She was almost unconscious. So the colliers’ lovers would stand with their backs to the walls, holding their sweethearts and kissing them as she was being kissed. Ah, but would their kisses be fine and powerful as the kisses of the firm-mouthed master? Even the keen, short-cut moustache—the colliers would not have that.
And the colliers’ sweethearts would, like herself, hang their heads back limp over their shoulder, and look out from the dark archway, at the close patch of yellow lights on the unseen hill in the distance, or at the vague form of trees, and at the buildings of the colliery wood-yard, in the other direction.
His arms were fast around her, he seemed to be gathering her into himself, her warmth, her softness, her adorable weight, drinking in the suffusion of her physical being, avidly. He lifted her, and seemed to pour her into himself, like wine into a cup.
“This is worth everything,” he said, in a strange, penetrating voice.
So she relaxed, and seemed to melt, to flow into him, as if she were some infinitely warm and precious suffusion filling into his veins, like an intoxicant. Her arms were round his neck, he kissed her and held her perfectly suspended, she was all slack and flowing into him, and he was the firm, strong cup that receives the wine of her life. So she lay cast upon him, stranded, lifted up against him, melting and melting under his kisses, melting into his limbs and bones, as if he were soft iron becoming surcharged with her electric life.
Till she seemed to swoon, gradually her mind went, and she passed away, everything in her was melted down and fluid, and she lay still, becoming contained by him, sleeping in him as lightning sleeps in a pure, soft stone. So she was passed away and gone in him, and he was perfected.
When she opened her eyes again, and saw the patch of lights in the distance, it seemed to her strange that the world still existed, that she was standing under the bridge resting her head on Gerald’s breast. Gerald—who was he? He was the exquisite adventure, the desirable unknown to her.
She looked up, and in the darkness saw his face above her, his shapely, male face. There seemed a faint, white light emitted from him, a white aura, as if he were visitor from the unseen. She reached up, like Eve reaching to the apples on the tree of knowledge, and she kissed him, though her passion was a transcendent fear of the thing he was, touching his face with her infinitely delicate, encroaching wondering fingers. Her fingers went over the mould of his face, over his features. How perfect and foreign he was—ah how dangerous! Her soul thrilled with complete knowledge. This was the glistening, forbidden apple, this face of a man. She kissed him, putting her fingers over his face, his eyes, his nostrils, over his brows and his ears, to his neck, to know him, to gather him in by touch. He was so firm, and shapely, with such satisfying, inconceivable shapeliness, strange, yet unutterably clear. He was such an unutterable enemy, yet glistening with uncanny white fire. She wanted to touch him and touch him and touch him, till she had him all in her hands, till she had strained him into her knowledge. Ah, if she could have the precious
knowledge
of him, she would be filled, and nothing could deprive her of this. For he was so unsure, so risky in the common world of day.
“You are so
beautiful,”
she murmured in her throat.
He wondered, and was suspended. But she felt him quiver, and she came down involuntarily nearer upon him. He could not help himself. Her fingers had him under their power. The fathomless, fathomless desire they could evoke in him was deeper than death, where he had no choice.
But she knew now, and it was enough. For the time, her soul was destroyed with the exquisite shock of his invisible fluid lightning. She knew. And this knowledge was a death from which she must recover. How much more of him was there to know? Ah much, much, many days harvesting for her large, yet perfectly subtle and intelligent hands upon the field of his living, radio-active body. Ah, her hands were eager, greedy for knowledge. But for the present it was enough, enough, as much as her soul could bear. Too much, and she would shatter herself, she would fill the fine vial of her soul too quickly, and it would break. Enough now—enough for the time being. There were all the after days when her hands, like birds, could feed upon the fields of his mystical plastic form—till then enough.
And even he was glad to be checked, rebuked, held back. For to desire is better than to possess, the finality of the end was dreaded as deeply as it was desired.
They walked on towards the town, towards where the lamps threaded singly, at long intervals down the dark high-road of the valley. They came at length to the gate of the drive.
“Don’t come any further,” she said.
