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.
