angel of cotton-wool, and two ends of cotton--“tie the angel at the
top.”
“Tie it at the top?” he said, looking down.
“Yes. At the very top--because it's just come down from the sky.”
“Ay my word!” he laughed. And he tied the angel.
Coming downstairs after changing he went into the icy cold parlour, and
took his music and a small handbag. With this he retreated again to the
back kitchen. He was still in trousers and shirt and slippers: but now
it was a clean white shirt, and his best black trousers, and new pink
and white braces. He sat under the gas-jet of the back kitchen, looking
through his music. Then he opened the bag, in which were sections of a
flute and a piccolo. He took out the flute, and adjusted it. As he sat
he was physically aware of the sounds of the night: the bubbling of
water in the boiler, the faint sound of the gas, the sudden crying of
the baby in the next room, then noises outside, distant boys shouting,
distant rags of carols, fragments of voices of men. The whole country
was roused and excited.
The little room was hot. Aaron rose and opened a square ventilator over
the copper, letting in a stream of cold air, which was grateful to him.
Then he cocked his eye over the sheet of music spread out on the table
before him. He tried his flute. And then at last, with the odd gesture
of a diver taking a plunge, he swung his head and began to play. A
stream of music, soft and rich and fluid, came out of the flute. He
played beautifully. He moved his head and his raised bare arms with
slight, intense movements, as the delicate music poured out. It was
sixteenth-century Christmas melody, very limpid and delicate.
The pure, mindless, exquisite motion and fluidity of the music delighted
him with a strange exasperation. There was something tense, exasperated
to the point of intolerable anger, in his good-humored breast, as he
played the finely-spun peace-music. The more exquisite the music, the
more perfectly he produced it, in sheer bliss; and at the same time, the
more intense was the maddened exasperation within him.
Millicent appeared in the room. She fidgetted at the sink. The music was
a bugbear to her, because it prevented her from saying what was on her
own mind. At length it ended, her father was turning over the various
books and sheets. She looked at him quickly, seizing her opportunity.
“Are you going out, Father?” she said.
“Eh?”
“Are you going out?” She twisted nervously.
“What do you want to know for?”
He made no other answer, and turned again to the music. His eye went
down a sheet--then over it again--then more closely over it again.
“Are you?” persisted the child, balancing on one foot.
He looked at her, and his eyes were angry under knitted brows.
“What are you bothering about?” he said.
“I'm not bothering--I only wanted to know if you were going out,” she
pouted, quivering to cry.
“I expect I am,” he said quietly.
She recovered at once, but still with timidity asked:
“We haven't got any candles for the Christmas tree--shall you buy some,
because mother isn't going out?”
“Candles!” he repeated, settling his music and taking up the piccolo.
“Yes--shall you buy us some, Father? Shall you?”
“Candles!” he repeated, putting the piccolo to his mouth and blowing a
few piercing, preparatory notes.
“Yes, little Christmas-tree candles--blue ones and red ones, in
boxes--Shall you, Father?”
“We'll see--if I see any--”
“But SHALL you?” she insisted desperately. She wisely mistrusted his
vagueness.
But he was looking unheeding at the music. Then suddenly the piccolo
broke forth, wild, shrill, brilliant. He was playing Mozart. The child's
face went pale with anger at the sound. She turned, and went out,
closing both doors behind her to shut out the noise.
The shrill, rapid movement of the piccolo music seemed to possess the
air, it was useless to try to shut it out. The man went on playing
to himself, measured and insistent. In the frosty evening the sound
carried. People passing down the street hesitated, listening. The
neighbours knew it was Aaron practising his piccolo. He was esteemed a
good player: was in request at concerts and dances, also at swell balls.
So the vivid piping sound tickled the darkness.
He played on till about seven o'clock; he did not want to go out too
soon, in spite of the early closing of the public houses. He never went
with the stream, but made a side current of his own. His wife said he
was contrary. When he went into the middle room to put on his collar and
tie, the two little girls were having their hair brushed, the baby was
in bed, there was a hot smell of mince-pies baking in the oven.