“You’d rather I didn’t?” he asked, relieved. He did not want to go up the public streets with her, his soul all naked and alight as it was.
“Much rather—good-night.” She held out her hand. He grasped it, then touched the perilous, potent fingers with his lips.
“Good-night,” he said. “To-morrow.”
And they parted. He went home full of the strength and the power of living desire.
But the next day, she did not come, she sent a note that she was kept indoors by a cold. Here was a torment! But he possessed his soul in some sort of patience, writing a brief answer, telling her how sorry he was not to see her.
The day after this, he stayed at home—it seemed so futile to go down to the office. His father could not live the week out. And he wanted to be at home, suspended.
Gerald sat on a chair by the window in his father’s room. The landscape outside was black and winter-sodden. His father lay grey and ashen on the bed, a nurse moved silently in her white dress, neat and elegant, even beautiful. There was a scent of eau-de-cologne in the room. The nurse went out of the room, Gerald was alone with death, facing the winter-black landscape.
“Is there much more water in Denley?” came the faint voice, determined and querulous, from the bed. The dying man was asking about a leakage from Willey Water into one of the pits.
“Some more—we shall have to run off the lake,” said Gerald.
“Will you?” The faint voice filtered to extinction. There was dead stillness. The grey-faced, sick man lay with eyes closed, more dead than death. Gerald looked away. He felt his heart was seared, it would perish if this went on much longer.
Suddenly he heard a strange noise. Turning round, he saw his father’s eyes wide open, strained and rolling in a frenzy of inhuman struggling. Gerald started to his feet, and stood transfixed in horror.
“Wha-a-ah-h-h-” came a horrible choking rattle from his father’s throat, the fearful, frenzied eye, rolling awfully in its wild fruitless search for help, passed blindly over Gerald, then up came the dark blood and mess pumping over the face of the agonised being, the tense body relaxed, the head fell aside, down the pillow.
Gerald stood transfixed, his soul echoing in horror. He would move, but he could not. He could not move his limbs. His brain seemed to re-echo, like a pulse.
The nurse in white softly entered. She glanced at Gerald, then at the bed.
“Ah!” came her soft whimpering cry, and she hurried forward to the dead man. “Ah-h!” came the slight sound of her agitated distress, as she stood bending over the bedside. Then she recovered, turned, and came for towel and sponge. She was wiping the dead face carefully, and murmuring, almost whimpering, very softly: “Poor Mr. Criers—Poor Mr. Crich!—Oh, poor Mr. Crich!”
“Is he dead?” clanged Gerald’s sharp voice.
“Oh yes, he’s gone,” replied the soft, moaning voice of the nurse, as she looked up at Gerald’s face. She was young and beautiful and quivering. A strange sort of grin went over Gerald’s face, over the horror. And he walked out of the room.
He was going to tell his mother. On the landing he met his brother Basil.
“He’s gone, Basil,” he said, scarcely able to subdue his voice, not to let an unconscious, frightening exultation sound through.
“What?” cried Basil, going pale.
Gerald nodded. Then he went on to his mother’s room.
She was sitting in her purple gown, sewing, very slowly sewing, putting in a stitch, then another stitch. She looked up at Gerald with her blue, undaunted eyes.
“Father’s gone,” he said.
“He’s dead? Who says so?”
“Oh, you know, mother, if you see him.”
She put her sewing down, and slowly rose.
“Are you going to see him?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
By the bedside the children already stood in a weeping group.
“Oh, mother!” cried the daughters, almost in hysterics, weeping loudly.
But the mother went forward. The dead man lay in repose, as if gently asleep, so gently, so peacefully, like a young man sleeping in purity. He was still warm. She stood looking at him in gloomy, heavy silence, for some time.