“You won't forget our candles, will you, Father?” asked Millicent, with
assurance now.
“I'll see,” he answered.
His wife watched him as he put on his overcoat and hat. He was
well-dressed, handsome-looking. She felt there was a curious glamour
about him. It made her feel bitter. He had an unfair advantage--he was
free to go off, while she must stay at home with the children.
“There's no knowing what time you'll be home,” she said.
“I shan't be late,” he answered.
“It's easy to say so,” she retorted, with some contempt. He took his
stick, and turned towards the door.
“Bring the children some candles for their tree, and don't be so
selfish,” she said.
“All right,” he said, going out.
“Don't say ALL RIGHT if you never mean to do it,” she cried, with sudden
anger, following him to the door.
His figure stood large and shadowy in the darkness.
“How many do you want?” he said.
“A dozen,” she said. “And holders too, if you can get them,” she added,
with barren bitterness.
“Yes--all right,” he turned and melted into the darkness. She went
indoors, worn with a strange and bitter flame.
He crossed the fields towards the little town, which once more fumed its
lights under the night. The country ran away, rising on his right hand.
It was no longer a great bank of darkness. Lights twinkled freely here
and there, though forlornly, now that the war-time restrictions were
removed. It was no glitter of pre-war nights, pit-heads glittering
far-off with electricity. Neither was it the black gulf of the war
darkness: instead, this forlorn sporadic twinkling.
Everybody seemed to be out of doors. The hollow dark countryside
re-echoed like a shell with shouts and calls and excited voices.
Restlessness and nervous excitement, nervous hilarity were in the
air. There was a sense of electric surcharge everywhere, frictional, a
neurasthenic haste for excitement.
Every moment Aaron Sisson was greeted with Good-night--Good-night,
Aaron--Good-night, Mr. Sisson. People carrying parcels, children,
women, thronged home on the dark paths. They were all talking loudly,
declaiming loudly about what they could and could not get, and what this
or the other had lost.
When he got into the main street, the only street of shops, it was
crowded. There seemed to have been some violent but quiet contest, a
subdued fight, going on all the afternoon and evening: people struggling
to buy things, to get things. Money was spent like water, there was
a frenzy of money-spending. Though the necessities of life were in
abundance, still the people struggled in frenzy for cheese, sweets,
raisins, pork-stuff, even for flowers and holly, all of which were
scarce, and for toys and knick-knacks, which were sold out. There was a
wild grumbling, but a deep satisfaction in the fight, the struggle. The
same fight and the same satisfaction in the fight was witnessed whenever
a tram-car stopped, or when it heaved its way into sight. Then the
struggle to mount on board became desperate and savage, but stimulating.
Souls surcharged with hostility found now some outlet for their
feelings.
As he came near the little market-place he bethought himself of the
Christmas-tree candles. He did not intend to trouble himself. And yet,
when he glanced in passing into the sweet-shop window, and saw it bare
as a board, the very fact that he probably _could not_ buy the things
made him hesitate, and try.
“Have you got any Christmas-tree candles?” he asked as he entered the
shop.
“How many do you want?”
“A dozen.”
“Can't let you have a dozen. You can have two boxes--four in a
box--eight. Six-pence a box.”
“Got any holders?”
“Holders? Don't ask. Haven't seen one this year.”
“Got any toffee--?”
“Cough-drops--two-pence an ounce--nothing else left.”
“Give me four ounces.”
He watched her weighing them in the little brass scales.
“You've not got much of a Christmas show,” he said.
“Don't talk about Christmas, as far as sweets is concerned. They ought
to have allowed us six times the quantity--there's plenty of sugar, why
didn't they? We s'll have to enjoy ourselves with what we've got. We
mean to, anyhow.”
“Ay,” he said.
“Time we had a bit of enjoyment, THIS Christmas. They ought to have made
things more plentiful.”
“Yes,” he said, stuffing his package in his pocket.