“Ay,” she said bitterly, at length, speaking as if to the unseen witnesses of the air. “You’re dead.” She stood for some minutes in silence, looking down. “Beautiful,” she asserted, “beautiful as if life had never touched you—never touched you. God send I look different. I hope I shall look my years, when I am dead. Beautiful, beautiful,” she crooned over him. “You can see him in his teens, with his first beard on his face. A beautiful soul, beautiful—” Then there was a tearing in her voice as she cried: “None of you look like this, when you are dead! Don’t let it happen again.” It was a strange, wild command from out of the unknown. Her children moved unconsciously together, in a nearer group, at the dreadful command in her voice. The colour was flushed bright in her cheek, she looked awful and wonderful. “Blame me, blame me if you like, that he lies there like a lad in his teens, with his first beard on his face. Blame me if you like. But you none of you know.” She was silent in intense silence. Then there came, in a low, tense voice: “If I thought that the children I bore would lie looking like that in death, I’d strangle them when they were infants, yes—”
“No, mother,” came the strange, clarion voice of Gerald from the background, “we are different, we don’t blame you.”
She turned and looked full in his eyes. Then she lifted her hands in a strange half-gesture of mad despair.
“Pray!” she said strongly. “Pray for yourselves to God, for there’s no help for you from your parents.”
“Oh mother!” cried her daughters wildly.
But she had turned and gone, and they all went quickly away from each other.
When Gudrun heard that Mr. Crich was dead, she felt rebuked. She had stayed away lest Gerald should think her too easy of winning. And now, he was in the midst of trouble, whilst she was cold.
The following day she went up as usual to Winifred, who was glad to see her, glad to get away into the studio. The girl had wept, and then, too frightened, had turned aside to avoid any more tragic eventuality. She and Gudrun resumed work as usual, in the isolation of the studio, and this seemed an immeasurable happiness, a pure world of freedom, after the aimlessness and misery of the house. Gudrun stayed on till evening. She and Winifred had dinner brought up to the studio, where they ate in freedom, away from all the people in the house.
After dinner Gerald came up. The great high studio was full of shadow and a fragrance of coffee. Gudrun and Winifred had a little table near the fire at the far end, with a white lamp whose light did not travel far. They were a tiny world to themselves, the two girls surrounded by lovely shadows, the beams and rafters shadowy overhead, the benches and implements shadowy down the studio.
“You are cosy enough here,” said Gerald, going up to them.
There was a low brick fireplace, full of fire, an old blue Turkish rug, the little oak table with the lamp and the white-and-blue cloth and the dessert, and Gudrun making coffee in an odd brass coffee-maker, and Winifred scalding a little milk in a tiny saucepan.
“Have you had coffee?” said Gudrun.
“I have, but I’ll have some more with you,” he replied.
“Then you must have it in a glass—there are only two cups,” said Winifred.
“It is the same to me,” he said, taking a chair and coming into the charmed circle of the girls. How happy they were, how cosy and glamorous it was with them, in a world of lofty shadows! The outside world, in which he had been transacting funeral business all the day, was completely wiped out. In an instant he snuffed glamour and magic.
They had all their things very dainty, two odd and lovely little cups, scarlet and solid gilt, and a little black jug with scarlet discs, and the curious coffee-machine, whose spirit-flame flowed steadily, almost invisibly. There was the effect of rather sinister richness, in which Gerald at once escaped himself.
They all sat down, and Gudrun carefully poured out the coffee.
“Will you have milk?” she asked calmly, yet nervously poising the little black jug with its big red dots. She was always so completely controlled, yet so bitterly nervous.
“No, I won’t,” he replied.
So, with a curious humility, she placed him the little cup of coffee, and herself took the awkward tumbler. She seemed to want to serve him.
“Why don’t you give me the glass—it is so clumsy for you,” he said. He would much rather have had it, and seen her daintily served. But she was silent, pleased with the disparity, with her self-abasement.
“You are quite
en menage,”
ch
he said.
“Yes. We aren’t really at home to visitors,” said Winifred.
“You’re not? Then I’m an intruder?”
For once he felt his conventional dress was out of place, he was an outsider.
Gudrun was very quiet. She did not feel drawn to talk to him. At this stage, silence was best—or mere light words. It was best to leave serious things aside. So they talked gaily and lightly, till they heard the man below lead out the horse, and call it to “back-back!” into the dog-cart that was to take Gudrun home. So she put on her things, and shook hands with Gerald, without once meeting his eyes. And she was gone.